Monica Sementilli Trial — Defense Closing Arguments (Part One)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: And I promise I will not take as long as the prosecution. She took almost three days, I'm just going to take two, two and a half. I hope you're laughing. Because one of my points to you as we begin this journey, and let me first say, the hardest thing as a defense attorney is to listen to the phone going off in the middle of your argument. [00:00:25] Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. [00:00:27] Speaker ?: I'm sorry. [00:00:29] Speaker 1: I've always known secretly she doesn't like it. The hardest thing is to sit there for, what, almost three days, more than three days of argument, and not be able to jump up and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's not right. Wait a minute, wait a minute. She got that wrong. Wait a minute, that wasn't the evidence. A couple of times I objected. The court properly said, if you think she said it wrong, you tell them. You clear it up. That's what you're here for. That's why we have a trial. And I will. I'm going to give you some general thoughts about this case because I've been thinking about it, and I'm the only attorney that's been on this case, except for maybe the prosecutor, for eight years. And I first want to thank Ms. Burke and Mr. Babich, Mr. Jones, and Ms. Peters, who's not here today. And I'm sure Ms. Silverman feels the same way about Ms. Stagel. There is no way in a case with hundreds of thousands of exhibits, forensic and otherwise, nine weeks of testimony, 50, 60 witnesses. And I'll get to that, because most of those witnesses were here to establish that Monica Sementilli had an affair. And to disparate her character. And they did a damn good job. And much of it was earned. But we're not here to decide whether or not Monica Sementilli was a bad wife, an adulteress, and we'll get to all those synonyms that Ms. Silverman put up there for betrayal. Because, yes, she did. We're here to decide. You are here to decide if she's been proven guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt. And I submit to you, if the evidence was that clear, it would not have taken eight years and eight weeks of testimony to prove it. Because most of what was presented to you were two things. With all those exhibits and all the jury instructions that Ms. Silverman is going to give to you, and that is that Robert Baker and Christopher Austin committed first-degree murder, conspired to do that. The other thing they proved over eight years and eight weeks and 50-plus witnesses is that Monica Lewinsky, you know, I knew I was going to do that once. I knew I was going to do that once, and I apologize. Monica Sementilli had an affair. I guess that's why it was on my mind. The President of the United States is not in trial here. That's what they proved over eight weeks and 50 witnesses that Baker and Austin conspired to commit first-degree murder and Monica Sementilli had an affair. Now, when you look at her, and I know you've looked at her throughout the trial, it's hard not to. She's the defendant. Before you go into your deliberations in the deliberation room, take one last look at her. Not with any sympathy. Because she doesn't deserve any sympathy. Not with any daggers. Although there are many who have had daggers out for her for a long time. That she has deserved. But look at her and say to yourself, innocent. Innocent. Before you go into the jury window. Because what the law requires you to do is exactly that. It's just not me saying that. Offending in a criminal action is presumed to be innocent until the contrary is proven. Case of a reasonable doubt. Whether it's satisfactorily shown. She's entitled to have a verdict of not guilty. That places upon the people. The burden of proving her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Next slide, if you would. And then that defines reasonable doubt. And you'll get this. That is not mere possible doubt. Because everything open to human affairs relating to it is open to imaginary or possible doubt. The state of the case after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence leaves you in the condition you cannot say you feel an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge. And what that means, and what his honor will tell you, is as you are sitting here now, the trial is not over. The trial includes closing argument and a rebuttal argument from the prosecution. The trial is not over until you go back there and start deliberating among the 12 of you. And throughout all of this, she is presumed innocent. And I submit to you what has happened in this case from the moment Robert Baker's DNA was found all over the murder scene to the moment that Monica Sementilli was tied to him by having an affair. It was connected to him and was clear that she was having an affair, a sexual affair, a romantic affair, a cheating affair, every word you can think of. And Ms. Silverman put most of them up there. From the very beginning, that's what they knew. Within two weeks. Two weeks of the murder. And what LAPD did and what the prosecution did is they assumed, just like Mr. Austin says so many times, well, I assume she knew, I mean, I assume. They assumed that the affair was proof of the murder. Not only proof, but that's all they really needed to prove was that she was having an affair. Something that nobody doubted from the beginning, nobody who took any look at this case, and it didn't take 51 witnesses to establish that. But I submit to you, if you went back and looked at your notes, about 30 or 40 or 50 of them almost established just that. Why do you think they did not arrest Monica Simon Tilly once they knew she was having an affair? Now, a more important question, frankly, that I don't have a good answer for, and maybe they do, is why they didn't arrest Robert Baker as soon as they knew he was a likely murderer. All this talk about, my God, she had no concern for the safety of her children. She didn't buy a new DVR. This is after they told her this was a knock-knock burglary. It never really reoccurs when there's a murder involved. Why are they going to come back to the murder scene? They're going to knock-knock. They're going to knock-knock someone else. Debra Obad's husband had changed the locks. What about the second murderer? He wasn't even identified, let alone captured. You're telling me that leaving Robert Baker on the street for four months was necessary? Was smart, was wise, was designed to keep her safe? None. And they certainly didn't need more evidence against Robert Baker. My God, they had his DNA, as I said, everywhere in that house. The murder scene, the Porsche, everywhere. They could have gone out and arrested him the next day and taken him out of the population, sat him down, and interrogated him. Maybe he would have talked, maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe they would have found out right away who Austin was. Maybe he would have made the sweet deal that Mr. Austin made eight years later. You tell us who your partner was, and we'll take half your life back. We'll give you half your life. You're facing life without parole, you'll be out in 15 years. Well, we'll get to that, because he refused any deal. And we know who jumped at the deal. But no, they did not arrest him for one reason. They wanted her. From the very beginning, and I'm not going to say they, because these gentlemen did not get on the case for like eight years. Ten, how many detectives, twelve detectives, some died, some retired. They all wanted her. They all wanted her. Why? The evil woman, the evil housewife, the black widow. I don't know what the stereotype they had. Maybe they just wanted her because they realized if it wasn't for her, Baker would not have been in her life. If it wasn't for her, Fabio Cimentilli would be alive today. For that, she is responsible and will live for that for the rest of her life. But adultery is not murder. Bless you. If there was, there would be a lot more people in death row or on life without parole now than there are. You know that, and I know that. And they knew that, at least LAPD. And they knew that, the prosecution. So, what did they do? They left the murderer on the street, Baker, and they decided, we're going to find more evidence against her. And how are we going to do that? Every way we can. My God, they must have used half of LAPD and the surveillance squad and narcotic squad. Tailing and surveilling and listening and looking at phones and everything. They put more effort into that than the Kennedy assassination. And what did they prove after four months? And we'll go through that. They proved that she was having an affair. Because if you presume she is innocent as the law requires. And you presume, just when you start your deliberations, that everything she did was to protect the affair, not to cover up the murder. You know what? Everything falls into place. She was obsessed with her family not finding out, with anybody not finding out, especially when he was murdered. Not because she was part of the murder, but because she was having an affair. And eventually when Robert Baker was identified and arrested for the last seven years, she's been responsible for having brought him into their life. Without Monica hooking up, if you will, with Robert Baker, there is no way Fabio Cimentilli is dead today. But she has paid dearly for that affair. Even if you find her not guilty, she has been in jail for eight years because of that affair. She is paid guilty. What you have to decide is if they have proven her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And that means when she covered up the phones and wanted to delete this and wanted to go, whatever she did, was it WhatsApp he put her on? Whatever the evidence was that they went to the nightclub and she was dancing in Las Vegas and stripping and sending lurid, explicit, pornographic photos to her lover? Was it necessary to put all that on? Did you need that? Those photos of her dancing and the descriptions of having oral sex, swinging, whatever? Did you need to see all that in front of her sister? Did they have to show those photographs? Whatever you find about the murder charge, one thing is clear. They set out to assassinate her character and they did a damn good job. And you know what? A lot of it was her fault. Absolutely. You will not hear us come up here and excuse or explain one of the acts she did in having the affair or covering up the affair. What we will address is the evidence they say proves she committed the murder. The murder. Let's move on to the next. Slide. You heard a lot about circumstantial evidence in the prosecution. That means basically there's