Hurricane Bay, on Lake Tahoe’s West Shore, is known for powerful winds that funnel down steep canyons, onto the lake and toss up the water. In the summertime, zigzagging boats add to the wind-driven swell, pushing white-capped waves onto the rocky, half-moon beach where dogs and families crowd the shoreline. Just beyond the beach, a popular bike path and Highway 89 hug the bay, offering a nonstop stream of drivers, cyclists and pedestrians a wide-open view of Lake Tahoe. 

It’s not a quiet place. Yet, on a busy Saturday in June 2021, a masked killer carrying a hidden .22-caliber gun strolled among the pandemic crowds at Hurricane Bay. 

The figure walked up the bike path in the late afternoon shade, wearing a backpack and a black hoodie with a white mask covering their face and, midway up the bay, crossed the highway and jogged up a driveway in a neighborhood of luxury homes that look over Lake Tahoe. Without being heard or seen, they slipped inside the home of Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood and waited.

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Spohr, 70, and Wood, 68, were down by the lake with their eldest daughter, Erin Spohr, and their two grandsons when the assailant entered their home. After returning to the house, Spohr and Wood said goodbye to Erin and their grandsons around 7:45 p.m. Before Erin left, her mother handed her a check for $90,000. Later, Erin would testify that her parents had been supporting her and her husband, Daniel Serafini, with financial assistance, paying for their home in Reno, day care, baby supplies, schools, vacations and a $55,000 car. 

A figure seen walking on a bike path along Hurricane Bay is believed to be the same individual who entered the home of Robert Gary Spohr and Wendy Wood.

That night, Spohr and Wood retreated to the second floor of their airy home, which featured a vaulted ceiling and a balcony overlooking Lake Tahoe. What happened next is unknown. But an hour later, six gunshots were fired. And minutes after that, the shooter left the home. 

Later, a 911 call came into dispatch, but the person on the phone could not speak. Dispatchers could only hear someone gasping for air. Emergency responders from the North Tahoe Fire Department were first on the scene. They found Spohr dead, with a single gunshot wound to the head. Placer County Sheriff deputies arrived soon after and found bullet shell casings and bloodstains on the couch cushions. 

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The first responders found Wood in the upstairs bathroom. She’d suffered two gunshot wounds to the head, but she was still alive. She’d regained consciousness to call 911. That night, emergency responders flew Wood to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno for life-saving medical care, where she spent the next month in the intensive care unit. 

Authorities believed the shooting was planned and premeditated, but early in the investigation, detectives had few leads beyond surveillance videos of the masked, hooded figure. 

In two decades working for the sheriff’s office, Nelson Resendes, who is now a captain with Placer County Sheriff’s Office, told SFGATE in 2021 he couldn’t remember another case like this one on Tahoe’s quiet West Shore. 

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At first, the family did not cooperate with authorities, Resendes said; he told SFGATE in 2021 that family members asked detectives to stop contacting Wood while she recovered in the hospital. 

Without more information or the cooperation of the family, the case went cold until the following winter, in February 2022, when Spohr and Wood’s youngest daughter Adrienne Spohr held a press conference at her parents’ West Shore home. 

Longtime Tahoe residents Wendy Wood and Robert Gary Spohr were shot in their Lake Tahoe, Calif., home on June 5, 2021. Spohr died that night and Wood was critically injured. Their son-in-law, Daniel Serafini, is the primary suspect in the murder case. The trial is scheduled to begin later this month.

Spohr and Wood had lived in Tahoe for more than 20 years. They met in college, got married in San Diego and built a life together, raising two daughters, Erin and Adrienne Spohr. They were business partners, investing in real estate. They traveled. In the 1970s and 1980s, they lived in Afghanistan and Hong Kong. Spohr loved the ocean and had plans to take his family scuba diving for his 71st birthday. Their 45th wedding anniversary was just a few months away.

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“They had experiences that I can only dream of today,” Adrienne said.

Wood grew up in the East Bay. She’d take the ski bus to Lake Tahoe on the weekend. Living in Lake Tahoe had been a lifelong dream........

© SFGate