Original subtitles

An internationally renowned hairdresser was found stabbed

outside a home in LA.

This looks like a robbery that turned into a murder.

That was the worst day of my life.

There's home surveillance cameras around the home.

If she had come home slightly earlier,

they could have been looking at a double homicide.

Our hope was that it would lead us to our killer.

I was shocked. What do you know about murder?

My brother's killer sitting with our family.

It's evil beyond comprehension.

When we first started to dive into the story at People,

it really seemed like something out of a Hollywood movie.

The glitz and glamour and scandalous sex.

But the most shocking part of the story is the villain

at the center of it all.

In 2017, Fabio Sementilli and his family,

they were living in Woodland Hills,

which is a really wealthy suburb of Los Angeles.

Fabio was the vice president of education for Wella,

which is a hair product company.

Oh, my God! Look at this thing!

This is awesome! Ah!

Fabio was a lot of fun. He was exciting to be around.

He started calling himself Big Daddy because he just

embraced exactly who he was.

He would just spend so much time laughing.

He had this big, big laugh.

How's everybody doing tonight? Whoo!

To Fabio, family is everything.

He always made you feel like you were so important.

He was living this wonderful life in Los Angeles,

but Fabio came from really humble beginnings in Toronto.

You know, his family were Italian immigrants.

My parents immigrated from Italy.

I was four, and my sister, Mirella, was eight months old,

and Fabio was born and raised in Toronto.

We have family throughout Italy,

and a lot of them are hairdressers,

and Fabio was very influenced by them.

He said to my mom one day, "That's what I want to do.

I want to be a hairdresser."

My sister started a salon called Modele Hair Design

in Toronto, and Fabio started working there.

The way he handled the scissor, he would cut with such style.

And he could create any shape with a head of hair.

Upon winning competitions,

he started to make a name for himself.

And so, you know, the word gets out, this guy's really good.

And in Toronto, you start to make connections.

I remember one time he called me and he's like,

"I'm here with Gordon Ramsay." And he was doing his hair.

In the 1990s, his reputation is skyrocketing

and he needs help at his salon and he ends up hiring

Monica Crescentini, the makeup artist and model.

They soon fell in love and got married and had two daughters,

Gessica and Isabella.

Fabio loved his children. He loved his wife.

They looked like they were good together.

You could just see how much they loved each other.

I still have memories of them dancing.

You could just tell that there was so much love there.

He was doing hair in the salon, and then he got noticed

by the bigger brand names,

like the L'Oreals and the Wellas of the world.

And he ended up going with Wella,

becoming the vice president of education.

He was excited about it, and he knew where he belonged,

helping stylists learn and grow, mentoring people.

In 2007, Fabio, Monica, and their two daughters

move to Los Angeles, so Fabio can take on the new role.

Luigi, his son from a previous marriage,

stays back in Toronto.

But Fabio travels back and forth often to see him.

Fabio was working with hair stylists,

promoting the business.

He would do celebrities like Jennifer Lopez,

Jennifer Love Hewitt,

a lot of movie stars that he did hair for.

Fabio had achieved the dream, a lucrative career

and a loving family.

But then, in 2017, it all comes to a violent end.

The 911 call was Isabella Sementilli.

She was 16 years old.

Her dad was slumped over in the backyard.

There was a lot of blood.

She was out of breath, and she was advised to

try to give care to her dad.

While she's on the phone, her mother, Monica Sementilli,

comes home and finds Isabella and Fabio in the backyard.

Police arrive on the scene, and it's pretty clear

immediately that Fabio Sementilli is dead.

So they contact LAPD's Van Nuys Division Homicide Detectives.

When we got there, it was dark outside.

It was a nice home in a nice community, larger home,

ranch style with a second story.

We observed the decedent, Fabio Sementilli, by the pool

in the backyard. - There was a lot of blood.

Fabio's body was positioned in sort of a fetal position

right next to the chair where he was sitting.

He was basically face down, knees were bent as if he was

sitting and fell forward.

Multiple stab wounds to the neck area,

the chest and the heart area, and also a wound on the leg.

There were seven stab wounds altogether.

Mostly all of them were fatal, so he bled out pretty quick.

It appeared kind of a surprise attack.

I call it a blitz attack.

Not long after, Gessica,

Fabio's other daughter, who was 18,

comes home.

They take Monica as well as Fabio's two daughters

to the neighbors.

We had members of our crisis response team that were out at

the scene comforting them.

They were all upset. It was obviously traumatic,

so we wanted to make sure they were well taken care of.

We did a walk-through of the property.

