Sheridans' sons cast new doubt on murder-suicide conclusion

The four sons of Cooper Health System CEO John P. Sheridan Jr. and his wife raised new questions Monday about their parents' death, and alleged that investigators botched the case from the beginning.

In the latest round in a mounting public campaign seeking to prove that their parents were murdered, they released a letter to Somerset County Prosecutor Geoffrey D. Soriano accusing his office of ignoring evidence and hastily determining that the deaths were a murder-suicide.

"All we want is the answers to what happened to our parents," one of the sons, Mark, said Monday during an interview at his Newark, N.J., law office. The family plans to file a lawsuit next week seeking to overturn the manner of death listed for the father.

The sons blasted Soriano for concluding that their father fatally stabbed his wife, Joyce, stabbed himself, and set the couple's bedroom on fire, when they say evidence calls such a finding into question.

Mark Sheridan said authorities disregarded evidence, misled the family and the public, and refused to turn over information requested by the family, including police reports.

Soriano, through a spokesman, declined to comment Monday. He has previously said he stood by his conclusions.

Using the 11-page letter, forensic and autopsy reports, and heated e-mails to the prosecutor - released to reporters Monday - Mark Sheridan criticized Soriano's conclusion of a murder-suicide in his parents' Montgomery Township house on Sept. 28.

John Sheridan, 72, was a former state transportation commissioner and a Republican insider whose decades of public service influenced public policy. His wife, 69, was a retired history teacher.

No weapon was found that caused John Sheridan's wounds. The autopsy reports contain no diagrams of the injuries. There is no explanation of how a right-handed man could inflict injuries to the right and left sides of his body and neck, Mark Sheridan said.

One neck wound, he said, was four inches long, extending downward. He said John Sheridan's autopsy report has an incorrect age, height, and weight.

Sheridan said it was Soriano who suggested that the family hire another expert, because he lacked confidence in the state's pathologist in an overworked system that has too few resources.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation have said top law enforcement officials, including State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes and acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman, offered whatever assistance was needed. Somerset County officials headed the investigation and concluded the morning of the fire that the deaths were a murder-suicide, the sources said.

The family's renowned forensic expert, Michael Baden, was the one who informed the family that the carving knife used to kill Joyce Sheridan was not used on John Sheridan. Mark Sheridan's letter said Baden found the wounds "could not be described as 'hesitation wounds,' " given their depth. He declined to release Baden's autopsy results, citing the possible lawsuit.

After Baden's revelation, the Sheridans called the Attorney General's Office and demanded to have investigators return to search for another weapon - though the crime scene had been released, the family's Monday letter said.

A news release issued by Soriano in late March noted a melted piece of metal, though officials did not say whether they believed it was the missing weapon. Mark Sheridan said Monday it was highly unlikely that metal was the third weapon, and more likely that it came from an armoire that toppled onto John Sheridan.

Mark Sheridan said he also requested an examination of a rolled-up rug from the master bedroom that was stained with blood, which he said could have been tested for forensic evidence and to ensure that the missing weapon was not present. The sons grew restless from the start when investigators suggested on the day the Sheridans were found that John Sheridan was responsible for the deaths.

A week after the deaths, the relationship between the sons and Soriano became testy, an Oct. 5 e-mail from Mark Sheridan to the prosecutor shows.

"It sounds to me, my family, and others that key members of the investigation team have decided what this was in spite of the fact that they had not done a thorough investigation and were/are missing key pieces of information," Sheridan wrote. "Only now are they attempting to backtrack and do an investigation they should have done in the first instance."

In a later meeting with the family, authorities insisted that John Sheridan took his own life. They then stalled the release of information, citing the need for forensic test results, according to the family.

Although the relationship between authorities and the family was tense, the sides were trying to cooperate and scheduled a meeting that included the family's private pathologist. The pathologist, however, did not attend because the Prosecutor's Office had insisted he sign a confidentiality agreement.

Early in the investigation, it appeared that thousands of dollars worth of jewelry - including a diamond tennis bracelet and an emerald ring - belonging to his mother could not be found in the home, Mark Sheridan said.

