Authors: M. William Phelps
Roseboro began his workday inside the funeral home after seeing Angie Funk, as usual, at Turkey Hill just minutes before. He was at his desk, scribing his first e-mail of the day to Angie by 7:49
A.M.
In what appeared to be twenty-four-size font, Roseboro began the electronic missive with “WOW,” followed by twenty-nine exclamation points. Something that Angie did had obviously flipped his boat that morning.
The wow was a reaction to the skirt Angie had on that day. Roseboro had seen her wearing it at Turkey Hill. By now, he was so preoccupied with the clothes this woman wore, he was commenting on them daily. It seemed he was enthralled by the element of anticipation, wondering as he drove to Turkey Hill what his love would be sauntering into the store wearing on any day. And yet, in retrospect, it wouldn’t matter what Angie had on: Roseboro was going to go wild for it, anyway.
After the “wow,” Michael told Angie she was “incredible” and “the most beautiful woman” he had ever laid eyes on. He said his heart “fluttered” and “pounded” whenever he saw her. Not from what she wore, it turned out, but “what’s inside of the outfit,” he was now convinced, had done it for him.
He then talked about a “deep desire” he had never felt before in all of his forty-one years. Angie had brought it out of him. He never knew it was there, perhaps hibernating, waiting for the right woman to come around and summon.
After that, he launched into the same old, tiring story
of never having experienced a love like this, how lucky he was, and how much he appreciated Angie loving him.
Ending the e-mail, he said, simply (for once), “I adore you,” then repeated the phrase by adding “completely” to it.
Only one minute later, their e-mails nearly crossing paths in cyberspace, Angie tapped out her response. She called Michael her “world” (only three exclamation points). He was now, according to Angie, the sole reason why she “got up in the morning.” Not to take care of her two kids, or go to work to support her family. But the reason why Angie Funk existed in this world was because of Michael Roseboro. Again, the urgency in this set of e-mails jumps off the page, with all the exclamation points and repeated phrases and words. It was as if a decision had been made—a silent agreement between them.
Angie said she could not wait any longer to be in Roseboro’s arms every morning when she awoke and every night she went to bed, adding that, oh yeah, lest they forget about “that afternoon,” as they had made plans to meet and have sex in the vacant apartment she managed in Mount Joy.
Ending her response, Angie mentioned how she couldn’t wait until all their dreams came “true, baby, all your dreams!” (Angie wrote “all” in upper-case lettering, and finished her proclamation with eight exclamation points!)
In the back of her mind, Angie Funk later said, when she sent that particular e-mail, she “knew” that Jan was going to find out about the affair sooner rather than later—because it was the time of the month in the Roseboro household when Jan did the household bills; and in the past, after studying his cell phone bill, she had caught her husband cheating.
Six minutes later, Michael typed a response. He made Angie a promise from his heart, letting her know that he
was never going to let her go. He said, “I need to be your husband,” adding how he needed her to be his “wife.”
Before they started e-mailing at seven-fifty that morning, Michael had called Angie seven times, beginning at five thirty-six. He dialed from his cell, from home, and from the fax machine at the funeral parlor. In all, between 5:36 and 7:49
A.M.
on the day he would murder his wife, Roseboro had spoken to either Angie’s cell phone voice mail or Angie herself for a total of thirty minutes.
Angie’s response at 8:09
A.M.
was a bit pleading. She opened by commenting on the dream portion of Roseboro’s previous e-mail, saying that all of her dreams would come true when he took her as his “wife and we go home TOGETHER!!”
Pressure.
She then said she had always wondered what life would be like being Mrs. Angela Lynn Roseboro, saying she wasn’t going to have “to wonder much longer.”
(Whatever
that
meant.)
At 8:20
A.M.,
Angie wrote to say she would be home until nine, when she was going to have to leave for an appointment. She asked Roseboro how long he was going to be at the parlor that morning.
