The wife of a Louisville man killed at a Kentucky prison says she is still searching for answers months after his death.
Robert Broyles, 34, was a husband and father known to his family as Tony. He had been serving time at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty for multiple theft charges.
Broyles was scheduled to be released on Sept. 9, 2025. Instead, he was found unresponsive in his cell on Aug. 31.
“We had homecoming stuff already. We had little banners and everything already made up,” his wife, Ashley Elgin, said.
Kentucky State Police investigated the case, and on Sept. 18, authorities charged 45-year-old Daleon Rice with Broyles’ murder.
Elgin said she continues to wait for clear answers. She filed several Open Records Requests but said she received hundreds of pages filled with redactions or unrelated information. She also questioned why her husband was housed with someone facing violent charges.
“When you have that many disciplinary write-ups and things like that, that should be a red flag. That should be a keep-separate flag, and they didn’t do that,” Elgin said.
Broyles died in August 2025. Since then, two more deaths have occurred at the same prison, with foul play suspected in both cases.
“I can’t keep what happened to my husband from happening because it’s the past. I can keep this from happening to someone else, which has already happened to two other people,” Elgin said.
She is now advocating for new legislation called “Tony’s Law” through a petition that has already gathered hundreds of signatures. The proposed law would require the state to brief families within 48 hours of any inmate death and create safe-release transition units for inmates nearing release.
WDRB reached out to the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex for comment. A spokesperson said the facility is working on a statement.
“The fact that they just try to brush it off like it’s just another murder or just another homicide, or it’s just a prisoner, that’s not true,” Elgin said. “He was a person, he was a human, and he was my husband.”
Rice was originally scheduled for a pretrial hearing on Jan. 22, but the hearing has been rescheduled for March 19, 2026.
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