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TRAINING VIDEO NARRATOR: After paper has been made,
it's reeled up into a fiber core
on a reel spool.
After a roll is as large as is desired,
a new roll is started with a second core.
This on-the-run process
of transferring the sheet from a finished roll
to a new core is called a turnover.
Here, Tom Monfils is applying a two-sided tape to the core.
The tape is used to make the sheet stick to the core during a turnover.
Tom is dressed for his television appearance
with a safety breakaway paper tie.
NARRATOR: This is the only surviving footage of Tom Monfils at work.
Is there anything we can say about Tom based on these images?
Was he a happy person?
Did he feel accepted by his peers?
What were his plans for the future?
We'll never know the answers to these questions,
because on November 23rd, 1992,
a missing person search at James River Paper Mill
in Green Bay, Wisconsin, would conclude
with the discovery of his corpse.
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
[INDUSTRIAL CLATTERING]
[BUBBLING]
RANDY WINKLER: It appeared to be a homicide immediately.
There was, uh...
a large hematoma on Tom's head
that was very evident of a blow of some sort.
The fact that there was a rope around his neck,
and the weight...
I mean...
uh...
There's no way that...
that was going to be ruled anything else other than that.
We have to go with what we have now
as the truth.
And the truth is that,
you know, these six men
are guilty of murdering Tom Monfils.
[MYSTERIOUS MUSIC PLAYING]
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
MIKE PIASKOWSKI: Well, I was born and raised right in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Just, if you want a quiet town life,
that's a good place to live.
Hard-working blue-collar community.
First thing I did was I worked for the railroad.
I worked on the section crew,
and then I left the railroad
and worked for an auto-glass specialist.
And then I enlisted in the Army.
And then we came down on order for Vietnam.
Because I didn't go on to college,
uh, I think joining the military made me grow up.
My girlfriend, when I went in there at the time,
her name was Margie Craning.
You know, when I first got out of the service and,
you know, she was there waiting for me and...
we started making plans to get married.
Actually, she got pregnant and we got married...
quicker because of that.
I wanted to build a house.
I wanted to get a decent job with benefits, you know,
the health insurance and retirement plans
and all those things.
Took the job that came first.
And it just happened to be a union mill.
Papermaking was probably the largest industry there.
INTERVIEWER: What... What kind of paper?
Mostly towel and tissue.
Uh, ass wipe, [CHUCKLING] for lack of a better term.
BRIAN KERHIN: Green Bay is the toilet-paper capital of the world.
And the James River Paper Mill,
it's just off of downtown, on the East side of downtown.
These were not, um,
mills out on the outskirts of town
in some industrial complex.
James River is downtown.
It's very close to the police station.
It's very close to the newspaper building.
It's close to the courthouse.
It is part of the town.
CAL MONFILS: And everybody knows what's going on in that mill
whether it's... gossip or truth.
In a sense, it was like, you know,
hitting a lottery
when, you know, when you were accepted and...
and you had this job at the mill,
because you really were set for life,
if you were okay with doing that type of work.
You know, it paid good benefits.
It was a job where you could raise a family.
If only dad worked, you could raise a family in Green Bay.
KEITH KUTSKA: My name is Keith Kutska.
I am one of the six defendants
in the Tom Monfils homicide case
from the James River Paper Mill in Green Bay.
INTERVIEWER: How would you describe Kutska to someone who hasn't met him before?
PIASKOWSKI: How would I describe Kutska?
Oh.
He looks like the Frito Bandito.
Big, heavy mustache.
I don't want to call him a bully, but...
If he could tease you in any way 'cause you were...
a little bit different than the other...
You know, you got to pay your dues before you can get to be
in the same level as everybody else.
So, you... you tease somebody
to find out what level of... where they're at.
WINKLER: I think it was on the...
night of November 10th.
Kutska and another gentleman
measured out some wire.
One person needed 200 feet,
and they measured out 200 feet.
And then, Kutska needed 16 feet
to wire something in a smokehouse.
KUTSKA: Lots of guys often took home scrap items
from the mill without written permission.
WINKLER: Monfils saw that, knowing that
if somebody got caught stealing, they'd lose their job.
[MALE OPERATOR OVER TAPE]
[TOM MONFILS SPEAKING]
My brother calling...
calling in Keith Kutska for stealing the cord. I...
You know, that was for... that was spite.
He was trying to get Keith Kutska in a little bit of trouble. I mean...
Whether that little piece of scrap cord left the mill or not,
it really didn't matter to my brother, you know?
DENIS GULLICKSON: The mill and its workers work a swing shift,
and it's a heavy toll.
They were proposing to go to four 12-hour workdays.
And, you know, obviously, like everything else,
some guys had no opinion, you know?
Other guys were absolutely adamant
they had keep things the way they were.
CAL: I believe that's probably the reason my brother made the call.
You know? He really wanted the 12-hour shift
where, basically, you would have more time off.
And... and several people wanted that.
And Keith Kutska, you know, was against it
'cause, you know, he had been there a long time.
He was set in his ways.
WINKLER: Kutska goes to leave work that day,
and the guards tell him to open his bag.
He said, "No, I'm in a hurry."
They said "No. You need to open your lunch box."
"No, I'm in a hurry." And he bolts.
He goes to work the next day
and is called into a disciplinary meeting
and is given four days of suspension without pay.
KUTSKA: I was upset and dumbfounded
that anyone in the mill would put my job
and my family's well-being in jeopardy
for something as common and minor
as taking a piece of wire from a dumpster.
I later learned that Tom himself
had often taken items from the mill,
very likely also without permission.
GULLICKSON: One of the managers says
a call came from inside the mill to the police from an hourly employee.
And Keith Kutska now knows that someone he works with
called the police about that wire in his bag.
KUTSKA: I learned that the police recorded all 911 calls.
When I called the police, they helped me get the recording.
WINKLER: On the tape, he said,
"I want to remain anonymous."
You cannot release any information
about a person once they say that.
A voice recording, well, it's a giveaway.
So, he confides in the Green Bay Police Department
and the district attorney, telling 'em that,
you know, "I called this in"
and, you know, "The guy is coming to get the tape."
[TOM SPEAKING]
[MALE OPERATOR SPEAKING]
He makes a total of five calls
to the Green Bay Police Department
in the week leading up to his disappearance.
[TOM SPEAKING OVER TAPE]
[MALE OPERATOR SPEAKING]
They were told to go get the tape,
hold it as evidence and not release it.
And he just didn't do it.
He just...
didn't bother to get up out of his chair
and walk 50 feet, grab the tape and...
That would've been the end of it.
KUTSKA: When I left the station with the recording,
I didn't know who the caller was.
I had my suspicions, but I didn't know.
When I played the recording, I heard Tom's voice.
If the Green Bay Police Department,
in an effort to protect
the identity of the person on the tape,
had simply released
a written transcript of the call,
we wouldn't be sitting here.
PIASKOWSKI: Tom was sitting right there by the door
with his knees up on the counter,
and he was reading a newspaper.
Within less than a minute,
Keith Kutska walked in and he had a tape,
small cassette tape player in his hand.
He calls me, "Piaskowski."
He said, "Piaskowski, name that tune."
-[CLICKS] -[TOM SPEAKING ON TAPE] I'd like to report
an employee theft
which is gonna occur at James River.
He set the tape player down in front of Tom.
-[OPERATOR ON TAPE] Did you notify your security? -[TOM] No, I didn't.
PIASKOWSKI: Tom looked up over his left shoulder
and he had just a total expression of disbelief and awe.
And his mouth just was gaping open
and his eyes were really wide and...
"Do you admit that's you?"
Tom said, "What?"
Like he didn't understand the question.
"Are you admitting that that's you on that police tape?"
Tom said, uh,
he admitted it. He said "Yes."
KUTSKA: He didn't give us a good reason
why he reported me to the police,
but I wanted him and others at the mill to know
that we knew what he did.
Kutska started saying,
berating him a little bit, "What'd you do that for?
"We were talking like good friends,
"five minutes later, or ten minutes later, or whatever.
"If you had a problem, why didn't you say something to me then?
"That's malicious."
And he, very indignantly,
turned around and walked out of the room.
I don't swear often.
On occasion I do, but I don't swear often.
But I said, "I just don't fucking believe
"that you would do that. We're family. We're friends."
You know? "We're a union."
I took my readings and I was gone for five or ten minutes,
and then I walked back to the control room.
I looked up and Tom was at the controls,
starting the 7:35-ish turnover.
TRAINING VIDEO NARRATOR: After a roll is as large as is desired,
a new roll is started with a second core.
