Former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Friday for the 2021 first-degree murder of his father-in-law and attempted murder of his mother-in-law in Lake Tahoe.
Serafini, who pitched for six MLB teams during a 22-year professional career that ended in 2013, killed Gary Spohr, 70, and seriously injured Wendy Wood during a burglary of their home on the west shore of Lake Tahoe.
He was convicted in July after a six-week trial and made two unsuccessful appeals, denied a new trial only a week ago. During his ruling, Placer County Superior Court Judge Garen J. Horst said Serafini, 52, was a “liar, manipulator, arrogant and someone who has a loose relationship with the truth.”
The jury also found Serafini guilty of first-degree burglary and found the special circumstance allegations of lying-in-wait and felony murder, as well as related firearm allegations, to be true.
Serafini broke into the Spohr’s home while the couple was boating with their grandsons and daughter Erin Spohr — Serafini’s wife. He waited in a closet until his family left and shot them both in the head upon their return, according to prosecutors.
Wood took her own life in 2022 at age 69. After a year of rehabilitation after the shooting, she had regained her ability to read and write, as well as to hike and ride a bicycle, according to her daughter, Adrienne Spohr. But she battled disability and depression.
Samantha Scott, a nanny employed by Serafini and Erin Spohr to watch their two young children, pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crimes. She testified in 2025 that she drove Serafini to the crime scene, believing it was for a drug deal.
Scott also testified that she saw Serafini with a gun and a silencer made of PVC pipe in his backpack. She testified that she dropped him off near the Spohr’s home and later saw him discard items from his backpack after they crossed the Nevada state line.
“When I learned that my sister’s husband Daniel Serafini and sister’s close friend Samantha Scott were arrested for the shooting of my parents, I was shaken to my core,” Adrienne Spohr said in a statement to the court. “This was a heinous, calculated crime. My parents had been incredibly generous to Daniel Serafini and Erin Spohr throughout their marriage.”
The Minnesota Twins made Serafini their first-round draft pick in 1992 out of Junipero Serra High in San Mateo, Calif., the same school that all-time home run king Barry Bonds attended. Serafini made his big-league debut in 1996 with the Twins and pitched with the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies.
Serafini pitched in Japan from 2004 to 2007 before returning to the United States. He was suspended for 50 games in 2007 for using performance-enhancing drugs that he blamed on medication he took in Japan. He also pitched for Italy in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.
Serafini’s bar in Sparks, Nev., was featured on an episode of “Bar Rescue” in 2025. The bar’s named was changed from the Bullpen Bar to the Oak Tavern as part of the makeover, but not before Serafini’s financial woes were described: He blew through $14 million in career earnings and took a $250,000 loan from his parents.
Prosecutors said Serafini’s crimes were driven by anger and financial distress. Evidence was presented that he made threats and spoke about wanting his in-laws dead for many years. He and Gary Spohr also had disputes over a $1.3 million loan intended for Erin Spohr’s horse ranch business.
All this is happening even as birthrates have plummeted in this country for decades, reaching their lowest point ever in 2024. A reduced population tends to relegate countries to economic and demographic doom — look at Japan and Russia. That’s why one of Trump’s big campaign promises was to Make America Fertile Again.
“I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s OK,” he boasted last spring during a women’s history event at the White House.
But even as this administration urges families to grow and single people to marry and welcome little ones into their lives, it’s persecuting children in the name of Trump’s deportation deluge.
While the president told a crowd last October, “We want more babies, to put it nicely” while announcing cheaper in vitro fertilization drugs, the New York Times found his administration was keeping an average of 175 children a day in immigration detention — a 700% increase from the end of the Biden administration.
As Vice President JD Vance bragged during a March for Life rally in January that he “practices what he preaches” by expecting a fourth child this year, 5-year-old U.S. citizen Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos was adjusting to life in Honduras along with her deported mother.
On the same day last month that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media, “My greatest job is being a dad to my nine kids and family will always come first,” a federal judge ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, an Ecuadorean preschooler grabbed outside his Minneapolis home along with his father in what the jurist described as a “perfidious lust for unbridled power.”
Just last week, Alaska resident Sonia Espinoza Arriaga and her sons, ages 5 and 16, were dumped in Tijuana by la migra even though the family had an active case to determine whether they qualified for asylum. And Trump’s campaign against undocumented children is just beginning on multiple fronts.
Ayaan Moledina protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they march toward the South Texas Family Residential Center on Jan. 28 in Dilley, Texas.
(Joel Angel Juarez / Getty Images)
The Supreme Court has scheduled hearings in April for Trump’s lawsuit seeking to end birthright citizenship for people born to parents who aren’t citizens or permanent residents. U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is suing to end policies that protect immigrant children in custody.
