By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH

A woman who was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for masterminding the killing of her husband —a prominent hairdresser — at the home they shared with their two daughters in Woodland Hills was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Monica Sementilli, 53, was convicted for the Jan. 23, 2017, stabbing death of her 49-year-old husband, Fabio, in the family’s backyard, shortly before the couple was set to celebrate its 20th wedding anniversary.

The 10-man, two-woman jury — which deliberated about eight hours and 45 minutes over a three-day period — found her guilty on April 11. Tha panel also found true the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen rejected a defense bid to have her sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Sementilli’s lover, Robert Baker, now 63, pleaded no contest in July 2023 to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and admitted the two special circumstance allegations. He is serving a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole.

Baker, a convicted sex offender and former adult movie actor who was called to the stand during the defense’s portion of Sementilli’s trial, maintained that the mother of two had nothing to do with the plan to kill her husband. He said he formed his own plan to murder Fabio Sementilli, saying, “I wanted her to be around me and with me more — like all the time.”

A third defendant, Christopher Austin, who was working as a parole and probation officer dealing with at-risk youth in Oregon at the time of his arrest last year, pleaded no contest in January to second-degree murder and was sentenced in May to 16 years to life in state prison as a result of a plea deal reached with prosecutors.

Austin, now 39, testified that his longtime friend, Baker, told him that Sementilli wanted her husband dead, but Austin acknowledged that he did not personally speak to her about the crime.

The couple’s oldest daughter, Gessica, told the judge in May that she and her sister are “so disappointed” that Austin was given a plea deal.

“We are the ones who lost a father. We are the ones who lost a mother,” she said.

The couple’s youngest daughter, Isabella, who found her father’s body, spoke directly to Austin during the sentencing, saying that he had “the audacity to cry on the stand” and was a “coward stupid enough to blindly trust someone like Robert Baker.”

“… I will fight for you to rot in prison the rest of your life,” the victim’s youngest daughter said.

Both of the daughters — who left the downtown Los Angeles courtroom before Austin’s sentence was handed down — have steadfastly maintained that their mother is innocent of the crime.

One of the victim’s sisters, Mirella Sementilli, addressed Austin in a statement read in court on her behalf, saying that her family had been “traumatized by your choice to say nothing.”

“You chose to be present. You chose to take part,” she said. “There will never be forgiveness, never.”

After his arrest, Austin told a jailhouse operative that “she was supposed to get a lot of money if we did it,” saying Baker — whom he considered “family” — told him that she was “loaded” and “wants him gone.” He said he mentioned insurance money because Baker had told him about it.

Austin testified that Baker paid for his airline flight to Los Angeles and drove him the same night to a shopping center after getting a text message that Sementilli was going to send her husband out that night. He said he couldn’t go forward with the attack, but said the two men went the next day to the Sementilli family home to commit the killing after Baker received a text message.

“He said the front door should be open, meaning unlocked. He told me, he said, ‘She’s gonna leave the door open,” Austin told jurors.

“… Did he tell you who she was?” the prosecutor asked.

“The defendant,” Austin responded, saying that the door was “indeed unlocked.”

He said Baker told him the victim should be on the back patio and that the victim didn’t see him until Baker got close to him and tried to yell then.

“Baker covered his mouth and started stabbing him,” he said. “I covered his eyes and stabbed him once.”

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Leonard Levine, the prosecution witness acknowledged that he didn’t see any text messages from Sementilli to Baker.

When asked why he didn’t say no to Baker about being involved in the crime, he said, “He was like family and he said that his girlfriend didn’t want him (the victim) around any more.”

During his time on the stand in Sementilli’s trial, Baker said, “I murdered him (Fabio Sementilli) because I wanted her.”

“Well, you kind of had her already, but not the way you wanted or what?” Levine asked.

“Absolutely,” Baker responded. “I didn’t have her the way I wanted her.”

Baker said he and his lover had talked about whether she was going to leave her husband and that “it didn’t seem like it was really going to happen.”

When asked if Sementilli had “anything to do with the planning or the execution of the plan to kill Fabio Sementilli,” he responded, “No.”

“You’re sure?” Levine asked.

“I’m positive,” he said.

During the prosecution’s closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors “it’s very obvious that the defendant, along with her lover, murdered Fabio Sementilli along with assistance from Christopher Austin,” and that the murder was “committed for financial gain as well as for other motivations — in other words, for their future together.”

She also urged jurors to find true the lying-in-wait special circumstance allegation, saying the woman’s husband was “ambushed based on a secret plan or design that the defendant and her lover put into place,” and that Austin backed out of an effort to kill the victim a night earlier as he was picking up a take-out order at a restaurant.

“She’s the one who destroyed so many lives and their entire family,” said Silverman, who called the murder plot the ultimate act of “betrayal.”

Sementilli’s attorney countered that his client was “guilty of a lot of things — stupidity, duplicity, lying, adultery” — but not murder.

“She was having an affair with someone who murdered her husband,” Levine told jurors. “But she did not commit or orchestrate or conspire to commit the murder of her husband.”

“… She has suffered for her choices — and they were horrible,” the defense attorney said. “But she’s not guilty of first-degree murder, of destroying a family, putting her daughter in danger of being murdered when she could have controlled the whole thing.”

Levine described Baker as a “Svengali,” saying that Sementilli made the “biggest mistake of her life” in becoming involved in an extramarital affair with him.

“Nothing good came from Mr. Baker, but he’s gone for life,” Levine said of Baker’s plea and subsequent life prison sentence. “Now they want to complete the circle and send her away.”

Sementilli has remained behind bars since her arrest in June 2017, when she and Baker were charged with murdering her husband. A conspiracy charge was subsequently added against the pair. The two were indicted just over two months later on the same charges.

Jurors heard a series of courthouse lockup recordings of conversations between Sementilli and Baker, including one in Van Nuys shortly after they were taken into custody. Baker can be heard repeatedly expressing his love for Sementilli and telling her that he’s “all in” and that he thinks they should get married.

“Just because we fell in love does not make us criminals,” Sementilli can be heard telling Baker at one point.

Austin has also remained behind bars since his arrest.