A prosecutor on Monday told a Placer County jury a retired Major League Baseball player hated his wife’s wealthy parents and had been heard telling others he wanted them dead.

“ ‘I’ll pay $20,000 to have them killed. They’re wealthy pieces of (expletive).’ That’s what he said about his in-laws Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood,” Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller told the jurors.

Daniel Serafini, the former MLB pitcher, is accused of shooting his wife’s parents four years ago at their Lake Tahoe-area home. Serafini’s murder trial began Monday afternoon with attorneys giving their opening statements.

David Dratman, one of Serafini’s attorneys, argued the prosecution does not have any physical evidence that links his client to the crime scene, noting that security camera video showed a masked intruder who appeared to be younger with a smaller and thinner body frame than the retired professional baseball player.

“Danny Serafini is not the person in the video. He did not shoot his wife’s parents,” Dratman told the jury. “These are the facts in this case.”

Serafini, 51, is accused of murder in connection with a reported burglary at the home of the married couple, Spohr, 70, and Wood, 68. Serafini has remained in custody at the Placer County Jail since his arrest.

Spohr was shot once in the head during the June 5, 2021, burglary at the Homewood residence on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, the victims’ family has said. Wood suffered two gunshot wounds to the head but regained consciousness and called authorities for help. Although Wood received extensive rehabilitation, she died a year after the shooting.

Authorities in October 2023 arrested Serafini and family friend Samantha Scott. The Placer County district attorney’s office then charged Serafini and Scott with murder in Spohr’s death, along with a charge of attempted murder in the shooting that wounded Wood. The filed charges indicate prosecutors believe Serafini was the person who shot his wife’s parents, not Scott.

Only Serafini’s charges included special allegation and circumstance enhancements that allege he used a .22-caliber gun to kill Spohr during a burglary while lying in wait for the victim, according to the criminal complaint. The enhancements made Serafini eligible for the death penalty if convicted. But the district attorney’s office in September said it would not to seek a capital sentence.

Serafini also faces a charge of first-degree residential burglary stemming from the June 2021 shooting. Only Serafini faces enhancements for allegedly using a gun and causing great bodily injury to two elderly victims during the burglary, along with an enhancement that alleges he used a .22-caliber gun to shoot Wood.

In February, Scott pleaded guilty to a felony charge of being an accessory after the fact in the crime. The prosecutor on Monday said Scott will testify in the trial about her role in the alleged plot to help Serafini kill his wife’s parents.

Miller, the assistant district attorney, said Serafini married Erin Spohr, the shooting victims’ eldest daughter, in 2012, joining a wealthy family where “fights” were common, especially after Serafini’s children were born.

But the defense attorney told the jury his client’s in-laws were “quite generous” with their daughter’s family, helping her out financially with her business. Dratman argued that Serafini’s mother-in-law had given her daughter a $90,000 check on the day of the shooting.

MLB career

Serafini was drafted in 1992 by the MLB Minnesota Twins. A left-handed pitcher, he also played for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies, according to Baseball Reference.

He played his last professional game in 2007 before being suspended for 50 games after failing a drug test, according to an ESPN report. Two years later, he played for Italy in the World Baseball Classic.

Serafini and his wife were featured in a 2015 episode of Paramount Network’s “Bar Rescue,” in which he told producers he had lost $14 million in “bad investments and a bitter divorce settlement” following the end of his major league career.

He purchased a bar called the Bullpen in Sparks, Nevada, and according to the show, Serafini was $300,000 in debt and at risk of losing his home and his parents’ house.

Lawsuits between Erin Spohr and her sister, Adrienne Spohr, allege money played a role in the June 2021 deadly shooting. Spohr and Wood’s estate was worth $10 million, according to Erin Spohr’s lawsuit.

The prosecutor told the jury that Scott met Serafini’s wife five years before the deadly shooting at Erin Spohr’s horseback riding business. They became friends, and Scott would often do odd jobs in exchange for Spohr’s horseback lessons and housing her horse at the stables.

Serafini and Spohr have two children. Serafini faces an additional charge of child endangerment listing his two small children as victims on the day of the shooting, according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors have said Serafini’s wife and children had been at the home earlier in the day and left before the fatal shooting occurred.

Defendant was having an affair

Miller told the jury that Serafini and Scott had been having an affair that continued after their 2023 arrest and through their incarceration in fall 2024, when a “jail kite” (or message) from Serafini was smuggled in a pink envelope by another inmate to Scott.

“We will be free soon. I love you and always will,” the prosecutor said Serafini wrote in the message to Scott.

In January, Scott through her attorney informed the prosecution she wanted to explain her full role in the 2021 shooting. Miller said. Scott — in a six-hour interview — told investigators that she lied repeatedly to them in 2021 to protect the man she was having an affair with.

The prosecutor said investigators used pass codes to examine two phones that corroborated Scott’s account of what happened, along with other evidence. Miller told the jury that Scott drove Serafini to the Tahoe City area, dropping him off a few miles north of his in-laws’ home.

The prosecutor showed security camera video of Serafini’s wife and his children visiting their parents, before they all left the home for an afternoon of boating on the lake. Miller argued that the video then shows Serafini wearing a mask sneaking into the home about 5 p.m. when he knew nobody else would be inside.

Serafini then hid in the home and waited with a gun for his wife and children to return with her parents and head back to their Reno home, Miller said in court. He told the jury that shortly before 9 p.m., Serafini shot his wife’s parents as they were watching TV.

The prosecutor said 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. There, she was able to dial 911 on her phone. Miller said 911 dispatchers could only hear her moaning in pain, but they used the phone signal to find a location for the call.

Later, Scott picked up Serafini in her gold Subaru Outback and headed east on Interstate 80 as Serafini disassembled the gun used in the shooting and threw it out the moving vehicle’s window along with clothes and a backpack, Miller told the jury.

The prosecutor acknowledged that investigators never found the gun parts or Serafini’s clothes and backpack. He also told the jurors investigators didn’t find traces of DNA or fingerprints that would link Serafini to the crime scene.

Co-defendant’s plea deal

The defense attorney told the jurors they will have to judge the credibility of the witnesses in this trial. Dratman argued that Scott sat through a four-day preliminary hearing last year, when the prosecution presented its case to a judge to determined whether there was sufficient evidence for a trial.

He said Scott carefully looked at the prosecution’s evidence and months later provided an account “designed to fill-in the weaknesses” of the prosecution’s case against Serafini.

Scott pleaded guilty to a felony accessory charge. Her sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled. Prosecutors have said the accessory charge could result in a sentence of 16 months to three years.

As a result of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped charges of murder and first-degree residential burglary against Scott. She had been in custody since her October 2023 arrest, but she was released from jail on her own recognizance with GPS monitoring in February after pleading guilty.

The defense attorney told the jury that Scott, if convicted, was facing up to 25 years to life in prison until she spoke to investigators earlier this year. Dratman said prosecutors have promised Scott that her felony accessory charge could later be reduced to a misdemeanor and be released after she testifies with a sentence of time already served in jail.

Placer Superior Court Judge Garen J. Horst said testimony in the trial will begin Tuesday morning. He has said he expects the murder trial will continue through July 25, with jury deliberations possibly beginning July 18.