Authors: M. William Phelps
“I know.”
“Let’s hope so” was about all Angie could say.
Roseboro explained that his lawyer always made him feel good about himself and his chances for acquittal, adding that his attorney’s assistant had been there for him. She’s an “expert on jury selection,” Roseboro bragged.
This gave Angie an avenue to talk about her attorney and how she had become more of a friend than someone she had simply hired.
They discussed how relieved Roseboro was to hear that Angie had lawyered-up. She said she didn’t want to get one, but, “um, but it got to the point where every time I left there (the DA’s office), I felt like they were accusing me more and more. I just got tired of it.” There was not one piece of documentation available to back up Angie on this point. The ECTPD, if she was referring to its investigators, or the LCDA’s Office, had definitely put her under close scrutiny during the early part of the investigation, but had not once pointed a finger in her face and made a direct accusation against her.
Roseboro said “they” had just come for more of his blood.
“Yeah, I know,” Angie responded. “They took another blood test from him, too. I was furious! Two hours after he was born, they were in the hospital. It infuriated me.”
Regarding that moment when blood was taken from the child, Detective Larry Martin, who was there, said, “Angie was pleasant when the warrant was served. I found that curious, considering she told Mike on the prison phone call that she was furious about the warrant being served.”
Conflicting stories from the same mouth.
“… I’m so proud of you,” Roseboro said, “for the way you’re handling things. I mean, I’m getting everything from [my attorney]. He always keeps me informed. I am so proud of you and the way you’re handling yourself.”
Makes you wonder if Roseboro would have patted Angie on the head while saying this, if she was there in front of him, the way it came out.
“Thank you,” Angie said to that.
They discussed how Angie, Roseboro’s family, and his children were being treated by “the papers.” He didn’t like it. No,
not
what was being reported about
him,
but everyone else. And as he talked, he broke off from that and said, “Oh, my goodness. Just great to hear your voice…. Oh—”
“Well, I almost didn’t answer,” Angie said, because she had to go pick up one of the kids.
Roseboro asked if he could call again.
“Yeah.”
Then he wondered when his child had been born. He didn’t know the date. His lawyer, he said, had told him April 1.
Angie cleared up the confusion.
“He was eager to get out of there, huh?”
A laugh and another explanation of how great it was to give birth to Matthew.
The talk then focused on how supportive their families and friends had been during what was a time of mostly downs, very few ups. The baby had changed that for the time being and had brought a bit of hope into Angie’s world. Maybe for both of them. Roseboro mentioned how good a friend Francis Tobias had been, and how the police “confiscated” that letter Roseboro had sent him.
“Yeah?” Angie said.
“Which it was just writing to say,” Roseboro answered, now lying about the letter he had written to Francis and Karen Tobias, “‘Hey, how are ya?’ So it just—it just, I don’t know.”
“It’s a shame,” Angie said.
Then it was back to talking about family. Roseboro mentioned Jan’s sister and brother. Angie asked, “I didn’t know how they would be treating you at all.”
“Of course,” he said, “there’s going to be some animosity, but they’re—”
Angie cut him off: “I know you and [Jan’s brother] were very close.”
Animosity?
The guy was accused of killing their sister! Roseboro here made it sound as if they would get over it and be his pal again.
Roseboro mentioned his oldest son, Sam, and how great the boy had been, coming in to see him and stepping
up to take on a mature role in the other children’s lives and helping out Michael’s parents. Suzie Van Zant was living at the Roseboro house still, taking care of the minor children. Sam lived with his grandparents.
After a few more statements about Sam and his parents, Roseboro said, “Well, it’s—oh, my goodness … I
will
call again.”
“Okay,” Angie answered.
“It was so good talking to you.”
“It was good talking to
you.”
“I love you,” Roseboro said seriously.
Angie laughed, embarrassed. Then, quickly, almost under her breath, “I love you, too.”
They said good-bye a few times and hung up.
‡
You can go online and hear these calls. Conduct a simple search on any reputable search engine.