Inside the kitchen, there was a large amount of blood on

the floor, countertops, blood droplets.

There was also a jug of vinegar that was in the kitchen sink.

We assumed that maybe there was

some attempt to clean up the crime scene,

although obviously not a good job.

Based on the droplets that were inside of the kitchen,

we believe that did not emanate from Fabio Sementilli.

Blood is slippery.

Most people that kill are not prepared for that,

and so they end up cutting themselves in the process.

It appeared as if someone was

bleeding and had walked through the area.

We believed that we had a mixture of blood.

Every bit of blood that's there from all those different rooms,

it goes to the lab and the scientists figure out

whose blood does this belong to.

Upon walking further through the house, we discovered that

there was a bedroom in the back that we learned was

a master bedroom.

Drawers had been pulled out, stuff overturned, like somebody

had gone through everything.

There appeared to be some sort of ransacking that had happened,

potentially from a burglary or robbery that had occurred.

There was currency in US, Euros, and Canadian dollars

that appeared to be taken from a cabinet,

some costume jewelry,

and there were some gold coins that had been taken.

Outside the house, there were no signs of forced entry.

It appeared as though maybe a door was left

open or unlocked.

Investigators noticed that there's home surveillance

cameras around the Sementilli home.

The security cameras appear to be newer-style cameras.

They are mounted to the outside surfaces of the house.

Monica advised us that the DVR for the camera system was

located in the garage on the cabinet.

To the right side of the subpanel box, there was

a set of wires that were exposed,

so we knew that we were missing the box.

The recording device isn't the only thing missing from the garage.

The detectives notice that there are also no vehicles

parked inside.

When we talked with Monica, she advised us that

her husband's Porsche 911 was missing.

The Porsche was put into our system

as "armed and dangerous stolen vehicle."

Our hope was that it would lead us to our killer.

After the police search the home, they go over to talk

to Monica and her two daughters,

Gessica and Isabella.

We interviewed Monica.

She was upset, trying to catch her breath, very emotional.

Monica explains that Isabella went to school that morning,

while Fabio, Gessica, and Monica

were all at the house.

OK, OK.

After the lunch, Monica had some errands to do, so she went

to Target and went to Ralphs.

Gessica had a babysitting job, so she went to go

do the babysitting.

That night, when I was in Toronto,

a detective called my sister, Mirella,

and said, you know,

"Your brother has been murdered."

Yeah.

I got to my sister's house. Mirella said,

"Fabio died. Someone killed him."

My mother comes, and we told her about Fabio,

and her blood-curdling screams were so loud.

So deep. It was a mess.

That broke the Sementilli family to the core.

January 23rd is my birthday.

My parents came over to have some cake.

And so we were just about to do the cake.

I got a phone call and I just

dropped the phone.

I don't even know, I fell to my knees.

I felt like somebody had just

punched the wind right out of me.

That was probably the worst day of my life.

Based on the information

provided by the family during those interviews,

as far as the time frame goes, we knew that the murder occurred

somewhere between 4 and 5 o'clock.

Because there was ransacking going on in the master bedroom,

bloodstains throughout the house.

We thought this looks like a robbery that went sideways

and it turned into a murder.

An internationally renowned Toronto hairdresser was found

beaten and stabbed outside a home in LA.

Police have identified him as 49-year-old Fabio Sementilli.

I spoke with Eden Sassoon tonight.

She's the daughter of another industry icon, Vidal Sassoon.

He really stood out. A man who truly cared.

Excuse my French, he gave a [bleep].

It made a difference.

I lost my mentor.

I lost the guy that was always there for me.

And losing that was hard because I knew the value of it.

I knew that you can't have that with anybody.

That was one of the hardest days of my life,

just realizing that he's gone.

In the days after the murder,

detectives continued their investigation

and canvassed the neighborhood

for any evidence of who killed Fabio Sementilli.

The community that they lived in was an HOA community.

The HOA had purchased cameras that monitored traffic that

came in and out of the neighborhood.

Our unit recovered all that video,

so we could see Gessica driving away in her red Ford Mustang.

Approximately 30 minutes later, we see two men running

southbound down Oakdale,

going towards the Sementilli house.

They have hooded sweatshirts on,

the hoods are over their head,

and the drawstrings are cinched tight

to where you have a hole about this big

that they're looking through as they're running up the street.

Odd, very odd.

This is not a heavily traveled area.

They're not just out there casually working out.

They're moving, and they're moving quickly.

So, we believe we were looking

at two people that were involved in this case.

The next critical piece that we have on video is when we see

the black Porsche 911 drive away.

Right before Isabella got home, somewhere around 5 o'clock.

