Ex-MLB pitcher convicted of Placer murder testifies about Tahoe-area shooting
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Daniel Serafini testified that his lawyers failed to hire expert witnesses.
- Serafini was convicted in July of murder in the shooting of his wife’s parents.
- The former Major League Baseball pitcher is asking the court for a new trial.
Daniel Serafini, a former Major League Baseball player convicted of murder in Placer County, testified on Monday about when he said he learned his wife’s parents were victims in a shooting at their Lake Tahoe-area home.
The retired MLB pitcher said he had driven from Nevada to the Reno home he shared with his wife, Erin Spohr, and their two children. Serafini said he arrived home and found his wife distraught.
“She was upset, we both were,” Serafini said on the witness stand.
A jury in July found Serafini guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder for the shooting that killed his father-in-law Gary Spohr, 70, and severely wounded his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood, 68, at their home. The jury also found Serafini guilty of first-degree burglary for the break-in at the couple’s West Lake Boulevard home.
Spohr died after being shot once in the head during the 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.
On Monday afternoon, Serafini continued his testimony in support of a defense motion seeking a new trial for the retired professional basebally player. Barry Zimmerman, Serafini’s attorney, has argued in court that his client received ineffective assistance from his two trial attorneys, David Dratman and David Fischer.
Serafini did not testify in his trial. He said he told his attorneys he wanted to testify on different occasions.
“I wanted them to make it public that it wasn’t me,” Serafini said in court. “I told them I wanted to testify, and that was that.”
Defendants in California criminal cases have a right not to testify in court. Serafini said his trial attorneys told him he didn’t need to testify to prove his innocence in this case.
Samantha Scott, Serafini’s co-defendant who received a plea deal from prosecutors, testified she drove Serafini and dropped him off a few miles away from his in-laws’ home on the day of the shooting. Scott told the jury that Serafini returned to where she waited for him hours later with a gun she had seen him with earlier in the day, throwing the gun, his clothes and other items from her Subaru as they headed back to Nevada that night.
The former MLB player testified that he was with Scott and gave her $25,000 in cash to give to “a buddy of mine” for an under-the-table investment. Serafini said he gave Scott the money several hours before the Lake Tahoe-area shooting, and she left to Reno where she would hand over the money.
Serafini, who didn’t provide any further details about the investment while testifying, asked Scott about the investment money months later. He said Scott told him she gave the friend the $25,000 in cash, and he then paid her three payments of $3,000 over three months for delivering the money.
He testified that two women saw him in Crescent Valley, Nevada, about a five-hour drive away from Lake Tahoe, on the afternoon of the shooting. He was temporarily living there in a trailer while he worked for a nearby mining company.
One of the women was a married woman he was having an affair with and the other was a neighbor, who initially said she saw Serafini on the day his wife’s parents were shot but later clarified she saw Serafini on the day after the shooting.
In court Monday, Serafini said the neighbor saw him outside his trailer wearing boxer shorts with pineapples as he lifted a flipped electricity breaker on his trailer on the afternoon of the shooting. He said the neighbor then told her boyfriend, who was traveling home on the day after the deadly shooting, about seeing Serafini in the unusual boxer shorts the day before.
Security camera video captured a masked intruder on June 5, 2021, enter the couple’s home during daylight and leave hours later after sunset.
Serafini testified that his neighbor couldn’t have seen him in Nevada the following afternoon, because was on his way to Reno on June 6, 2021, when he learned of the shooting
He said he was expecting both women would testify in the trial, along with hired expert witnesses who would review the prosecution’s evidence and testify in court. Serafini said he believed his trial attorneys would do all this, but they didn’t.
Judge Garen J. Horst scheduled Serafini, who remains in custody at the Placer County Jail, to return to court next Monday to continue his testimony. The judge has also scheduled a Feb. 13 hearing for testimony for other witnesses before the attorneys argue over Serafini’s motion for a new trial.
The former MLB player, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 20, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
