Facts about Trudy Monk

General Facts

• Trudy was born in 1962 and died in 1997 [PILOT] [THREE PIES]
• Trudy’s birthday was on the tenth of the month. The only time the 10th falls on a Monday in 2005 is in January and October. I am inclined to think that Trudy's birthday was in October. [I am inclined to agree, but that would make her 35 at the time of her death if the November 1997 date is correct.] [MRS. MONK]
• Trudy was the only child of Dwight and Marsha Ellison [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy's middle name is Anne [PILOT]
• Trudy put a cinnamon stick in her coffee – a trick she picked up in Spain. [MRS. MONK]
• Trudy is allergic to fish. [MRS. MONK]
• Trudy’s favorite wine is a 1984 Allacco Cabernet. [GETS DRUNK]
• Trudy loved to write poetry. [BACK TO SCHOOL, PLAYBOY, MRS. MONK, etc.]
• Trudy kept every promise she ever made [BLACKOUT]
• Trudy always went barefoot, even when it was cold out. [BLACKOUT]
• Trudy’s head was oval-shaped. [BLACKOUT]
• Trudy’s favorite dish is Chicken Cacciatore. [ASYLUM]
• Trudy's favorite perfume was Shalimar. [MRS. MONK]
• Trudy was Willie Nelson’s biggest fan. [RED-HEADED STRANGER]
• Trudy used strawberry shampoo and lilac lotion. [MEDICINE]
• Trudy’s father Dwight Ellison is now a successful game show producer. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy’s mother is now a grief counselor. [GAME SHOW]

Before She Met Adrian

• Trudy’s best friend in high school was Arleen Cassidy, now vice-principal of Ashton Preparatory School. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy attended Ashton Preparatory School on scholarship. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy was the valedictorian of her class and worked on the yearbook committee. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy played tennis. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy apparently graduated at the age of 15 in 1977. [This conclusion, drawn from Trudy having painted the flowers in the 1977 senior class mural, could be erroneous. We know she painted the flowers; we don’t know she graduated that year.] [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy painted flowers on the Class of 1977's mural. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy’s favorite place to write at Ashton was under a certain tree on campus. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy was quiet, smart and didn't date much. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy was waiting for the right man and would know him when she found him. [BACK TO SCHOOL]
• Trudy was from Los Angeles. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy was a rock 'n roll fan in her youth. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy was not only academically gifted but also excelled in sports. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy had a diary as a young girl, which had butterflies on the cover. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy had a golden retriever named Ginger who died. [GAME SHOW]

After She Met Adrian

• Trudy fell in love with Monk when he was a detective, on the street, breaking cases. [Ball Game]
• Trudy met Adrian on August 12^th (year unspecified) [ASYLUM]
• Trudy and Adrian married in 1990. [OTHER WOMAN]
• Trudy and Adrian honeymooned at the Allacco Inn and Winery. [GETS DRUNK]
• Trudy worked as a reporter for The Examiner and later for The Chronicle, writing hard-hitting exposes. [MRS. MONK]
• Trudy went to Madrid with Janice Ellinghouse and wrote one story with her. [MRS. MONK]
• Trudy drives very fast or, at least, Monk thinks so. [GAME SHOW]
• Trudy loved New York City. [MANHATTAN]
• Trudy gave Adrian a wrist watch which now doesn't work anymore, though he wears it anyway. [CAPTAIN’S WIFE]
• Trudy had a keychain with a "T" on it, which Adrian now uses for his keys. [PILOT]
• “Trudy always said that marriage was 90 percent love and 10 percent forgiveness. She was married to me, so she was sort of an expert on forgiveness." [WEDDING]
• Trudy sometimes calls Adrian 'my darling' [MEDICINE, COBRA]
• Trudy was engaged in a legal battle with Dale the Whale in 1993 because she called him the "Ghengis Khan of Finance" [DALE THE WHALE]
• Trudy and Adrian had to sell their starter home to pay the legal fees resulting from Dale Biederbeck’s lawsuit. [DALE THE WHALE]
• Trudy and Adrian had been married 7 years when she was killed. [OTHER WOMAN]
• Trudy had a separate office at the time of her death for which she was only paying $600 a month. [COBRA]
• Trudy’s last words, according to a paramedic were "Bread and butter." [DALE THE WHALE, MRS. MONK]
• Trudy was 34 when she died. "Every time I close my eyes she's there. She is always wearing the same dress, she is always 34, and she is so…." (If Trudy was born on October 10^th 1962, she must have been killed before that date in 1997 to be 34 years old at the time of her death.) [OTHER WOMAN]
• Trudy has been dead four years as of 2002 [PILOT] and as of October 2005 [GOES HOME AGAIN] she has been dead 8 years.
• The man who built the bomb which killed Trudy was Warrick Tennyson. He said he was hired by a six-fingered man. [MANHATTAN]
• Trudy was buying cough medicine for Ambrose when she died. That's why she was in that parking garage or at least that’s what Ambrose thinks. [THREE PIES]
• Trudy’s gravestone reads: ‘Trudy Anne Monk 1962-1997 Beloved Wife and Daughter.’ [PILOT] [THREE PIES]

