Heading back over to the house, Neff and Martin got to talking. Neff was more than a little concerned by now. Roseboro had not once asked about his wife, what happened, or what the police thought might have happened. He had never shed a tear that Neff or Martin had seen. Stranger still, the ER doctor at the hospital had reported that in over thirty years of experience in dealing with death in the ER, he had never had a family member—wife, husband, sister, brother, mother, father—fail to show up at the hospital or call during a situation similar to Jan’s. Roseboro not only had never gone to the hospital to inquire about his wife’s well-being, but had never called, either. No one in the family had, for that matter. And yet they were all under the impression that Jan had died.
“That is not the appropriate reaction that I am used to seeing when talking to someone who has just lost a loved one,” Neff remarked. “Mike Roseboro was pretty much quiet. He was not asking me questions: ‘What do you know? What’s going on?’ That sort of thing.”
Martin was a bit more guarded about his judgments concerning Roseboro. With more investigatory experience, Martin was taking the case in, a breath at a time, following the evidence. Neff was too, it should be noted, but Neff had a sneaky suspicion (maybe a gut instinct) that all was not what it seemed, and that the answer could very well be found inside the Roseboro house.
When they arrived that second time, early morning, July 23, 2008, the heaviest rain of the night began. Cats and dogs. Buckets upon buckets of thick, slanted rain, with thunder and lightning, to boot. If there was any sign of blood outside the house, on the lawn, or around the pool, consider it washed away by God’s hand at this point.
Gone.
Inside the Roseboro residence by 2:52 A.M., Neff explained, there was, “and I am going to estimate here, between fifteen to twenty family and friends walking around the house.”
Neff and Martin knew going into the situation that Roseboro could yank the “consent to search” form out of their hands anytime he felt like it, then demand they hightail it out of his house at once. So they had to be careful with their reactions and what they said, making the visit as quick and thorough as they could under the circumstances.
“That house was cold,” Neff said later, referring to the reaction from Roseboro’s family and friends as he and Martin began their walk-through. Nobody wanted them there, and they were not concealing those feelings for the officers as Martin and Neff entered.
“I just kept my head down,” Neff added, “and did what we had to do.”
The house itself was “confusing to navigate,” Neff explained. Which was one of the reasons why they asked Roseboro to show them around. The other problem was that everyone in the house was startled by their presence this second time: Why in the heavens are the cops back here again? Jan had drowned accidentally. Everyone at the house had signed off on that as a cause of death. Heart attack. Fall. Drowning. Jan’s death was a tragedy enough all by itself. Did the police have to make matters worse by continuing to pester this grieving family?
“We were not welcome with open arms,” Martin said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
There was a lot of strange feelings in the house, too, Martin felt. The pastor from the Roseboro’s church, Larry Hummer, who also happened to be the ECTPD’s chaplain, was inside, talking to Roseboro friends and family, helping out where he could. Many of these people inside the house were professionals: doctors, lawyers, businesspeople.
Martin had called ADA Kelly Sekula back and asked if the ECTPD had any chance of obtaining a search warrant.
“You just don’t have enough,” Sekula said. Most in law enforcement will admit that Pennsylvania is one of those states where getting a search warrant is tough business. It’s not as easy as people might think. Here, in this situation, the ECTPD had absolutely nothing: speculation and theory, a cop’s gut instinct. But no evidence whatsoever—the “probable cause” a judge wants to see—showing them Roseboro had anything to do with his wife’s untimely death.
That would all change the instant Neff or Martin spotted something in the house that could kindle a search warrant: a bloody towel on the floor, hair or blood in the washer or dryer, a bloody weapon of some sort, maybe some furniture out of place, a broken vase, anything of concern. But they were walking on eggshells, being hawked and watched as if they were intruders.
Larry Martin pulled Michael Roseboro aside before they started. “Mike, listen, is there anything strange or out of place—i.e., somebody who could have broken into the house, robbery, burglary, or evidence of an intruder—that you see?”