If the killers had not left when they did, there was a very

good chance that it would have been a double homicide,

because Isabella would have arrived just when

her father was getting murdered.

Based on what we had at the scene, we investigated this

case as a potential burglary.

And around that time, there was a burglary crew that was

operating called the "knock-knock burglars."

And there's this new video just in.

It shows a knock-knock burglary crew at work in Burbank.

There were thousands of these guys.

It wasn't like a handful of suspects

that were operating a burglary ring.

There were thousands of them, and they were loosely connected.

They were all gang members.

The suspects will go to a house,

usually in an affluent neighborhood, very wealthy,

and they'll go to the front door,

and they'll knock on the door, see if anybody's home,

and if nobody answers the door, they'll go around

to the back and then go into the house and basically search

and steal valuable items.

Just days ago, the LAPD announced a task force

to crack down on so-called knock-knock burglaries.

The knock-knock burglars were very, very active

in Woodland Hills,

same neighborhood that Fabio Sementilli

was found murdered.

Police believe that the two guys in the hoodies,

there's a very good chance that they could have been members of

this knock-knock crew.

And then police get a big break a couple of days later.

We received a call from a resident in a neighborhood

that this car has been parked in their neighborhood for,

you know, several days and hasn't moved,

and they just wanted to report it to the police.

This Porsche didn't have plates on it.

When they ran the VIN, that's when they found out that

this was Fabio's stolen Porsche.

So that car gets recovered. It gets taken to our crime lab.

Blood was discovered on the driver's-side door.

There was blood on the door handle.

There was blood on the center console.

There was blood on the foot pedals.

And so all of the blood was collected and sent to serology.

Our hope was that blood evidence is gonna be from the killer.

The memorial service happened in Los Angeles, so my mother,

my sister, and I flew down from Toronto.

Monica set up his picture,

Big Daddy hat, and she had this memorial set on a chair.

It was the saddest thing you've ever seen,

to walk into that house and not see Fabio.

It-- it was so heartbreaking,

but we were there for Monica.

I just felt so much sadness for Monica.

To know that her daughter found him and to know that

her husband's now gone,

a husband who she loved and adored.

Detectives believe that the blood inside the house

and in the Porsche belongs to one or both

of the perpetrators.

On February 13th, three weeks after the murder,

the DNA results confirm their suspicion.

My partner gets a phone call and an email explaining

there's been a CODIS hit in the case.

It says that the name attached to it is Robert Baker.

Who's Robert Baker?

Why is his blood in Fabio Sementilli's house?

We start researching Robert Baker.

Robert Baker is a 55-year-old male, lives in Canoga Park,

which is just a few miles away from where the crime occurred.

He is a former porn actor.

He had been married five times.

He is a registered sex offender.

He was arrested at one point because he was having sex with

an underage person.

He was having sex with his stepdaughter,

who was 15.

So police know that Baker is one of their suspects,

but the problem is, who's the other suspect,

who is seen jogging up to Fabio Sementilli's home?

So we started to follow Robert Baker.

We put surveillance on him to find out what he's doing.

Their goal during this whole thing was to see who Baker met

with to see if we could locate our additional suspect.

What we found was Baker meeting with Monica.

Based on what they witnessed, it would appear

Baker and Monica Sementilli are in the midst

of a romantic relationship.

To find out that Baker is out and about with Monica,

it was absolutely shocking.

Armed with information about Monica's secret affair with

Robert Baker, detectives go back to Monica's house

under the guise of doing another walk-through.

We told her the purpose was to re-walk the crime scene.

But the real reason was to go talk to her

and see what she's gonna say about Rob Baker.

Is she gonna be honest with us?

We started asking, "You have all these gym friends,"

you know, "Can you tell us about them?

Are there any men involved in this-- in this group?"

"I think his last name might be Baker or something like that."

It's like, OK.

Surveillance has already shown that they're together.

Detectives want to know, like, is she lying because

she's having an affair, or is she lying because

she's complicit in the death of Fabio?

We did think that, OK, this could be a conspiracy

between Monica, Robert,

and the third unidentified suspect at this point in time.

But all we had was, "Yeah, they're having an affair."

That's it.

We didn't have anything directly tying Monica into

knowing about this murder.

Maybe she didn't know anything about this.

Detectives get a warrant not only for her phone,

but also for Robert Baker's phone.

They want the cell phone information to find out where

the two of them were at the time of the murders.

Based on the first statement, we knew that Monica

was down the street, Ventura Boulevard at Target.

One of our detectives went out, recovered video.

