Cut, Color, Kill | 4. Don’t Talk

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It's a sunny day in June, 2017. At an intersection in the LA suburbs, a police car flashes its lights at a black Ford Mustang. The Mustang is Monica Cementilly's new car. She's

writing shotgun, looking polished as always with her brown bangs and a sleek blowout. Robert

“Baker, her rack-it-ball coach and secret lover is at the wheel. The cops 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. 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 cops car. Inside, it's like an oven.

Monica's struggling and complaining, but this isn't just an inconvenience. She has no idea

“what she's stepped into. The police cruiser is wired up with three microphones and a camera.”

The surveillance fan is parked around the corner. Inside, a team of officers are waiting and listening to every word. 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 Seventyli wanted for the first degree murder

of Fabio Seventyli. From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is Cut Color Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Episode 4. Don't talk. What the fuck? What the fuck? Getting out of this car! Over in the surveillance fan, 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. One of the police officers approaches the window of the police car. Monica demands to know what's going on. Oh my god, please!

The officer steps away from the car. Monica and Baker are on their own again. Don't talk. A lot of that is coming from her.

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, the peanuts and search warns, the police are

finally making their move. Today has been a long time in the planning.

“Every single thing of the two suspects say right now could be important evidence.”

While Monica Panics, Robert Baker tries to explain what this arrest war means for them both. That means that satisfy what they say are these elements of truth to this world. Whatever that is, I have no thought that the look would have what could be in their mind. Monica says that she's being set up. It's doing this three steps.

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-razz image. It shows Baker and Monica both leaning forward and huddled positions. That 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. This is exactly what Deputy DA 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 constants of guilt. It's pretty sketchy, right?”

I don't know why 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 van, 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 to 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 Seventillian Robert Baker continued to whisper virtually on her for five minutes. When the news about the mics failing reaches Beth 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 damming, 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 vanish station in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. Their books 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. It's Fernando's 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 on my contrary.

Yeah. Monica starts telling her chatty cellmate, Cynthia, all about what's happening to her. But when the handcuffs are back with horror, and then they said there's a watch for murder. You murdered your husband? Okay, there's something wrong here. And it happened at your house? Wow. Cynthia is really curious, a little nosey, even.

But Monica doesn't seem to notice.

“Make you our whole mind, you do it. But that's what I'm saying. I don't understand. They must have”

something that not telling me, which I would love to know what it is.

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 mic-de-police cruiser was only the first part of this operation,

and Cynthia, the undercover agent, isn't the only person playing a role. Detective Jean Prishal, the officer Monica has been in contact with since the murder, approaches the cell. Listen, so when you take this, I mean that with two weeks of film? Yeah, yeah. And they came up with stuff that links you. I want to know what it is. Maybe it'll explain some of this stuff.

I don't know what it is. Okay, Prishal is here to turn up the pressure.

“For sure, when I was down, they had been turned in that. Robert Baker was involved in”

violence. That cannot be him. That cannot be possible. Oh, my God. There's no doubt about that. Okay, I'm sorry if you don't. 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? Fabio Cementilly. Big hearts, big voice, big laugh. A rock star hair stylist who drove

a morsha, he was like a wizard behind the chair. The killers came for Fabio and his own backyard. You can't rationalize that you can't figure it out. There was rampant speculation about everything. But every wild theory was wrong, because the truth was even more unbelievable. Well, is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? And even more heartbreaking. The uncertainty of not knowing is a form of agony. From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is Cut Color Kill.

I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Cut Color Kill is available now on the bench. Search for it wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. Subscribers to the bench can listen to all episodes, all at once, and free. Who's that guy? Monica is alone with her curious soulmate Cynthia. He's such a front of father's is no way. She's still processing the bombshell to take

a per shawl, just dropped. Robert Baker is the prime suspect in her husband's murder. Cynthia probes Monica to see if she'll let anything slip.

“Does he your friend? Does he not like your husband?”

Oh my gosh. No, he's our lead director of Iraq, about being a victim. And he became a really good friend, especially after this really helped help me in the girls. Cynthia even floats the idea that the rack-up all coach might even have romantic feelings for Monica. You think that I like sugar and want something else with you and you don't know it,

maybe? Oh, thanks so. Never felt bad. Was your husband like treating you bad?

So maybe he was defending your honor or something like that? No, my husband was above all my life. This is a good, good person. Monica doesn't bite, so the investigators turn the screw again. This time it's another detective Chris Gable from the robbery homicide division who steps up to the cell. 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. He knew that it was

a lot of swaps taken. Yes, okay. So a lot of that blood didn't, in fact, come back to a very big round. Oh my god, I can't believe it. And you've known that for a really long time. So I'm just a little bit more let you know that since we've had gender surrounds when you grew up, we've had gender surrounds when you grew up, you fly away trips, throwing away trips,

and we've always had surveillance for the graphic view and document and everything. Okay,

we understand completely about the relationship that you grew up at. When we know that this blood

been on a lot of work and a lot of other things. I'm waiting for my partner to get down,

so this comes down, we'll explain more things to you. I'm just going to let you know. Everything we did is it directly indicates you and you. 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. Oh my god, I'm so sorry with this.

