Speaker 1: It's time for our True Crime Tuesday. The story is true,
Speaker 1: sounds true? No, it sounds made up. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Garry and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a woman, Monica Semonilly, who you know.
Speaker 2: We often talk about the motive for murder. Sometimes it's money,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's love, and for Monica it seems like.
Speaker 1: It was both.
Speaker 3: Quite the story just last Friday, convicted of sending her
Speaker 3: lover to kill her husband, Fabio semon Tilly and the
Speaker 3: woman who helped all of that come to fruition at
Speaker 3: least the guilty verdict was La County Deputy Da Beth Silverman,
Speaker 3: who joins us live for True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Beth, thanks for taking time for us. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Of course, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: So Beth, this case really had everything. I mean, the
Speaker 2: lover was a former porn star, a racquetball co like
Speaker 2: it's nineteen eighty eight. You've got the slain man, the
Speaker 2: man stabbed and killed out side of his Woodland Hills home,
Speaker 2: and he's a famous hairstylist. You've got a massive life
Speaker 2: insurance policy. My god, there's something for everybody, that's right.
Speaker 4: That's why I think the media is so finding it
Speaker 4: so scintillating, especially all the sex Ooh the sex.
Speaker 2: I don't think I got into that part yet.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, wells tell us of what's going on, So
Speaker 3: we know that what we originally thought, and I'm by we,
Speaker 3: I mean investigators originally thought that this might have been
Speaker 3: a knock knock burglar because the house, you know, it
Speaker 3: was in an area where there had been some ransacked
Speaker 3: expensive homes in the valley. But there were a couple
Speaker 3: of clues that said that it was something more than that.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about the early stuff that we found
Speaker 3: out about the case?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think the initial investigation showed that the
Speaker 4: crime scene features didn't add up. It appeared that someone
Speaker 4: had come in and ransacked only one room in the
Speaker 4: house and that was the master bedroom, and went out
Speaker 4: onto the patio and stabbed Fabio Semanteley, who was a
Speaker 4: famous hairdresser in Canada and then came to the United
Speaker 4: States to take an executive role at Wela, which is
Speaker 4: part of Cody and then PNG, a very large beauty company.
Speaker 4: But it looked like he had been murdered first, and
Speaker 4: then the bedroom was rifled through and made to look
Speaker 4: like stage like a crime scene, but the rollucks was
Speaker 4: left on his wrist so didn't add up from the beginning.
Speaker 4: And the Knock Knock burglary crew was actually a roof
Speaker 4: that Lapd used in order to investigate the crime. And
Speaker 4: then they uncovered this ongoing affair between the victim's wife
Speaker 4: and Robert Baker.
Speaker 2: Now when did they start looking at the wife or
Speaker 2: did they was that later in the game.
Speaker 4: Well, it was pretty early on. I would say within
Speaker 4: less than a month the attention was directed there. They
Speaker 4: had some information to indicate that it obviously wasn't your
Speaker 4: typical burglary with someone come in during the day and
Speaker 4: want to take property and get out as quick as possible.
Speaker 4: Because then there was blood from the victims mirrored on
Speaker 4: items in the master bedroom, it was clear it was
Speaker 4: a targeted killing. And then once they started investigating and
Speaker 4: realized she was lying to them about her relationship with
Speaker 4: the with Robert Baker, it all started, you know, calling
Speaker 4: into place with various search warrants and surveillance crews and
Speaker 4: things like that that they started putting into place to
Speaker 4: gather evidence.
Speaker 2: So I assume in this evidence gathering time frame they
Speaker 2: also started digging through text messages. And I think we've
Speaker 2: all been to funerals, right, I don't think any of
Speaker 2: us in the conversation has ever sexted somebody during a funeral.
Speaker 1: Is that the stage? Is that the stage where they uncovered.
Speaker 4: Those Yeah, that was the crazy part was during the cremation,
Speaker 4: the memorial, the funeral, the various burial services that took
Speaker 4: place in Canada after his body was flown back to
Speaker 4: his home company country for interment. Later on, after she
Speaker 4: was arrested and we wound up dumping her phone, we
Speaker 4: found that she had been sending her lover photos of
Speaker 4: herself naked, posing for photos and masturbating and doing other
Speaker 4: crazy things during the time of those services that were
Speaker 4: going on over the course of the week up in Canada.
