Indictment returned in Violi case

Published 3:47 pm Wednesday, March 18, 2026

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Robert Scott Froberg

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Morgan Violi

A federal grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday against the man accused of abducting Morgan Violi 30 years ago from the parking lot of a Bowling Green apartment complex.

Robert Scott Froberg, 61, has been formally charged with kidnapping, with the indictment alleging that he took the 7-year-old Violi on July 23, 1996, and transported her over state lines into Tennessee, resulting in her death.

The charge carries a punishment of life imprisonment or the death penalty.

“Morgan’s family has waited thirty long years for answers to their worst nightmare,” said Kyle Bumgarner, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, in a statement to the Daily News. “Today marks another step in the legal process of giving them those answers and, most importantly, bringing justice for Morgan.”

No date has been set for an initial court appearance for Froberg, though Bumgarner said his office will seek for Froberg to be extradited from Alabama, where he is incarcerated, to be transferred into federal custody in Kentucky.

The case will be prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green by Bumgarner and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Butler.

Morgan was taken in 1996 while walking with a friend in the parking lot of what was The Colony apartment complex on Shive Lane.

Witnesses described the abductor as a thin white male in his 20s with brown hair, wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt and driving a burgundy Chevrolet van.

According to previous reports, the man attempted to grab another child who escaped before Morgan was taken.

The van, which had been stolen from Ohio, was found abandoned three days after the abduction at a truck stop in Williamson County, Tennessee, and Morgan’s body was found Oct. 20, 1996, in a wooded area in White House, Tennessee.

In 1997, the FBI confirmed through forensic analysis that a fiber found in Morgan’s hair was consistent with fibers from the seat cushion of the van.

Police spent the next three decades sifting through tips, and advancements in DNA processing were helpful in identifying a suspect.

According to a federal criminal complaint that was filed last month, additional laboratory testing was requested for hairs that had been preserved on microscope slides after they were found in vacuum sweepings from the front and back floorboards of the van.

A DNA profile was extracted from one of the hairs and, through a search on a nationwide DNA database called the Combined DNA Index System, a match with Froberg’s DNA was found, though court records do not establish when the match occurred.

Members of the Bowling Green Police Department and FBI then learned Froberg was convicted in Alabama for a 1988 armed robbery and escaped from a prison work detail there on April 3, 1996, one year after prison officials discovered Froberg possessed two nude pictures of minor girls, the criminal complaint said.

Investigators learned that Froberg had an association with a now-dead Alabama Department of Corrections nurse who “provided money and other assistance to some inmates in exchange for sexual favors,” according to the complaint.

Froberg was arrested in Pennsylvania in May 1996, after a 7-year-old boy found him sitting in a treehouse and was invited to come up and join him.

That child instead told his mother, who contacted police, leading to Froberg’s arrest there, records show.

On July 16, 1996, Froberg escaped from jail in Pennsylvania by climbing a rain spout to the roof and using a cable to climb down, stealing a prison employee’s bicycle to get away, the criminal complaint said.

The Chevrolet van was then stolen from Dayton, Ohio, on July, 23, 1996.

Froberg was interviewed by an FBI agent and a BGPD detective in Alabama on Feb. 24, and he acknowledged encountering the child in the treehouse in Pennsylvania and escaping from jail there, then traveling through Bowling Green on his way to stay with the former prison nurse in Alabama.

Froberg reportedly told police he stopped in Bowling Green to buy marijuana and took Morgan and threw her in the van while driving through the Colony apartment parking lot.

“Froberg admitted that Morgan was crying and screaming as he sped out of Bowling Green,” the criminal complaint said. “He lied to her and told her he was taking her to her father to calm her.”

Instead, the van continued into Tennessee, exiting I-65 at White House and pulling over at a barn.

“Froberg described Morgan ‘screaming’ and ‘freaking out,’” the criminal complaint said. “Froberg admitted placing his hand over Morgan’s mouth then covering Morgan’s mouth with a handkerchief and pulling on the handkerchief with both hands until he strangled Morgan causing her death.”

Afterward, Froberg said he stripped off Morgan’s clothes, discarded her body in the nearby woods and disposed of the clothing, then cleaned and abandoned the van, records show.

Froberg reportedly hid out with the prison nurse for about a week before going back to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested for his prior escape on Aug. 21, 1996, and has since remained in custody.

Bumgarner and other law enforcement officials announced that Froberg had been identified as a suspect in Morgan’s abduction during a press conference last month at BGPD headquarters.