direct evidence that Robert Baker committed the crime. Actually no one saw him do it. That's a lot of circumstantial evidence too. His DNA was there and he's running up and then of course he confessed. That's pretty good evidence. But the rest of the evidence is circumstantial. In other words, if she was on the phone, if they put in a new system, if she deleted some refuges, if she was seeing him surprestitiously, she was dancing with him, if she covered this up and that up, is that evidence of the murder or the affair? Because if circumstantial evidence as to any particular count permits two reasonable interpretations, one of which points to the defendant's guilt, the other two are innocence, you must adopt that interpretation that points to the defendant's innocence and reject that interpretation that points to her guilt. So on the other hand, and this is fair, if one interpretation is unreasonable and the other is reasonable, you must accept the reasonable and reject the unreasonable. Monica Cimitilli in eight years has never confessed to the murder of her husband. You didn't see one bit of evidence where she says, my God, why did we kill him? How could I do this? Either overheard or not overheard. She's the only one. Baker and Austin, my God, have gotten in the court and pled guilty to the murder of Fabio Cimentilli. Not her. Everything about, and no one saw her kill him, which obviously she did not. As if she needed an alibi, as if she would have found the body, and we'll get to that. This timing is so crucial to you in this case. By itself, it established a reasonable doubt, the timing of this small window you've heard so much about, and I'll get to that. It's all circumstantial evidence, and if you assume, if you presume, like the law requires you, that she is innocent, and she sits here right now, and you presume that throughout your deliberations, and you presume she was having an affair, everything she did is consistent with the affair. And if there are two reasons, now, it could be consistent with the murder also, if you destroy messages, or if you're at the house, or if you lie about something that the police talk to you, or you hassle them about insurance, and I'll get to that. Yeah, that could be evidence that points to guilt. It also could point to evidence that points to innocence. Yes, she wants the insurance. She's got two kids. She knows she did them nothing wrong. Why are they holding it up? And I want you to listen, and we may play some of those, because I'm not going to be here three days, but I'll be here a few hours. All this so-called haranguing of Parshall, who unfortunately is not here, and then they've died, totally unrelated to this, but all we have are the phone messages recorded, if you remember. They're about five or six, they were played to you. Play a couple. They're very short. Interestingly, one was a message from Monica that we believed had nothing to do with the affair, and that one can't be found. Stop. All right? Can't be found. But there are plenty. And you have been led to believe that every time she called up LAPD, whether it was Parshall, and they said Parshall had the best relationship with her, or anyone else, that she was just fixated on insurance. That's all she was thinking about, caring about. You listen to those, and presume she's innocent, remember, as you are required to do. Wouldn't you be calling up, knowing that what they were waiting for is to clear her? Well, why haven't you cleared me? That's what an innocent person would do. It's been four, five, six months, you had blood all over the car. Why haven't you cleared me? What about my children? Have you cleared them? My God, have you cleared Jessica and Isabella? Are they really co-conspirators? For a while, I thought they were going to call them that, because they had the nerve to stand by their mother. Well, they know their mother a lot better than the prosecution knows their mother. And they love their father. And when they said, we stand by their mother, we just don't believe she could have done this, they meant it. And you know what? It cost them dearly as well. It cost them the relationship with all of the relatives of Fabio. Every one of them deserted her. More than deserted her, excuse my language, one of them called her a bitch and a cunt. Those are horrible words. And the only reason I repeat them is because they are, and they were said, admittedly, by Morella to one of the girls. This is how they treated them. But it wasn't how they treated them before the arrest, was it? Before the arrest, when they presumed Monica had nothing to do with it, as you are legally bound to presume, what was the relationship between the family? They were grieving together. They attended wakes together. They flew to Canada to honor him, and not every flight was paid for. Funeral, yes. Honoring him, no. The whole family was there. They were grieving together. They flew down. They helped out. They helped with food and lodging, and the girls lived, I think, for a while at Deborah Obad. Everybody was helping out and feeling sorry for Monica, and Jessica, and Isabella, as well they should have. Did any of them, before the arrest, which was four months later, anyone from Wella, and you've heard five or six witnesses, Henry Meyer, Eversbacher, Thor, Alicia, Truesdale, you've heard several witnesses testify. And you've heard several family members testify. And basically, if you just sat in this audience and you listened to them from the witness stand, you would have thought, my God, they must be right. This Monica was a real work of art. She wasn't even, she didn't care. She was getting drunk. She was singing My Way. That's the first time I have ever heard the song My Way criticized for being sung. And it was Fabio's favorite song. But that was no good. The way she dressed was no good. The way she acted was no good. The way she hounded Mr. Mayor was no good. The way she hounded Truesdale was no good. Where's the insurance? What are you doing? Did any of them go to the police or anyone else, the head of the company, and say, you know what? Fabio was just murdered. And you ought to see how Monica is behaving. She is hounding us about insurance. She can't believe she hasn't been paid. She wants to know how much money is coming in. She wants to know about his options. She wants to know how long you're going to pay him. She wants to know all these things. Maybe she's involved. Maybe you ought to look at her. Why is she so obsessed with all that? Did any of them go to the police and say that? Because none of them were interviewed for those four months between the murder and the arrest, were they? You look it up. Then, what happens? Then, the police tell Jessica, having the nerve to first sit her down and start questioning her again. By the way, do you remember when your mom did, you know, and we're getting close. Don't worry. We'll be there. We'll be there. Total lies. They lied to them for four months. Talk about a ruse. It's more than a ruse. Out and out lies. Even to Jessica. And you know what happens at the end of their interview in June? Oh, by the way, Jessica, we just arrested her for murder. You better go tell your sister and your family. That's how they were informed. Now, not only did Parshall or Gable, I forget who it was, announce that they were going to be, oh, they had been arrested. In fact, that day, they all can announce it before they're arrested. And we'll get to the arrest. So they are arrested, and the family is informed, of course, Fabio's family and Monica's family. And what do they say? Do they say what was up there? Well, we've charged, she's been charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, intent to commit murder. Now, of course, she'll have a right to a trial, and we'll put on evidence, and then the jury will decide. No. You know what they said? We just arrested your mother. She killed Fabio. She killed him with Baker. We're sure of that. We know it. There's no doubt. Well, they might have just had been judged, executioner, and sentencer right then and there. You have to trial there. There's no doubt. That's what was presented to the public and the family. Now, how would you react, number one, if it was your family? His sister, his brother, children, whatever. How would Fabio's family react when the police told them, we've caught her, her lover, they killed him, and there's no doubt. His DNA is all over the place. They didn't spell out what they had on her other than they were having an affair. But they were more than happy to play judge, jury, and executioner, as I said. That is not their job. Their job is not to convict. Their job is to arrest. And they don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt to arrest. Consecution's a different story. But the prosecution didn't get this case tried for a lot of reasons. Not all their fault, but I'll get to that. For eight years. So for eight years, if you've read anything in the paper, or watched Dateline, or 2020, or any of those shows like Mr. Austin did and his family, and I'll get to it. I'm going to object. [00:27:51] Speaker 2: Again, that's overruled for the reasons I've been saying earlier. [00:27:58] Speaker 1: I thought I heard that Mr. Austin and his mom and dad, or whatever, were watching all these crime shows. Okay? All right. Maybe they were different crime shows. But they were crime shows. That's how she knew Baker was arrested. And Monica. And we'll get to that. So if you are watching television, or reading in the paper, and they have a little paper clip of the crime. It was an actual story when the arrest took place. What are you going to assume? You know, when I open the paper and it says huge bust, and I'm a criminal defense attorney, and it says cartel arrested and so forth. Yeah, I probably assume they got something on them. But I'm not a juror like you are. I can do that. The public can do that. The family can do that. You can't. But my point is, everything changed once they were told that Monica and her lover murdered Fabio. Only then were all these people interviewed. Only then. Do we have that slide with what Luigi said? There's an interesting statement that Luigi testified to. And forgive me for jumping around, but I do that often with Mr. Babitz. And while he's looking for that, let me just tell you. What it basically says, and you'll see, is that once he learned that Monica killed Fabio with Baker, everything opened up. Here's what it is. That's Luigi's testimony from the trial of this terrible crime. There was something asked about this terrible crime, which indeed it was. Answer, right. Once you go back and start recollecting, it becomes very clear. The puzzle pieces fit together very easily. So at the