Recap of what we know about Trudy's murder

By Olivia

It happened at 9:00 AM and no one else was hurt or killed. This is written in the headlines of the papers he is going over in “Mr. Monk and the Candidate”, but the smaller print in the articles below this doesn’t say anything about her murder. They look like articles from the financial section, probably just put in by Monk prop people to have something below the headlines to look real.

The headlines read:

• Blast Kills Award Winning Columnist – Trudy Anne Monk was killed instantly when her car exploded this morning. Nobody else was hurt, she was 35.

• Monk Murder Still Unsolved – Three months after Trudy Monk was killed in a car explosion, police are no closer to solving the crime, says spokesman.

• Explosion Rips Through Parkade Killing One – Unexplained blast at 9 A.M. this morning killed journalist Trudy Anne Monk, police have no explanation. (This article has no date on it: neither did any of the others.)

• Detective's Wife Slain – Decorated detective in shock after hearing report.

• No Links To Other Car Bombing Suspected – Detective Adrian Monk of the San Francisco Police has failed to produce evidence linking Monk car bombing with... (I can't read further than this, another paper is obscuring it)

The parking spot was number B5, or close to B5, as indicated by the post in the background of the photos of the scene.

She was somewhere near a drug store, picking up medicine for Ambrose (“Three Pies.”) The trigger was a cell phone. I assume that the killer set the bomb off by dialing the number. Considering this, I think it is likely that the person wanted to be certain that Trudy was the victim, probably to be sure she was the only victim. [Assumes too much?] He/she wanted complete control over when the bomb went off. He/she possibly even followed Trudy to know exactly when was the best time to plant the bomb and to detonate it.

We don't know if the parking garage where Warwick Tennyson met Frank to deliver the bomb is the same garage where Trudy was murdered. [I don’t think there is any reason to assume it is.] The detonation method was given to us by Warrick Tennyson in “Manhattan.” Also we learned from him that a six fingered man named Frank hired him, paid him $2000, and met him in a parking garage. The amount of plastique used has been mentioned, but is inconsistent (10lbs in “Manhattan”, 3lbs in “Theater” or was it 5lbs?)

There was another car bombing in the Bay Area close to the same time, which Monk couldn't link to Trudy's bombing. This to me seems very odd. Car bombing shouldn't be that common, should they? Two car bombings in a short period of time in the same area would usually indicate a link, unless the second one was a copy-cat or done to make the police think it was related to the first bombing. The parking level Trudy was on was underground, I believe, because Sharona's vehicle in “The Candidate” was pointed downward when she was going to pick him up and Benjy asked what Monk was doing. You could assume that all or most parking garages in San Francisco are underground, but I don't think that's likely. [Not only likely, but absolutely true.]

We know from “Employee of the Month” that Joe Christie, Adrian's partner, was with him when the call came through about Trudy's murder and that Adrian was laughing when the phone rang, but no one has seen him laugh since. So we know that someone was with him and can confirm his whereabouts when it happened, as well as his reaction to the news.

In “Dale the Whale”, Dale said that her last words, according to the coroner's inquest, were “bread and butter” and he taunted Adrian about it, wondering what it meant and if it was a message to him. Adrian later told Sharona that this was something Trudy always said when they were holding hands but had to let go for a moment because someone walked between them or a pole was in their path. He thought it meant she was trying to tell him she had to let go for a little while but it wouldn't be forever. I don't think most people think of the phrase this way, to mean this. I have more often heard it to mean where the money they live on comes from, like her and Adrian's jobs were their bread and butter, just as an example.

