March 5, 2026 • 39 mins
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
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dots with Joseph's Gotten More.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I've always been fascinated by film noir. If you will,
I love black and white movies. I wish I had
more time to watch them. As a matter of fact,
I think I'm going to put that on my checklist.
Kimy 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
(00:27):
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, and there's always something so foreboding
about it, particularly films that involved individuals that, say, for instance,
were cons and they escape from prison and those types
(00:48):
of things. I'm always fascinated by that because how exactly
does an individual escape from a high security prison and
just kind of vanishes into thin air. Well, today on
body Bags, we're going to discuss one such case. But
(01:10):
you know the thing about it is, this guy did
not vanish, He didn't melt away before he took the
life of a seven year old girl over thirty years ago.
Coming to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University.
(01:30):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Brother Dave.
The You know, they talk about being a soldier, and
being a soldier is extreme boredom punctuated by just seconds
of terror. It would seem that being incarcerated, being in
(01:53):
some big penitentiary somewhere would I think, I guess you
would have punk way to moments of terror in there,
but it seems more more like boredom to me. You
have to occupy your mind, you have to occupy yourself.
And I think you know I love Sean shank Redemption.
I know you probably do too. It's such a great movie.
And you think about, you know, somebody that just sits
(02:15):
there and has the ability to think, how in the
world do I escape from this place? And then once
you because once you escape, that's the easy part. Staying
remaining escaped and kind of fading into fading into the
darkness is a completely different thing.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
But the story today when you talk about a seven
year old child being dead and the reason the seven
year old is dead is because this scumbag was able
to escape county jail. Yeah, this is more than problematic.
(02:55):
This is it's I told you before we started. I
believe there are a number of other people that ought
to be suffering the pangs of this right now. But
let me just let's start. Let's start at the ending. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It was a hot summer day July twenty fourth, nineteen
ninety six. Seven year old Morgan went outside to play
with a friend at the Shiveline apartment complex that she
lived in with her mom and her two sisters in
Bowling Green, Kentucky. Morgan was with her best friend when
(03:30):
a man driving an older model maroon Chevy van a
nineteen seventy eight Chevy van pulls up alongside the girls.
Witnesses saw he tries to grab Morgan's friend first, but
the little girl is able to get away from him somehow,
so this man grabs Morgan and slams her into the car.
(03:53):
Witnesses say the suspect jumped out tried to grab the
girl Morgan played with when he was unsuccessfully snatched Morgan
through endo the van. It's by a way, Oh that
poor baby. Horrible. Think I'm thinking of all of the children,
all of the If you witness something like this, you
know in my head, I'm thinking, why was there not somebody?
Why was somebody not able to stop? You know, But
(04:15):
the fact that we're witnesses, the fact they were on
this right away, the fact people knew. And in nineteen
ninety six, Joe, we had had a good fifteen years
of stories of children being snatched, you know, we'd had
unsolved mysteries, we'd had John Walsh, you know, we'd had
all those stories for a long time at this point.
So when Morgan was snatched, I just am still. I'm
(04:40):
just at a loss of how it happened.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
But it did, yeah, and in the twinkling of the eye,
and that that's terrifying. And you wonder why, you know,
people wonder why. And this is years ago, you know,
but to this day, and there are any number of
reasons that we could lay out here why kids don't
play out in the yard. And you don't see him
as much as you would like to. But even us,
(05:04):
you know, Kimmy and I when when we've got our
babies over here, you know, visiting us, or grandbabies, I
sound so overprotective. I sit out in the yard when
them though, yep, they play outside, but I sit out
in the yard with him. I don't let him out
of my sighte.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
We need to know. I'm the same way with Brellin.
Bredin's ten. Breylyn is going to be eleven years old, Okay,
my grandson. He's a big eleven year old. And yet
even when he's here at my house, in my fenced
in backyard, I constantly know where he is and what
he's doing. I'm usually out there with him because I
can't stand it. I can't stand the thought of him
being out there, you know, mainly because he's way too
(05:42):
creative to be left alone with all this stuff I
have in my backyard, including a huge swimming pool. You know,
he would put fish and turtles in there and go
and make a camping thing. I'm not kidding. This kid
is nuts. But anyway to go back to this, in
nineteen ninety six, at an apartment complex filled with families
and you've got witness is that watch it happened? Morgan
(06:03):
goes missing. The FBI described the man as about twenty
to thirty years old in nineteen ninety six, light brown hair,
medium height, and wait the van in nineteen seventy eight
maroon Chevy van used in the kidnapping. They were able
to find out it had been stolen from Dayton, Ohio,
the day before the abduction Joe the day before. Now
(06:23):
I'm not good on geography, but it's not that far
of a distance from Dayton, Ohio to Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
No, No, it's an easy turn to make. I think,
you know, when you're heading down towhur that I think.
If I'm not mistaken, I'm probably I think Dayton is
just north of Sancy, and of course Sincy. You know
you look, you know, you land in Kentucky to go
to the sin I mean the Cincinnati Airport is actually
in Kentucky. No, think about that. Everything is, you know,
(06:48):
very concentrically located.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's funny. I didn't know that Cincinnati for.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
All of his problems. You know, they call it the
Queen City. It's one of the most beautiful cities in
the country. At night, you know, when you see it,
the sky is incredible. It really is there in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
To me, all I think of is Jerry Springer used
to be the mayor and he wrote a check to
a whorehouse in Kentucky. You know, That's what I think
of anyway, But back to this story. The sickest part
of all of this, Joe, is you've got a witness
that sees everything happen. You've got people on this case
right away, but Morgan's not found. It took three months
(07:28):
to find Morgan. I would like to ads though they did.
They being in law enforcement, found the Chevy van in Franklin, Tennessee,
at a Union seventy six truck stop, two days after
the kidnapping. Now Franklin, Tennessee is about thirty miles south
of Nashville. So they find that. That's that's big news. Okay,
(07:50):
you've got we know this is the van where the
guy stole the girl out of Kentucky. We're looking for
him right here, you know. And it's them three months
to find Morgan. And when they did, Joe, it was
a horrible, horrible day. I mentioned the van was found
thirty miles south of Nashville. Morgan's remains found thirty miles
(08:16):
north of Nashville. She wasn't found until October twenty sixth
of nineteen ninety six. Skeletal remains of Morgan were discovered
in the woods by a woman walking near her home
in the town of White House. Tennessee just off I
sixty five. According to what we've been able to figure out, now,
(08:39):
Kidnapper takes off with Morgan. He kills her in that
van Joe. He dumps her body thirty miles north of Nashville,
hops on sixty five, drives to Nashville, goes thirty miles
south of Nashville, ditches the van. Now, if you think
about this, this is a person familiar with the area.
(09:02):
He's added, And if you head straight down south on
sixty five, you're a hopstick is skipping a jump away
from Alabama.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, you're you know, you know, you know my son Noah,
you know, he lives in northern Alabama, actually up in Huntsville.
And as a matter of fact, he he loves Huntsble
and we love going to visit him there because it's
a really cool place if here. But you know, when
he goes out for serious play, Tom, he's he's heading
(09:30):
north to Nashville, you know, because they've got a soccer
soccer team, and he goes to pres Pread's matches and
all that sort of stuff. It typical young man kind
of stuff that he does. So yeah, I think that
people geographically they don't understand this is almost kind of
a north south linear pattern that we're following here with this.
