The After Show: Sex, Knives and Videotape

Hi there, 2020 podcast listeners. Welcome to the 2020 After Show.
I'm Debra Roberts. On Friday nights, 2020, we told you about the dramatic case in Los Angeles where Monica Cimentelli has been on trial for the murder of her husband, Fabio Cimentelli.
He was an internationally known hairstylist and hair care executive. He was found stabbed to death next to his pool eight years ago.
And interestingly, two men were caught on security cameras entering his property. And although his wife Monica has denied any involvement in the murder, prosecutors and investigators don't buy it.
Their big question has always been what role, if any, did his wife Monica play in her husband's death? And we recently received news that the jury has convicted Monica Simentelli of the murder of her husband Fabio. On today's 2020 After Show, we're going to talk with ABC News consultant and fabulous crime journalist Pat LaLama, who sat in that courtroom every day of the trial and has been on this story since the murder took place in 2017 and has such great insight into it.
Hi there, Pat. Hey, Debra.
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk about this case.
Well, this is what's so wonderful about doing this program because we all get to talk about the little nuances and the things that happen in the courtroom and what you found along the way that sometimes we don't always necessarily get those into our program. So this is what's great about today.
So let's talk about the genesis of this story. You pitched it actually to us and you said that this was like one of the most fascinating, captivating, and I guess disturbing stories that you had covered.
Tell me how so. And Deborah, for me to say that is big, because I've covered so many trials.
And yet this one touched me in ways I can't describe. Let's put it this way, Deborah.
I live in Hollywood, right? It's the mecca of screenwriters looking for that Oscar-winning script that'll put their name in lights. There is nothing those screenwriters can write that, to me, equals what I'm seeing every day in this particular case.
It is downright Shakespearean. It is the human condition, greed, lust, infidelity, anger, jealousy, put it all together.
And this is the case that you have. Wow.
And it is also adjacent to fame too, because he styled hair for some of the more famous people in Hollywood. That's exactly right.
This man, so let me tell you just a little bit about Fabio before we go. Very, I mean, just beloved in the industry, one of the only actual stylists.
And he wasn't just a stylist in the salon. He was the creative director for all the big runway shows from here to Paris and Rome and everywhere else.
And he was so beloved and so smart that they made him an executive at Wella Corporation, which was at the time owned by Procter & Gamble. So that's what brought him to L.A.
from Toronto. So he came here with his wife and his two young daughters, and they made a home in an upscale part of L.A.
called Woodland Hills. And on the outside, Deborah, everything was beautiful.
That classic story. Classic story.
And what happens now, this is according to the prosecution. Monica, his wife, decides to have this lust driven affair with her racquetball coach, right? The guy is a convicted sex offender.
He's an interesting character. But apparently,

so many of the women in this upscale health club in Woodland Hills were crazy about him. Go figure.
Right. I mean, that's a story for another podcast.
Well, let's let's go back to that security camera footage we talked about and how police zeroed in. there were two admitted killers in this case and testifying for both sides of the case.
One prosecution, one defense. Yeah.
You know what? I wish we had eight hours to go through every little detail, but I'll try to narrow it down for you. Here's what really makes this case so interesting.
Two men were on that surveillance tape. You can't see them, but they were able to figure them out.
Right. One of them, it turns out, and I can say this matter-of-factly because they have confessed to the crimes, right? Robert Baker is the racquetball coach.
He's one of them. The other one is one of his—a young man he considered his nephew.
They'd known each other for decades, very, very close. He turns out to be the other man.
Now, in the end, what happened is the racquetball coach has fallen on the sword 100%. He was not offered any kind of a deal.
He just comes forward and says, I'm just going to admit to it. I did it.
I want nothing. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison.
And darn it,

