Mysterious death of American couple
On September 28, 2014, John Sheridan, a former New Jersey Transportation Commissioner and health care executive, was found dead along with his wife Joyce in their home in Skillman, New Jersey, United States. The bodies were found in the house's master bedroom by firefighters responding to a fire emergency, with both exhibiting stab wounds. The case was initially believed by the Somerset County prosecutor's office to have been a murder-suicide and they wrote a public report to this effect.
However, even before the official report's release, the Sheridans' sons challenged this conclusion. Based on a second autopsy performed by forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who wrote his own report, he believed it was more likely that their parents had been murdered by an intruder who set the fire in an attempt to destroy evidence. The Sheridan sons exercised considerable political influence to have the finding of murder-suicide overturned; a 2016 open letter to change the finding, addressed to newly appointed state medical examiner Andrew Falzon, was signed by 200 prominent state residents, including three former governors and two former state attorneys general. In 2017 Falzon officially changed the manner of John Sheridan's death from suicide to undetermined. Five years later, State Attorney General Matt Platkin reopened the case after guilty pleas in a similar murder also involving political connections.
The Sheridans sons' efforts to change the verdict revealed a number of deficiencies in the state medical examiner's office generally and the investigation of the Sheridans' deaths specifically. Before Falzon's appointment, the position had been vacant for six years following the resignation of a predecessor who had resigned out of frustration with the system and himself replaced another predecessor who resigned for the same reason. The pathologist who performed the original autopsies was not board certified, had resigned from a previous position due to a failure to inform police about a changed autopsy finding and may have yielded to pressure from the prosecutor's office. One of the detectives who had initially been part of the investigation filed a whistleblower lawsuit, later dismissed, alleging he had been subject to retaliation after he had complained about how evidence related to the case was either mishandled or destroyed.
Background.
John Sheridan, a senior partner in the Morristown law firm of Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland &amp; Perretti, was a lifelong Republican whose career in New Jersey state government during the 1970s had culminated in his service as Transportation Commissioner in the cabinet of Governor Thomas Kean from 1982 to 1985. In that capacity he had overseen the transfer of the state's commuter rail service from federally-owned Conrail to the newly created New Jersey Transit Rail Operations. Sheridan later served on the transition teams for Republican governors Christine Todd Whitman and Chris Christie following their elections.
Sheridan and his wife Joyce had settled in Skillman, an affluent section of Montgomery Township in Somerset County, a short distance north of Princeton, in 1977. There they had raised four sons, twins Mark and Matt, Dan, and Tim. Mark himself followed in his father's footsteps, reaching the level of senior partner in the law firm Squire Patton Boggs and serving as chief counsel to New Jersey's Republican Party.
In 2005, John Sheridan had left Riker Danzig to take over as chief executive officer of Cooper University Hospital in Camden. Working together with the chairman of the hospital's board, George Norcross, a prominent Democratic leader in South Jersey, he oversaw an expansion of the hospital into what is today called Cooper Health System. The new facilities included a four-year medical college and cancer center.
Sheridan was also chair of a Camden non-profit, Cooper's Ferry Partnership (CFP), that owned parcels of land in the city that it attempted to redevelop. The largest was a stretch of the city's waterfront called L3, with some existing state-owned buildings, which had the potential to become highly valuable office space in the wake of a state law allowing tax breaks for development in Camden in order to create jobs in the economically distressed city, the state's poorest. In early 2014 a power struggle between Norcross and CFP leadership over a redevelopment proposal led to the ouster of some of the latter and L3 being sold to private developers closely allied with the Norcross family, an outcome Sheridan had tried to prevent. By the middle of 2014, Sheridan was being pressured to recuse himself from any involvement in the deal over allegations that his role as the CEO of both the hospital and CFP created a conflict of interest, an allegation his son Mark says was greatly exaggerated as the hospital had discussed merely renting space at L3, not buying any of it.
Deaths.
Shortly before dawn on September 28, 2014, local police and firefighters responded to a report of flames at the Sheridan residence on Meadow Run Drive. Smoke was coming from one area of the second floor that turned out to be the master bedroom. After entering through the unlocked front door, the firefighters went upstairs and easily put out the fire, fueled by gasoline that had been poured on the floor as an accelerant. Also on the floor, they found the bodies of John and Joyce Sheridan, lying face up. John was pronounced dead at the scene, as was Joyce after her body was taken to University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro.
The can from which the gas had been poured was also nearby, along with matches and knives. A heavy wooden armoire, partially consumed by the fire, had fallen across John's body, blocking the door and breaking several of his ribs; his wife had suffered first- and second-degree burns over many parts of her body. Both bodies exhibited stab wounds.