Thousands more agents are expected to storm our streets in the coming weeks while the Department of Homeland Security spends billions of dollars to build or retrofit warehouses to stuff with the people they grab. Reports are already emerging from the South Texas Family Residential Center an hour south of San Antonio, which ICE uses to house children slated for removal from this country, of rancid food and overcrowded cells.
Trump’s apologists will claim there’s nothing racist or heartless about removing youngsters in this country illegally — or if their parents are in the U.S. without documentation — while asking citizens to have bigger families, even as the main proponents of the so-called pronatalist movement are white conservatives while nearly all of the kids la migra are booting are Latinos.
But an administration that can’t treat these children humanely shouldn’t be trusted with taking care of even American-born children. And one can’t separate Trump’s supposed pro-baby policies from what this country has historically inflicted on Latino families.
American authorities forced U.S.-born children to leave for Mexico with their parents during the Great Depression, arguing they would become a welfare burden at the expense of white children. Doctors were sterilizing Latinas without their consent in the name of population control as recently as the 1970s. Popular culture ridiculed large Latino families as backward and destined for poverty.
I grew up in a California where politicians railed against Mexican American kids like myself for supposedly overwhelming schools, parks, medical clinics and streets with our numbers. We were supposedly the ground troops in a nefarious conspiracy called Reconquista that sought to return the American Southwest to Mexico.
By the time I reached high school in the 1990s, voters began to pass laws that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants like my father and other relatives, with a special punitive focus on their progeny. The infamous Prop. 187, which passed in 1994, would’ve banned undocumented children from attending California public schools from kindergarten to higher education. Five years later, the Anaheim Union High School District, whose schools I attended, passed a resolution seeking to sue Mexico for $50 million for educating the children of undocumented immigrants.
Board president Harald Martin — who migrated to this country from Austria as a 2-year-old — appeared on NPR to justify his actions by comparing the students he was in charge of to Tribbles, furry little aliens that starred in a famous “Star Trek” episode when they bred in such numbers that the Starship Enterprise was overwhelmed.
“They were so cute and fluffy, nice little things when there were four or five of them,” Martin said. “Then it got to the point down the road when it wasn’t so nice. They were getting in the way because there now were thousands of them on the ship.”
Martin’s example was not only wildly racist, it ignored the reality that Latinos were on the same road to assimilation as other previous immigrant groups ridiculed for their large families. While a March of Dimes study released last year shows Latinas had more children than any other ethnic group in this country as of 2023, the Latina birthrate declined by a third since 2003 — by far the largest drop of those groups.
I’ve seen this play out in my own family. I have 16 aunts and uncles who lived to adulthood and am the oldest of four children born to my parents — but my dad has just one grandchild and probably isn’t getting any more. I agree with Trump, Vance and the rest of them that children bring magic and vitality to communities — but what Latino family would want to raise a family where everything is far more expensive and the threat of deportation is never far away?
In this photo released by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, are seen in San Antonio on Jan. 31 after being released from the Dilley detention center.
(U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro)
Fatherhood wasn’t in the cards for me, but I love being Tío Guti to my nephew and the children of my friends. That’s why my heart breaks when I hear them say that their classmates left the United States and my blood boils when I hear Vance, Trump and others urge Americans to have more kids. Trumpworld isn’t looking to increase the number of people who look like my loved ones — and that’s something that should frighten us all.
After some 150 students walked out of Redlands schools early this month in support of immigrants they were dealt an unexpected consequence: a temporary suspension of school privileges as administrators enforced rules that forbid them from leaving a classroom without permission.
The punishment — the loss of access to sports, dances, performances and other school events — in a school system with a conservative-majority governing board stands in sharp contrast to the positive reception that student activism has received in some other California school systems, including Los Angeles Unified School District.
The disparate actions show how school officials throughout various states and school systems — in blue and red regions — have been dealing with a wave of student walkouts that began in late January as part of national protests over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.
Redlands school officials said the suspension of privileges will remain in place until a student satisfies certain conditions, such as attending a session of Saturday school or performing four hours of community service.
“The superintendent’s message is consistent: We care deeply about our students, and we recognize that many young people are dealing and engaging with issues they see in the news and in their community,” said district Public Information Officer Christine Stephens. “Students have the right to express themselves peacefully. At the same time, the district must uphold its responsibility to maintain a safe, supervised learning environment during the school day.”
Districts that expressed support for students’ free-speech rights included those in San Francisco and Sacramento. In Palo Alto, district officials worked with schools to make sure students could carry out their announced walkout safely.
