He then talked about a “deep desire” he had never felt before in all of his forty-one years. Angie had brought it out of him. He never knew it was there, perhaps hibernating, waiting for the right woman to come around and summon.
After that, he launched into the same old, tiring story of never having experienced a love like this, how lucky he was, and how much he appreciated Angie loving him.
Ending the e-mail, he said, simply (for once), “I adore you,” then repeated the phrase by adding “completely” to it.
Only one minute later, their e-mails nearly crossing paths in cyberspace, Angie tapped out her response. She called Michael her “world” (only three exclamation points). He was now, according to Angie, the sole reason why she “got up in the morning.” Not to take care of her two kids, or go to work to support her family. But the reason why Angie Funk existed in this world was because of Michael Roseboro. Again, the urgency in this set of e-mails jumps off the page, with all the exclamation points and repeated phrases and words. It was as if a decision had been made—a silent agreement between them.
Angie said she could not wait any longer to be in Roseboro’s arms every morning when she awoke and every night she went to bed, adding that, oh yeah, lest they forget about “that afternoon,” as they had made plans to meet and have sex in the vacant apartment she managed in Mount Joy.
Ending her response, Angie mentioned how she couldn’t wait until all their dreams came “true, baby, all your dreams!” (Angie wrote “all” in upper-case lettering, and finished her proclamation with eight exclamation points!)
In the back of her mind, Angie Funk later said, when she sent that particular e-mail, she “knew” that Jan was going to find out about the affair sooner rather than later—because it was the time of the month in the Roseboro household when Jan did the household bills; and in the past, after studying his cell phone bill, she had caught her husband cheating.
Six minutes later, Michael typed a response. He made Angie a promise from his heart, letting her know that he was never going to let her go. He said, “I need to be your husband,” adding how he needed her to be his “wife.”
Before they started e-mailing at seven-fifty that morning, Michael had called Angie seven times, beginning at five thirty-six. He dialed from his cell, from home, and from the fax machine at the funeral parlor. In all, between 5:36 and 7:49 A.M. on the day he would murder his wife, Roseboro had spoken to either Angie’s cell phone voice mail or Angie herself for a total of thirty minutes.
Angie’s response at 8:09 A.M. was a bit pleading. She opened by commenting on the dream portion of Roseboro’s previous e-mail, saying that all of her dreams would come true when he took her as his “wife and we go home TOGETHER!!”
Pressure.
She then said she had always wondered what life would be like being Mrs. Angela Lynn Roseboro, saying she wasn’t going to have “to wonder much longer.”
(Whatever that meant.)
At 8:20 A.M., Angie wrote to say she would be home until nine, when she was going to have to leave for an appointment. She asked Roseboro how long he was going to be at the parlor that morning.
He responded by telling Angie a vile joke about a nun and a priest in the desert whose camel falls suddenly ill and dies. After giving her the raunchy, blasphemous punch line, Roseboro said he “liked that one” and “missed you, baby.” He couldn’t wait to see her in what he said was only five and a half hours.
Angie responded by saying she liked the joke. Then she explained the rest of her morning. After that appointment, she was leaving work at 11:45 A.M. to pick up the girls at her friend’s house. Then she was driving straight up to Mount Joy—where the vacant apartment she managed was located—to drop off the girls at, of all places, her mother-in-law’s, who lived close by. From there, she was scheduled to head over to the apartment. She needed to be there by 1:00 P.M. to show the place to a potential renter. She knew Roseboro had a doctor’s appointment in Lancaster and told him to call her before he left, so she could go out and get them some lunch, ending the e-mail by professing how much she loved “taking care” of her man.
Michael called Angie from the funeral parlor fax machine phone at 8:42 A.M., staying on the line for forty-eight seconds, one would presume, leaving her a voice mail message. She called right back. They talked for exactly one minute. An hour later, Angie sent her lover a text message. At 9:17 A.M., Roseboro sent Angie an e-mail, indicating he would call her when he left for Lancaster, concluding that he was “drooling, thinking about” her “in that outfit” she had promised to wear.
Angie sent a return e-mail moments later. This one was written in all italics to either suggest a softness or importance. She talked about how fantastic it was going to be to see her man later on that day. In fact, any time she spent with him she would always “cherish.” After that, she carried on with more of the same yearning they had been spewing to each other over the past few days—that same gushy, adolescent lovespeak they had repeated ad nauseam.
They texted each other five separate times between 10:08 and 10:26 A.M. Angie wrote another e-mail—again in italics—at 11:01 A.M., telling Roseboro how much she missed him and how much she was looking forward to holding him and touching him and being with him that day.
It was as if they had not seen each other for weeks.
They texted each other five additional times between 11:02 and 11:49 A.M., when Angie called Michael on his cell phone. Then, between 12:26 and 1:40 P.M., they spoke a total of eight times via cell phone, for a total of thirty-one minutes and change.
Since Michael Roseboro had woken up at 5:36 A.M. and called Angie that first time, they had communicated via phone, text, or e-mail thirty-eight times.
