When Christopher Monfort was arrested last November on suspicion of assassinating a Seattle police officer, detectives scoured his background, searching for a telltale record of violence, says the Seattle Times. Instead, they found little more than a traffic ticket. He seemed, as one put it, a “ghost.” Monfort’s life, it seems, is one of unfulfilled ambition.
His four years as a 30-something college student in the Seattle area give the clearest picture of the obsessive political ideology of Monfort, who carried a copy of the Constitution in his breast pocket and saw himself as a modern-day version of a Revolutionary War-era patriot. Monfort, 41, is accused of what prosecutors call a politically driven, violent campaign against the Seattle police that culminated in the Oct. 31 slaying of Officer Timothy Brenton and wounding of Officer Britt Sweeney. Against the advice of his attorney, Monfort continues to talk, both in the courtroom and in interviews with Times. In the interviews, he evaded questions about the criminal charges but offered to tell his story if he were paid. He was not. As he awaits King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg’s decision on whether to seek the death penalty, Monfort spends his days in a wheelchair, a bullet still lodged near his spine.