HUNTER: Black widow Monica Sementilli convicted in murder of husband
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Black widow Monica Sementilli’s face was set like stone in the minutes leading up to a jury declaring her grim fate on Friday afternoon.
It took the ten-man, two-woman panel seven hours and 47 minutes to declare the 53-year-old former Woodbridge woman guilty of cold-bloodedly orchestrating the murder of her husband, famed Toronto hairstylist Fabio Sementilli.
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The 49-year-old style rock star was stabbed to death on the patio of his Woodland Hills, California home while enjoying a glass of wine and a cigar on Jan. 23, 2017.
More than eight years of agony and waiting have officially ended for the victim’s tight-knit family.
Monica Sementilli will be sentenced on June 23.
She was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The penalty for those crimes is life in prison without parole.
“Monica Sementilli is the most unsubtle defendant of all time,” Court TV legal analyst Michael Jaffer said. “Even though the axeman (Robert Baker, the admitted killer and Monica’s lover) testified she had nothing to do with it, the jury still found her guilty. And the jury got it right.”
Jaffer added that everyone agreed former porn star and convicted sex offender Baker, 63, was the killer.
But Monica Sementilli could not escape the weeks of testimony from friends, family, cops and the third accused, Christopher Austin, that painted her into a corner as details of the lurid affair and her evil schemes emerged.
The sex trips to Vegas, the emails, and Fabio’s $2 million life insurance policy, she pestered detectives about.
Jaffer added: “She was the most unsubtle defendant of unsubtle defendants.”
Initially, detectives believed the murder of Fabio Sementilli was a botched home invasion. But blood from the crime scene carried the killer’s DNA, and that led to Baker and Monica.
The investigation was about money and sex. Behind her husband’s back, for 18 months, Monica and Baker — her racquetball instructor — engaged in a torrid, sex-fuelled affair.
Baker pleaded no contest in July 2023 and was convicted of killing Fabio. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — the same sentence Sementilli now faces.
Another man, Chris Austin, who helped Baker stab Fabio, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a 16-year sentence.
But it was always Monica Sementilli pulling the strings. She was, prosecutors said, desperate for a new life with Robert Baker.
“She’s the one who destroyed so many lives and their entire family. No one else did that, there’s no one else to blame,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said.
The scene in Los Angeles Superior Court Friday morning was surely a long way from the sexy second life that Monica Sementilli had envisioned for herself.
Looking much older and haggard after seven years in the LA County Jail, her gray-flecked hair was pinned off her forehead. She seemed edgy, twitchy.
Her mouth was turned down in a frown.
And when the verdict was read, Monica Sementilli shook and sobbed and appeared confused. Even as LA County Sheriffs led her out of the courtroom, she didn’t appear to comprehend her new reality.
The reality is this: Monica Sementilli orchestrated a horrific crime for sex and money, robbing her children of their father’s love and guidance, robbing his family of a beloved man and robbing the world of someone who, in his way, made it better.
And her own life? That’s utterly worthless.
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