Inmate Charged in 1996 Kidnapping, Killing of Girl

Federal authorities have charged Robert Scott Froberg, a 62-year-old inmate in an Alabama prison, with the 1996 kidnapping and killing of 7-year-old Morgan Jade Violi in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The case, unsolved for nearly three decades, was cracked through advanced DNA testing that linked Froberg to a stolen van used in the abduction, officials announced Friday.

Violi disappeared on July 24, 1996, while playing outside her family's apartment at the Colony Apartments in Bowling Green. Witnesses reported seeing a man in his 20s grab the girl and drive away in a maroon Chevrolet van. The vehicle, stolen two days earlier in Dayton, Ohio, was found abandoned on July 26 at a truck stop in Williamson County, Tennessee. Violi's body was discovered three months later, on October 20, in a wooded area near White House, Tennessee.

Froberg, who was serving a 40-year sentence in Alabama for armed robbery at the time, confessed to the crime during an interview earlier this week at a federal office in Montgomery, Alabama. According to court documents, he admitted exiting Interstate 65 in Bowling Green to obtain marijuana when he spotted Violi and a younger child playing near a wooded area....