time, no. But once I heard about the events in the case, you know, the clouds cleared and things started making sense again. What she's saying is at the time of the murder, none of this made sense about Monica being involved. But once I heard about the events, their arrest, and the police saying they did it, there's no doubt. Everything started to make sense again. And the problem is that none of these people from Wella or the family, most of the other witnesses were interviewed until after they knew or were told that Monica was guilty of killing her husband. Now, how would you look at things, if it was your family and your Fabio? How would you look at things at Wella when it's clear they adored this man? And let me make it clear, you won't hear a negative word about Fabio Cimentelli from this side. And I doubt from that side. If there's anything we all agree on, it's the kind of person he was. An employee rising up, beloved by everyone. Then they hear Monica had him killed with her lover, Baker. Oh, by the way, what do you recall about Monica making contact with you after the murder? Well, I've got to tell you, she was rabid about that. See, every time she calls, it was insurance, insurance, insurance. She didn't even mention Fabio. And, my God, the cremation, you know, he shouldn't have been cremated. He should have been buried. That was a real problem. Oh, you should have seen the way Monica acted at the funeral, at the wake. My God, she was drinking too much, she wasn't dressed, she was, my way, how inappropriate, one of them said. Everything, the clouds cleared and things started making sense. Thank you, Jeremy. All of a sudden, for the first time, we heard about lack of tears. We heard about he shouldn't have been cremated. We heard about my way. We heard about replacing Bella's total fiat and buying a Mustang. We heard about the focus on life insurance. That's when we started hearing about that. After they were told they had been arrested and Monica was guilty. If she had had tears, they would have been fake tears. Whatever she had done, it would have been wrong. Because you didn't hear about lack of tears, except from Gable, at the grand jury. No one who came to the house that night ever said, you know what? You better go in. Well, some people cry and some don't. I cry in movies more than I cry over tragedies in the family. That's just me. Some said Bella was frozen. She didn't know how to react. Everyone who was asked the day of the murder, and shortly thereafter, the police asking him, said yes. She was heartbroken. She wore his sweatshirt for a week. She wanted to sleep in his bed that night. All of that is going to be turned around and made dirty. Because if you conclude, if you presume she was guilty, if you presume she is guilty, that everything she did is going to look bad. It's going to look not kosher. Something's wrong. But if you look at her as the law requires and presume for the purposes of the short time you have left, which is now hearing to me, listening to me, and I thank you for that. You have no choice, but I thank you for that. Because this is still part of the trial. If you presume she is innocent when you go back there, just look at the evidence from the prism of she is innocent and had nothing to do with the murder. And then you'll see that asking about the insurance was not that crazy, because it also was acting about, when are you going to find out who did this? And about her financial issues, you're going to realize she didn't know that Wella was going to give him a six-month salary and take care of the hospital and medical and forgive the car loan. She didn't know that originally, when she's supposed to be obsessed with insurance in the beginning. Well, yeah, if your husband suddenly dies and you know he has insurance and you know it's for the kids, remember, half of that money, almost half, maybe a little less, was going to the children. Some was going to Luigi. Monica wanted Luigi to know that he had a separate policy that was going to protect his college education. All of that now becomes dirty. And everything she did in terms of having the affair with Baker was made even more dirty. It was made slutty. She was made into a whore. What did they uncover with all those surveillance? Imagine the manpower and the cost to go around surveilling and tracking their cars and where they went for four months. What did they find? She kissed a bouncer. They went to nightclubs. She didn't come home every night when she should have. If that was a crime, my mom would have been in jail. Everyone's had nights when you're 16, 17, 18, and mom and dad are supposed to be home at 10 and they come in at 12. Okay. It's not cool. It's not good. It doesn't make them a murderer. And what did you see? You saw text messages over a four-month period for three nights. One of them when Jessica was saying, hey, you know, take it easy, Bella. You were going out, too. Was it good for her? Was it the right thing to do for her to continue her affair with Robert Baker after Fabio was killed? That's an easy question. Of course not. But they had been having the affair for a year before then. And whatever it was in her psyche or her marriage or her upbringing or her sexual desires, I can't tell you I'm not a psychiatrist. But I can tell you this, that none of that makes you a murderer. And the worse they tried to make her look, the more you should ask yourself, why? Why? I mean, I had all this evidence. She did it. This forensic evidence. We will go through every one of the forensic evidence. We will show you when they say Monica only contacted Baker when she was eventually cleared, they said. Another ruse. Everything that police did in this case was a lie. Okay, they told you why, but it was. It wasn't true that Monica first told Baker. Two nights before, he told his family. She was there for her graduation. She got an email two days before saying we're close. The letter's going to be written. You're going to be cleared. They celebrated. She and Anna and her family. Two days later, she gets the final email. You have been cleared. Yes, she lets Baker know. It's her lover. What? She's going to let him know. I guess the next day, they were supposed to fly off to Italy in the plane and buy half the real estate in Las Vegas. Do you really think that Monica's family was ever going to accept Robert Baker as her new partner? There's a big reason why she wasn't going to divorce him. It had nothing to do with religion. She got married because of the divorce. That Fabio had when they were having an affair. She wasn't going to divorce him. And she certainly wasn't, after the murder, going to say, I just want you to know, I miss my husband. But hey, it's okay, boy. I got a real winner for you now. He's a child molester and a porn star. That was never going to happen. She was never going to divorce 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. Why kill him? Why kill him? Not even to mention having the ability to plan a plot to kill your husband. I mean, that takes pretty devious mind. Did she have a criminal record? Was there anything in her background that would make you believe that she'd run off with this porn star and kill her husband to be with him? No chance. Ah, but where does that leave him? Where does that leave the wonderful Mr. Baker? If she goes back to her family and her husband or finds somebody new. He's gone. He was broke at the time. He checked the records. He didn't have a dollar to his name. You can bet he wanted money. Because he thought she had it. But it wasn't her wanting the money. He did. She had plenty. And if she divorced him, we'll put the death versus divorce sword up there. And by the way, the death versus divorce was not introduced by us. Oh, you had Mr. Malatesta. And he was up there telling you how you represented Britney Spears and this one and that one. You know what? That's Mr. Malatesta. He's a show-off. Does it make him a bad lawyer? Does it make him wrong about alimony? Who was right about alimony? Ms. Ebersbacher put up. Here's what she did for death. And here's what she got for divorce. Much more from death. And you know what? There was nothing in the categories for alimony. Now, she said, oh, it's speculative enough. Okay, so put up there. It's speculative. Oh, it could have been five years or ten years. So put up there. Five years. $20,000 a year. Whatever you get $100,000. $50,000 a year. He was making a lot of money. They were married for 20 years. This is a no-fault state, which means you could have 20 affairs. And if you get divorced and you were married in California, you get community property. I don't care what kind of cedar you were or adulterer you were. It's not even up there. Man, they put up there for the P&G stock office. It's $935,000. So she knew if she had him killed, she'd get $935,000. She took the amount that the options were worth in 2023, 2024, seven years later, and the only reason they were exercised is because Mr. Rubin, the administrator of the estate who was chosen by Luigi, got a letter from Parker and Gamble saying, you've got options here. If you don't exercise him, you're going to lose him. So he exercised him. $935,000. And that was Monica's planning? She'd been rotting in jail for seven years. You don't think she could have used some of the money from the options? At least to pay her lawyer. [00:43:08] Speaker 2: It's a joke. Mr. Rubin, this is a good time to break. Let's take our lunch and recess until 1.30. The administration flies and discusses cases among yourselves. If anyone else inform or express any opinion to the cause, it's nice to submit it to you. Have a good lunch. See you at 1.30. The defendant's present, all counsel present, jury, and all the president. Good afternoon. Mr. Rubin, you may continue. [00:43:28] Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Your Honor. Hope you all had a good lunch. Had a lot of lunches in the last nine weeks. All right. Let's get back to the issue of what the prosecution has to prove. As I pointed out to you, what they did prove over and over again is that Monica Cimentilli had an affair with Robert Baker. Well, that we know. That's a given. The question is, what do they have to prove? Now, the charge is conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder. So let's look at the elements. Mrs. Silverman went through these in great detail, and I'll tell you why I'm going through them in a second. Each of the persons entered into the agreement to kill a human being. In this case, Fabio Cimentilli. Each of the persons specifically intended to enter into the agreement with one or more other persons for that purpose. In this case, we know Robert Baker and Christopher Austin entered into that