As Robb sentencing approaches, looking back on a victim's life

The thing that Gary Gregory will always remember about his sister's death is how close she was to leaving her husband when he killed her.

Gregory was down from Massachusetts to bring his sister, Ellen Robb, and her daughter Olivia up to Boston with him for Christmas. He planned on picking her up from the house she shared with her husband, then-Penn Economics professor Rafael Robb. After more than 13 years in an unhappy marriage, Ellen had finally decided to file for divorce.

Gregory had also planned a surprise for her 50th birthday just days later. His idea was to take her to Boston to see a show and stay downtown overnight in a hotel suite overlooking the skyline.

But as Gregory pulled up to his sister's three-bedroom ranch in Wayne the afternoon of Dec. 22, 2006, to take her home with him, he knew something was horribly wrong. He saw yellow police tape cordoning off the house and an ambulance parked outside that was being loaded with a stretcher carrying Ellen.

Thinking she was hurt, Gregory jumped out of his car and was running toward the house when a police officer pulled him aside. After Gregory explained who he was, the officer broke the news: His sister had been killed.

Police later arrested Robb in connection with the killing, and he pleaded guilty at a November hearing to voluntary manslaughter in connection with her death.

He testified that on Dec. 22, while Ellen was wrapping Christmas presents at the kitchen table and packing for Massachusetts, he had gotten into a fight with her because he was afraid their daughter would miss school by accompanying Ellen to Massachusetts. The argument spun out of control, and Robb said that Ellen pushed him against the kitchen table. Robb explained he then "lost it," and, taking an exercise bar lying nearby, he began to hit her with it, ultimately killing her.

Now, outraged that Robb will likely face a sentence of only four-and-a-half to seven years for his actions under state sentencing guidelines, Ellen's friends and family have decided to speak out. They argue that the heinousness of Robb's crime - Ellen's skull caved in under the force of the blows - justify a much harsher sentence, especially when put into the context of a relationship in which they say Ellen suffered verbal abuse for years at Robb's hands.

Robb's lawyer, Frank DeSimone, declined to comment for this article, saying that it would be inappropriate for him to speak before Robb's sentencing, slated for May. Robb also did not respond to an interview request sent to him at the Montgomery County Prison.

Remembering Ellen

Ellen was born Dec. 26, 1956, in Syracuse, N.Y. Because of her father's job, her family moved from Pennsylvania to a suburb of Ann Arbor, Mich., and finally Bogota, Colombia. After her father's early death from diabetes complications, the family moved back to suburban Philadelphia, where Ellen's mother, Mary, raised Ellen and her younger brothers Art and Gary.

The brothers used to call her "little mother," Gary said, because of her willingness to help out around the house. Art said he developed a particularly close relationship with Ellen because their mother was so focused on raising Gary. Ellen included Art in her circle of friends at school, even though he was a few grades below her.

And Ellen was surrounded by a large circle of friends, many of whom stayed in touch with her through college. She also knew how to have fun, often heading into Center City to go dancing and was known as the life of the party.

"Ellen always knew where the parties were," said Karen Lander, one of Ellen's closest high-school friends.

After graduating from what is now Philadelphia University in the early 1980s, she started work in the housewares department at the Bamberger department store in King of Prussia and in November 1986, she met Robb through a dating service.

While friends said the couple did not have a passionate love affair, they could see how the two complemented each other. "He was the quiet one. She was the outgoing one," Lander explained.

Ellen was looking to settle down. After dating for a few years without entering into a serious relationship and seeing many of her friends get married, she felt Robb was someone with whom she could start a family, Lander said, adding that "she just wanted to be a mom so bad."

The two also shared a love of travel, and the fact that Robb's job in academia took him all over the world was a definite plus. The couple made trips to countries including Germany and Robb's native Israel, where Ellen was fascinated by the Bedouin herders she saw in the desert.

Ellen and Robb moved in together at their house in the Upper Merion part of Wayne and married in 1990.

Robb, the enigma

Robb, however, remained something of an enigma to Ellen's family and friends. His quiet demeanor made it difficult for them to get to know him, though Ellen's friend Becky Best said that his friends from Penn seemed "very nice."

