Wendy Wood of Tahoe: The Shooting, Conviction, and Estate Fight

Wendy Wood of Lake Tahoe was a 68-year-old real estate investor shot in the head inside her Homewood, California, home on June 5, 2021, in an attack that killed her husband, Robert Gary Spohr. She survived, endured a long and painful recovery, and died by suicide in March 2023 without seeing anyone charged. Her son-in-law, former Major League Baseball pitcher Daniel Serafini, was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder in July 2025 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in February 2026.¹

Who Wendy Wood Was

Wood grew up in the East Bay and rode the ski bus to Tahoe as a kid. She met Gary Spohr in college and married him in San Diego. They lived abroad in Afghanistan and Hong Kong during the 1970s and 1980s before returning to California to raise two daughters, Erin and Adrienne Spohr.²

Around 2000 the couple moved to Lake Tahoe for good and built a $3.5 million retirement home in Homewood. They were business partners as well as spouses, building a real estate portfolio prosecutors later valued at roughly $23 million.³ In the community, Wood was known for advocating for foreign workers on J-1 visas at local ski resorts, helping them find affordable housing.²

The Night of the Shooting

On the evening of June 5, 2021, first responders found Gary Spohr dead from a gunshot wound and Wood bleeding on the couch from multiple gunshot wounds to the head.⁴ Surveillance cameras at the house had captured a masked figure in a hooded sweatshirt entering the garage hours earlier and hiding inside. Gunshots registered on the footage at about 8:51 p.m., and four minutes later the intruder was recorded jogging away.⁵

Wood managed to dial 911 but could not speak. She was taken to Renown Regional Medical Center, where she spent a month in intensive care.²

Surviving the Attack

Wood’s survival was remarkable and brutal. She underwent surgery to repair her skull and spent hundreds of hours in rehabilitation relearning how to walk, talk, and eat.⁶ Over time she regained the ability to read, write, hike, and ride a bicycle. She never recovered her memory of the shooting itself, which her daughter Adrienne later described as the “single biggest impediment to her healing.”²

Depression followed. She missed her husband and was never able to live comfortably again in the Tahoe home they had built together.⁶ On March 9, 2023, Wendy Wood died by suicide. She was 70.⁷

What Wood Said and Did Before She Died

In the time between the shooting and her death, Wood made two decisions that shaped everything that came after. She changed her will to disinherit her daughter Erin Spohr and Erin’s husband, Daniel Serafini.⁸ And in secretly recorded conversations with investigators, she said what she had not said publicly: “It makes all the logical sense in the world that Danny would off Gary,” and “I believe that Danny did pull the trigger, and I believe I’ve known that for a long time.”⁹

The Son-in-Law Convicted of the Attack

Daniel Serafini was a left-handed pitcher drafted in the first round by the Minnesota Twins in 1992. He played parts of seven major-league seasons between 1996 and 2007 for several clubs, and his MLB career ended after a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy.¹⁰

Prosecutors said Serafini had lost roughly $14 million in career earnings through bad investments and a prior divorce, and that by 2021 he and Erin were financially dependent on her parents. Spohr and Wood had paid for homes, cars, IVF treatments, and tuition, but they kept control of the money and had threatened to cut the couple off.³

The case went unsolved for more than two years. In October 2023, law enforcement arrested Serafini and Samantha Scott, a family friend who had worked as a nanny for Serafini and Erin.¹¹ Both pleaded not guilty.¹²

Serafini’s trial began on May 19, 2025, in Placer Superior Court in Auburn, led by Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Rick Miller. It ran six weeks.¹³ Miller told jurors Serafini “hated his wife’s parents, and he wanted them dead.”¹⁴ The prosecution introduced years of hostile emails and texts, including a 2016 message to Gary Spohr reading “Take the f—ing house… This is his final warning,” and a text in which Serafini said he would pay $21,000 for a “fixer” to have his in-laws killed, writing, “I’m gonna kill them one day.”¹⁵

The prosecution’s theory was that Serafini snuck into the home while his wife and children were out boating, waited several hours, and ambushed Spohr and Wood when they returned.¹⁶ Scott testified that Serafini had privately confessed to her, saying he “shot Wendy twice in the head and once in the hand,” and then threatened her and her family if she talked.¹⁷

Defense attorney David Dratman argued no DNA or physical evidence placed Serafini at the scene and challenged whether the hooded figure on video was his client, noting that Serafini stood 6-foot-3 and about 220 pounds while the figure appeared thinner. The defense also pointed to phone data placing Serafini near Crescent Valley, Nevada.¹⁸ Erin Spohr testified for the defense, calling her husband a “devoted father and loving husband” and insisting the figure on camera was not him: “He doesn’t walk that way.”⁵

