A year after John Sheridan and his wife died, family still seeking answers

Normally, around this time, the Sheridan family prepared for Halloween, just as Joyce Sheridan insisted.

Elaborate decorations - centered on a 300-piece Halloween village - filled the family's home in Somerset County, N.J.

She threw a massive bash for her former teaching colleagues, and hosted an annual family dinner alongside her husband, John P. Sheridan Jr., the CEO of Cooper University Health System.

"It was something she loved, and it was part punishment for the rest of us," said Matt Sheridan.

"Which made her like it even more," said his brother Mark, the two sharing the easy rapport and running jokes of twins.

A year ago, as Halloween decorating was underway, the couple were found in their bedroom with numerous stab wounds. A fire had been set.

Their deaths shocked the elite political and social circles the couple had traveled in for decades, a feeling only compounded - after a six-month investigation - when authorities concluded that the mild-mannered John Sheridan had killed his wife and then himself.

The brothers are convinced that both parents were murdered, and that authorities were incompetent, ignored evidence, and botched the investigation. Jack Bennett, spokesman for the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office, said the prosecutor would not answer questions, and emailed "no comment" to questions about the investigation.

Matt and Mark Sheridan, 41, recently spoke to The Inquirer, describing a year of grieving and battling investigators. Matt had lived with his parents for the last few years, helping his mother as she struggled with health issues, including spinal surgery. Now he lives alone in another house in Montgomery Township.

"Nothing is the same," Matt Sheridan said, his eyes filling with tears. "There's not one thing that was the same as it was this time last year."

Mark Sheridan's daughter and son sometimes cry when their grandparents aren't at lacrosse games or horse-riding competitions. She doted over them and sparked her granddaughter's interest in riding out of her own love of horses. Now, the children awaken from nightmares.

The year also has had happy milestones. Brother Dan, 39, got married in August. Tim, 36, is engaged.

Through it all, the four brothers have laughed and cried while sorting through their parents' belongings, including baby clothes, baseball cards, and two cribs they used as infants.

"Spending a year going through the last 47 years of their lives wasn't easy," Matt said.

The brothers have always been close, but now, rarely a day goes by that they don't talk - almost always about their parents.

"It's one of those things that you're talking about it even when you're not talking about it," Matt said. "It's always there."

On Sept 28, 2014, the brothers' world turned upside down.

Matt Sheridan had been up all night, catching striped bass on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound. In the early morning, he had fallen asleep in his car when he got the first text.

"Are you OK?" a neighbor asked. Fire, police, and emergency crews were at his house.

"Everything's terrific right up until 6 o'clock in the morning," he recalled. "And all hell breaks loose."

Dan, who works for an insurance company, arrived first at his parents' home in the quiet, well-to-do suburb of Skillman. Tim, who works in construction, had FaceTimed with John and Joyce the previous night, so they could see his young son.

Mark, a partner with the prominent law firm Squire Patton Boggs and the go-to attorney for New Jersey Republicans, had taken his wife to New York to celebrate. Sept. 28 was their anniversary.

Matt finally reached Dan by phone.

"He was such a wreck that it was - there wasn't any question what was going on," Matt said.

After Matt rushed to the house, his troubles got worse. Police found a small amount of cocaine in his car. He was arrested that day but has not been indicted. The matter is still pending.

He said his parents had no unusual problems, and loved each other.

"I saw them every day. I talked to them every day," Matt said. "I ate with them most days."

The idea that John, 72, would kill Joyce, 69, "it's unfathomable," Matt said.

John Sheridan was the measured one, who advised three governors.

Mark said his father believed in the good that government could do. He spent decades in and around politics, including time as Gov. Thomas H. Kean's transportation secretary, and as a member of transition teams for Gov. Christie Whitman and Gov. Christie. He joined Cooper in 2005, and had served as the health system's CEO since 2008. He also was on the board of Cooper's Ferry Partnership in Camden.

Their father was a "sounding board" for all four brothers, Matt said. But if they asked their mother for advice, she "would tell you to shut up and do it."

She once was unafraid to tell her husband that Whitman shouldn't have called during dinner - loudly enough so the then-governor would hear.

Joyce, a retired history teacher with a quick wit and sarcasm, "gave as good as she got," Matt said. She amused their father, and the two balanced each other, the sons said.

They both loved antiquing, and time with their three grandchildren.

"They were together constantly," Matt said.

County authorities, though, said John Sheridan snapped, although they have offered no motive, and there is no history of domestic violence.

In reaching their conclusion, investigators cited more than 180 interviews, noted that they were told John Sheridan was upset days before the deaths, and said that there was nothing taken from the home.

Mark Sheridan acknowledged that his father had some business concerns in Camden. Nothing, he said, that would cause his father to kill. Nor were there marital problems, financial problems, or other issues "that could ever explain this," he said.

Most troubling, investigators never found the knife that caused John Sheridan's stab wounds, which authorities said were self-inflicted.

All along, investigators said that once they conducted a full investigation they would find someone who could "foresee this happening," Matt said.

"We asked them - 'Did you find that person?' " he said. "They did not."

As he battled a Republican-appointed prosecutor, Mark stepped down as counsel for the GOP. He said he lost the passion for politics that he had inherited from his father, and his belief in the system.

"I have no faith in it," he said. "There's certain officials within the administration and within law enforcement in New Jersey that did not do their jobs, and they should be embarrassed by it and ashamed of it."

As the family's point man for his parents' estate and dealing with investigators, Mark has compiled stacks of documents, including some crime scene photos he believes raise even more questions.

"As bad as we thought the investigation was originally, it was worse," he said. There is information that "could explain why somebody would want to hurt our parents." He declined to elaborate, and hopes the case will be reopened.

Joyce Sheridan's older brother, Peter Mitchko of Cape Coral, Fla., also does not believe that John Sheridan killed Joyce, calling Somerset's prosecutor, Geoffrey Soriano, a "political machine" who dismissed the family's concerns.

"I just can never get over it, or to a point where I can understand it, because no one has answered our questions," said Mitchko, criticizing officials for not releasing investigative records after closing the case.

The sons say they won't give up. They are seeking the full investigative file, and hired professionals, including forensic pathologist Michael Baden. They have sued to change the classification of John Sheridan's death from suicide to undetermined. The matter is pending.

Both parents, the twins believe, would tell their sons not to quit. His father, Mark said, would tell the brothers not to personalize the fight so much. As for their mother: "The words she would use would be completely unprintable," Matt said.

The brothers have sold much of their parents' antiques collection, holding on to sentimental items. Their parents' New York vacation house is for sale.

Halloween will be drastically different. The traditional family dinner has ended. Inside the fire-damaged house, Joyce's Halloween village remains where Matt and his father put it up last year - a reminder of joyful times.

But soon, the family plans to knock down the Montgomery house and sell the lot.

This year, Matt said, he doesn't know how he'll spend Halloween.

bboyer@phillynews.com

856-779-3838 @BBBoyer