James Strosser concluded his testimony after reading another broad selection of e-mails from the month of July, leading jurors up to Jan Roseboro’s murder. It was almost painful for some to sit and listen to this e-chat back and forth between Michael and Angie as the date of Jan’s death grew closer with each e-mail that the state cop read. Jan was staring down the barrel of death, and her husband was writing to his lover that he never believed for a moment he would “ever, ever want to go horseback riding.” Or how passionately one kiss from Angie could “arouse” him so much. Walking hand in hand along the beach. Not being able to live without her. And yet, in all of the correspondence Strosser read, not once did Michael Roseboro suggest that he had a plan to divorce his wife.
Why was this? the state had intoned.
Because his plan was to kill her, instead.
It was a pathetic display of a man’s obsessive emotions—one that jurors would find all at once appalling and cold. Sitting, watching jurors, anyone in the courtroom could see that the men and women chosen to decide Roseboro’s fate were nauseated by how he so blatantly had disgraced his nineteen-year marriage.
The defense’s cross of Corporal James Strosser was brief. The idea was to ask Strosser a few questions about his craft and shift the focus of the testimony away from the content of those now-devastating e-mails. Better to lick your wounds on this one and allow the state to move on.
It was near two o’clock on the afternoon of July 17, 2009, when the jury got to hear from the state’s next witness, Peter Savage Jr., a county detective working for Craig Stedman’s office, who had helped Keith Neff, Larry Martin, and Jan Walters at various stages of the investigation and, in addition, inspect the computers. Savage had almost thirty years of law enforcement experience. A true pro.
Throughout the afternoon, Kelly Sekula had Savage reiterate what James Strosser had testified to earlier. Savage explained, however, how they also conducted searches on the four computers for “key words,” such as “drowning,” “pool,” “Clorox,” “strangle,” “murder,” “suffocation,” and other words relating to Michael Roseboro and Angie Funk possibly talking about Jan’s murder and/or Michael and/or Angie searching the Internet for any of these terms.
“And am I correct, based upon your forensic examination of … those computers, nothing of any value was a result of those [search] terms?” Allan Sodomsky’s co-counsel, Jay Nigrini, asked Savage near the end of his cross-examination.
“Nothing of any value came up with those,” Savage admitted.
The next five witnesses—all friends and neighbors of Mike and Jan’s—came in one after the other and explained four important (albeit opinionated) factors for the state: One, Jan Roseboro had no enemies. Two, Michael Roseboro, during those days immediately following his wife’s tragic, untimely death, was not overcome with grief, sorrow, or sadness. Three, Michael Roseboro either never mentioned Angie Funk or had lied about her and the role she played in his life, when faced with evidence of a connection to her. And four, Michael Roseboro never made a move to secure his house and showed no concern for himself or his children, which one could deduce a man whose wife had been murdered by a random killer probably would have done. In addition to all that, most of these witnesses made the claim that Roseboro had never said anything about jewelry being stolen from Jan’s person or missing from the house.
Why, the jury members had to ask themselves as each witness testified, wasn’t this man running around in a manic state of fear and confusion, crazy worried, crying over Jan’s death? Why wasn’t he asking himself and his friends, Who could have killed my wife? Who could have done this to our family? Why haven’t they caught her killer?
The state’s contention, in putting all of these witnesses on, was that Roseboro wasn’t concerned or frightened, because he knew who had killed his wife.
The highlight of the following day’s testimony, Monday, July 20, was when Francis Tobias, once said to be Michael Roseboro’s best friend, took the stand.
Tobias had a wan look of concern about his face. He knew the information he was bringing into the trial had the potential to hurt his friend, and yet, at the same time, Tobias wanted nothing more than to tell the truth. He wasn’t there to protect anyone. If anything, he was there to honor his friend Jan Roseboro and her memory by sharing the information. The previous Friday, Karen Tobias had talked about that letter Michael Roseboro had written to her and her husband in October 2008. The one in which Roseboro, pissing on the grave of his wife, accused Jan of having an affair.
The surprise Francis Tobias dropped, however, was how Michael Roseboro, after the police had told him Jan was murdered in a violent fashion, told the Tobiases that Jan had died accidentally. This was a slip on Michael’s part, the state maintained. Michael didn’t want friends to know Jan was murdered because they might point a finger at him.
Allan Sodomsky didn’t have much, other than having Tobias disagree that he said, “Mike was in shock all night” after Jan’s death. What Francis Tobias had said, he clarified, was “… Mike appeared to be in a state of shock and drained.”
The next major witness—whose testimony would draw gasps from the otherwise hushed gallery—was Karen Wagner, a research nurse from the Regional Gastroenterology Associates of Lancaster.
Wagner said she had been asked to look at records her office kept for July 22, 2008, the day of Jan Roseboro’s murder, which also happened to be the day Michael and Angie met and had sex inside that Mount Joy apartment. Roseboro had told police (and all of his friends and family) he was at a doctor’s appointment all afternoon taking a medical test.
The research nurse explained that Roseboro’s appointment was scheduled for 1:30 P.M. He was there to participate in a study the office had been conducting. Roseboro signed the office consent form for the study at 1:07 P.M. At 1:20 P.M., according to her notes, Wagner drew a tube of his blood.
“By one-thirty,” she concluded, “he should have been finished.”
“Okay. Thank you,” Stedman said.
Michael Roseboro was not at the doctor’s office all afternoon, as he had explained to police (covering up that time he spent having sex with Angie). He was at the doctor’s office for about twenty minutes.
The remainder of the day was filled with testimony from Larry Martin, who discussed the phone records and how the ECTPD was able to obtain warrants for all the phone numbers connected to the case and what they had uncovered; Keith Neff, who once again introduced several exhibits; and Larry Miller, a forensic officer with the ECTPD. Miller had taken many of the photos that Craig Stedman and Kelly Sekula introduced: the tiki torches, the dusk-to-dawn light and wiring; Jan’s cell phone on the bottom of the pool, next to her glasses.
As Larry Miller finished testifying, the day ended.
As the gallery left the courtroom, word buzzing in the halls was that the state’s next witness would be explosive.
No, not Angie Funk. She was still waiting in the wings—in hiding, more like it. But her husband, Randall, was up next.
What would the other man at the center of this affair have to say? Would he trash his wife and her lover? Did Randall know anything about the crime?