A former Major League Baseball pitcher had continued his sordid affair with his nanny even after they were both arrested for murder.
Dan Serafini, 51, who played for six Major League Baseball 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 wife Wendy Wood, then 69.
He was arrested in October 2023 in connection with the June 5, 2021 shooting, alongside nanny Samantha Scott, 35, who has since admitted to what is coyly described as ‘a flirtatious, romantic relationship’ with Serafini in court papers previously obtained by DailyMail.com.
She is now set to testify at Serafini’s lengthy murder trial in California, which kicked off Monday when both prosecutors and Serafini’s defense presented their opening statements.
A bombshell then came when Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney claimed that Serafini and Scott had been having an affair that continued through their incarceration last year.
He told the jury how Serafini allegedly sent Scott a message through another inmate in the fall of 2024 that read: ‘We will be free soon. I love you and always will,’ according to the Sacramento Bee.
By January, Scott reached out to prosecutors to explain her role in the 2021 shooting.
But her testimony will likely be refuted by Serafini’s wife, Erin, 36, who will speak in defense of her husband – and argue that her husband could not have killed her parents.
Former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini’s murder trial kicked off on Monday
He was arrested in October 2023 alongside his nanny, Samantha Scott, for the murder of his father-in-law and the attempted murder of his mother-in-law
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
Prosecutors have claimed Serafini spoke out about how much he hated his wealthy in-laws and even told others that he wanted them dead.
“‘I’ll pay $20,000 to have them killed. They’re wealthy pieces of s***.’ That’s what he said about his in-laws Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood,’ Miller told jurors on Monday.
He allegedly made the comment in 2012, the same year he and Erin married. 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.
The relationship between Serafini and his in-laws had been fraught since the very beginning, as the former pitcher and his wife found themselves partially reliant on handouts from her wealthy parents, prosecutors have claimed.
In fact, on the day of the murder Wood handed Erin a check for $90,000 as she, Spohr and her and Serafini’s two young children decided to take the boat out on the lake.
Meanwhile, 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.
Serafini played for six Major League Baseball teams including the Minnesota Twins, the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds
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
Police and prosecutors now say the man captured on camera was Serafini, who had been driven to Tahoe City by his lover Scott.
They allege the former professional baseballer 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.
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
The Lake Tahoe home where Robert Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood were killed in 2021
In initial interviews, Scott claimed to have been 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 Scott’s 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.
According to court papers, Scott admitted to driving the former big-leaguer to Tahoe City that day but insisted she had left him there by the Fat Cat Bar and Grill after he said he needed ‘to pick up a package’ before collecting him a few hours later for the drive back to Crescent Valley.
She allegedly said 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.
Scott has pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, and is set to testify at Serafini’s trial
Prosecutors say they had been having an affair that lasted even after they were both arrested
Serafini’s defense therefore say there is no physical evidence linking the former baseballer to the scene.
Attorney David Dratman 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.’
He went on to claim that Scott carefully looked 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.
He 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.
Serafini was detained in Winnemucca, Nevada, and accused of murder, along with lying in wait and child endangerment because his two children were in the home shortly before the shooting
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 DailyMail.com 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’.
DailyMail.com 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.
Testimony in Serafini’s months-long trial is now set to begin on Tuesday, as jurors deliberate whether to convict him of murder, attempted murder, lying in wait and child endangerment because his two children were in the home shortly before the shooting.
It is expected to continue through July 25, with jury deliberations tentatively scheduled for July 18.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .