Ex-Ivy League professor convicted in wife’s death is freed
ALBION, Pa. — A former Ivy League professor convicted in the bludgeoning death of his wife at their suburban Philadelphia home has been released from prison.
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said the former University of Pennsylvania economics professor Rafael Robb was released Sunday morning from the State Correctional Institution at Albion.
Robb, of Upper Merion, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 death of his wife Ellen.
Ellen Robb’s family won a $124 million judgment against Rafael Robb in a civil suit over her death, and is now trying to collect on it. They believe Robb has several million dollars in retirement funds. They are sometimes protected in such cases, but the family believes her estate is entitled to at least half the money, according to her brother, Gary Gregory, of Sherborn, Massachusetts.
Ellen Robb had retained a divorce lawyer and was planning to move out when she was killed in 2006. She had complained of years of verbal and emotional abuse, he said. The couple’s then 12-year-old daughter, Olivia, raised by another brother in Haddonfield, New Jersey, has since finished college, Gregory said.
“This guy killed Ellen to protect his assets,” Gregory told The Associated Press on Friday. “He has repeatedly shown a lack of remorse.”
Robb served the maximum 10 years of the five- to 10-year term for voluntary manslaughter, after the family fought his bid to be paroled after five years.
Robb, who taught game theory at Penn, told police that he had come home to find the house burglarized.
He later admitted that he killed his wife during an argument as she wrapped presents days before Christmas.