2022_09_New_Jersey_Monthly

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