Frank Nunn (also known as "the six-fingered man") was a career criminal and hitman who was hired by Ethan Rickover to assassinate Trudy Monk.
Biography[]
To kill Trudy Monk, Nunn hired Warrick Tennyson, an explosives expert, to build the bomb, while Nunn planted it and then detonated it with a cellular phone.
Ten years later, he was hired to build another bomb, as part of a scheme by Dale J. Biederbeck III, and plant it in the back of a car meant to be ridden by the Governor of California and his wife during his hometown's bicentennial parade.
Unknown to him, Nunn was also a pawn in a related scheme to frame Adrian Monk for murder. Biederbeck's agents faked an electronics store robbery by a six-fingered man, leaving a coded message behind that lured Monk, alone, to the meeting where Nunn expected to collect his payment.
Monk confronted Nunn at gunpoint, but before he could give details on why Trudy was killed, Nunn was shot dead by corrupt sheriff John Rollins, who framed Monk for the crime.
Eventually, Monk was exonerated, and a search of Nunn's papers turned up a reference to "The Judge" in connection with Trudy's murder.
Background Information and Notes[]
- The "six-fingered man" who killed Trudy was first described in Season 3's "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan", but was not identified until Season Six.
- In Season 4's "Mr. Monk Bumps His Head", Monk had heard from someone that they had an ID Photo of Frank Nunn, so Monk went to see the photo only to discover that it was fake, and only ending up getting Amnesia from a head blow.
- In the non-canon novel "Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii" by Lee Goldberg, Monk shares what little he knows about Trudy's murder with Natalie, and tells her that the six-fingered hand was not such a useful clue for several reasons:
- There are a surprisingly large number of persons with polydactaly in the U.S., not to mention the world.
- The man could have had the extra finger surgically removed after meeting Tennyson.
- The finger could have been a fake to begin with, something worn to trick or distract Tennyson from the man's face.
- Also in Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii, psychic Dylan Swift makes a prediction that Trudy's killer is in Brazil. Monk says "the police in Durado found lettersin Frank's apartment, referencing São Paulo, Brazil, showing he was in Brazil before he was brought back to the U.S. for Dale's plan. While Swift has the hotel they are staying in wired and could have gleaned this information, because Dylan is a fraud it is far more likely he just made a lucky guess.
- In the novel "Mr. Monk Goes to Germany", also by Goldberg, Monk becomes fixated on a German psychiatrist who has a six-fingered right hand, and with trying to prove whether or not the man killed Trudy. Goldberg wrote the novel before "Mr. Monk Is On The Run" was aired, but it was published afterwards, so Goldberg's foreword acknowledged the discontinuity.
- According to Rollins in "Mr. Monk Is on the Run, Part 1", Nunn went into hiding in Brazil and just returned when Monk seemingly killed him in cold blood. However, it is unknown whether this was in fact true or not.
- Frank Nunn's last name derives from "nun", a female clergy person within the Catholic Church, thus establishing a metaphorical character foil to Adrian Monk, whose name also derives from a type of clergy person in the Church (although male in Monk's case).
- Monk's search for a six-fingered man was likely inspired by the classic novel and film The Princess Bride, in which the character of Inigo Montoya searches for a six-fingered man who killed his father. Both Nunn and the character of Count Rugen have six fingers on their right hand. While Monk comes close to killing Nunn and is prevented from doing so by Rollins, Inigo succeeds in killing Rugen.