Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Cut, Color, Kill | 4. Don’t Talk

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

The police make their move, with an audacious undercover operation. After, Fabio’s loved ones face a bombshell revelation. 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

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to listen wherever you are. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The bench. It's a sunny day in June, 2017. At an intersection in the L.A. suburbs, a police car flashes its lights at a black Ford Mustang. The Mustang is Monica Semantilly's new car. She's riding shotgun, looking polished, as always, with her brown bangs in a sleek blowout.

Robert Baker, her racquetball coach and secret lover, is at the wheel. The cop signal for Monica and Baker to pull over. The officer approaches the car, tells the couple they have reason to believe the Mustang may be a stolen car. Unfortunately, this is a first for me. Monica is sure there's been a mistake. The Mustang is hers, but the cop walks her and Baker over to another squad car waiting nearby. Until the police can get to the bottom of this, they'll have to wait in the back. The sun is beating down on the cop's car.

Oh my gosh. Inside, it's like an oven. I can't breathe. I need help. Monica's struggling and complaining, but this isn't just an inconvenience. She has no idea what she stepped into. The police cruiser is wired up with three microphones and a camera. A surveillance van is parked around the corner.

Inside, a team of officers are waiting. and listening to every word. I will. This is ridiculous. The conversation is interrupted by the police radio. The cops run a message over the radio into the cruiser. The speaker is set loud. Monica and Baker can hear it clearly. Monica Semantilly wanted for the first-degree murder of Fabio Semantilly.

From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is Cut, Color, Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Episode 4, don't talk. What the fuck? Over in the surveillance van, the detectives are glued to every word. They're hoping that in the back of this hot, airless police cruiser, with radio messages being piped in, Monica and Baker are going to let slip something that will crack the case. Oh, God.

I'm going to get out of here. Help me! One of the police officers approaches the window of the police car. Monica demands to know what's going on. Ma'am? Yes. There's a warrant for your arrest for murder. Oh, my gosh.

I just talked to the detective this morning. Okay, that's his detective. Parcell. Yes. Okay. That came up. I got to give him a call. Okay.

Please do. We're going to have to get it. Oh, my husband was murdered five months ago. Listen, I'm very sorry for the loss. How can this be? All I can tell you is you've got a warrant for your arrest, and I'm going to make a phone call right now. Oh, my God, please.

The officer steps away from the car. Monica and Baker are on their own again. Just listen, listen. Don't know. I know, listen. Listen, listen. Got to get a lawyer immediately. I will.

I don't know what's going on. Get a lawyer, don't talk. And a lot of that was coming from her. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman is in D.C. at a conference on the day of the arrest. She's eager to find out what's happening in the bugged patrol car. They both were playing this game where they were denying strongly that there was any sort of relationship between the two of them, other than this racquetball league relationship that he was her coach.

Silverman has been working with LAPD detectives since February, advising them on their investigation. After months of covert surveillance, subpoenas, and search warrants, the police are finally making their move. Today has been a long time in the planning. Every single thing that the two suspects say right now could be important evidence. I need to know what is going on right now. While Monica panics, Robert Baker tries to explain what this arrest warrant means for them both. If they have any warrant, that means they have to satisfy what they think are the... I'll have some proof of this bullet.

Whatever that is, I have no fuck. I think a little what the fuck could be in there, Mom. Monica says that she's being set up. Someone is doing this to me, Dad. Then Baker and Monica begin to whisper. The cops and their surveillance van watch through a camera feed. It captures them on a flickering feed with a low-res image. It shows Baker and Monica both leaning forward in huddled positions.

Sat very close to each other. The investigating team lean in and strain their ears to hear. They can just about make out certain words. And one line from Baker is especially telling. We've cleaned it up so you can hear it. Stay in protocol. Stay in protocol. This is exactly what Deputy D.A. Silverman has been waiting for.

The idea that they had planned for the eventuality that they might be arrested and how they were going to handle that was a tremendous piece of evidence that's referred to often as consciousness of guilt. It's pretty sketchy, right? I don't know about you, but I've never felt the need to make a plan for what to do if I get arrested for murder.

