The third suspect was a ghost who morphed like vapour into the fetid night air in Los Angeles.
For nearly seven years, he has remained elusive. Homicide detectives didn’t even have a name — until now.
The Toronto Sun has learned that LAPD investigators have arrested the mysterious third suspect in the brutal Jan. 13, 2017, knifing murder of renowned Toronto hair stylist Fabio Sementilli on the patio of his southern California home while he enjoyed a cigar and a glass of wine.
“It’s an absolute relief,” a source close to the victim’s family told the Sun. “We never thought we’d see this day.”
The accused is 38-year-old Christopher Austin who was arrested in Washington state by detectives. He pleaded not guilty to murder in an L.A. courtroom on Friday.
Cops say Austin personally wielded a knife during the commission of the grisly crime. He is now caged on more than $2-million bail.
But Austin would never be the star of this particular Tinseltown production. Think Gabby Hayes as comic relief in a John Wayne-Randolph Scott horse opera.
No, the top spot on the marquee is reserved for weeping widow Monica Sementilli, 52, and her leading man, the repugnant Robert Louis Baker. They were arrested six months after the murder.
And what a torrid tale it was. There was kinky sex and, mostly, to hear detectives tell it, there was a big, fat insurance policy totalling $1.6 million.
Baker threw in the towel in July 2023 when he pleaded no contest to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The former porn impresario also copped to the special-circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait.
Stiletto-thin Monica Sementilli is due in court Wednesday for a pretrial hearing. She has murder and conspiracy allegations hanging over her now greying raven locks.
Monica has pleaded not guilty.
While the couple’s two daughters stand by their mother, Fabio’s siblings are definitely not.
He was a rock star in the world of hairstyling, first in Toronto and then the bright lights of L.A. where he was the beloved vice-president of beauty giant Wella.
Prosecutors say Monica and Baker conspired to murder Sementilli with their eyes laser-focused on that insurance policy.
It is alleged that Monica gave her lover instructions on how to access the home CCTV where her unsuspecting husband would witness his final moments on this earth.
She allegedly went shopping to give herself an alibi and then coldly waited for their daughter to find her father dead. But Baker cut himself in the attack and detectives linked the blood he left behind to the convicted sex offender’s DNA profile.
Her lawyer, Leonard Levine, appears to be pinning his courtroom hopes on Baker’s testimony — although it isn’t yet clear the lethal lothario will even take the stand.
Levine told reporters: “(His) truthful testimony will finally establish once and for all that Monica Sementilli had nothing to do with the planning or the murder of Fabio Sementilli, her husband. And we’re looking forward to the trial, which we believe will establish that fact.”
For the Sementilli family, the road to justice has been agonizingly slow. After nearly eight long years of legal limbo, trial dates were derailed repeatedly by COVID and a court system bursting at the seams.
Now is their moment.
Monica Sementilli faces life in a California prison if convicted.
@HunterTOSun