Love Her To Death

by M. William Phelps

  Go figure. The guy was facing the rest of his life in prison for murdering his wife and he found it within himself to have a sense of humor.

  Roseboro had lost twenty-five pounds, he explained, a consequence of his new life that was “on the bright side,” all considering. He had not smoked in three months. Another plus! He said he was constantly thinking about everyone—“the gang,” he called them. For the first time in any type of documentation connected to his case, Roseboro brought up God, saying that the Lord “would see” him through it all and “I’ll be home….”

  He was writing, Roseboro said, mainly because he felt the need to “clarify some things.” (Damage control, in other words.) It was important, he added, that Karen and Francis pass along to the rest of “the gang” what he had to say next. It was time everyone knew the truth. Friends deserved as much.

  Michael claimed he and Jan had endured a marriage “with its ups and downs….” Like any long-term union, he said, he and Jan had fought and made up and weathered the storms of being in each other’s face every day for two decades. Theirs was the typical marriage, Roseboro seemed to force on Francis and Karen. And they might have bought that.

  But then came the actual reason behind the letter.

  Jan had confided to him in March 2008, Roseboro said, that “she had an affair [that] November through February.” Michael blamed himself for Jan’s affair, saying he wasn’t home much between working on the house, sitting with Grandpa Louie, on his deathbed, every night, and holding down the family business. Roseboro never mentioned, of course, that he was also running around the county, having sex with Angie Funk whenever he could, or spending a majority of his time calling, texting, and e-mailing her.

  He left that out.

  Quite strikingly, he said that as he and Jan talked through her affair, they decided the best thing to do was to “end the marriage.” Michael insisted that he’d talked it over with Jan and “convinced her” to wait until their youngest graduated high school.

  And guess what? She agreed!

  How ‘bout that? The chances.

  There was that little question of the Outer Banks trip that Michael Roseboro needed to cover, if convincing his friends that Jan had instigated adultery, not him. Responding to that, Roseboro said he went ahead with his plans for renewing their vows because he wouldn’t give up on nineteen years of their lives together. He was going to fight for his marriage the same way he would fight for anything else in life he deemed worthy. Regardless of what Jan had wanted.

  It was near the end of May, Roseboro wrote, that he met this girl, Angie … and one thing led to another. He let things get out of hand. His emotions took over from there. He must have assumed those e-mails he wrote would never surface, because next he wrote: But I had every intention of ending things with Angie … and working things out with Jan. He added, perhaps for effect, that his biggest regret was never having the opportunity to apologize to Jan. That “pain and remorse” would be with him, he maintained, for the rest of his life. He asked for forgiveness from his friends, scolding himself for not telling “the gang” about the affair with Angie before the newspapers made it public. He said he loved all of them like brothers and sisters. Speaking specifically about Jan, he wrote, I miss her so badly…. He added how he couldn’t wrap his mind around the notion that anyone would want to hurt her. He thanked everyone for their friendship and belief in him. Facing each new day, he added, would not be possible without knowing they were all back home rallying behind him. He wanted Francis and Karen to pass along his thanks to all of those who were at the preliminary hearing, ending with a pledge of sincerity: I love you all.

  The end result of the letter, or, rather, what Roseboro suggested in his choice of words and phrases, felt as if he was asking his friends to tell everyone they knew Jan had been cheating on him for six months before her murder. Jan was the instigator here, Roseboro seemed to suggest. He had gone out and had an affair himself with this Angie person (as he made her sound), only because he was vulnerable and Jan had done it first.

  Tit for tat, apparently.

  Perhaps he believed no one in his circle of friends knew about all those other women.

  “One thing led to another….”

  The idea that Jan was having an affair struck Karen and Francis Tobias as a bit overwhelming, if not extraordinary. It was, for one, impossible to believe, based simply on opportunity alone. Not that Jan was a saint by any means, but she just didn’t have that type of unfaithful bone in her body. Jan valued the sanctity of marriage, regardless of how she was being treated. Two wrongs, in Jan’s world, never equalized the playing field. Beyond that, Francis Tobias said later in court, “Jan was accountable.”

