BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (TCN) — Thirty years after he kidnapped and killed 7-year-old Morgan Violi, a 61-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky, Robert Scott Froberg was arrested for armed robbery in Alabama in 1988. He escaped custody in 1996 and fled to Pennsylvania, where he attempted to lure a 7-year-old boy into a treehouse in May 1996. He was apprehended and taken into custody after the child reported the incident to his mother.
Froberg escaped custody again in Pennsylvania in July 1996. He stole a van from behind his parents’ home in Dayton, Ohio, per the U.S. attorney’s office, and kidnapped Violi at an apartment complex in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on July 24, 1996. He then drove her to White House, Tennessee, and strangled her before leaving her body near a barn.
WNKY reports Violi’s remains were found three months later, in October 1996. The case went cold until DNA technology advances led investigators to Froberg. A special supervisory FBI agent “picked the case up out of the corner, dusted it off and took investigative steps that hadn’t been done and started the process,” according to Brian Butler, first assistant United States attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky.
On July 24, Froberg pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping resulting in death, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. United States Attorney Kyle G. Bumgarner said, “It is hard to envision a more egregious crime than the abduction and murder of a 7-year-old child. This evil act left Morgan’s family devastated and began 30 years of unanswered questions and torturing sadness. This evil act also left the parents in our community wondering if this previously unknown predator would strike again. Whose child would he steal next? … This defendant’s depravity forever changed Morgan’s family and Bowling Green. Morgan’s abduction has been an open wound in our community for 30 years.”
WKNY reports Froberg was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Nov. 2. According to WBKO, he is currently serving a sentence in Alabama; the sentence for Violi’s death will be served concurrently.
An online memorial for Violi reads, “Her life, though brief, was real and complete in its own span. She lived, played, and belonged to a family and a community. The circumstances of her death do not erase that reality.”
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