And it was only 1:40 P.M.
July 22, 2008
The afternoon before Jan Roseboro’s murder
38
If you look at a simple computer-generated chart (maybe Excel, something like that) listing the times Michael Roseboro and Angie Funk communicated on July 22, 2008, there is not an hour without several calls, e-mails, or texts—that is, with the exception of 1:40 to 4:59 P.M., when the electronic contact between them came to a complete halt.
Why?
Because they were inside that Mount Joy apartment spending the afternoon and early evening together. When later asked about the nearly three and a half hours they spent alone that day, Angie had a hard time recalling any details—imagine that? The things she did remember, however, tell a story.
“I had gotten lunch before he came over [to the apartment],” Angie said, trying to recall the events of that day for Detective Keith Neff, “and we ate lunch together and then … then we just hung out for a few hours.”
Hung out.
The apartment, she explained further, was in transition. It wasn’t totally empty, nor was it completely furnished. There was a couple “in the process,” Angie said, “of moving their things out.”
And so, to their advantage, Angie and Michael had a table and a sofa to use on this particular day. They wouldn’t have to worry about rug burn or rolling around on a soiled carpet. They could use the table or the couch—maybe both, maybe neither.
Angie was later asked what things she had talked about with Roseboro that day, considering they had spent so much time together; and when they weren’t in the same room, they had been e-mailing, texting, or talking.
“Oh,” she said rather defensively, “I have no idea. I honestly don’t know. It was just talk. I can’t honestly remember what we talked about.”
Angie was then asked if she could recall “just one thing” she talked about that day with her lover.
“I … honestly, I really don’t know,” she offered. “I really don’t remember. It was probably all small talk or getting to know each other. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Getting to know each other. “
They had been intimate and had seen each other every day during weekdays for the past forty-nine days. By this
point, one could safely say that Angie and Michael knew each other well enough. Between the previous morning, July 21, and this time on July 22, they had communicated over one hundred times. Yet, Angie Funk said she could not recall anything they discussed.
She was asked if she recalled having sex with Michael Roseboro on that day, in those hours before Roseboro drove home and murdered his wife.
That, Angie Funk remembered: “Yes,” she said brazenly, without hesitation.
More than any of this, however, Angie was later asked about scratches on Michael Roseboro’s face and if she had seen any that afternoon. One could take a leap in assuming that being with him for that time, being close enough to kiss him and have sex, she would have seen scratches on his face. If they were there.
“He did not have any scratches on his face,” Angie told police.
July 22, 2008
The evening of Jan Roseboro’s murder
39
They had arrived in separate vehicles. After the fun-loving afternoon came to an end, they left in separate vehicles. The drive back to town for the lovebirds took about forty-five minutes. Angie Funk probably stopped to pick up her children at her mother-in-law’s—this, after having adulterous sex all afternoon with her lover—although she never mentioned this in her play-by-play of the day later on.
No sooner had they left Mount Joy did Angie call Michael Roseboro. That first call at 4:59 P.M., as they trekked down Interstate 283 toward Lancaster, lasted two minutes; but the next, at 5:05 P.M., went on for thirty-six minutes.
Later prompted by law enforcement to recall anything said during those thirty-six minutes, Angie could not remember a single word, saying in court a little over one year after the events, “I have no idea. I mean, it was conversation, you know. I don’t … I don’t know the specifics….”
“Getting to know each other. “
For the next forty minutes after that call, there was no communication between them. Then Michael called Angie’s cell phone from his home phone at 5:45 P.M., a call that lasted twenty-six seconds.
Eleven minutes later, Angie sent Michael a text.
He responded one minute later.
Two minutes after that, Angie sent a text back.
Three minutes later, Michael responded.
Then, at 6:01 P.M., Angie answered him.
He did not reply.
Angie sent another at 6:46 P.M.
Again, Michael failed to respond.
What was wrong?
Roseboro called Angie’s cell number from his house at 7:19 P.M.; they talked for seven minutes. At 8:42 P.M., Roseboro called her back—a call that lasted seventeen minutes. Of that seventeen-minute call, when asked, Angie could recall only that her lover said, “I’m tired…. I’m going to bed,” adding, “That’s really all I remember. I’m sure we talked about the day.”
And what a day it had been.
“Well,” Angie said, thinking back, “it was the most time we ever spent together. So, yeah, I guess you could say [it was a big day].”
When pestered to recall what she talked about during that 8:42 P.M. call, Angie admitted that they shared “how much we loved each other and that we planned to leave our spouses.”
This was an important revelation. On the night of Jan Roseboro’s murder, Jan’s husband and his lover discussed divorcing their spouses. It appeared that this was something Angie was beginning to wonder about as their relationship carried on in such a holding pattern.
Yet, there was more, according to what Angie had said in September 2008, a little over two months after the day in question.
“Like,” she said, talking about the content of the 8:42 P.M. call, “getting married and all that stuff…. I mean, I just said that, you know … [Jan] could probably take him for a lot if she found out about us.”
Pressure.
