A man who's been fighting for parole after being convicted of beating his wife to death using a chin-up bar in their Montgomery County home in 2006 will serve his full sentence, prosecutors said on Monday.
Rafael Robb has been fighting to be released since his parole came up in February. Robb was sentenced to 10 years in prison with the possibility of parole as part of a negotiated plea deal after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2007.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said at a news conference on Monday that Robb will serve his full sentence.
Steele said at the news conference that justice was served in the decision to keep Robb behind bars.
Robb, a former University of Pennsylvania professor, admitted to beating his wife, Ellen Gregory Robb, to death using a chin-up bar in the couple's King of Prussia home.
Ellen Gregory Robb's family, local lawmakers and prosecutors have been fighting to keep Rafael Robb behind bars to finish his full sentence.
Ellen Gregory Robb's brother, Gary Gregory, and domestic-violence advocates praised the decision to keep her husband in prison. Gregory said his sister had been planning to leave Robb when he killed her. Since her death, he has done advocacy work to aid survivors of domestic violence.
"It's an epidemic that my sister suffered from in silence," Gregory said, breaking down, during Monday's news conference. "I'm most pleased and proud to be surrounded by people who have made a difference in our lives, but most importantly in Ellen's legacy so that it carries forward for years to come."
Robert Mongeluzzi, who won a historic $124 million civil settlement for Ellen Gregory Robb's daughter in civil court, which Robb is fighting, vowed to continue to fight that case.
"We proved in a that courtroom that he intentionally slaughtered her ... [he] waited for her as she was wrapping Christmas presents and brutally beat her to death ... in a scene he described himself as out of a horror movie and out of a slaughterhouse," Mongeluzzi said at Monday's news conference. "In a horror movie, there is always a monster, and the monster in this case is Rafael Robb."
