Ex-MLB Player Daniel Serafini Gunned Down In-Laws for $23M Fortune — with Babysitter's Help. Inside the Shocking Case (Exclusive) By Chris Spargo

It had been a long winter made all the more difficult by COVID restrictions for wealthy real estate investors Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood, who in 2021 found themselves unable to travel or welcome friends to the $3.5 million home they had built on Lake Tahoe in Homewood, Calif., for their retirement. But on June 5, 2021, the couple were able to enjoy a day of boating with their favorite guests — their 8-month-old and 3-year-old grandsons. The couple’s daughter Erin Spohr, 39, arrived with the boys behind schedule, cutting short their time on the lake, but that didn’t matter to Wendy, 68, as she walked back to the house that evening hand in hand with the toddler while Gary, 70, cooked dinner for the group.

Before Erin packed the boys into the family’s SUV for the drive home to Reno at 7:45 p.m., her mother handed her a check for $90,000 — a gift to help Erin build the indoor horse-riding ring she had dreamed of. And then Wendy and Gary headed into the house, completely unaware that a masked man seen on surveillance video entering the garage hours earlier was lying in wait inside. An hour later, authorities say, the intruder emerged from hiding and opened fire on the couple. Gary was shot in the back of the head and died on the spot; Wendy, who was hit twice in the head and once in the hand, survived. She dialed 911, and although she was unable to speak, a dispatcher sent law enforcement to the house within minutes. They rushed Wendy to a hospital. 

In the next weeks “she relearned how to walk and write and even went hiking,” says Adrienne Spohr, 35, the couple’s youngest daughter. “She was amazing.” But as Wendy tried to get on with her life, she struggled with depression and anxiety. In 2023 she died by suicide at an assisted-living facility. “The heartbreak of losing my dad — and knowing who was responsible [for his death] — became too much,” says Adrienne. “She said it felt like she had lost her right arm.”

Although Wendy suffered brain damage and could never remember the night she was shot, she was convinced that the masked intruder — who fled from the scene before police arrived — was her daughter Erin’s husband, former Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini, 51. For years, Wendy and Gary had a volatile relationship with their son-in-law, clashing repeatedly over politics and money. It would take police more than two years to gather sufficient evidence of his involvement, but on Oct. 20, 2023, Sera­fini and an accomplice, Samantha Scott, 35 — a close friend of his wife’s with whom he was having an affair — were arrested, and they were later charged with the murder of Gary and the attempted murder of Wendy. 

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Serafini’s six-week murder trial began at the Placer County courthouse in Auburn, Calif., on May 19, 2025. Prosecutors argued that the former pitcher, who lost the $14 million he had earned in the major leagues on bad investments, was financially dependent on Erin’s parents, whom he once called “wealthy pieces of s—,” and wanted them dead so that he could share his wife’s inheritance of their $23 million estate. 

In a dramatic turn, his codefendant, Scott, struck a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser accessory charge in return for testifying against her lover in court. At trial, Scott said she drove Serafini to and from Lake Tahoe on the day of the shootings and had watched him fire a gun to test the crude plastic-pipe silencer he planned to use. On July 14, 2025, the jury found Serafini guilty of murder, attempted murder and first-­degree burglary in the attack on his in-laws. His sentencing was set for Aug. 18. Says Placer County D.A. Morgan Gire: “There can never truly be closure for Gary and Wendy’s family and friends. We hope this verdict provides some semblance of resolve as they move forward.” 

An equestrian from a young age, Erin met her future husband Serafini, then a 31-year-old married father of two children, in 2006 when she was hired by Serafini’s then wife to train the family’s horses. Just 19 at the time, she testified at her husband’s trial, she didn’t consider the older professional baseball player as a potential romantic partner. But four years later a mutual friend let her know that Serafini, then divorcing, was asking for her number. She agreed to fly from San Jose, where she was studying to be a dental hygienist, to go on a date with Serafini in Reno. They were married in a barefoot beach ceremony in Hawaii the following year.

From the day they began dating, when Sera­fini was still playing baseball and spending months away from home, the couple maintained an open relationship that allowed sex with other partners. “It was kind of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ sometimes,” Erin testified. “My father cheated on my mom our whole upbringing. So for me, sexual things were a little more fluid.”

Serafini’s relationship with his wife’s parents was contentious from the start. When Erin dropped out of dental school in San Jose to be with Serafini in Reno, her parents threatened to sue him for the tuition they had paid. And ­shortly after the wedding, Wendy demanded that her new son-in-law sign a postnuptial agreement that would cut off his access to the multimillion-dollar trust set up by Wendy and Gary for their daughters if he and Erin divorced. Serafini agreed to sign the papers.

