By noon on July 23, 2008, word had worked its way through town that Jan Roseboro was dead. An improbable accident in the pool was the story being shouted back and forth across fuel pumps and from behind coffee counters. But grinding in the grist of the town gossip and rumor mills was a far different scenario.
Cassandra Pope called her mother, Marcia, who, with her husband, had been friends and neighbors of Jan and Michael Roseboro’s for years when they all lived next to one another on the opposite end of town.
“Jan’s dead,” Cassie said. “Suzie said she hit her head maybe, but they weren’t really sure.”
Suzie’s husband had died of a heart attack at a young age. Cassie said that Suzie mentioned she thought maybe the same thing might have happened to Jan.
Heart attack … a slip, fall, and then she drowned?
They just didn’t know.
Marcia got on the phone and called a neighbor, who had also known Jan rather well.
“Oh, my God …,” the neighbor said.
They talked for a few moments.
Two hours later, Marcia’s neighbor called back. “It just hit online that Jan was murdered!”
“Murdered? You’re kidding,” Marcia said. “Oh, my goodness—Mike did it!”
Where had that come from?
It was the first thought she had, Marcia later said, after hearing Jan might have been murdered. The Michael Roseboro whom Marcia had known all those years—the guy she had seen around the neighborhood, helping newly appointed widows and widowers deal with the loss of their spouses, that same guy who liked to be the bartender at all the neighborhood parties—had murdered his sweet wife, a good friend of hers. She was certain of it, for some strange reason. This was how the town reacted during those early moments, Marcia and her husband later said. The women in town were all under the impression that Michael had done it; while the men gave Michael the benefit of the doubt. For those who truly knew Michael and Jan, his reputation for sleeping with anything he could get his hands on was old news. So killing Jan now didn’t make sense in terms of an affair as motive. The guy, after all, had cheated on the woman for years.
“When you talk about small town,” Marcia, a romance novelist by trade, said, “you have to talk about Denver being part of Reinholds, because they are connected. Even though the Roseboros’ new home was in Reinholds, everyone called it Denver. Jan and Mike were … Well, let’s say I have never seen them as ‘the perfect couple.’”
“But they appeared to be the ‘perfect couple,’” Cassandra Pope remarked. From her point of view, as a child watching Jan and Michael from afar, the Roseboros seemed to have it all together. Living next door, renting from Jan, Cassie had watched them build the new house. She recalled Michael and Jan from family and neighborhood gatherings, cookouts and block parties. They appeared to be in love. Later, though, Cassie saw something different. They had grown apart. A couple who had their individual roles inside the family rubric, played the part, but lived separate lives.
“Everyone knew that Mike was running around on Jan,” Marcia added. “Jan was the mother figure, the Earth Mother. She wasn’t out gardening with a big hat and gloves, but she did plant a garden the year she died and she was very excited about it. Jan enjoyed being a mother. She lived for those kids. That’s the horrible part. She loved kids. When Cassandra had her baby, Jan was right there. She went out and got Toys ‘Я’ Us gift cards for the baby, and she was positive it was a girl. After Cassandra had her, whenever Jan saw Cassandra outside with the baby, she’d run over and hold her and play with her.”
Michael Roseboro was never around. Always at work. Or “out.”
“It seemed to me,” Cassie’s husband, Richard Pope, said, “during those months leading up to her death, when Jan was home, Mike was gone. And when Mike was home, Jan wasn’t around. I don’t know if it was planned to be that way or it just worked out. But that’s what I saw while living next door.”
Being home with her new baby during those days after Jan was murdered, Cassie saw much more, she later said. And now that Jan was dead, Cassie was scared to death of this enigma of a man next door whom she knew only from childhood and from what she remembered. Roseboro now seemed to be this dark figure, the undertaker who possibly murdered his wife. And as the hours passed and rumors buzzed, Cassie and Richard watched the house, where Michael Roseboro, they said, was acting strange.
Looking out their window one morning, Cassie and Richard looked on as Michael, who was bent over inside Jan’s garden, stood there as though he was pulling weeds. He had a bunch of grass in his hands. This, while a man Cassie presumed to be one of his lawyers snapped digital photographs of him. After the photo op concluded, Roseboro righted himself, brushed off his hands, and then walked into the house, Cassie and Richard said.
What in the heck are they doing? Cassie asked herself.
Richard said something similar.
“They have a gardener,” Cassie recalled. “I don’t know why he would be out there pulling weeds!”
The Roseboros’ next-door neighbors were a little uneasy, anyway, considering that they believed a murder had taken place not one hundred yards from Cassie and her newborn. There were cops in unmarked cars sitting in their driveway, watching the Roseboro house at times. There also was a cop roaming around the neighborhood. Detectives had been by to take a statement, and Cassie and Richard had told them things. Cassie had described that scream she heard the night Jan died.
What would Roseboro do, Cassie wondered, if he knew I was talking to the police?