Jury hears arguments in Placer County murder trial for accused former MLB player
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Prosecutors accuse Daniel Serafini of ambushing and shooting in-laws.
- Defense questions evidence, cites masked intruder video and height discrepancy.
- Key witness Samantha Scott testified Serafini confessed and secured her plea deal.
A prosecutor on Tuesday showed crimes scene photos of a married couple with gunshot wounds splayed on the floor of their Lake Tahoe-area home.
Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller told a Placer County jury that the couple’s son-in-law, a retired Major League Baseball player, shot them after a decades-worth of heated arguments and built-up “resentment, anger and frustration” with his wife’s parents.
Daniel Serafini, the former MLB pitcher, is accused of shooting Gary Spohr, 70, and Wendy Wood, 68, four years ago at their home. Serafini’s murder trial, which began May 19, neared its end Tuesday as attorneys gave their closing arguments.
“This was an awful crime,” Miller told the jurors. “Gary and Wendy had to die. (This crime was) committed by somebody who hates Gary and Wendy.”
The prosecutor has said in court that Serafini, 51, hated his wife’s wealthy parents and told others he was willing to pay $20,000 to have them killed.
David Dratman, one of Serafini’s attorneys, has argued the prosecution does not have any physical evidence that links his client to the crime scene, noting that security camera video showed a masked intruder entering the couple’s home who appeared to be younger with a smaller and thinner body frame than the retired professional baseball player.
On Tuesday, Dratman told the jury that a FBI expert who testified for the prosecution said the masked suspect in the video stood 6-foot-2, plus or minus three-quarters of an inch. The defense attorney argued that two law enforcement investigators testified that Serafini’s height is 6-foot-3.
“Danny Serafini did not shoot his in-laws,” Dratman said in court. “What we’re dealing with here are the facts.”
Serafini is on trial in connection with a reported burglary at the home of his wife’s parents. Serafini is accused of shooting Spohr and Wood 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.
The Placer County District Attorney’s Office charged Serafini with murder in Spohr’s death, along with a charge of attempted murder in the shooting that wounded Wood. Prosecutors believe Serafini was the person who shot his wife’s parents, not Scott.
Scott testified that Serafini convinced her to drive him from Nevada in her Subaru Outback and drop him off a few miles from his wife’s parents’ home. She told the jury that she assumed Serafini was heading to Lake Tahoe to pick up cocaine, and she saw him earlier that day test-fire a handgun with an attached PVC pipe to act as a makeshift silencer.
“He said he was just checking to see if it worked,” Scott said on the witness stand.
Scott testified that she didn’t know Serafini’s in-laws lived nearby. She said she dropped him off and waited hours before Serafini returned. She said she drove him back to Nevada with Serafini getting rid of his clothing, a backpack and the handgun by throwing the items out of the moving vehicle along the highway.
Major League Baseball career
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 professional 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 married Erin Spohr, the shooting victims’ eldest daughter, in 2011. Erin Spohr testified in the trial that her parents forced Serafini to sign a post-nuptial agreement a year after the wedding, an agreement that means he wouldn’t get any of his wife’s money if the marriage were to end.
The prosecutor told the jury that Serafini’s in-laws made it clear to him with that signed document: Don’t divorce our daughter and you’ll share her half of her inheritance from her parents.
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.
Lawsuits between Erin Spohr and her sister, Adrienne Spohr, allege money played a role in the June 2021 deadly shooting.
The jury has been shown transcripts of angry emails and text messages between Serafini and his wife’s parents showing 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.
The prosecutor argued that Serafini’s in-laws would give him and his wife enormous amounts of money in loans the couple knew they eventually wouldn’t have to pay back. But Miller said those loans came with “some pretty powerful strings” that made his wife’s parents seem controlling.
Spohr testified that her relationship with her late parents “was always a little tumultuous,” and she and her husband had heated arguments with her parents over money. The former MLB pitcher’s wife said that she and her parents always made up.
She said in court her parents still helped her financially from time to time, and her mother gave her a $90,000 check before she left her parents home on the day they were shot. Her parents, not long before the shooting, had given Serafini a loan to buy a GTO, the car of his dreams.
Serafini’s attorney told the jury on Tuesday that the District Attorney’s Office has the burden to prove his client’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It’s a decision that will stay with you for the rest of your lives, and the rest of Mr. Serafini’s life,” Dratman said.
Testimony about affair
A few years before the shooting, Scott met Serafini’s wife at Erin Spohr’s horseback riding business and became friends. Scott would often do odd jobs for Spohr and her family, including working as a nanny, in exchange for horseback lessons and housing her horse at Spohr’s stables.
Scott 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.
Scott told the jury that Serafini confessed to her in the summer 2021, telling Scott that he shot Wood twice in the head. That same summer, Scott went on trip to an island along the Washington coast after Serafini’s wife insisted she join them on a family vacation that included Serafini and his mother-in-law who was suffering a traumatic brain injury from the shooting. And she said her friendship with Serafini’s wife continued until her arrest.
Spohr testified that her husband told her he was having sex with Scott in November 2021, but she didn’t care because they had an open marriage. She said she now knows he wasn’t telling her everything about his relationship with Scott. She said Scott was being deceptive on the witness stand about her husband’s alleged confession in the shooting of her parents.
Spohr said she doesn’t feel as deceived by her husband over his affair with Scott, and she still trusts him “100%.”
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.
On the witness stand, Scott said she lied to investigators when they questioned her on two occasions, only revealing her role in the crime six months ago. She said she lied to her own attorney about it until she met with the prosecution in hopes of a plea deal. She said she lied to her own family and still hasn’t told them.
Dratman has argued that Scott sat through a four-day preliminary hearing last year, when the prosecution presented its case to a judge to determine whether there was sufficient evidence for a trial. The defense attorney said Scott carefully looked at the prosecution’s evidence and months later provided an account “designed to fill-in the weaknesses” of the prosecution’s case against Serafini.
The criminal charges
Serafini’s charges include special allegation and circumstance enhancements that allege he used a .22-caliber gun to kill Spohr during a burglary while lying in wait for the victim, according to the criminal complaint. The enhancements made Serafini eligible for the death penalty if convicted. But the District Attorney’s Office in September said it would not to seek a capital sentence.
Serafini also faces a charge of first-degree residential burglary stemming from the June 2021 shooting. Serafini faces enhancements for allegedly using a gun and causing great bodily injury to the two victims during the burglary, along with an enhancement that alleges he used a .22 caliber gun to shoot Wood.
The former MLB player faces an additional charge of child endangerment listing his two children, 3-years-old and 6-months-old at the time, as victims on the day of the shooting, according to the criminal complaint.
The prosecutor told the jury 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 four hours for his family to leave and head back to Reno before he ambushed his wife’s parents.
“You know why he thought he could get away with this right under his wife’s nose,” Miller argued in court before he pointed to Serafini. “There’s a murderer in this room. He’s sitting right there.”
The jury will begin their deliberations Tuesday afternoon and decide Serafini’s fate.
This story was originally published July 8, 2025 at 2:12 PM.
