2022_09_New_Jersey_Monthly

sheridan case
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really happened in their final, desperate
moments? How had the county detectives
who investigated the case allegedly
botched things so badly, failing to dust for
fingerprints, discounting blood spatter in a
back hallway, missing a fireplace poker that
matched bruises on their father?
There were allegedly so many missteps,
so many omissions and missed opportunities
by local lawmen and medical examiners
that the state was eventually compelled
to retract its official finding that John had
murdered his wife and then himself, somehow
managing to set fire to the bedroom
and pull a massive armoire on top of himself
at the same time.
“Undetermined” became the official
designation for the cause of John's death,
while Joyce’s death remained classified
as a homicide.
John and Joyce Sheridan had been married
for 47 years when they were found
dead in their two-story ’70s-era colonial
home in the well-heeled section of Montgomery
Township, just north of Princeton.
By all accounts, they had been happily
married. Joyce was a public school teacher
who took time off to raise their boys. The
couple had many friends and spent a lot of
their time hunting for antiques.
It was a beautiful, warm and sunny morning
on September 28, 2014, when a neighbor
called police after spotting smoke coming
out of a second-floor front window of the
Sheridan house.
When firefighters arrived, they found a
horrific scene. The couple’s bodies were
sprawled on the floor of the main bedroom.
They had both been stabbed to death, and
an armoire was lying across John. The
room had been set on fire.
Police called all four adult Sheridan sons
to come home. When Sheridan, the eldest
of the brothers, arrived at the scene, the
house was surrounded by emergency responders,
and he was not allowed inside.
When Sheridan learned that the Somerset
County Prosecutor's Office was considering
calling the case a murder-suicide, he
knew right away that they had to be wrong.
To his knowledge, there was nothing in
his parents’ lives that could have led to a
murder-suicide: they were happily married
and had no financial problems, no affairs
and no issues with addiction.
“I think my parents were murdered;
there’s nothing to suggest otherwise,” he
says. “I don’t know if there’s a connection
with the Galdieri murder, but what struck
me was the similarities between the two
crimes. In both cases, they were stabbed
to death and the rooms were set on fire.”
Joyce had been stabbed 12 times in the
head, chest and hands; they were obviously
defensive wounds. Sheridan says that not a
drop of Joyce’s blood was found on his father,
even though blood spatter from his mother
was found 6-9 feet away from her body.
“It would seem to be nearly impossible
for that to happen if he did it,” he says.
John had five stab wounds, shallow cuts
to his neck and torso. County investigators
believed that the cuts resembled so-called
hesitation wounds similar to those found
on people trying to commit suicide, according
to the prosecutor. Investigators
apparently came to the conclusion within
days that John had killed his wife before
committing suicide.
When the prosecutor’s office called him
and his brothers in for a meeting to explain
their belief that the killings were a murdersuicide,
the discussion grew heated, Sheridan
says. The investigators then demanded
DNA samples from all the brothers, even
though police had already checked their
telephones, E-ZPass, and credit card records
and had found nothing to implicate
the children in their parents’ deaths.
“The county had their mind made up
right away that it was a murder-suicide, so
they never collected evidence or pursued
leads like they should have,’’ Sheridan says.
Accusations that the county investigation
was flawed mounted quickly. There
was a bloody fingerprint found outside of
the Sheridans’ bedroom that was never
explained. Nearly $1,000 in cash and valuables,
including expensive jewelry, were
left untouched in their room. The house
showed no sign of forced entry.
Within days of the deaths, the Sheridan
brothers hired forensic pathologist
Michael Baden to redo autopsies on their
parents. Baden found surprising errors,
including a cut on John's neck had penetrated
his jugular vein and likely killed him.
A weapon that matched the fatal wound,
however, was never found. A county investigator
who took part in the Sheridan
probe later filed a whistleblower lawsuit,
claiming the county had made serious errors
during the investigation, including
improperly collecting, preserving and subsequently
destroying evidence in the case.
The Somerset prosecutor’s office declined
to be interviewed for this story.
The whistleblower lawsuit was eventually
dismissed and the cause of John's
death was later officially changed from
suicide to undetermined. The phrase murder-suicide
connected to John still grates
on family and friends.
John Farmer Jr., a former attorney
general under Govenor Christine Todd
Whitman who was a friend to the Sheridan
family, says he feels badly that the children
have to live with the intimation that their
father was a murderer.
“Mark had to explain to his children that
his father killed his mother. There’s a lack
of empathy there. When I first spoke to
him, he was trying to process what they
told him,” says Farmer, adding that Mark
was understandably outraged about the
mistakes in the autopsy.
Farmer said the developments regarding
the Sean Caddle case and news that the
Sheridan investigation is being reopened,
gives some hope that there may finally be
answers for the whole Sheridan family.
“I don’t know if there’s a connection between
the two murders, but I do know that
the police were very dismissive,’’ Farmer
says. “Someone could have staged a murder-suicide
like that and covered it up. ”
Many murder investigations, Farmer
says, end up hitting brick walls. But, he
believes that the state should have a formal
process in cases where a murder-suicide
is suspected, and the family disputes it.
Sheridan realizes the chances of finding
out just why his parents died are slim. Too
much evidence is gone or was never collected,
he says. Too much time has passed.
But with the state’s new interest in the
case, and with the Caddle case percolating,
Sheridan has something he has not had for
years: hope and a chance for closure.
“Look, I don’t know what happened to my
parents, and I am not saying their deaths
are definitely linked to” Caddle’s hit man
or Camden, Sheridan says. “I’m just saying,
let’s finally investigate these issues the way
they should have been from the start.’’
If the recent past is any indication, the
future courses of both cases are sure to
take some intriguing twists. Caddle’s sentencing
is scheduled for early December.
Jeff Pillets, an investigative reporter, has
won numerous writing awards and was a
2008 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
116 SEPTEMBER 2022 NJMONTHLY.COM