Daniel Serafini stares down jury as former MLB pitcher learns fate after father-in-law’s murder

Former Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini was found guilty on Monday of murdering his father-in-law and attempting to kill his mother-in-law.

A jury in California convicted the 51-year-old former Minnesota Twins and Chicago Cubs player of first-degree murder, attempted murder and burglary for the death of his wealthy father-in-law Gary Spohr, 70, and the shooting of his mother-in-law Wendy Wood, then 69, at their Tahoe-area home in 2021, 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.

The former professional athlete was  then seen staring down the jurors as the verdict was handed down on Monday.

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.

He 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, and waited with a .22-caliber gun for his wife and children to return to their Reno, Nevada home. 

Then, when Spohr and Wood were watching television shortly before 9am, Serafini opened fire.

Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller also 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.

As the investigation into the shooting continued, authorities 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.

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.

Erin and Serafini’s two young children even 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 Samantha 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.

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 that investigators never recovered.

Serafini’s defense therefore argued there is no physical evidence linking the former baseballer to the scene.

But 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 told the jury of how 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.

One of Serafini’s attorney’s, David Dratman, also made his closing arguments on the day and claimed 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.

In court, Dratman said: ‘Danny Serafini did not shoot his in-laws. What we’re dealing with here are the facts.’

He 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.