This on-the-run process of transferring the sheet
from a finished roll to a new core is called a turnover.
Here, Tom Monfils is applying two-sided tape to the core.
PIASKOWSKI: He goes to the left and runs the crane
that lifts the big roll of paper out and they move it out of there like that.
Well, I can't see any of that happen anymore,
because there's a big control panel
in right my line of vision from sitting
in the control room where I was sitting.
And I never saw Tom again.
And that's a fact.
WINKLER: Monfils just magically disappears.
I'm sure that if the TV show4400 would've been around at the time,
they would've said he was abducted, you know.
They... [BLOWS RASPBERRY] Gone. You know? [CHUCKLES]
Because it was... they wanted it to appear just that way.
PIASKOWSKI: I looked down and Tom wasn't around.
There wasn't anybody by my machine.
And there should be.
If Tom's not around,
I'll get him in trouble.
I immediately grabbed the phone and I called the office
and I got a hold of the foreman.
He said, "What's going on?"
I said, 'Well, there's a whole bunch of shit going on.
"You better get down here fast."
Well, I wanted to get him down here
so he showed up before Tom showed up.
Tom would have egg on his face,
and I'd be able to say, "See?"
The more and more time went by without finding any answers,
the more and more, uh, serious it got.
STEVE STEIN: I thought it was weird.
I was like, "Wow.
"Where the heck would he go?"
[FAINT WHIRRING]
The buzz around the mill was that he had left,
or walked off the premises.
They didn't realize he was still in the mill.
PIASKOWSKI: At 7 o'clock, they said,
"Well, let's stop at Carla Jean's and iron this out,
or figure this out, or something.
Lepeck said, "What if Monfils is in the parking lot
"and he's got a deer rifle with him?"
You know? We both stepped away from Kutska,
you know, joking, kind of like that.
And I went to the middle of the road,
and I said, you know, followed the joke along,
I said, "Yeah. Hit the dirt or start running.
"Just like in 'Nam or something." I said to him.
[IMPERCEPTIBLE]
STEIN: They were talking about shutting all of the machines down
and starting to drain the pulp vats and stuff like that,
just to start checking to see,
-because they couldn't find him anywhere. -[BUBBLING]
And they asked me if I would do it.
And I said I would do it.
I actually did it because I couldn't believe it.
I was, like, "Well, I got to see this,
"because I don't believe that...
"that he's in this tank."
He was in there.
PIASKOWSKI: Well, my very first thought was
they found him in the tissue chest.
The tissue chest had to be empty.
He was just hiding in there.
I said, "Well, that's where he was." You know?
And then they told me he was passed away, dead,
and I couldn't believe it.
That's... that's insane.
That's crazy.
[MACHINERY WHIRRING]
Just...
hard to... hard to accept,
you know, that something like that could happen
in our little mill, our little...
family.
[MACHINERY WHIRRING]
STEIN: The atmosphere in the mill became
like you were walking on eggshells.
KERHIN: Everybody, at first, was really angered at the Police Department
for being so foolish to give a voice recording.
Had it not been released,
I don't think there would've been a homicide.
STEIN: Well, I believe it was the day after that they found Tom, uh...
they came to my house.
First thing they said was, "We're here
"because we believe you killed Tom Monfils."
And I was like...
"Uh... wait a minute. I wasn't even there."
And then they proceeded to tell me how I snuck back into the mill
and I did this, and I did that,
right in front of my family, right in front of my kids.
"We've got enough on you to get you fired from your job."
"Your family loves you, but they're not gonna love you
"when they find out what kind of a scumbag you are."
INTERVIEWER: So it wasn't just, like, one officer?
This was a system-wide...
Well, it was one in particular.
He's quite a piece of work.
We're talking about Randy Winkler.
Randy Winkler came to my house one Sunday afternoon.
He came up and he says, "Steve, you never signed
"your affidavit from yesterday."
And I said, "Sure I did."
He said, "No, you never signed it."
And I said, "Yeah, I signed it."
"No. You never signed it."
He says, "Here, just sign it quick," he says.
"I'll get on my way."
I was ready to sign it.
I had it on my workbench. I was ready to sign it
and my wife came out and she says,
"Steve, what are you doing?" And I said,
"I'm going to sign this."
And she says, "Well, did you read it?"
And I said, "No, I didn't read it."
And Randy was like, "No, no, no.
"Just let him sign it. I got to get going."
He had it written down that I told him that Mike Piaskowski told me
that he knew what happened.
And I said, "I never told you that."
"I never told you that, 'cause Mike's never said that to me."
He grabbed that paper.
He got so mad, he ripped that up
and he swore at me
and he pointed his finger at me.
And he says, "I'm gonna get you.
"I'm gonna implicate you somehow."
Thank God for my wife.
She... she...
Uh, 'cause I was ready to sign it.
WINKLER: I think I was...
I was meant to be a cop.
My dad was a farmer.
And one particular night,
my dad was stopped by a state trooper.
And he had a tail light burnt out.
And it was dark.
And the trooper went to his trunk of his car,
pulled out a screwdriver and a light bulb,
changed the light, put it in
and away we went.
And I just thought that was the coolest thing.
He could have...
just, "Nah, I'm not even going to bother," you know?
You know, or given him a warning
to have him fix it himself, or something like that.
But instead, no, he actually took an effort and...
and did something good for somebody.
That's when I made the decision I wanted to become a cop.
Because I wanted to be able to help people.
I started out in the patrol division.
I started out walking a beat.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
Walking a beat was one of the most fantastic experiences
I've ever had.
Walking into the bars on Broadway...
Today Broadway is nothing like it was
back in the '70s, you know?
You had to earn your respect
when you walked into a place, you know?
You couldn't be...
hard.
If you walked into a bar and they were shooting craps on the bar,
rather than bust 'em, or arrest 'em for it,
you just looked out the window,
and when you looked back, the dice were off the bar.
They didn't disrespect you
and you didn't
have to do things that you didn't want to do.
When you get into detectives,
it becomes much more serious.
You have to be... very, very careful
that you have the right person.
You definitely don't want to accuse anyone of something that...
or point 'em out, even as a suspect
in something that they didn't do.
PIASKOWSKI: She wanted time. She wanted space.
You know, how they, uh...
I didn't know about the boyfriend.
I was suspicious, but I didn't know.
I think deep down, I always thought that...
that she'd come back.
She's still with the guy.
And he's yet to have a job.
A decent job. Huh.
He's a loser. Nice guy.
One of those friendly kind, you know, and...
drummer in a band.
Just be totally honest with you,
I wasn't totally faithful either. Uh...
So I was willing to put the past behind us.
Once it came to light,
when she said that she wanted a divorce, that...
I was willing to do whatever it took to make it right.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
PIASKOWSKI: Steve Stein and I went to Murphy's Pub,
had a fish dinner and...
and drank a little bit too much that night.
I was kind of drowning my sorrows,
so to speak like that.
And then I ended up having a...
an interview with the police the next morning, and I was quite hungover.
Not a wise decision to get drunk like that.
I'm foggy and I'm not feeling good. I'm...
Stomachache, or headache,
or whatever I happen to have at the time, or both.
I liked the guy. [CHUCKLES]
He's, you know, anybody with a name like Randy,
it's not Randall,
or Ed, it's Eddie. You know?
Anybody with an "ie" on, it's very endearing, I think.
I didn't learn what kind of a guy he truly was
until I found out how he thinks.
He thinks a little strange, in my opinion.
WINKLER: You get to know these people and almost, um...
want to be friends with them, you know,
and... that can...
But you can't. You can't do it.
You can't allow your judgment to be clouded.
You know, I always would try to get them in
and get them to tell you a lie right off the bat,
so that you can tell when they're lying to you.
INTERVIEWER: How do you get someone to tell you a lie?
Have you ever stolen anything from work?
Probably but, I don't... Yeah, right.
-You don't... [LAUGHS] -[LAUGHS]
You know... And no, I never did. You know?
And, well, everybody has.
Life in a paper mill is pretty mundane.
I mean, it's...
You know, it's the same thing
day after day after day after day.
Now, this day...
is an exciting day.
Keith Kutska,
on Friday night,
had already called everybody in the mill
and told 'em he's got the tape.
He played it to a few of 'em over the phone,
told everybody to come up and listen to it.
Uh, now, this is a big, exciting time.
Big excitement.
Big thing happening in the mill.
It's not the mundane...
average everyday thing.
All those people that were there
now have lapse of memory.
Mike Piaskowski can't remember
"Did I do this or did do that?
"Well, I assume I did this, and I assume I did that,
"and I probably would have done this,
"and I might have done that.