  Great point.

  “She was a stay-at-home mom,” Francis continued, “four kids, different ages, two boys, two girls. They were all involved in a number of activities. She was involved in all of them! She was always with the kids and even volunteered for a lot of activities. She was involved with the church. She had a close relationship with her sister. I know they saw each other all the time. I just cannot believe that, rationally, she would have the time and, personally, as I knew Jan, I don’t think she could ever do that to her kids.”

  As they thought the entire Jan and Mike Roseboro situation through, Francis and Karen Tobias had to see straight through what was, in essence, a full-blown cock- and-bull story Roseboro was trying to pass off on them. Thinking back to those days after the murder, when they were with Michael, consoling him during what they assumed was the most trying time of his life, what these good people knew now was that even after the ECTPD had instructed Roseboro that his wife had been murdered, he was still telling everyone—“the gang”—it was an accident. Not one of Michael Roseboro’s posse would later report that he talked about Jan being murdered. Or was sickened by it. And yet on top of all his nonsense, everyone was now supposed to swallow the notion that Jan had had an affair?

  On face value, what Roseboro implied was ludicrous.

  What’s more, the timing of the letter—October 20, 2008—was viably suspect. Roseboro’s preliminary hearing had been only three weeks before (he had held off, in fact, in responding to the letter Francis and Karen had sent, possibly to put a bit of time between him and the facts the hearing had made public). He could no longer deny to anyone that he’d had an affair with Angie, because she had testified to it. He had to play catch-up, so to speak. Backpedal. He needed to put a shine on his terribly tarnished reputation and get all those people back on his side.

  Even if you don’t want to believe this, and make the claim that this letter was a mere coincidence, you’d still have to ask yourself one central question: Why was there no mention by Michael Roseboro to the police at anytime of Jan and this alleged affair? He had never said a word about it to anyone before now. One would think this would have been the first statement out of Michael’s mouth after learning that his wife had been brutally murdered: Her angry lover did it!

  The notion that Roseboro was trash-talking his wife from prison was offensive to many who would soon learn about this letter.

  “You give no name (of her supposed lover) and you just throw this out there, from nowhere,” Keith Neff observed, speaking about the alleged affair Jan had. “It never comes up before this letter. There’s no evidence of it—we had spoken to all of her friends. On her phone records, we had identified every single number she had ever called between the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. There’s nothing there. Just one more lie—like the jewelry. ‘Drowning’s not working, um … let’s try stolen jewelry. That’s not working, okay…. Let’s toss out there that she’s had an affair.’”

  Pathetic.

  All it did was make Michael Roseboro look guiltier.

  60

  Tubes of “venous blood” were drawn from Michael Roseboro by court order on November 20, 2008, as Detective Kerry Sweigart looked on. When medic Ross Deck finished, Sweigart watched as the six tubes, 9cc’s each, were pac
kaged, sealed, and handed over to Brett Vallicello, a worker for Ravgen Diagnostics. Testing by Ravgen would be completed that same day.

  The affidavit accompanying the order revealed the additional evidence the state had uncovered as Thanksgiving 2008 came to pass in Lancaster County. For one, that search warrant for the Roseboro home back on August 2 yielded an important discovery. A walk through the home proved that the only way to turn on or off the dusk-to-dawn light (without simulating darkness) on the small garage outside by the pool was to shut the breaker off downstairs in the basement of the Roseboro home, or unplug the actual light from inside the garage. The point was: would an intruder go to this length, or even know how or where to do it?

  That it is reasonable to believe, the affidavit stated, that Michael Roseboro would be significantly more familiar with the location of the circuit breaker and plug for the dusk-to-dawn light at the residence than other persons.

