A Los Angeles woman who plotted to kill her celebrity hairstylist husband in a love triangle with a former porn star has been sentenced to life in prison.
Monica Sementelli, 53, got life without parole Monday for the 2017 fatal stabbing murder of her husband Fabio Sementelli, 49.
Fabio had been sitting on his Woodland Hills backyard deck when two hooded men stabbed him seven times. Monica watched the murder from a local Target via a home security camera livestream.
Monica had begun an affair with her racquetball coach, Robert Baker, a 63-year-old former porn star and convicted sex offender, 18 months earlier. Prosecutors argued the two had conspired to kill Fabio in an attempt to get his $1.6 million life insurance policy.
The murder was meant to look like a home invasion robbery gone wrong, with a missing safe and Fabio’s black Porsche gone. But the hairstylist’s $8,000 Rolex was left on his wrist, raising eyebrows.
Baker was sentenced to life without parole for Fabio’s murder in 2023. He repeatedly stabbed Fabio’s face, neck and body while his accomplice, Christopher Austin, held him down, according to prosecutors. Austin was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison in May.
“I murdered him because I wanted her,” Baker said during Monica’s trial, insisting, “She had nothing to do with it,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Austin testified that Monica directed Fabio’s murder, according to the Times.
Monica’s attorney Leonard Levine said, per the Times: “Adultery is not murder,” insisting, “Everything she did was to protect the affair, not to cover up the murder.”
Levine said Monica "continues to maintain that she did not commit this crime and is innocent,” ABC7 Los Angeles reported.
Monica and Baker continued their relationship following Fabio’s death, even after they were arrested months later.
L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said Monica sent nude photographs to Baker during her husband’s funeral, according to the Times.
While in jail, Monica told an undercover officer posing as a cellmate, “He’s not just my lover, he’s my confidant, he’s my everything,” according to a recording released by police on the day of their arrest and later played on CBS’s 48 Hours.
But Levine said Monica made the “biggest mistake of her life’’ when becoming involved in her affair with Baker, the Times reported.