I'm going to testify for Monica Semateli. Who understands why he wants to die on this hill? I don't know.
The other man, the younger one, he pled guilty to second degree murder. And here's the here's the peg.
He testified for the prosecution that Monica was most definitely behind this. His words were that Robert didn't make a move without her instruction.
Robert is trying to tell the jury or told the jury that she had nothing to do with it. And therein lies this double-edged sword.
One killer for the prosecution, one killer for the defense. How interesting is that? Wow, it's beyond interesting.
And these are the kinds of things that we actually see play out all the time in these cases that we cover on 2020. Pat, hold that thought for a second.
We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about what police caught on tape about Monica.
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Some of the most fascinating audio presented at this trial came from conversations that police recorded between Monica Cimentelli and her lover, Robert Baker. You brought us, Pat, one of those, and you can set up this clip for us because the fascinating thing is you've got two different people here, two different stories.
Tell us what you brought to us. Okay.
So the police, LAPD, deliberately put them in cells next to each other. So there's a lot of different ways they were able to monitor their conversations.
And so in these conversations, some of them are phone calls. Some of them are what they call overhears, where they can record them talking to each other between cell blocks.
But these are actual phone calls. And the way they were able to do the phone calls, Deborah, is they got a third party to help put them together.
Anyway, that's also another long description of how this happened. But let me just tell you.
But clever police work. Absolutely the best.
But what happened was you think now they're both arrested for murder, right? And if she is innocent, then you wouldn't think she would keep this up. But here they are in jail, professing their undying love and lust for each other.
Calling each other and the phone calls got a little steamy too, right? Oh my gosh, you haven't heard that. We can't play you the half of it.
We can't redo the half of it. We can't play you.
We can't show you. I mean, you'd have to go and sit in the trial every day like I did to see your own jaw drop every day, listening to the undeniable passion these two had for each other.
Let's take a listen. You're so gorgeous, baby.
Oh, you just like me a little bit. Oh my God, I love you so much.
You're so gorgeous, baby. You just like me a little bit oh my god i love you so much

honestly i've had quite a few relationships this is different this is like supercharged. Honestly, I've had quite a few relationships.
This is different. This is supercharged.
I love you so much. I can't talk about you.
He's telling her, be strong, baby. I love you so much.
I am your home. You are my home.
Wherever we are is our home. Remember that.
We are each other's home. They cannot take that away from us.
They're each other's home. Nobody can take that away.
And that's, you know, that's the lustful edge of it. But what you'll find is that in this case, they also, there are recordings of them actually talking about evidence.
And Deborah, that is what gave the prosecution a lot of strength because they are discussing evidence and they are expressing concern for

some of the evidence. So the prosecution is arguing, well, then how is it that she didn't

know anything? You know, they're talking about their love for each other and their lust for each

other. But and I'm sure viewers were probably struck by this, too, when this aired.
But

there's no sense of we're in trouble. What do we do?? Oh my gosh, how do we get here? None of that.
This is when they first got to jail. But over time, you hear in the jail what they call the overhears, where the cops are monitoring their conversations, where they really do get concerned about certain things.
For example, how Robert's blood got into the home. And there are lies about that.
So the cops are able to establish some inconsistencies and some lies. Because think about it.
They're so embroiled in their lust for each other that they're not being very smart. Right.
So they give themselves away a lot in those conversations. Deborah, here's the important thing.
The important point for the prosecution in trying to prove that she was the mastermind is that they have a plethora of compelling, irrefutable evidence of her going to Fabio's many memorials and services, playing the grieving widow, and then going home and sending Robert the most salacious nude photographs and messages you can imagine. The problem for the defense is they can't refute it because it's right there in the technology, which is what makes this such a great circumstantial case.
Well, that's what I wanted to get at because you've been covering these cases for decades. You know, you have been at it a long time, as have I.
And the technology has changed a lot over the years. And when you talk about sometimes things that are circumstantial, and that happens a lot with the cases we cover on 2020, but that has changed a lot and made the police work a little bit more fruitful, hasn't it? Oh, my gosh, Deborah, you just hit it on the head.
Let me tell you, if I were speaking to, let's say, some young juvenile offenders, what I would say to them back then was, oh, you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison. What I say now is, don't do it.
There's a camera. Somewhere there is a record.
And this trial, the prosecution laid out one of the most intricate and fascinating timelines using text messages, encrypted app indications, cell towers, surveillance footage. And when I sat, I've been covering this forever.
I feel like I know every detail, right? But you still have to keep yourself objective.

But when I saw that timeline of the day of the murder. I sat, I've been covering this forever.
I feel like I know every detail, right? But you still have to keep yourself objective.

But when I saw that timeline of the day of the murder and the exchanges between Monica and Robert, and they do this beautiful timeline, it makes it so clear how she placed herself, He placed himself in places and times and communications that made it seemingly clear that she was definitely involved. That's what's so interesting, the timeline, you know, and they're able to do that with all of this technology.
Yeah, kind of walk us through that a little bit. Yes, absolutely.
So just speaking of only the day of murder, right? They start out in this timeline of showing you cell phone usage where she starts calling him early in the morning.

And then you'll see the graph go higher, lower in terms of their communications.

It stops when they're not communicating and they're at a location where they meet before the murder.

And then there's a flurry of activity.

