Authors: M. William Phelps
That it is reasonable to believe,
the affidavit stated,
that Michael Roseboro would be significantly more familiar with the location of the circuit breaker and plug for the dusk-to-dawn light at the residence than other persons.
Quite true. The guy had overseen just about every detail of the new construction project. He damn well knew where the circuit breaker unit was, because most likely, he had chosen to put it there.
Back on September 5, Larry Martin and Keith Neff interviewed Angie Funk once again. She had
stated that the pregnancy was confirmed through her doctor,
that same affidavit stipulated. The due date given to Angie by her doctor was April 1, 2009. Angie was slated to have Michael Roseboro’s illegitimate baby on April Fool’s Day.
How appropriate, considering the case Roseboro was trying to build for himself.
Craig Stedman and his staff had one of his investigators consult with Dr. Ravinder Dhallan, of Columbia, Maryland. Dr. Dhallan, a fetal DNA
†
research expert, who had conducted some groundbreaking work on new ways of testing for birth defects in unborn babies, had told the LCDA’s Office about a new test that could determine prenatal paternity as early as five weeks into the pregnancy. Ravgen Diagnostics, a company of which Dr. Dhallan was chairman and CEO, had developed prenatal testing methods that were far less invasive to pregnant mothers and unborn children. Dhallan was well respected and well regarded in his field for his work and research.
Prenatal paternity can be determined because the fetal DNA is present in the plasma of the mother’s blood,
the affidavit said. Therefore, if investigators retrieved a sample of
Angie’s blood, the doctor could build a DNA profile of the unborn baby from it. “A sample of blood from the mother and a sample of blood from the [suspected] father can definitely establish or exclude paternity through identifying the sites in the fetal DNA which differ from the mother’s DNA but will match the father’s DNA,” the doctor told investigators.
The best thing about the test turned out to be that it “posed no threat to the fetus,” and certainly no threat beyond a common needle stick to the mother or suspected father.
Angie had given blood on the same day as Michael, at Lancaster General Women & Babies Hospital, in front of Detective Sweigart. She didn’t look happy about it, but she was there, nonetheless, arm tied in a tourniquet, fist balled up, head turned, offering her DNA.
It was eventually confirmed positively that the child Angie Funk was carrying, now four months into her pregnancy, was Michael Roseboro’s baby boy. There was no way Roseboro could deny an affair with Angie.
Science had backed up her claim.
When that bank surveillance tape came in and Keith Neff and the team had a look at it, they were confident that Michael Roseboro’s story of Jan wearing $40,000 worth of jewelry was one more piece of manure in what was a growing pile. The video was grainy and a bit out of focus, but there was no doubt about it: there was Jan walking into the Fulton Bank, wearing the same exact sweatshirt she would soon be found dead in.
Neff and his colleagues spent a considerable amount of time looking at and studying the video, pulling out frames (snapshots) to show the jury.
“Clearly,” Neff explained, “she is
not
wearing any jewelry.”
Not even an everyday gold bracelet.
Nothing.
Instead, Jan Roseboro looked like she was ready for the gym, not, per se, a night walking the red carpet, wearing $40,000 worth of diamonds and gold, which would have made her stand out on that bank video.
“So the assumption is,” Neff added, “at least what
they
say—this woman runs errands, hangs out at her pool in the same sweatshirt and clothes, but puts on
forty thousand
dollars’ worth of jewelry to go be with the family? It’s absurd.”
Furthermore, the coroner never found any tear marks on Jan’s ears, where someone might have grabbed and ripped earrings from her person. That, or abrasions on her wrists or neck, where an intruder might have done the same.
“She had plenty of trauma,” Neff said, “but no visible marks from, like, jewelry being torn off.”
