On November 21, 1992, Thomas Monfils, an employee at the James River paper mill in Green Bay, Wisconsin, disappeared. After an intensive search, his body was found the next evening, submerged in a pulp vat. The police called it murder. In 1995, six of Monfils’ coworkers were wrongfully convicted of his death, the result of a preordained theory and a reckless prosecution.
Highly detailed and meticulously researched, The Monfils Conspiracy reveals the true story of a botched case that landed six innocent men in prison. Through extensive interviews, court documents, police reports, and other documentation, Denis Gullickson and John Gaie present a powerful look at the troubling events surrounding the death of Thomas Monfils and the mistake-riddled investigation that followed.
Gullickson and Gaie trace the futile twenty-nine month investigation between the time of Monfils’ death and the conviction, one pock-marked with dead end leads and overlooked evidence. Using solid facts, they lay bare the weaknesses, inconsistencies, and secrets in the prosecution’s case and the jury’s erroneous rush to judgment. As recently as 2001, a federal judge ordered the release of one of the men, citing a lack of evidence, and further suggesting the original proof as unsound. Fifteen years after Monfils’ death and a dozen years after his coworkers’ convictions, The Monfils Conspiracy shatters the myths surrounding this case and opens the door to justice and the truth.
After reading “The Monfils Conspiracy” we believe you will see that:
- The Green Bay Police Department failed in their duty to assist Tom Monfils with his request and to safeguard his identity as he requested.
- As a result, the GBPD had a serious conflict of interest and should have turned the investigation over to a neutral party — they didn’t.
- To cast responsibility elsewhere, the GBPD investigators – with the DA’s blessing, never dared to look beyond their original blame shedding theory.
- The trying of all six of these men together in a single trial was part of the prosecution’s deadly strategy of “brinkmanship” and should have been declared unconstitutional.
- There was no evidence discovered or presented at trial to support their theory beyond unsupported hearsay, unconfirmed speculation, and hyped up inference stacking.
- Important investigative police documents presented at trial by the State to make the defendants look guilty were admittedly altered by the GBPD’s lead investigator.
- The court did not allow the jury to hear testimony that a primary witness for the State had been recently convicted of murder and was in prison for the gunning down of his own unarmed brother.
- A career criminal and felon, who was suspiciously released after providing uncorroborated and inconsistent jailhouse testimony for the State in this case, is now in prison for ‘life – without the possibility of parole’ for the stabbing and killing of his wife in front of their 14 year old son.
- The unverified and unsupported “bubbler confrontation” hearsay story – which is the basis for all six of the convictions, never took place.
- There were two eyewitnesses available to the GBPD during the investigation, who together can validate the innocence of all six of the wrongly convicted men.
- The six men were dragged into this injustice because their honesty kept them from agreeing with a police theory – which they knew to be untrue.
- No “union conspiracy” of any kind ever existed. That the honesty and integrity of the other mill workers kept them from accepting a theory they also knew was untrue.
- Whatever it was that happened to Tom Monfils, had to have happened to him someplace else and in some other way.
- This case is still an “unsolved mystery.”