He responded by telling Angie a vile joke about a nun and a priest in the desert whose camel falls suddenly ill and dies. After giving her the raunchy, blasphemous punch line, Roseboro said he “liked that one” and “missed you, baby.” He couldn’t wait to see her in what he said was only five and a half hours.
Angie responded by saying she liked the joke. Then she explained the rest of her morning. After that appointment, she was leaving work at 11:45
A.M.
to pick up the girls at her friend’s house. Then she was driving straight up to Mount Joy—where the vacant apartment she managed was located—to drop off the girls at, of all
places, her mother-in-law’s, who lived close by. From there, she was scheduled to head over to the apartment. She needed to be there by 1:00
P.M.
to show the place to a potential renter. She knew Roseboro had a doctor’s appointment in Lancaster and told him to call her before he left, so she could go out and get them some lunch, ending the e-mail by professing how much she loved “taking care” of her man.
Michael called Angie from the funeral parlor fax machine phone at 8:42
A.M.,
staying on the line for forty-eight seconds, one would presume, leaving her a voice mail message. She called right back. They talked for exactly one minute. An hour later, Angie sent her lover a text message. At 9:17
A.M.,
Roseboro sent Angie an e-mail, indicating he would call her when he left for Lancaster, concluding that he was “drooling, thinking about” her “in that outfit” she had promised to wear.
Angie sent a return e-mail moments later. This one was written in all italics to either suggest a softness or importance. She talked about how fantastic it was going to be to see her man later on that day. In fact, any time she spent with him she would always “cherish.” After that, she carried on with more of the same yearning they had been spewing to each other over the past few days—that same gushy, adolescent lovespeak they had repeated ad nauseam.
They texted each other five separate times between 10:08 and 10:26
A.M.
Angie wrote another e-mail—again in italics—at 11:01
A.M.,
telling Roseboro how much she missed him and how much she was looking forward to holding him and touching him and being with him that day.
It was as if they had not seen each other for weeks.
They texted each other five additional times between 11:02 and 11:49
A.M.,
when Angie called Michael on his cell phone. Then, between 12:26 and 1:40
P.M.,
they
spoke a total of eight times via cell phone, for a total of thirty-one minutes and change.
Since Michael Roseboro had woken up at 5:36
A.M.
and called Angie that first time, they had communicated via phone, text, or e-mail thirty-eight times.
And it was only 1:40
P.M.
July 22, 2008
The afternoon before Jan Roseboro’s murder
38
If you look at a simple computer-generated chart (maybe Excel, something like that) listing the times Michael Roseboro and Angie Funk communicated on July 22, 2008, there is not an hour without several calls, e-mails, or texts—that is, with the exception of 1:40 to 4:59
P.M.,
when the electronic contact between them came to a complete halt.
Why?
Because they were inside that Mount Joy apartment spending the afternoon and early evening together. When later asked about the nearly three and a half hours they spent alone that day, Angie had a hard time recalling any details—imagine that? The things she did remember, however, tell a story.
“I had gotten lunch before he came over [to the apartment],” Angie said, trying to recall the events of that day for Detective Keith Neff, “and we ate lunch together and then … then we just hung out for a few hours.”
Hung out.
The apartment, she explained further, was in transition. It wasn’t totally empty, nor was it completely furnished. There was a couple “in the process,” Angie said, “of moving their things out.”
And so, to their advantage, Angie and Michael had a table and a sofa to use on this particular day. They wouldn’t have to worry about rug burn or rolling around on a soiled carpet. They could use the table or the couch—maybe both, maybe neither.
Angie was later asked what things she had talked about with Roseboro that day, considering they had spent so much time together; and when they weren’t in the same room, they had been e-mailing, texting, or talking.
“Oh,” she said rather defensively, “I have no idea. I honestly don’t know. It was just talk. I can’t honestly remember
what
we talked about.”
Angie was then asked if she could recall “just one thing” she talked about that day with her lover.