So here on the day of the murder, on January 23rd, 2017,

Monica Sementilli came into the parking lot of this Target.

What we discovered in analyzing it, getting the video enhanced

as much as we could,

we observed Monica pull into the parking lot.

She has a very large, black F-150 truck.

It's very fuzzy. It's very far away.

But you can see an image walking to Monica's car,

and you can see the passenger door open.

We had to have it enhanced,

and it was very, very hard to see,

but we see that somebody gets into Monica's car.

And this is right before the murder.

In order to determine the identity of

the blurry figure, the investigators review

security footage from the hour

before Monica pulled into the parking lot.

It's then that they see a familiar face walking out of

the Target, 10 minutes before Monica arrives.

It was verified that Baker was in the same area

at that same time

when Monica was in the parking lot.

So we come up to a conclusion that it was both of them

meeting inside her black F-150 truck

at the back of the parking lot.

Those videos show that Monica and Rob Baker were at that

Target parking lot just prior to the murder.

Like, it's probably the last thing Rob Baker did before

he went and parked the car

and they started jogging up the street.

And then Monica drives around the parking lot to the front

part of Target and exits her car and goes

into the store.

That's when we start following her from the video cameras from

inside the store.

We follow her throughout the store,

and she is glued to her phone.

Right, and as she walks out of the store,

she's watching the phone intently, almost walks into

an anti-theft barrier on the way out of the store.

Once they have the cell phone data back, one of the things

that they could tell is what she was doing on her phone when

she leaves the store at Target.

We discovered that she was monitoring

her home surveillance camera,

literally watching it in real time.

We believe she was basically using her surveillance system

to watch Baker's back and make sure nobody else came home.

In addition to the affair with Robert Baker,

detectives discover another motive.

They learn through Fabio's employer that just

months earlier, Fabio and Monica had

signed him up for a life insurance policy.

At that point in time, we were in contact with Monica,

and it became more and more about life insurance.

Fabio's life insurance policy was worth $1.6 million.

When we learned about this life insurance,

we put a hold on the life insurance money.

Didn't make Monica very happy.

Monica continuously called about the money being released.

Not like, "Where's the killer? Who killed my husband?"

"I want the money, the money. Show me the money."

Hoping to identify the other man

jogging towards Fabio's house on the day of the murder,

detectives hold off on making any arrests.

But finally, police decide to make a move.

Robert Baker's blood is in the house.

And that, along with Monica's lies,

gave us probable cause to make arrests.

So we secured the warrant for the arrest of Robert Baker

and Monica Sementilli.

We had surveillance on both of them.

And so our plan was, for when they were together,

to have patrol officers arrest them

under the ruse that their car was stolen.

"Probably just a screwup, but we have procedure, and we

"have to handcuff you guys, put you in the back of

the police car while we sort it out."

Close the doors for the police car.

They're in a cage.

We had the police car wired with cameras and microphones.

At that point, we run them over the radio

for wants and warrants for them to hear

That was done to stimulate conversation between the two of them.

And, boy, did they talk.

They start to whisper.

However, we were able to pick up the whispering.

When you get arrested and your statement is,

"Someone talked, stick to protocol,"

that's not normal behavior for someone that's innocent.

That's when we knew, OK, this is great evidence

that we're gathering.

After that, they're arrested for real, and they are taken

down to Van Nuys Station for interviews.

OK.

I interview both Baker and Monica.

Robert Baker waived his rights. He didn't ask for a lawyer.

We do a lot of small talk

at the beginning of the interview.

Then we start confronting him with the evidence.

Once Baker asks for a lawyer, police can no longer ask him

any questions about the crime or the second elusive man seen

in the security footage.

He shuts down. OK, no problem.

Monica was a little different.

Monica immediately asked for a lawyer.

We legally cannot ask any more questions.

We can tell her something. We can't ask anything about it.

We told her, "Your boyfriend Rob Baker's blood

"is all over the crime scene.

He's the one that killed your husband."

Then Monica blurbs out, "You know, detectives,

I know how Rob's blood got into my house."

And then she says, "I gave him a towel, and he soaked up

the blood in that towel."

OK.

I don't think anybody's gonna believe that.

But, hey, it is what it is.

At that point, Monica and Rob

are arrested for the murder of Fabio Sementilli.

The detective called my sister's house and said,

"We arrested Monica and Robert Baker

for the murder of your brother, Fabio."

We were all shocked to the core.

The wife of a murdered Woodland Hills hairdresser is

now accused in his death and police say her lover is the killer.

It was just this past Sunday in Canada when Monica accepted

a Lifetime Achievement Award on her husband's behalf.

