Apparently drafted by Dahl, the document effectively put the blame for the collapse of Dahl Vineyards on Tawfilis and absolved Dahl of any debts. Koller thinks Dahl demanded Tawfilis sign the document at gunpoint, and when Tawfilis refused, Dahl shot him. But there is evidence Dahl had planned to kill Tawfilis regardless of how the meeting went. In a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Dahl’s wife and business partners, attorneys representing Tawfilis’ family allege that Dahl had dismissed all winery employees on the day of the meeting so Tawfilis and Dahl would be alone. Koller says he also found duct tape, plastic bags and prepaid phones in the winery that police had failed to remove from the crime scene. Even Dahl’s friends think he planned the murder in advance. Myles Davis met Dahl’s wife at the police station after the murder/suicide and was asked to retrieve Dahl’s personal items from his SUV. In the back of the Pathfinder, Davis says, he found a hazmat suit covered in mud. “I think he had already dug a hole and probably planned to dump the body,” Davis says. A month before the killing, sources say, Dahl had driven to Idaho to buy a gun and a silencer. “I’m still in disbelief,” says Kousha Berokim, who as Dahl’s attorney was one of the last men to talk to him before he died. “This was not expected. I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly what happened.”
AP
“I THINK IF IT HADN’T BEEN SO PERSONAL TO EMAD, THINGS COULD HAVE WORKED OUT,” SAYS ONE WINEMAKER. “ROBERT TOLD ME, ‘THE SON OF A BITCH JUST WON’T LET ME SETTLE.’ ”
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business so much, they’ll just throw caution to the wind.” What few in Napa want to admit is that the valley is changing. Built on prestige and exclusivity, restrictive land-use laws that prevent commercial development and its relative isolation, Napa has been able to keep the outside world largely at bay, and its high barrier for entry has prevented all but the very rich from ever really doing business here. But ironically the very thing that made Napa such a success—highly coveted wines that can go for thousands of dollars a bottle—has attracted the dark underbelly of the business, a criminal element that has arisen as wine has become more expensive. Last Christmas, someone used a crowbar to pry open the door of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and stole 76 bottles of wine worth a total of $300,000. Earlier that year, a similar heist occurred at a restaurant a half mile down the road called Redd. As of press time the FBI hadn’t announced any arrests, but those close to the investigation say the heists were carried out by someone who understood that stealing wine isn’t too different from stealing a Picasso or a Monet: Once a bottle is stolen it enters the black market before winding up in someone’s private collection. Except wine, unlike art, is unlikely to resurface for years, if at all. On a warm morning in late spring, the gate to Dahl Vineyards was still padlocked, and cameras had been installed on the building where Tawfilis was shot. Rumors that Dahl had buried cash somewhere in the vineyard had been attracting high school kids who showed up in the middle of the night, shovels in hand. A cool Pacific breeze passed over the Mayacamas, gently rustling the leaves of the sturdy oaks that lined the vineyard’s driveway. It was easy to picture Emad Tawfilis walking down one of these rows, his loafers sinking softly into the soil, his hands gently inspecting the purple grapes coming in on the vines, imagining the wine he would one day make here. ■
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ot long after the killing, Tawfilis’ family laid him to rest in a private ceremony in Southern California. Emad’s younger brother, Adel, an oral surgeon in San Diego, delivered the eulogy, paying tribute to the hardest worker he’d ever known. He recalled the time his brother remodeled his home and backyard on his own, spending hours on his hands and knees, and the nights he’d lie in bed beside Adel’s sons, giving them advice or playing Xbox with them till one in the morning. At wineries up and down the valley this spring, vintners and growers were still trying to make sense of what happened and figure out what, if anything, the incident said about Napa. “Napa Valley is the sort of place where lots of unknown faces show up with grandiose dreams,” says Lewis Perdue, who covered the story closely in his Wine Industry Insight. “And Robert was the epitome of someone who will do anything to be part of it, and to a certain extent Emad was representative of that too. He was a smart guy, but you think about that bag of cash—it just shows that people want to be associated with the wine
Dahl in Napa Point Brewing, a gastropub he opened in 2013.