You've got somebody that is kind of uh, you know,
(09:54):
depositing things along the way, if you will, not the
least of which is this truck. Are this because David,
I'll tell you the van actually many many years later
will lead to a conclusion in this case, and conclusion
at a fiber and a molecular level. You know that
(10:31):
one of these things you think about the twinkling of
an eye. When you get eyewitnesses to something. Most of
the time, they don't really realize how important anything that
they recall at any specific time.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Is.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
You know, they don't realize that maybe these recollections that
they have from these moments, you know, when they're when
they're out there and they're just going about their lives
and they have this ability to see something, to witness something.
They actually had a description on this perpetrator, and I
think that you had mentioned it had we know that
(11:15):
he was a white male. Yes, thing just happened in
a fly. You think about poor Morgan there on side
of the road and she's with her her playmates, and
I'm sure that they contributed to the descriptor too well.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Actually went to the FBI and dug through the database
to look because this was an unsolved crime. It was
unsolved for thirty years. Okay, it's been a long time coming.
And so what I did is I went back and
looked at the FBI file on it to find out
what the description was. It wasn't filled in after the
fact that it was not they had a good description
(11:49):
they had The guy was twenty to thirty years old,
light brown hair, medium height and weight. This is your
average everyday guy, all right. And yet when I looked
at the drawings that they got and what the suspect
looked like at the time, they had a good look
(12:11):
at him, and he wasn't somebody known to anybody in
that apartment complex. Show that was the issue. You've got
a person driving a van from out of state, comes
in in and out an apartment complex, you know where
you do have a lot of transient not in a
negative you know people that come in and out renting
and things like that. So there's oftentimes movement in an
(12:32):
apartment complexes. You see a lot of different vehicles, so
not that uncommon too, you wouldn't pay attention to it.
Or off the bat. It's just shocking that the way
this happened. But you mentioned how they were able to
utilize that van and how they were able to tie
it all together. And do you want to go to
(12:58):
do let me tell you who the guy is or
do you want to go into how they discovered him?
How do you want to go about this because it's
kind of we've had to start at the end to
go to the beginning, because the reason we know about
this is because of what transpired to find this is
an unsolved crime. It happened in nineteen ninety six. Here
it is twenty twenty six. We're talking about it. Why
(13:18):
because we just found out they have the solution last week.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Think of the family, Joe, think of the poor family,
the friends, the other little girl that was playing with
Morgan that day. I mean, what have they gone through
for the last thirty years?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, what is Let's just take her playmate just for
a second. What has she gone through? How many nights
do you think she laid awake in her little bed,
you know, recalling and trust me, this would be emblazoned
in her brain, recalling watching this grown man first put
his hands on her yep, and she was able to
slip away and then watch watch her friend Morgan be
(13:58):
snatched off into the bit of blackness inside of that man.
That door shutting, and off they go into the distance.
You're talking about seven year olds here, Dave, And how
horrific this is this child. Yeah, it's been bad on
the parents. I know that it has been. But this,
this little girl that bore witness to this, this is
something that will be emblazoned on her psyche for the
(14:19):
rest of her life.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Well, think about it. She's thirty seven now, Okay, she's
probably a mother herself and has probably gone through that
same fear that you and I did when Archie. You
know it's there. It's a constant presence in your life,
you know.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, I promise you one thing. I can almost guarantee
you this, unless she went to some kind of mental
vapor lock, if you were to sit down with her
now today, Dave, she could give you fun detail, fine
detail about what she saw at that moment in time.
Oh yeah, al, it's something that's so burned into there.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Well, when we actually came around on this, and I'm
still amazed at how the evidence was, how they were
able to do this because when you go back in time,
you go back to we know who the suspect is.
His name is Robert Froberg. Robert Scott Froberg. That's the
man's name. By the way, he's sixty one now. He's
(15:20):
the suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Morgan v Ille.
December twenty seven, nineteen eighty eight, Robert Froberg committed an
armed robbery in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly after that, Froberg was
arrested and found in possession of paperwork about how to
(15:41):
hot wire cars. Now this is in nineteen eighty eight.
Eighty nine. Froberger was sentenced to a lengthy term of
fore armed robbery. He got a prison term. While he
was in prison, he learned a few things. February nineteen
ninety five, prison officials find Froberg in possession of two
nude pictures of minor girls. April third, nineteen ninety six,
(16:05):
Froberg escapes from a prison work detail in Birmingham, Alabama.
He robs an elderly woman and steals her nineteen eighty
six oldsmobile. Roberg fleeds Alabama in the stolen car, ends
up in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. Now you know what he
was doing. Joe Froburg. He's on the lamb. He's a
(16:27):
wanted fugitive and he is in a child's playhouse, a treehouse,
and he's hiding there. Don't know how long he was there,
but on May twentieth, nineteen ninety six, this little boy,
a seven year old boy identified only by his initials WA,
shows up looking for a friend. The boy goes up
(16:50):
this treehouse and finds Froburg. Think about this for a minute,
but Proberg plays it cool. He engages the kid, talking
to him. The boy says, Hey, what are you gonna do.
The boy says, I'm going to the store to buy
some candy. Froberg says, I'll buy it for you. Not
a problem. The kid sensed something was wrong. He's like, I
gotta go home and get money. So before Froberg could
(17:12):
do anything, this kid got out of there. Joe ran
home and tells his mom, Hey, there's a guy in
the treehouse. They called the cops right away. They show up.
A brief chase is on. Froberg is caught seven year old.
A seven year old did not believe the lying fell,
so Freberg is locked up in the Northumberland County jail again.
(17:38):
That's May twentieth, nineteen ninety six. On July sixteenth, nineteen
ninety six, Froberg escapes Northumberland County jail Joe. He climbs
a rainspout to the roof, then using a cable, he
climbs down on the ground. He steals a prison employe's
(18:00):
bicycle and rides away. It is just this is.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
A movie, not You couldn't make this up.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
This is July now again July sixteenth, nineteen ninety six.
These dates are important. Friends. Remember he's on the lamb
from Alabama May twentieth, July sixteen. He's now on the
lamb in Pennsylvania. July of nineteen ninety six, Dayton, Ohio.
Froberg's parents live in Dayton, Ohio. The address is two
(18:32):
thousand and one Spice Avenue, in a home that Froburg
had lived in throughout his formative years. He grew up
in that home. On July twenty third, nineteen ninety six.
July twenty third, nineteen ninety six, about a half mile
from the Froburg's home, a nineteen seventy eight Chevy Van
Maroon in color is stolen the next day. That was
(18:55):
the van that was driven to Bowling Green, Kentucky, July
twenty four, nineteen ninety seven. That's been Morgan Bil just
kidding opped.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
And I would imagine that you know that Morgan's life
ended in that van. I mean, you know, the thing
about it is is that you know, with with Morgan,
those those elements of her and those deeds that were
done within that van wind up betraying this guy, you know,
(19:26):
some possible joe.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
He only had the van for a couple of days, right.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Well, any kind of movements, Yeah, you think about any
kind of deposition that they find. And I'll get into
this relative to to Morgan's death. This is a homicide obviously,
but you think about this guy is trying to stay hid,
and he's trying to stay secluded. So anywhere that he
might go in that van, he's going to leave his
own deposition. This is a fine, fine example of the cards.