While most of Robb's former students and colleagues contacted declined to comment for this article, 2006 Wharton alumnus George Knox, who took a class with him in industrial organization, called Robb "very knowledgeable and a little unpredictable" in his teaching methods. Robb didn't stick to a planned syllabus and liked to jump around in the material he covered, Knox added in an e-mail interview.

At first, the Robbs seemed like any typical newlyweds. Lander remembers, for instance, that Rafael was very proud of his house and eager to show it off to her and her husband when the two visited.

The marriage started to go sour, though, when Robb had what Ellen's friend Mary Beth Pedlow called "a midlife crisis" after Ellen became pregnant with their daughter Olivia in 1993. His father had just died, and according to Ellen's friends and family, he decided he couldn't commit to raising a child.

Robb left for Europe on a teaching sabbatical, and Ellen stayed with her brother Art and his then-wife during the rough weeks of her pregnancy. Ellen also made her first attempt to leave him at this point, filing for divorce on Nov. 10, 1993. And though Robb returned for Olivia's birth, he left again shortly afterward.

The two eventually managed to patch things up, though, and when Robb returned from his teaching appointment he moved back in and Ellen let the idea of divorce lapse.

Things fall apart

Around this time, however, Ellen's friends and family began noticing changes in both her personality and the tenor of her relationship with Robb. The two moved into separate bedrooms, and Robb kept the door to his room locked whenever he wasn't home.

It was also around this time that Robb began verbally abusing her, friends and family members said.

He would use the fact that he was the family's sole wage earner to control her - Ellen had left her job at Sarah Lee when Olivia was born and never went back, much to her friends' dismay.

Friends and family said that Robb forced Ellen to dip into her retirement savings to cover common household expenses like groceries. And while Robb treated himself to a new car every couple of years, Ellen was stuck driving a 17-year-old Subaru.

At the same time, she showered attention on Olivia, being named volunteer of the year at Roberts Elementary School when her daughter was in fourth grade.

She was active in Girl Scouts and was almost obsessive in helping her daughter sell Girl Scout cookies every year, known as the "cookie mom." Art recalled, for instance, a scheme of Ellen's in which she would mail cookies to him in South Jersey, where he could sell them for more than what she was able to in Pennsylvania.

But while Ellen presented a confident public face, her home life was marked by deepening depression.

Ellen's behavior began to change. She fell out of touch with her old friends from high school, not returning their phone calls and letters.

She and her husband began seeing therapists, and Ellen rearranged her schedule so as to avoid seeing Robb. She would wake up during the day, when both Olivia and Robb were out of the house, and she would either try to be asleep by the time Robb came home from work or spend the night doing errands.

Pedlow said that it wasn't unusual for her to see Ellen food-shopping at the local Acme after 9 p.m., and since Ellen knew that her brother Art was a light sleeper, he'd get phone calls from her in the middle of the night.

But the most visible sign of her depression was the squalor her house fell into. Ellen had always been proud of her house and always made sure it was immaculate. Over time, though, the floors became littered with old newspapers and magazines, as well as purchases she had accrued through binge-buying.

"From a very live, vivacious person, she just started to fizzle out," said Lander, who was one of the friends who was cut off from Ellen as the years went on.

While her friends and family told her she desperately needed a divorce, Ellen stuck with it for over a decade because of her concern that the split would hurt Olivia.

Robb also threatened to take Olivia back with him to Israel if Ellen ever tried to leave him, Ellen's friends and family members said.

Ellen had a change of heart, though, after spending a summer alone when Olivia was entering middle school. Her daughter had left for sleep-away camp, and Robb was visiting family in Israel. It was then, Pedlow said, that Ellen began to reassert her independence and realized that she could strike out on her own.

She began seeing a divorce attorney on Oct. 13, 2006, and made arrangements to move into a nearby townhouse with Olivia while the divorce was finalized, and her friends and family began noticing a change in her.

"It was as if the skies had opened up and cleared up for Ellen," her brother Gary said.

But everyone's hopes ended in tragedy, just before Ellen's new life was supposed to begin.

"She was literally hours away from emancipation," Gary said.

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