Michael Roseboro must have felt the need to watch out for himself and his family.
It was near one o’clock in the morning. Officer Savage called Larry Martin from the hospital. Savage had followed the ambulance and stayed with Jan. Savage told Martin that doctors had found a noticeable “mark behind the victim’s ear.” A pronounced wound of some sort that went deep. One of the only reasons they noticed the wound was because Jan had started bleeding inside the ambulance on the way to the hospital as medics pumped life back into her heart and it started beating, if only mechanically. Lying outside on the deck, Jan had not bled, because her heart had stopped beating. But the head bleeds copiously, like no other part of the body.
Martin spoke to Dr. Steven Zebert at the hospital. It being such a small community, Zebert and Martin knew each other. “What do you think, Doctor?” Martin asked.
“Man, this is a deep wound, Larry. It goes all the way to the skull. I’m not even one hundred percent sure it’s not a bullet wound!”
Martin was shocked by the suggestion. “Huh?”
“But listen, I am going to send her downstairs for an X-ray and we’ll find out.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Martin said, flipping his cell phone closed.
This comment, at least for Larry Martin, made the situation a bit more fluid, if not downright mysterious. Martin asked who was awake inside the house—and if any of the kids were up.
He wanted to speak to them.
They were all sleeping.
The injury was later described as a “puncture wound …to the left side of [Jan’s] head … behind the left ear approximately one centimeter in diameter.” About the size and shape, in other words, of a bullet wound. And wouldn’t you know it, the wound was in the exact place a hit man or someone who knew how to kill would place a pistol and fire.
One shot.
Pop.
Done.
Detective Martin thought about it. Bullet wound? Puncture to the back of the head? If she had not been shot, had Jan fallen, hit her head, and maybe rolled into the pool and drowned? Perhaps Michael Roseboro was so distressed over the idea of not being there for his wife when she needed him that he was upset and wanted to crawl into a corner somewhere. That would explain his odd behavior. The guy was possibly blaming himself for what had happened.
Martin gave Keith Neff this new information. Yet it occurred to Neff after surveying the scene fairly meticulously that there was no blood anywhere outside. How could she have fallen, hit her head hard enough to produce such a severe wound, and not leave any blood behind?
“This rain,” Neff said. It had come down hard, in intervals. It was one of those midsummer downpours that seem to come out of nowhere and dump bucket loads of rain and then abruptly stop, only to begin again minutes later. The rain could have washed away any blood, concealing where Jan had fallen.
“Of course, I don’t want to overlook the obvious,” Neff later explained, talking about what he was thinking as he walked the scene. “But I still need to stay focused and not get too zeroed in on anything in the beginning of an investigation.”
Anything was possible.
* * *
According to Keith Neff’s meticulous notes of that night, it was 1:07 A.M. when he approached Michael Roseboro for the first time. In his gentle manner, soft-spoken and congenial, Neff asked Roseboro, “I was hoping you could come down to the station and talk about what happened.” Neff explained that the ECTPD was obligated to fill out reports and get statements from everyone it could. Since Roseboro was the person who had found his wife, his input might help clear up things. During this short conversation, Neff never told Roseboro that his wife had died at the hospital.
And Michael Roseboro never asked.
“Sure,” Roseboro said, responding to a trip downtown.
The guy was preoccupied and flat, Neff observed. No emotion one way or the other. Family members nearby—Neff
Krystal Shannan, Camryn Rhys