Someone yelled, “Ephrata Community Hospital.”
Michael Roseboro was back outside and heard the comment. He had not gotten into the ambulance. He was also told by several professionals on scene where his wife was being taken. Jan was en route to a hospital about fifteen minutes across county. The ambulance attendants would continue CPR all the way to the emergency room (ER), where the mother of four would receive the best medical care available.
There was still a chance. Everyone has heard stories of people being dead fifteen, twenty, or even thirty minutes, only to be brought back to life at the hospital before telling a story about white lights and clouds and people from beyond.
Patrolman Firestone had watched the ambulance prepare to drive off. The vehicle was “very well lit” inside. From where he was standing inside the pool deck area, he’d had a clear view of what was going on and who was there.
Additional family members arrived. Phone records from the night indicate Michael Roseboro called his father, Ralph, at home, and then the family business, the Roseboro Funeral Home, which was closed at this hour, for some reason.
Michael had stayed at the house while Jan was whisked off. Perhaps he wanted to take his own vehicle and follow the ambulance? Or maybe wait for additional family members to show up? Still, there were plenty of people at the house to watch the kids if he wanted to be with Jan.
Why wasn’t he leaving?
Firestone took a walk around the pool area. He had an eye and instinct for crime scenes, having worked in the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Unit for a time.
“I was looking for any signs of a struggle,” Firestone said. “Anything that might stand out as suspicious.”
Again, standard procedure. It wasn’t that Firestone suspected anything—in fact, quite to the contrary. If nothing else, the Roseboro family, because of who they were and the business they ran, were given the benefit of the doubt more than most others might have been. The problem Firestone encountered from within was that he was trained to think outside the box and search for a reason why this woman—a seemingly healthy adult who had not been drinking—ended up fully clothed and unconscious inside her pool. There was an answer somewhere. Probably an explanation that was going to make a lot of sense as soon as the ECTPD uncovered it.
After a careful walk around, Firestone didn’t see anything out of place. Every item—patio furniture, tables and chairs, and anything else associated with the pool area itself—“looked normal.” Nothing had been disturbed. In addition, the scene didn’t appear to be overly perfect, either, as if someone had gone around and tidied up. The area was well maintained and practical. At least by Firestone’s opinion.
More than anything else, Firestone was looking for a sign, he later said, indicating Jan had accidentally stumbled and fallen into the pool. There were only a few scenarios that could have placed Jan in that pool—an accident, right now, at the top of the list. Yet, there should be some indication of what had happened.
“I was looking for blood and hair,” Firestone added, “tissue, something of that nature, on the pool edge.”
There had to be evidence left behind indicating that Jan had slipped, fallen, and hit her head.
But Firestone found nothing.
Coming around to the deep end of the pool, staring into the water, something caught Firestone’s attention.
A cell phone?
The lights inside the pool were on, so it was easy to see to the bottom. As he came around the corner of the deep end, Firestone noticed the item, red in color, on the bottom of the pool.
Yes, a red cell phone was sitting there by a pair of what looked to be reading glasses and “two small brown stones.” The stones were similar to those used in the landscaping around that particular section of the pool.
It was near this time that Officer Steve Savage showed up and began combing through the scene with Firestone. Michael Roseboro, who had not gone to the hospital as of yet, was also roaming around, being consoled by family members and friends. Up near the screened-in porch, on the opposite side of the deep end of the pool, where, according to Roseboro, he had found his wife, Firestone and Savage saw a bucket.
They walked over. Took a whiff.
The bucket, filled with a foamy fluid, smelled “heavily of a cleaning solution of some type,” Firestone later noted.
Inside the bucket was a “whitish opaque fluid, and there appeared to be a rag floating in it.”
A red rag.