(19:53):
I know you guys get tired of me talking about
la cards, but the card is is the cornerstone for
everything we think about in forensics. With those things that
you leave behind are those things you introduce into a
scene and.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Explain where that comes from, Joe, because you take for
granted that a lot of folks know what you're talking
about when you say it. I do. But you know what,
the first time you said it when we were doing
the show, we were actually doing a show with Nancy,
and you mentioned it, I wrote it down and looked
it up because I didn't know. I didn't know what
it meant.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Well, it comes from a gentleman named Edmond, Edmond Lcard,
and he's French, and he was during his day, he
was referred to. I think the first Sherlock Holmes book
came out in like eighteen eighty seven, and Lecard, you know,
was he appears on the scene in the late nineteen teens,
early twenties, nineteen twenties rather, And he's a scientist by trade,
(20:43):
and he understands the connectivity and crime science between at
an elemental level and the people that are involved in
the crime. He always thought that there would be connectivity.
So he takes the laws of physical science, you know,
classic physical science, applies it to crime solving, and he
arrived at and he's got several there's several, you know,
(21:06):
principles that he puts forth, but probably the most famous
is what's referred to as le Card's exchange principle, and
that is that every contact leaves a trace. And the
whole statement is a bit longer than that, but that's
the condensed version. But every contact leaves a trace. So
if you, as a perpetrator, are walking into a scene,
(21:28):
let's just say this pristine world, maybe a van. When
you get into that van, wherever you have come from,
you're bringing bits of yourself in your environment with you. Okay,
Now those things might be unique to you, or it
might be to another environment, but yet they're deposited in
that van. So let's just say you walk through You
(21:49):
walk on the side of the road, and the side
of the road is compacted clay that's dusty. Well, when
you mount up on the van and your feet have
been walking through it, you're going to transfer that clay
into the interior of that van. That doesn't mean that
that came from you, However, it is deposited. If you
find this person's boots or their shoes and has said
(22:10):
clay on it, then that's a point of connection. That
doesn't solve the case for you, but it does show
that someone with those shoes or those boots walked into
that van deposited the same type of clay. Now you
can also have hair deposition, you know, fiber deposition, you know,
something that comes off of a pillow or a blanket
(22:31):
or something like this, or you're shedding hair in this environment.
Your hair is falling away. That is your hair. And
now we can take hair and do mitochondrial DNA on
hair and tie it directly back to you. In the past,
we would do things like hair morphology where we would
look at a hair and we would say, okay, this
is human. You know. That's where we always start with
(22:53):
any kind of biological element. Is this human, just like
we do with blood. So we would look at that
hair and say, yes, this is in fact human hair.
Then you have to go down the list. Can you
put a race with the hair? Well, racing a hair
is a bit more difficult, okay, because you don't know.
(23:13):
You know, certain people carry certain genetic markers that might
predispose them to curly hair, might predispose them stick straight
hair like mine, or they might have some body to it. Okay,
But at the molecular level, it tells a tale about
that subject. So in broad strokes in the past. All
we had to look at was the more followed you
(23:34):
the hair, you know, some other indicators, which is really
fascinating if you ever see this in a microscope. And
for all our friends out there that go and get
their hair colored, what's fascinating. And Kimmy will do this
periodically too. She'll say, my roots are showing. And any
lady you've ever been around, if she gets her hair colored,
you'll hear them say, my roots are showing. What that
(23:54):
means is that the hair is growing. And as it grows,
the shaft increases in length. Well, that area that has
previously been dyed are colored. You can see a demarcation
in This thing's kind of fascinating when you look at
it microscopically because suddenly it changes. You know, you'll see
the natural hair and then you'll see this colored hair
(24:14):
and it has very particular markings to it. It's striking,
you know when you see it. And that's but that's
a point of identification. Because now if you've got like
a six inch strand of hair and it's colored halfway
up the shaft, well, if you can do, say a
measurement on how long it takes a human hair to
grow out that much. You can get an idea of,
(24:37):
you know, more about the life of this subject. Then
you can look at the dye that's in the hair.
You can try to get a sense of where this
comes from. So you know the card. I'm not saying
he knew about hair dyes, but he did, in fact
know that. There's this principle within forensics. It's called individualization.
It's a beautiful principle because if you hold onto it
(24:59):
and you bear down on it and use that as
like your kind of baseline as an investigator. If you
can say that that this is an individual visualized piece
of evidence, you very well might unlock the door to
the scientific truth. Dave, I hate to go on this road,
(25:35):
will you, but this is our programmed body backs, right,
But let me just ask you. Can you tell me
just a wee bit about how precious Morgan was found.
I know that it was. It was a period of
time before they found her.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You know, she was not found. She was found because
of the decomposition, the smell. Morgan was found three months
after she was taken. She was found in October and
of ninety six. You know, when you think I'll see
July August August, September, September, October. You've got three of
(26:12):
the hottest months of the year in the South, and
you're talking about thirty miles north of Nashville. She wasn't
taken care of. She was tossed, just thrown off the
side of the road into the woods. Joe. Based on
how close the area was to I sixty five Interstate
(26:37):
sixty five, I'm going to guess that she Well, there's
certain things that we know now based on what we've learned,
that her dead body was carried from the van into
those woods just off the interstate, just off. Yeah, and
when you think about driving down the interstate at seventy
(26:59):
miles an hour, you know, and you glance over at
the sides, you don't really pay much attention to it
unless you see something. But usually, especially in that area,
even now, even thirty years later, driving that area of
sixty five is just woods. It's woods and houses.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
All through there. Yeah, it's wooded area. And so you
have to have an event like the occurred with Morgan
that you know, a passer by in a vehicle is
not going to take notice. But Dave, I think that
there's a pedestrian involved in.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
This there is a woman. Actually, the area where this
happened was in white House, Tennessee, And it's one of
those things I looked up because I had never heard
of white House, Tennessee. I've heard that this area, but
I thought maybe it was a misprint, like it was
supposed to be white Horse. It's white House, Tennessee. Is
an actual community actually, right is a community that sits
on two different counties. And when you come to an investigation,
(27:51):
that can be a problem. And Morgan's body was discarded
in the wooded area where a woman. It was near
this woman's home. She's walking down the road. And when
you think about where the body was found in relation
to the interstate and the community, it was happenstance that
(28:12):
she actually was found when she was found because she
had been there for three months. Joe and her decomposed remains.