"But I'm not sure. And if somebody said I did it,
"I probably did it, but I may not have done it."
PIASKOWSKI: Winkler's sitting,
his face inches from mine, sideways,
screaming at me, the spit's coming in my face, you know?
And I'm thinking,
you know, I'm in my own mind,
I'm looking down at this situation that I'm sitting in,
thinking, "They've got to go through this stuff."
Sooner or later, they'll realize
they're barking up the wrong tree.
And they'll go bark somewhere else.
Then Winkler will slam the table
and he'll do all kinds of gyrations
and try to get you excited,
try to make you stumble,
uh, try to confuse you.
WINKLER: Yeah, I'm not a bad cop.
I'm not a bully, or a... [CHUCKLES]
uh, a hard person to talk to, you know? It's...
I can get stern at times when... when I need to.
"Come on, tell me."
You know?
Get pointed with questions and...
"Come on. I know that's not the truth.
"I need the truth from you.
"Now just tell me the truth."
"Don't tell me that.
"I know that's a lie."
Or, you know, even stronger than that.
"I know you know this. Just... just come out...
"It's not going to hurt you to tell us the truth."
I'm close. Personal touching, you know,
in your space, you know?
And it's hard for you to avoid me,
because you're going to, you know, you're...
you're right with me, you know?
And I'm right with you, you know? So...
And that's how it's done.
CAL: The first time the medical examiner said how he died,
you know, it was two words,
"Ligature strangulation."
KLEMM: He had injuries to his scalp.
He had a skull fracture.
He had a fracture of the jaw.
He had injuries to his abdomen.
We know that Tom Monfils was alive,
at least briefly,
at the bottom of the pulp vat.
Uh, pulp is the raw material that goes into making paper.
It's wood and liquid.
He had that in his lungs.
So he was alive in the vat.
He had the weight attached around his neck with a rope.
And Helen Young described him
as having both suffocated and been strangled.
Once he entered the vat with the weight around his neck,
he was never coming out.
There was no way out for him.
When you look at what happened to Tom Monfils,
you understand why people were reluctant to come forward.
WINKLER: People really want to distance themselves from that case.
Most people wanted to stay away from it,
you know, at arm's length, because...
it was obvious
it was not going to turn out good
for whoever did the investigation.
Somebody...
had to grab the reins and let's go.
Let's get something done.
And finally I just said I'll do it.
That I'm going to take it over.
I'll take lead on it.
And I think there was, like,
thirty sighs of relief in the room. [LAUGHS]
"Finally, some idiot took it."
[LAUGHS] You know, so...
And that was me, I guess.
JOHN ZAKOWSKI: You don't have to have an eyewitness.
You don't have to have a photograph.
There's a jury instruction that says circumstantial evidence
is many times more powerful than direct evidence.
And over our many years in the D.A.'s office, I think that's true.
Circumstantial evidence is used
to describe the totality of the evidence.
They are all pieces of evidence.
They're all pieces of a puzzle.
And, so they...
You put together all of these pieces in the puzzle.
Let's say it's a portrait of Abe Lincoln,
and it's a 100-piece puzzle
and you've got 96 pieces.
Well, you might have four pieces missing,
but after all these pieces are together,
you can figure out who it is,
you can figure out what happened.
You can figure out the truth.
INTERVIEWER: When did you start taking personal notes
of, like, just things you were thinking, noticing?
Uh, I think my attorney told me that.
"Whenever you hear anything, write it down."
'Cause it can only help you.
Especially if you got a Polish memory like mine. So...
PIASKOWSKI: "February 22nd. 8:55 p.m.
"Al said the mill was setting up
"Winkler with an office for the interviews again.
"He commented,
"'This only proves that the police are lost.'"
"October 24th, 1993.
"Tom's paranoia might've caused him
"to plan a possible suicide.
"Getting a rope and weight ready,
"maybe placing them on the catwalk above the chests.
"Did the cops check out the area above the chests?
"Did they take any photographs of those areas?"
"Rumor mill at James River.
"Possibly Tom Monfils had the goods on someone else
"in a major way,
"and those persons took advantage of the situation?"
KERHIN: It's the hard thing to help people comprehend
twenty years later, talking about it,
is what two and a half years...
no answers meant.
It happens in November,
and you go a whole another year,
and a whole another year.
Who haven't we talked to
and what is the question we haven't asked?
What is the question we should be asking of what person?
ZAKOWSKI: In this case, I think that was understandable,
that any law enforcement felt more pressure.
They felt more pressure.
They felt like they were under the gun,
especially once that tape was released.
WINKLER: And I had some allies, um,
in the mill,
and I needed their... their support.
And that person said, [SIGHS]
"You know, I don't think you're ever going to solve this."
And that was like...
That was like a knife in the heart.
[KELLNER READING]
AMANDA WILLIAMS: I had gotten off the school bus
and there was a car in the driveway,
and a gentleman stepped out
and came around the back of the car.
He introduced himself as being Randy Winkler,
and said, "I need to talk to you about your parents."
I knew the name as far as he was an officer,
and that kind of freaked me out, saying,
"I need to talk to you about your parents."
I thought something happened, you know, kind of thing,
and I was really kind of scared.
He kind of stood between me and going into the house.
And he was just talking to me about, you know,
"What has been said around your house?
"Have you overheard things?
"Do you know things that are going on?"
You know, and so on and so forth.
And it was just... [SIGHS] Like, he was very persistent,
very kind of in-my-face, very abrupt and kind of brash.
He followed me into the house.
What I said obviously wasn't what he liked,
because it...
his body language changed.
Instead of being leaning towards me,
he leaned back and like, crossed his arms across his chest.
He was probably in there for about two hours
where he was just talking to me about this.
Have I been privy
to conversations between my dad and Keith?
Have I talked to him about dad and Pie?
And, you know, do I know the things
that happened between my mom and these men?
And... everything... It was just like, "Seriously?"
LAWYER: Do you recall that you waited one day for Amanda Kellner
-to come home from school... -[WOMAN COUGHING]
LAWYER: ...at her home?
No, I do not.
LAWYER: You recall that you were waiting there,
she came home from school
and you followed her in the house?
No.
Do you remember that you stayed there
an hour or two?
-No. -You don't remember
asking her questions about conversations
that she had heard her parents have?
No, I do not.
You remember Mr. Kellner telling you
to leave his children out of your efforts
to obtain information from him?
No.
You don't remember he was angry
that you had involved the children?
I never involved his children.
EARL KELLNER: We had a day planned.
We were going to go bowling
or, I don't remember, bowling,
or a movie, or just something you know, for my birthday.
Just me, my dad and my sister.
And he came home and he...
he was different.
We took a walk outside. We went to our backyard.
He said that there are some things that are going on.
He said, "And I have to do some things and say some things."
And he said, "I have to do this
"to keep the family safe.
"I have to keep the family together."
He thought that the phones were bugged,
that the house was being watched. Um...
He pointed down the road.
There was always a car sitting there.
And, since this all started and he said, "They're watching us."
"I'll do anything for you and your sister." Um...
He said that, "No matter what happens,
"I always want you and your sister to be together."
"You know, I'm trying to keep you guys safe."
You know?
"I didn't fight your mom for this long for custody of you guys
"to have you taken away for something like this."
"I want you to look after each other."
And as a... as a kid,
that quite honestly scared the daylights out of me.
WINKLER: I sat him down and I had this...
I had it all set up. It was a...
make-it-or-break-it move.
I pulled out this little receiver
that would be like in a phone.
Two little... paper clip...
Sorry, not paper clip,
but little clips soldered to it.
And I said, "You know...
"you can walk into a bar,
"go and make a phone call,
"place this inside,
"finish making your phone call,
"hang it up,
"and yet you can hear everything that's said in that bar."
His mouth dropped open.
He got pale white,
and at that point I knew
that he had a lot of information
that he wasn't telling us, or hadn't told us in the past.
And I just said to him, you know,
"You either can tell us what happened,
"or we can play these tapes and see what happens there."
You know?
Trying to indicate to him,
or make him think that if he didn't...
didn't cooperate,
that he could possibly be charged with something.
WILLIAMS: He spent a lot of time in the police station.
I think it was two days
that he was questioned and questioned
and presented with that written statement
stating he had to sign it,
you know, for threats of losing his job,
losing his home,
because he's gonna go to jail.
And losing his kids.
I mean, that's... that's not okay.
[KELLNER READING]
It was the Fourth of July weekend.
Keith got drunk and was talking about what happened
the morning Monfils was killed.
He had us role-play
using his wife, my wife and me,
and said we were different people.
