The murder trial of former Minnesota Twins first-round draft pick Dan Serafini wrapped up its fourth week in Auburn, California, with shocking testimony from Serafini’s onetime nanny-turned-mistress, who claimed that the 51-year-old seven-year big league pitcher confessed to her that he shot one of the two victims in the head, twice.
The testimony of Samantha Scott on Thursday only added another new, bizarre twist to the already sordid story in which Serafini, drafted 26th overall by Minnesota in 1992, is accused of entering the Lake Tahoe mansion owned by his in-laws on June 5, 2021, his face covered by a mask.
Once inside, according the allegations against him, he shot his father-in-law Robert Gary Spohr in the head twice and also shot his mother-in-law Wendy Wood twice in the head and once in the arm, according to a report based on court records by The Daily Mail newspaper.
Spohr died instantly. Wood, his wife, miraculously survived her wounds only to commit suicide in 2023, according to reports.
Serafini Drafted Out of Big-Time Sports High School
Serafini was drafted out of Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California â a school known for producing top athletes. Among its other graduates drafted by MLB teams are, in 1982, Barry Bonds by the San Francisco Giants, and Tom Brady by the Montreal Expos in 1995.
Bonds went to Arizona State rather than straight to pro baseball, but was later drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1985. Brady turned away from baseball altogether, instead attending Michigan to play football and went on to become the consensus greatest quarterback in NFL history.
Serafini, on the other hand, chose to turn pro out of high school and became the No. 76-ranked prospect in baseball by Baseball America. He made his big league debut with Minnesota in 1997. But he never lived up to his promise as a first-rounder, pitching for six different teams in his seven-season career â as well as three seasons in Japan.
Though his final MLB season was 2007, Serafini continued to pitch in Mexico and in independent leagues until 2013.
After his baseball career, unfortunately, he felt on hard times, losing large amounts of money on a failed bar known as The Bullpen in Sparks, Nevada, according to the Mail report. He married Erin Spohr, 15 years his junior, in 2012.
Acrimonious Relationship With In-Laws
But Serafini had an acrimonious relationship with her parents which continued and apparently intensified after he married their daughterâ despite becoming financially reliant on them after the failure of the bar, according to the Mail report. At one point, not long before the 2021 shootings, they gave the couple a gift of $90,000, the report said.
Serafini was arrested on the murder charges in 2023. His trial opened on May 19 of this year.
The former pitcher and his wife lived in a $1.1 million home in Reno, Nevada, and at some point after his marriage but before the murders, Serafini began an extramarital affair with the family’s nanny, Samantha Scott.
According to police reports cited in media accounts, it was Scott who drove Serafini back across the Nevada-California state line after the shooting â but at the time she was unaware that the murder and attempted murder had taken place.
Scott, 35, said on the witness stand Thursday that she earlier lied to investigators to protect the retired pitcher despite the fact that her suspicions about him had grown over the weeks after the crime.
“Later in the summer, in a bombshell revelation, Serafini confessed to Scott that heâd shot Wood twice in the head and once in the hand, Scott alleges. Serafini did not say anything to Scott about shooting Spohr,” the San Francicso-based SFGate news site reported.
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