It was a skeletal at that time. Just skeletal remains
is all that they found. I cannot imagine there was
a lot of soft tissue left. I'm imagining there was
a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Brother, I got to tell you there has to be
something there, because you know, the opinion, the opinion of
the medical, legal authorities is that she was strangled. So
I think that's an interesting point, and you really have to,
you know, kind of dig into this a little bit
and think, well, if I don't if I've got a
(28:52):
diagnosis that's being related here that where they believe she
was strangled, and you've got decomposing remains, which for those
that don't know, it's one of the most difficult assessments
that you can do. I'd say that I would say
fire is, but with fire bodies you still have this
(29:15):
kind of hardened containment. That's probably not a good way
to say it. But the body is, it's burned in
one spot, for lack of a better term, Decomposed bodies
become very gelatinous, I'll put it to that way. They're
gelaginous and soupy, is really the only way I can
(29:36):
put it in. The longer you go with you know,
all of the organics contained in there, it's not necessarily
a melting. It's just that the cellular tissue is breaking
down and it gives way. So at that matrix, at
that baseline matrix that keeps everything, keeps us connected and
makes up our architecture, that's literally being dissolved Dave. And
(30:00):
as those limits are reached with you know, the changes
relative to decomposition, everything just kind of it's like a
collapsing building, if you will. That just kind of gives way.
I would compare it more probably to a sand castle
that's being washed away, because with a building, you know,
(30:22):
you might still have bricks and that sort of thing,
and you do have bones, but you understand what I'm saying,
it just kind of melts away. You can look there
and you can see, well, at one point in time,
this was a body, but you have to catch it
at the right point in time where you can still
make a rather complex diagnosis, which you know, some kind
of trauma to the neck is very difficult to make
(30:43):
when the body is not fresh. How are you arriving
at this conclusion? I really wonder again if her Laynix
the organs of the neck that are really cartilaginous, the trachia,
this sort of thing. I really wonder if because they
might be a bit they are. I know this for fact,
they are a bit more resilient than say muscle and
(31:05):
soft tissue. So was there any trauma there? And of
course we have to go back to uh, something we've
talked about considerably. Was our highway intact. Now, the one
saving grace with her case, Dave, is that her body
was in a bag, so it's not going to be
(31:25):
you can have scavengers that will show up, but not
like where you're talking about a surface deposition of a
body where you know they're coming and they're going. And
you know, if you put a if you had a
cadaver and you had a what's it called a you know,
a game a game camera out there, and you could
see the little animals coming and going. They've done this
(31:45):
a lot.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Actually.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I think there's pretty good, uh, pretty good documentary on
on YouTube about Secrets of the Body Farm where they've
got a camera that shows kind of the march of
the insects around the body. The same thing happens with
species as well. And if you could see that, you
would see, you know, going to the graphic detail, but
(32:07):
you know, the feasting on the body, and then you
would have the uh, other animals carrying things away, those
sort of things, which you don't have that here. And
not only were they able, Dave, in this particular case,
to assess that this was some kind of asphyxial death,
but Dave. They they actually had containment on on fiber
(32:34):
evidence that originated from where that van. Wow, And isn't
that amazing After all that period of time they were
able to tie back and you know you mentioned earlier, brother,
you know they found that damn van. They found it
in frank It was Franklin, Tennessee, right.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, it was. And again thirty miles north of Tennessee
is where her body was dumped out. Thirty miles south
of Tennessee of matt Nashville, rather in Franklin. That's where
the was found. And by the way, that van had
been totally cleaned when they found it. It had been
wiped clean, so the suspect thought he washed it, scrubbed it,
(33:11):
but did not get everything Joe, and it was that. Now,
a lot of what we've learned about Morgan's what happened
with Morgan from the time she was taken, has come
from the suspect, okay, to something to finish up with here.
(33:31):
This man, I hate to even call him, that he
was rearrested in August of nineteen ninety six. Okay. Now,
remember when we said pay attention to the dates. Ye
May twenty, nineteen ninety six, he's out of town. He
escapes Alabama, goes to Tennisee, Pennsylvania. He's arrested there. He
(33:54):
escapes county jail there in July July twenty thirty, steals
the van next to his parents' house. July twenty four,
ninety six, he finds Morgan. He snatches her. He throws
her in the van. By the way, Morgan was fighting
and screaming. That was why some of the witnesses knew
what had happened. They paid attention because they heard her screaming.
(34:16):
Once they were able to get this down pat they
found out that Morgan was fighting and screaming the whole way.
A handkerchief was used to cover her mouth, and that's
where Robert Froberg used that to strangle her. According to him. Now,
(34:38):
Froburg to calm Morgan down, told her that they were
going to see her dad. Now how he knew to
say that, I don't know, But he was just passing through.
He didn't have any real connection there. This was such
a happenstance occasion, Joe. For this little girl she fought.
(35:00):
He killed her in that van and then dumped her
body like it was nothing. He drives sixty miles from
where he dumps her body, cleans out the van, and
leaves it where it's found. You know, the van was
found two days after she was kidnapped. Think about that.
They find this van two days after Morgan is kidnapped.
(35:22):
There's still hope she's alive. They're still hoping that we're
going to find this little seven year old girl. But
she was already dead when they found this van. They
had been totally cleaned out.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, and probably had been for at least twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Oh yeah, Yeah, he dumped it right away. So Froburg
he does make it back to Alabama, and he's arrested
in August. Joe, August of nineteen ninety six. You know,
when we talked about how Froberg was sentenced for the
armor every charge in eighty eight. It was a long
sentence then, and he kept piling up other charges while
he was in jail and in prison, and when you escape,
that's even more. He was still in prison from that
(35:57):
original charge in eighty eight when they rested him in
ninety six. He's been in jail ever since. He's been
in jail since a month, okay, since a month after
he killed Morgan. He's been in jail ever since. He
was in jail for two months before her body was found,
Joe for two months before her body was found. He
(36:18):
was in jail.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Well this we know, the FEDS have gotten hold of this,
and the FEDS are the ones that are charging him now.
They're involved in this case involving Morgan's homicide. And what's
really interesting about this, Dave, is that Morgan, you know,
almost like some kind of specter, you know, arises and
(36:42):
you know, points to him through her own her own
biology that he he was the person that did this.
Because Dave contained within that bag that they found dumped
there in that area where this precious child's remains contained
within her hair, Dave were fibers off of one of
(37:05):
the pillows or cushions rather inside of that van that
he had stolen. So there the cards, you've got that attachment.
Now we know that he's been in the joint for
some time. It's the confirmatory thing is that he left
his own DNA in that damn van. And when he did,
science finally caught up to everything because they were able.
(37:28):
This is one of the cases where Cotis works Dave.
They were able to take that sample and put it
into cotis and guess what, they got a hit on
this comeback, they got to hit and again pointing the
finger at him. The science is telling the truth here.
But you know, the time has passed, The time has
passed for you know, so called and I never know
(37:50):
what this actually means justice. You know, in a case
like this, justice would have been that this precious little
angel would have been able to live her life to
the fullest and instead on that as you put that
hot July day back in nineteen ninety six, her life ended.
It ended, and he was able to go on with
(38:12):
his life. Now maybe it's behind bars and incarcerated, but
he is still drawing breath. And I echo your sentiments, Dave.
If anybody had knowledge of this, looking at the parents here,
that he was on the lamb that they facilitated in
any way in his safe passage or whatever the case
(38:34):
might be, shame on you, Shame on you for doing this,
because now you know, Morgan's at peace. Now, she's been
at peace for a long time. But all of those
that are out there that were in her circle, her parents,
her grandparents, her extended family, and oh yeah, that little
(38:56):
girl that witnesses happened, that has probably spent many any
sleepless nights, may have had to go to therapy. You
robbed them of peace by virtue of the fact that
you took care of this guy.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
What a shame.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Facts.