[LAUGHING]
Keith said he put Rey Moore and Mike Hirn up to harassing Monfils.
He watched Hirn push Tom while he was making
his last entry in the production log.
They had him, trapped by the bubbler.
He said one of the guys came up behind Tom and hit him in the head.
Keith sent Moore to pick on Monfils,
because Monfils was White and Moore was Black,
and if Monfils said anything,
they would say he was prejudiced.
Rey had the tape and was shaking it at him,
telling him he couldn't deny that he made the phone call.
Piaskowski, Basten, and Johnson were
all standing around yelling at Tom.
Keith said he was just enjoying the show.
Keith repeated these things to me several different times.
ZAKOWSKI: Once that information was
discovered and brought to our office,
then we were able to start looking
towards actually issuing charges.
KELLNER: I've read this 12-page statement
and find it true to the best of my knowledge,
and I sign of my own free will.
Brian A. Kellner.
The role play just doesn't pass the smell test.
It will involve all of these people surrounding Tom.
It will involve one of the men saying,
"Oh, there's a weight and a rope over here.
"I'll go get that."
It will involve two of the men carrying Tom's unconscious body
across an entire warehouse,
unsupported by any eyewitness
and unsupported by physical evidence of any kind.
And then, and probably most unbelievably,
get themselves squared away
emotionally, spiritually,
mentally, to return to their workstations
and work out the rest of their day
without so much as a case of the jitters.
STEIN: You know, it's hard enough to get a guy
to throw $3 or $5
in the retirement kitty when a guy retires.
But, jeez, just ask me to kill somebody for you,
and I'll go along with that.
This is the Fox Den bar outside the town of Abrams.
It's actually in the town of Morgan, where on the July 4th weekend,
Keith Kutska, Brian Kellner
and their two wives gathered here inside the bar.
And, according to the criminal complaint filed against Kutska,
what they did was reenact the confrontation
that Kutska and others had with Monfils
on the day in which he was killed.
Well, let's go back to Kellner's statement for a second.
Here's somebody in the bar.
He's saying, "You're Tom Monfils.
"I'm going to be Mike Hirn.
"You're Rey Moore. And then you're behind him.
"You're over here. You're Piaskowski," and so on,
with specificity.
And then draws on a napkin
where everybody was in the number 9 coop
and draws arrows
as to where Moore goes out this way, we go out this way.
That's somebody that's really telling what happened.
WINKLER: As soon as I got the warrant,
we had teams set up. I got on the radio and I said, "All units, it's a go."
And they swooped him up and brought him in.
Keith Kutska, Rey Moore,
Mike Piaskowski, Mike Johnson,
Mike Hirn, Dale Basten.
PIASKOWSKI: The thing that we feared was happening.
That we were being arrested and charged.
We'd talk and they would be, you know,
just almost like thumbing their nose at you.
They're real...
cocky for another word, you know.
And just...
sit back and think nothing was going to happen to 'em,
that they were untouchables.
And we were able to prove 'em wrong.
We believe we do have enough evidence
to go into court and obtain a conviction
by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
I'm happy this day happened.
There was a lot of happy people today.
FEMALE NEWSREADER: Thomas Monfils' mother Joan Monfils says
her family had to be patient
and just take it one day at a time.
Our feelings...
go out to the families of the defendants.
I'm sure that they must be feeling today
like we felt for the last two and a half years.
Why now?
Because we have enough evidence.
People wonder why has it taken so long.
We did not have the evidence to come forward.
WINKLER: Mr. Monfils was confronted not once, but a second time.
And we believe it was after that second confrontation
that the decision was made to, um...
if you want to put it this way, um,
get rid of the evidence
and thereby putting him in a vat.
ZAKOWSKI: Certainly, the Kellner statements
and other statements which Mr. Kutska made to other people
helped supply some major pieces of the puzzle
which we had to have before going forward.
WINKLER: There's still more evidence out there.
There are people that know things that
may have been afraid to come forward up to this point.
We appeal to their sense of decency,
not only for the family but for the community,
but 'cause it's the right thing to do,
to please come forward and share that information.
MAN 1: I think they did the right thing, yeah, by waiting and...
I know it was rough for the family, but...
I always said if you do something wrong,
it's just a matter of time before they get you anyway.
MAN 2: Actually, I would be quite relieved
that they finally found somebody.
Um, it's not surprising it took this long.
I mean, you gotta expect things like this to take time.
You got to find the hard facts and, you know, nail them.
WOMAN: I was happy that they got the people,
because... [CHUCKLES IN RELIEF]
justice is finally being done for him.
[MAN 3 SIGHS IN RELIEF] It's a relief.
I'll tell you, I'm happy.
I had some... I can't...
There's no words.
I mean, I'm shocked.
I'm happy with the family.
ZAKOWSKI: This is it. This is our one chance.
You know? We got to... we got to get it.
KERHIN: And you had six defendants,
and most of them had two attorneys.
A couple of them only had one.
But, you know, so there were 11, 12, 13 defense attorneys.
MALE REPORTER: When these six suspects make their way
into court come Monday morning,
it will be under very tight security.
Security like we have never ever seen before
here in Brown County.
Context is everything.
I mean, if you did not see these men in the courtroom,
and hear what they were being accused of,
they looked like any six men you'd find anywhere in Green Bay.
They looked like any six men
that my father would have been friends with
from his factory where he worked.
CAL: The one thing I did not like in court was
the fact that you had two sides
to the courtroom.
You had the side
that was like, for Tom Monfils.
And then you had the side,
you know, of the men being
you know, accused... of the murder.
And it was just odd because so many people
on the other side of the courtroom, I knew.
I went to high school with them
and they were relatives, or friends,
or family of one of the six men.
FEMALE NEWSREADER: Most of the people coming to watch the trial are
family members of the victim and the defendants.
Most know the routine by now
and plan on coming back throughout the next month.
How long it takes, it doesn't really matter.
Just, you know...
just so somebody pays for this.
NEWSREADER: Even high-school students
like Eileen Matuszak are sitting in.
Matuszak is learning about the court system.
I just pick it up along the way, I guess,
by watching and observing.
NEWSREADER: There are some here who don't have
any legal interest in the case.
It's an unusual case.
I mean, six... What is it? Six men, tried for one crime?
It's unusual for Green Bay.
MALE NEWSREADER: And for the first time in either the civil or criminal case,
Tom Monfils' widow, Susan, showed up in court
with her attorney, Bruce Bachhuber,
but she rushed out of court saying she didn't want to talk.
Neither did the two defendants out on bond,
Mike Piaskowski and Dale Basten.
REPORTER: May I ask you how you think it's going so far?
No comment.
GULLICKSON: If ever a scene were constructed
to look like the Monfils Six,
or a half dozen union thugs,
there it was.
KERHIN: They were called the Monfils Six
over and over again by most of the media outlets.
They're called the Monfils Six.
MALE NEWSREADER: The men known as the Monfils Six.
The fate of the Monfils Six.
KERHIN: And they were lumped together,
and the decision to try them all together was clearly
a key moment in the case
and has kept them tied together. "Monfils Six."
FEMALE NEWSREADER: The defendants in the Tom Monfils' murder case
sat together for this week's hearing,
but they will probably fight to have separate trials.
It was a fight to get it
where all six defendants were tried at the same time.
FEMALE NEWSREADER: But District Attorney John Zakowski says
it's a better use of resources to try them together.
We'll certainly fight a severance motion
'cause I just think it makes more sense
for all the defendants to be tried at once.
Well, first of all, a joint trial is
going to save taxpayer money.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think that if they had been tried separately,
that you could have gotten convictions?
No.
PIASKOWSKI: Like, I knew Basten.
I knew of Rey Moore.
Uh, I knew of Mike Hirn.
Kind of knew him, 'cause he worked at the paper machines.
But I never really "knew him" knew him.
Michael Johnson, I knew who he was.
INTERVIEWER: At the time, were you convinced that they were all innocent?
Well, we... No. Throughout our own investigation,
you know, we looked at each one of 'em
as if each one of 'em could have done this
or these two could have done something.
In fact, I helped with Mike's defense.
My assignment was to look at Mike Hirn
and see whether Mike Hirn was a...
could have done it.
So, you know, if we've got that strategy,
they all have that strategy.
Mike Hirn's attorney was...
His defense seemed to be that, you know,
all the other five guys are guilty,
but his defendant was not.
My client is hanging out there alone.
I think that's pretty clear if anybody's listening to the evidence.
Everybody's protecting everybody else.
At least they're all saying they're together.
And my guy isn't. My guys hanging out there
in the... on the edge,
holding on with his fingernails,
and I'm going to make sure the jury gets that message.