Speaker 2: Wow, Wow, you ken't like going to a church bathroom
Speaker 2: or something like.
Speaker 1: I don't even know it was.
Speaker 4: Like when she came back, Like her sister testified that
Speaker 4: one day she left, she had to take her home
Speaker 4: early because she just couldn't take being there anymore and
Speaker 4: she was just so mentally exhausted. And then of course
Speaker 4: we have these photos of her in her parents' home
Speaker 4: that she was taking later on during the day and
Speaker 4: then again in the evening that just happened to wind
Speaker 4: up on her lovers best d cards. You know, the
Speaker 4: kind of electronic device card where you would say pictures
Speaker 4: from let's say your camera or something like that.
Speaker 2: Wow, leaving your dead husband's funeral, murdered dead husband's funeral
Speaker 2: to go to your parents' house and master bate and
Speaker 2: send to your ex porn star, racketball coach lover is
Speaker 2: next level. Okay, so this is my big question, Beth.
Speaker 2: My big question is this, The lover is found guilty
Speaker 2: of killing this guy, and then she goes The wife
Speaker 2: goes on trial, and the lover during this trial says
Speaker 2: she had nothing.
Speaker 1: To do with it. I did it just for love.
Speaker 1: I want to know what his motivation was.
Speaker 2: Not to sand bag this woman, because you prosecuted that
Speaker 2: that case as well.
Speaker 1: Can we do that when we come back?
Speaker 4: Sure? Okay?
Speaker 3: Are we talking with La County Deputy DA Beth Silverman
Speaker 3: about the Monica Semonily case, convicted Friday of sending her
Speaker 3: level to kill her husband, who happened to be a
Speaker 3: pretty well known hairstylist named Fabio Simon Telly. We're in
Speaker 3: the middle of a true crime Tuesday talking with La
Speaker 3: County Deputy DA Beth Silverman. But the Monica Semonili case,
Speaker 3: she was convicted just a few days ago of sending
Speaker 3: her lover she was having an affair with, to kill
Speaker 3: her husband, who happened to be celebrity hairstylist Fabio Simonilly
Speaker 3: at their home in Woodland Hills eight years ago.
Speaker 1: Finally that conviction.
Speaker 2: Now the lover was convicted of this murder, of Fabio's
Speaker 2: murder and sentence to life without parole.
Speaker 1: He was the star.
Speaker 2: Witness at her at Monica's trial, and he insisted at
Speaker 2: this trial that he killed Fabio for love, that she
Speaker 2: was not the mastermind. Beth, Why did he maintain this
Speaker 2: was Was there some sort of payout that he was
Speaker 2: going to get into his commissary?
Speaker 1: Why would he not just roll on her?
Speaker 4: I think that could be part of it. But the
Speaker 4: real truth is the belief that they are going to
Speaker 4: stay by each other forever, and that we showed a
Speaker 4: lot of evidence to the jury where they had said
Speaker 4: that to each other on recorded jail calls, recordings in
Speaker 4: the lock up outside the courtroom, jail mail, things of
Speaker 4: that nature, that he would take the fall for her,
Speaker 4: and that she would be able to support him on
Speaker 4: the outside. We made reference to maybe getting some kind
Speaker 4: of ability for her to visit him at some point
Speaker 4: where they'd be able to continue their sexcapaved, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was the great word.
Speaker 3: There was another person in there as well, an accomplice,
Speaker 3: a guy named Christopher Austin, who also testified for the
Speaker 3: prosecution explain his role in all of this.
Speaker 4: So we said, we were able to identify him a
Speaker 4: couple of years back, but we never were able to
Speaker 4: put enough together to have a case where we had
Speaker 4: sufficient vidence to prove it to the standard that were
Speaker 4: required as prosecutors until sometime late in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: towards the end of twenty twenty three, when we finally
Speaker 4: arrested him and extradited him down to California. And so
Speaker 4: he basically testified contrary to Baker about the fact that
Speaker 4: the wife was the one, Monica Simantilly, who set the
Speaker 4: whole thing up. So the defense called Baker and we
Speaker 4: called Austen to counter that evidence.