L.A. Unified officials have not set districtwide penalties for walkouts — and its leaders align with the students’ anti-ICE critique. Supt. Alberto Carvalho, an immigrant himself, has pledged to do all in the district’s power to maintain schools as sanctuaries for children of immigrant families — and activists patrol outside schools to help ensure safe passage to campus for parents and students.
At the same time, LAUSD educators have encouraged students to stay on campus for safety reasons. In L.A. there were reports of physical confrontations between officers and protesters after students walked out on Feb. 5 and on Feb. 13, when three federal agents were injured after some in the crowd threw objects at them.
State and education leaders in Texas and Florida outlined significant consequences for students and educators related to student walkouts. In Texas, state leaders have talked about possible suspension and expulsion for students, dismissal for educators and state takeovers for school districts.
The ACLU of Georgia sent a letter Jan. 29 expressing concerns to the Cobb County School District after it threatened out-of-school suspension, loss of parking and extracurricular privileges and warned of college admissions consequences for participation in walkouts.
The ACLU warned that the school system would be acting illegally if walkout participants were singled out for especially harsh treatment based on their viewpoints.
The young activists
Student high school activists — in Redlands and elsewhere — said they are willing to face consequences, if necessary, to stand up for what they believe by protesting the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“As organizers, it’s expected for us to take the first wave of retaliation,” said Redlands High School senior Jax Hardy. “So while we would be very disappointed in the district for doing such a thing, for us, it’s important to exercise our free speech rights to oppose a government that is encroaching on our human rights.”
Student leaders see their protests as a civics lesson in action.
“It’s necessary to act, because, if we don’t, who knows how things will escalate further,” said Redlands High junior Aya F, who goes by her last initial rather than her full legal name. “So that’s why we feel it’s important for us to stage this walkout.”
Redlands is about 60 miles east of downtown L.A. and enrolls about 20,000 students. In November 2024 a conservative majority was elected to the five-person Redlands Board of Education, aligning the board with key policies of the Trump administration. Redlands joined a handful of ideologically similar California boards in approving policies that would allow parents to challenge library books with sexual content and prohibit display of the rainbow pride flag, which is associated with the LGBTQ+ community.
But the district stated that its actions on the walkouts have no ideology attached.
“The district’s response is not based on the viewpoint, theme or content of a student’s expression,” Stephens said.
Students walk out despite punishment
Some Redlands students organized another walkout Friday and organizers said they expected representation from students at seven middle and high schools. Many showed up from Redlands High School. They carried “Stop ICE” signs and Mexican flags and blew whistles as they made a 15-minute trek to a downtown intersection that some refer to as “Peace Corner.”
“I haven’t seen this many people in Redlands do anything ever,” said sophomore James Bojado, who also said that, for days, administrators had attempted to dissuade students with threats of discipline.
Several Redlands police vehicles patrolled the rally area, slowly rolling by.
A man in a sun hat shouted: “Why don’t you fly the American flag? Are you ashamed of America?”
“Leave us alone!” a chorus responded.
“My mom and my dad are immigrants,” said sophomore Carmen Robles. “Why deport families that care about America back to where they came from?”
At the rally, student demands included an ironclad district commitment that ICE will never be allowed on campus. Students also called for the abolition of ICE and spoke of wanting the school board to rescind what they regard as anti-LGBTQ+ policies. These include the flag ban and the book restriction policy.
During the Friday Redlands rally, there were a few tense minutes when a student in a MAGA hat was pelted by water bottles. The student spoke to police but also said he wasn’t hurt.
A person wearing a MAGA hat gets water and pizza thrown at him during a student walkout and protest in Redlands.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Adult volunteers were on hand with the goal of keeping things safe and positive. Parent Toni Belcher said that students have a right to be heard.
“I’m happy to see all these kids trying to get their voice to matter,” Belcher said. “If it doesn’t now, it will. … They’re starting early.”
What the law says
The right of students to express themselves begins with the U.S. Constitution.
“You do not lose your right to free speech just by walking into school,” according to guidance from the American Civil Liberties Union. “You have the right to speak out, hand out flyers and petitions and wear expressive clothing in school — as long as you don’t disrupt the functioning of the school or violate the school’s content-neutral policies.”
A walkout, however, could be treated as a disruption. But greater punishment cannot be applied based on the nature of the views expressed.
Redlands Unified believes it is complying with that legal standard.
California law offers some additional protection for student protests, but it’s not unlimited.
A California law, which took effect in 2023, allows a middle or high school student to miss one day of school per year as an excused absence for a “civic or political event.” This includes, but is not limited to, “voting, poll-working, strikes, public-commenting, candidate speeches, political or civic forums and town halls.”