Over in the police fan, the cops lean in and try to catch more of what Monica and Baker are saying. But they're listening through the mic that's located at the front of the cruiser. They can barely hear them. In the back of the car are two more hidden mics. set up to capture their whispers with high clarity.

The investigators in the van are getting excited, but too late they find out there has been a mistake. Those high-spec mics on the back, which are crucial to the operation, were in fact not switched on and not in operation. Monica Semantilly and Robert Baker continued to whisper, virtually unheard, for five minutes. When the news about the mics failing reaches best,

With Silverman, she is not happy. You have two individuals who have just been arrested. You can see them and hear them in the vehicle plainly discussing what's happening, whispering to each other. We catch certain words, but without having the entire context for it, I mean, we obviously know that we've lost crucial evidence. That obviously was extremely damning, otherwise they wouldn't have been whispering. It was sloppy. It's the loss of evidence you can never get back. But the day isn't over yet, and the investigators still have another trick up their sleeve.

The police officers transport Monica and Baker to Van Nu Station in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. They're booked separately, and their phones are seized. Then they're placed in separate holding cells. Monica's left in her cell to wait for what comes next. But she's not alone. There's one other inmate already there. I'm Cynthia. Why, Monica?

I know, this whole situation, it just sucks. While Monica is getting to know her cellmate, she has no idea that in some ways, her police interrogation has already begun. Cynthia is wearing a wire. What they do to you? My husband was murdered in January. Monica starts telling her chatty cellmate Cynthia

all about what's happening to her. He'll be in handcuffs in the back of the car, And then they said there's a warrant for murder. You murdered your husband? No. Because I'm saying there's something wrong here. And it happened at your house? Back in. Wow.

Cynthia is really curious, a little nosy even. But Monica doesn't seem to notice. I mean, if you weren't home, I'd you do it. But that's what I'm saying. I don't understand. They must have something they're not telling me, which I would love to know what it is. Monica has just stepped into what's called a Perkins operation. A Perkins operation.

is named after a particular case that allows us after arrest but before the filing of charges to place an arrestee into a jail cell with an undercover agent of the police and record their conversations. The miced-up police cruiser was only the first part of this operation, and Cynthia, the undercover agent isn't the only person playing a role. Detective, what's going on? Please tell me what's going. Detective Jean Prashal, the officer Monica, has been in contact with since the murder, approaches the cell.

Listen, so remember the two detectives? I made that with two weeks ago? Yeah, yeah. And they came up with stuff that links you to bomb you. I want to know what it is. You may be able to explain some of the stuff. I don't know. I don't know.

I have to. Okay. Prishal is here to turn up the pressure. For sure, without a doubt, they have determined that Robert Baker was involved with Robert Buren. That cannot be, that cannot be possible. Oh my God. There's no doubt about that, okay?

I didn't know. Okay? So far, Monica and Robert Baker appear to have been sticking to a plan. But now, they're separated, and the police are directly accusing him of murder. Will Monica turn on her boyfriend? If you want a deeper look behind cut, color, kill, now is the time. Join our free newsletter at patreon.com slash the binge, and you will get exclusive story details. You can't get anywhere else.

Again, join me at patreon.com slash the binge. Who's that guy? Watermaker is a good friend of us. Can't be. Monica is alone. with her curious cellmate, Cynthia. He's such a good friend of ours. Is no way.

She's still processing the bombshell Detective Pershal just dropped. Robert Baker is the prime suspect in her husband's murder. It can be. It can't be him. He said, without a doubt, it can't be. Cynthia probes, Monica,

to see if she'll let anything slip. Does he your friend, does he not like your husband? No, my gosh. No, he's our lead director of a racquetball league at the gym. and he became a really good friend, especially after this, really helped help me and the girls.

Cynthia even floats the idea that the racquetball coach might even have romantic feelings for Monica. You think that guy likes you and wants something else with you and you don't know it, maybe? I don't think so. Never felt bad. Was your husband, like, treating you bad? So maybe he was defending your honor or something, you think?