When they gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award,

we go on stage.

She's holding me, Monica, and I'm holding her.

She's crying, I'm crying, I'm losing it.

That was Sunday.

Tuesday, she gets arrested.

Man, I was-- I was shocked.

Oh, my God, she did it. And she's crying like that?

What's wrong with this woman? What's wrong with her?

She grieved with us. She held us tight.

I never, in my wildest dreams, thought his wife.

But when she was arrested with her boyfriend, I saw these

pictures of this Robert Baker.

It was just another shocker, like, "What?"

Because I remember seeing this person in the backyard of

Fabio's house after the funeral.

Monica and this guy.

They're talking very close to each other.

They must be good friends.

My mother says, "Strange."

Then I put two and two together.

Monica had my brother's killer sitting with our family,

with her stepson, with her daughters.

How do you do that?

It's evil beyond comprehension for me.

Monica's arrest drives a wedge through the family.

Her two daughters, Gessica and Isabella,

choose to stand by their mom and insist on her innocence.

It was hard to see Isabella and Gessica protect their mom.

They didn't see everything like I did.

But hopefully one day they face reality and look at everything.

I can't imagine what that is like to be

Gessica or Isabella.

That was their mom.

But I was going to stand up for Fab.

And I was wanting the truth to come out.

The main evidence that we gathered against Robert Baker

was pretty simple-- his blood at the scene.

But Monica was a little bit more difficult.

We had to prove that she was part of the conspiracy.

Because of the COVID pandemic and legal maneuvering,

the trial date gets pushed back for years.

During the long wait, Fabio's family starts to worry

that Monica may never face justice.

During those years,

we lost our dear mom.

Her last words in her mouth was, "Fabio."

And I knew why she said, "Fabio."

She said, "Be there. Be his voice."

Six years pass and they finally

are going to take Monica and Baker to trial,

even though they still have not found that other suspect.

In July of 2023, the case was ready to go to trial.

Put Robert Baker, Monica Sementilli both on trial

together, and in a surprise,

Robert Baker decides he wants to plead guilty.

My sister and I never thought we would finally see the day

that justice would be served.

You took our beautiful mother's selflessness

and our amazing father's life down with you!

He was given life without the possibility of parole,

and that's it.

Baker knew his goose was cooked.

He pleads guilty to the charges.

He doesn't ask for leniency.

He takes a total rap, and he refuses to

implicate Monica.

It seems that Monica may

actually be able to beat the case.

But then investigators get a breakthrough.

After I retired, fresh eyes looked at the case

and found a very, very simple thing that I missed.

While reviewing the security camera footage of Robert Baker

on the day of the murder, detectives notice he's driving

a 2016 Nissan Versa.

But no one had ever checked to

see what happened to the car after the murder.

After the case was given to the new set of detectives,

somebody thought of doing a complete workup on the car.

And lo and behold, a guy by the name of Christopher Austin

was given a ticket an hour after the murder

in that rental car.

Christopher Austin's father and Robert Baker were friends.

Christopher Austin called him "Unc."

Since the time of the murder, Christopher Austin had moved to

the state of Washington.

The LAPD detectives contact Washington State.

They find Christopher Austin,

and they bring him in for questioning.

Christopher Austin makes a deal with prosecutors

and he pleads guilty to second-degree murder

and gets 16 years to life in prison.

In order to get that sentence, he has to testify in court

against Monica Sementilli.

Monica's trial finally gets underway in January of 2025,

and the star witness is Christopher Austin.

It was so horrific to watch.

The worst thing in the world is to set up your daughter

to find your dad that way.

It was so heartbreaking.

The prosecution rests, and Baker is a star witness

for the defense.

And he takes a stand, and he basically says that

the reason why he killed Fabio was because he wanted Monica

to himself, and that Monica had nothing to do with it.

After a 10-week trial,

it's up to the jury whether they believe

the prosecution's story or Baker's.

For them to plan something like this and then to think

that in this day and age that you're gonna get away with it,

blows my mind.

I will never get to accept all my life,

how a wife that he loved

and cared for, would murder you?

Why? To be with Robert Baker?

To start a new life with him?

For money? Life insurance?

Greed?

There's a real sadness that still exists when people say

his name or they talk about him,

because it was a life that was cut short.

I think he had so much more to do and to give.

And I think that hurts me, too,

to know that he wasn't finished.

I want to be remembered for the relationships I've built.

I want to be remembered for how maybe I've made people feel.

My brother was just one amazing man

that just had so much going for him.

I want to remember him for what he did for us

and his love for us.

Fabio, I miss you.

We love you.