Pod Insights The Binge Crimes Cut, Color, Kill | 6. Betrayal About this episode Fabio's family is divided as the killers take the stand. A secret is revealed.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 What's up, rich people? It's me, Haley, AKA Mrs. Dow Jones, and this is Financial Tea, the show where money talk is finally fun. Each week, I'm going to be breaking down the money stories and wealth building secrets you actually need to know. The trends, the headlines, the drama, in a way that's smart, fun, and honestly, low-key addictive. Subscribe to Financial Tea wherever you get your podcasts. Stay rich.
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1:08 Speaker 02 So you told us kind of what you did, but we'd like to put the whole picture together from Chris's perspective.
1:16 Speaker 01 In an interrogation room in Vancouver, Washington, Christopher Austin is sitting opposite two detectives with his head in his hands. He's just confessed to stabbing Fabio Semantili.
1:27 Speaker 03 His world had just been turned upside down. He knew that going forward, he was forever changed.
1:33 Speaker 01 Deputy DA Heather Stegall is in another room in the police station, watching the interview on a screen.
1:39 Speaker 03 He'd been living this other life now, trying to put this murder behind him. His concern was he had a small daughter and a wife. He repeatedly, repeatedly said, can I see them? Can I talk to them? Can I talk to my wife? Can I see her? That was high priority in him.
1:58 Speaker 04 Do you see me? Have you seen my cross again?
2:02 Speaker 02 You mean as a guy walking freely out the door right now? Or long-term?
2:08 Speaker 04 Just in general.
2:11 Speaker 02 I'll be honest with you, I don't see you walking out of the door today.
2:14 Speaker 01 The detectives tell him he's not going to be leaving the police station today. He's under arrest, and the DA will most likely charge him.
2:25 Speaker 04 Can I meet the DA today?
2:28 Speaker 02 Uh, we'll ask.
2:29 Speaker 03 And that's when he started asking to talk to the DA. The detectives came back and told me that he wants to talk to you. I said, okay, sounds good. Let's do this. I was ready to go.
2:40 Speaker 01 Steggall strides down the hall and into the interrogation room. She's polished, in a smart suit and black stilettos.
2:49 Speaker 01 Austin is leaning forward in his chair, looking defeated.
2:52 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm the DA. Do you want to talk to me?
2:55 Speaker 01 The prosecutor shakes his hand and takes a seat. She makes it clear that he can ask for an attorney if he wants one.
3:03 Speaker 05 So do you want to talk to me now with I'm an attorney? Is that accurate?
3:07 Speaker 04 That is accurate. I asked to speak to you.
3:09 Speaker 05 Okay.
3:10 Speaker 03 He seemed like he wanted to get it all off his chest and just tell everything that he could about his involvement in it.
3:17 Speaker 04 I mean, what can you do as a DA for me to see my girls? At the end of the day, I only care about seeing my girls. What do you need from me so I can go see my girls?
3:34 Speaker 05 We just want the truth because we know we've got one other person to try and next Monica.
3:40 Speaker 01 Monica Samantilli is going to trial in January. She's being charged with conspiring with Robert Baker to murder her husband Fabio. Deputy DA Steggall and her fellow prosecutor Beth Silverman already have a lot of circumstantial evidence against Monica. The lies she told to the detectives and all the sneaking around with Robert Baker, their secret whisperings in the lockup. But they need it to be ironclad. If Christopher Austin is willing to testify that Monica was the mastermind coordinating Fabio's death, that would be some of the clearest evidence yet.
4:18 Speaker 03 Just solidifying that link. Any extra evidence that she's the lead of the conspiracy, every piece was a great new piece of evidence.
4:28 Speaker 01 But the defense also has a star witness of their own. Robert Baker is going to testify that he's murdered Fabio without Monica's knowledge. She had nothing to do with it.
4:40 Speaker 03 We've got two people taking the stand saying, I killed Fabio. Two killers, a Baker and an Austin, and they're both going to testify.
4:52 Speaker 03 So now it comes down to which killer are you going to believe?
4:59 Speaker 01 From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Cut, Color, Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch, episode six, Betrayal.