There was always the possibility that while Roseboro was asleep, which he had claimed to be during that crucial hour Jan had died, a home invasion could have been uncovered by Jan, who died trying to bust it up.
Roseboro did not hesitate with his answer: “Nope. Everything looks normal.”
Martin made note of what Roseboro said.
Both detectives “would have loved to lay on the floor and shine flashlights under beds and in back of furniture,” Martin later lamented. But considering the intense disgust they were feeling from others about them being there, in the first place, and the fact that Roseboro could ask them to leave at any moment, a more thorough search was not going to be possible.
There were several people, including Roseboro, following so close behind as they walked through, Neff and Martin could literally feel their breath on their backs.
Martin opened the door to the master bedroom, where the kids were still sleeping. He walked in.
One of the children, sleeping in the large bed, rose up.
Someone came up from behind. “Get out of there! No! Don’t wake the kids!”
Keith Neff and Larry Martin backed off.
“Look,” Martin said later, “if I pushed this issue, we don’t get any walk-through. They throw us out.”
It was remarkable to the detectives that the kids were still asleep and had not woken up once throughout the entire ordeal.
In the laundry room, there were a pair of each: two clothes dryers and two washers. Martin took a careful look inside both.
He found nothing.
Without moving anything, they quickly looked in trash cans for blood or any obvious signs of violence.
Zilch.
“This,” Martin said, “was certainly not the search I would have liked to conduct.”
They wanted to go through the outside garbage cans and the turkey house out in back, but knew there was no way Roseboro was going to allow it. Heck, they were already on borrowed time; pushing the matter would only get them tossed.
What they needed was a search warrant.
“Legitimately,” Martin said, emphasizing the word, “it was a walk-through in every manner of speaking.”
Nearing the end, Martin asked if they could take a look inside the pool house connected to the patio area. A nice room, with a fireplace and cozy couches, plush carpeting and fieldstone for the mantel, it was an area of the house where there had no doubt been lots of family fun. Memories, even though the addition was just months old, seemed to seep from the walls like laughter as they entered. It was hard not to picture Jan and her kids inside this room talking about life, joking around, reminiscing about a cookout or a family function, a swim meet, schoolwork, a lacrosse game, playing cards, talking about the future.
Sad, too, that none of this would ever take place again. Three young kids—still sleeping, unaware—had gone to bed with a mother and would wake up without one.
A tragedy, indeed.
Roseboro followed Neff and Martin into the room. It was just the three of them now. The two detectives had finally gotten Roseboro alone.
Martin asked Roseboro to have a seat. They wanted to speak with him, he said, if he didn’t mind. Just for a moment. Martin said they had some new information they wanted to share. It was important they gave it to him personally.
“Mike, hey, listen,” Martin said in his gentle manner, “that injury on Jan’s head … Well, t
hat thing is deep and wide. Do you realize how much pressure and force it must have taken … to go all the way to the skull? Do you have any idea what happened?” Martin looked at Roseboro with a seriousness neither he nor Neff had yet to project on the mortician. They wanted to let him know, delicately, that things had taken a turn into a more sobering, more serious direction. They were not simply going to write the case off as an accidental drowning because Roseboro had said so. Not with an injury as pronounced and deep as the one on the back of Jan’s head. They needed to find the answer to how the injury got there.
“Oh, okay,” Roseboro said. It was an odd answer. And that was it.
Neff and Martin looked at each other.
The comment caught Neff “off guard”—“Oh, okay. “ So he piped in, “Do you have any questions for us about that, or anything else?”
‘No. I didn’t see the injury,” Roseboro said nonchalantly.
‘You have no questions, Mr. Roseboro?” Martin asked. He and Neff looked at each other again. What’s going on here? They couldn’t believe it. Both had pictured themselves in the same situation, their wives dead, the same injury on the back of the head. They’d be banging down doors to try to find out what happened. Climbing the walls. Crazy for answers.
