Trudy Monk is the deceased wife of detective Adrian Monk. Trudy Monk was born in Los Angeles in 1962, to Dwight and Marcia Ellison. She attended the Ashton Preparatory School on a scholarship and graduated valedictorian in 1977, at the age of 15. Her best friend, Arleen Cassidy, went on to become headmaster of their school. Trudy did not date very much in high school, expecting to know who the right man would be once she found him. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She met her future husband Adrian while he was working there at the library. Adrian and Trudy married on August 8, 1990.

Trudy Monk was murdered on a snowy December 14, 1997, by a bomb planted under the passenger seat of her car - 10 pounds of plastique with a magnesium charge. At the time it exploded, she was in a parking garage. Earlier that day, Adrian's brother Ambrose had asked her to run an errand to the drugstore for him, he blamed himself for her death, and his guilt led to a 7-year rift between the brothers. But Ruskin, while looking at the photos of the crime scene, suggested that she may have been meeting someone in connection with one of her stories, an angle Monk had not considered before. The murder of his wife is the only case that Adrian Monk has not been able to solve. (Read more...)

Recently featured: Monk
More featured articles · Nominations for featured articles