agreement. Each of the persons to the agreement harbored express malice or forethought, namely specific intent to kill another human being, and an overt act was committed in this state by one or more of the persons who agreed and intended to commit murder. So before I get to what must be proved in this case involving Monica, let's stick on that for a second. Because the prosecution took a great deal of time in establishing that Robert Baker and Christopher Austin are guilty of a conspiracy to commit murder. Remember, these are the elements. This is what malice or forethought is. You had to intend to do it. Look, they both pled guilty. That's number one. They both went there with knives and brutally stabbed him in the heart and the leg and the chest and the neck. There's no question of that. That's a given. And it shouldn't have taken a long time or any time to establish that. What I'm trying to point out is that you are here for a specific purpose. And that is to decide what must be proved in this case. And the only defendant left, now they're talking about, well, they're going to continue to investigate. That's fine. That's fine. Eight years, not enough. That's fine. But they've got the two guys who brutally killed him. And they want a third. And the question is, was there even a third member of this conspiracy? And have they proven that Monica Cimentilli was the third person, was a third person? You don't need two. I mean three. You just need two. This is what, go back a second, Jeremy. This is what they must prove. One, Monica Cimentilli entered into an agreement to kill her husband. She specifically intended to enter into the agreement. She had the specific intent to kill her husband. And Overt Act was committed by one of the co, one of the conspirators. Okay. All of that, all of that depends on Christopher Austin. Period. We have just discussed, and you will discuss, I assume, in the jury room, whether or not just establishing that Monica Cimentilli had an affair, as explicit as it was, as terrible as it was, as betrayal as it was, all the adjectives you can use, she is guilty of that. The question is, was there a conspiracy to commit murder to kill her husband? We know Austin. We know Baker did that. Monica was not part of that, nor have they proven she is part of that. And I'll tell you why. Ms. Silverman said, you know, the evidence is so strong, you can even throw Christopher Austin out of the case and she'd still be guilty. Really? Really? What has always bothered me about this case and about the testimony of Christopher Austin is that he got the deal of a lifetime, literally, cutting the time that he was going to serve, had he been convicted of what Baker was convicted of, intentional premeditated first-degree murder with special circumstances. Life without the possibility of parole. Now, he can be out in 15 years. It's a long time, but he's still a young man. How old is Mr. Austin now? Now, 40, so let's say he gets out in 55-60 for the rest, has the rest of his life ahead of him. I don't know about you. I don't know about his honor, but that's looking pretty good, the age of 60, having the rest of your life ahead of you, where I'm looking at. And it sure is looking good and looks good for Mr. Austin. And he made it clear all he wanted was to be back with his family and his daughter. Now, he was presented and described a lot more sympathetically than I thought he should have been. Oh, yeah, you know, I'm ashamed. I was thinking of committing suicide. He was so thinking of committing suicide that he went out, found a woman, married a woman, had a daughter, has a life. He was so intent on committing suicide, he got several jobs in law enforcement, the parole office. So he knows what the law is and what it isn't, what deals are, what deals aren't. He went about his life because Mr. Baker said, I will protect you. Trust me. Trust me. And Mr. Baker did. Whatever you can say about him, and there's not much, he is paying under the law for what he did. He entered a plea to the charge, the charges open. That means no deal, in front of his honor, knowing what he was going to get, life without the possibility of parole, and indeed he got it. And don't let the prosecutor say again, well, she can say it. Don't you believe for a second, don't you believe for a second that when he entered that plea, he was admitting that Monica Simon Tilly was involved. Oh yeah, the original charge is conspiracy to commit murder with Monica Simon Tilly. They didn't have Christopher Austin there yet, when Baker was first charged. Remember, he was charged in 2017. Not Austin wasn't until 2024. The reason Christopher Austin entered a plea was because he had nothing else to do. And the reason Baker entered a plea is because he was not required to say under oath, when he entered his plea and was sentenced, that Monica Simon Tilly was part of the conspiracy. We have that plea transcript in the record. In the record, very nice court reporter like the one here took down every word. Mr. Baker, understand the charge, yes. Are you giving up your right to a trial, yes. Are you have an attorney, yes. Have you been told all your possible defenses? All the things that this great country requires be done in every criminal case, whether you're pleading guilty to petty theft or first-degree murder. And he waived all his rights, he knew what the sentence could be, he knew what it was going to be. Now, not once, when the prosecutor was taking the plea, that means, Mr. Baker, do you understand as I just said? All she had to do was to say to him, And do you admit that when you committed this crime of conspiracy to commit murder, you did it with Monica Simon Tilly? Never said it. The judge could have asked at the request of the people, Do you understand when you enter your plea to conspiracy to commit murder, you're entering a plea with conspiracy with Monica Simon Tilly to commit murder? Never asked. His plea was just as acceptable as his conspiracy was with Christopher Austin. And it was. Now, why didn't they ask Mr. Baker, who was asking for no deal, Do you admit that you committed this crime with the intent to commit to kill Fabio Simon Tilly and you conspired with and carried it out with Monica Simon Tilly? Why didn't they ask that? I submit to you because his answer would have been no. Now, they could have refused to take his plea. They could have taken his plea. That states the law. That's sustained. All right, let's go back. That's fair. He was able to enter the plea without naming Monica Simon Tilly as his co-conspirator. But why wouldn't he do that? Why couldn't he have been asked that? He was taking the complete sentence. If he didn't enter his plea, he could go to trial. And the worst he would have gotten is first to be murdered. The same sentence. Life without parole. He told you he could have gotten a deal according to his lawyer. And the prosecution never called his lawyer, which they could have for that purpose only, and say, did you in fact tell him you thought you could get him the same thing Mr. Austin ended up getting, which was second degree murder, 15 to life. They didn't do that. He could have gotten the same deal. And I submit to you, he did not because it wasn't true. Now, do I think Mr. Baker is a modicum of honesty and so forth? No. Of course not. Of course not. And it had been two or three years since Monica Simon Tilly had had anything to do with him. If you remember, all the things you heard happened in 2018-19. She finally broke it totally off. And I submit to you, it's because it was clear at that point that he killed her husband. So he enters the plea, as we know. And we go to see him. I'll get back to Mr. Austin in a second. And we go to see him. Why? Because now that he has entered a plea and been sentenced to life without parole, he no longer has a Fifth Amendment right. He can't say, I don't answer, I wouldn't want to answer the question because it will incriminate me. Of course it incriminates him. He admitted to murder. We needed to know what the truth was about what happened that day, that week, as long as this was going on. So, yes, we did our job. We first asked permission, as you know, of the court and of Mr. Baker's attorney, permission to go and visit with him the county jail and to ask him what the hell happened. He could have said anything he wanted at that point. But what he said, and what he said under oath, which he said meant something to him, you can believe that or not, but I'll get to that, was that she had nothing to do with it. And you know what else he said originally? He wouldn't tell us who the second person was. And when he did tell us who he said the second person was, it was clearly, as the prosecutor said, pure trash. Some guy named Jay Bird, he met at a basketball game and he just took him with him. Baloney. So, prosecutor's right. We went to see him 5, 10, 12 times because we were not going to put him on that stand to testify in this case unless we believed he was telling the truth about everything. Now, I'm sure he didn't. But the main things he did. He conspired with Austin to commit the murder and Monica had nothing to do with it. But he would not name Christopher Austin. If you remember, for what it's worth, and apparently there is honor among thieves at some point, he did not want to snitch out Mr. Austin. He did not want what they call a snitch jacket on his record when he went up to state prison. Snitches are not too popular, as you can imagine, either in state prison or on the Sopranos. So, the last thing he wanted to do was tell anyone who the second person was. So, he made up this story. What changed that? Finally, after eight years, and we'll get into at some point what happened during those eight years, and you can determine it was incompetence by the police, you can determine that they didn't put it as the number one priority, or you can believe them that they were looking for him for eight years, and we'll continue to look. It really doesn't matter. I mean, it kind of matters, and I think you have every right to question their conduct for those eight years. Hell, they could have arrested Baker in February of 2017 and asked him who was involved, and offered him a deal to name who his co-conspirator was, Austin. Maybe he would have done it, maybe he would not. They left Austin on the street for eight years. They left Baker on the street for four years and had the nerve to claim that Monica put her children in danger by not getting a new DVR. Her children were in danger because there was no guarantee Baker wouldn't go after them. They were witnesses to some of the things. There was certainly no... no certainty that Austin, who was still loose, would not go after Monica or