The Binge Crimes: Deadly Fortune - Cut, Color, Kill | 1. Big Daddy

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Fabio Sementilli rises from humble beginnings in Toronto’s Italian community to become a rock star of the hair world. When he accepts a top job in LA, he has no idea his Hollywood dream will end in a nightmare. Want the full story? Binge every episode of Cut, Color, Kill ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. Cut, Color, Kill is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I sold my car in Carvana last night Well, that's cool No, you don't understand It went perfectly Real offer, down to the penny They're picking it up tomorrow Nothing went wrong So, what's the problem?

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Feed your true crime. obsession. The bench. There's a little lie we like to tell ourselves. A consolment, if you will. The people like you and me, nice people, never find ourselves in the crosshairs of a murderous plot.

Truth is, even nice guys, cross paths with people who want them out of the picture. Nice guys, like Fabio Semantilly. West of West Hollywood, on a quiet street in Woodland Hills, police arrive at the home of Fabio Semantilly on the 23rd of January, 2017. Just hours earlier, Fabio was sitting in his favorite chair, poolside, like he often did since he'd moved from Canada to pursue his career in Hollywood around seven years ago. But today was different than all those other days. When his daughter came home, she found him in that chair

stabbed multiple times. A few hours later, Detective Ryan Verne Verne Verne. Werna arrives. There's blood in the kitchen area on the floors, in the kitchen sink. As you walk into the kitchen, you could clearly see through the windows and through that door that there was a body in the backyard and large amounts of blood. Detective Verna and his partner, Jean Pershaw, are there to ask some questions. Fabio's house has cordoned off with crime scene tape. So they meet Fabio's wife, Monica.

at the next-door neighbor's house. Monica, Monica, hello. I'm a pegged to press house, my partner, Detective Berna. Very sorry, and we have to meet like this, okay? But we need to talk first. Detectives are there to talk to Monica and her two daughters, Jessica and Isabella.

So tell me what happened today from the morning. What time did you get up? Monica is visibly upset. She can't seem to catch her breath. The weight of this moment, seems to be overwhelming her. Could this actually be happening? 6.30.

You think you got up at 6.30 or 7.30? Yes. I got up at 6.30. Okay. This is not the typical call detectives in this town field. $2 million house behind security gates on a quiet street. A driveway hugged by the feathery branches of cedar trees. A safe place to raise a family. And enjoy your little corner.

of the Hollywood dream. Not a crime scene. Fabio, it appeared, had made it. A beautiful wife and daughters, a fancy home. He was a hairdresser to celebrities, an executive at a major beauty corporation, Wella. How long has he been working there? Detectives are trying to piece together

in the early hours after his body was discovered. What happened here? You have a conference call with Just people from working that normally does. No big issues. No one's yelling. No one had any problems. It was Fabio's daughter, Bella, who found her dad, in the back patio beside the pool.

There appears to be some sort of sharp force injury, meaning a stabbing. There's lots of blood. Attempted call 911. 911 told her to attempt to provide aid. Monica arrived home next. She and Bella tried with the help of the emergency operator to revive Fabio. But it was too late. The fire department arrived and pronounced him deceased.

She said that Fabio was a great guy. There were no issues with anybody else. Everybody loved Fabio. He was a nice guy. And this is something detectives will hear over and over again in the coming days. Fabio had a lot of friends. Nobody seems to have a bad word to say about him. The man they described to the detectives is Greg.

Vargarious, warm, and loving. The life and soul of the party, hardworking with a perfect family. People were truly shocked that anyone would commit such a heinous and brutal crime against this man. And the question that would take almost a decade to answer was why. And the reason would shock everyone who knew him to their core. From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is Cut, Color, Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch.

Episode 1, Big Daddy. Everybody welcome Fabio! It's sometime around 2009. Fabio Semantilly is appearing as a hair expert on the Canadian CBC show called Stephen and Chris. He's here to answer all the audience's hot hair questions. I have really curly hair. I love it, but sometimes I like to change it and straighten it out. Fabio's a tall guy, about six foot, six foot one, with a beard that comes down to a point.

