GREEN BAY, Wis. — His voice was tight with fear.
"I haven't slept much in the last couple of days," Tom Monfils told a police officer in a taped phone call. "This is not a nice guy. He's a biker type. . . . If he gets hold of this [tape of an earlier call], I might not come home some night."
His prediction proved to be chillingly accurate.
The week before, Monfils, a 35-year-old paper mill worker, had phoned an anonymous tip to police about thefts by a co-worker.
When the culprit, Keith Kutska, returned to work, he let it be known that he intended to find out who had turned him in. And when he did, Kutska said, he would get even.
Growing more scared by the day, Monfils called the Green Bay Police Department three more times and pleaded with officers, including the deputy chief, to keep secret the tape of his first call. They assured him they would take care of the matter.
But they didn't. On a Friday afternoon in November 1992, an officer handed over a copy of the tape to Kutska, who took it to work the next day.
Now Monfils' words sound a warning to police departments nationwide who hear from ordinary citizens reporting a crime.
Monfils was last seen at his control room post at 7:30 a.m. that Saturday. His wife, frantic when he did not return home, demanded a search of the huge paper plant that loomed over the Fox River. Searchers finally found Monfils' body at the bottom of a two-story-high pulp vat; a rope, twisted through a 40-pound weight, had been wrapped around his neck.
The murder shocked this conservative town like none before.
"This one hit with a double punch," said Mike Blecha, an editorial writer for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "It was probably the worst crime in this city's history. And people were angry both at the [labor] union and at the Police Department for the slipshod way they handled this."
It also led to a precedent-setting verdict that held the police liable for endangering the life of a citizen who reports a crime tip.
The case of Monfils vs. City of Green Bay closed a loophole in the law that many would not have guessed existed in the first place.
Americans have no right to protection from the police, the courts have said, even when officers know a person is in danger.
And they have no assurance that their calls to police will be kept secret. Policies at local departments are sometimes unclear, even to their own officers.