I'm not even doing, Deborah, I am not doing justice to what this timeline was able to reveal for the murder. And then there's a flurry of activity.
I'm not even doing, Deborah, I am not

doing justice to what this timeline was able to reveal for the jury of what happened the day of the murder. And they placed them at the Target store where she's basically hiding out while he goes to do the murder.
I can't, there's so much detail. Trust me when I tell you this timeline made it, it parted the clouds for me and I believe for the jury in terms of how she, alleged by the prosecution, manipulated the whole day, gave him all the instructions, told him, told him where everyone in the family was going to be that day, sent him her husband's itinerary, sent him the code to the DVR surveillance video.
They have technological evidence that she was watching her home DVR system as they were there doing the murder. She gave him all this information so that he would know when the window of opportunity was.

Yeah. Now, of course, the defense disputed that timeline in court.
Yes, they did. They tried to find glitches in the timeline.
And listen, there is no smoking gun. There is no text message that says, all right, go get it.
OK, honey, we'll be together forever. Now go slice them up, right?

There's nothing, nothing.

Okay, and the other thing that the jury has to wonder, as I do, is why is this man, Robert Baker, dying on this hill for her? He gets nothing. He'll never see the light of day.
What is motivating him to say she had nothing to do with it? So those are two very strong things. But remember,

in a circumstantial case, when the pieces all fit together, they can be airtight. And the defense can try all they will to undo these puzzles, but it's hard to break them open.
They fit together

perfectly. with a side of biscuits and gravy.
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Let's talk about your reaction, Pat, in the courtroom, because one of the things that just grabs me in a lot of our reporting is when these cases are revealed and there are kids involved. And so Monica's then 16-year-old daughter, Isabella, is the one who found her father brutally, brutally stabbed to death outside their house near the pool.
And she testified in the trial. And talk to us about the family and watching that and seeing the daughter's testimony, and particularly for you, not just as a journalist, but as a person.
The prosecution alleged that Monica devised the timeline so that her 16-year-old daughter would come home to find her dad dead. Now, the defense disputes that.
And they say, no, no, it just happened that way, you know, because Monica didn't know anything about it. But the fact is, there is some evidence that Monica did plan everything and even detoured her daughter, Isabella, for a while to go pick up some glasses that she needed, just out of the blue.
But still, Isabella got home in time to find her dad. Okay.
Now, Robert Baker is a convicted sex offender, sodomized a 14 year old girl, excuse me for the harsh description, but it's true. And it came out in the case.
And yet Monica gave him the codes to her home surveillance footage, right? And pin numbers and everything he needed with two teenage daughters in the home, okay? Also, after the murder, there are text exchanges between Monica and her daughters where she is downright emotionless and callous because Isabella is saying, Mom, I'm afraid to be home alone in this house. Please come home.
And Monica's responding like, I'm at a comedy club. And what are you guys, a cop? You know, basically.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm talking, Deborah, I'm talking days and weeks after this young girl, Isabella, finds her daddy dead.
And get this, I got one. I can't I can't keep this from you.
On one of the text exchanges. Remember remember Monica is out with Robert through all of this until all hours of the morning, sometimes not even coming home.
Isabella is just pleading with her mother to come home. Right.
And she goes, and she goes, I'm alive. I'm a human being.
You guys aren't even paying attention. I'm so scared to be here by myself.
And then she says, mom, I'm going to make that therapist appointment tomorrow. Deborah, get this.
You know what Monica responds? Okay, okay, fine. I'm coming home.
I'm so disappointed. I'm so disappointed, she says.
And that had such an impact in the courtroom, too, when you when you think about that. But yet, but yet, Isab.
But yet Isabella still defends her mom. I mean, she wants to actually see her mom free.
Deborah, you're a parent. I'm a step-parent, and I love the kids like they were my own.
To me, this is what I mean when I say that, you know, jokingly I say everybody wants to kill their spouse now and then, right? I say that jokingly, so don't take that out of common. But when you hear...
But there's truth to that. When you hear these young ladies and what their mother had absolutely no regard for their emotional well-being, to me, I said to myself, the jury's going to hate this more than the murder.
Now, of course, I'm being slightly facetious because murder is murder, of course. But these girls, Deborah, they don't want to believe their mother is capable of this.
And you can understand that. And also for their future, too.
I mean, going forward. I mean, how can you process all of that? But that's what really got me in this case, too, that they still they don't really believe that she could have as much as they probably know that their mom could be callous and all of that.
They don't want to believe that she could do something that heinous. No.
Pat, you have, as we said earlier, you've covered so many of these cases. And oftentimes when I'm out there in the field and I'm reporting on these things and getting all the details, you do think that you just couldn't make this up.
And no, this one, yeah, this one, I think you said it's up there for you in terms of what you found so fascinating about it, the human condition, very Shakespearean. You know, this is one you're not going to forget for a long time.
No, this is it. This is in my think about what I've covered hundreds of trials.
Right.