whatever, or the kids, or who knows? They were all in danger. It didn't matter. It did not matter. I shouldn't say that. It wouldn't matter to LAPD if Monica or the kids were roughed up or killed. But I'll tell you what did matter more. Monica, for some reason, and Ms. Silverman can explain it or not, beyond just wanting to catch murderers who are responsible for murder, they wanted her. And that's why they spent those four months trying to find anything they could, anything, and found nothing more than lurid conduct, which they were more than happy to put up on the screen and up on the Elmo and testify to. And that was it. They knew about Austin. They knew he'd flown down. They knew from the records that he had had all these phone calls with Baker back and forth. And by the way, not one phone call between Austin and Monica. Not one. And I submit to you, if you look at the evidence carefully, you will find that the only time she met him was at the gym when he was introduced to her by Baker as one of his girls. And he had plenty of girls. All right. So Austin is remaining free for all those years. It's funny. He claims that his mother or someone in the family had seen on some crime show that Baker was arrested. Okay. Probably true. And acts like, I asked him, well, did you hear that Monica was too? Well, no. I'd never heard the name Monica. He didn't even know Monica's name before they went up to see him eight years later. He had no idea who she was. He had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that finally, after eight years, and it wasn't Austin, it wasn't Baker's fault, he didn't snitch out on him, remember, LABD Fon League got around to sending, what, 12 people up there in 2024? And they got the permission to do a Perkins, what, they couldn't have gotten a Perkins done in 2021, 22, 23, 24, had his DNA? There's all sorts of reasons, and you've heard of them. None of them are that good, because once they went up there and put him in a cell with a supposed co-suspect, someone who was in jail for another reason, and that's what a Perkins operation is, you stick in an LAPD officer and they are good, and he was very good. And you have a transcript of what that, that, that interview was. He was, or we have gone through it at least. And he was very good. And what did he do as soon as Mr. Austin got in the cell with him? He basically said, and I kid you not, you can't make this stuff up. If you want to get out of here, you got to get the bitch. You got to get the third one. She's on trial. I don't care if you have to change your story or not. It's right there in black and white. Really? I don't care if you have to change your story. I don't care if you have to tell the truth. I don't care if you have to lie is what they're saying. First in, first out. And he says it over and over and over again. And you remember the cross-examination that I conducted with him and I finally said, why don't you cut all the bullshit and just tell us what happened? I remember saying that, which probably was not the proper thing to say. But it got ridiculous what he was being told by an LAPD officer. Your ticket out of here is to name Monica Cimentelli as your co-conspirator. Now, why did they want that so bad that they ended up giving him that deal? Half or more of his life back with his wife and his daughter if he just says what they want to. I had an attorney friend of mine once who did an example and I'll do it with you. This is a dollar bill. If I took this dollar bill and gave it to Mr. Austin or one of you to testify in a way that I thought was favorable for my client, I could be charged with bribery, lose my license, whatever. and I should if I offered money to Austin or anyone else. They can offer Mr. Austin his life back in exchange for his testimony and that that is just fine. That is just fine. And that's exactly what they did. If they could have thrown, if they want you to throw away Mr. Austin's testimony in other words, decide this case and pretend he wasn't a witness or you heard anything about him because they're trying to show how strong the other evidence was, why did they do it? They took a cold-blooded murderer and I don't care how he looked and acted on the stand. If you look at this case as closely as we have for all these years and you can do that because you've sat through nine weeks of evidence then you will conclude one thing. Without Christopher Austin Fabio Sementilli is alive today. There is no way that Robert Baker, five foot seven of him, I don't care what kind of porn star he is, was going to be able to overpower Fabio Sementilli and a lot of questioning was directed to that. I'm sure the family was wondering about that. He was big. He was strong. How could this have happened? No defensive wounds? Fighting back? That wasn't the Fabio Sementilli that was described to you. No doubt I think that was Fabio Sementilli. There's no way he's sitting in that chair on the patio with two men coming at him and not fighting back. And if it had been won like Mr. Baker alone or had it been won the night before when Mr. Austin says he was going to do it and then chickened [01:06:30] Speaker ?: and then chickened [01:06:30] Speaker 1: out, thank God, didn't matter though, next day, without Austin with him, he doesn't overpower Fabio. And what the evidence finally showed is that one of them, I think it changed each time, but what was consistent is one of them held him down, covered his mouth and the other stabbed him in the neck, carotid artery, in the heart, in the leg, wherever. And he bled out so quickly he could not fight back. That does not happen without Mr. Austin. And yet he's sitting in some prison now thinking, wow, they gave me second degree murder for that and all I had to do was say she was involved. You should take his testimony and throw it out like they said. But if you do that, you will find as we will go through the rest of this closing argument, that all the other evidence was circumstantial as we said. And all the other evidence in apps and crips and deleting and all this was just as consistent with Monica trying to cover up the affair as it would be with Monica trying to cover up a murder. If she was so smart, so conniving, and Baker was too, although the prosecutor called him dumb, and yeah, he was dumb. He was streetwise dumb. He was dumb enough to convince five women to marry him, have sex and live with a 14-year-old and basically marry her when she got older. he had something wasn't good, wasn't healthy, but he had something that enabled him to control people. But without Austin, all they had was this circumstantial evidence that looks good after you tell the witnesses she did it ahead of time, just the opposite of what you're going to do, which is presume she's innocent and then decide, not presume she's guilty and try to fit all the evidence into that. So they spent the next four months, as you know, doing that. And what in the final analysis did Mr. Austin have to say up there? I once knew a detective, an LAPD, I was meeting with him at his office, he had a sign above his desk behind him and it said, no man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. And he believed it. And he was right. And what he meant was, if there's a murder that took place last Thanksgiving, or two Thanksgivings ago, and you were a suspect, and they talked to you on the date of the murder because you had it in for the guy maybe, or you had a motive, you had an argument the day before, and they said, where were you the night of the murder? And he says, oh, I was at the movies watching Oppenheimer. Okay. Check it out, and Oppenheimer was playing, and they can't disprove that. Then two years later, the murder is still being investigated because they haven't found it. And for some reason, they go back to him, and they say, where were you, remind us? And he says, oh, yeah, I was watching the Blutarist, or the whatever, Brutarist, Brutalist. Movies have changed. And the guy said, well, wait a minute, the last time you said you were watching Oppenheim. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the problem was, had he really been watching Oppenheim, well, he could have thought, if his memory is better than mine is now, let's assume he was like in his 30s, he could have just thought back and remembered, yeah, I saw it, Oppenheimer, it was about the atom bomb, they were in Los Alamos, it was a great movie, but if he made it up as an alibi that wasn't true, and now he's got to remember it a year later, it's not that easy. It's not that easy. All Mr. Austin had to do, and I urge you, I urge you to play the tape recording of his, quote, proffer. You know what a proffer is. So, Mr. Austin, when he was up in Vancouver and confessed to the murder, if you remember, but he would not say that Monica was involved. In fact, what he said was, I don't even remember that bitch, I don't even remember her name, I don't even remember his name. And at some point, and it's in the record, because there was cross examination by Ms. Stagel and Ms. Burke, he asked the DA who flies up there, Ms. Stagel flies up there, and he basically says, if I tell you what you want to hear, will I go home today and honestly, because she's honest and ethical, and she couldn't say yes, she said no, and he said, fine, I want to see a lawyer. now they brought him down to L.A., and what did they do? He was clearly guilty of first degree murder conspiracy to commit first degree murder. They charged him with second degree murder. He was charged with second degree murder before he had the deal. They got permission to do that. How? He should have been charged with first degree murder, and then if you testify truthfully, we'll consider giving you second degree. Now, it was, you've got second degree. All you've got to do, there was two words up there. Can we find the, there it is. Oh, he's good. The district attorney, Ms. Silverman, and Ms. Stagel was there, and one of the detectives. They made it clear to him and Mr. Avall, who was a very good lawyer, I mean, his job is to defend his client to the best of his ability. His job is not to do anything other than help his client. And his client was Christopher Austin. So, Austin was told, up front! No, he got to meet with his attorney before and after the proffer, and you can imagine what happened there, but he was told, you will get the offer, the deal, second degree, 15 to life, where you're out in 15 years as opposed to life without parole. But you've got to be truthful, okay, that's fair, and the evidence has to be valuable. What? What? $10 worth $20 worth $100? No. You know what valuable meant then and what it means now. It had to be valuable to our case. And the only thing we don't have in our