This wall of silence that has come into this case...
is the envy of the mafia.
It is incredible.
So, you know, we were actually, uh...
defending ourselves against him as well.
And again,
that's that joint trial issue, which is unfair.
INTERVIEWER: It's fascinating to hear
about these attorneys basically eating each other alive
-during the whole thing. -Yeah.
It was a difficult job for all the attorneys. Um...
They...
They did have a difficult case.
INTERVIEWER: But do you think they had a fair trial?
Oh, yes. They definitely had a fair trial.
ZAKOWSKI: There's always,
from a prosecutor's perspective,
an advantage and a utility
in having a joint trial,
because it's for judicial economy,
judicial efficiency,
witnesses don't have to testify more than once.
You don't have to have two juries being impaneled, or more.
So in almost every case involving co-defendants,
if it's possible,
if, legally, you have the means to try them together,
we will seek a joint trial,
and we did that in this case as well.
The case is exactly what we thought it would be.
Um. They have no evidence. The state has no evidence.
They try to bring up a lot of... throw up a lot of dirt.
But nothing involving the events of that day
that tie our client in any way to this supposed crime.
FEMALE NEWSREADER: Prosecutors say this is their strongest witness.
Brian Kellner.
I think that they'll find the case is
really, frankly, not that complex.
It's a simple matter of whether they accept
what Brian Keller told them now.
Everybody except Rey went out the front door of the coop
and down towards the number 7 paper machine where Tom was.
Rey went out the back door of number 9's booth.
And that they confronted Tom by the bubbler.
MALE NEWSREADER: Kellner places all six suspects at the murder scene,
talked specifically
about Rey Moore screaming at Monfils
and Mike Hirn shoving him in the chest.
KELLNER: Three more standing behind him.
And Mike Hirn walked... go up in front of him and...
[PAPERS SHUFFLING]
KELLNER: ...they were shaking a tape in his face, saying
"We got you now." You know?
"There's no way you can deny this."
MALE NEWSREADER: According to Kellner,
Dale Basten, Michael Piaskowski,
Michael Johnson and Kutska were also in that control room.
Kellner says Kutska told him what happened next.
This was going on and Mike Hirn was
right up in Tom's face
and gave him a shove.
And sometime during that
time period there, whatever... how long it took, that...
one of the guys gave him a slap upside the back of the head.
He said he was... he was hit in the head.
-Yeah. -LAWYER: And did...
And did Mr. Kutska say where he was hit in the head?
Um, top back.
If Kellner is believed, then everybody else is lying,
they're lying to cover up their crime.
If one fall, they should all fall.
GULLICKSON: That Fox Den roleplay
which was introduced against Kutska
could never have been introduced against the other men.
It was hearsay.
They couldn't have a trial against five of the six of us,
uh, without having a joint trial,
because they didn't have any direct evidence against us.
Just for us laypeople to think
that, um, they'd grab up six people,
and you would...
by inference and by presence, be guilty of anything
thrown at any other person in that room.
I understand this only applies to Keith Kutska.
[SNICKERS] There are the other five men seated in the same room.
That's the scenario under which these men were tried.
ZAKOWSKI: I think... well, whether they...
at this point, I should... I should backtrack.
If they had been single trials...
I don't know if...
if, in fact... I don't... I don't know to what extent...
um, I'm not certain of what extent
those... the other statements may or may not have been...
We would have argued that they were.
It, uh, could be used.
But the argument was that of a single trial is appropriate
and that at the single trial,
those statements against Kutska can be used
against the other co-defendants.
PIASKOWSKI: Even if the judge says to the jury,
"Now, you don't apply this evidence against...
"uh, these four defendants, just against these two."
Or "Just this one against these five."
You know? The bell has been rung.
You can't un-ring a bell.
ZAKOWSKI: This is a whodunit case.
What? Where? When?
Who? You've got to find out who is responsible
for the death of Thomas Monfils.
Closing argument,
my former boss used to say it was
Christmas tree time.
For almost four hours this morning,
the District Attorney made his plea for justice.
John Zakowski, beginning his closing arguments,
defending his case and the credibility of his witnesses.
And that was always my favorite part of doing a trial,
because you could be yourself,
and you could explain yourself,
and you could present
what you thought was important to a jury.
And you could do it in different ways.
Ladies and gentlemen, this case involves
the murder of Thomas Monfils.
It involves a second confrontation
during the morning hours of November 21st, 1992.
WINKLER: What I think happened on November 21st 1992,
the day that Tom Monfils was murdered.
First, he's confronted in the coop.
ZAKOWSKI: He's got to admit that it's his voice on that tape.
The tape itself isn't going to be enough.
No, he didn't admit to it.
They confronted him. Mr. Kutska was civil.
And now the union can't even do anything?
Do you think they were just gonna let it lay?
And they weren't going to do anything at that point?
And they had to go and confront him
to get him, to be able to bring those union charges.
WINKLER: All the guys that were in the number 9 coop,
watching what was going on, came out
surrounded Tom Monfils, were yelling at him.
ZAKOWSKI: And they met him by the bubbler.
And they began yelling at him.
One of them had a tape,
and they had the tape
and they were shaking it in his face.
And Hirn was right in his face, and Morrison...
"What's your fucking problem?"
At 7:34, Mike Hirn comes up to him,
gives him a shove...
causing Tom to make a mark at 7:34
that indicates something happened.
We know Monfils worked at 7:34 turnover.
And we know that Piaskowski calls him
and is missing about 7:50.
But before the 7:56,
that's when those rolls kicked off.
The logic is, Monfils was killed
between 7:35 and 7:50 in that short period of time.
[MACHINERY WHIRRING]
As they're yelling, Rey Moore reaches over
and hits Tom Monfils in the head and down he goes.
ZAKOWSKI: What could have been used to hit him?
A wrench? Board? A Pipe?
The word was that he hit him with a knockout wrench.
ZAKOWSKI: We know that Monfils was severely beaten.
-It wasn't a one-man job. -[BEATINGS AND GROANS]
Thirteen separate injuries to Thomas Monfils.
There was severe bruising to the head, fractured skull,
contrecoup injury,
deep bruising in the neck
consistent with this kind of motion,
bruises to the chest over the rib area,
fractured jaw and, of course, a knee to the groin.
Now, he's lying on the ground,
in front of these six defendants.
What do you think happened next?
What do you think was going through their minds?
What we argue to the jury,
and what I think people forget is the motive in this case.
If you are participating,
or part of a beating of a fellow co-worker,
you're gonna be fired.
You're going to lose your job.
And one of the exhibits that we used was
how much money these people were making in the mill.
Piaskowski, 72,000.
I think Johnson was over 70.
Basten, over $100,000.
Now, back in 1992, that was darn good money.
If Tom Monfils survives, they get fired.
They lose their jobs.
And here you've got a snitch,
who's laying there bleeding.
And if you don't get rid of him,
you're going to lose your job.
And I think that, in a matter of minutes, if not seconds,
they said, "We've got to get rid of him,
"or we're gonna lose that $100,000-a-year job."
ZAKOWSKI: What do you think this body is telling us?
What are we supposed to glean from this?
Mr. Monfils is telling you, "Look at this.
"Look at me! Look what they did to me!
"They're hurting me.
"They're killing me.
"I didn't commit suicide.
"My God, I've got a wife and two kids.
"When I heard about that tape,
"I went out and I worked that day.
"It took more than one person to do this."
That's what his body is telling us.
ZAKOWSKI: He was killed when he was placed in the vat,
because his lungs inhaled the pulp,
and so he was still breathing.
So it's the operation of putting him in the vat
which is the first-degree intentional homicide.
INTERVIEWER: The one that I've had a hard time
maybe getting in my head is
the evidence that really gets Mike Piaskowski,
that really ties him to this.
Can you go over that a little bit more with me?
Rope and weight.
There was a rope that had duct tape around it
that was found attached to Monfils and this weight.
And that came from the number seven coop.
There's rope all over that mill.
But behind in this dark recess of the number seven coop,
there were two jump ropes
that, you know, made makeshift jump ropes
with this duct tape.
It is in a dark part behind the number seven coop.
There's no traffic there.
There's no reason to walk through.
If you're from another part of the mill,
the only people that would have access
to that would be in that number seven coop.
And the only person that had access to that rope, well...
Pete Delvoe was busy working on the machine.
Dennis Servais was in the coop
and later kept occupied by Mike Hirn.
And Monfils was beaten up.
The only person left is Mike Piaskowski.
ZAKOWSKI: In closing, ladies and gentlemen,
you know, there's a saying up there on the wall.