Joyce had been stabbed 12 times, mostly on her head and hands; police photographer Barry Jansen described her appearance as "mutilated". One wound that pierced her aorta was found to be lethal; her death was thus called a homicide. John had only five such wounds, mostly on his neck and torso; one of the former had pierced his jugular vein and would have eventually been fatal without medical attention. Soot was found in John's lungs during the autopsy along with elevated carbon monoxide levels in his blood, suggesting he had been alive when the fire started. The medical examiner deferred listing a cause of death "pending further investigation."
A week later, a memorial service was held for John and Joyce at Patriot's Theater at the Trenton War Memorial. The surviving family was joined by hundreds of mourners, including Governor Christie and his predecessors Thomas Kean, Christie Whitman and Democrat Jim Florio. Many of the public officials present praised John Sheridan's career and accomplishments. "The city of Camden is a different place because of his vision," Norcross said. The actual funeral was private. At the time, full details of how the couple died had not been made public. It was known that they had died in a fire; shortly before the service it was disclosed that the fire had been set. Whitman recalled later that rumors were actively circulating: "This was just not the John and Joyce any of us knew."
Investigation.
Investigators clashed with the Sheridan family from the morning the bodies were found. Responding firefighters notified Matt Sheridan, who lived at the house with his parents but was away on a fishing trip at Fishers Island, New York, from which he began making his own way home. Matt in turn called his twin brother Mark, who at the time was celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife at a hotel on New York City's Upper East Side. When Mark and his wife arrived they found his parents' house surrounded with crime scene tape and were denied entry.
On Mark's way to Skillman, he picked up his brother Tim and learned that Somerset County prosecutor Geoffrey Soriano was on the scene. Since he did not know Soriano personally, he called Chris Porrino, chief counsel to Governor Christie (and later the state's attorney general), who had appointed Soriano. Mark knew Porrino from his own work as chief counsel for the state GOP. Soriano called Mark as he arrived at the scene and told him that the fire appeared to be arson and that his parents had been fatally stabbed.
The Sheridan sons went to the police station for interviews. According to Mark, a couple of hours later, detectives inexplicably asked Matt if they could search his car, and he consented. They found a small quantity of cocaine inside. Matt was also in possession of a digital scale and plastic bags coated with white powder on the inside. Police put him under arrest but did not charge him at that time.
The Sheridans, all of whom made their way to the scene of the fire that morning, assumed that their parents had been killed by an intruder and that police would be searching for who might have done it. But within a week, Soriano's office made statements reassuring the public that there was no danger of further attacks. "We are quite confident that there exists no threat to either the immediate neighborhood or to the local community," his spokesman said. At a meeting with the brothers, Soriano and an assistant explained how investigators had concluded that murder-suicide was the most likely explanation for the couple's deaths. John's body, he told Mark, had hesitation wounds, commonly found on people committing suicide by cutting themselves. He also stated that detectives would be looking through the couple's phones, emails and other records for evidence of extramarital affairs, financial problems or domestic violence that might explain a murder-suicide, and which he believed from his experience would turn up.
All the Sheridan sons found the theory highly doubtful. They knew their parents well and had seen no sign of any issues between them that might have led to violence. Mark recalled being the only one of them defending Soriano, as he himself was "part of the system" and still wanted to give the prosecutor the benefit of the doubt: "I was probably the most naïve of all about that stuff."
Mark said later that John had bought new suits and dress shirts, suggesting he had no immediate plans to end his life; John had also had a FaceTime video chat with one of his grandchildren at 5 p.m. the evening before his death and two hours later sent a detailed email to colleagues in preparation for an upcoming meeting. Joyce had also begun putting Halloween decorations on the interior and exterior of the house, as she did every year. Montgomery Township police records showed only one emergency call from the Sheridan house during the thirty-seven years the couple lived there, in response to a fall by Joyce in which she injured her hip.
After Soriano suggested they might want to have a second autopsy done privately since the county medical examiner's office "wasn't very good", according to Mark, the Sheridans hired Michael Baden, a well-known former forensic pathologist who had been the chief medical examiner for New York City and had hosted HBO's "Autopsy", to assist and consult with deputy state medical examiner Eddy Lilavois. Baden and Lilavois agreed that the stab wounds to both bodies had been caused by the same knife. They could not determine whether that knife was one of the two recovered at the scene, both kitchen knives. One, in fact, was designed for slicing bread and therefore had a serrated blade with a rounded tip, features that would not have made it the best choice for stabbing someone. It was likelier that it had been a third knife which had perhaps not yet been found.
In addition to going through the Sheridans' records, detectives interviewed 180 friends, family and co-workers. Those efforts turned up nothing suggesting any major issues with either spouse that could have prompted the crime. The only sign that either of them might have had some reason to be unhappy was from John's job. According to Cooper's chief counsel, Gary Lesneski, John was worried about the effect an upcoming state report on high fatality rates at the hospital's cardiac unit, which they expected to be very negative, might have. But Lesneski said he had left it as a work issue for the weekend, and one of his last emails, a lengthy response to a question from Norcross written the evening before the fire, was well-composed and