5:27 Speaker 01 It's January 2025, eight years since Fabio Semantilli was murdered in his home in Woodland Hills. Eight years of his loved ones waiting for justice. And in a wood-paneled courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, Monica Semantilli's trial is beginning. Cameras are rolling. Journalists from outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS are covering the case, and Court TV is streaming live courtroom coverage. This case has captured the attention of people around the world, not least because of the family drama playing out here in the courtroom.
6:00 Speaker 03 We've got families sitting on two sides of the courtroom, not speaking to each other, who used to be, you know, having lunches and barbecues and parties together. They did not acknowledge each other.
6:11 Speaker 01 Prosecutors Beth Silverman and Heather Stagel have a huge task ahead of them. This trial will last 10 weeks, and there are hundreds of witnesses prepped and a huge amount of evidence to cover. I can't take you through every single detail of the evidence, and some of it, like the secret police recordings, you've already heard. But I do want you to hear this one piece of testimony that I think really cuts to the heart of what's at stake here in this courtroom. Anna Crescentini is called as a witness on day 28 of the trial. She's Monica's older sister by two and a half years, an eighth grade science and math teacher, and she's flown all the way from Canada to testify. Anna says she spoke to Monica on the phone only a couple of hours before Fabio was killed, and she seemed completely herself. And in the aftermath, she says her sister was devastated by grief.
6:56 Speaker 00 We found my sister on the couch,
7:01 Speaker 00 hugging a gray sweater that belonged to Fabio and rocking. Tears pouring down her face.
7:10 Speaker 00 She had toilet paper and Kleenex all around her. And when we tried to talk to her, she wasn't even making eye contact with us.
7:23 Speaker 01 For the defense, the point of all this is to try and humanize Monica, to show that her shock and grief at Fabio's death was genuine, because she wasn't involved in planning it. By the time prosecutor Steggall stands up to cross-examine Anna, she's feeling frustrated.
7:40 Speaker 03 On and on and on, what a great person she is. And that she was grieving, and I witnessed her grieving so bad.
7:46 Speaker 01 Steggall wants to put to the test how well Anna really knew her sister.
7:51 Speaker 03 You love her, you trust her?
7:52 Speaker 00 I love her, I trust her, one of my closest friends, yes.
7:56 Speaker 03 Did you talk about everything?
7:58 Speaker 00 I did.
7:59 Speaker 03 Okay, obviously, you know, you didn't know about the affair this entire time, correct?
8:03 Speaker 00 Correct.
8:04 Speaker 03 I started with the affair, all the text messages, the sneaking out, the leaving her kids, the lies.
8:10 Speaker 01 One time after Fabio's death, Anna says Monica flew from Canada to LA because she wanted time alone to grieve with her daughters.
8:18 Speaker 03 Did you know that when she landed, she immediately went out with Baker, but didn't go home to grieve with her girls?
8:25 Speaker 00 I did not know.
8:27 Speaker 01 Another time, when the family was in Canada for Fabio's cremation, Anna says Monica was so emotionally drained, she had to take her home to their mom's house.
8:38 Speaker 03 Did you know that those three days, February 3rd, 4th, and 6th, that she was sending sexually explicit photos of herself naked to her boyfriend?
8:52 Speaker 00 No, obviously, I did not know.
8:55 Speaker 01 The prosecutor hands over a stack of photographs. They are printouts of photos that Monica sent to Robert Baker. Steggall asks Anna to look at them.
9:03 Speaker 03 I mean, not my proudest moment, but the point being, you don't know your sister.
9:10 Speaker 03 I don't fault her for taking the stand for her sister. I mean, that's what family does. And it was not meant to embarrass Anna or do anything like that. It was just she was digging in so hard about how she knew her sister and her sister would never do this. So I'm going through all the examples of what you didn't know about your sister, and the list was endless.
9:28 Speaker 01 At the end of the cross-examination, Stekel asks Anna whether, knowing all of this, she still trusts Monica to tell the truth.
9:36 Speaker 00 I believe my sister. I know she was lying because she was hiding an affair. Do I trust her? Yes.
9:42 Speaker 01 Anna accepts her sister lied about an affair, but she's absolutely clear on this point.
9:48 Speaker 00 Of course she's gonna lie. She wants to cover the affair. Doesn't mean that she had anything to do with this murder.
