2022_09_New_Jersey_Monthly
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who admitted paying off Bratsenis and his partner, Bomani<br />
Africa, the day after Galdieri was killed.<br />
Caddle’s story is especially riveting stuff for the Democratic bigwigs<br />
for whom he consulted in Hudson County and beyond. Former<br />
state senator Ray Lesniak, who hired Caddle to run key campaigns,<br />
including his 2017 run for governor, says Caddle could be unreliable<br />
at times, but never showed signs of being a homicidal monster.<br />
Caddle, Lesniak says, infuriated him by calling him up to chat<br />
about politics after news broke of the Galdieri murder plot and<br />
his continuing cooperation with the feds. He says he hung up<br />
the phone in fury and told Caddle their relationship was over.<br />
“Caddle...was going door-to-door on our campaigns while he<br />
was plotting this guy’s murder,’’ Lesniak told <strong>New</strong> <strong>Jersey</strong> <strong>Monthly</strong><br />
in an interview. “How do you do that?”<br />
Caddle’s motive and his ongoing cooperation with federal<br />
authorities have riveted political circles as much as any topic<br />
since the deaths of Joyce and John Sheridan—just four months<br />
after Galdieri was killed.<br />
MISSED OPPORTUNITY<br />
John Sheridan was an elite lawyer who had a storybook<br />
family and home life, raising four boys in a large<br />
colonial house set amid the pastureland and country<br />
clubs outside Princeton. In his final years, he was CEO of Cooper<br />
University Health System in Camden and helped engineer a dramatic<br />
expansion of the hospital.<br />
Sheridan, like Galdieri, had found himself on the outs with<br />
local political forces. In his case, the subject was real estate and<br />
lucrative state subsidies that were targeted for the long-suffering<br />
city of Camden.<br />
In 2014, a new state tax-break program that would eventually<br />
lavish more than $1 billion on the city attracted companies from<br />
all over <strong>New</strong> <strong>Jersey</strong> to consider new projects in Camden and its<br />
MYSTERY Investigators<br />
outside the<br />
apartment of Michael<br />
Galdieri, who was found<br />
stabbed to death inside<br />
his home in May 2014.<br />
run-down waterfront on the Delaware River.<br />
At the head of this wave was Sheridan’s employer, Cooper<br />
Medical System, an ever-expanding entity that was a bright<br />
spot in a blighted city.<br />
In addition to working as Cooper’s chief, Sheridan volunteered<br />
as an unpaid director for Camden’s oldest and most respected<br />
community-development group, the Cooper’s Ferry Partnership,<br />
a nonprofit that was also looking to use the new tax subsidies to<br />
buy property on the waterfront.<br />
Sheridan suddenly found himself caught up in what became<br />
a massive tug-of-war between two powerful entities to control<br />
a critical—and potentially lucrative—chunk of Camden.<br />
The two sides were tussling over the right to purchase and<br />
develop a business park located across from Philadelphia.<br />
Sheridan says the final months of his father’s life were spent<br />
entangled in strife between these formidable local competitors.<br />
At certain points, he says, his father’s job was at risk as he<br />
navigated the treacherous waters. John’s brilliant career was in<br />
danger of ending in disappointment and discord.<br />
“This whole conflict very much affected my father near the<br />
end of his life. He was under a lot of stress,’’ Sheridan says. “You<br />
have to remember that Camden in 2014 was on the brink of a<br />
huge building spree that would be financed with those tax breaks.<br />
Think of all the money at stake. Millions of dollars were changing<br />
hands. My father was in the middle of all that.’’<br />
When investigators arrived at the Sheridan house the morning<br />
after the deaths, they found a tumble of documents spread out<br />
on the dining room table. Those documents—handwritten notes,<br />
memos and copies of emails—were all part of the development<br />
saga that had cast anxiety over the final months of John Sheridan.<br />
Sheridan keeps carefully collated copies of the paper trail in a<br />
thick file close at hand. Paging through it, he shakes his head.<br />
The documents show a man in distress, a man seeking just<br />
solutions to a local land dispute that appeared to have grown<br />
personal and vindictive. At points, John appears to be writing<br />
memos to himself as he tries to sort out his responsibilities between<br />
the competing factions. At best, it is a fragmented paper<br />
trail, but it offers a tantalizing glimpse of the thorny issues that<br />
dominated the final months of Sheridan’s life.<br />
“The investigators wanted to know what might have been<br />
bothering my father at the end; what was going on with him,’’ he<br />
says. “This—this was it. But they never cared about looking into<br />
it. They never really pursued it.”<br />
Now that the case is re-opened, investigators have to decide how<br />
far they will go to reconstruct John’s final days. Matt Plakin, <strong>New</strong><br />
<strong>Jersey</strong>’s acting attorney general, isn’t giving interviews.<br />
Who will investigators talk to? How far will they delve into the<br />
fraught territory of political power struggles and real estate squabbles?<br />
Whatever path investigators follow, it’s a good bet they’ll start<br />
with the clues John left on his dining room table.<br />
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?<br />
The four Sheridan brothers have spent eight<br />
frustrating years seeking answers to the mysteries<br />
that still hang over their parents’ deaths. What<br />
Continued on page 116<br />
SEPTEMBER <strong>2022</strong> NEW JERSEY MONTHLY 77