Michael Kenworthy was a former Parole Officer turned criminal.
He was formerly a Parole officer, and eventually retired. However, he also made some "friends" during his job, all of whom were criminals who had robbery, attempted murder, and other crimes under their belt.
In 2007, he planned with his convict friends to break into the museum, which had an exhibit for the Christmas season called the Star of Bethlehem, which was the second-largest diamond in the world, and was on loan from Cairo, Egypt. He would disguise himself as Santa Claus and throw down toys to the traffic and cause a holdup, while one of his lackies, Carl, who worked as one of the gift shop managers, would allow the other three thugs inside, steal the diamond, and then head for Ecuador. However, his diversion backfired when Monk (who was among those stuck in holiday traffic) attempted to tell "Santa" to stop throwing down things as it was against the law, and discovered that "Santa" was carrying a gun and then came at Monk with a pipe, forcing Monk to shoot him in self defense on the arm, thus delaying the robbery. He later tries to pin the blame entirely on Monk, making it seem as though Monk came at him with the gun, and claiming that he was only trying to do some good for the Christmas season, causing most of San Francisco to hate Monk afterwards.
Kenworthy is later met with Stottlemeyer and Disher who question him on what was really going on, as they looked into his phone records and discovered evidence that he was in regular contact with some of his convict friends. He dismisses their accusations. Later that night, he was seemingly operating a Salvation Army bin. However, this was actually an act as he was actually watching Alice DuBois and then come up to her and murder her himself if the thug who was supposed to kill her, Thorn, failed, so Carl can have the next time slot to do their revised heist at 2:00-6:00 so they enter at closing time. This time, he has to block traffic from the Police by making it seem as though an eight wheeler had broken down in the freeway. This time, they managed to actually enter the Museum to steal the diamond while Kenworthy starts acting his role as Santa. However, Monk deduced what they were up to and proceeded to give chase to Kenworthy (who had the diamond). Eventually, Kenworthy and Monk began to have a vicious brawl on the street, and eventually exposes himself as the real crook when pointing a knife at Monk and saying "You won't be stopping me again!" before Monk knocks him out senseless with a life-sized candy cane. He is later arrested for the attempted robbery.
Behind the scenes[]
During the Man Who Shot Santa incident, Brandy Barber claimed that Kenworthy was, aside from a retired Parole officer, also a doting Grandfather and considered "The nicest man in the city" by his neighbors. However, knowing Barber's style of journalism, it is unknown if these were actually true.