9:54 Speaker 01 That's what I wanted you to hear. Anna's testimony in the courtroom exposes one of the main fault lines of this entire trial. The question of how well we really know the people we love. The narrative the prosecution is building is that Monica is a liar and a manipulator. They can lay out the exact timeline of the deception because Monica documented so much of it herself in the hundreds of photos and videos she sent to Robert Baker, taken from iCloud and Dropbox accounts, in the text messages, lying about her whereabouts from before and after the murder. But Anna's view of her sister's marriage is more complicated.
10:33 Speaker 00 It is possible to love someone and cheat on them at the same time.
10:37 Speaker 01 When Monica's defense attorneys stand in front of the jury, they keep coming back to the same point. Yes, Monica had an affair. She lied and deceived her family and friends. She made choices that hurt people. None of that makes her guilty of murder. The financial motive doesn't make sense, they argue, because Monica wasn't the sole beneficiary of Fabio's $1.6 million life insurance payout. It was split between her and his children, too. Their point being, Fabio was worth more to Monica alive than dead.
11:15 Speaker 06 Kill him.
11:17 Speaker 06 Why kill him? She had everything she wanted, moral or not. She had a loving husband, making a good living, living the good life, two beautiful kids, and whatever Mr. Baker offered, in bed or otherwise, she had that too.
11:39 Speaker 01 The charge is not whether Monica had an affair. It's whether she intentionally entered into an agreement to kill her husband. And that, the defense say, depends on the testimony of one person.
11:53 Speaker 03 Thank you. Do people call Christopher Austin?
11:56 Speaker 01 After more than five weeks of laying out the circumstantial evidence against Monica, on March 4th, the prosecution finally called one of the killers to the witness stand. And Christopher Austin is about to tell the jury something that for nearly eight years before his arrest, nobody knew. Something that will throw everything we thought we knew about this murder plot up in the air.
12:29 Speaker 01 Christopher Austin is sitting in the witness stand. He's wearing a blue shirt and glasses and he looks subdued. In January, he accepted a deal from the prosecution. He pled guilty to second degree murder. He was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison on the condition that he cooperates with the prosecution and testifies truthfully in Monica's trial.
12:48 Speaker 00 We told him that if we found anything out, that he had told us that was not truthful, that all bets were off and we would prosecute him anyway.
12:56 Speaker 01 Deputy DA Steigl says she and her colleague Beth Silverman talked to the Semintili family about the deal they were offering to Austin. Luigi has mixed feelings, knowing that one of the men who killed his father has agreed to testify.
13:12 Speaker 02 I felt the sense of relief that one of his assailants was going to be going to prison. I also felt a sense of pity and there was even a little tiny sense of feeling grateful that this person was cooperating to the extent that he was and was going to testify against Monica.
13:32 Speaker 01 If there's anything other than negative feelings toward Austin,
13:36 Speaker 01 kind of speaks to how badly I wanted there to be justice in the greater trial. Stegall takes her place at the front of the courtroom, ready to examine Austin. She's focused on the task at hand, but she knows her witness also comes with significant baggage.
13:54 Speaker 03 You're putting a man who says, "I murdered somebody in cold blood," which is not a common thing that people will walk around saying, and you're asking the jury to now believe everything that he says.
14:07 Speaker 03 Have you known Robert Baker a long time?
14:10 Speaker 04 Yes.
14:10 Speaker 03 And is Rob older than you then?
14:12 Speaker 04 Yes.
14:13 Speaker 03 How much older?
14:15 Speaker 04 Same age as my dad. I'm not a math guy. Thirty-plus years older than me.
14:22 Speaker 01 Austin tells the jury how he got to know Baker as a friend of his father's in North Carolina. Beth Silverman watches her trial partner fire questions at Austin and weighs up how he's coming across to the jury.
14:36 Speaker 00 He seemed very humble. He came across as not particularly bright, but somebody who trusts people who are older than him, like Baker, especially given that Baker was one of his father's close friends growing up.
14:51 Speaker 01 In July of 2016, the two of them met up in Las Vegas. On that trip, Austin says he heard a conversation between Baker and another friend. They were talking about the woman Baker was seeing.
15:03 Speaker 04 He started asking me, he's like, "How much did I weigh?"
15:06 Speaker 03 Who?
15:07 Speaker 04 Baker. I remember hearing, "He could probably do it." I was like, "Do what?" He said, "I'll tell you later."