Watching him, you can tell he's at ease in front of the camera, in a striped shirt and an elegant scarf. And now we're going to really show you how to blow dry that hair. Nice and easy. He deftly smooths the woman's hair into an elegant blowout. It's impressive, and even more so, considering that he's doing all of this while bantering with the hosts. And in the fringe area, guys, this technique here, you can take this one to the bank. Okay. Just put the brush in.

How much money were you getting? Depends on how I do, right? That's right, yeah. It was like watching a master at work. He would look at and touch hair, similar to how I would imagine a sculptor looking at a unmolded piece of clay. Looking at the hair, feeling it,

how did it lay, how did it flow? It was like magic, seeing him interact with your hair. These big hands would wield these hair styling tools with such dexterity, doing all these sorts of maneuvers with these scissors. He was like a wizard behind the chair. Luigi Semantilly is Fabio's son. His parents divorced when he was little,

so every other Saturday he'd come to work with his dad. Fabio runs his own salon in Toronto called What Else? Salon Fabio. It was a very loud, lively place, always very busy, always a hotbed of artistic expression. Saturdays are always crazy. Everyone wants a weekend appointment to get spruced up and feel special.

Stylists are trimming and curling, doving hair dye and folding foils. And Fabio's at the center of the action. He was always the loudest voice in the room, the loudest laugh in the room. His towering physique and exuberant personality earned him the nickname Big Daddy. He's a stylist to models, athletes, celebrities. Later on, some people will. wonder whether Fabio had it too good, whether all this success had made him a target. Right now, he's riding high. When he started to become more successful in his career, he bought a BMW

M3. It had silver exterior, red leather interior, and that made me a, you know, a bit of a a celebrity in the schoolyard the next day. Everyone's saying, oh, what's that car your dad drives? That kind of made me look up to him as like this superhero, right? He's like, doing these shows, and he's got this salon surrounded by all these cool, artistic-minded people, and that he's got this great sports car, really a rock star hairstylist. Fabio's success didn't come out of nowhere. Like a lot of people who end up following their dreams to Hollywood, there was a tragedy in his past that spurred him on.

Fabio was the son of Italian immigrants. He grew up in a neighborhood of Toronto known as Corso Italia, on a street called St. Clair Avenue. Our front doors were never locked. No neighborhood watch was needed because every mom sitting on the porch would know who belonged and who didn't belong. Joe Mercurio grew up there too. In the early 70s, he lived across the street from the cementillies. I would call out his name, but I didn't know his name.

So his nickname to me was Ravioli, and I would scream, Ravioli come outside. The pair became inseparable. Fabio was a year or so older, and Joe looked up to him like a big brother. Fab would always come to my defense, unconditionally always. knowing that someone is there behind you, covering you, it's a huge thing to have as a kid. Even as a kid, Fabio was a big personality. Articulate and disarming, he can make a friend anywhere.

Joe says Fabio got that from his father. If you want to know Fabio, you'd have to know his dad. Everyone loved them in the area. Then, when Fabio was still a young kid, his dad died suddenly. Fabio's mom didn't speak English well, and she and Fabio and his two older sisters were left without a breadwinner. We never spoke about it. It was a non-conversation, and I knew that. I would see when some kids would prod him on that subject, and he would lose his cool.

But I know this is a fact as a friend. He was the only male now in that home. And as the only male in that home, we all knew what that meant. That was quite obvious. It became the protector, if you will. Fabio was shouldering new responsibilities. He started working when he was still a teenager. He followed in the footsteps of his big sister Morella, who had become a hairdresser.