Body dots with Joseph's Gotten More.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I've always been fascinated by film noir. If you will,
I love black and white movies. I wish I had
more time to watch them. As a matter of fact,
I think I'm going to put that on my checklist.
Kimy 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
(00:27):
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, and there's always something so foreboding
about it, particularly films that involved individuals that, say, for instance,
were cons and they escape from prison and those types
(00:48):
of things. I'm always fascinated by that because how exactly
does an individual escape from a high security prison and
just kind of vanishes into thin air. Well, today on
body Bags, we're going to discuss one such case. But
(01:10):
you know the thing about it is, this guy did
not vanish, He didn't melt away before he took the
life of a seven year old girl over thirty years ago.
Coming to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University.
(01:30):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Brother Dave.
The You know, they talk about being a soldier, and
being a soldier is extreme boredom punctuated by just seconds
of terror. It would seem that being incarcerated, being in
(01:53):
some big penitentiary somewhere would I think, I guess you
would have punk way to moments of terror in there,
but it seems more more like boredom to me. You
have to occupy your mind, you have to occupy yourself.
And I think you know I love Sean shank Redemption.
I know you probably do too. It's such a great movie.
And you think about, you know, somebody that just sits
(02:15):
there and has the ability to think, how in the
world do I escape from this place? And then once
you because once you escape, that's the easy part. Staying
remaining escaped and kind of fading into fading into the
darkness is a completely different thing.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
But the story today when you talk about a seven
year old child being dead and the reason the seven
year old is dead is because this scumbag was able
to escape county jail. Yeah, this is more than problematic.
(02:55):
This is it's I told you before we started. I
believe there are a number of other people that ought
to be suffering the pangs of this right now. But
let me just let's start. Let's start at the ending. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It was a hot summer day July twenty fourth, nineteen
ninety six. Seven year old Morgan went outside to play
with a friend at the Shiveline apartment complex that she
lived in with her mom and her two sisters in
Bowling Green, Kentucky. Morgan was with her best friend when
(03:30):
a man driving an older model maroon Chevy van a
nineteen seventy eight Chevy van pulls up alongside the girls.
Witnesses saw he tries to grab Morgan's friend first, but
the little girl is able to get away from him somehow,
so this man grabs Morgan and slams her into the car.
(03:53):
Witnesses say the suspect jumped out tried to grab the
girl Morgan played with when he was unsuccessfully snatched Morgan
through endo the van. It's by a way, Oh that
poor baby. Horrible. Think I'm thinking of all of the children,
all of the If you witness something like this, you
know in my head, I'm thinking, why was there not somebody?
Why was somebody not able to stop? You know, But
(04:15):
the fact that we're witnesses, the fact they were on
this right away, the fact people knew. And in nineteen
ninety six, Joe, we had had a good fifteen years
of stories of children being snatched, you know, we'd had
unsolved mysteries, we'd had John Walsh, you know, we'd had
all those stories for a long time at this point.
So when Morgan was snatched, I just am still. I'm
(04:40):
just at a loss of how it happened.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
But it did, yeah, and in the twinkling of the eye,
and that that's terrifying. And you wonder why, you know,
people wonder why. And this is years ago, you know,
but to this day, and there are any number of
reasons that we could lay out here why kids don't
play out in the yard. And you don't see him
as much as you would like to. But even us,
(05:04):
you know, Kimmy and I when when we've got our
babies over here, you know, visiting us, or grandbabies, I
sound so overprotective. I sit out in the yard when
them though, yep, they play outside, but I sit out
in the yard with him. I don't let him out
of my sighte.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
We need to know. I'm the same way with Brellin.
Bredin's ten. Breylyn is going to be eleven years old, Okay,
my grandson. He's a big eleven year old. And yet
even when he's here at my house, in my fenced
in backyard, I constantly know where he is and what
he's doing. I'm usually out there with him because I
can't stand it. I can't stand the thought of him
being out there, you know, mainly because he's way too
(05:42):
creative to be left alone with all this stuff I
have in my backyard, including a huge swimming pool. You know,
he would put fish and turtles in there and go
and make a camping thing. I'm not kidding. This kid
is nuts. But anyway to go back to this, in
nineteen ninety six, at an apartment complex filled with families
and you've got witness is that watch it happened? Morgan
(06:03):
goes missing. The FBI described the man as about twenty
to thirty years old in nineteen ninety six, light brown hair,
medium height, and wait the van in nineteen seventy eight
maroon Chevy van used in the kidnapping. They were able
to find out it had been stolen from Dayton, Ohio,
the day before the abduction Joe the day before. Now
(06:23):
I'm not good on geography, but it's not that far
of a distance from Dayton, Ohio to Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
No, No, it's an easy turn to make. I think,
you know, when you're heading down towhur that I think.
If I'm not mistaken, I'm probably I think Dayton is
just north of Sancy, and of course Sincy. You know
you look, you know, you land in Kentucky to go
to the sin I mean the Cincinnati Airport is actually
in Kentucky. No, think about that. Everything is, you know,
(06:48):
very concentrically located.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's funny. I didn't know that Cincinnati for.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
All of his problems. You know, they call it the
Queen City. It's one of the most beautiful cities in
the country. At night, you know, when you see it,
the sky is incredible. It really is there in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
To me, all I think of is Jerry Springer used
to be the mayor and he wrote a check to
a whorehouse in Kentucky. You know, That's what I think
of anyway, But back to this story. The sickest part
of all of this, Joe, is you've got a witness
that sees everything happen. You've got people on this case
right away, but Morgan's not found. It took three months
(07:28):
to find Morgan. I would like to ads though they did.
They being in law enforcement, found the Chevy van in Franklin, Tennessee,
at a Union seventy six truck stop, two days after
the kidnapping. Now Franklin, Tennessee is about thirty miles south
of Nashville. So they find that. That's that's big news. Okay,
(07:50):
you've got we know this is the van where the
guy stole the girl out of Kentucky. We're looking for
him right here, you know. And it's them three months
to find Morgan. And when they did, Joe, it was
a horrible, horrible day. I mentioned the van was found
thirty miles south of Nashville. Morgan's remains found thirty miles
(08:16):
north of Nashville. She wasn't found until October twenty sixth
of nineteen ninety six. Skeletal remains of Morgan were discovered
in the woods by a woman walking near her home
in the town of White House. Tennessee just off I
sixty five. According to what we've been able to figure out, now,
(08:39):
Kidnapper takes off with Morgan. He kills her in that
van Joe. He dumps her body thirty miles north of Nashville,
hops on sixty five, drives to Nashville, goes thirty miles
south of Nashville, ditches the van. Now, if you think
about this, this is a person familiar with the area.
(09:02):
He's added, And if you head straight down south on
sixty five, you're a hopstick is skipping a jump away
from Alabama.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, you're you know, you know, you know my son Noah,
you know, he lives in northern Alabama, actually up in Huntsville.
And as a matter of fact, he he loves Huntsble
and we love going to visit him there because it's
a really cool place if here. But you know, when
he goes out for serious play, Tom, he's he's heading
(09:30):
north to Nashville, you know, because they've got a soccer
soccer team, and he goes to pres Pread's matches and
all that sort of stuff. It typical young man kind
of stuff that he does. So yeah, I think that
people geographically they don't understand this is almost kind of
a north south linear pattern that we're following here with this.