15:15 Speaker 01 It sounds like Baker was already sizing Austin up, seeing if he was strong enough to kill someone. Eventually, Austin says, Baker stopped being cryptic, got more direct. He told Austin his girlfriend wanted her husband out of the way.
15:31 Speaker 04 Baker said she wants him gone. She wants him dead.
15:35 Speaker 01 Monica Semantili. Austin says the first time he remembers meeting Monica was when Baker paid for him to fly to LA from Vegas later that July. The three of them played racquetball together at LA Fitness. Afterwards, they all went back to the Semantili home in Woodland Hills. Fabio was away.
15:55 Speaker 04 She took me out to the patio and Baker was there.
15:59 Speaker 01 Austin says when they left the house, Baker turned to him.
16:03 Speaker 04 Said it's a nice house, right? And then I was like, yeah, he's like, remember that layout? I was like, layout? I said, okay.
16:09 Speaker 03 He said, remember that layout?
16:11 Speaker 04 I remember him saying that.
16:12 Speaker 01 Austin says there were more calls with Baker over the following months, where they talked about killing Fabio.
16:19 Speaker 03 Did you ever speak directly with the defendant at any time, directly with her about killing her husband?
16:26 Speaker 04 No.
16:27 Speaker 03 So was your communication with and through Baker?
16:30 Speaker 04 Yes.
16:31 Speaker 01 You might be thinking that this makes Austin's testimony seem pretty weak. After all, the defense could argue it's just hearsay. He didn't actually ever hear Monica conspiring to murder Fabio. But prosecutor Beth Silverman isn't phased by this at all. In fact, she thinks it actually makes him look more credible as a witness.
16:52 Speaker 00 If he was somebody who was trying to buy himself a deal to get out of what had happened, number one, he would have said he was the lookout. He never would have admitted to being an actual stabber. And number two, he would have also exaggerated in terms of the conversations he had had with Monica and made her more involved in what was told to him about the plan and the conspiracy to kill her husband.
17:23 Speaker 01 From December onward, Austin says things got more serious. Baker tried to arrange a date for the murder. Austin says he made excuses because he didn't want to go through with it. But his friend was insistent.
17:37 Speaker 01 On January 12th, Baker bought Christopher Austin a plane ticket to Los Angeles. Austin says Baker promised him $30,000 to $50,000 for the murder, money that was to come from Monica.
17:50 Speaker 04 He would always say she's loaded. So once she gets this insurance money, we're gonna be good.
17:59 Speaker 01 On the 22nd of January, the day before Fabio was killed, Austin flew out to California. They had to move quickly, he said, because Baker had information from Monica that Fabio would be out of town again soon. Austin says Baker picked him up from the airport, gave him a burner phone. They waited at Baker's apartment all day. Then they went to Walmart so Baker could buy a knife. Then Christopher Austin tells the jury something new, something it took the investigators on this case eight years to discover.
18:33 Speaker 04 As the night fell, he let me know. He said, she's gonna send him to the store. So we can catch him then.
18:46 Speaker 01 I want to be really clear. Austin is talking about the evening of the 22nd of January 2017, the day before Fabio was killed. At 5:11 PM on the 22nd of January, Fabio searched "fa near me" and sent Monica the address of a restaurant. Monica then Googled the restaurant. It was, of course, a Vietnamese place. She then texted her daughter Bella to ask if she wanted some fried rice. During the same 30-minute window when Monica was texting with Fabio about this restaurant, she exchanged 17 messages on the encrypted messaging app Viber with Robert Baker. By the end of the day, she and Baker had messaged each other 180 times.
19:29 Speaker 01 Austin says that Monica told Baker where Fabio would be that night.
19:34 Speaker 04 Before we left the apartment, he got a text message from his girlfriend at the time. She was gonna send him to the store. So we went directly there.
19:43 Speaker 03 So him and Baker got in the car, went over to this strip mall and waited for Fabio to get there. He walked through this breezeway by these pillars and he was told what kind of car Fabio was driving. He saw the car. He saw Fabio coming out carrying a bag of what was probably food. He started walking towards Fabio and then he said, I chickened out. I just, I couldn't do it.
20:06 Speaker 04 I was like, I'm not doing this. I can't do this. And I went back to the car. He's like, what happened? I told him, I couldn't get him. Can't do it.