64
The relationship between Jan’s family and Michael Roseboro was becoming volatile as the month of April came to pass. In the weeks that followed, things would happen to shape a different type of association between the two families. That aside for the moment, investigators learned many things while listening to that call between Roseboro and Angie Funk. Number one, in his letter to Francis Tobias, Michael had said he was working things out with Jan. That his affair with Angie was finished. Now they had Michael (and Angie), a consummate impostor if there ever was one, on tape saying they loved each other. Was Angie going to end up being a hostile witness for the prosecution, out there fighting for her man, perhaps protecting him when she sat in the witness stand?
It seemed so.
Judged from the way she acted during that call, her presence in court would be ambiguous at best, supporting the rival team at worst. The prosecution knew Angie needed to stay somewhere in the middle to have an impact.
Michael was still standing on two different sides of the fence himself, depending on whom he spoke to. His
wife was dead and here he was still chasing Angie Funk and proclaiming his love for her.
“Oh, my God, it’s good to hear your voice … baby.”
It was astonishing to some that Michael’s infatuation with the woman had not been tampered by the charges against him. He was still holding out hope that he would be released, and somehow he, Angie, and their child were all going to be together.
Two days after that first call, Michael was not able to get through to Angie. Guess what? He called her back.
Again, he chose the afternoon hour, mainly because Randall Funk—the man who was living with, supporting, and caring for Michael’s child—was at work.
Opening this call, Roseboro said the last time they spoke he’d forgotten to “congratulate” Angie on a recent Philadelphia Phillies (2008) World Series victory.
Angie laughed her guarded, schoolgirl giggle, which came across as phony and contrived, saying, “Oh—and the Steelers!”
“Well, that goes without saying,” Roseboro offered. He, too, was a Steelers fan, and had, in fact, dedicated his entire rec room in the basement of the new addition to a Steelers theme. (The team had won the Super Bowl in 2008.)
“It was a good sport year,” Angie added.
They carried on about sports for a brief time. Roseboro told Angie how sick and tired he was of watching basketball inside the prison, adding, “I mean, they get to the point where they even put professional women’s basketball on—” (He didn’t say who he meant by “they.”)
“I’m not a basketball fan,” Angie said, interrupting.
Concluding his earlier thought, Roseboro gave a little hint as to who he had meant by “they,” saying, “… that and, ah, Black Entertainment Television.”
“Really?” Angie asked, feigning surprise.
“Yeah, it’s a … We got one officer to put on Country
Music Television. I thought there was going to be a riot in here.”
That comment cracked up Angie.
“We just did it for a joke,” Roseboro added.
“That’s funny!”
From there, Roseboro changed the subject. “No, actually, there’s a date that I plan on being home in August … ‘cause I, when I came in here, I was, I … was furious.”
“I’m sure you were.” That comment had put the brakes on Angie’s laughing spell. There were sounds in the background—those echoes again, from the long prison hallways and guards talking over the loudspeakers, slamming and locking doors—reminding the two of them where this man was calling from. They could joke all they wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that Roseboro was in prison, facing the rest of his life behind bars.
More serious, Roseboro said he had given his entire situation “up to God’s hands.” Being in jail, locked up like he was, had given him a “lot of good prayer time … and, ah, I just feel really good.”
“Good, good,” Angie responded quickly.
He said it bummed him out “that people would, someone would even think I would do something like that—that bums me out.”
“Yeah, well, you know,” Angie said. “There’s people that think that I had something to do with it, too.”
“I know,” Roseboro said.
“That I manipulated you and all that stuff, and that’s not who I am and never was like that….”
“I know…. I know….”
“And it hurts, it really hurts … that people can hate so badly.”
In this discussion, there was no mention of the notion that Jan had lost her life. The suffering was on the children’s shoulders now and for those who knew Jan best—her family. This talk between Angie and Roseboro centered
on themselves. No remorse. No empathy. No simple compassion for a woman who was murdered in a brutal rage. It was as if Jan had never existed.