You've got somebody that is kind of uh, you know,
(09:54):
depositing things along the way, if you will, not the
least of which is this truck. Are this because David,
I'll tell you the van actually many many years later
will lead to a conclusion in this case, and conclusion
at a fiber and a molecular level. You know that
(10:31):
one of these things you think about the twinkling of
an eye. When you get eyewitnesses to something. Most of
the time, they don't really realize how important anything that
they recall at any specific time.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Is.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
You know, they don't realize that maybe these recollections that
they have from these moments, you know, when they're when
they're out there and they're just going about their lives
and they have this ability to see something, to witness something.
They actually had a description on this perpetrator, and I
think that you had mentioned it had we know that
(11:15):
he was a white male. Yes, thing just happened in
a fly. You think about poor Morgan there on side
of the road and she's with her her playmates, and
I'm sure that they contributed to the descriptor too well.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Actually went to the FBI and dug through the database
to look because this was an unsolved crime. It was
unsolved for thirty years. Okay, it's been a long time coming.
And so what I did is I went back and
looked at the FBI file on it to find out
what the description was. It wasn't filled in after the
fact that it was not they had a good description
(11:49):
they had The guy was twenty to thirty years old,
light brown hair, medium height and weight. This is your
average everyday guy, all right. And yet when I looked
at the drawings that they got and what the suspect
looked like at the time, they had a good look
(12:11):
at him, and he wasn't somebody known to anybody in
that apartment complex. Show that was the issue. You've got
a person driving a van from out of state, comes
in in and out an apartment complex, you know where
you do have a lot of transient not in a
negative you know people that come in and out renting
and things like that. So there's oftentimes movement in an
(12:32):
apartment complexes. You see a lot of different vehicles, so
not that uncommon too, you wouldn't pay attention to it.
Or off the bat. It's just shocking that the way
this happened. But you mentioned how they were able to
utilize that van and how they were able to tie
it all together. And do you want to go to
(12:58):
do let me tell you who the guy is or
do you want to go into how they discovered him?
How do you want to go about this because it's
kind of we've had to start at the end to
go to the beginning, because the reason we know about
this is because of what transpired to find this is
an unsolved crime. It happened in nineteen ninety six. Here
it is twenty twenty six. We're talking about it. Why
(13:18):
because we just found out they have the solution last week.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Think of the family, Joe, think of the poor family,
the friends, the other little girl that was playing with
Morgan that day. I mean, what have they gone through
for the last thirty years?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, what is Let's just take her playmate just for
a second. What has she gone through? How many nights
do you think she laid awake in her little bed,
you know, recalling and trust me, this would be emblazoned
in her brain, recalling watching this grown man first put
his hands on her yep, and she was able to
slip away and then watch watch her friend Morgan be
(13:58):
snatched off into the bit of blackness inside of that man.
That door shutting, and off they go into the distance.
You're talking about seven year olds here, Dave, And how
horrific this is this child. Yeah, it's been bad on
the parents. I know that it has been. But this,
this little girl that bore witness to this, this is
something that will be emblazoned on her psyche for the
(14:19):
rest of her life.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Well, think about it. She's thirty seven now, Okay, she's
probably a mother herself and has probably gone through that
same fear that you and I did when Archie. You
know it's there. It's a constant presence in your life,
you know.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, I promise you one thing. I can almost guarantee
you this, unless she went to some kind of mental
vapor lock, if you were to sit down with her
now today, Dave, she could give you fun detail, fine
detail about what she saw at that moment in time.
Oh yeah, al, it's something that's so burned into there.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Well, when we actually came around on this, and I'm
still amazed at how the evidence was, how they were
able to do this because when you go back in time,
you go back to we know who the suspect is.
His name is Robert Froberg. Robert Scott Froberg. That's the
man's name. By the way, he's sixty one now. He's
(15:20):
the suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Morgan v Ille.
December twenty seven, nineteen eighty eight, Robert Froberg committed an
armed robbery in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly after that, Froberg was
arrested and found in possession of paperwork about how to
(15:41):
hot wire cars. Now this is in nineteen eighty eight.
Eighty nine. Froberger was sentenced to a lengthy term of
fore armed robbery. He got a prison term. While he
was in prison, he learned a few things. February nineteen
ninety five, prison officials find Froberg in possession of two
nude pictures of minor girls. April third, nineteen ninety six,
(16:05):
Froberg escapes from a prison work detail in Birmingham, Alabama.
He robs an elderly woman and steals her nineteen eighty
six oldsmobile. Roberg fleeds Alabama in the stolen car, ends
up in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. Now you know what he
was doing. Joe Froburg. He's on the lamb. He's a
(16:27):
wanted fugitive and he is in a child's playhouse, a treehouse,
and he's hiding there. Don't know how long he was there,
but on May twentieth, nineteen ninety six, this little boy,
a seven year old boy identified only by his initials WA,
shows up looking for a friend. The boy goes up
(16:50):
this treehouse and finds Froburg. Think about this for a minute,
but Proberg plays it cool. He engages the kid, talking
to him. The boy says, Hey, what are you gonna do.
The boy says, I'm going to the store to buy
some candy. Froberg says, I'll buy it for you. Not
a problem. The kid sensed something was wrong. He's like, I
gotta go home and get money. So before Froberg could
(17:12):
do anything, this kid got out of there. Joe ran
home and tells his mom, Hey, there's a guy in
the treehouse. They called the cops right away. They show up.
A brief chase is on. Froberg is caught seven year old.
A seven year old did not believe the lying fell,
so Freberg is locked up in the Northumberland County jail again.
(17:38):
That's May twentieth, nineteen ninety six. On July sixteenth, nineteen
ninety six, Froberg escapes Northumberland County jail Joe. He climbs
a rainspout to the roof, then using a cable, he
climbs down on the ground. He steals a prison employe's
(18:00):
bicycle and rides away. It is just this is.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
A movie, not You couldn't make this up.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
This is July now again July sixteenth, nineteen ninety six.
These dates are important. Friends. Remember he's on the lamb
from Alabama May twentieth, July sixteen. He's now on the
lamb in Pennsylvania. July of nineteen ninety six, Dayton, Ohio.
Froberg's parents live in Dayton, Ohio. The address is two
(18:32):
thousand and one Spice Avenue, in a home that Froburg
had lived in throughout his formative years. He grew up
in that home. On July twenty third, nineteen ninety six.
July twenty third, nineteen ninety six, about a half mile
from the Froburg's home, a nineteen seventy eight Chevy Van
Maroon in color is stolen the next day. That was
(18:55):
the van that was driven to Bowling Green, Kentucky, July
twenty four, nineteen ninety seven. That's been Morgan Bil just
kidding opped.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
And I would imagine that you know that Morgan's life
ended in that van. I mean, you know, the thing
about it is is that you know, with with Morgan,
those those elements of her and those deeds that were
done within that van wind up betraying this guy, you know,
(19:26):
some possible joe.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
He only had the van for a couple of days, right.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Well, any kind of movements, Yeah, you think about any
kind of deposition that they find. And I'll get into
this relative to to Morgan's death. This is a homicide obviously,
but you think about this guy is trying to stay hid,
and he's trying to stay secluded. So anywhere that he
might go in that van, he's going to leave his
own deposition. This is a fine, fine example of the cards.
