Guilty plea expected in Violi case
Published 4:12 pm Monday, July 20, 2026
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Morgan Violi
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Robert Scott Froberg
The man accused in the 1996 kidnapping of Morgan Violi is anticipated to enter a guilty plea this week in federal court.
Robert Scott Froberg is due to appear Wednesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green for a change of plea hearing.
Froberg was charged earlier this year with kidnapping resulting in death in connection with the abduction of the 7-year-old Violi in the parking lot of The Colony apartment complex on Shive Lane on July 24, 1996.
Morgan’s body was found Oct. 20, 1996, in a wooded area in White House, Tennessee, and no suspects were identified for nearly three decades until DNA extracted from a van involved in the abduction matched a DNA profile for the 61-year-old Froberg.
A phone conference was held last week in which attorneys involved in the criminal case provided a status update to U.S. District Court Judge Greg Stivers, leading to the scheduling of an in-person court appearance to take place Wednesday.
On Monday, the in-person appearance was reclassified in federal court records as a change of plea hearing.
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The Bowling Green Police Department and the FBI were involved in the investigation into Morgan’s disappearance.
Witnesses at The Colony were able to provide a description of the abductor and the van in which he was driving, which law enforcement found three days after the abduction in the parking lot of a truck stop in Williamson County, Tennessee.
In 1997, authorities confirmed that fibers recovered from a seat cushion in the van matched a fiber found in Morgan’s hair.
Years later, additional DNA testing on hairs found in the van provided the evidence to connect Froberg to the vehicle, according to federal court records.
Froberg reportedly confessed earlier this year to taking Morgan, then strangling her, discarding her body in the woods and disposing of her clothing.
Police have said that, at the time of the abduction, Froberg was an escapee from Alabama who was convicted there for an armed robbery and had been subsequently arrested in Pennsvlvania, but had also escaped custody there when he arrived in Bowling Green while traveling back to Alabama in a van that had been reported stolen in Ohio.