20:19 Speaker 01 Austin says Baker texted Monica when they left the strip mall to update her about the failed attempt.
20:25 Speaker 03 The plan's off, it didn't happen, and Austin was a witness to that.
20:29 Speaker 01 The text messages, the restaurant address, it all corroborates the story. Christopher Austin has just given them evidence that Monica didn't just try to have Fabio killed once. She did it twice.
20:43 Speaker 03 This wasn't a fluke that happened the day of the murder. This was as premeditated, deliberate, and willful as you get.
20:52 Speaker 01 Before Austin was arrested, nobody had a clue that anything remarkable had happened the night before Fabio's death, let alone an attempted murder.
21:00 Speaker 03 All of us in the room just kind of froze for a second. We're like, the night? What are you talking about? We had no idea this was planned or had even happened. I mean, we like to think that we had every corner of this case nailed down, and for the most part, all the blanks filled in, but we did not know that.
21:20 Speaker 01 The original plan was for Fabio to be killed in the car park of the strip mall, alone, in a seemingly random attack by a stranger, not at home, in a location that could easily be linked to Monica. After the failed murder attempt on the 22nd, Christopher Austin was only in town for two more days, and Fabio was about to leave town. The window of opportunity was closing. And so, the next day, on the 23rd of January, everything happened in a rush. Around noon, surveillance footage captured Monica and Robert Baker both arriving at LA Fitness 10 minutes apart. Later that afternoon, Monica and Baker were both seen in the parking lot of a Target in Woodland Hills.
22:04 Speaker 01 Around 3:29, surveillance footage captured a grainy figure getting into Monica's truck. The prosecutors say that was Baker, meeting up with Monica to coordinate their plan. When Baker got back to his apartment, Austin says he got a text.
22:22 Speaker 04 He kind of jolted. He said, yo, he's home alone. Said she's gonna go to the store. We have a small window. Because, uh, somebody might come to the house while she's gone.
22:35 Speaker 01 According to Austin, this is it. The moment Monica gave Baker the green light to murder Fabio.
22:42 Speaker 03 It was rushed. Like Baker got the call from Monica, like, now, go. We gotta go. We gotta go. Get in the car. Let's go. She wanted him killed. That plan didn't work. They're still in town. The next day, it's gonna happen. It just really puts the nail in the coffin on the level of Monica's involvement and the premeditation and her never-ending desire to get Fabio out of the way.
23:08 Speaker 01 The prosecution have made their case, but the defense still have their own star witness. Another confessed killer with his own version of what went down in January 2017. Robert Baker takes the stand. He's wearing a button-down shirt and a suit jacket for the occasion. In 2023, when Baker pled no contest, he wrote a letter to Monica's defense team, confessing to the murder. In the letter, Baker wrote that he went to the Seminole House to deliver a gift to Monica, where he ran into Fabio by mistake. "He killed Fabio in self-defense," he said. But now, his story has totally changed. He tells the jury, this was a planned attack.
23:50 Speaker 04 I murdered him because I wanted her.
23:54 Speaker 04 I wanted to have easier access. I wanted her to be around me and with me. More, like, all the time.
24:00 Speaker 01 He couldn't keep his story straight from years ago, let alone from moment to moment? When its deputy DA Beth Silverman's turned to cross-examine Baker, she is ready to go to town on all his inconsistencies.
24:13 Speaker 00 You agreed last week that everything you wrote in the letter was a lie.
24:17 Speaker 04 Not everything, but...
24:18 Speaker 00 Which part was true?
24:19 Speaker 04 I gotta look at the letter.
24:20 Speaker 00 Approximately how many lies would you say you told in that letter? Give me an estimate.
24:25 Speaker 04 I don't have, I'm not giving an estimate because I don't know.
24:27 Speaker 00 10? 50?
24:29 Speaker 04 I don't know.
24:29 Speaker 00 How about 360? He was on the stand, I think, for like, three days or four days, and he couldn't remember what he had said. The day before, and so the lies just kept changing and becoming more and more outrageous.
24:43 Speaker 01 At one point, Silverman starts asking Baker about the security camera systems at the Salmon Tilly house. When police arrived at the scene after Fabio's murder, they found the DVR was missing.
