The home at the corner of West Main and Creek Road in Reinholds was the site of the homicide of a 45-y
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A police cruiser sits near a fence that surrounds Jan Roseboro's backyard pool, where she was found un
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A 45-year-old mother of four, whose husband said he found her unconscious in their backyard swimming pool late Tuesday night, had been severely beaten and drowned, authorities said today.
Jan E. Roseboro suffered multiple blunt force trauma and died of multiple traumatic injuries and freshwater drowning, Lancaster County forensic pathologist Dr. Wayne K. Ross found in an autopsy on Wednesday.
Ross ruled the death a homicide.
"This was a significant beating," District Attorney Craig Stedman said today. "There is no possibility this was accidental. She had multiple trauma, on multiple parts of her body - all over her body - as well as drowning. She didn't do it herself.
"Someone murdered her, and that person is at-large in the community," he said.
The county coroner, Dr. Stephen G. Diamantoni, said his office was still investigating the extent of Mrs. Roseboro's injuries, but added: "The injuries were consistent with a brutal, brutal beating."
Mother of 4 slainInvestigators would not identify a suspect or person of interest today, but police were executing a search warrant at the Roseboro home, at 107 W. Main St. in Reinholds, late this morning. Four officers were scouring the pool area for evidence, and evidence trucks were parked by the house.
Roseboro was the wife of Michael A. Roseboro, a director of the Roseboro Funeral Home in Denver, which is well known in the northeastern part of the county and has been in the family for more than a century.
Asked whether Mr. Roseboro was at home at the time of the incident, Stedman said, "The information we have at this point in time is that he was at home."
It is unclear whether any or all of the children also were at home, which is northeast of Ephrata and just west of Adamstown in West Cocalico Township.
Robert Bachman, a cousin of Mrs. Roseboro who described her as "like a daughter to me," said he was stunned by the news.
He said he learned of her death from Mr. Roseboro on Wednesday.
"It is just terrible," he said.
He said Mr. Roseboro told him the couple had been talking by the pool Tuesday night.
"Michael and Jan were sitting by the pool talking. He went inside. She didn't come right in, and he went back out to look for her," Bachman said Mr. Roseboro told him. "Apparently, she must have either slipped or tripped and hit her head and fallen into the water. Nobody saw it happen. The kids were in bed."
Police said in a prepared statement that a man identifying himself as Mr. Roseboro called 911 around 11 p.m. Tuesday. He told dispatchers that he found his wife in their backyard swimming pool.
Officers were dispatched for the drowning call at 11:02 p.m.
When police arrived at the scene, they found Mrs. Roseboro unconscious and lying by the edge of the pool. Mr. Roseboro, who is 41, was performing CPR on his wife.
She was wearing clothes, not a swim suit, when East Cocalico Township police arrived shortly after 11, Stedman said.
Reinholds Ambulance and Medic crews, also dispatched to the home, tried to help the woman before taking her to Ephrata Community Hospital. She was declared dead on arrival.
Police said there were no signs of forced entry into the home, and "no obvious signs of a struggle." The backyard and pool are surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.
The home is a single-story red-brick structure with a large extension and sits on more than three acres of land. Neighbors said today that Mrs. Roseboro had grown up in the home, which had been owned at one time by her parents.
Investigators have interviewed Mr. Roseboro, as well as other family members and neighbors.
East Cocalico Township police St. Larry Martin, speaking at an 11 a.m. press conference, read from the prepared statement, adding that the department was not ready to release any new information.
Messages left for Mr. Roseboro at his household and funeral home were not returned this morning. Ralph Roseboro, Mr. Roseboro's father, said he did not want to comment.
Bachman, who served on the board of the Cocalico Creek Watershed Association with Mrs. Roseboro, said his cousin was an outdoors enthusiast who worked to better the environment.
"She was very concerned about the environment," Bachman said. "She was very dedicated."
Cathy Hess, who served on the East Cocalico Swim Team parent board with Mrs. Roseboro, described her as being very involved with her children's activities - from swimming to high-school lacrosse.
"She was a wonderful person," said Hess, of Reamstown. "There's not too much more you can say about her, other than she's one of the nicest people I've ever met."
Mrs. Roseboro was a past president of the board.
An obituary in today's newspaper said Mrs. Roseboro and her husband celebrated 19 years of marriage on May 7. The couple have four children, two boys and two girls, all of whom live at home. Three of the four attend school in the Cocalico School District. The eldest recently graduated from high school.
Mrs. Roseboro had previously worked as a branch manager for Fulton Bank.
She was a 1981 graduate of Cocalico High School and 1985 graduate of Penn State University. She was the treasurer of Cocalico Creek Watershed Association and past president of the East Cocalico Swim Team.
The obituary said she "loved her children dearly and enjoyed spending time with family and friends."
Roseboro's homicide is the third significant investigation involving the district attorney's office this week. On Sunday night, an Ephrata man shot his wife and was later charge. Earlier on Tuesday, a robbery victim in Manheim shot and killed one of his attackers — a shooting Stedman's office determined to be self-defense and therefore justified.
"We've had to shift a lot of our people from Manheim up to this (Reinholds homicide)," he said. "We're a little thin right now."
Investigators ask anyone with information about Mrs. Roseboro's homicide to call either the East Cocalico Township Police at 336-1725 or the District Attorney's Office at 299-8100.
(New Era staff writer Stephen Zook contributed to this report.)
Staff writer Tom Murse can be reached at tmurse@LNPnews.com or 481-6021.