He was ambitious, hard worker, and his life accelerated. He bought the first car in the neighborhood. He married first. He left the neighborhood first. A lot of first because he was a man now. And I think that was the biggest conflict of his life. And also the most powerful thing of his life. Fabio was driven. He had big dreams. He'd learned a harsh lesson, though, one that would seem to be even more poignant after everything that came later. Life can be cut tragically short. And Fabio wasn't wasting any time. Fabio started competing at international hairdressing shows with his sister Morella. They won trophies and made a name for themselves. And while Fabio was climbing the career ladder, his family was growing too. He'd gotten divorced from Luigi's mom.

He married a hair model and makeup artist called Monica. They had two daughters, Jessica and Isabella. Whenever I would arrive at my dad's house from being picked up for the weekend, they would always yell my name and come and give me a big hug as I entered the doorway. And I could also tell that my dad loved having me there and having everyone together, the five of us as a family. Fabio had always been close with Morella and his other sister, Lori, and he wanted the same for Luigi.

Whenever my dad and I were talking one-on-one and I would, in passing, refer to them as my half-sisters, he would always stop me and say, no, those are your sisters. We were on a trip to the family cottage, and I was upstairs in a bedroom playing on a PlayStation portable. And my dad came up and sat down and basically broke the news to me that they were going to be moving to California. Fabio had been working with the hair product giant Wella, and they'd offered him a new job, creative director for North America. He was stepping away from the stylist chair and into a new world of executive titles, MBAs, and C-sweets. It also meant moving with Monica and the girls to Los Angeles.

For Joe, saying goodbye to his best friend was bittersweet, but he also knew it was the step Fabio needed. He was satisfying his dream. Fabio loved America, all of America, the talent of America, the size of America, the freedom of America, the big Cadillacs of America. It's always a perfect thing for him. No matter how carefully Fabio weighed up that decision, he could never have known how fateful it would turn out to be. Hey guys, this is Molly Sims, host of Lipsick on the Rim. So I have a little bit of a pet peeve that I think you're going to relate to this.

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Luigi is in town visiting his dad. The two are tearing down the Pacific Coast Highway and his Mustang convertible. The wind in bleached spiky hair. A lead Zeppelin CD blasting through the speakers. We stopped off at this bar. Apparently it's like some kind of well-known biker bar. There were a lot of bikes there, like motorcycles. It was called Neptune's Net, and it was right on the ocean.

My dad was like, let's stop off here and have a drink. have a drink. I know exactly what place you're talking about. It's like, it's got this like sort of 60s era sign right out on the front and there's like palm trees in the back. It's felt like this is California. Like this place is so indecatively quintessentially California. Luigi is now in college. And his dad's new life in California seemed like something out of a movie. Literally, Neptune's Net is in point break, Iron Man 3, and Vin Diesel even had a drink there in The Fast and the Furious. Here in this California dream, the idea that danger could be just around the corner must have seemed impossible. Even Fabio's new house is like the set of a Hollywood sitcom.

He settled with Monica and the girls in Woodland Hills, a leafy, affluent suburb in the San Fernando Valley. I was like, wow, this house doesn't look like the house they had when they were in Canada. Beautiful sitting area outside in a great big pool, beautiful backyard. Whenever Luigi visits, they spend long hours together in his dad's favorite place, the back patio. That backyard was really the locus of the family operations. He loved spending time out there. The chair outside there that he would sit on was kind of like his throne. He had a TV set up out there, and I spent a lot of time out there sitting back there with him, smoking cigars.

That's how it was on Luigi's last visit in August 20th. 2016, laughing and joking around, eating family dinners with Monica and Luigi's sisters. It all seemed too good to be true. And maybe it was. Five months later, Luigi is back in Toronto. It's January 23, 2017. And this cold winter night couldn't be farther away from those carefree summers spent cruising around L.A. I had just gotten back from class, and I was sitting down at the computer playing a video game.