case, Mr. Ewald clearly knew his lawyer, was the connection to the conspiracy of Monica Cementilli. All they had was circumstantial evidence, meaning she was having an affair, and she was communicating with them all the time on Viper and what's happening. And when we get down to the specifics of the case and the evidence, you will see that she was no more communicating with him back and forth with Baker in January of 2016 when the affair started, and there was no idea at that point to murder anyone, let alone Fabio. and it was the same amount of time that she was doing it in January of 2017. And they wanted you to believe, oh my God, look how many calls they had back and forth, da, da, da, right around the time of the murder, and it was the same amount of calls they've been having throughout their affair, even long before anyone claimed, even the prosecution, that there was a plot to kill Fabio Cementilli. So how does Mr. Austin give them valuable evidence? Well, he meets with his lawyer, his lawyer meets with the prosecution, somehow the prosecution's convinced that he can do it because they go on with the proffer. The proffer is simply we're going to interview you with a tape recording and a camera, which is fine, and he made a big deal, that's why did Mr. Dawson do that? Well, I'll get to that because he wasn't allowed to. Oh, he could have gotten a court order. Did you hear the prosecution put on any evidence that the court could have ordered them to have us tape record our interviews with Mr. Baker? No, that's a separate issue. This was tape recorded. I urge you to play some or all of it. You got the transcript of it. And now it's clear and they tell him, we're going to interview you and you've got to be truthful and valuable. Well, valuable meant you have got to connect Monica Cimentilli to Robert Baker and this conspiracy. Now, how do you do that if it's not true? and I submit to you, it's not true and it's not been proven true and it won't be proven true and she is not guilty because of it. Guilty of a lot of things but not that. Well, I guess he could make up that I met with her. I wish he tried to make up that he met with her in Las Vegas and he remembered and he couldn't get it straight and finally all they could show is that he was in Las Vegas at the same time that Baker was in Las Vegas with Monica but they never put them together. I don't know how many Las Vegas police officers they had roaming the elevators. Hell, they probably had cameras in the elevators just trying to show them together. You know what you got up on the screen? My team is mad at me because I have all these slides and we'll get to them at some point. We'll put a lot of effort into it but I prefer just talking to you first. You know what they showed? They showed a video of Monica checking in at the lobby. There was no, with Baker, there was no Austin around. They didn't have one shred of evidence that he had met Monica in Las Vegas. And if you listen to that proper, they tried to get there so many different ways and finally they got to accept the fact he can't say that because it's not true. He can't remember that. It's hard to remember things that aren't true like that police officer said. So, give up with that. Then they supposedly conspired in December and they showed him a knife and a big knife to see if he was going to back away or not. And then they talked about, oh, let's use a gun or should we use a knife. but all of this likely happened between Austin and Baker. I mean, that's true. We know they conspired. They ended up going up there and killing the guy. And maybe Burt Song was involved. Maybe he wasn't. Another mysterious figure out here. He didn't testify. Okay. So, you're left with Austin. Austin and Baker. Baker testified. Austin and he did it. Monica had nothing to do with it. So, they're stuck with Austin. You know what they end up with? And they basically tell him what to say. with leading questions. And I'll get to that. They end up with Austin claiming that he was on three-way calls with Baker and Bird Song when they were planning to kill Fabio. And during the calls, Baker said, and you know what? Monica wants him dead. That's all he has to add. And I remember, he called up another time and said, Monica says we can do it now. Monica says this. Monica says that. He never spoke to Monica once. He met her once at a gym. but all he says, [01:20:02] Speaker ?: but all he has [01:20:02] Speaker 1: to do is take what Baker likely said to him with Bird Song, which is, how do you think we ought to do it? When? How? What? Where? And all he has to add is, and Baker said Monica wanted it done. Period. You will see that the prosecution has not introduced among all their experts and all their records any evidence that Baker and Bird Song and Austin had a three-way call, let alone Baker, Austin, and Monica. Not even Austin says that. Where are all these three-way calls? You ask the prosecution, you can't ask them, but they have a chance to respond to me. Where's the evidence of three-way calls between Austin, Baker, and Bird Song? And you know what happened? If you look at the transcript, if you play the tapeback of the proper, at one point, Mr. Austin is asked by Ms. Silverman, so did you have any three-way calls about the murder? Not even involving Monica, just three-way calls about the murder. Yeah, I think maybe one. Could it have been two? It could have, yeah. Is it possible it was three? I don't know about three. All right, so there was more three-calls, and then going right on, like that's what he said. And so the truth is you had more than three-way calls, you had more than three three-way calls, and the transcript is yes. And you met him in Las Vegas and you did X, Y, and Z? Yes. Now, if you play that tape back, you learn something. I don't know, you didn't come here to learn law. You're going to learn a lot of law from the judge's instructions. But I hope you learn what a leading question is because there were a lot of objections and the court ruled on them. Leading question is, if I turn to Mr. Jones and say, what's your name? Well, he's going to tell me, I would think, Tom Jones. He could tell me anything else, I guess, Wayne Newton or something. I'm really dating myself. But what if I say to him, is your name Tom Jones? All he's got to do is say yes. And if he thinks that I want to hear yes, he says yes. He didn't even have to know. Were you at the did you conspire with so and so on this date to kill Monica Cimentilli by getting Fabio alone in the house? Yes. But if I say to him, what happened between you and Baker? He's got to think, Monica was a he can't make that up. He doesn't have to. If you look at that proffer, you just ask yourself how many times have they said to Mr. Austin, Miss Stagel did too, sometimes interrupted. All right, you tell us what happened. He doesn't know shit. Until they say, and what happened is you had a three-way call and then Baker said that they needed Monica dead and isn't that right? And he says yes. I guarantee you 90% of his answers are yes. Not what happened, but yes. And one time he couldn't even get that right. As I said, did you have how many three-way calls? One? Maybe. Well, okay, that's the answer, right? One, maybe. Why does the next question have to be, could it have been two? they want a conspiracy going on? One call's not really good enough. Well, maybe. Could it have been three? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it could have been possibly three. And at some point, Mr. Avall says, it's right there in black and white, would you mind if I had a private conversation with my client? Because he's not saying yes or not. He's not saying what they need to hear. And what they need to hear is that she was an active part, a knowing part of the conspiracy. Because they can't prove it without. And if they say they could, then ask them again, why did you give this guy the deal of the century if you could prove it without him? Prove it without him, get her convicted, and convict him of what he did. Which, as I said to you, is the brutal murder of Fabio Simitilli, which doesn't happen. He didn't have to stab him, but he did. And then got up there and said, I'm ashamed of it, as he took the blood money and collected the gold coins. So Mr. Eval, getting back to the record, may I speak with my clients secretly or in private? Of course, which, you know, that's fair. He goes, and then the record shows a half hour later, their back in front of the D.A. And at that point, it's when Ms. Silverman says to him, now you listen to me. You're here for a reason. You're going to tell the truth. Yeah. If the truth was that she had nothing to do with it, that ain't valuable. I guarantee you he's in prison for the rest of his life. So you better start telling us the truth because I'm not wasting my time with you. It's right there. I've walked out of proffers before, she says. I've walked out of them, meaning I've had people come in here and want to deal and they don't say what we expect them to say. I'm not saying that she's asking him to lie. I'm saying that his attorney told him ahead of time what to say he couldn't remember because it wasn't true. And after that little speech then he starts answering a little better. But he is all over the place. How many knives did you have? We went to Walmart the day of, you know, he talks about the night before and I'll give to that. All right, we went to Walmart why? Baker had to buy a knife. I thought Baker had a knife. Yeah, he had a knife. What kind? I mean, how many hunting knives did they describe? I got mixed up. Hunting knife was this and that. Everything was a hunting knife. So what happened? Well, he had to buy another knife. Okay. So he went to Walmart and he bought a knife. Pretty fun. Then Miss Silverman digs up a knife with a serrated edge that was found in the Mustang that Mr. Baker and Monica Cementilli were in when they were arrested. Knife in the car? June 2017? Boom! Murder weapon? We'll take it to the coroner. We'll show it to him. He'll say, yeah, this could have been used as the knife that killed him. Wow, we found the murder weapon. uh-uh. It wasn't even close because Detective Gable, a year later, well, not even a year later, at the time, I believe, testified at the grand jury, which was weeks after the arrest. Did you ever recover the murder weapon? And he says, no. Okay, from that point on, for the next six years, the agreement was, the truth was, the conclusion was of LAPD that they never recovered the murder weapon. Why? Because it was thrown away and buried by Mr. Austin, oh, they went out to look for it eight years later, and Baker said he threw the weapon away. I'll say, okay, they got a knife that was in the