“Nope,” Roseboro said. He was calm. Undistracted. Unworried.
This answer struck both men as abnormal—that is, considering the circumstances of the conversation. They had just told Jan Roseboro’s husband that she had suffered a severe blow and gash to the back of her head. One that was likely the impetus leading to her death—and the guy did not even wonder how it might have gotten there. He didn’t even ask if they had a theory. It was as if what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
“That was the point during the conversation,” Neff recalled, “where, for me, the trigger hit the hammer.”
The other aspect of this scenario that Neff and Martin were perhaps overlooking to a large extent was that Roseboro had been a funeral director and worked in a funeral home. The guy had been around dead bodies all his life, had drained blood from corpses and replaced it with embalming fluid. He had taken mangled children and repaired them enough for an open casket. He had caked makeup on the dead and combed their natty hair, clipped their nails and sewn their mouths shut. The man was likely desensitized to death. To him, perhaps, death was a thing. A part of the job. He was turning to that well of emotion for this situation. Using it to get through it all. Was this Roseboro’s poker face? Had it helped him cope and deal with Jan’s demise—that same somber look he had assumed like a mask for the hundreds of families throughout the years who had come in and out of the doors to the funeral home?
Larry Martin and Keith Neff were concerned on many levels as they drove away from the Roseboro residence. So Martin called ADA Kelly Sekula as Neff drove. It was now somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:30 A.M.
“Kelly, is there any way that we can hold this residence until we can get a search warrant?” Martin was certain the answer was inside the house. But every minute that passed was another chance that whatever evidence was in the house would be found and discarded or cleaned up.
It was a situation akin to an infant death, ADA Sekula explained, using the analogy to make an important legal point. Sadly, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s (LCDA’s) Office sees more infant deaths these days than ever, and yet they are some of the most difficult crimes to investigate and prosecute. An infant dies. The parents claim crib death. Cops have a feeling it’s more than that. But there are no outward signs of a crime. The investigating officer, nine out of ten times, is forced to release what he or she strongly believes is a crime scene with evidence—and there’s nothing the police can do about it.
ADA Sekula hung up with Martin, called DA Craig Stedman, asked him about a search warrant.
Sometime later, she called Martin back: “No, Larry. Cannot do it.”
Martin hung up his cell and stared out the window.
Tomorrow was another day. Perhaps something would turn up? Maybe somebody saw something? Possibly the autopsy would divulge a clue or two, maybe enough to secure a warrant?
Either way, Martin considered, he wasn’t giving up on Jan Roseboro.
12
Jan Roseboro’s father, Samuel Binkley, was a well-known Denver resident and banker throughout Lancaster County. Binkley owned Denver National Bank, later bought out by Fulton Bank, where Jan had been branch manager before becoming a full-time stay-at-home mom in 1995. It was Sam Binkley’s house on West Main Street that Jan and Michael Roseboro put a $600,000 addition into recently, and had relocated from their home on the other side of town after Christmas, 2007.
“Mr. Binkley was a very nice guy,” said a former neighbor. “Jan and Mike spent about a year remodeling that house.”
For a time, they were living in both houses, going back and forth between the two. Jan had grown up in the West Main Street house with her sister and brother. Jan’s father, a gentle man, was that It’s a Wonderful Life–type banker you went to in a small town, hat in hands, eyes on the floor, when times were tough and everyone else turned you down. Binkley was a smart businessman, knowing that if you treated people the way you wanted to be treated, they would be loyal customers forever. A straightforward, effortless business model small-town people had no trouble accepting.
“Mr. Binkley would just sit outside with his dog in the evenings,” that neighbor added, “and just keep to himself. He was a simple man. I’d say hello and he would nod.”