The bill’s author, then-state Sen. Connie Leyva, said at the time that the law “emphasizes the importance of getting students more involved in government and their community by prioritizing student opportunities for civic learning and engagement both within and outside their education.”
One caveat is that the law requires that “the pupil notifies the school ahead of the absence.”
Students exercising this right must be allowed to make up missed schoolwork without penalty. There are potential gray areas — such as whether a large-scale school walkout — which organizers intend to be dramatic — would fall outside this protection because students don’t formally check out, for example.
One Redlands parent said he notified the school that his son had permission to take part in an earlier walkout after the walkout. But his son was still penalized because, the parent said, he was not allowed to grant permission for his son retroactively.
State law does require advance notice, but it does not say parental permission is required for that one protected civic activity day per year. The law also stipulates that schools, at their discretion, can allow additional excused absences for civic participation.
The parent, who did not want to be named out of concern for retaliation, said his son was placed on a “No-Go List” for extracurricular activities and events.
The way Sheila E. remembers it, she received her first call about a gig as a working Los Angeles musician as she was busy unpacking the moving truck with which she’d just moved to L.A.
“‘Can you come do a session?’ — that type of thing,” the Oakland native recalls with a laugh. “It was pretty awesome.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
This was 1980 or ’81, she reckons, just after she’d come off the road playing percussion for the jazz star George Duke; by 1984, she’d become a star herself with the pop hit “The Glamorous Life,” which she cut with her mentor Prince and which went to No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Over the decades that followed, Sheila E. went on to record or perform with everyone from Ringo Starr to Beyoncé. Yet her latest projects look back to her earliest days playing Latin jazz with her father, fellow percussionist Pete Escovedo: “Bailar” is a salsa album with guest vocal spots by the likes of Rubén Blades and Gloria Estefan, while an accompanying instrumental disc features appearances by players such as bassist Marcus Miller and trumpeter Chris Botti.
Sheila E. will tour Europe in April. Here, she runs down her routine for a welcome day off at home in L.A.
10 a.m.: Parents in the pews
I would get up around 7:30 or 8, and the first thing I’ll do is go to church. My church is called Believe L.A., and it’s in Calabasas. My pastor is Aaron Lindsey, who’s an incredible gospel producer who’s won many Grammys. The band is always on point, and it feeds my soul — it’s what I need as part of my food. You just walk out so happy. I mean, I walk in happy most of the time. But you walk out filled with love and peace. It’s a joyful time, especially when I get to bring my parents with me. Still having them around is a huge blessing. They just celebrated their 69th anniversary. That’s really rare.
Noon: No juice required
After church we’ll go to brunch at Leo & Lilyin Woodland Hills. Sometimes I’ll order the breakfast, which is two eggs and turkey bacon and potatoes. But sometimes that’s a little bit too heavy, so I’ll get the orzo salad, which is really good. I might have an espresso, or I might have a glass of Champagne. I don’t like mimosas — just give it to me straight.
1:30 p.m.: Retail therapy
My parents love driving down Ventura Boulevard. We’ll stop at some places and go window shopping, or maybe we’ll go to the Topanga Westfield mall. And when we finish at the mall, I have to go to Costco. The Costco run is really just for my dog — I have to get all her food. I get turkey and vegetables, and I cook all that and pre-make her meals for two weeks so I don’t have to deal with it. I can just open it, warm it up and feed her. She’s a mixed pit rescue, and her name is Emma. I got her when she was 5 months old in Oakland while we were performing, and now she’s 12. She’s a sweetheart.
4 p.m.: Family secret
We’re sports fans, so if it’s football season, we have to hurry up and get back to my house for the game. We’re a 49ers family. I would say the Raiders because we’re from Oakland, but we’ve always been 49ers fans. I mean, when it’s time to root for the Raiders, we do. We don’t hate like the Raiders hate on us. I’ll cook food depending on who all’s coming over — my nephews and various friends and so on. I grill a lot, so I’ll do steaks or lamb chops or chicken wings. My mom loves making potato salad. I can’t tell you the recipe — it’s a secret. It’s actually her mother’s potato salad, and they’re Creoles. Those Creoles don’t mess around with their potato salad.
8:30 p.m.: Games after the game
I never tell anyone to leave. Sometimes people spend the night — it’s an open house. If we’re not too tired, we’ll start playing board games or card games. Don’t get us started on poker.
11:30 p.m.: Steam time
Before bed I’ll get into the sauna just to relax and do a little sweating. Then I go take a shower with jazz or spa music playing. Sometimes I’ll do a little stretching before I get in the bed. I usually don’t read before I go to sleep. My go-to is HGTV — I set it for an hour and a half, and I’m out.
