Former Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini glared at the jury as he was found guilty on Monday of murdering his father-in-law and attempting to kill his mother-in-law.
The 51-year-old former Minnesota Twins and Chicago Cubs player broke into Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood’s Lake Tahoe-area home in 2021 and shot dead Spohr at close range before firing at Wood, 69.
On Monday, a California jury declared that Serafini was guilty of first-degree murder for his father-in-law’s death, as well as the attempted murder of his mother-in-law and burglary, CBS News reports.
The jury also found Serafini was guilty of charge enhancements, including discharging of a firearm to cause great bodily injury, lying in wait and that the attack was woeful, willful and premeditated, according to KCRA.
However, the 10-woman, two-man jury found Serafini was not guilty of child endangerment as his children were not at the house at the time of the deadly shooting.
As jurors read out the verdict on Monday, the former professional athlete could be seen staring down the panel.
Prosecutors have claimed throughout the months-long trial that Serafini had been 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.
They also argued that the former baseball star 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.
Former Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini stared down the jury as it handed down its verdict on Monday
Retired businessman Gary Spohr, 70, and his wife Wendy Wood, then 69, were shot at their luxury Lake Tahoe home in 2021. He died and she miraculously survived only to hang herself two years later
Placer County prosecutor Richard Miller made his closing arguments in the case of Serafini
Serafini, they said, ultimately devised a plan to sneak into his wealthy in-laws home on June 5, 2021 when he knew they were spending time out on the lake with his wife and children.
He then waited with a .22-caliber gun for his wife and children to return to their Reno, Nevada home, and when Spohr and Wood were watching television shortly before 9am, Serafini opened fire, Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller told jurors.
Miller went on to claim that 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.
Still, 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 Serafini’s wife, Erin, and her other daughter, Adrienne, 39.
The two sisters are fighting to get custody of the couple’s estate – which they estimate to be worth $10 million.
It now seems that 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.
Making matters worse, her parents forced Serafini to sign a post-nuptial agreement one year after their wedding – meaning he would not get any of her money if their marriage were to end, Erin testified in court, according to the Sacramento Bee.
David Dratman, attorney for Serafini, pictured making his closing arguments last Tuesday
As the investigation into the shooting continued, authorities also discovered Serafini once said he would pay to have his in-laws killed.
”I’ll pay $20,000 to have them killed. They’re wealthy pieces of s***.’ That’s what he said about his in-laws,’ Miller told jurors back in May.
He said Serafini 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 overheard by a mine foreman saying he wanted to kill them in a furious phone call.
Transcripts of angry emails and text messages between Serafini and his wife’s parents further showed a heated, ongoing dispute over a $1.3 million loan from his in-laws to help fund Erin’s fledgling horse ranch business.
Yet the in-laws continued to help out their daughter – even providing her a check for $90,0000 on the day of the grisly murder.
Erin and Serafini’s two young children had visited the Lake Tahoe compound that day, and as they spent hours 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.
Police caught a masked intruder entering the Spohrs’ Hurricane Bay home on surveillance footage the night of June 5, 2021
Wearing a backpack and black hoodie, the man thought to be the killer carried a concealed .22-caliber gun as he strolled around Lake Tahoe on the day of the murder
Prosecutors have asserted 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.
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 with Serafini also inside.
By January, Scott confessed that she drove the former big-leaguer to Tahoe City that day, though she insisted she had left him by the Fat Cat Bar and Grill after he said he needed ‘to pick up a package.’
She claimed in court that she assumed Serafini was simply picking up cocaine, even though she had seen him earlier in the day test fire a handgun with an attached PVC pipe to act as a makeshift silencer.
The Lake Tahoe home where Robert Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood were killed in 2021
Serafini was arrested in October 2023 alongside his nanny and alleged lover, Samantha Scott (pictured) for the murder of his father-in-law and the attempted murder of his mother-in-law
Serafini played for six Major League Baseball teams including the Minnesota Twins, the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds
Scott said she collected him a few hours later for the drive back to Crescent Valley.
During that drive, Scott 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 that investigators never recovered.
Serafini’s defense therefore argued there is no physical evidence linking the former baseballer to the scene.
But in closing arguments last Tuesday, prosecutors showed the jury gruesome crime scene photos of the married couple with gunshot wounds, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller also reaffirmed that Serafini had built up ‘resentment, anger and frustration’ towards his wife’s parents after ‘decades-worth of heated arguments’.
As the prosecutors made their case last Tuesday, an emotionless Serafini was pictured inside the courtroom listening on.
Prosecutors say 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
His attorney David Dratman then made his own closing arguments, claiming that the prosecution do not have any physical evidence that links his client to the crime scene.
He noted that the security camera footage only showed a masked intruder entering the property and that the person appeared to have a much smaller body frame than Serafini.
‘Danny Serafini did not shoot his in-laws,’ Dratman said. ‘What we’re dealing with here are the facts.’
The former baseball star is now due to be sentenced on August 18, when he faces the possibility of life behind bars.
Serafini was an MLB pitcher who was drafted in 1992 and whose career spanned 11 years with multiple teams.
He played for the Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres, Chicago Cubs and finished his career with the Colorado Rockies back in 2007.