For nearly two months, up until the very day Jan Roseboro was murdered, her husband, Michael, was professing his love to someone else.

He wrote to his girlfriend about marriage, shopped for her wedding gown, selected a honeymoon spot and dreamed of a life together — with her.

All that changed after Michael Roseboro, 42, was arrested and charged with killing his wife, who was found dead in their backyard pool July 22, 2008.

Prosecutors, when they announced his arrest, said the murder was motivated by Roseboro's obsessive extramarital affair with his girlfriend, Angela Funk.

Friday, as testimony in Roseboro's homicide trial continued, friends of the victim told a Lancaster County jury that the defendant had described Funk as just someone who was helping him plan a ceremony to renew his wedding vows.

But one of those friends, Karen Tobias, said that in October 2008 she received a letter from Roseboro.

Roseboro admitted having an affair with Funk, she testified, but he wrote that his wife had one, too, the previous year.

"Tell everybody that Jan had an affair six months before," Tobias testified as she read the letter aloud.

It was he who wanted to keep the marriage together, Roseboro wrote to Tobias, which was why he planned the ceremony to renew their wedding vows.

Roseboro also wrote that he was planning on "ending things with Angela and trying to reconcile with Jan."

"I never got to apologize to Jan," Tobias testified, reading from Roseboro's letter.

"I miss her so badly. ... I can't believe anyone would try and hurt her," Tobias read, crying.

Tobias testified, as others did, that they had no knowledge of Jan Roseboro ever having an extramarital affair and did not believe the allegation was true.

And Tobias testified about Roseboro's "very, very calm" demeanor in the days that followed his wife's death.

A week after Jan Roseboro's death, Tobias said, she and Roseboro were together with a small group of friends, eating and drinking, when Roseboro suggested they play a board game.

"He was not grieving the way I thought a husband would grieve for his wife," Tobias said.

District Attorney Craig Stedman has said that Funk cooperated with the homicide investigation and had an alibi for the time of the murder. She has not been charged with any crime.

Defense attorney Allan Sodomsky maintains that Roseboro is not guilty.

In his opening statement to the jury, Sodomsky acknowledged the extramarital affair between Roseboro and Funk, but said neither discussed murdering their spouses.

In other testimony Friday, Charlotte Moyer, a relative by marriage, said that she knew Jan Roseboro all her life, and knew no one who would want to kill her.

"I know people who loved her very much, including myself," Moyer said.

Moyer said that on the morning after the murder, she arrived at the Roseboros' West Main Street home shortly after 8 a.m. and found 18-year-old Samuel Roseboro sitting outside crying. The three younger Roseboro children were still in bed asleep, she said.

Moyer said she sat with Samuel for awhile and then went into another room and talked with Michael Roseboro. He recited for her the events of the night before, Moyer said, mentioning that his wife had "a contusion" on the left side of her head.

"The word 'contusion' stuck in my mind," Moyer said. That, and the fact that Roseboro complimented her hair style.

Another relative, Carol Culver, testified that she asked Roseboro what it was like to have found his wife. His response, Culver said, was to describe the events of the evening, what time he went to bed and got up, and then described to her, bent over with his arms outstretched, how he found Jan Roseboro floating submerged in the pool.

Rebecca Donahue, a close friend of the Roseboro family, gave similar testimony about the couple's alleged extramarital affairs.

"I don't know when on God's green Earth she could have had time," Donahue said.

She, too, remarked on Roseboro's calm demeanor, but said that she attributed it to his profession as a director of the family's funeral home business in Denver.

The day after the murder, Donahue said, she went to the house and Rachel, then 12, had just been told of her mother's death.

"She walked out onto the patio, and she just stood there," Donahue said. "You could tell she was lost."

Donahue said she took the two Roseboro daughters, Rachel and Stella, then 6, home with her after their mother's death and kept them for a time.

It was she who got the girls clothes for the funeral and drove them to the service, she said.

After a week, Donahue said, she confronted Roseboro, suggesting that he needed to spend time with his children and get them into grief counseling.

"He said he had just had two shots of vodka and couldn't make any decisions," Donahue said.

Donahue, who cried into her hands as she testified, will return to the witness stand Monday when the trial continues before Judge James P. Cullen.

For several hours Friday morning, the jury listened to a state police computer expert, Cpl. James Strosser, continue from the day before reading dozens of e-mail exchanges between Roseboro and Funk.

The romantic, sometimes sexually suggestive e-mails discuss marriage, a wedding gown and a honeymoon, but no mention of divorcing their respective spouses.

"Angela, you have met your match in me," Roseboro wrote on July 7, 2008.

"You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into."

And the following morning, Roseboro wrote:

"I am angry that for now I have to keep my feelings secret. ... When the time is right my love for you will be a secret to nobody."

Strosser said that on July 17, 2008, Roseboro wrote:

"I love thinking about our future because it will be a reality soon."

Then Strosser read a July 22, 2008, e-mail from Funk:

"I always wondered what it would be like to be your wife. ... I guess I won't have to wonder too much longer."

E-mail: jkelley@lnpnews.com