Months later, an insurance adjuster found a backpack full of jewelry in the master suite - one of numerous examples that the investigation was less than thorough, Monday's letter alleged.

"If they couldn't find a backpack full of jewelry feet from a murder scene," according to the letter, "we probably shouldn't be surprised that they didn't find the weapon used to stab our father or even small items like fingerprints, blood, or DNA."

While Joyce Sheridan's blood was not found on her husband, a blood sample tested from her husband's underwear was determined to be from both. Officials never dusted for fingerprints or had a forensic expert search for blood beyond the bedroom and stairway leading to the second floor, Mark Sheridan said.

There were small amounts of DNA under Joyce Sheridan's nails from a male, investigators reported, concluding that John Sheridan could not be ruled out.

Prosecutors also cited evidence such as DNA found on the handle of the knife they said was used to kill Joyce Sheridan. John Sheridan "could not be excluded as a possible contributor" to that DNA, officials said.

But neither can millions of other people, according to the DNA lab report. The analysis found that DNA sample could have come from 50 percent of the white male population, and from one-third of either the African American or Asian populations.

The likely reason for this ambiguity is that investigators recovered only a small amount of usable DNA from that sample, said Lawrence Presley, former director of Arcadia University's forensic science program.

Of particular interest, Mark Sheridan said, is evidence on the knife that included his mother's blood and the DNA of a white male - but not John Sheridan or his sons.

"We'll never know," Sheridan said, wondering whether it was that of an intruder, or from contamination of the scene.

The family has also underscored the lack of a clear motive or explanation for the deaths.

John Sheridan's toxicology report noted the presence of naloxone, a short-acting drug used almost exclusively in medications that treat or prevent opioid addiction or reverse an opioid overdose. But the lab tests ruled out the presence of most opioids that would be used with naloxone, including the painkillers hydromorphone and oxycodone.

The report also says the naloxone finding in John Sheridan was "not confirmed by another method."

"It doesn't look meaningful to me," said David R. Gastfriend, an expert in addiction and chief executive of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia. If the presence of naloxone had been deemed significant, Gastfriend said, additional testing would have been performed.

Several types of narcotic painkillers were found in Joyce Sheridan's blood. The lab report made no mention of naloxone in her test results.

John Sheridan also was said to have been concerned about a pending state Health Department cardiac surgery report. Of the 36 surgeons in the state who performed at least 100 heart bypass operations from 2009 to 2010, only Cooper's Richard Y. Highbloom was significantly worse than average, based on how many of his patients survived.

But health-care-quality experts say that a single finding does not indicate much about a physician's overall skill. In two previous state reports, Highbloom's patient-survival rate was in line with the state average.

Family and Cooper officials have said that they did not believe the report could have had sparked a violent episode by John Sheridan.

Some experts said they believe the family is correct in continuing to raise its questions.

"If, as a prosecutor, you are going to label someone - in this case John Sheridan - a murderer of his wife of 47 years and a suicide, and force his grieving children and grandchildren and other family members to live under that shadow, it seems to me imperative as a matter of human decency that the proofs supporting that conclusion be compelling," former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer Jr. wrote in an e-mail to The Inquirer following the conclusions by Somerset County last month.

Farmer said he considered John Sheridan a "professional friend," as the two crossed paths in their legal work - they were at the same firm from 1988 to 1990, Farmer as an associate and Sheridan as a partner - and in the state government and policy world.

"Given the complete absence of motive evidence, the fragility of the forensic evidence, and his family's lifelong knowledge of John Sheridan," Farmer wrote, "I think it is entirely reasonable for the Sheridan family to question this conclusion."

Lack of a clear motive. "There were

no health problems,

no marital problems,

no financial problems,"

the Sheridan sons say.

Overlooked evidence.

The prosecutor identified four wounds to John Sheridan, but Dr. Michael Baden, the family's private forensic expert, discovered

a fifth.

Unsupported conclusions. Their father's wounds could not have been caused by any of the weapons recovered so far, according to Baden. While the prosecutor wrote that their father could not be ruled out as the source of DNA on the knife used to kill their mother, the DNA matches roughly half of the world's men, the sons say.EndText