1996 Cold Case: Kidnap/Murder of 7-year-old, SOLVED!
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan
CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It was a hot summer day on July 24, 1996, when 7-year-old Morgan Violi went outside to play with a friend at the Shive Lane apartment complex where she lived with her mom and two sisters in Bowling Green, Kentucky. A man driving an older-model, maroon Chevrolet van pulled up alongside the girls, jumped out and tried to grab the girl Morgan was playing with but was unsuccessful, so, he snatched Morgan, threw her into the van and sped away. The van was stolen out of Dayton, Ohio, and was recovered two days later in Franklin, Tennessee, 30 miles south of Nashville. The van was scrubbed clean. The search for Morgan lasted until October 26, 1996, when her skeletal remains were found in the woods off I-65 in White House, Tennessee, 30 miles north of Nashville. A suspect was never located, and the case went cold for nearly 30 years. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the cold case kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Morgan Violi and the forensic evidence that solved her case and led to a confession by the killer.
Transcribe Highlights
00:01.31 Introduction
01:18.66 Prison escapee kills 7-year-old
05:04.06 Watching children
10:19.84 Fiber solves cold case
14:56.99 Robert Froberg, the killer, 61 now
25:01.86 Unlocking door to scientific truth
29:56.86 Examining decomposition
35:21.14 Van found two days after Morgan kidnapped
39:17.35 Conclusion
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:05.7 | Quality Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. |
| 0:10.5 | I've always been fascinated by film noir, if you will. |
| 0:14.1 | I love black and white movies. |
| 0:15.5 | I wish I had more time to watch them. |
| 0:17.1 | As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to put that on my checklist. |
| 0:19.7 | Kimmy and I have to sit down and at least watch one noir movie per week until I make it through. You know, you can go to the different categories on these movie platforms and find them. I don't know why I like it. I think it's obviously the darkness of it. The kind of the shifting of light that you can't appreciate in color films. |
| 0:42.3 | And there's always something so foreboding about it, particularly films that involved individuals that, say, for instance, were cons and they escaped from prison and those types of things. |
| 0:53.3 | I'm always fascinated by that because how |
| 0:57.0 | exactly does an individual escape from a high security prison and just kind of vanishes into thin air? |
| 1:08.0 | Well, today on body bags, we're going to discuss one such case. But you know, the thing |
| 1:15.1 | about it is this guy did not vanish. He didn't melt away before he took the life of a seven-year-old |
| 1:24.9 | girl over 30 years ago. |
| 1:30.3 | Coming to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, |
| 1:34.3 | and I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags. |
| 1:40.3 | Brother Dave, they talk about being a soldier, and being a soldier is extreme boredom, punctuated by just seconds of terror. |
| 1:53.6 | It would seem that being incarcerated, being in some big penitentiary somewhere would I think I guess you would have |
| 2:04.1 | punctuated moments of terror in there but it seems more more like boredom to me you |
| 2:08.6 | have to occupy your mind you have to occupy yourself and I think you know I love |
| 2:12.5 | Sean Shank Redemption I know you I know you probably do too it's such a great |
| 2:16.4 | movie and you think about you know somebody that just sits there and has the ability to think I know you probably do too. It's such a great movie. |
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