  Quite true. The guy had overseen just about every detail of the new construction project. He damn well knew where the circuit breaker unit was, because most likely, he had chosen to put it there.

  Back on September 5, Larry Martin and Keith Neff interviewed Angie Funk once again. She had stated that the pregnancy was confirmed through her doctor, that same affidavit stipulated. The due date given to Angie by her doctor was April 1, 2009. Angie was slated to have Michael Roseboro’s illegitimate baby on April Fool’s Day.

  How appropriate, considering the case Roseboro was trying to build for himself.

  Craig Stedman and his staff had one of his investigators consult with Dr. Ravinder Dhallan, of Columbia, Maryland. Dr. Dhallan, a fetal DNA† research expert, who had conducted some groundbreaking work on new ways of testing for birth defects in unborn babies, had told the LCDA’s Office about a new test that could determine prenatal paternity as early as five weeks into the pregnancy. Ravgen Diagnostics, a company of which Dr. Dhallan was chairman and CEO, had developed prenatal testing methods that were far less invasive to pregnant mothers and unborn children. Dhallan was well respected and well regarded in his field for his work and research.

  Prenatal paternity can be determined because the fetal DNA is present in the plasma of the mother’s blood, the affidavit said. Therefore, if investigators retrieved a sample of Angie’s blood, the doctor could build a DNA profile of the unborn baby from it. “A sample of blood from the mother and a sample of blood from the [suspected] father can definitely establish or exclude paternity through identifying the sites in the fetal DNA which differ from the mother’s DNA but will match the father’s DNA,” the doctor told investigators.

  The best thing about the test turned out to be that it “posed no threat to the fetus,” and certainly no threat beyond a common needle stick to the mother or suspected father.

  Angie had given blood on the same day as Michael, at Lancaster General Women & Babies Hospital, in front of Detective Sweigart. She didn’t look happy about it, but she was there, nonetheless, arm tied in a tourniquet, fist balled up, head turned, offering her DNA.

  It was eventually confirmed positively that the child Angie Funk was carrying, now four months into her pregnancy, was Michael Roseboro’s baby boy. There was no way Roseboro could deny an affair with Angie.

  Science had backed up her claim.

  When that bank surveillance tape came in and Keith Neff and the team had a look at it, they were confident that Michael Roseboro’s story of Jan wearing $40,000 worth of jewelry was one more piece of manure in what was a growing pile. The video was grainy and a bit out of focus, but there was no doubt about it: there was Jan walking into the Fulton Bank, wearing the same exact sweatshirt she would soon be found dead in.

  Neff and his colleagues spent a considerable amount of time looking at and studying the video, pulling out frames (snapshots) to show the jury.

  “Clearly,” Neff explained, “she is not wearing any jewelry.”

  Not even an everyday gold bracelet.

  Nothing.

  Instead, Jan Roseboro looked like she was ready for the gym, not, per se, a night walking the red carpet, wearing $40,000 worth of diamonds and gold, which would have made her stand out on that bank video.

  “So the assumption is,” Neff added, “at least what they say—this woman runs errands, hangs out at her pool in the same sweatshirt and clothes, but puts on forty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry to go be with the family? It’s absurd.”

  Furthermore, the coroner never found any tear marks on Jan’s ears, where someone might have grabbed and ripped earrings from her person. That, or abrasions on her wrists or neck, where an intruder might have done the same.

  “She had plenty of trauma,” Neff said, “but no visible marks from, like, jewelry being torn off.”

  The investigation was in a stage of transition: interviews on top of interviews were the main source of information flooding into the ECTPD and the LCDA’s Office as the winter of 2008 and 2009 passed. The Roseboro family knew a lot of people. Any one of them had the potential to supply delicate and important information about Jan and Michael’s marriage, the ebb and flow of the Roseboros’ life, and, of course, their secrets. More than that, who Michael Roseboro was as a father and husband might also come from a careful look into his background. Friends, too, could offer different ideas and insight.