They also discussed the fact that Michael Roseboro, if Jan ever found out about Angie Funk, could lose the funeral home in a nasty divorce.
“That he didn’t want to lose it,” Angie said. Once again, she and Roseboro talked about him putting the funeral home in his father’s name until the divorce was finalized. “Then put it back in [Mike’s] name or whatever.” The reason for that, Angie said they discussed, was so “she [Jan] couldn’t touch it.”
Michael had spent more time with his lover that afternoon than he ever had. They ate lunch together. Had sex all afternoon. Talked marriage and wedding dresses and beaches and all things Mike and Angie. But now, as the strain of Jan at home wore on him, Roseboro was feeling it somewhere near 9:00 P.M. Jan was outside at the pool. Roseboro was, undoubtedly, wondering what he was going to do about a wife he was certain would take him to the cleaners in a divorce.
Tell her and lose everything?
Or kill Jan and try to make it look like an accident?
Regarding this so-called wedding, Angie Funk told Michael Roseboro one day when they were discussing getting married, she wanted him to “grow his hair longer for the wedding.”
“It’ll become curly,” Roseboro said.
“Do it now,” she demanded, “so I can see what it will look like for the wedding.”
Like listening to country music now—when before meeting Angie, he had despised it. Roseboro agreed to grow his locks out.
The wedding was scheduled “soon,” Angie later said during a police interview. They had never set a particular date other than, she agreed, within a year’s time. Yet, Angie would later refute her own words, saying, “I’m not denying that I said that, but I don’t—there’s no way we could have been married within a year.” She went on to say she didn’t think she could have divorced Randy and resolved all of her personal affairs in twelve months. “I’m just saying it would not be possible for me to be married within a year….”
As they talked some more about being married and their life together, the subject of affairs came up. Angie was obviously worried about Michael continuing to do in the future what he was doing to Jan.
Roseboro said he’d never had an affair before Angie. But the conversation had somehow sparked a memory in Roseboro, which he shared. And this was where Roseboro utilized his best manipulation skills: dodge the hardball questions by dredging up some sympathy. Get Angie to focus on something else.
“What is it?” she asked. Roseboro looked dismayed.
Roseboro explained that someone close to him “has had affairs.” He paused. “I don’t want to be like [that person].”
In recalling this conversation to police, Angie said, “I was fooled by Michael. If I confronted him about things, he would just explain them away.
“He was a good liar.”
Those last two phone calls Angie Funk made to Michael Roseboro on the night of July 22, 2008, must have been important. For two people who had communicated throughout a day with what Craig Stedman later called “an extremely unusual amount of contact,” back and forth, the final calls of that long day of communication would have been significant. Between 9:37 and 10:14 P.M., cutting it close to the time that Jan Roseboro was murdered, Angie called her man three times and sent one text message. At 9:37 P.M., Angie called Roseboro’s cell phone and left him a five-minute voice mail, something she later noted that, besides the time on that night, was not unusual for her to do. Then at 9:43 P.M., a minute after hanging up from the previous call, she left a three-minute voice mail; then, at 10:08 P.M., another five-minute voice mail. Finally, on her last communication of that busy day, Angie Funk sent Michael Roseboro a text message at 10:14 P.M.
He never responded to any of the calls or the text.
When asked later what she had said, and why she kept calling back, Angie could not recall.
“I just don’t know.”
Had Angie Funk told her lover that she was carrying his child—and had that information sent Michael Roseboro over the edge, to the point that he did not want to talk to her? According to Roseboro, he was wide awake during those times, save for maybe that last text at 10:14 P.M. In fact, Ros
eboro was inside the house with the young kids, he claimed, while Jan was still outside. Couldn’t he have slipped away from the children (like he had so many times before) and, at the least, answered the text, or walked to another part of that large house and called Angie back?
If you asked Angie, she’d say, no way. She had not told him she was pregnant during any of those voice mails. Craig Stedman posed this question to Angie: “When did you find out that you were pregnant?”
“July,” Angie answered without hesitation. But then she seemed to think about it and said: “Or no! August first.”
“Was it July or August?” Stedman wondered.
“It was August first.”
July 22, 2008
The night Jan Roseboro was murdered
40
What happened in the hours after that last phone call between Angie Funk and Michael Roseboro? What were Jan Roseboro’s final moments like?
Only Michael Roseboro knows for sure—and he refuses to admit that he had anything to do with the murder of his wife.
From the evidence left behind, however, including all the testimony and the interviews conducted by the ECTPD, the pathologist’s report and the autopsy, those initial reports from the hospital where Jan was taken, the findings and experience of several of the detectives and the Lancaster County DA’s thoughts, all indicators point to the murder having taken place near the Roseboros’ inground pool. All the lights were out—several neighbors reported this. Michael might have told Jan he wanted to look at the stars with her (“Like the creepy schmoozer he was,” someone in law enforcement told me), which would allow him the excuse to go around and turn off all the lights. Roseboro even made mention of this in his first statement to police and to some of his family members who came to the house that night and the next day.
Love Her To Death Page 18