THE TRAGEDY
On November 21, 1992, 35 year old Tom Monfils, an employee at the James River paper mill in Green Bay, Wisconsin, left his work station and disappeared. After an intensive search, coworkers found his body the next evening submerged in a large paper pulp storage tank. One end of Tom’s own exercise jump rope was wrapped around his neck and, on the other end of this rope, a fifty pound iron weight. Many thought it was a suicide, the police called it a Union sponsored murder.
The CONVICTION of SIX INNOCENT MEN
In a single trial almost three years later, six of Monfils’ coworkers were eventually convicted of his death and given ‘life sentences’; the result of a preordained police theory, a one-sided investigation, and a reckless prosecution. In spite of repeated appeals and having one of the convictions reversed due to an absence of legitimate evidence, almost nineteen years later, five of the six wrongfully convicted men remain in prison to this day.
THE ISSUES
With the following questions about the investigation and the trial being of great concern; (1) the State’s mandatory use of a six-person joint-trial; (2) an investigation that provided no evidence of guilt or innocence; (3) a lead police detective confessing to altering official police documents about the investigation; (4) the use of the suspicious ‘repressed-memory-finger-pointing-alibi’ testimony at trial, of the James River employee who worked next to the location where Monfils’ body was found. (who later shot and killed his own unarmed brother); (5) the use of smalltown drunken barroom gossip testimony of one of the defendants neighbors; (6) the use of the uncorroborated jailhouse testimony of a career criminal; (7) the fact that a number of prosecution witnesses have since recanted their testimony; (8) that the Federal Court found five different Green Bay Police Officers negligent in the handling of several phone calls Monfils had made to the police just prior to his death; (9) And more importantly, the fact that one of the six convictions from the same ‘joint’ trial was later reversed due to a lack of legitimate evidence: Justice demands a closer look at the validity of all six of these guilty verdicts.
GREEN BAY POLICE RESPONSIBLE
“Monfils’ Family gets $2 million – Jury finds Green Bay Police responsible in 1992 death”
-Green Bay Press Gazette Saturday June 28, 1997-
Just over four and a half years after Tom Monfils’ death and almost two years after the conviction of the six innocent men, while responding to a Federal Court wrongful death style civil suit filed by Monfils’ family against the City of Green Bay and the Green Bay Police Department, a jury in Milwaukee declared the Green Bay Police responsible for the events that led up to Monfils’ death. The jury found that “the City had ratified unconstitutional behavior by [Deputy Chief] Taylor” and that “Taylor’s actions were a cause of Monfils’ injuries, as were the defendants’ [the other GBPD officers] negligence and the city’s failure to provide equal protection for anonymous tipsters.” After appeals and attorney fees the award was in excess of three million dollars.
The REVERSED CONVICTION
In a scathing decision almost six years later, in 2001, the U.S. Federal Courts exonerated one of the six defendants convicted of killing Monfils, stating “no reasonable jury” should be allowed to convict by stacking “speculation on top of inferences drawn from other inferences”. “This…, like so much else in this case, is conjecture camouflaged as [if it were] evidence.” requiring “a leap of faith” that no ”rational jury” should be allowed to take.
OUR OBJECTIVES
This website strives to raise public awareness that five other innocent men were also convicted for this crime, a crime that may not have even happened. We are working tirelessly to right this wrong for the five men still imprisoned today.
Please join us in our fight for justice. The following web pages contain the basic information with links to events, excerpts from the book and some that were left on the cutting room floor.
THE BOOK
The Monfils Conspiracy; The Conviction of Six Innocent Men
by Denis Gullickson and John Gaie with exoneree Mike Piaskowski
To obtain a copy of the book and learn all the information compiled in the eight year re-investigation of this case by writers Denis Gullickson and John Gaie with the help of ‘Exoneree’ Mike Piaskowski, please visit our order page or see the special pricing below.
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Green Bay, WI 54313
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