Following Mitch's death in 1998 in the Kosovo War, Natalie was left as the single mother of their daughter, Julie, and bounced around between a number of odd jobs, including working in an office, housesitting, and bartending.
Towards the end of the series, Natalie begins dating Mitch's oldest friend in the navy, Lieutenant Steven Albright, as Julie leaves home to study theatre arts at UC Berkeley.
In the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk and the Really, Really Dead Guy", Disher is placed as a decoy to attract the attention of a serial, playing "I Don't Need a Badge" as a one-man band while forgetting most of the lyrics.
The advertising on her cast is a clue Monk utilizes to prove that mystery writer Ian Ludlow killed a local shoe salesman and tried to frame Natalie for it.
Julie also initially helps Monk out when Dale "the Whale" Biederbeck apparently escapes from police custody while at SF General Hospital undergoing a bypass surgery.
In "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink", it is revealed that he has a wife, Madeline, and a rebellious adolescent son, Troy, who denies that he is their child, has made his father take a DNA test three times, and has been detained by Randy on a previous occasion.
In his first appearance, "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale", Biederbeck is the primary suspect in the slaying of Catherine Lavinio, a superior court judge who issued a costly antitrust ruling against him.
Monk telephones Biederbeck from Germany when he suspects that one of Dr. Kroger's colleagues, a psychiatrist with a six-fingered hand named Dr. Martin Rahner, is the man who killed Trudy.
Indeed, the next day, there is a major accident when a moving truck driving down Powell Street loses its brakes, careens down the hill into Union Square, and smashes into a MUNI bus and a cable car, leaving four people dead and dozens critically injured.
Monk, Julie, Stottlemeyer and Devlin rush to the hospital, but in the chaos, it seems Dale has escaped by being snuck out in a body bag by an accomplice driving a stolen hearse.
However, any chance of figuring out where Dale is through her ends when she tries to kill the three by suicide-bombing her house (the three survive, though Stottlemeyer breaks his right arm when the resulting fireball throws him through the air and he lands the wrong way).
Trudy Monk was murdered on a snowy[6] December 14, 1997[7] with a car bomb, made of approximately three pounds of plastic explosives, powered by ten 20 volt magnesium batteries, that was planted under the front seat and remotely detonated by a cell phone.
Unaware of the murder plot, Harold plays along with the charade because he loves the public attention, getting a golden opportunity to infuriate Monk, and gaining new respect and admiration from his own son, Jimmy.
While investigating the "abduction" of actress Sally Larkin, Harold shows up at the crime scene and tells Monk about his new therapist, that he is over their feud, and also gives him Dr. Climan's business card.
Now serving on the San Francisco City Council, Harold initially votes against Adrian's motion to preserve the parking garage where Trudy was murdered, instead of demolishing it to build a children's playground.
This novel reveals that Ambrose wrote the instruction manual for the Triax tracking device that is utilized by alleged Ponzi schemer Bob Sebes, whom Adrian suspects as having killed three government witnesses about to testify against him for their parts in the scheme.
Kevin first appears in "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy", where he wins a $43 million lottery, although his "girlfriend" Vicki Salinas (Nicole DeHuff), a clerk at the nearby Stop-N-Go convenience store, tries to hide it from him with the objective of eventually getting it all.
Monk and Sharona arrive, having followed him thanks to a travel brochure, and after a struggle with Vicki, throw the switch at the crossover to shift the approaching train to the other track, just in the nick of time, sparing Kevin.
Although Kevin gets his money back, by the time he makes his next appearance in "Mr. Monk and the Game Show," he has lost it all to a number of serious misfortunes, including gambling losses, two greedy wives, and a dishonest accountant.
A CPA, he has two sisters, can recall every time he has eaten an egg salad sandwich in his life (eight altogether), and once worked for two non-consecutive summers at a coffee shop in Aspen, Colorado.
Jack Jr. makes repeated efforts to ingratiate himself to his older half-brother by stammering and sniveling helplessly, even going so far as to stage a phony phone call from his girlfriend who pretends to be his mother, who bawls sappily, begging Adrian to help her little "Jackie".
When Jack finally shows up in person, he is working for the Midland, Texas-based Tiger Bay Trucking Company and had been stopped in San Francisco for running a red light.
Although Jack Sr. is portrayed as eccentric, unpleasant, and erratic, he is also apparently quite intelligent, possibly implying that Ambrose and Adrian inherited at least some of their prodigious mental abilities from their father.
The investigation eventually leads them to a local doctor named Jay Bennett (Fred Weller), who had hit Linda's car while driving from the marina after killing his girlfriend Anna Pollard out in the bay.
However, just before they leave for Hawaii, Linda's former business partner Sean Corcoran is shot dead by a shotgun-wielding intruder in front of a married couple during an open house tour.
In "Mr. Monk Gets Fired", Karen is seen filming a documentary of life in the San Francisco Police Department's Homicide Division, including many moments of Commissioner Brooks' anger and Paul Harley's arrest.
When Monk has to retrieve a stolen moonrock from a thief in a science museum, Julie's pet fish ends up out of its tank, where it flops its way down one of the corridors, slowly dying.
Twelve years later, he was hired to build another bomb, as part of a scheme by Dale Biederbeck, 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.
Unbeknownst to him, the day before Trudy was killed, she made a video message to Adrian, explaining how Rickover wanted to meet her in that parking garage, and also mentioning the secret affair.
She is introduced in Mr. Monk on the Road, when Adrian, Ambrose, and Natalie encounter her accompanying her longtime boss, journalist Dub Clements, on a cross-country RV trip.