A former Manhattan restaurant owner has been sentenced to 24 and a half years in prison on two counts of rape.
Robert Iacobellis appeared in court Friday as Judge Kendra Lewison sealed his fate, granting a motion to depart to the grid, sentencing him to 147 months on both counts, to be served consecutively, for a total of 294 months. The 64-year-old entered into an Alford plea in April 2022, maintaining his innocence but admitting to prosecutors that evidence would likely result in a guilty verdict if brought to trial…
At the hearing, five people spoke on behalf of the former Bob’s Diner owner, including his two daughters, Elizabeth King and Jamie Berges, the latter testifying in support of her father from the Pottawatomie County Jail, where she’s currently incarcerated. One of the three victims, who was 7 at the time Iacobellis began abusing her, provided a victim impact statement, noting the abuse occurred on numerous occasions. That victim is now 19 years old…
Iacobellis was initially arrested in August 2019 on charges of rape and aggravated indecent liberties with a child. He was eventually charged with 27 total counts involving three victims, and ultimately convicted on two rape charges.
The case was delayed several times, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also due to unsuccessful attempts by Iacobellis to hire his own attorneys as well as disagreements with his appointed counsel and an unsuccessful attempt to withdraw his Alford plea.
Iacobellis sentenced to 24.5 years on rape convictions involving minors
BY BRANDON PEOPLES ON FEBRUARY 24, 2023
Why did I go meddling in my old self’s life when I really have no business being there? I’d rather forget that I ever worked for Bob Iachobellis who turned out to be one of the most reprehensible humans I had met up until that point in my short life. He worked hard at an affable yet tough wise guy persona, but the simmering psychosis just underneath was palpable. He had enough cool to walk away from initial introductions once he couldn’t contain his nervous glances around the immediate settings that communicated “that’s enough for now. I’ll learn your weak points soon enough to leech on your soul.”
As tyrannical of an owner and lead line cook as he could be, I don’t think I’ll ever see that much autonomy in any work situation ever again, and that’s a profoundly sorry thing to say. Such are the times. However, if you wanted to make money in this little “iconic” slice of americana paradise and you are a woman, you had to maintain a size 6 at most – his head waitress, Mary, 20 years his junior turned mistress who became his second wife would poke you with her pen that usually rested in a halo of Aquanet or V05 if she thought you were getting a little pudgy. It helped if you looked like a gymnast or actually used to be one, previously modeled, or were an avid equestrian. Fat, old, or ugly was strictly forbidden from the diner floor that included a large smoking section. You better save your best and tightest blue jeans for the weekend rushes, if you could grab a shift. If you put up with enough abuse or were tough enough to yell back and keep it at an acceptable level of profanity and willingness to brawl with Bob, the dishwasher, and/or at times nearly blacked out drunk customers, you could pull a double then take three days off with rent paid and have blunts for days.
It was a serious operation with a facade that appeared wholly unserious due to the general chaos of the environment, and the autonomy rested in how you responded to Bob’s thoroughly insane tantrums. Front and back of house regularly came down on Bob in unison when he was at his most psychotic, but it was a shitshow people could only subject themselves to for so long before taking weeks to months off and going somewhere else for a while till they absolutely needed the cash that little cow of a dive could pump out. Whenever a hard-pressed former employee would lumber back in with shoulders hunched, nothing made him happier than bellowing “oh so and so, good to see you back. Let’s have a chat here at number five. Beth/Jessie/Lauren/Shelly, bring me a coffee. What will you have?”, artfully draping his towel over his shoulder before forcefully swinging the kitchen door open. It was a standard production and humiliation he savored.
He could go from cooking the tenderest hash browns for a beloved regular over a lighthearted chat through the window to verbally abusing a waitress who reacted too slow for his liking, probably from being five pounds heavier because “that’s what Mary said” in the span of 15 minutes. His tiny mother, “Bev”, did the books and acted as good cop. This ingratiated her to the wait staff who attended to her every need the moment she made an appearance mostly based on her open disdain of Mary, often referred to as “peg leg” in an oddly sexually demeaning tone for a surgery performed on her leg that she would not rest from unless she was strictly bedridden and unable to walk. In recalling cues from the time and the latitude Mary had for being a generally nasty person for all her “good natured” “looking out for you” (“he and I are tougher on all the best servers because we know you can handle it”), I suspect the injury that necessitated surgery was from him knocking her around.
That was over 20 years ago now, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I can only imagine what he got away with up until this point in his 64 years on this earth, so I do believe prison is a good place for him and the women and girls of Manhattan, Kansas. In the words of Lindsey Buckingham, I’m never going back again. Thank God for that.
kariflack 