No, my husband was love of my life. He was such a good, good person. Monica doesn't bite, so the investigators turn the screw again. Hello? Monica. Yes, oh my gosh. Yes, please tell me what's going on. This time, it's another detective, Chris Gable, from the robbery homicide division,

who steps up to the cell. I'll give you an idea because I'm sure you have a thousand questions. Yes. He reminds her of the blood from the. crime scene, which was sent for DNA testing. There was a lot of blood that was at the scene that day. And you know there was a lot of swabs taken. Yes.

Okay. So a lot of that blood did, in fact, come back to Rob Baker. Oh, my God, I can't believe that. And we've known that for a really long time. So I'm just, I just want to let you know that since way back my time, we've had you under surveillance when you and Rob go to nightclubs. Yeah. We've had you under surveillance when you were up.

You fly away trail. trips, drive-boy trips, and we've always had surveillance photographing you and document and everything. So we understand completely about the relationship that you and Rob have. And we know that his blood is all over the scene. And we've known that for a long time. We've been watching it for a long time. We've been doing a lot of work and a lot of other things. I'm waiting for my partner to get down. As soon as he comes down, we'll explain more things to you. I guess I need to let you know. Everything we did is it directly implicates you and Rob. After five months of letting Monica think she's pulled the wool over their eyes,

the investigators have shown their hand. They know all about their affair. Rob's DNA was all over the crime scene, and both he and Monica are now implicated in the murder. The investigators have been busy. They don't have access to Monica and Baker's phones, but they've managed to subpoena a huge amount of digital backup data, things like iCloud, Dropbox, email accounts,

You pulled all of your photos from your eye cloud. There's a lot of them. I'm sure you're only one of people to see. There is a substantial stash of explicit photos that Monica sent to her lover. Some of them are even taken on the day of Fabio's funeral. How does that have to do with the DNA being there? That doesn't have anything to do with you telling the truth.

As Detective Gable gets more direct, Monica digs her heels in. You have a lot of those. that shows us that you were involved in this crime. And that's what we want. I'm sure you have a lot of questions. I mean, I answer those questions, we have questions for you. It's not about if you did it, it's just we want to understand why.

I just don't know what. Just please think about telling the truth. I am telling the truth. I need you to tell me the truth. I'll be. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Detective Gable leaves. Monica is still reeling from what she's just learned when Cynthia moves in again. in again. So I guess he is your boyfriend, huh? Monica's on the back foot, but she's defensive. An affair isn't a crime. They said they've been watching you everything you do. But I already knew that because you know, and it's a murder investigation, everyone, the

spouse is the first one to be followed, so I had no problem with them hiding anything. There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. It is if he kills your husband. That makes for movies all the time. all the time. You've probably seen a couple of them up. At this point, you should be thinking about yourself, not whoever that guy is, but screw him. I mean, Cynthia is trying to get in Monica's head to see if she'll blame Baker or feel something about the crime. He did this. Make him responsible for it, because I bet you he's not going to think twice about

screwing you over. There's a long pause. What do you guys talk about? Everything. Well, not everything if he didn't tell you that he killed your husband. You're not trying to protect him, are you? Monica doesn't reply. She's subdued. He even seems a little vulnerable.

But by the time the detectives escort her out of her cell that evening and into a small windowless interrogation room, she's back to defending her lover. I can't believe that I don't believe that Rob did that. Monica is sitting at a table. Opposite her are two detectives. She's being asked why Rob's blood was found at the house. And she's got an explanation.

The only other thing I can think of that his DNA would be in my house is probably when I cracked him in the hand when we played racquetball. It's probably on my racket. It's probably on my shoes. It's probably in the gym courts. And I brought the towel home. And I even showed it to my husband. And he said, don't bother washing it.

I will get rid of it. And that's the only thing I can think of for it to even be maybe in the garage, maybe in the sink if he put it in the sink, because I didn't see it after that. For five months, the police have been speaking to her about the blood in the house. Monica never mentioned Baker. Now, when she's confronted with the evidence, she's changed her tune. That's all I can really, that I know. As the detectives drop her back off at her cell, they vent their frustrations.