The investigation was in a stage of transition: interviews on top of interviews were the main source of information flooding into the ECTPD and the LCDA’s Office as the winter of 2008 and 2009 passed. The Roseboro family knew a lot of people. Any one of them had the potential to supply delicate and important information about Jan and Michael’s marriage, the ebb and flow of the Roseboros’ life, and, of course, their secrets. More than that, who Michael Roseboro was as a father and husband might also come from a careful look into his background. Friends, too, could offer different ideas and insight.
As Keith Neff and Jan Walters spoke to family, friends, more neighbors, and people from Jan and Michael’s past, part of their focus was to put out the flame on the intruder theory. It sounded ridiculous, sure. But as a cop, you had better make sure that it wasn’t true, or a
good defense team would use that lack of investigative experience against you.
How?
The lights, for one. Law enforcement had several witnesses now saying it was pitch black out there all night long.
Only Michael Roseboro had said the lights were on.
“So the intruder turned the lights
on
to make his
escape
?” Keith Neff said, a bit of sarcasm in his inflection.
Part of the puzzle was to get an understanding of the land layout around the Roseboros’ property. Richard Pope, the Roseboros’ neighbor and tenant, provided the best information to thwart any attempt that might be made regarding an intruder coming from the woods behind the house and sneaking up on Jan Roseboro.
Richard was a good witness. Straitlaced father and husband, hardworking blue-collar guy (pipe layer), who had no beef with the Roseboro family, and actually thought highly of them (Michael, specifically) before July 22.
Regarding the entire stranger theory, Richard had a tough time with it. He lived next door and was often outside at night and early evening, smoking, doing things in the garage, playing with his kid, hanging out with his wife. He also knew most everyone in the neighborhood. A stranger would have stood out like buttons on a snowman. Then there was the presence of Jan’s dogs—all the barking and yelping they did.
Richard said the dogs were
always
outside, whenever Jan was. Except on that night. Someone had put the dogs in the basement of the house.
To Richard, that was strange.
But it was the property, he explained, more than anything, that did not present itself as the ideal environment for a potential intruder.
“I would go out in back there,” Richard said, “and hit golf balls into the woods. There’s pricker bushes and
swampland and just real rough shrubbery all along the back of the lot. There’s no way anybody could get through it.”
Briars, Richard noted, “and, actually, all through[out] … it’s woods…. So just walking through there, you know, walking through the area (surrounding the Roseboro home on two sides), you cannot really get much through these woods…. It’s pretty much tangled.”
There were also two wire fences. “It’s just a mess of thorns and bushes and”—he laughed—“hundreds of golf balls, probably.”
You’d have to be Rambo. And still, it would be almost impossible.
Where Michael Roseboro, the person, was concerned, Richard was impartial. “Mike never showed me who he was,” Richard said. When the house was being remodeled, Michael was there every day, walking the site, picking up garbage, pointing out things to contractors, and checking over his investment. “Everybody in town spoke well about Mike. He was well respected.”
The idea that Roseboro was the town mortician didn’t creep people out. “He was just that guy in the dark suit who had a family and was working hard to take care of them and get an addition put on his house,” Richard remarked.
At least that’s what people saw. The suburban mask. The person Michael Roseboro wanted you to see. But there was another side to the man.
“I never saw him smoke before he started with that addition,” Richard added. “I’d see him drinking beer and smoking while they worked on the house. I never saw that before. He seemed like he needed to get that addition done as fast as possible.”
Like there was something driving him.
A strange addition it is, many who have walked through the house have said. There are sections you cannot get into without walking outside first and then entering
from another door. The entire house is not connected via inside hallways and doors. Even the basement is hard to get into without leaving the main house and walking down into it through a separate doorway. You would definitely have to know where you were going to get anywhere in the house. There is no natural flow, like most contemporary homes.
“Yeah,” Michael Evanick, Richard’s father-in-law, observed, “you’d never get your money back on that house. I don’t think they really cared about resale value.”
It was, many agreed, as if the addition had been custom built for Michael Roseboro alone.
