Former Serra High baseball star Dan Serafini was convicted on Monday by a Placer County jury of first-degree murder and attempted murder in the 2021 shooting of his wife’s parents.
Serafini, the 26th overall pick in the 1992 draft who pitched for seven seasons in the majors, was found guilty of shooting his father-in-law, Gary Spohr, and severely wounding his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood on June 5, 2021 at the couple’s Lake Tahoe-area home. Serafini also was convicted of first-degree burglary.
Serafini, a 51-year-old graduate of the San Mateo private school, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Sentencing has been set for Aug. 18.
Prosecutors told the jury that Serafini snuck into his in-laws’ house on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe while his wife and their two children were spending time with her parents on the lake and he waited four hours for his family to leave and head back to their home in Reno before he ambushed the couple.
Spohr, who was 70, was shot once in the head and found dead at the scene by deputies. Wood, who was 68, initially survived two shots to the head and called authorities, but died a year later.
Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller, who prosecuted Serafini, told the jury that Serafini hated his wife’s wealthy parents and told others he was willing to pay $20,000 to have them killed, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Money was believed to play a role in the killings. Serafini, who made approximately $14 million in his pro baseball career, was in debt due to poor investments, including a bar in Sparks, Nevada that was featured on an episode of the reality show ‘Bar Rescue.’ Erin Spohr, his wife and the daughter of the victims, said in court that she received a check for approximately $90,000 from her mother earlier on the day of the killings and the couple frequently received money from her parents.
Serafini graduated from Serra in 1992 and was a first-round pick of the Minnesota Twins. He pitched for six teams over a seven-year MLB career and had a stint in the Giants’ minor-league system. After pitching for the Colorado Rockies in 2007, he received a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance. He said medicine prescribed during his previous three seasons in Japan produced the positive tests.
Serafini was arrested in October 2023 in Nevada and charged with the murder of Spohr and the attempted murder of Wood. Samantha Scott, a former family nanny, accepted a plea deal and became a witness in the prosecution’s case against Serafini. She testified that she drove him from Nevada to Lake Tahoe on the day of the shooting, thinking he was going there to buy cocaine.
Serafini remains married to Erin Spohr. Scott testified that she and Serafini began an affair months after the shooting that continued until their arrest, and they remained in communication while in custody.