"Justice, the hope of all who suffered,
"the dread of all who wrong."
Now, I'll tell you, I've used that once before in a case,
and God willing, I'm sure I'll have an opportunity again.
But there will never be another case
where that saying means as much
as this case.
On behalf of the state,
on behalf of this community,
and on behalf of the family of Thomas Monfils,
I implore you,
don't let them get away with it,
like they have for two and a half years.
Don't let them get away with murder.
They're all involved.
And not to hold them accountable,
each one of them accountable for what they did.
It wouldn't be fair.
It wouldn't be right.
And it wouldn't be the truth.
Please return with a verdict of guilty
as to each and every defendant.
Thank you.
REPORTER: Whenever the verdict comes down,
Action 2 News is going to cut into the programming.
Whatever we have on the air, we're breaking into it
and you are going to get live coverage of the verdict.
This trial has been such a long one
that some of the regular courtroom observers have
brought along their own seat cushions.
These benches can get pretty hard to sit on
all-day long for five weeks,
and now, they continue to wait.
They plan to camp out here in the courthouse
until the jury's decision is in.
I hope I'm in the courthouse when the verdict comes out.
PIASKOWSKI: I felt doomed. I really did.
It was just an inner feeling, um...
deep down, secretly hoping that, you know,
the jury would see it right
and thinking maybe they'll convict Keith Kutska
and maybe not us.
It was interesting because, you know,
as this trial is going on, the O.J. trial is going on.
I remember when the O.J. Simpson verdict came...
came in during the course of that trial,
I think it was during the noon hour.
We were in the media room,
and they came back with a not-guilty verdict.
And we thought, "What kind of mountain do we have to climb?"
given what the evidence was in that case.
My opinion is the same opinion as half the world.
O.J. Simpson was guilty.
Uh, guilty as sin.
But the California jury let him off.
And I think this jury may have had in the back of its...
in the recesses of their mind that
"We're not going to let the O.J. verdict
"kind of thing happen here in Green Bay."
[IMPERCEPTIBLE]
MALE REPORTER: This is Judge James Bayorgeon,
the Outagamie County judge
who's been covering the case.
We apologize for the hum coming from the courtroom.
Some of the technical facilities
with so many cameras here, emit some hum.
MALE REPORTER: The verdict's handed to the judge right now
by the bailiff as he walks off camera.
Judge James Bayorgeon carefully looking at each one...
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask
that you listen to the reading of the verdict.
MALE REPORTER: And here he goes.
"State of Wisconsin versus Keith Kutska.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Keith M. Kutska,
"guilty of the offense
"of first-degree intentional homicide,
"party to the crime
"on or about November 21, 1992,
"as charged in the information,
"Here at Green Bay, Brown County, Wisconsin,
"this 28th day of October 1995, grand jury.
"State of Wisconsin versus Michael Piaskowski.
"We, the jury, find the defendant,
"Michael L. Piaskowski guilty of the offense
-"of first-degree... -[WOMAN SCREAMS]
"...intentional homicide."
"Mike Piaskowski, guilty" and Lisa screamed.
And we weren't supposed to make any noise.
And...
I collapsed down here,
and we weren't supposed to do anything
so we're weeping.
What I remember is "Michael Piaskowski, guilty."
"Oh, no. Mikey, no."
You know? It was her right behind me.
"State of Wisconsin versus Reynold Moore.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Reynold C. Moore
-"guilty of..." -[WOMAN SCREAMING AND WAILING]
"...first-degree intentional homicide,
-"party to the crime..." -[WOMAN SCREAMING]
JUDGE: Remove her, please.
-GUARD: You're out of here. -[WOMAN WHIMPERS]
REPORTER: One person ordered being removed from the courtroom right now.
That is Rey Moore's wife
and daughter being removed from the courtroom right now.
-Three guilty verdicts. -If any further demonstrations,
I'll clear the courtroom before I proceed.
"State of Wisconsin versus Michael Hirn.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Michael Hirn,
"guilty of the offense
-"of first-degree intentional homicide..." -[WOMAN CRYING]
"...party to the crime on or about November 21st, 1992,
"as charged in the information
"dated at Green Bay, Brown County, Wisconsin,
"this 28th day of October, 1995.
"State of Wisconsin versus Dale Basten.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Dale N. Basten,
"guilty of the offense
"of first-degree intentional homicide,
"party to the crime on or about November 21st, 1992."
"State of Wisconsin versus Michael Johnson.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Michael Johnson,
"guilty of the offense
"of first-degree intentional homicide,
-party of the crime... -REPORTER: That's it. Guilty verdicts...
JUDGE: ...November 21st, 1992.
REPORTER: ...for all six defendants.
PIASKOWSKI: I lost faith in mankind.
I couldn't believe that society was giving up on me that way.
It was terrible.
Um...
We were sentenced to life
for something we didn't do.
CAL: I was just glad it was going to be out of the media.
As selfish as that sounds,
I was just happy.
I thought, "Finally. It's done." You know?
"I don't have to listen to it anymore."
WINKLER: I just wanted to go up
and personally shake his hand and... um...
[BREATH TREMBLING]
I walked in the D.A.'s office and...
and they all applauded me. [BREATH TREMBLING]
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
PIASKOWSKI: Minutes and hours...
and days go by so slowly.
The immediate time goes so slowly.
But before you know it, a year has gone, you know?
And then two years.
You've got to put your mind into this...
space-y state, in a sense,
just to kind of deal with it.
INTERVIEWER: How do you keep from losing it?
In prison?
Uh, you don't want to know. [CHUCKLES]
Probably felt about the same or maybe worse
than when I went to Vietnam.
At least when I went to Vietnam,
I was...
I had a lot of bravado and training.
I had no training for what was going to come on in prison.
I got a phone call.
The guard of our cell block got a phone call
and they came out,
and that happens only on super rare occasions.
And then I got on the phone and they announced
that my father had passed away.
[BREATH TREMBLING]
And... [CLEARS THROAT]
Hmm.
And, um...
It was sad. It hurt.
Um...
I think the guards were there...
I think the guards were there to...
prevent...
a person that gets information like that from going off.
Uh, they wanted to be at the ready, so to speak.
And I didn't let it hit me that way,
uh, 'cause that's not me.
I...
[EXHALES]
[INHALES]
I developed an attitude for a while,
um, because what the system did to me,
to my family, to my father.
They took away our lives together
in his final years. That's...
I was pretty bitter for a while.
INTERVIEWER: How long did that last for you?
Uh...
It's still there.
It's smaller, but it's still there.
As some...
cop friends of mine have said,
you know, Tom Monfils wasn't the only victim in this...
in this case.
There are a lot of victims, including me.
I worked very hard on that homicide
and put in...
way too many hours
and put in too much of myself.
And...
it took its toll on me.
And, so...
I got ill after.
It just... It all added up
and it just got to be too much.
And, so I took some time off.
KLEMM: Brian and I also covered the federal civil trial,
uh, that Susan Monfils brought against Green Bay
and the police for releasing the tape.
And it was all about police
and whether they had created additional danger,
whether they had placed Tom Monfils in danger
by releasing the tape.
At the end of it,
Susan Monfils and her children were awarded about $2 million.
WINKLER: When I got back to work,
um, I was assigned to work with the civil attorneys
who were representing the city against the civil suit.
And I was telling 'em the truth.
Telling 'em what I was gonna have to testify to.
If what... asked in court,
this is what the answer is going to be.
And they didn't want that.
They didn't like what they heard.
I got threatened in the hallway
by the attorney representing the city,
that I better not say
what he thinks I'm going to say.
And then, you know,
against his better wishes
I did say what needed to be said,
what the truth was.
INTERVIEWER: What was that truth?
There was a question as to...
whether the tapes were still in existence,
because I believe the city claimed
that they were no longer in existence and, um...
and I knew that they were.
INTERVIEWER: But wasn't it public knowledge
that the tape was released? So how...
Yeah.
Hmm.
I'm getting in real...
untouchable territory.
You can't do an investigation and find out only the things you want to find out.
Then you find out other things.
And you don't want to know 'em, but you know 'em.
And when it comes time to have to testify to them,
you can't say, "I don't remember."
Or you can't say, "I don't want to."
You have to tell the truth.
And the truth is going to be damning.
And... And...
not what other police officers want to hear,
not what administration wants to hear,
not what the mayor wants to hear.
They wanted me to be a good old boy
and not do anything that would
incriminate the city,
that would show the city liable.
They didn't want to be sued.
They didn't want to have to pay anything,
and that's understandable.
But they also have to admit
that they did something wrong.
When that happens,
that's the only thing you can do.
