Ex-MLB player’s wife testifies in accused husband’s Placer County murder trial
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Erin Spohr testified about her parents, her open marriage and an affair.
- Prosecutors allege Daniel Serafini shot his in-laws over financial disputes.
- Key witness Samantha Scott claimed Serafini confessed about the shooting.
A Placer County murder trial for former Major League Baseball player Daniel Serafini continued Thursday with testimony from his wife who told jurors she had an up-and-down relationship with her late parents throughout her life.
Erin Spohr, the retired MLB pitcher’s wife, said the relationship with her parents “was always a little tumultuous.” She said her mother “had a strong personality,” and she had heated arguments with her parents about her husband and over money, but that they always made up and traveled on vacations together as a family.
She testified that she was getting along with her parents in the months before the shooting at their Lake Tahoe-area home.
Serafini is on trial in connection with a reported burglary at the home of his wife’s parents, Gary Spohr, 70, and Wendy Wood, 68. Serafini, 51, is accused of shooting the married couple four years ago as they watched TV inside their home.
Spohr died after being shot once in the head during the June 5, 2021, burglary at the couple’s Homewood residence on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, the victims’ family has said. Wood suffered two gunshot wounds to the head but regained consciousness and called authorities for help. Wood received extensive rehabilitation but died a year after the shooting.
Authorities arrested Serafini and family friend Samantha Scott in October 2023 in connection with the deadly shooting. Scott has since agreed to a plea deal and testified as a key witness for the prosecution in Serafini’s trial, which began May 19.
Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller has told the jury that Serafini convinced Scott to drive him from Nevada and drop him off a few miles from his wife’s parents’ home. The prosecutor said Serafini snuck into the house while his wife and their two children were spending time with her parents on the lake. Miller said Serafini then waited in the house for his family to leave and head back to Reno before he ambushed his wife’s parents.
Spohr was called to the witness stand by the prosecution Wednesday to testify in her husband’s trial.
During cross-examination Thursday by the defense, Erin Spohr said she was “100%” traumatized by losing her parents in such a manner, by a search warrant served at her home in connection with the shooting and by investigators poking into her private life and searching through her phone records and computers.
She also told the jury it’s been difficult not being able to have a private conversation with her husband since his 2023 arrest. Serafini is being held at the Placer County Jail pending the conclusion of his criminal case.
Serafini’s affair with Scott
Spohr testified that she and her husband had an open marriage, sometimes including threesomes with other women. And she said they would have sex with others separately in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell type of arrangement. She told the jury that some of their closest friends knew of the arrangement she had with her husband.
Her idea of marriage was formulated in part by her father cheating on her mother, Spohr said in court. She said her mother would get angry over her father’s cheating and hire private investigators to follow him around, so Spohr didn’t want to have that type of relationship with her husband.
Scott has testified that she began an affair with Serafini in October 2021, about five months after the deadly shooting. She said the affair continued up until their arrest two years later. She said they continued to communicate while in custody via “jail kites,” hand-written messages in which he would offer emotional support and she would express her devotion to him.
Spohr told the jurors that her husband told her he was having sex with Scott in November 2021, and she now knows he wasn’t telling her everything about his relationship with Scott. She said Scott was being deceptive by not telling her about the true nature of the relationship with her husband.
“I feel very deceived by her,” Spohr said on the witness stand. “Why wouldn’t she tell me? She was my friend, she’s picking up my kids from school, she’s having dinner at my house.”
Spohr said she doesn’t feel as deceived by her husband over his affair with Scott, and she still trusts him “100%.”
She also said she believes Scott was deceptive in court when she testified that Serafini confessed to her that he shot Wood in the head and that he threw out a gun, his clothes and a backpack on their drive from Lake Tahoe back to Nevada.
Serafini’s wife said she felt it was “creepy” that Scott has changed her appearance to look like Spohr in the five months since her release from jail. David Fischer, one of Serafini’s attorneys, asked Spohr to compare photos of herself and Scott taken outside of court.
Spohr said Scott seemed to have a similar hair color and style, along with similar clothes and sunglasses.
Spohr testified that Scott — before the affair — seemed to be attracted to her husband and to want the same kind of life she had.
“I just think it’s odd,” Spohr said about Scott. “She just always seemed to be around.”
Arguments over money
The prosecutor has said in court that Serafini hated his wife’s wealthy parents and told others he was willing to pay $20,000 to have them killed. Serafini married Erin Spohr, the shooting victims’ eldest daughter, in 2011. Spohr testified that her parents forced Serafini to sign a post-nuptial agreement a year later that means he wouldn’t get any of his wife’s money if the marriage were to end.
The jury has been shown transcripts of angry emails and text messages between Serafini and his wife’s parents that show a heated, ongoing dispute over a $1.3 million loan from his in-laws to help fund his wife’s fledgling horse ranch business. The emails and text messages also included heated arguments between Serafini’s wife and her parents.
Lawsuits between Erin Spohr and her sister, Adrienne Spohr, allege money played a role in the June 2021 deadly shooting.
On Thursday, Serafini’s wife testified that her parents made her younger sister the sole trustee of their parents’ estate worth more than $20 million — wealth built over many years buying and selling real estate properties. If their parents died, the sisters would split their inheritance.
Serafini was drafted in 1992 by the Minnesota Twins. A left-handed pitcher, he also played for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies, according to Baseball Reference.
He played his last MLB game in 2007 before being suspended for 50 games after failing a drug test, according to an ESPN report. Two years later, he played for Italy in the World Baseball Classic.
Serafini and his wife were featured in a 2015 episode of Paramount Network’s “Bar Rescue,” in which he told producers he had lost $14 million in “bad investments and a bitter divorce settlement” following the end of his major league career.
He purchased a bar called the Bullpen in Sparks, Nevada, and according to the TV show, Serafini was $300,000 in debt and at risk of losing his home and his parents’ house.
Criminal charges
The Placer County District Attorney’s Office charged Serafini and Scott with murder in Spohr’s death, along with a charge of attempted murder in the shooting that wounded Wood. The filed charges indicate prosecutors believe Serafini was the person who shot his wife’s parents, not Scott.
In February, Scott pleaded guilty to a felony charge of being an accessory after the fact in the crime. Her sentencing hearing has not been scheduled. Prosecutors have said the accessory charge could result in a sentence of 16 months to three years.
Spohr’s testimony in Serafini’s trial ended Thursday. Placer Superior Court Judge Garen J. Horst has said he expects the murder trial will continue through July 25, with jury deliberations possibly beginning July 18.