Angie went on to talk about a friend of hers who had “been there” for her. She mentioned how Jesus had become a central part of their lives and how Christ had taught them all to deal with the situation of being cast out, essentially, of the community and looked down on by anyone they came into contact with.
To that, Roseboro said: “Well, that’s what I’ve been saying to my parents. I gotta forgive them, because how am I supposed to be forgiven, if I can’t forgive them?”
The world they lived in—Denver/Reinholds and the other surrounding towns—was a God-fearing region of Lancaster County. People here are believers. They embrace the word of God, and church attendance is high in this area. On Sundays, you can watch as horse and buggies carrying the Amish and Mennonites travel along the road in processions of what appears to be hundreds on their way to meeting houses. The Lutheran and other denominational churches, as well, are full. And yet Roseboro was not one of those devout, pious people, leaning on God, living a life under God’s commandments, but here he was now, backed into a corner, beginning to speak as though he had been an altar boy and devoted churchgoer.
Angie talked more about her friends and the support she was getting and how grateful she was for it. But there was no way to get away from the lashing Angie said she was getting from “people.”
Roseboro said he felt fortunate for being the one locked up, and not being on the receiving end of that collective, societal hostility.
“I pray for you every day,” he told Angie at one point, “for what you’re going through. Like I said, I am so proud of you for the way you’re handling yourself.”
As Angie thanked her man, she let out two short
laughs (nerves). As she did that, Roseboro broke off into a different subject: the inmates he had become “real good friends” with inside the prison. There was one guy Roseboro mentioned by name.
“Oh, cool,” Angie said, almost as if she didn’t want to hear, “what’s he in for?”
Roseboro started to say, “Ra …”—perhaps
rape
or
robbery?
—but then stopped himself abruptly, opting instead for, “Breaking and entering.” This “good guy,” as Roseboro described him, had been sentenced for his crimes recently: “They gave him twenty to forty [years]…. I could have cried for him.”
This man Roseboro had nearly shed tears for (the “good guy”), according to witness testimony during his case, had targeted Amish women in two separate home invasions, and even had touched one woman as she slept. Two of the victims had chased the man from their home.
Angie gasped in a quick breath. Then, “Are you serious?”
“Well, and that’s what I said to my mom….” Because of this man and others he had met on the inside, Roseboro felt compelled to “do something” when he got out, he explained. “Get these guys some sort of a job. Do something to help them get into a workplace. Because they don’t have an option. They get out of here—no one wants to hire them.”
Angie understood.
“Then they go right back to what they came in for.”
They talked about being strong themselves for the kids. Roseboro was happy to hear from his mother, he said, that there were people on the outside who still believed in him.
“I must have gotten about five hundred letters and cards so far,” Roseboro said.
“That’s awesome.”
Angie asked Roseboro about having a temper at lacrosse
games, which had been reported, and Roseboro brushed it off, saying, “That wasn’t a temper. I just got wrapped up in the game.”
Angie said, “Yeah, I know…. I have a temper.”
“I know,” Roseboro said.
“I’m stubborn,” Angie responded. “You know, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go out and kill somebody.” She was laughing, adding that just because someone has a “temper,” it doesn’t mean they’re prone to violence.
“You got a worse temper than I do,” Roseboro said, totally bypassing that “kill somebody” remark.
“Oh, I do not.”
“I’m kiddin’ ya!”
For a few moments, they discussed the baby. Angie talked about the delivery. How she had “no morning sickness,” and that she was afraid Matthew would be colicky because mothers who undergo stress during pregnancy—so she had heard—end up with colicky babies. “I’ve been dying to know what kind of baby you were,” she asked Roseboro, “just so—”
“I was perfect!” he said. “What do you mean, ‘what kind of baby’ was I?”
There was a peculiar nature to the conversation at this point. Not even a year before, Jan was alive, and Angie Funk and Michael Roseboro’s affair had not yet begun. Now, here they were—Roseboro behind bars, Angie raising their love child with her husband—talking about it all as though they were discussing a soap opera they had both watched. There was a certain surrealism to the conversation as it carried on.