While Erin said in court that she was not involved in drafting the postnuptial agreement, she added that she wasn’t surprised by her mother’s actions: “I have probably been cut off by my mom about 30 times in my life, from when I was 18 to when she passed away. My mom would send emails and throw daggers,” Erin said on the witness stand. “It would happen all the time. When I was younger, [she would] stop making a truck payment. Stop making payments to college, if I were in college. Cut the phones off. Cut the car insurance. Then when I was older, it was communication just completely cut off.” Wendy also threatened to disinherit her “a few times,” Erin said.

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As a couple, Erin, who runs an equestrian center at her home in Reno, and Serafini, who since 2017 had worked as an equipment operator at a remote Nevada gold mine, often quarreled with Gary and Wendy. Erin said her parents were generous — paying for the couple’s homes and cars, IVF treatments, school tuition for their sons, family vacations and country club memberships — yet would control how the money was spent and cut off communication for months at a time when they had disagreements. 

In 2016, when the couples were at odds over how Erin and Serafini would use $1.3 million in cash given to them by Erin’s parents to buy property, Serafini lashed out at his father-in-law in an email that investigators found on his wife’s phone: “Take the f—ing house. But if Gary ever says f— you to me again I will knock him the f— out. How’s that for temper control? This is his final warning.” After another dispute with his in-laws in 2021, Serafini wrote: “I’m going to kill the motherf—ers one day.” Still, he remained dependent on them: Prosecutors claim the former pro athlete received a $70,000 check from Wendy to buy his “dream car” weeks before the couple were ambushed at home. 

News of the fatal shooting sent tremors through the tranquil lake community, where local police hadn’t investigated a homicide in 20 years. With little evidence to go on other than the video of a person stealthily approaching Gary and Wendy’s house, and with no signs of forced entry or theft, investigators soon focused their search for the killer on somebody who knew the victims and was familiar with the house layout. They interviewed family members and canvased the neighborhood, but to no avail. Within a year the case went cold. 

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At the same time, tension was building in the victims’ family. Adrienne, who worked closely with authorities, held a press conference to appeal to the public and offer a $150,000 reward for information. Her sister Erin and brother-in-law Serafini were notably not at the event. Then, on the second anniversary of the crime, June 5, 2023, Adrienne publicly accused them of involvement in the attack on her parents in a wrongful-death lawsuit. 

Finally there was a break in the criminal investigation in 2023. Armed with search warrants, detectives had seized Erin’s and Serafini’s electronic devices and discovered cellphone data that placed Scott, Erin’s close friend who babysat the couple’s children, at the Red Lion hotel in Elko, Nev., on the night before the shootings. Surveillance video from the front desk showed Scott as she paid for a room with a hot tub that she shared with Serafini.

When questioned by police, Scott initially lied about her part in the crime and the nature of her relationship with Serafini. But after taking a plea and being given immunity, she told a different account. On the witness stand at Serafini’s trial, she testified that they first met after she began taking riding lessons with his wife in 2017. She and Erin became fast friends, and soon Scott was helping out with everything from childcare to horse deliveries. Serafini was also warm, friendly — and attractive. With that in mind, she said, she didn’t give much thought to Serafini’s request that she meet him in Elko, near the gold mine where he worked, on June 4, 2021, and drive him to Lake Tahoe the following day. Scott, who had taken drugs with Serafini, said she thought he was buying cocaine. 

When they arrived outside Homewood, Scott said, she waited in the parked car for five hours as Serafini hid out in his in-laws’ house until Gary and Wendy returned from the lake. As they drove home after the shooting, Scott said, Sera­fini disassembled his gun and tossed it into a ravine after they crossed the Nevada state line. Five months later, as Scott and Serafini’s relationship intensified, she recalled, he told her that he had shot his mother-in-law, implying he’d killed his father-in-law as well. He threatened to kill Scott if she told anybody, she said. But by then Scott didn’t need a reason to lie on his behalf. She did it for Dan, she told the court.

All the while, Scott maintained her friendship with Erin, who has denied any involvement in the plot to kill her parents and has never been criminally charged. Until Scott’s arrest, she continued to babysit Erin’s children; she spent time with Erin’s mother months after the shootings; and Scott and Erin traveled together to Mexico in 2022 for elective surgery paid for by Serafini.

Erin, meanwhile, has stood by her husband. At his trial she testified that the figure seen in the surveillance video did not look like the man she “laid next to for 13 years of my life,” adding, “He’s always been there for me. He’s an amazing father, great provider. He’s my best friend.” That loyalty, however, has destroyed her relationship with her sole surviving family member, Adrienne. In addition to the wrongful-death suit, the sisters are fighting over the Lake Tahoe home that Wendy and Gary put into the trust for them. “My parents were forces of nature. They were strong, adventurous, generous, and they loved deeply,” says Adrienne. “That’s how I want people to remember them — not as victims but as the incredible people they were.”