On July 14, 2025, the jury found Serafini guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and first-degree burglary, with true findings on the special circumstances of lying in wait and felony murder and related firearm enhancements.¹³ On February 20, 2026, Placer County Judge Garen J. Horst denied Serafini’s motion for a new trial, calling him a “liar, manipulator, arrogant and someone who has a loose relationship with the truth.”¹⁹ A week later, on February 27, 2026, Serafini was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He maintained his innocence and called the trial a “popularity contest.”¹ He is in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.²⁰

The Accomplice Who Testified

The case against Serafini turned largely on Samantha Scott. In February 2025 she pleaded guilty to a felony count of being an accessory after the fact and agreed to testify against him, avoiding murder, attempted murder, and burglary charges that carried a potential life sentence.²¹

Scott testified she had driven Serafini from Elko, Nevada, to the Tahoe area on the day of the shooting in her gold Subaru, believing it was a drug trip, and that Serafini had asked her to turn off her phone. She described watching him throw clothing, gun parts, and what appeared to be a PVC-pipe silencer out of the car window on the way back to Nevada.¹⁷ She acknowledged lying to investigators for a year and a half and beginning a romantic relationship with Serafini about five months after the shooting that continued until their arrests.²²

On March 16, 2026, Judge Horst sentenced Scott to two years of probation. The maximum sentence was three years in jail, but she had already served most of that while awaiting trial, and under her plea agreement she was released to probation. At the hearing, Adrienne Spohr told the court that Scott “allowed a killer to roam free” and said that if Scott had told the truth earlier, “my mom would still be alive.”²¹

The Fight Over Her Estate

The criminal case ran alongside bitter civil litigation between Wood’s two daughters. In June 2023, Adrienne Spohr filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Placer Superior Court against Erin Spohr and Daniel Serafini, alleging they had conspired to cause her father’s murder and her mother’s attempted murder, and seeking damages above $25,000 on behalf of herself and the estate.²³

Erin countersued in August 2023, accusing Adrienne of elder abuse and alleging she had manipulated their mother during her vulnerable post-shooting recovery, isolated her, and used “undue influence” to engineer the disinheritance of Erin and Serafini. Her suit sought to invalidate the changes to the will and reinstate a 1999 trust that split the estate equally. The estate, which includes the Homewood home, has been valued in the filings at more than $10 million.²³ The wrongful death suit was placed on hold until Serafini’s criminal case concluded.⁴

One week after the July 2025 guilty verdict, Erin Spohr filed for divorce, seeking sole custody of the couple’s two young sons and describing their relationship as “amicable.” She did not attend Serafini’s sentencing but submitted the only letter asking the judge for leniency.²⁴ At that hearing, Adrienne Spohr asked the court to remember her parents as “adventurous and happy people” and spoke about her mother’s final night: “What’s important to remember is that my mom fought with everything she could to get out of the house that night, and she did not let Dan Serafini win.”⁸

1
NBC News. Former MLB Pitcher Dan Serafini Sentenced to Life in Prison
2
SFGate. California Lake House Fortune MLB Player Murder
3
People. Daniel Serafini Ex MLB Player Murder Lake Tahoe
4
Tahoe Daily Tribune. Homewood Shooter Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole
5
KCRA. Evidence in Dan Serafini Murder Conviction Revealed
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KCRA. Adrienne Spohr, Wendy Wood, Gary Spohr Statement on Arrests
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CBS News Sacramento. Dan Serafini Sentenced Life Lake Tahoe Shootings
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KCRA. Dan Serafini Murder Case Victim’s Voicemail, Secret Phone Recordings at Issue in Fight for New Trial
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Baseball Almanac. Dan Serafini Player Page
11
KCRA. Tahoe 2021 Murders: Sisters Sue Over Inheritance
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Sierra Sun. Alleged Homewood Murderers Plead Not Guilty at Court Appearance
13
Placer County. Jury Finds Daniel Serafini Guilty of Murder
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Sacramento Bee. Dan Serafini Sentencing
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KCRA. Dan Serafini Murder Trial
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KCRA. Dan Serafini Murder Trial: Samantha Scott Testimony
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Sacramento Bee. Dan Serafini Trial
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KCRA. Placer County Judge Denies New Trial for Dan Serafini
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USA Today. Daniel Serafini Sentenced to Life for Shooting In-Laws
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Sacramento Bee. Samantha Scott Sentencing
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Sacramento Bee. Samantha Scott Trial Testimony
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Sacramento Bee. Spohr Sisters Estate Litigation
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People. Where Is Erin Spohr Now