Over all these decades. And this is in my top five.
This is in my top five because, Deborah, the reason why I made criminal justice the focus of my career, like you, I've covered everything you can throw at me. But criminal justice, particularly when it comes to murder, I'm not interested in the murder.
I'm interested in what happened in a person's life that could make them go off the rails like this, to put yourself above every living thing, to be able to construct and craft such a heinous murder of someone that you had two children with. Right.
We talk about the timeline and everything kind of falling into place for this murder if Monica indeed, you know, did it. But do you think she wanted her daughter? She set it up for her daughter to find her father's body? Or do you think that was just collateral damage here? I'll put it this way.
The prosecution, the detectives even said on the stand, horrible as it may be, we believe that she set it up this way so that someone else besides her would have to be the one the public sees as having found the dead person. That's what the prosecution is trying to say.
She put that on someone else to deal with so that she didn't have to be in the spotlight. That's what the prosecution believes.
The defense said to the detectives, you can't possibly believe Monica would do such a thing. And the detective came back and said, well, sad as it is to say, yes, we believe that she constructed it so her own daughter would find it.
And her own daughter would be the one that would have to carry that weight. Isabella came home one minute, Deborah, one minute after the killers left the house.
And in fact, Robert Baker made a comment to his accomplice, oh, expletive, one of the daughters is coming home. One of the things that was so incredible is that there are two murder suspects here, and one testified for the prosecution, one testifies for the defense.
Talk about that accomplice to Robert Baker. Chris Austin was a baby when Robert Baker met him.
Chris Austin's dad is Robert Baker's best friend. Chris Austin is a pretty decent guy, Deborah.
I'm going to tell you, you might find it hard. How can Pat say that when he's going to prison for 16 to life for murder? But I will tell you this.
You know what Chris Austin did for a living? He mentored juvenile offenders. Never been in trouble himself.
He was a mentor to them. He kept them on the straight and narrow.
If they got in trouble, he tried to put them back on track. He delivered food to people who were mentally challenged.
He has a wife and a baby whom he worships and adores. Now, look, I'm a law and order kind of girl.
You're responsible for the actions that you take in your own life. However, I would say that there are mitigating circumstances in this because the prosecution brought out the way in which Robert coerced him to get involved, but only as a lookout.
His role was just to be a lookout. That's what Chris Austin thought he was going to be doing.
You may not know this. The first murder attempt was the night before, where the prosecution alleges that Monica gave Robert Baker the name of a Chinese restaurant where Fabio was going to pick up food at a Chinese restaurant.
And they went to that scene, and he handed Chris Austin the knife and said, you go do it. How's that for a spineless person? Right.
And Chris Austin went, got out of the car, went toward the restaurant where he spotted Fabio and then chickened out and came back practically in tears saying, I can't do it, Robert. I can't do it.
So that's why they had to do it the next day when Monica, according to the prosecution, let them know when Fabio was going to be home alone.

Christopher Austin testified that he closed his eyes and stabbed him once, couldn't do it anymore. Okay.
And then when they figured out who he was, he told them the whole story and Monica's involvement. The defense countered by saying, you're only making the Monica stuff up so you can get a deal.
Okay. That was a legitimate defense.
That was a legitimate defense. But I got to tell you, he just sobbed on the stand and talked about how ashamed he was and how remorseful how he was and how, you know, he just Robert, he called Robert Unc all his life and he just was trying to help him out.
And Robert Baker used him. And it breaks my heart.
I'm going to tell you, breaks my heart that his life is ruined. Yeah.
And he got a lighter sentence, though. Pat, this has been so fascinating.
And you and I could talk all day about this. But I can't thank you enough for bringing such intrigue and such understanding to these stories, at least to the extent that we can understand them.
Always a pleasure to talk with you, Pat. Oh, thank you.
And I'm thrilled to be a part of it. So thanks.
Pat LaLama is an ABC News consultant who covered the Cimentelli trial for us in Los Angeles. That does it for 2020, the after show.
And we hope you'll tune in on Friday nights at nine for all new episodes of 2020 on ABC. This episode was produced by Cameron Chertavian and Sasha Aslanian, along with Joe Rhee, Brian Mazursky, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020.
And we also had help this week from Amira Williams, Meg Vieira, and Larry Decant. Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020.
Josh Cohen is the director of podcasting and ABC Audio. Laura Mayer is the executive producer.
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