“I … honestly, I really don’t know,” she offered. “I really don’t remember. It was probably all small talk or getting to know each other. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Getting to know each other. “
They had been intimate and had seen each other every day during weekdays for the past forty-nine days. By this point, one could safely say that Angie and Michael knew each other well enough. Between the previous morning, July 21, and this time on July 22, they had communicated over one hundred times. Yet, Angie Funk said she could not recall anything they discussed.
She was asked if she recalled having sex with Michael Roseboro on that day, in those hours before Roseboro drove home and murdered his wife.
That,
Angie Funk remembered: “Yes,” she said brazenly, without hesitation.
More than any of this, however, Angie was later asked about scratches on Michael Roseboro’s face and if she had seen any that afternoon. One could take a leap in
assuming that being with him for that time, being close enough to kiss him and have sex, she would have seen scratches on his face. If they were there.
“He did not have any scratches on his face,” Angie told police.
July 22, 2008
The evening of Jan Roseboro’s murder
39
They had arrived in separate vehicles. After the fun-loving afternoon came to an end, they left in separate vehicles. The drive back to town for the lovebirds took about forty-five minutes. Angie Funk probably stopped to pick up her children at her mother-in-law’s—this, after having adulterous sex all afternoon with her lover—although she never mentioned this in her play-by-play of the day later on.
No sooner had they left Mount Joy did Angie call Michael Roseboro. That first call at 4:59
P.M.,
as they trekked down Interstate 283 toward Lancaster, lasted two minutes; but the next, at 5:05
P.M.,
went on for thirty-six minutes.
Later prompted by law enforcement to recall
anything
said during those thirty-six minutes, Angie could not remember a single word, saying in court a little over one year after the events, “I have no idea. I mean, it was conversation, you know. I don’t … I don’t know the specifics….”
“Getting to know each other. “
For the next forty minutes after that call, there was no communication between them. Then Michael called
Angie’s cell phone from his home phone at 5:45
P.M.,
a call that lasted twenty-six seconds.
Eleven minutes later, Angie sent Michael a text.
He responded one minute later.
Two minutes after that, Angie sent a text back.
Three minutes later, Michael responded.
Then, at 6:01
P.M.,
Angie answered him.
He did not reply.
Angie sent another at 6:46
P.M.
Again, Michael failed to respond.
What was wrong?
Roseboro called Angie’s cell number from his house at 7:19
P.M.;
they talked for seven minutes. At 8:42
P.M.,
Roseboro called her back—a call that lasted seventeen minutes. Of that seventeen-minute call, when asked, Angie could recall only that her lover said, “I’m tired…. I’m going to bed,” adding, “That’s really all I remember. I’m sure we talked about the day.”
And what a day it had been.
“Well,” Angie said, thinking back, “it was the most time we ever spent together. So, yeah, I guess you could say [it was a big day].”
When pestered to recall what she talked about during that 8:42
P.M.
call, Angie admitted that they shared “how much we loved each other and that we planned to leave our spouses.”
This was an important revelation. On the night of Jan Roseboro’s murder, Jan’s husband and his lover discussed divorcing their spouses. It appeared that this was something Angie was beginning to wonder about as their relationship carried on in such a holding pattern.
Yet, there was more, according to what Angie had said in September 2008, a little over two months after the day in question.
“Like,” she said, talking about the content of the 8:42
P.M.
call, “getting married and all that stuff…. I mean,
I just said that, you know … [Jan] could probably take him for a lot if she found out about us.”
Pressure.
They also discussed the fact that Michael Roseboro, if Jan ever found out about Angie Funk, could lose the funeral home in a nasty divorce.
“That he didn’t
want
to lose it,” Angie said. Once again, she and Roseboro talked about him putting the funeral home in his father’s name until the divorce was finalized. “Then put it back in [Mike’s] name or whatever.” The reason for that, Angie said they discussed, was so “she [Jan] couldn’t touch it.”