On Thursday, two days after the so-called flame died down, Angie Funk was back to being “baby” in Michael Roseboro’s “good morning” e-mail. He had seen her at Turkey Hill. He said his days were complete before they actually started because he was able to catch a glimpse of the woman he loved. On this day, he told Angie how “hot” she looked while standing inside the convenience store. He said that while he was scoping her out, he had wanted her “soooooooo badly.”
Next, Roseboro explained a party idea he had for Angie’s fortieth birthday, which was over five months away (Angie was a Christmas Eve baby). It was something special. Something extravagant. An event to end all events. There was plenty enough time, Roseboro explained, considering that he knew when Angie’s birthday was; he had that covered, anyway, he added, because he didn’t want to give the love of his life a birthday party on or near her actual birthday—that would be too typical. Instead, he wanted it to be a surprise, at a time when she “least expected it.” He laid out the scenario he saw himself actively involved in as though he was some sort of party planner. He told Angie how he would call her mother so she could give him all the names and numbers of Angie’s friends and family. He had sat and mused, he said, about what type of food to serve, adding that he “loved thinking about the future” because it was going to be their “reality soon.”
He said all this, however, without giving Angie—at least in any of the e-mails left behind—a carefully scripted plan for how and when he was going to divorce Jan.
Looking at the immense amount of communication between Angie and Michael, considering what he wrote and how often, it was as if to Michael Roseboro (and this is a very important point), Jan was already gone. The mother of his children, his wife for two decades, did not exist. He had entirely cropped Jan out of his life. In Michael’s world, Jan Roseboro was a memory.
Already dead.
Next, Michael told Angie how he would “love to teach” her girls “how to swim,” along with Angie, too, of course. He said this while describing the image of bringing them all to the park one day so they could take a walk and play on the jungle gym sets, like a normal family out for a day of fun. Afterward, they could stop by Turkey Hill and get Slushies, “extra large.”
In the next series of e-mails, Michael sent Angie to several websites—JCPenney and a Hawaiian shop among them—to look at wedding dresses that he was thinking about buying for her. He made it clear that he was paying for the gown. No matter what it cost.
“This was nothing new—he had sent a few of his other mistresses to those same websites,” a source in the family later told me.
Only fragments of Angie’s e-mail responses to the wedding dress questions remain. In one, Angie said how it flattered her that Michael was browsing the Internet, looking for a wedding gown, but she should be the one doing those sorts of things. Nonetheless, she told Michael he was an “amazing” man for going to such extremes. With him looking into wedding dresses, she sensed now this was not bedroom talk, a pipe dream, or figment of his incredible imagination. The guy was actually hunting down wedding dresses and sending her the links.
He was serious.
Michael wrote and told Angie to forget about JCPenney; the dresses he saw on the site paled in comparison to those on the Hawaiian site.
They discussed how a long dress with a train wasn’t going to suit their needs because it would drag along the beach and get ruined by the sand and surf.
Touché, touché.
In another fragmented e-mail later uncovered by a computer forensic search, Angie agreed that the dresses on that Hawaiian website were far superior to JCPenney’s.
The fact that Roseboro was going to all this trouble fed into Angie’s belief that he was planning on leaving Jan, a sentiment implicit in the way she answered. “It means so much to me …,” she said, talking about him “looking.” She said there was no way they could go out together—or she alone, for that matter—in or around Denver, shopping for dresses. How would she ever explain searching for a wedding dress when she was married already?
Michael ignored her fear of getting caught shopping and instead came back with an e-mail affirming his dreams of marrying her and how he could not wait to make her his wife.
For the next few e-mails they talked about how Angie Funk would wear her hair—Michael Roseboro suggesting it would be great if the sea breeze could dry it as they waited to say their vows on the beach—and how he would wear his. Like a pair of twentysomethings getting married for the first time, they grappled over the idea that their hair needed to be perfect, but that none of it mattered as long as they were together, holding hands, reciting their vows.
By 11:00 A.M., they were anticipating seeing each other within the hour, a near daily meeting by this point in the relationship that included a quickie, if they could fit it in.