(19:53):
I know you guys get tired of me talking about
la cards, but the card is is the cornerstone for
everything we think about in forensics. With those things that
you leave behind are those things you introduce into a
scene and.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Explain where that comes from, Joe, because you take for
granted that a lot of folks know what you're talking
about when you say it. I do. But you know what,
the first time you said it when we were doing
the show, we were actually doing a show with Nancy,
and you mentioned it, I wrote it down and looked
it up because I didn't know. I didn't know what
it meant.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Well, it comes from a gentleman named Edmond, Edmond Lcard,
and he's French, and he was during his day, he
was referred to. I think the first Sherlock Holmes book
came out in like eighteen eighty seven, and Lecard, you know,
was he appears on the scene in the late nineteen teens,
early twenties, nineteen twenties rather, And he's a scientist by trade,
(20:43):
and he understands the connectivity and crime science between at
an elemental level and the people that are involved in
the crime. He always thought that there would be connectivity.
So he takes the laws of physical science, you know,
classic physical science, applies it to crime solving, and he
arrived at and he's got several there's several, you know,
(21:06):
principles that he puts forth, but probably the most famous
is what's referred to as le Card's exchange principle, and
that is that every contact leaves a trace. And the
whole statement is a bit longer than that, but that's
the condensed version. But every contact leaves a trace. So
if you, as a perpetrator, are walking into a scene,
(21:28):
let's just say this pristine world, maybe a van. When
you get into that van, wherever you have come from,
you're bringing bits of yourself in your environment with you. Okay,
Now those things might be unique to you, or it
might be to another environment, but yet they're deposited in
that van. So let's just say you walk through You
(21:49):
walk on the side of the road, and the side
of the road is compacted clay that's dusty. Well, when
you mount up on the van and your feet have
been walking through it, you're going to transfer that clay
into the interior of that van. That doesn't mean that
that came from you, However, it is deposited. If you
find this person's boots or their shoes and has said
(22:10):
clay on it, then that's a point of connection. That
doesn't solve the case for you, but it does show
that someone with those shoes or those boots walked into
that van deposited the same type of clay. Now you
can also have hair deposition, you know, fiber deposition, you know,
something that comes off of a pillow or a blanket
(22:31):
or something like this, or you're shedding hair in this environment.
Your hair is falling away. That is your hair. And
now we can take hair and do mitochondrial DNA on
hair and tie it directly back to you. In the past,
we would do things like hair morphology where we would
look at a hair and we would say, okay, this
is human. You know. That's where we always start with
(22:53):
any kind of biological element. Is this human, just like
we do with blood. So we would look at that
hair and say, yes, this is in fact human hair.
Then you have to go down the list. Can you
put a race with the hair? Well, racing a hair
is a bit more difficult, okay, because you don't know.
(23:13):
You know, certain people carry certain genetic markers that might
predispose them to curly hair, might predispose them stick straight
hair like mine, or they might have some body to it. Okay,
But at the molecular level, it tells a tale about
that subject. So in broad strokes in the past. All
we had to look at was the more followed you
(23:34):
the hair, you know, some other indicators, which is really
fascinating if you ever see this in a microscope. And
for all our friends out there that go and get
their hair colored, what's fascinating. And Kimmy will do this
periodically too. She'll say, my roots are showing. And any
lady you've ever been around, if she gets her hair colored,
you'll hear them say, my roots are showing. What that
(23:54):
means is that the hair is growing. And as it grows,
the shaft increases in length. Well, that area that has
previously been dyed are colored. You can see a demarcation
in This thing's kind of fascinating when you look at
it microscopically because suddenly it changes. You know, you'll see
the natural hair and then you'll see this colored hair
(24:14):
and it has very particular markings to it. It's striking,
you know when you see it. And that's but that's
a point of identification. Because now if you've got like
a six inch strand of hair and it's colored halfway
up the shaft, well, if you can do, say a
measurement on how long it takes a human hair to
grow out that much. You can get an idea of,
(24:37):
you know, more about the life of this subject. Then
you can look at the dye that's in the hair.
You can try to get a sense of where this
comes from. So you know the card. I'm not saying
he knew about hair dyes, but he did, in fact
know that. There's this principle within forensics. It's called individualization.
It's a beautiful principle because if you hold onto it
(24:59):
and you bear down on it and use that as
like your kind of baseline as an investigator. If you
can say that that this is an individual visualized piece
of evidence, you very well might unlock the door to
the scientific truth. Dave, I hate to go on this road,
(25:35):
will you, but this is our programmed body backs, right,
But let me just ask you. Can you tell me
just a wee bit about how precious Morgan was found.
I know that it was. It was a period of
time before they found her.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You know, she was not found. She was found because
of the decomposition, the smell. Morgan was found three months
after she was taken. She was found in October and
of ninety six. You know, when you think I'll see
July August August, September, September, October. You've got three of
(26:12):
the hottest months of the year in the South, and
you're talking about thirty miles north of Nashville. She wasn't
taken care of. She was tossed, just thrown off the
side of the road into the woods. Joe. Based on
how close the area was to I sixty five Interstate
(26:37):
sixty five, I'm going to guess that she Well, there's
certain things that we know now based on what we've learned,
that her dead body was carried from the van into
those woods just off the interstate, just off. Yeah, and
when you think about driving down the interstate at seventy
(26:59):
miles an hour, you know, and you glance over at
the sides, you don't really pay much attention to it
unless you see something. But usually, especially in that area,
even now, even thirty years later, driving that area of
sixty five is just woods. It's woods and houses.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
All through there. Yeah, it's wooded area. And so you
have to have an event like the occurred with Morgan
that you know, a passer by in a vehicle is
not going to take notice. But Dave, I think that
there's a pedestrian involved in.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
This there is a woman. Actually, the area where this
happened was in white House, Tennessee, And it's one of
those things I looked up because I had never heard
of white House, Tennessee. I've heard that this area, but
I thought maybe it was a misprint, like it was
supposed to be white Horse. It's white House, Tennessee. Is
an actual community actually, right is a community that sits
on two different counties. And when you come to an investigation,
(27:51):
that can be a problem. And Morgan's body was discarded
in the wooded area where a woman. It was near
this woman's home. She's walking down the road. And when
you think about where the body was found in relation
to the interstate and the community, it was happenstance that
(28:12):
she actually was found when she was found because she
had been there for three months. Joe and her decomposed remains.