I was playing World of Warcraft. And I remember my phone going off, and it was my sister Jessica who called. And I was kind of busy playing the game and thinking, oh, maybe I won't pick up. Luigi ignores the call at first. But Jessica keeps ringing. I picked up and remember her being hysterical on the other end. And at first thinking, oh, she must be out with friends and calling me to reminisce about something or something came up that reminded her of me, so she gave me a call.

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Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast. hosted by me, Kaelin Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of the Darkly Curious,

check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious. Detectives Ryan Verna and Jean Parshall are sitting with Fabio's wife, Monica, at a neighbor's house. Outside, Queen Victoria Road is teeming with emergency services. There was the fire department, there was crime seat tape, a lot of police were already present,

and there's just a lot of activity going on for what should be a quiet neighborhood. How long have you lived on Queen Victoria? It's going to be four years. Okay. Detective Verna and his partner are here to interview Monica and her daughters, one by one about what happened that day. Fabio was working from home, Monica tells them. Okay, you came home and worked.

was probably he was at the kitchen working still working she'd been home most of the day went to the gym at one point with jessica her older daughter had got back from the gym had some lunch and then decided to go run out and do some errands so you first hit target and then you hit ralphs yeah okay did you have any problems with anyone there no anyone on the road yellow you road rage cuss at you put you off anything like that no no okay and No problems of anyone in either store. You didn't notice anyone following you or anything like that. That you can remember? Okay. Jessica is 18.

At around 3.40, she went out to a babysitting job. Bella, who's 16, was at school most of the day. She was trying to get a job at a deli. And so she had an interview after school. And then following that, she received a call from her mother telling her, hey, your glasses are ready. You need to go to this optometrist and pick up your class. And so she did that and then came home.

She got into the house, walked in the kitchen, and looked out the window. She noticed that her dad was in the patio, slumped over in the seat, and there was a large amount of blood. Bella called 911. A few minutes later, Monica returned home. Heard Bella screaming that Fabio had been injured and was on the back patio.

They tried to resuscitate Fabio, but they weren't able to move him. By the time the first responders arrived, Fabio was dead. The rock of the Semantilly family was gone forever. Ryan normally works on gang-related murders, so it's unusual to get called out to a homicide at an upper middle-class neighborhood like this. But Woodland Hills could be a prime target for a different type of crime. We had what was called knock-knock burglaries going on at the time. And what these guys would do, they would find a house. They'd go up to the front door, knock on the front door. If someone answered the door, they'd typically move on to some other location.

If nobody answered, then they'd break into the house and rob it. If one of these crews broke into the Semantilly house and ran into Fabio in the backyard, maybe things turned violent. The detectives managed to account for the cars belonging to Monica and her daughters, but Fabio's beloved Porsche was gone. It's a valuable car, sort of thing. an opportunistic thief might be interested in. Then there's the master bedroom.

Did you have anything valuable in your room? It looks like drawers were pulled out. There was some evidence of ransacking, meaning there was property that been pulled out of drawers and cabinets. When the detectives take Monica on a walkthrough of the house, she says that some valuables are missing. We only have changed. Canadian money and euros

She reported that there was currency that had been taken in the form of U.S., Canadian and European currency, as well as some, like, costume-y kind of jewelry. So, yeah, this potentially could be one of these burglaries gone bad. We're going to do everything in our power to find out we did this. We're going to process the whole house. It's probably going to be here for hours and hours and hours and processing. evidence. That night, the crime scene is locked down. As forensic investigators arrive and combed through each room of the Sematilly House, they carefully label and photograph any piece of potential

evidence. We had noticed that there was security cameras at the home. In the garage, there was an area near the entry into the kitchen on top of a cabinet where the DVR probably was based on wires that were protruding from the wall, but there's nothing there. Whoever Fabio's attacker was, they dismantled this crucial piece of evidence before they made their getaway. This doesn't look like a frenzied attack in the heat of the moment. It looks carefully planned. There's also a sign of how they could have gotten in.