car, has nothing to do with the murder, but, during the proper, Mr. Silverman gets the idea, let me show him the knife. The knife we know was not used, according to Detective Gable. And what does he say? Yeah, that's the knife, and that's it. Bullshit. I'm sorry. That was no more the knife than a little nail file with the knife. But now he's got a problem. Where'd that knife come from? He said they only bought one knife at Walmart. Oh, no, they bought two knives. Read it. You can't make this stuff up. Now it's two knives they bought. And for the prosecution, that's just fine. That is just fine. So he goes on with his proffer and he says nothing more than Baker told him on the phone that Monica told him that she wanted him dead and was doing it for insurance money. That's all he's got to say. Baker denies that happened, that she was ever involved. So what? You're going to believe Austin over Baker, right? I'm not sure why you would. I'm not sure why you would believe either one of them. They're two murderers. But one of them is doing the rest of his life in state prison without parole. That's where he belongs. The other one will be on the streets in 15 years when he's in his 50s. that's where he does not belong. The only difference, the only difference is one of them was willing to say she was involved and the other one wasn't. That's the only difference. And when they say to you, take Mr. Austin out of the case, ignore his testimony, throw it away, we've convicted her anyway, you try that. You do that. You should do that. You're going to get a jury instruction from his honor that says, among the things you can consider in determining whether someone is credible or truthful or not, is whether he was offered any leniency in exchange for his testimony. Well, as I explained to you, he wasn't offered leniency, he was offered years. He jumped at it. How many different stories did he tell you about the gold coins? He said a trial was never from the safe. He never got it from the safe. I got it at the airport he gave it to me. How many? Well, there was three, or there was six, or there was eight. Then he later says, well, I think it was from the safe. Why? Because Baker told me that Monica used to collect them. Monica used to collect them? I thought it was Fabio who collected them. Then there's another story. Baker told me to say I got it from the safe. Four or five different versions of the gold coins. Why? Because he had nothing to do with the gold coins except at the airport. He was given gold coins by Mr. Baker. Six or eight, whatever, gold coins to kill somebody you never met or never knew. Why? Did you ever get a reason why other than I trusted him? What does that mean? He trusted him not to squeal or snitch on him and to protect him. And you know what? He did. He protected Mr. Austin for eight years. He entered a plea of guilty no deal and didn't mention Mr. Austin at all because he said he would protect him. You know when Baker first mentioned Mr. Austin? The first time is after he confessed. Remember, he went up to Vancouver, they put him in the cell with the Perkins guy. The Perkins guy basically told him you got no choice. You got to get that bitch who killed the motherfucker. I mean, sorry to use that language. They didn't even know Fabio's name so they called him motherfucker. Good. And he confessed. Right up there. Look at the testimony. Look at the transcript. but the one thing he wouldn't do up there is to say that she was part of it. That had to await until he came to LA and got the deal that we just talked about. So that's the only time that Austin mentions that he the first time that he confesses eight years later to being part of the murder of Fabio Cimentilli. So we go back Mr. Dawson and I go back to Mr. Baker. Why not? We know now that Austin was the second killer. So we ask him and we tell him Austin pled guilty. You don't have to be a snitch anymore. He pled guilty. He's going to go to prison. Tell us what happened. And that's when he says Austin was involved. Now as I said as a result of all of that Austin got 15 to life and Baker got life without parole. maybe it's not worth much but it's worth something. It's worth something. So when Baker says she knew nothing about it at least consider it he had total control over that woman. We talked about death divorce a little while ago and I said she wasn't going to divorce Fabio. It wasn't a religious reason. I submit to you she was going to divorce the man of the year at Wella the loving father and husband and for years people said that was true. This wasn't made up and she's going to say I'm divorcing him. Oh I'd like you to meet my new husband. Robert Baker. He's a great guy. He molested a girl at 14. He has five women. He's a porn actor but you love him. You love him. He's great. That was never going to happen. You know when Baker realized it was never going to happen? That's what he said. They were going. They were having their fun. I don't know what the attraction was. It's bad boy. You know you see movies. Good girl. Bad boy. I don't know. I don't even want to get into the sexual side of it. He degraded her. He told her to masturbate in jail in front of other inmates. send him semen. He was going to send her semen. Come on. Why did you do that? Why? He had a hold on her. And the irony is for some reason because Baker appeared to have been heterosexual he had a hold on Austin too didn't he? He could get Christopher Austin. He could ask him hey you want to come up and kill someone for me? I need your help. Oh yeah sure. Okay. When? When do you want to do it? And sure enough he goes up there and does it. Half the time he's asked and we'll get to that. What were you going to get for it? I don't know. He told me she had money. He told me she was coming into money. He told me she was going to get money. I was going to ask her if she would give him something. What did he end up getting? six gold coins or something for murder? What kind of control did he have over Christopher Austin? It wasn't blackmailing him. At that point Austin had no prior record. They were just friends. Their fathers or uncles were cousins in South Carolina or Fayetteville or North Carolina. For some reason, Robert Baker had a way of controlling people. That's why he had five women, some at the same time. Why he had the 14-year-old, why he was in porn, why he was in managing, why he was in this, why he was in that. And it clicked with Monica. You think she's happy about that? You think her family's happy about that? You think Fabio's family's happy about that? But at least that's something they could have lived with if Fabio was still alive. And the reason he is not alive today is not just Robert Baker, it's Christopher Austin as well. And one guy got what he deserved and one guy didn't. And you should consider that. So they finally got their Austin eight years later and now we're at trial. And as I said, it shouldn't have taken if this case was so clear cut, eight weeks and three days of argument to convince you that Monica Simmons Tilly is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and murder. they didn't have to spend any time on Austin, he pled guilty. What did they spend most of their time on? The phone records, the phone calls, the deletions, the WhatsApp, the Viber, all these things that they say is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, mind you, that she's guilty of murder. all they show is she desperately did not want someone to find out that she was having an affair with this lowlife. She didn't want to kill her husband. She was happy the way it was. The affair was secret. She was living a double life for a whole year and two months. Nobody knew about it. Traveling to Vegas wherever they went. whatever you think about that, and I'm sure it's not much, it was working. But it wasn't working for Baker. It wasn't working for Baker. And he saw after that Christmas holiday in 2016, December, he saw that he's with the family and he has a choice, he's with the family and I'm here alone. Because most of the time that she was seeing Baker, it seems clear from the evidence, was when he was on trips. And he went on trips a lot. And they made a big deal out of the fact that she was sending Baker his itinerary. Well, why not? The plan wasn't to kill him overseas or in Canada. She sent it to him so they could get together and have sex and make videos and drop thermoses. They could do anything. Anything they wanted. Because nobody knew. And the only one who suspected was Deborah Obed. We got a hand it to her. You know what she figured out? Last week Monica was in her sweats and tennis shoes at the gym. The next time I saw her she was in a bridal gown or something. Something's changed. She went to the hairstylist. She got new clothes. She figured it out. And if she had had the, not guts, but she didn't want to ruin a friendship and go to her and say, you having an affair with this guy? Even after the murder, she should have and eventually she did. And she was mad and she testified that way before the grand jury and she got up here and then told you the truth. With all of this, she doesn't believe she killed her husband. It's like the two girls don't. And the people who do are the people who were told, first of all, who were closest to Fabio and second, were told by the police from the very beginning we got her, we got her, she did it, she had Fabio killed. And you can imagine again what you'd be thinking if you were related to him or you work with him, especially considering the kind of person he was. Now, there's several more things to go over because the prosecution is going to go back to all the records that show the phone calls and so forth. But that's proof that they were having them before. I submit to you it was proof that he had an obsession with her and she had an obsession with him. And whether or not he put a tracker on the car or not, I mean, why did we put it in the report? That's what he said. But even if you look at the pings that they had sometimes, he was constantly in that area, he lived in that area, really. He was obsessed with her. That's why he was at Target that day. He had to know where she was every single day. And if he was gone at work or whatever, you can bet they got together. The girls were at school, Bella was working, Jessica was at school, or vice versa, and they got together. and yes, they had the affair. And that's what those phone records really show. The same volume of calls as before they say there was a conspiracy to kill, as after, they say. You look at those records and we'll show them to you. Another thing that bothered me a little bit by the prosecution's opening argument. They said, as I recall, Monica kept calling