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.
The evidence the pathologist uncovered pointed to Jan’s murderer having begun by putting her in a carotid neck choke hold. In cutting off blood and oxygen to the brain via Jan’s carotid arteries, those two main veins on each side of the neck that throb under stressful conditions or from a tight necktie, Jan would have passed out quickly. This would have allowed Jan’s killer to fake the drowning then, which everyone agreed was Roseboro’s plan from the start.
Likely, as Jan struggled with her killer inside the pool, she scratched him on the face by reaching behind herself as he continued to strangle her. (This theory lines up with the scream Cassandra Pope heard that night, which, she said, came from that area of the yard at about this time, ten-thirty.)
The scream indicated Jan was confronted and murdered outside the home, as opposed to down in the basement, or in a section of the house near the pool deck. No one could have heard her scream if Michael Roseboro accosted his wife in the basement. On top of that, the deep gash on Jan’s head behind her ear was likely caused by her head hitting the corner of one of the large planters next to the pool as she struggled and/or fell backward, or was simply bashed over the head with some sort of weapon never recovered.
With Jan bleeding and perhaps unconscious, Michael needed to get her into the pool so he could call 911 and put that accident theory into motion. As Jan was tossed into the water, there’s an indication she “came to” while in the water. She was definitely alive and breathing while in the water; the soapy liquid released from her lungs during the autopsy proved that.
The question became, then: did Jan Roseboro wake up entirely, or was she partially awake and unable to fight off her attacker?
The minor bruising found all over Jan’s body indicated a struggle. Or at least a partial fight on Jan’s part.
No doubt about it: Jan Roseboro wanted to live.
She fought for her life until the end.
With blood all over the deck of the pool, one would have to ask why no blood was found when the CSI Unit sprayed luminol, or when the first responders took a walk around and looked for evidence of an accident or a struggle.
How had Michael Roseboro gotten rid of all the blood?
Being a funeral director, a person who dealt with blood on a daily basis while embalming bodies, Roseboro was well schooled in how to clean up blood.
Why weren’t any traces of chemicals found, the same chemicals he had access to at the funeral home? All that rain, and a crime scene that the ECTPD didn’t get to until nearly a day after Jan Roseboro was murdered.