Backside of your house, I guess to be the north side of your house. There are several rooms that have sliding glass windows. So if you just looked into the room real quick, it would appear that it was secure. However, when you open the shutters up, you would discover that that door is actually ajar and open. So that was out of the ordinary. Ryan is keeping an open mind, but he's not fully convinced by this burglary theory. The typical thing for those gang members to do, if they confronted somebody inside or outside of a house, would have been to run the other way.

to go stab somebody on the back patio would be out of line with what they're doing. There's blood in the back patio, the kitchen, the garage. But there's also some blood transfer in the master bedroom, too. That indicated to us that these guys stuck around and then did the ransacking after the fact. I think the first indication would be to get the hell out of there, not to dig deeper to see if we can find some property. When the coroner arrives, they take a closer look at Fabio's body. We got to see what kind of injuries there was, and he had significant injuries.

There were targeted places on his body that were aimed for, all areas that if you're, you know, attacked properly, will cause someone to bleed out pretty quickly. In other words, these injuries look deliberate. Each one intended to inflict the most damage possible, to be fatal. And there's something else. It looks like whoever did this made sure Fabio couldn't fight back. we didn't seem to find any kind of defensive wounds on Fabio Cementelli. So it appeared to us that this wasn't a surprise where like our suspects were surprised,

hey, there's a guy there and we got to fight him off. It appeared that Fabio was attacked. But nobody the detectives interview that night has any idea who might have wanted to hurt him. By the time Ryan heads home late that night, his head is full of questions. For one brief moment, when Luigi Seminthili opens his eyes the next morning, everything is normal. Then the previous night comes rushing back. First, it was bewilderment, disbelief, feeling stunned, even feeling nothing, just being reduced to bafflement that something like this could happen. When you wake up, you're kind of reminded of reality and reminded of how your life has changed.

And then you feel all of these things all over. again. It felt like it had happened all over again. Last night after he got the call about his dad, a friend came and picked him up and drove him to his mom's house. A long, weird car ride of really just being in silence for most of it, not knowing what was going to happen, how to react, how to feel. It just felt like you were watching a movie that was being projected in front of your eyes. Now he gets dressed and heads to his aunt Morella's house. That was kind of where the family got together to begin the grieving process.

Morella is Fabio's big sister and role model, the sister he followed into hairdressing. She's the one the Semintilis looked to in a time of crisis. We were in the kitchen and everyone was kind of sitting around the table, maybe some people in the living room. And that was just a explosion of emotion from everyone. more tears than hopefully I'll ever see for the rest of my life. Bewilderment, shock, anxiety, talking, reminiscing, speculating, obsessing. There's a lot of talk of knock-knock burglary, where people would simply knock on your door and then make their way into your home.

The burglary gone wrong doesn't seem to fit with the brutality of the crime. But the alternative seems unthinkable. A lot of anxiety came from speculation about what could have happened. Trying to get answers or make answers, connect dots in their mind about how someone that was so important to all of us was in a moment taken away. In the weeks to come, there would be a lot more speculation. The horrific circumstances around Fabio's death left everyone with questions. Who could have done this? when Fabio was so well-loved.

But every wild theory and far-fetched rumor was wrong, because the truth was even more unbelievable, and even more heartbreaking. Next time on Cut, Color, Kill. The cops get their first lead. You could tell them the video that they were running with a purpose. We knew right away, those are our guys. Don't want to wait for that next episode.

You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of Cut Color Kill, add free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple, head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the binge channel page on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. This is Cut, Color, Kill, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, hosted by me, Jonathan Hirsch. Caroline Thorneum is our senior producer.

Catherine Godfrey is our editor. Muhammad Ahmed is our assistant producer. Mark Pittam is our engineer. Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson. For a novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis, and me, Jonathan Hirsch. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage.

and Charlotte Wolf. Fact-checking by Fendell Fulton, research by Myron Kaplan. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews. Novel's director of development is Selina Metta. Special thanks to Carolyn Sher Levin at Miller-Korsnick-Raman. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.