24:54 Speaker 00 Did you stop to take the DVR?
24:56 Speaker 06 Yes.
24:58 Speaker 00 So where was that?
25:01 Speaker 06 That was in the garage.
25:03 Speaker 00 Okay, and who showed you where that was?
25:06 Speaker 06 Just follow the wires.
25:07 Speaker 00 Okay, so there were wires that led you there?
25:11 Speaker 06 Can't miss it.
25:12 Speaker 01 Baker is playing dumb, acting like he just happened upon the DVR, but the prosecutor knows he's lying.
25:19 Speaker 00 You hadn't had a prior conversation with Monica about the DVR, had you?
25:25 Speaker 06 I hadn't had a conversation with her about it.
25:29 Speaker 00 Never?
25:30 Speaker 06 I noticed she was getting a new system. She said it was getting upgraded. He said that he wanted to get it done.
25:37 Speaker 01 The "he" is Fabio. When detectives asked Monica about the security system after Fabio was killed, she told them she didn't know anything about it. Fabio had it installed. Fabio knew all about it. She didn't even know how to access it. So the investigators tracked down the guy who put the cameras in the summer of 2016. The guy said it was Monica, not Fabio, who was there.
26:03 Speaker 01 When the digital forensics team went through all the files, they found another damning piece of evidence. Monica had received an email with the IP address, the password, and the instruction manual for the security system. And on the 28th of June, shortly before Austin first heard Baker talk about the plot to kill Fabio, Monica forwarded the email to, you guessed it, Robert Baker.
26:31 Speaker 01 Beth Silverman knows that all of these shifting stories, tying himself up in knots, is not helping Baker's case with the jury.
26:38 Speaker 00 This was a person who just came across as completely incredible because he wasn't smart enough to find his way out of a paper bag. You know, she was really the brains behind the operation.
26:51 Speaker 01 When Leonard Levine, Monica's defense attorney, makes the closing statement, he tries to make it all about this battle between the two killers on the witness stand. Other than Christopher Austin's testimony, he argues, the prosecution doesn't really have a case.
27:05 Speaker 06 All they had was circumstantial evidence, meaning she was having an affair.
27:13 Speaker 01 And Christopher Austin isn't to be trusted because he got a plea deal.
27:17 Speaker 06 They can offer Mr. Austin his life back in exchange for his testimony.
27:25 Speaker 01 Levine strides down the full length of the courtroom and points his finger at the jury. He says he's not asking them to find that Monica was a good wife. He's not even asking them to find that she was a good person. But he does hope they'll decide one thing.
27:40 Speaker 06 Monica, you're not a murderer, and they have not proven you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
27:47 Speaker 01 But when the prosecutors make their final statements, they take a different approach.
27:52 Speaker 00 Every detail in this case matters. Every single detail matters. There's never one piece of evidence.
27:59 Speaker 01 "This isn't a case with a single smoking gun," they say. "This isn't just one killer's word against another. This is about looking at the pieces of the puzzle and seeing how they fit together."
28:12 Speaker 01 Deputy DA Beth Silverman speaks for two and a half days, until her voice gets hoarse. She takes the jury back through the entire case, back through all the ways Monica deceived and manipulated her friends and family. The lies she told to the police, like not knowing anything about the DVR system, or the things she said to Baker in the cop car after the two of them were arrested.
28:36 Speaker 00 The first thing the defendant is telling Baker is, "No deals. None. I'm denying everything, except our affair." Well, what else is there if it's only an affair?
28:49 Speaker 01 Silverman reminds the jury that in 60 hours of conversation between Monica and Baker in the courthouse lockup, she never even once asked her lover to explain why his DNA was all over the crime scene.
29:02 Speaker 00 Never confront him with the fact that he's the actual killer. Instead, what you hear is the two of them acting together to explain it away.
29:14 Speaker 01 When Heather Stegall makes the final rebuttal statement for the prosecution, she asks the jury to use their common sense. What is the only possible explanation for all of this evidence? As her statement comes to an end, it's not the surveillance, or the digital forensics, or Monica's behavior she reminds the court of. Instead, she chooses the words of one of Fabio's family members to make a final impression on the jury: his son, Luigi Semantilli.