Cassandra “Cassie” Evanick Pope grew up around Jan and Michael Roseboro; she and her family knew them long before they moved next door to where Cassandra and her husband, Richard, now lived on West Main Street. Before she was married, Cassandra lived southeast of the Roseboros’ West Main Street home with her parents on the outskirts of Reinholds, about two miles away. Jan and Michael Roseboro lived in the same neighborhood. Cassandra was familiar with the Roseboro family: picnics, block parties, get-togethers. Of course, anytime a family member, friend, or someone in the neighborhood passed, there was Michael Roseboro taking care of everything. There was not another funeral home any one of the Roseboros’ neighbors would dream of using. Roseboro, said one of his customers, “was the kindest, nicest man to our family when my father died.”
At neighborhood parties, Roseboro insisted on being the bartender. He made strong drinks, some said, especially for the women. He liked to frolic around, too, others added, raising eyebrows to the ladies, maybe commenting on a tight pair of jeans or short skirt.
“I was seventeen,” one former neighbor told me, “when he hit on me the first time at one of the block parties. That was Mike … always eyeing the young girls. Very creepy.”
“Jan was the typical soccer mom,” Richard Pope said of his former neighbor. At the time Jan died, Richard and Cassandra lived next door, the first house after the Roseboros’ heading down West Main, after taking a left off Creek Road. “She was always running around … and taking the kids here and there. Very pleasant woman.” Living next door to Michael and Jan Roseboro, Richard watched the new addition go up. He also saw Jan once a month, because Jan and her siblings owned the two-story house Richard lived in with Cassandra and their newborn. So Richard Pope would walk over and hand Jan the rent check every month. They’d chat. Jan was always sociable and talkative. “Whenever I had any problems in the house, I just called Jan and she’d take care of it. I never dealt with Mike.”
A good-looking woman, Jan had kept herself physically fit and reasonably trim. She was in good shape. “She wasn’t bone-skinny, like a model,” Marcia Evanick, Cassandra’s mother, later said. “She ate, but took care of herself. Jan was constantly with her kids. Anything having to do with her kids, Jan was there! Her younger ones were on the swim team…. That’s why she was gone every morning—to watch them practice….”
Whereas, some later said, the Roseboro clan weren’t afraid to show what they were worth, and buy the toys and finer things in life they wanted,
the Binkley family never flaunted what they had.
“They were humble people, I’d say so, yes,” Marcia Evanick added. “Jan had the fancy jewelry and everything … but you always saw her in shorts and jeans.”
Flip-flops, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Marcia called Jan “the mother. She’d jump rope with the kids, be out there swimming and playing.”
“For a mother of four,” Michael Evanick, Marcia’s husband, said, with a respectful laugh, “Jan had it together. She was hot! All those firemen across the street from the house, they would all look over at Jan if she was out at the pool and they were heading out for a fire or just driving by.”
This was why, on the night of Jan Roseboro’s death, that same team of firefighters, heading off to an alarm in town shortly before the call came in about Jan being found, unresponsive, in the water, didn’t notice Jan outside at the pool. Many of them later said they would have definitely noticed if Jan was outside, not only because they had actually looked for her whenever they drove by, but all the lights surrounding the pool—at least near 10:30 P.M. when the fire alarm was called down the street—were off. The back of the Roseboro house, which was an extremely rare event, if not odd, was pitch dark. Even the dusk-to-dawn light, a light that required no human contact to turn on or off, was out. The only way to shut that light off was to flip the breaker in the fuse box, or pull the plug from the socket (if you knew where it was).
“For this one night, during this particular time frame,” someone close to the case later said, “no lights were on in the backyard of the Roseboro house.”
Over a half-dozen others claimed to have seen the same thing.
Yet, when paramedics and law enforcement arrived, all the lights, including the tiki torch lamps, which required fire to be lit, were on.
13
Cassandra Pope liked to get her six-month-old, Dakota, into bed by nine o’clock on most nights. That way, Cassandra could catch the nightly news and then watch a rerun of one of her favorite shows, Friends.
Love Her To Death Page 6