21-05-2025
'Murderer' ex-MLB star's 'four evil words about in-laws he shot while having affair with nanny'
A former Major League Baseball pitcher called his in-laws 'wealthy pieces of s***' before he allegedly shot them inside their home.
Dan Serafini, 51, who played for six MLB teams including the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago Cubs, is accused of shooting dead his wealthy father-in-law Gary Spohr, 70, and attempting to kill his mother-in-law Wendy Wood, then 69, in 2021.
When his lengthy murder trial kicked off on Monday, jurors heard how he spoke about how much he hated his wealthy in-laws and even told others that he wanted them dead, as he continued his affair with the nanny, Samantha Scott, 35.
"'I'll pay $20,000 to have them killed. They're wealthy pieces of s***.' That's what he said about his in-laws,' Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller told jurors on Monday, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Serafini allegedly made the comment in 2012, the same year he married their daughter, Erin, now 36.
Then, just three months before the murder, Serafini was also allegedly overheard by a mine foreman saying he wanted to kill them in a furious phone call.
Prosecutors now say Serafini's relationship with his in-laws had been fraught from the beginning - and tensions only grew worse as the former pitcher and his wife found themselves partially reliant on handouts from her wealthy parents.
But in a shocking twist, Erin is expected to speak out in defense of her husband - and argue that he could not have killed her parents.
Erin and Serafini's two young children had visited her parents at their Lake Tahoe compound the day of the grisly murder, when Wood handed Erin a check for $90,000.
As the family spent the day boating on the lake, a masked man was caught on camera sneaking into Spohr's Tahoe City shortly after 5pm.
Just over an hour later, five gunshots were heard in rapid succession from inside the property with the masked killer caught leaving the home a few minutes before 9pm.
Prosecutors now assert that the man captured on camera was Serafini, who had been driven to Tahoe City by his lover Scott - who was arrested alongside the former baseball star in October 2023 but is now set to testify against him.
They allege the former professional pitcher was in desperate need of cash following an acrimonious divorce and a failed bar venture for which he lost $14 million in earnings from his baseball career.
He then allegedly snuck into the home when he knew his wife and children and waited with a .22-caliber gun for his wife and children to return to their Reno home.
Then as Spohr and Wood were watching television shortly before 9am, Miller said Serafini opened fire.
The prosecutor claimed Spohr was 'executed' with a bullet to the back of his head, while Wood was struck by gunfire, vomited and bled on the couch before she crawled to a bathroom where she managed to call 911.
She was so badly injured that she could only gasp for air.
Emergency responders rushed to the scene, where they found Spohr's body along with bullet shell casings and bloodstains splattered around the luxury home.
Medics found Wood in the bathroom, and flew her to the hospital in Reno, where she spent the next month in intensive care.
She ultimately hanged herself in 2023 and her will is now the subject of a contentious legal battle between Erin and her other daughter, Adrienne, 39, who are fighting to get custody of the couple's estate - which they estimate to be worth $10 million.
Following the homicide, Scott claimed she was in Elko on the day of the murder and said Serafini had spent the previous night with her there at the Red Lion Casino before leaving to return to his Crescent Valley trailer.
But her tale changed when police confronted her with cellphone pings that placed her first in Crescent Valley, then Reno and next crossing into California where her phone pinged near Truckee – a border town close to Tahoe City.
In Tahoe City, her tan Subaru was captured on home surveillance footage parking close to the Spohr residence at 6:42pm that night.
The car was repeatedly seen moving from parking spot to parking spot before driving off at 9:22pm that night allegedly with Serafini also inside.
In a lengthy interview with authorities in January, Scott told how she drove the former big-leaguer to Tahoe City that day but insisted she had left him by the Fat Cat Bar and Grill after he said he needed 'to pick up a package.
She said she collected him a few hours later for the drive back to Crescent Valley.
During that drive, Scott allegedly claimed Serafini disassembled the gun and threw it out of the moving vehicle's window along with his clothes and a backpack - which prosecutors admitted on Friday that investigators never recovered.
Serafini's defense therefore say there is no physical evidence linking the former baseballer to the scene.
His attorney, David Dratman, also argued that the masked figure in the security footage appeared to be younger and with a smaller frame than his client.
'Danny Serafini is not the person in the video. He did not shoot his wife's parents,' the attorney told jurors in his opening statement.
'These are the facts of the case.'
At that point, Dratman turned his attention to discrediting Scott.
He claimed that she combed through the prosecution's evidence during a hearing over the summer and then decided to provide an account 'designed to fill-in the weaknesses' of the prosecution's case against Serafini.
Dratman also noted that Scott had been facing 25 years to life in prison before she pleaded guilty in February to being an accessory after the fact - and argued that prosecutors promised her that the felony charge would be dropped to a misdemeanor if she were to testify against his client.
Scott would then be released after she testified with credit for time already served, Dratman claimed.
As Serafini's trial continues, the defense is also expected to argue that there were plenty of other people with reason to want to kill Spohr and Wood - who had been nightmare neighbors and the subject of restraining orders at the time of the attack.
Court papers seen by bear that out.
Wood was convicted of attacking a man with a paddle board paddle for fishing outside her home in 2018 while Spohr had been involved in a laundry list of court cases dating back to 2011.
Dratman and Serafini's other lawyer, David Fischer, also say the Spohrs' other daughter Adrienne benefitted financially from her parents' deaths. She is currently dating a convicted bank robber named in court papers as 'T.H'.
previously revealed that 'T.H' is Taylor Hatton, 39, who was convicted of robbing the First Community Bank in Taos, New Mexico, in 2008 and brandishing a firearm during the heist.
He was eventually arrested in Albuquerque, convicted and released from jail in 2014 according to Bureau of Prisons records.
They say the man caught on camera could have been Hatton, although Richard Miller – who is leading the prosecution – noted in court last week that Hatton is just 5ft 9 while the masked man is closer to Serafini's 6ft 1 height.
Serafini is now facing charges of murder, attempted murder, lying in wait and child endangerment because his two children were in the home shortly before the shooting.
His trial is expected to continue through July 25, with jury deliberations tentatively scheduled for July 18.