29:43 Speaker 03 Luigi trusted the defendant, and he gave her the benefit of the doubt, much like you started here with the presumption of innocence. But as Luigi said, once you go back and start recollecting, it becomes very clear. The puzzle pieces fit together very easily. My co-counsel and I have presented you those pieces, and the puzzle is complete. Thank you.
30:07 Speaker 01 I hardly watched any of the trial. I just couldn't stand to. Back at home in Canada, Luigi Semantilli hasn't been following all the drama in the courtroom. I don't need any more bad news right now. I don't want to be strung along with, what does this mean? Could this be bad? I don't want to hear it. I really just want to get to the verdict and get the final word, because that's really the final word that matters. After 10 weeks, dozens of witnesses, and thousands of pieces of evidence, that day finally comes. The moment Luigi has been waiting over eight years for. The jury is about to deliver their verdict. This is it. It's going to go down. It's time.
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31:28 Speaker 03 I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for season five of Dateline: Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing person's case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. Maybe you could help solve a mystery. Search Dateline: Missing in America to
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32:01 Speaker 01 On April 11th, 2025, in the LA County Court in downtown Los Angeles, the prosecution and defense teams are assembled to hear the verdict in Monica Semantili's trial. There are TV cameras rolling and journalists with pens poised over their notepads. The media have been following every word of this trial. Luigi Semantili is at home in Niagara Falls. Today, even he is watching online.
32:27 Speaker 01 Constantly refreshing the livestream, watching the livestream, waiting for them to announce that they had come to their verdict, staring at that seal of California that's above the judge's desk for what felt like forever. Finally, the judge takes his seat. Monica is sat with her defense attorney, Leonard Levine. She's wearing a gray blazer. Her expression is neutral, but you can see the tension in her brow. The judge opens the envelope containing the verdicts. He peers down at the papers over his half-moon glasses, then hands it back to one of the court clerks, who begins to read. "We, the jury, find the defendant Monica
33:09 Speaker 01 Semantili guilty of the crime of murder and violation of Penal Code 187A."
33:18 Speaker 01 The clerk runs through the charges. First-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, plus the additional special circumstances that make the crime even more serious, lying in wait, and financial gain. Guilty on all counts.
33:40 Speaker 01 Back in Canada, Luigi is overcome.
33:43 Speaker 04 Just endless tears streaming down my face. That it was over. It was done. After over eight years, that it was finally finished. Was like closing the book on the hardest chapter of my life. And to get the verdict that I wanted
34:06 Speaker 04 was just an unbelievable feeling. An unbelievable rush of emotion.
34:13 Speaker 04 I called my three best friends. I called my mom, of course. I called my aunt.
34:21 Speaker 04 And my Aunt Morella and I on the phone, we were just, we were hysterical. And we kept saying, "It's done. It's done. It's done."
34:32 Speaker 01 In June, Luigi returns to Los Angeles for Monica's sentencing. He and some of his family are giving victim impact statements. It's a final opportunity to stand face to face with the woman who murdered the man they all adored. And let the world know how her actions have affected them.
34:50 Speaker 01 You had it all, Monica, and you threw it away. There's a darkness living inside of you that no mortal can understand, your evil treason. When Fabio's sisters, Loretta and Morella, stand before the court, the emotion in the room is palpable. You didn't just kill Fabio, you humiliated him. You betrayed him in the most despicable way. Then you held my grieving mother and you pretended to mourn Fabio when you were the killer. When it's Luigi's turn to speak, he wants to say something different.
35:24 Speaker 04 I always thought that when this moment came, I'd have a holster full of the nastiest, most... vengeful and vitriolic words I could possibly muster to do my part in speaking truth to power and righteousness to evil. But that's not what I'm going to do here today. I knew I didn't want to go up there and pour my anger out. Because I didn't want to hold on to it anymore. And being that I studied philosophy, one of the books I remember studying and enjoying a lot was The Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. And there's a great chapter in there on the bite of the adder, where he's bitten by the snake, and he says, "You can't give me your poison."
36:07 Speaker 04 And he forces the snake to lick the poison out of his wound. I have no poison to give back to the adder. Because I've come to believe that you become what you behold. And if I hold on to cruel, hateful, and vindictive thoughts, then I too will become a cruel, hateful, and vindictive person. And I refuse to be made worse from this experience. I didn't want the poison of this situation to infect me and infect my life. I wanted to let go of the anger. I wanted to let go of the grief. And now, this moment was the beginning of the rest of my life.
