Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Pro Athlete is in BIG Trouble - The Dan Serafini Story

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini, who played for several teams from the mid‑1990s through 2007 and later faced financial setbacks, was convicted in July 2025 of first‑degree murder, attempted murder, and burglary

So this Major League Baseball player is in big trouble. Now the guy's name is Dan and Dan used to be a successful dude. He made millions of dollars playing Major League Baseball for about a decade until he tested positive one day for performance enhancing drugs. And boom, they suspended him. Here's the thing about Dan though. Dan really likes to make money. Here's the other thing about Dan though.

Dan is really bad with money. Even though he made $14 million playing baseball, he has since lost it all. After he stopped playing baseball professionally, he lost everything he had from a divorce and from a bunch of bad investments he made. But whatever, he's still determined to make money. And he's just going to figure out another way to do it. So in 2013, when he's 39 years old, he borrows some funds from his parents. And he opens a bar where he lives in Nevada.

And surprisingly, this bar starts doing really well. Customers are showing up, the place is getting a lot of business, people like coming here. And suddenly, Dan is making like 50 grand a month from all of it. But then, of course, he starts to screw it all up. Because apparently he and his staff are partying a little too hard. I mean, Dan really loves to do cocaine. And he and his staff treat the bar like it's their own personal liquor cabinet. And all this partying eats into their profits.

And eventually the bar is failing. and Dan finds himself $300,000 in debt. So now what's he going to do? Well, he's going to do the only thing he can do. He's going to go on TV. And so Dan goes on a reality type show called Bar Rescue, where the host tries to rescue struggling bars. And even on the show, Dan and the bar employees are pretty open

about how they just party all the time and kind of do whatever they want to do. It's like one big party. Like every day We get to party with the customers And we get to drink with the customers As the staff continue to party Dan saw his profits dwindle But despite going on the show

It just doesn't work A few years later He unfortunately has to close the bar And this really sucks for Dan Not just because he wanted to own a bar But because now he and his wife Have become financially dependent On his wife's parents

Who will just call Aaron's parents? Because his wife's name is Aaron. And Dan hates being dependent on Aaron's parents. And Aaron's parents hate it too. I mean, they're multi-millionaires and they're paying for a ton of Dan and his wife's stuff. Their house, their cars, their vacations, their country club memberships, even Aaron's IVF treatments. And even though they pay for a lot of his shit, they really just don't like Dan. They think he's a deadbeat.

So it's just not a good relationship between them and him. Regardless, they keep giving Dan and Aaron money for various things, and according to Dan, they're somewhat controlling when they do give it. And Aaron's parents are not just lending Dan and Aaron a little bit of money. This is a large amount of money. Like in 2016, they lend Aaron $1.3 million so that she and Dan can start a horse ranch business. Stuff like that. And so anyway, then a few years go by, and it's now 2021.

And Dan is 47 years old at this point, and his money problems still haven't gone away, and he's still fighting with Aaron's parents about the funds that they lend him. But one day, Dan starts joking about how he kind of just wants Aaron's parents gone. And that is when he gets an idea that's going to change his life forever. Dan realizes that if Aaron's parents pass away, Aaron would inherit their $23 million estate, which means that he would have access to their $23 million estate. And so he decides he's going to try and murder them. Now, Dan and Aaron apparently have what you would call an open marriage.

I guess they've agreed to smash with other people or whatever. I don't know. And so he's been openly seeing this other woman on the side. Her name's Samantha. And Samantha is actually friends with both Dan and Aaron, which sounds very messy to me, but whatever, it's their business. So one day in 2021, Dan hits up Samantha and he asks her to drive him out to Lake Tahoe, where Aaron's parents live.

Now, he obviously can't tell her the real reason he wants to go there is so that he can try to murder his wife's parents. So instead, he lies and says, I'm going there to score a bunch of cocaine and I need you to drive. And I guess Samantha's like, all right. And at some point, Samantha and Dan get in her ride and she drives him five hours from where he lives in Nevada all the way over to Lake. Tahoe. And so they get there near Aaron's parents' house and they park her car somewhere around a mile away. And I guess Dan tells her he's going to get the drugs and so Samantha waits there in the car. While Dan puts on a mask and he walks almost a mile to their house. And you can see him walking up in the footage here. There he is walking up the driveway. So he enters through the garage. Once he's

inside the place, he waits. Aaron's parents aren't actually home. A friend's. A few, few hours later, they finally do come home. And for whatever reason, Dan hides there for another hour, and then when he thinks the time is right, suddenly, bam, he jumps out and he ambushes them, and he's got a pistol. And blam, he shoots Aaron's dad. And then blam, blam, blam, he shoots Aaron's mom. Then he flees the scene all the way back to Samantha's car and they drive away. Here's the thing though. Aaron's dad was unfortunately unalived instantly. But Aaron's mom is actually still alive.

So she's able to call 911 and she makes it to the hospital and she survives. So of course police start investigating all this right away. But there's a problem. Aaron's mom doesn't remember anything from the day of the shooting because she was shot in the head twice and she lost her memory. So she can't tell police that Dan was the one who did it. However, even though she can't remember, she's still convinced that he is the one who broke in and shot her. And so she takes him and Aaron out of her will. She doesn't want them to get any of the money from her estate.

Now, police don't seem to have any solid leads or any tangible evidence that it was actually Dan who committed the crime. So after a while, the case goes cold. And the worst part is, the saddest part is, I guess, the trauma of what Aaron's mom went through, getting shot and losing her husband, becomes too much for her to live with, and a few years later in 2023, she unalives herself. And since she took Dan and Aaron out of her will at the last minute, Dan doesn't see any of that $23 million estate they would have otherwise inherited. So ultimately, Dan's plan failed. He didn't get any money. However, he's not too upset because at the end of the day, he did get away with a horrible crime.

Until. Until police finally stumble upon some evidence they can use. So they're still investigating all this, and they're able to track Samantha's phone. And they figure out that during the shooting, her phone was located just over a mile from Aaron's parents' house, which places her near the scene of the crime. And so, bam! police arrest Samantha. Here's her mugshot. And pretty quickly, she flips on Dan and tells police everything she knows. Also, bam, they arrest Dan too. Here's his mugshot. And he goes to trial,

he's found guilty, but he hasn't been sentenced as of the time of me making this video. While Samantha pleads guilty to being an accessory, and she also hasn't been sentenced yet. And strangely, to this day, Aaron still stands by her husband and she thinks that he didn't murder her parents. It's wild.