Key moments in ex-MLB player Serafini’s murder trial as CA court case nears end
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- The criminal case in the 2021 shooting of Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood is nearing its end.
- Their son-in-law, Daniel Serafini, was convicted and sentenced for shooting the couple.
- Samantha Scott pleaded guilty to being an accessory and is set to be sentenced.
Five years after Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood were ambushed by a masked gunman in the living room of their Lake Tahoe-area home, the Placer County criminal case seeking justice for the married couple is nearing its end.
A jury in July found the couple’s son-in-law, former Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini, guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder for the June 5, 2021, shooting that killed Spohr and severely wounded Wood.
The jury also found Serafini guilty of first-degree burglary for breaking into the couple’s Homewood home, where the prosecutor said Serafini hid before shooting his in-laws as they watched TV. Last month, Serafini, 52, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The criminal case isn’t over just yet. Samantha Scott, Serafini’s co-defendant who received a plea deal from prosecutors in exchange for her testimony in the murder trial, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday afternoon.
In February 2025, Scott pleaded guilty to a felony charge of being an accessory after the fact in the crime. The Placer County District Attorney’s Office has said the accessory charge could result in a sentence of 16 months to three years. The judge had postponed her sentencing until after the trial, delaying it further until after Serafini was sentenced.
Scott had been in jail custody since October 2023, when she and Serafini were arrested, and was released after she agreed to the plea deal. Scott spent 16 months in jail awaiting prosecution. One of Serafini’s attorneys argued in the trial that Scott, after she’s sentenced, will likely be free to go with time already served in jail.
Here are some of the key moments in Serafini’s murder trial.
Opening statements in the trial
The prosecutor explained the motive behind the living room ambush in the simplest terms for the jury: Serafini hated his wife’s parents, and he wanted them dead.
“’I’ll pay $20,000 to have them killed. They’re wealthy pieces of (expletive).’ That’s what he said about his in-laws Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood,” Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller told the jurors.
The legal defense strategy was just as direct: The prosecution had no physical evidence linking the retired MLB pitcher to the crime scene. David Dratman, one of Serafini’s attorneys, also argued that security camera video showed a masked intruder who appeared to be younger with a smaller and thinner body frame than Serafini.
“Danny Serafini is not the person in the video. He did not shoot his wife’s parents,” Dratman told the jury. “These are the facts in this case.”
Spohr, 70, died after being shot once in the head during the burglary at the couple’s West Lake Boulevard residence on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, the victims’ family has said. Wood, 68, 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.
Angry emails and text messages
Justin Infante, an investigator with the Placer County District Attorney’s Office, testified about numerous emails between Serafini, his wife and his wife’s parents. Spohr and his wife were wealthy and had given their daughter a $1.3 million loan to fund her fledgling horse ranch business that offered stable services and horse lessons.
“All we ask for is for financials, and you treat us like scum,” according to a March 2016 email from Spohr and Wood to their son-in-law.
Serafini married Erin Spohr, the shooting victims’ eldest daughter, in 2011, joining the wealthy family. She 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.
Erin Spohr said her parents’ estate was worth more than $20 million, wealth built over many years buying and selling real estate properties. She also testified that Serafini’s her parents made her younger sister, Adrienne Spohr, the sole trustee of their parents’ estate.
In a follow-up email, Wood explained how she and her husband had many mentors as they amassed their wealth learning as they went. She advised Serafini and his wife to do the same. She also told Serafini he spoke differently to them in person, but then hid “behind text messages” and became “vicious and belligerent” with them.
“Stop fighting with us, we do know what we’re doing,” Wood told Serafini in the email.
Serafini responded by telling his in-laws that he did not come “empty-handed” into the marriage with their daughter.
“I’ve always offered to pay my way since day one,” Serafini said in a March 2016 email. “So, you keep on judging my character and we’ll see how it turns out.”
His wife also responded to her parents, telling them that instead of giving them a chance, they have chosen to “insult, berate and belittle” them with their emails.
Key prosecution witness
Scott testified in court that Serafini offered her money to drive him from Nevada to the Lake Tahoe area on the day his wife’s parents were shot. She believed Serafini was picking up drugs.
Scott told the jury she saw Serafini pull out a gun with a PVC pipe from his backpack earlier that day. She said Serafini fired one shot from the gun at a sandy hill. Scott said he told her he had attached the PVC pipe to the gun to act as a silencer.
“He said he was just checking to see if it worked,” Scott said on the witness stand.
Scott told the jury she later learned that she dropped off Serafini that afternoon a few miles from his in-laws’ home and waited for hours before he returned. She testified they headed back to Nevada in her Subaru east on Interstate 80, and Serafini threw out his clothing, his backpack and the gun along the way. The prosecutor said those items were never found.
Shooting confession
Scott testified that Serafini told her about the shooting as they sat in his pickup truck one day in summer 2021 at his wife’s horse ranch.
“He had told me that he had shot Wendy twice in the head ... and she had survived,” Scott said on the witness stand last June. “It was shocking.”
She said Serafini didn’t tell her anything about how his father-in-law was shot.
Scott testified that up until then she had “suspicions” Serafini was involved in the shooting, but she didn’t think he was capable of it. She had already been questioned by sheriff’s detectives, and she said Serafini told her investigators might think she was involved.
During cross-examination, Scott testified she lied to investigators when they questioned her on two occasions, only revealing her role in January 2025. 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.
Serafini’s wife testifies
Erin Spohr, the retired MLB pitcher’s wife, said the relationship with her parents “was always a little tumultuous.” She testified that 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 told the jury she was getting along with her parents in the months before the shooting at their Lake Tahoe-area home.
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.
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.”
Murder trial ends with guilty verdict
In their closing arguments for the jury the attorneys focused on their strategies from the beginning of the trial.
The prosecutor said Serafini shot his in-laws after a decades-worth of heated arguments and built-up “resentment, anger and frustration” with his wife’s parents.
“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 defense attorney reminded the jury there was no evidence linking his client to the crime scene, and Serafini didn’t match the masked intruder in the video.
“Danny Serafini did not shoot his in-laws,” Dratman said in court. “What we’re dealing with here are the facts.”
The jury deliberated roughly three days before reaching a verdict on July 14 and finding Serafini guilty of his crimes.
After several months of Serafini’s legal challenges to the jury’s verdict, along with claims of ineffective assistance from his trial attorneys, Placer Superior Court Judge Garen J. Horst sentenced Serafini to spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.
As of Thursday, Serafini was serving his sentence at Wasco State Prison in Kern County.