Speaker 2: So you have to pour through all of the evidence,
Speaker 2: including the nudes sent from our parents' house.
Speaker 1: What's that like?
Speaker 4: There was a lot of that. There was an extraordinary
Speaker 4: amount of digital events in this case that they created
Speaker 4: the two defendants themselves from their cell phones and they're
Speaker 4: swinging they were involved in. I learned a lot of
Speaker 4: things on this case, so I never knew about before.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that still went on. But there's a
Speaker 4: whole web page for that in a way for people
Speaker 4: to hook up with other couples and have group sex
Speaker 4: and things like that. And so we had a lot
Speaker 4: of that kind of evidence that we had to basically
Speaker 4: go through in order to find the stuff we actually
Speaker 4: wanted to use for trial. And you know what, we
Speaker 4: were going to put in and try and flim down
Speaker 4: the amount of evidence because as it was, we were
Speaker 4: in trial for over two months and we probably could
Speaker 4: have been trial for four.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So okay, so the swinging thing, So was if Monica
Speaker 2: and the lover were into the swinging or is? Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay, huh, Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, they had They had names. She went by the
Speaker 4: name Madonna. She talked in her jail mail about wanting
Speaker 4: to get rid of ditch the name sem and teely.
Speaker 4: She hated that last name and she wanted to marry Baker.
Speaker 4: And you know, she used the name Madonna for their sexcapades,
Speaker 4: but also when she signed letters to him, she that's
Speaker 4: how she signed it. Monica Madonna Baker.
Speaker 1: Now the defensive this case.
Speaker 3: They were trying to suggest that that that Monica was
Speaker 3: was a victim in all of this as well, right,
Speaker 3: that that the Baker had done all this all by.
Speaker 4: Himself, right, which wasn't at all believable. And when you
Speaker 4: saw Baker testify for about five minutes he was on
Speaker 4: Stamp about three or four days on cross, it was
Speaker 4: fairly obvious. The man couldn't find his way out of
Speaker 4: a paper bag.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's that the funeral stuff. I mean, I go back
Speaker 2: to Scott Peterson at Lacey's memorial, you know, on the
Speaker 2: phone with Amber talking about, oh, I'm at the Paris
Speaker 2: and the fireworks and it's the was it New Year
Speaker 2: or something like that. It must have been New Year's
Speaker 2: because she went missing, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Actually missing Christmas easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they didn't get the body for a while anyway.
Speaker 2: So I just the idea that you're at your your
Speaker 2: husband or wife's funeral and your and you're on the
Speaker 2: phone with your lover.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's like a husband who you were married
Speaker 4: to for almost twenty years. I mean we're not talking
Speaker 4: about some brief, fleeting, short lived marriage. I mean this
Speaker 4: is a you know relationship where, at least from Fabio's side,
Speaker 4: he loved his girls. You know, family was the most
Speaker 4: important thing to him, his daughters and his wife.
Speaker 2: So it just was narcissism to the nth degree degree. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the daughters, how are they They're grown? I assume
Speaker 2: they are.
Speaker 4: They're grown now. You know, this has been going on
Speaker 4: for eight years. They strong strongly believe their mother's innocent.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: Interesting, and that whole side of the family has, you know,
Speaker 4: is completely hid their heads in the sand and they refused.
Speaker 4: The girls didn't see any of the trial other than
Speaker 4: the portions of the defense put on, so they weren't
Speaker 4: interested in hearing the truth.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, so they don't know about the wilfullest
Speaker 2: swinging and the sex sting.
Speaker 4: Exactly, willcal ignorance. That's right.
Speaker 3: Well, Beth, again, thanks for taking time out of the
Speaker 3: afternoon to talk to us.
Speaker 1: We greatly appreciate it. Sure, sure, Beth's silverman there again.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a fun trial that honestly, like I know,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of work, but that would be a
Speaker 2: lot of entertainment.
Speaker 4: Yeah,