[From the Word Detective.com http://www.word-detective.com, in response to a reader’s question on the origin of the phrase “bread and butter”:

I'm glad you asked this question, because I have heard this odd phrase from my wife for more than 25 years. We will be walking down the street, and every time we are separated by an obstruction in our path (parking meter, movie star, alien spacecraft, whatever), she will demand that I say "bread and butter." Until now I presumed that this quaint ritual was a throwback to her childhood spent in short-order diners, but apparently this "bread and butter" business is more widespread than I had thought.

But it's not so widespread as to be well-documented, evidently. Only one source (the Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE) of many that I checked even mentioned the phrase. DARE explains it as "an exclamation used when two people walking together are momentarily separated by someone or something coming between them." The earliest citation listed by DARE is from The Federal Writers Project "Guide to Kansas" published in 1939, where the "bread and butter" ritual is described as a "ubiquitous" incantation among schoolchildren of the area. If it was ubiquitous in 1939, the ritual is probably much older, possibly dating back to at least the 19th century.

"Bread and butter" is not listed in one place I hoped to find it, Iona and Peter Opie's "The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren" (Oxford University Press, 1959). As this extraordinarily fine volume (now, unbelievably, out of print) covers only the British Isles, "bread and butter" may be a native American creation.

As to its meaning, I think it's simply one of a number of rituals children follow, on the order of "step on a crack and break your mother's back," designed to invoke magical protection from bad luck. In this case, the fact that bread and butter "go together" gives the ritual power an affirmation of togetherness, lest a momentary separation be an omen of permanent one.]

[I first heard the phrase with this meaning in a Twilight Zone episode. I believe it’s the episode “Walking Distance” starring Gig Young. When he walks between two young lovers they say the phrase and then clasp hands again. As soon as I heard Dale say it, I associated the phrase with this usage.]

In “Goes to Jail,” Dale said that the bomb that killed Trudy was meant for her, not Adrian, even though Adrian always believed it was meant for him. [Of course, there’s always the possibility that Dale was lying.] Dale also told Adrian to go to New York to find Warrick Tennyson because he had information about and was “involved” in Trudy's death. We find out in the next episode (“Manhattan”) that he built the bomb, and was hired by a man with six fingers, who USA Network’s Monk episode guide refers to as Frank.

From “Billionaire Mugger” we find out that a scrap of paper from Trudy’s appointment book for the day before she died read, '530 Kelly Street, Mr. Simon.' Adrian initially assumed it meant an address, but every year (presumably about the same date) he realizes that it might have meant 5:30 as a time and Kelly Street as a person. He goes to the home of a woman named Kelly Street, but then blocks it out of his memory.

In this episode, the door is answered by Ms. Street's sister, who I assumed hadn't met him before because she didn't seem to remember him. Maybe she was visiting that year? She tells Adrian that Mr. Simon was her sister's dog and Kelly hadn't been able to bury him so she had him stuffed. Maybe Trudy was doing a story about that, because it is something people might consider strange. Then Kelly comes in and tells Monk that he's been back every year to ask about his wife's murder, but he doesn't remember.

Trudy’s last entry into her appointment book is the one about Kelly Street. We aren’t given any information about what, if anything, Monk might have found out on previous visits that he may now be blocking out.

Also on the scrap of paper is a note in red ink 'P/U Dry Cleaning' and in sort of lighter black ink 'Quincey's B-day.' (Assuming this is how they know it was for the day before her murder, different inks indicate notes were written at different times, with different pens.) Finally, in darker black ink, '530 Kelly Street' is written. Justbelow that in the same ink, parallel to this is what looks like 're.' with most of what follows missing. Then below that, same ink, but on the line rather slanted across the page are the words 'Mr. Simon'. I wonder if this indicates that it was written at a different time from the note above it about Kelly Street. ‘Re’ could be rd., the abbreviation for road. However, If she wrote the abbreviation for road, it wouldn't make sense for her to have written out the word ‘Street’ unless it was the woman's last name. It could be nothing though. [Surely, “re.” means regarding?]

Among the things that Adrian has at his home as evidence, besides the scrap from the appointment book:

• A watch
• Newspaper clippings from the days or weeks after the murder
• Photos of the crime scene
• Copies of the police reports

One Forensics lab report says that they also recovered hair, her watch, contents of her purse and clothing fragments and has the date on the report as 11/11/97. [This date would not correspond to her being born on October 10 in 1962 and being 34 at the time of her death. She would have been 35.] That was on a Monday. One of the headlines said it was a Monday morning when she was killed.