†They
were talking about molecular deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in this case: the “blueprint for life.” That twisted ladder-like strand of cells that codes everything we are: hair color, height, metabolism. Half of this type of DNA comes from our mother, the other half from our father, which is the reason why each one of us is different. From a scientific standpoint, the best DNA sample for testing comes from one main source, body fluids—including, of course, skin cells.
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With so many pieces of evidence, “to do” lists on top of “to do” lists written by the DA, along with hundreds of interviews, you are bound as an investigator to send things out for testing to the lab and forget about them. That said, you have confidence in your colleagues to follow through and let you know when the results from a vital piece of forensic evidence are available. This was why Detective Larry Martin became so important to the Roseboro investigation: Martin choreographed the investigation from the ECTPD’s standpoint; he made sure no one retraced anyone else’s steps, and kept investigators focused on the different aspects of the case they needed to complete.
After what seemed like a long holiday break—investigators still knocking on doors and working the case 24/7 through Christmas and New Year’s—the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) Bureau of Forensic Services, its Harrisburg laboratory, called Keith Neff. It was February 12. The Harrisburg lab was what you’d call a prescreening facility: evidence is sent to Harrisburg from all around the state to see if there is any reason to pass it along to the lab in Greensburg, which conducted
more thorough and detailed DNA testing to confirm initial results.
“It’s possible that there’s some DNA (blood, skin) under Mrs. Roseboro’s fingernails,” the scientist told Neff.
Nails? DNA?
Neff didn’t want to jump out of his chair, just yet. These results were, the scientist made clear, preliminary. The possibility, she said, that DNA existed was there, but it would be Greensburg’s call whose DNA it was.
“I did not want to get too excited and be let down,” Neff said later.
Back during the week when Jan Roseboro was murdered, the pathologist had scraped her fingernails and sent those scrapings to the lab for microscopic study and DNA testing. The lab was now responding to that test.
The theory was that the scratches on Michael Roseboro’s face caused a buildup of his skin to form underneath Jan’s fingernails. The pathologist was certain that any DNA underneath the nails would have come from a vigorous scratch; it wouldn’t have come from superficial scratching or common touching (the chlorine in the water would have washed that type of DNA away). Any DNA still there after Jan had been in that water for an extended period of time would have come from violent or aggressive scratching.
It was going to take some time, the scientist said, for Greensburg to determine the veracity of the tests.
Sit tight, we still have one more hurdle here to jump.
This was a major breakthrough, Neff considered. It looked like they had a match. If that was the case, Michael Roseboro wouldn’t be measured as one of a few, or put into a group with what could be ten additional donors. DNA was fail-safe. If they got a hit in Greensburg, it was Roseboro’s DNA underneath Jan’s fingernails.
Exactly what they needed to bring their case home.
When Greensburg came back with its results, one of the forensic scientists called Neff.
From what Neff could understand, although he said the dynamics of what she had to say were “crazy complicated,” the results were positive. That’s what Neff heard.
Yes,
that was Michael Roseboro’s skin underneath Jan’s fingernails.
It’s a match.
Still, Neff was confused. Larry Martin, who understood DNA perhaps better than your average cop, because his son has a genetic defect, was standing by Neff as he took the call.
“Talk to her, Lar,” Neff said, handing his boss the phone. “I think it’s good news, but I’m … I’m having a hard time, and just not sure.”
Neff stood and looked on, watching Martin shake his head yes and ask pertinent questions.
Finished with the call, Martin had a smile on his face.
“Yes,” he said. “We got a match!”
“What!”
“Call Craig and Kelly and let them know.”
Still, there was work to do. Neff said the next step was to take that evidence to National Medical Services (NMS). NMS has been in business for more than thirty-five years. According to its profile, the lab, well known throughout the medical community,
has been setting the standard for excellence in clinical toxicology and forensic testing—responding to the needs of healthcare providers … and other medical researchers, reference labs, hospitals, and the criminal justice system with state-of-the-art tests that other labs don’t or can’t provide.