When you do something wrong, you admit it and move on.
You learn from it.
I got back to work and...
when the chief put out an order
that no one was allowed to talk to me.
They moved my desk to the one right in front of the captain's door,
so the captain could see me at all times.
You know? And they let me know that.
You know? "That's why we're putting you here, so we keep an eye on you."
I retired on October 31st of 1997,
I believe it was.
It was an agreement between myself and the city,
and I took a Duty Disability retirement.
Probably four years ago, I...
I would have been very reluctant to talk to you
about this, or about anything, you know.
I was still guarding myself, but...
you know, I don't feel that way now,
and chips will fall where they fall.
CAL: I was glad it was over with. I was happy.
My parents could move on now.
You know? And I guess at that time
I just thought, "Well, they gambled." You know?
They thought there was no evidence against them.
So they all gambled.
And, you know...
But then shortly after that,
it's like, "Well, that makes no sense."
And then, you know, I started to research
a little more on my own, talking to people and...
and, you know, every day that goes on,
it's harder and harder to believe.
This wasn't a group of six drifters
that came through town and had nothing to lose.
I mean, they had everything to lose.
And they did lose everything.
They wouldn't have been smart enough to pull it off.
You know? Now you may hate to say it,
but a few of them wouldn't have been smart enough to pull it off.
You're going to tell me that these simple people outfoxed the police?
That they didn't leave any evidence anywhere and...
All we can go on is a lot of common sense, really.
And, you know, what human nature is, I mean...
I find it impossible to believe that you're gonna have six people commit a crime,
within a three-four minute period,
that didn't go to work that day planning to harm anybody.
They didn't premeditate this,
there was no prior planning.
And yet, they are going to stick to it to this day.
It's pretty obvious to see that it really doesn't add up.
INTERVIEWER: What was it about this case that grabbed you?
STEVE KAPLAN: The lack of evidence.
There was no direct evidence of a beating and a murder.
There was nothing in the history of any of the six suspects,
then defendants, now convicted,
um, not defendants,
that suggested to me in any way they were violent.
Every time I looked at it, it made no sense,
and I started to see,
particularly as I read the news clippings
back in real time from theGreen Bay paper,
I could see the pressure on the police, on the D.A.
Somebody had to pay for this,
the death of Tom Monfils.
And it just struck me...
um...
uh, as odd that you would just say,
"Well, I don't want to look at the possibility
"that this may not have been a murder at all."
You know...
everybody calls it... It's the "Monfils Six."
It's the "Monfils case."
And we know the least about Tom.
CAL: He was my big brother.
He was also, in a sense, almost a parent to me.
INTERVIEWER: And what was the age gap between you and Tom again?
CAL: Ten years.
Where a lot of people are just kind of,
"Ah, that's my little brother.
"Go away. You're pestering me."
You know? It wasn't like that at all.
I mean, if there is any picture of a holiday
of the family together,
it's always my brother and myself sitting next to each other.
And then he had left for the Coast Guard
for quite a few years.
STEIN: And he was telling me, you know, some stories
about when he was in the Coast Guard and stuff like that.
His thing in the Coast Guard was
recovering people's bodies that had committed suicide
from jumping off of bridges,
and railroad trestles, and...
And the way he described it,
how they would just shackle themselves to this weight
so they couldn't get away from it.
And they were going down. And he says, "Well, they...
"When they wanted to kill themselves,
"they knew that they weren't gonna...
"they weren't gonna get all them chains unlocked and opened up and..."
And then when I found out he had a rope around his neck
and a weight at the end of it and stuff,
I was just like, "Man. That's almost like the stuff he was describing to me."
[BELL RINGING]
CAL: I was driving with Susan. It was just me and her,
and we were all making funeral arrangements.
And we'd just left the cemetery
and we were going to a floral shop
that was in the neighborhood.
So we had just pulled in the lot, and it was noon.
The noon news comes on the radio and says
that, you know, Tom was found with a rope
and a weight tied around his neck.
And we hadn't known that.
You know, Sue had obviously already known
that he had passed away, that he was found in the vat.
When she heard about this rope and weight,
she just keeled over in the passenger seat
and stared at the floor for a period of time,
and then said to me, "Take me to the bank."
We went to the bank and she wanted to go
in her security deposit box, which she did.
And she was just back there 15 to 20 minutes.
And then she came out. And then we ended up, from there,
we went to my sister's house.
I'm just wondering, what was she looking for?
Was she heading there to see if there was a note in there?
INTERVIEWER: Did you ask her at the time?
No, I didn't.
KAPLAN: What are you looking for in the safe deposit box?
Are you worried about...
Do you want to look at the insurance policies
to see if there is a suicide exclusion?
Because now you've made the same connection
that a lot of guys have made at the mill
that he died in the exact manner
that he used to talk about people killing themselves,
committing suicide by drowning
with heavy objects tied to them.
CAL: We went to the bank, and of course, I stood there and waited.
You know, I didn't go in with her.
She was in there 15-20 minutes,
and then we got in the car
and we drove to my sister's house.
It was just an odd thing.
KAPLAN: Susan Monfils had a conversation
with Tom's mother, Cal's mother also.
CAL: She sat at my mom and dad's house,
saying at the kitchen table,
saying that he committed suicide.
She repeated it several times.
And then there was some talk
about some notes that she had found
above the ceiling tiles in her bedroom.
KAPLAN: Susan Monfils testified
that after Tom's death,
she had pushed up a ceiling panel,
I think in the bedroom.
Because she was thinking about doing some renovations.
And down fell a business card
from the Green Bay Police,
and there were names written on it
of police officers.
And she was then asked, "Well, what did you do with it?"
"I burned it."
Sue knows a lot more
than she ever said.
And there's really nobody in the family that disagrees with that.
KAPLAN: And then the question was the knots.
What are the knots?
We find a guy living in the Minneapolis suburbs
who spent, I think it was at least four years in the Coast Guard,
and then the bulk of his career
in the U.S. Merchant Marine.
And he looks at the rope knots
that were tied first around Tom's neck,
and then to the handle of that 50-pound weight.
And he says those are two-half-hitch knots.
And those are taught in the Coast Guard.
Then Cal told me that he had
obtained knots from Tom's house after Tom's death.
He went looking for knots,
and he found knots that his brother had tied.
They were with a cord, kind of a thin cord,
tied around nails.
And he had, in the courtroom,
at the July 2015 hearing,
he had photographs of those knots,
and he also had the knots themselves.
They're the same knot
that was tied around Tom's neck
and to the rope handle.
There are seven people on the planet
who matter in terms of knot tying.
The six defendants and Tom Monfils.
Of the seven, the only one who was shown to have
the ability and propensity
to tie that two-half-hitch knot is the guy
who was in the Coast Guard, Tom Monfils.
Then I read Dr. Young's testimony.
I read her autopsy report.
It made no sense to me.
She ruled out suicide and ruled in homicide
on the basis of a variety of assumptions.
"Well, these injuries could only have been caused by a beating
"before he was put into the vat, or entered the vat.
How she could know that was beyond me.
It just made no sense.
Every one of those injuries could've been
suffered in the vat.
There is no injury here that tells me
that it could only have been inflicted by a beating.
He had a two-inch-long skull fracture,
the edges of which were parallel, 3/8 inch wide,
and 1/16th of an inch deep.
At his deposition,
the lead engineer for the mill said
that with the blades rotating,
Mr. Monfils, particularly with this 50-pound weight would've
been physically sucked
into contact with the blades.
The police never took
physical possession of the blades,
but they measured them.
They measured the edge
as 3/8 inch wide.
The exact width of this fracture.
And the thought that the police didn't know
that the dimensions of that fracture
just exactly match the width of those rotating blades is
a bridge too far for me to believe.
The most logical inference you can draw,
if we're going to draw inferences,
let's draw this one.
Tom Monfils had made up his mind
that his life was not worth living.
The last person to see him alive is Pete Delvoe,
a worker at the mill. And Pete says
he saw Tom walking toward the airlock entrance
to the number seven coop.
Now that airlock entrance leads to that coop,
and it also leads to the storage room
where Tom's jump rope was hanging on a railing.
The first couple of times
that Pete Delvoe was interviewed, he said,
"I saw him walking into the number seven coop."
Later on, he said,
"Well, I think that's where he was walking,
"'cause that's where the guys would have gone
"after finishing a task on the number seven machine."
But we know Mike Piaskowski
and Dennis Servais were sitting there at that time,
and both Dennis and Mike said, "He never came in here."
He had to have gone through the other door
in this... that was connected to this airlock
that led to what was called the three-four storage room
where the rope was hanging on a railing.
