In summer 1993, Karen Francis DeGolia had an idyllic life. She was 31 and living part-time in Wine Country with her fiancé, Tom Collins, a firefighter and the owner of a charming winery known for making old-vine Zinfandel, Limerick Lane Cellars.
“It sounds pretty perfect. My friends were jealous,” DeGolia said. “But the universe had a different plan.”
Two weeks after she and Collins brought in that year’s harvest, his father shot and killed him in a murder-suicide. Collins’ brother and business partner, Michael, who once said the tragedy occurred in a “fit of rage,” became the owner of the winery…