I mean, come on, Monica, how convenient is it for you to come up with the exact same story that your boyfriend told us about the towel? Do you do you do that? Yes, he did. In his police interview, Robert Baker told detectives the same story about the bloody towel. Despite all the police's best efforts, Monica and Baker seemed to be holding fast to the protocol they discussed in the back of the cop car. It seemed like she and Baker had definitely discussed and planned for this. eventuality. They haven't got a confession out of Monica, but for Deputy D.A. Beth Silverman, the Perkins' operation with cellmate Cynthia was still eye-opening. Some of it was what she said and also

what she didn't say. Her demeanor, the arrogance, just a complete lack of interest in what you would think somebody in her position if she was innocent would have been discussing, like, I wish LAPD was focusing on the real killers. A lot of that was interesting. Ever since Fabio's murder, the press have been all over at this case. There have been helicopters hovering over Woodland Hills and reporters camped outside the Semantilly house. But that's nothing compared to what's going to happen when news gets out that the victim's wife and her racquetball coach and ex-porn star boyfriend have been arrested.

The detectives need to get ahead of this. Over in Toronto, Luigi Semantilly's phone starts ringing. They told me that arrests had been made in connection with my dad's murder. It's nighttime in Toronto, and Luigi Semin Tilly has just been woken up by a phone call from the detectives. Finally, after five months, they have news. He's suddenly wide awake. I'm dying to hear what they know and what happened. And they tell me that Monica was arrested, along with this man named Robert Baker.

Arrests had been made towards getting to some form of justice for my dad who was so high. humaniously killed. But this person, who I considered part of my family, had betrayed everyone. I can't imagine what it must feel like to receive that news. Your own stepmother, someone you've grown up with since you were a little kid, has just been arrested for your father's murder. Luigi's mind is racing. He fires question after question of the detective. How certain are you? Give me a percentage. Where have you seen this before? What else do you know? How are you feeling about this as an investigator? And everything they were telling me was, from the day it happened, her story was not adding up.

She was lying to the detectives. Things weren't making sense. They even used the phrase, this is a slam dunk. The detective tells Luigi about Monica's affair and her obsession with the life insurance money. And Luigi finds himself thinking about the first time he spoke to Monica on the phone. The night his dad was murdered. She was kind of hyperventilating, and between breaths, the first things that she said to me was that there was going to be a lot of money coming my way. And that I would be able to buy a car and I would be able to buy a house. At the time, I suppose I thought maybe in some strange way this person is trying to mitigate this horror that happened in a weird way where our brains often do to try and protect ourselves.

But now, Luigi sees that moment. that's something else. Kind of a weirdly obvious dead giveaway. But it was such an unbelievable, astronomically impossible thing that she would have orchestrated this, that it didn't cross my mind at the time that had that phone call with her. Luigi starts to think back to the days after his dad's murder. He was in L.A. at his family's Woodland Hills home.

It's pretty freaky, going back to the place where he was killed. weird that my stepmom and sisters were still sitting at this house. I remember on that trip being brought up to the computer room and being shown a printed document detailing the different life insurances, estate proceeds, and how they would be divided up amongst myself, Monica, my sisters. She was kind of holding it and regarding it. I think she was petting this piece of paper in some strange, proud way. And it was that talented Mr. Ripley moment

when you're starting to think about the preceding six months and how these little moments that at the time were not an indictment of anything, now that was a dot to be connected. It was like light bulb after light bulb, epiphany after epiphany. By the time the call with the detective ends, Luigi's made up his mind. In that moment, I thought, this makes sense.

I don't doubt this. The first person I spoke to was my mom, and I went into her room, woke her up and said, you're not going to believe who just called me and what they just said. Over at the Wella offices in Los Angeles, Carol Porta is running a meeting with her team, when CEO Sal's assistant Barbara knocks on the door. Sal needs to see you now. And we're like, we're in a meeting.

Well, you know, kind of annoyed a little bit of why does he need to take us out of a meeting now? We'll be there as soon as possible. Five minutes pass and then Barbara is here again. It's like, you need to come right now. Okay, that seems serious. Alicia Truesdale also gets a message at the same time. It says come to Sal's office right now. Alicia was Fabio's executive assistant.