and asking about the insurance. And I explained to you that when she was doing it, and no one thought she was anything more than a grieving widow who had kids to raise and was concerned and needed money, because they had a mortgage and all the rest, and she didn't have a living. They thought there was nothing wrong with that, and after they were told she killed him, then suddenly she was harassing us and calling us all the time and wouldn't leave us alone. You have the tape recordings, as I said, of all the calls to Parshall. They only last about 15 minutes. You have a transcript of each one. Play them all. And you tell me if that sounds like a woman who's only interested in money or is interested in what happened to her husband and who killed him, and when do my daughter's going to get their life insurance? I understand you can't give it to me. Can you give it to them? You think they killed their father? Well, I'm a new lead. I'm a new thing. She's accused of lying all the time. We'll get to that and see what she lied about. You know who lied all the time? CD. Every single time we're on a lead, we checked the DNA, it came back to Fabio, we're going to find out. And she's supposed to be asking about that because Baker needs to know if they identified him. Well, Baker would know if they identified him, then arrest him. Did he ever think that they would identify him and not arrest him because they weren't happy with enough evidence they had on her and leave a known killer on the streets for four months? Uh-uh. I'm sorry, that's not the way preserve and protect is supposed to be. It sounds to me like accuse and arrest. And that's exactly what they did. And when four months went by and they had nothing more on her than more lured photographs of her coming out of a bar and crying at a hotel and so forth and so on, then they finally said, all right, we're going to send her an email. And it's going to say or suggest and then say, you've been cleared. You've been cleared. And let's see what she does. I mean, Jesus, she could have gone on the next plane for Italy. She was in New York or Canada, I forget. They trusted her to come home. You know how many times she flew to Canada back and forth knowing Robert Baker, according to them, was a murderer and knowing his DNA was all over the place? Think she was comfortable? Let me ask you a question. You're smart. She's smart. That's what they're saying, smart enough to connive and have a conspiracy to kill Baker that was supposed to, I mean, Fabia that was really spelled out. What do you do if you and your lover, who nobody really knows about except the gym people, conspire to kill your husband and he does it, but he cuts his finger while he's doing it? What do you do? I got an idea. Invite him to the house where nobody knows him and we'll see his finger cut. That's what you do. In fact, invite the whole gym team there. And you know what else you do? Fly to Myrtle Beach. That'll get them. That'll throw them off. And you know what else you do? Call Laura and tell them you want special rates at a hotel. Unbelievable. Nobody is that stupid. And somebody who's supposed to be smart enough with her lover to conspire through this whole plan with the tight window and all the things and we'll get to that, to kill and then the killing goes off. I don't know about you, but when I watch Law and Order, what they decide to do, we better not communicate for a few months at least. Don't call me. I won't call you. Let's wait until they clear you and get the insurance and then we'll fly to Scheherazade or something. they start up almost a week or two after and go to Myrtle Beach with excuses and go out karaoke and send you text messages home to her daughter. Just grow up, would you? I have a right to go out and says to Morella, I'll fuck whoever I want. Sorry, that was the language. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do if I killed him, sure. I'm just going to spread it around how happy I am to be alone and show photographs. She was a little out of her mind and it happens. She has not pled not guilty by reason of insanity. If she was charged with having an affair and breaking up her family, then I would have pled not guilty for reason and insanity. You could be so insane as to want Robert Baker over Fabio Simon Tilly and Jessica and Isabella and Mena and Anna and the whole family and Mirella and Marco and Luigi. Who would do that? She would do that for what? For insurance money that's going to run out in about two, three years when your husband is making $280 to $300 and a rising star and yes, if you're not happy, divorce him. You saw the chart up there. Much more money she could have with divorce. But it's not, it ain't going to work, my friends. I can't bring home Robert Baker and say, hi, mom, would you call him son, here's your new son-in-law. I'm sorry, I mean, Fabio was okay, but he can't match up to Baker. That makes no sense and the evidence has not changed that. But what makes sense is Robert Baker has finally, I didn't do a background check on the women that he was involved with in his marriages and the 14-year-old. I have a feeling the 14-year-old wasn't worth a lot of money and I have a feeling the other ones probably weren't either and he didn't have a dime to his name. He was way out of his league, way out of his league. And you know, sex is great, but it kind of wears off after a while. I think my wife's in the audience, I didn't say that. But something is going to change and he's not going to have her forever if he sticks with Fabio and she's not going to leave her husband and two kids and going to college and Ken and everything. She has plenty of choice. Let's just do it the way it's been. If it doesn't work out, maybe I'll realize what a great husband he was or maybe I'll cheat again. I don't know. I don't know her that well. But there's a big difference between cheating and treachery and do you have that slide? Jeremy, we'll find it. It's caught my eye when Ms. Silverman put up these words up there because she looked up the definition of betrayal. And I looked it up too and she's right. Deception, disloyalty, treachery, duplicity, devious. I guess D's have a lot to do with a cheap, trickery, flawed, cunning, breach of trust, false-hearted, underhanded, unfaithful. Every one of those definitions applied to her because she was keeping it secret, she was being devious, she broke her trust, she was false-hearted, she was underhanded, she was unfaithful, disloyal, treachery. But then I realized there's one word missing in the definition of betrayal. Oh, there it is. Murder. There is a big difference. Even I could figure this out. Between cheating, disloyal, underhandedness, breach of trust, and murder. You've got to be a pretty evil person to do that. and I submit to you, she is not. And she did not. Now, Robert Baker, that's a different story. That's a different story. His life was filled with all those things, plus he was in the armed service, plus he had a dishonorable discharge, or he said it was a discharge without dishonor. I don't know, he had a funny definition of that. So he was a prime candidate, and he knew, sadly, where to stab someone and kill him. He also knew he couldn't do it himself. But I still cannot figure out this Christopher Austin. But it makes sense, because if Baker was controlling enough to get her to be with him, and then after they're arrested, to say, I love you, and I want to marry you, and God, they showed a photograph of Monica, and it said Mrs. Baker on the mirror. And that was supposed to be real evidence of how far gone she was, and she was pretty far gone. But it was also evidence of control. Because if you looked in the little corner of the mirror, you know who was watching her? Robert Baker. I guarantee you, he said to her, you write Mrs. Baker up there, or I'm going to tell everyone about your affair, or I'm going to show them all your photographs, or who the hell knows. And then when they're in jail, he's going, I guarantee you, we've got to stick together, we've got to stick together. Now, I'll show you when we come back from the break, some of the things in the overhears that the prosecution did not play for you. A lot of them don't sound very good. That's what happens when you just fall head over heels and now you're in prison, and the only one you can depend on you think is your lover, and he's telling you I'd had nothing to do with it, and if I have to, I'll say I did it. They left out that he said, I'll say I did it even though I didn't. Why didn't they include that in the, they had how many hours of overhears? Why didn't they include the one that we ended up playing for you that said, you don't belong here, you're just a housewife. Now they can play all the other ones and they sound terrible, but I guarantee you to do what she was told to do in that jail, even on her period she said once, I had to do this and that and masturbate and I mean, this man was a Sen'Gali. She tied herself to him. And that was the biggest mistake of her life. It cost her eight years. it cost Fabio his life. Nothing good came from Mr. Baker. And he's gone for life and Austin's gone for what should have been life and now they want to complete the circle and send her away. Now if you find that that's the right verdict, of course you're going to return it. But before you do, I want you to consider what we're going to present to you in the next hour or so before we go home. Because I'm not just going to leave you with there's no evidence. They put on a lot of evidence. What I'm going to show you is that if you assume that she is innocent, that evidence is just as consistent with innocence and guilt. If you assume she's guilty, then that evidence is evidence of guilt. So how do you choose what you saw up there before? You took an oath. In our system, you are presumed innocent throughout the case. You have to presume that she was having an affair and just doing these things to cover it up. Because she was so upset, she was so fearful of anybody knowing about it, you can imagine. Look how people thought when they found out. If it's just as consistent with her covering things up because she was fearful it would come out, then your vote is not guilty. Now when we come back, and I don't know if the court wants to break now, but it's a good time. I just have one other thing to say. We're going to go through the day of the murder, and I'm going to show you what I believe is certain evidence to establish that there's no way that she could have been involved in this conspiracy to kill her husband. Thank you. [01:58:57] Speaker 2: Let's take our afternoon recess for 15 minutes. The admonition applies. See you back here. [01:59:07] Speaker ?: Bye. Bye.