Penn Prof Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter of Wife
Rafael Robb, Penn professor of Economics, pleaded guilty yesterday to beating his wife, Ellen Gregory Robb, to death with a metal chin-up bar last year. Robb's plea agreement is for voluntary manslaughter, down from the first-degree murder charge for which he stood trial. Though voluntary manslaughter usually carries a prison sentence of 4.5 to 7 years, DA Bruce Castor says he will seek 10 to 20 for Robb.
Fox News correspondent Rick Leventhal, who met Robb in January, describes the professor's crime and confession:
Ellen was bludgeoned so badly investigators initially thought she'd been blasted at close range with a shotgun or rifle. The DA was prepared to introduce testimony from experts suggesting this was an "enraged blitz attack" by someone who knew the victim and was trying to "wipe her face off the map." ... He admitted staging evidence of a break-in at the house and disposing of the weapon and bloody clothes in a dumpster in Chinatown.
Chilling as the crime was, Robb's proclaimed rationale was perhaps strangest: During an argument about a holiday trip Ellen would be taking with the couple's daughter, Olivia, Rafael grew enraged at the suggestion that the girl would miss school. "At one point," he testified, "Ellen pushed me. ... I just lost it."
So this was over an elementary school girl's attendance record? We wonder how the professor dealt with the half-empty lecture halls that populate undergraduate Economics. To the Penn students and economists in the audience: WTF was this guy's deal?
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November 27th, 2007 at 5:25 am
How the hell did this guy get manslauter and not murder?! And, since when are econ lecture halls half-full? Also, police blotter’s up.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Featuring Yale, Princeton, and Tufts students getting arrested in Hanover…
November 27th, 2007 at 11:10 am
7 years for bludgeoning someone to death? i’ve never wished prison rape on anyone before but…
November 27th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
how the fuck is beating someone to death with a chin up bar manslaughter? Manslaughter is accidentally bumping off a pedestrian, not willful and violent murder.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
stupid internets
November 27th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Manslaughter is when you kill someone on the whim of emotions (not pre-meditated). Murder, on the other hand, is pre-meditated killing. This guy apparently just got really pissed at his wife. REALLY pissed.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
plus he pleaded, which usually entails pleading DOWN, so maybe they would have gotten him on something higher in trial.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
IvyGate is really phoning it in these days.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
This is totally yesterday’s news…Ivygate needs to pick up their game.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
As sean connery put in 1993: “There are women who take it to the wire. That’s what they are looking for, the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack.”
November 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
In Pennsylvania, someone who commits voluntary manslaughter is “A person who kills an individual without lawful justification commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he is acting under a sudden and intense passion resulting from serious provocation by the individual killed.” I don’t know if suggesting that their daughters miss school for a couple of days and then being pushed by a woman is “serious provocation.”
Additionally, first degree murder in Pennsylvania is defined as: “A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.” I would say that beating the face off of one’s wife is an intentional killing, but then again I may be old-fashioned.
But yeah, voluntary manslaughter for this is a little lenient.
November 27th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
y’all he teaches GAME THEORY. of course he was going to get manslaughter…puuh-lease. he knew what was up.
November 27th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
“Grisly” means “horrible”; a “grizzly” is a bear.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
princeton2009 says:
7 years for bludgeoning someone to death? i’ve never wished prison rape on anyone before but…
——
Good point. All econ professors (especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe) really do deserve to be hollowed out for the rest of their lives. I don’t know, though. I think homicide’s a good card to hold in prison, even if you’re not a threat to the other prisoners.
I mean, if I were going to rape someone in prison (let’s assume I get bored of raping free people), I would choose someone who’s a bit more cherry, spiritually speaking. After all, if straight male-male rape (as opposed to sex) is motivated more by psychological dysfunction than physical chemistry, then raping someone who has snuffed out human life is like the ultimate sloppy seconds.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Prison is the ultimate Ivory Tower.
Teach ‘em inmates some economics, yo.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:19 am
princeton2009 says:
7 years for bludgeoning someone to death? i’ve never wished prison rape on anyone before but…
——
Good point. All econ professors (especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe) really do deserve to be hollowed out for the rest of their lives. I don’t know, though. I think homicide’s a good card to hold in prison, even if you’re not a threat to the other prisoners.
I mean, if I were going to rape someone in prison (let’s assume I get bored of raping free people), I would choose someone who’s a bit more cherry, spiritually speaking. After all, if straight male-male rape (as opposed to sex) is motivated more by psychological dysfunction than physical chemistry, then raping someone who has snuffed out human life is like the ultimate sloppy seconds.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Remember, you can’t spell “manslaughter” with “Laughter”