It was a skeletal at that time. Just skeletal remains
is all that they found. I cannot imagine there was
a lot of soft tissue left. I'm imagining there was
a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Brother, I got to tell you there has to be
something there, because you know, the opinion, the opinion of
the medical, legal authorities is that she was strangled. So
I think that's an interesting point, and you really have to,
you know, kind of dig into this a little bit
and think, well, if I don't if I've got a
(28:52):
diagnosis that's being related here that where they believe she
was strangled, and you've got decomposing remains, which for those
that don't know, it's one of the most difficult assessments
that you can do. I'd say that I would say
fire is, but with fire bodies you still have this
(29:15):
kind of hardened containment. That's probably not a good way
to say it. But the body is, it's burned in
one spot, for lack of a better term, Decomposed bodies
become very gelatinous, I'll put it to that way. They're
gelaginous and soupy, is really the only way I can
(29:36):
put it in. The longer you go with you know,
all of the organics contained in there, it's not necessarily
a melting. It's just that the cellular tissue is breaking
down and it gives way. So at that matrix, at
that baseline matrix that keeps everything, keeps us connected and
makes up our architecture, that's literally being dissolved Dave. And
(30:00):
as those limits are reached with you know, the changes
relative to decomposition, everything just kind of it's like a
collapsing building, if you will. That just kind of gives way.
I would compare it more probably to a sand castle
that's being washed away, because with a building, you know,
(30:22):
you might still have bricks and that sort of thing,
and you do have bones, but you understand what I'm saying,
it just kind of melts away. You can look there
and you can see, well, at one point in time,
this was a body, but you have to catch it
at the right point in time where you can still
make a rather complex diagnosis, which you know, some kind
of trauma to the neck is very difficult to make
(30:43):
when the body is not fresh. How are you arriving
at this conclusion? I really wonder again if her Laynix
the organs of the neck that are really cartilaginous, the trachia,
this sort of thing. I really wonder if because they
might be a bit they are. I know this for fact,
they are a bit more resilient than say muscle and
(31:05):
soft tissue. So was there any trauma there? And of
course we have to go back to uh, something we've
talked about considerably. Was our highway intact. Now, the one
saving grace with her case, Dave, is that her body
was in a bag, so it's not going to be
(31:25):
you can have scavengers that will show up, but not
like where you're talking about a surface deposition of a
body where you know they're coming and they're going. And
you know, if you put a if you had a
cadaver and you had a what's it called a you know,
a game a game camera out there, and you could
see the little animals coming and going. They've done this
(31:45):
a lot.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Actually.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I think there's pretty good, uh, pretty good documentary on
on YouTube about Secrets of the Body Farm where they've
got a camera that shows kind of the march of
the insects around the body. The same thing happens with
species as well. And if you could see that, you
would see, you know, going to the graphic detail, but
(32:07):
you know, the feasting on the body, and then you
would have the uh, other animals carrying things away, those
sort of things, which you don't have that here. And
not only were they able, Dave, in this particular case,
to assess that this was some kind of asphyxial death,
but Dave. They they actually had containment on on fiber
(32:34):
evidence that originated from where that van. Wow, And isn't
that amazing After all that period of time they were
able to tie back and you know you mentioned earlier, brother,
you know they found that damn van. They found it
in frank It was Franklin, Tennessee, right.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, it was. And again thirty miles north of Tennessee
is where her body was dumped out. Thirty miles south
of Tennessee of matt Nashville, rather in Franklin. That's where
the was found. And by the way, that van had
been totally cleaned when they found it. It had been
wiped clean, so the suspect thought he washed it, scrubbed it,
(33:11):
but did not get everything Joe, and it was that. Now,
a lot of what we've learned about Morgan's what happened
with Morgan from the time she was taken, has come
from the suspect, okay, to something to finish up with here.
(33:31):
This man, I hate to even call him, that he
was rearrested in August of nineteen ninety six. Okay. Now,
remember when we said pay attention to the dates. Ye
May twenty, nineteen ninety six, he's out of town. He
escapes Alabama, goes to Tennisee, Pennsylvania. He's arrested there. He
(33:54):
escapes county jail there in July July twenty thirty, steals
the van next to his parents' house. July twenty four,
ninety six, he finds Morgan. He snatches her. He throws
her in the van. By the way, Morgan was fighting
and screaming. That was why some of the witnesses knew
what had happened. They paid attention because they heard her screaming.
(34:16):
Once they were able to get this down pat they
found out that Morgan was fighting and screaming the whole way.
A handkerchief was used to cover her mouth, and that's
where Robert Froberg used that to strangle her. According to him. Now,
(34:38):
Froburg to calm Morgan down, told her that they were
going to see her dad. Now how he knew to
say that, I don't know, But he was just passing through.
He didn't have any real connection there. This was such
a happenstance occasion, Joe. For this little girl she fought.
(35:00):
He killed her in that van and then dumped her
body like it was nothing. He drives sixty miles from
where he dumps her body, cleans out the van, and
leaves it where it's found. You know, the van was
found two days after she was kidnapped. Think about that.
They find this van two days after Morgan is kidnapped.
(35:22):
There's still hope she's alive. They're still hoping that we're
going to find this little seven year old girl. But
she was already dead when they found this van. They
had been totally cleaned out.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, and probably had been for at least twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Oh yeah, Yeah, he dumped it right away. So Froburg
he does make it back to Alabama, and he's arrested
in August. Joe, August of nineteen ninety six. You know,
when we talked about how Froberg was sentenced for the
armor every charge in eighty eight. It was a long
sentence then, and he kept piling up other charges while
he was in jail and in prison, and when you escape,
that's even more. He was still in prison from that
(35:57):
original charge in eighty eight when they rested him in
ninety six. He's been in jail ever since. He's been
in jail since a month, okay, since a month after
he killed Morgan. He's been in jail ever since. He
was in jail for two months before her body was found,
Joe for two months before her body was found. He
(36:18):
was in jail.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Well this we know, the FEDS have gotten hold of this,
and the FEDS are the ones that are charging him now.
They're involved in this case involving Morgan's homicide. And what's
really interesting about this, Dave, is that Morgan, you know,
almost like some kind of specter, you know, arises and
(36:42):
you know, points to him through her own her own
biology that he he was the person that did this.
Because Dave contained within that bag that they found dumped
there in that area where this precious child's remains contained
within her hair, Dave were fibers off of one of
(37:05):
the pillows or cushions rather inside of that van that
he had stolen. So there the cards, you've got that attachment.
Now we know that he's been in the joint for
some time. It's the confirmatory thing is that he left
his own DNA in that damn van. And when he did,
science finally caught up to everything because they were able.
(37:28):
This is one of the cases where Cotis works Dave.
They were able to take that sample and put it
into cotis and guess what, they got a hit on
this comeback, they got to hit and again pointing the
finger at him. The science is telling the truth here.
But you know, the time has passed, The time has
passed for you know, so called and I never know
(37:50):
what this actually means justice. You know, in a case
like this, justice would have been that this precious little
angel would have been able to live her life to
the fullest and instead on that as you put that
hot July day back in nineteen ninety six, her life ended.
It ended, and he was able to go on with
(38:12):
his life. Now maybe it's behind bars and incarcerated, but
he is still drawing breath. And I echo your sentiments, Dave.
If anybody had knowledge of this, looking at the parents here,
that he was on the lamb that they facilitated in
any way in his safe passage or whatever the case
(38:34):
might be, shame on you, Shame on you for doing this,
because now you know, Morgan's at peace. Now, she's been
at peace for a long time. But all of those
that are out there that were in her circle, her parents,
her grandparents, her extended family, and oh yeah, that little
(38:56):
girl that witnesses happened, that has probably spent many any
sleepless nights, may have had to go to therapy. You
robbed them of peace by virtue of the fact that
you took care of this guy.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
What a shame.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Facts.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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