This can't be. Oh my god. 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 eye cloud, dropbox, email accounts. You need to pull all of your phones from your”

eye cloud, there's a lot of them that will show you what people 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. As Detective Gable gets more direct, Monica digs her heels in. We have a lot of evidence that shows us that you're involved in. And that's what we want to consider you have a lot of questions. I mean when I answer this question, we have a question for you.

It's not about if you did it, it's just we didn't want to understand what. I'll just tell you. Don't you think I'm just thinking about telling the truth. I am telling the truth. I need you to tell me the truth. I'm leaving now. Well, I'm going to see what be. All right. All right. Detective Gable leaves. Monica is still reeling from what she's just learned when Cynthia moves in again. So I guess he is your boyfriend, huh? Monica's on the back foot,

but she's defensive. And a fair isn't a crime. I said they've like they've been watching you everything you do. What I already do that, because you know when it's a murder investigation,

everyone, the stals is the first one to be followed. So I have no problem with hiding anything.

Hmm, that's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. It is if he kills your husband. That makes for a movie's all the time. You've probably seen a couple of him run.

“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 and it came 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, I'm out of everything if he didn't tell you that he killed your husband. I'm not going to protect him, are you? Monika 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 or 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 and we would play it back while. That's probably 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 two of them. Maybe in the garage, maybe in the sink if he put 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 to Baker. Now, when she's confronted with the

evidence, she's changed her tone. As the detectives drop her back off at herself, they vent their frustrations. I mean, come on though, for how can be a distance for you to come up with the exact same story that your boyfriend told us about the towel and the mental justice. In his police

police' best efforts, Monica and Baker seem 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 at a Monica, but for Deputy DA Beth Silverman, the Perkins operation with Selmaid Cynthia was still eye-opening. Some of it was what she said and also what she didn't say. Her demeanor that air against 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 had been all over this case. There have been helicopters hovering over Whitlin Hills and reporters camped outside the cemetery house. But that's nothing compared to what's going to happen when news gets out that the victim's wife and her rackable coach and X-point star boyfriend have been arrested. The detectives need to get ahead of this. Over in Toronto, Luigi Cementilly'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 Cementilly has just been woken up by a phone call from the

detectives. Finally, after five months, they've 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 handously 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. Or 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 a 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 then 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 as 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 LA, at his family's Woodland Hills home. It was 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 and my sisters. She was kind of holding it and regarding it, like 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 at Piffney after a Piffney. 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 and woke her up and said,

Over at the Wella offices in Los Angeles, Carol Protot is running a meeting with her team

when CEO Sousa's assistant Barbara Nauts on the door. Sousa needs to see you now and we're in a meeting, we'll kind of annoy the little bit of why does he need to take us out of a meeting now? We'll be there as soon as possible, five minute pass and then Barbara is here against like,

“"You need to come right now." Okay, that seems serious. Elisha Truzdale also gets a message at the same”

time. Says, "Come to Sousa office right now." Elisha was fabulous 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. 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 put 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 hair stylist was murdered at his home. Monica cementilly under our arrest now, on suspicion of murdering her husband and being held without bail.

“She had been arrested in her muck shot and he's muck shot and what the hell? And then you're like,”

"What that's the guy that was at the memorial?" I lost it. I screamed. I started crying. I couldn't handle. I couldn't hold it in. And we were just dumbfounded. Like literally shop number two,

I would have never, never in a million years to imagine this. Melanie Garabe, another of Fabio's

well-accrue, is in a different meeting when a friend texts her. I'm so sorry about Monica. I'm like, "What? Are you sure that's that? 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 sociopathing 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? You know? 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 who's 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 replying that time she and Melanie went over to the Woodland Hills house. Monica showed them her new Mustang. Carol remembers how Monica had glowed it, about playing the grieving widow to get a good deal. This phrase came back in my mind of the award-winning performance and 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, you know, and they showed 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 are, we're clowns over here. We were played the entire time." Thousands of miles away in Toronto, the Ouija and Fabio side of the cemetery 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 when I'm at 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 Canada, everything suddenly makes sense.

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 crescentines. 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 into. But there's someone still out there who knows what really happened on January 23, 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. They're still a missing suspect at large

“and he holds the key to unlocking the truth. Do you say he stabbed him?”

What? Is anybody hearing what I'm hearing? Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to. On lock 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 get the binge.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 get the binge.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 Pornam. Katherine Gottfried is our editor. Mark Pittam is our engineer, additional engineering by Daniel Kempson. For novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. For Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Katherine St. Louis and me, Jonathan Hirsch. Production management from Shari Huston,

Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolf. Fact checking by Fendell Fulton, research by Miron Kaplan. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews. novels director of development is Selena Meadow. Special thanks to Caroline Churre Levin at Miller, Corznik Raymond. And a big thanks to the whole sun music entertainment team. (upbeat music)