  As Keith Neff and Jan Walters spoke to family, friends, more neighbors, and people from Jan and Michael’s past, part of their focus was to put out the flame on the intruder theory. It sounded ridiculous, sure. But as a cop, you had better make sure that it wasn’t true, or a good defense team would use that lack of investigative experience against you.

  How?

  The lights, for one. Law enforcement had several witnesses now saying it was pitch black out there all night long.

  Only Michael Roseboro had said the lights were on.

  “So the intruder turned the lights on to make his escape?” Keith Neff said, a bit of sarcasm in his inflection.

  Part of the puzzle was to get an understanding of the land layout around the Roseboros’ property. Richard Pope, the Roseboros’ neighbor and tenant, provided the best information to thwart any attempt that might be made regarding an intruder coming from the woods behind the house and sneaking up on Jan Roseboro.

  Richard was a good witness. Straitlaced father and husband, hardworking blue-collar guy (pipe layer), who had no beef with the Roseboro family, and actually thought highly of them (Michael, specifically) before July 22.

  Regarding the entire stranger theory, Richard had a tough time with it. He lived next door and was often outside at night and early evening, smoking, doing things in the garage, playing with his kid, hanging out with his wife. He also knew most everyone in the neighborhood. A stranger would have stood out like buttons on a snowman. Then there was the presence of Jan’s dogs—all the barking and yelping they did.

  Richard said the dogs were always outside, whenever Jan was. Except on that night. Someone had put the dogs in the basement of the house.

  To Richard, that was strange.

  But it was the property, he explained, more than anything, that did not present itself as the ideal environment for a potential intruder.

  “I would go out in back there,” Richard said, “and hit golf balls into the woods. There’s pricker bushes and swampland and just real rough shrubbery all along the back of the lot. There’s no way anybody could get through it.”

  Briars, Richard noted, “and, actually, all through[out] … it’s woods…. So just walking through there, you know, walking through the area (surrounding the Roseboro home on two sides), you cannot really get much through these woods…. It’s pretty much tangled.”

  There were also two wire fences. “It’s just a mess of thorns and bushes and”—he laughed—“hundreds of golf balls, probably.”

  You’d have to be Rambo. And still, it would be almost impossible.

  Where Michael Roseboro, the person, was concerned, Richard was impartial. “Mike never showed me who
he was,” Richard said. When the house was being remodeled, Michael was there every day, walking the site, picking up garbage, pointing out things to contractors, and checking over his investment. “Everybody in town spoke well about Mike. He was well respected.”

  The idea that Roseboro was the town mortician didn’t creep people out. “He was just that guy in the dark suit who had a family and was working hard to take care of them and get an addition put on his house,” Richard remarked.

  At least that’s what people saw. The suburban mask. The person Michael Roseboro wanted you to see. But there was another side to the man.

  “I never saw him smoke before he started with that addition,” Richard added. “I’d see him drinking beer and smoking while they worked on the house. I never saw that before. He seemed like he needed to get that addition done as fast as possible.”

  Like there was something driving him.

  A strange addition it is, many who have walked through the house have said. There are sections you cannot get into without walking outside first and then entering from another door. The entire house is not connected via inside hallways and doors. Even the basement is hard to get into without leaving the main house and walking down into it through a separate doorway. You would definitely have to know where you were going to get anywhere in the house. There is no natural flow, like most contemporary homes.

  “Yeah,” Michael Evanick, Richard’s father-in-law, observed, “you’d never get your money back on that house. I don’t think they really cared about resale value.”

  It was, many agreed, as if the addition had been custom built for Michael Roseboro alone.

  †They were talking about molecular deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in this case: the “blueprint for life.” That twisted ladder-like strand of cells that codes everything we are: hair color, height, metabolism. Half of this type of DNA comes from our mother, the other half from our father, which is the reason why each one of us is different. From a scientific standpoint, the best DNA sample for testing comes from one main source, body fluids—including, of course, skin cells.