Robert Scott Froberg was charged in a federal criminal complaint with kidnapping resulting in death in connection with the murder of Morgan Violi.
An Alabama inmate who previously escaped from jail twice was charged this week in the July 1996 cold-case abduction and murder of a 7-year-old Kentucky girl, authorities announced during a news conference.
Robert Scott Froberg was charged Thursday in a federal criminal complaint with kidnapping resulting in death in connection with the killing of Morgan Violi.
Froberg was arrested in August 1996 for an unrelated offense and was in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections when officials charged him in Morgan’s death.
Kyle G. Bumgarner, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, said at a Friday news conference that advances in forensic testing ultimately tied Froberg to the crime.
According to a federal affidavit supporting the criminal complaint, Morgan was playing with her 6-year-old friend at the Colony Apartments in Bowling Green, Kentucky, when she was kidnapped. An adult witnessed the abduction and described the suspect as a man driving a maroon van.
Authorities discovered Morgan’s body three months later in the woods near a barn in Tennessee.
Bumgarner said the case had “haunted” Bowling Green for nearly 30 years.
“Morgan’s kidnapping and murder changed her family’s life forever,” he said. “Morgan’s family has been left with unanswered questions: who, how, why. They’ve longed for those answers; they’ve longed for closure.”
Froberg faces either life in prison or the death penalty, Bumgarner said.
The affidavit states that in 1996, Froberg was serving a lengthy sentence with the Alabama Department of Corrections after a 1988 robbery conviction in Montgomery. He escaped from prison in April 1996.
While on the run, authorities said he stole an elderly woman’s car and traveled to Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. In May 1996, officers apprehended him after a mother reported that a man was hiding in a neighborhood treehouse used by children.
Officials took him to the Northumberland County Jail in Pennsylvania, but he escaped again in July 1996 by climbing a rain spout to the roof and then using a cable to lower himself to the ground, according to the affidavit.
Roughly a week after that escape, someone stole a maroon van — later linked to Morgan’s kidnapping — from behind a residence in Ohio, the affidavit states. Bumgarner said Froberg’s parents lived less than half a mile from where the van was taken.
Detectives continued investigating the case for decades, Bumgarner said. The affidavit explains that fiber evidence, advances in DNA testing and a national DNA database led authorities to Froberg. Investigators traced fiber found in Morgan’s hair to the stolen van, and DNA analysis linked a strand of hair recovered from the van to Froberg.
Earlier this week, detectives interviewed Froberg. Bumgarner said he admitted that after escaping from the county jail, he traveled through Kentucky to Huntsville, Alabama, intending to hide with a male nurse he met while incarcerated in Alabama.
According to the affidavit, Froberg also admitted he kidnapped Morgan, strangled her and left her naked body in the woods. He told investigators he discarded her clothing in a dumpster because he believed it might contain DNA evidence.
Bumgarner said Froberg stayed with the nurse for about a week before heading to Pennsylvania, where authorities arrested him in August 1996 in connection with his Alabama prison escape.
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