Since his death, she's been worried that her job might get cut. Oh, no, this is it. They're getting rid of me. They don't need me anymore. I go over to the office. And I walk in and Carol's there, Mika, the head of HR, Sal. And Mika says, sit her down. Sit her down right now.

And I'm going like, what's going on? Sal puts on the TV and they show it. It's all over the news. CBS has the story. A stunning arrest nearly five months after a prominent hairstylist was murdered at his home. Monica Semantilly under arrest now

on suspicion of murdering her husband and being held without bail. She had been arrested and her muck shot and he's mug shot. And we're like, what the hell? And then you're like, well, that's the guy that was at the memorial. I lost it. I screamed.

I started crying. I couldn't hold it in. We were just dumbfounded. Like literally shop number two. I would have never, never in a million years imagined this. Melanie Garabé, another of Fabio's Wella crew, is in a different meeting when a friend texts her. I'm so sorry about Monica.

I'm like, what? Are you sure? That can't be. Fabio's work friends have spent months trying to support Monica. They thought she was devastated. But the details emerging from the police investigation tell a very different story. We saw the indictments and we saw what they were charging her with and we read all of this and we're like, wow, have we just been fooled? It felt like a sociopaths in action.

It didn't feel like a person we knew. It didn't feel like something that from the person we knew would have happened. So did something happen? Did she flip somewhere? And then you start rethinking all of the things that you had thought before. There's the fact that Monica brought Robert Baker to Fabio's wake, the man she was having an affair with, the man whose blood was all over the crime scene.

there's the weird fact of Monica continuing to live in the house where Fabio was murdered. And then one moment, Carol can't stop replaying. At time she and Melanie went over to the Woodland Hills house, Monica showed them her new Mustang. Carol remembers how Monica had gloated about playing the grieving widow to get a good deal. This phrase came back in my mind of the award-winning performance. And I'm like, wow, indeed. that was an award-winning performance. It's all adding up.

And now disbelief begins to give way to anger. I said, that bitch, I can't believe why. What was she doing? And they show the whole arrest of her. I'm dumbfounded again. I'm just, I can't believe that this happened and that she did this. She's the one. you feel fully, fully, fully betrayed.

Oh my God. Like, we're clowns over here. We were played the entire time. Thousands of miles away in Toronto, Luigi and Fabio's side of the Semantilly family are gathered at his Aunt Morella's house. They're trying to make sense of this inconceivable news. How could she do this?

How could this happen? Anger, betrayal. My family was around Monica far more often than I was, especially my aunt Morella, who was quite close with Monica over the preceding 20 years. They all trusted Monica, but the police investigation has proven that she lied to them and to Fabio again and again.

The woman they trusted doesn't exist. The prospect of this being the case wasn't met with much doubt. It was plausible, and we all believed it. For Luigi and his dad's side of the family in Kansas, Canada, everything suddenly makes sense. What about your sisters? What kind of conversations did you all have?

That's where the difficulty began in my relationship with them. Monica's daughters with Fabio, Jessica, and Isabella are still only 16 and 18. Now that Monica has been arrested, they've been taken under the wing of their mom's family, the Crescentini's. Monica's family was very quick to fly down and kind of take control of the situation surrounding my sisters. And the narrative as it was being spun by Monica's family and then being accepted by them was that this was not true,

that a mistake had happened, that this is not the case, that they would be getting to the bottom of this one way or another. Monica is maintaining her innocence, and Fabio's family, the thing that mattered most to him in the world, is split in two. But there's someone still out there who knows what really happened on January 23rd, 2017.

There were two joggers, caught on camera running towards Fabio's house that day. We reached out to Luigi's sisters and Monica's side of the family. They either declined to comment or did not respond. Next time on Cut, Color, Kill. There's still a missing suspect at large, and he holds the key to unlocking the truth. Did he just say he stabbed him?

Is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to. Unlock all of everything. 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 get thebinge.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. Our producers are Muhammad Ahmed and Caroline Thorneum. Catherine Godfrey is our editor. 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 Selena Meta. Special thanks to Carolyn Sher Levin at Miller-Korsnick-Raman. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.