36:52 Speaker 01 Monica Semantili is sentenced to life without parole. But there are two members of the Semantili family who see this verdict very differently: Luigi's sisters, Bella and Jessica. For years, they've stood by their mother, refusing to believe that she was responsible for their father's murder. They spoke at the sentencing hearing too, describing their pain at losing not just one parent, but now two. Their happy memories of times spent with their mom and their dad, and their desire to not be defined by this devastating chapter of their lives.
37:23 Speaker 04 After we got the verdict, I reached out and I said, "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for your loss." And since then, we've still been talking more.
37:34 Speaker 01 than we have been in many years. But I imagine it's going to take time to navigate the new normal in our relationship.
37:46 Speaker 01 Everyone leaves the courtroom after the sentencing hearing. Fabio's side of the family go out for lunch. They sit around a table at a restaurant. The two prosecutors come too.
37:55 Speaker 00 One of the cousins said something about like it would have killed us had, you know, the verdict not come back that way. And I said, no, it really wouldn't have because you know what the truth is. You know what the evidence is and you guys all still have each other. And I think they all have some recognition that from here on it's their responsibility to live as wonderful and big a life as they each can because they're living not just now for themselves and their families, but for Fabio.
38:24 Speaker 01 As of this recording, Monica Semantili is appealing her conviction. She still maintains her innocence. We reached out to her attorney who did not respond. But Luigi and the rest of the Semantili family are trying to move on. It really feels like after the sentencing, everyone started to allow themselves to heal. It's not as dark as it was. We're starting to reminisce in new ways, in lighter ways, instead of the gravity of the situation infecting every conversation and every utterance of him. I've listened to a lot of people talk about Fabio Semantili while I've been making the show. And across the board, there has been such an outpouring of love for this guy, whether
39:07 Speaker 01 it's family and friends, colleagues, or just people who crossed paths with him in the beauty industry at some point, someone he might have mentored, someone he inspired. There are hundreds we could have spoken to. Fabio was the kind of guy that left an impression on people and people really wanted to share that. He had a rare quality about him. Lots of people describe it the same way. It was how he made them feel.
39:34 Speaker 03 Talent is one thing, right? Talent, yes, you can be talented and you can do great hair, but a lot of people can do that. How you make people feel and how they remember you, it's a, it's a warm feeling in your heart, and I think that's what his legacy is. He made everybody feel as if they were important and then they contributed something because that's all people want, just be seen, you know? I hope that everybody has a chance to encounter somebody like Fabio in their lives. His ray of light just radiated and affected so many people.
40:09 Speaker 01 He always believed that people may not remember what you say, but they'll remember how you made them feel. He was in the business of making people feel good, and people remembered that.
40:27 Speaker 01 In a story with so much darkness and cruelty, it would be easy to feel that the lesson here is about deception, betrayal. But for me, what stands out above all is the love that Fabio inspired in so many people. And maybe that's because Fabio himself was so clear about what he wanted his legacy to be. You kind of sit in the backyard and I say to myself, you know, what do I want to be remembered for? In June of 2015, Fabio was interviewed by American Salon Magazine. He was asked what had mattered most to him over his life. We know Fabio was wildly successful. He won awards. He went from rags to riches as the son of immigrants.
41:10 Speaker 01 But as he sits back in his chair and pauses before he speaks, I think you can see on his face that this is what truly matters. I always say to myself, I want to be remembered for the relationships I've built. I want to be remembered for how maybe I've made people feel in a positive light. And if it was negative for any reason, it's because I was honest. I hope that's what I'm remembered for.
41:48 Speaker 01 This is Cut, Color, Kill, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, hosted by me, Jonathan Hirsch. Caroline Thornham is our senior producer. Catherine Godfrey is our editor. Mohamed Ahmed is our assistant producer. Mark Pittman is our engineer. Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson. For Novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. For Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and me, Jonathan Hirsch. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact checking by Fendel Fulton. Research by Myron Kaplan. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews. Novel's director of development is Selena Meta. Special thanks to Carolyn Schur Levin at Miller-Korsnik
42:32 Speaker 01 Raymond. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.
43:11 Speaker 00 Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
43:21 Speaker 00 A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.
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