And we also know
that the 50-pound weight was sitting on the floor
right by the entrance to that airlock.
So Tom clearly knew where that weight was.
Anybody who worked on seven
knew where that weight was.
There was no evidence
that only Mike Piaskowski knew
where this rope and the weight were.
He picks it up by the handle,
walks through the airlock,
goes through the door to the storage room,
takes his rope off the railing,
and proceeds unnoticed.
And this was an isolated area
now that he is in, in the mill.
He ties one end of that jump rope around his neck,
the other end to the handle of that weight.
Uh, and he knew that he needed the 50-pound weight
to keep himself submerged
so that he would not do what a normal person would do,
which is to fight to...
struggle to the top of the surface and breathe.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think that...
Sue would ever say if she knew anything else?
I don't think so.
I think if, you know,
one person can hold it inside.
But not six.
REY MOORE: The truth is going to come out.
I mean, it may not be today.
It may not be tomorrow. It may be five years from now.
But the truth will come out.
And when the truth comes out,
and my kids can walk with their head held high
and know that the world knows
that their father is not a murderer.
Then it'll be worth it.
I brought that tape to work.
I played that tape.
It was no secret.
That was all I did.
I had no knowledge
that anybody was going to kill Tom.
NEWSREADER: Michael Johnson, serving his sentence
in another Tennessee prison, tells what he saw.
You know, people weren't throwing things around,
or stomping on the floor,
or banging their fists on the table or...
It didn't seem like that kind of an atmosphere to me.
You know? I didn't see any violent reaction at all.
People were just interested in it.
I mean, you know, they wanted to listen to it.
You know, what was on it?
Myself and the other men are innocent men
convicted by state-sponsored perjury,
coerced by Detective Randy Winkler,
and forced into the mouth
of Brian Kellner through threats.
Um...
Threats and intimidation.
That's fundamentally against the principles
this country is founded on.
There is no other evidence.
PIASKOWSKI: I was in the gymnasium doing some extra work.
One of the sergeants from cell block one hollered out.
"Hey, Piaskowski, come here once!"
He asked me if I...
if I was the guy with the Monfils case.
And I said "Yeah." He says, "Well, you're on TV right now.
"The judge has made a decision.
"You're going to want to see this."
And in the sergeant's quarters,
there were several guys there like that.
And they're all like, "Yeah, yeah. You're going home.
"You're going home."
Mike's appeal had been granted.
[MIMICS SCREAMING IN EXCITEMENT]
I scream, I scream!
I'm at work and I'm screaming.
I didn't know what they were talking about.
And he said, "Yeah, they've got it on TV.
"It'll be coming on again in a minute."
FEMALE NEWSREADER: A huge decision from a federal judge
in Milwaukee today,
overturning the five-year-old conviction of Mike Piaskowski.
In this 25-page decision,
Federal Judge Myron Gordon says there is no evidence
tying Mike Piaskowski to the murder of Tom Monfils.
Probably the best day of my life,
short of my daughter's birth
and my marriage and all those usual things.
Best unusual day of my life.
You only get probably one miracle in your life.
And I've had it.
And Mike's had it. Whatever.
We've had it.
PIASKOWSKI: And the first thing I wanted was
a Whopper, of all things, if you think about it.
Anything... I'm craving a Whopper.
INTERVIEWER: How was that Whopper?
It was very good. Very, very good.
TV HOST: What else do you find that you appreciate?
Oh.
The toilet seat.
Metal eating utensils.
A glass glass.
A ceramic coffee cup.
Little things like that.
On my left forearm,
I have the date and exoneree.
I don't know if you guys can see it or not, but it's...
[INTERVIEWER LAUGHS]
But it's here.
See if you can get it in there.
ZAKOWSKI: No, he wasn't exonerated.
He was not exonerated.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. What is the... Correct us.
He was mistakenly let go. That's what...
I asked one of the justices who I respect,
"What about the rope and weight?"
And he said, "What rope and weight?"
And I'm thinking, "Well, are we talking about the same case?
"Did you read the same transcript?"
It's my understanding that the way it was presented
was that Mike Piaskowski was guilty of the murder
and not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder,
which is what the crime was that he was charged with
and found guilty of.
They were charged with party to the crime
of first-degree intentional homicide.
This was a collective group act,
and that's what they were charged as.
It wasn't that all six of them tied the rope around his neck,
or threw him in the vat.
It was that they are all part of this sequence of events.
He didn't hear
half the evidence against Piaskowski.
About the rope, the weight,
the significance of his testimony,
tying himself to Kutska and being there at the time
that he was beaten
and then having the same motive.
So he wasn't... In our opinion, he wasn't exonerated.
He was released.
If he did do it, he's gotten away with it.
And if he didn't do it,
the other five should be with him and gotten out as well.
Why is that...
Why is there justice for just Piaskowski?
KAPLAN: In February of 2014,
my partner, John Lundqvist,
who was willing to help me,
um, with the burdens of this case,
he interviewed Brian Kellner.
And during the course of the...
the one hour or so he spent with Brian,
Brian says to John
there was never any conversation
by Keith on that occasion at the Fox Den Bar
about Tom Monfils, period.
Nothing.
Not even a hypothetical conversation.
It simply never happened.
It was all made up.
[KELLNER READING]
WILLIAMS: He should have stuck up for himself,
or fought for help somewhere, somehow
to try to get this.
But when...
you're a person who loves your children
and doesn't want to see them taken away
and put in foster care,
or God only knows where...
you know, desperate times sometimes
make you do desperate things,
such as sign a piece of paper.
KAPLAN: John leaves Minneapolis
and he's made it, I think, just to Wausau or just beyond,
uh, just east of there,
and I get a phone call from Mike Piaskowski saying
Brian had died that morning.
You know, it...
It was unfortunate
that...
he lied.
It was unfortunate that by the time he was
ready to cleanse himself as it were,
and try to make amends
for what he had done,
that, um, it was too late.
He died.
So that was tragic
for many, many reasons.
There's so much judgment that goes with this,
so many opinions,
it's hard to be associated with any part of this
and not have some kind of stigma.
I don't raise a flag of "I'm Brian Kellner's daughter,"
you know, kind of thing.
I don't...
I talk about my dad.
But I don't talk about this for my dad, you know, kind of thing.
I talk about my dad as being my dad.
Not as being, you know, the key witness in the Monfils case.
He was my father first before he was a witness.
WINKLER: I think back...
My career ended abruptly.
Not the way I intended it to end.
But until that point,
I had the most fantastic life.
[CAR APPROACHING]
I did experience...
being a cop.
I lived my dream.
Short, but I lived it.
Throughout this entire process, I think I've been...
um...
labeled as the one that solved this case.
But it wasn't me alone.
I just either got the...
got the credit, or the blame.
[LAUGHING] Depends on how you look at it.
I won the lottery.
I don't know how else to put it.
The legal system in our country is the best in the world,
except for the death penalty.
It's the best in world, but it makes mistakes.
And this again is another one.
And when they make a mistake, it's a horrible one.
In the big picture, you know,
the huge mistake they made in our case,
and against me in particular, the system worked.
The appeals system allowed me to regain my freedom.
It's a mistake.
Things happen. Things happen.
Unfortunately, the mistake continues for my co-defendants.
You have to keep that light at the end of the tunnel,
remain faithful in the system.
If you lose hope, you might as well lose your life.
'Cause a life without hope of some kind is a pretty shitty way of life.
CAL: I haven't seen Tom's children in... 20 years.
I think my daughter is 24,
and she doesn't even know who they are.
She's never met 'em.
All right. I shouldn't say that. Younger, she's met 'em,
but she has no recollection of it at all.
[INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION]
CAL: And I think it's very hard for people
to understand where I'm coming from.
See, people, they immediately jump to conclusions
and think, oh, like I'm a sellout.
Or like "Oh, my God, that's terrible."
Like, "He's with those guys," you know?
If I really thought any of these guys had anything to do with that,
outside of playing the tape,
you know, a little verbal harassment, I...
you know, I'd have no use for the guys.
You know, I am... I am for the death penalty.
If you can prove it,
I am an eye-for-an-eye person.
But...
this just doesn't add up.
If everything was reversed and Tom was in jail right now,
my family would be as vocal as anybody
and trying get him out of prison
and prove his innocence.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think Tom would want at this point?
I don't know. That's a tough...
That's a tough question.
FEMALE NEWSREADER: Dale Basten is now serving
his life sentence at Green Bay Correctional.
Well, I'll be 60 on my next birthday. So...
I don't know what to say.
I suppose I have a very good chance
of dying in prison.
[MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYING]