John Sheridan

His death has been a matter of some controversy. Firefighters responding to a fire at his Skillman home in the early morning found Sheridan and his wife Joyce dead in an upstairs room. Both bodies had been stabbed multiple times; an autopsy found John Sheridan had been alive after the fire started. After a lengthy investigation the Somerset County prosecutor ruled that John Sheridan had killed his wife and then himself, setting the fire to make it appear they had died that way.

Sheridan's four sons, the oldest of whom had followed his father's political footsteps and served as chief counsel to the New Jersey Republican Party, vigorously disputed the finding. After a court challenge they brought, in 2017 the state's chief medical examiner overruled the prosecutor and said that while John Sheridan's proximate cause of death was the combined effect of the stab wounds he suffered and smoke inhalation, it could not be determined if he had stabbed himself or not. In 2022 the state reopened the investigation in the wake of a similar killing that also involved some people with political connections.

Early life John Patrick Sheridan Jr. was born September 7, 1942, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Rita and John P. Sheridan. The family moved to Northern New Jersey in childhood, and John Jr. eventually graduated from Seton Hall Preparatory School, then in South Orange. He graduated from St. Peter's College (now St. Peter's University) in Jersey City in 1964 and Rutgers Law School in 1967. Returning to civilian life, he went to work in the administration of Republican New Jersey Governor William T. Cahill as a deputy attorney general and, later, assistant counsel to Cahill. Later in the decade, after Cahill's two terms had ended and Democrat Brendan Byrne was elected governor, he would serve as counsel to the Republicans, then the minority party, in the State Senate. Outside of government, he ran the Trenton office of the Morristown law firm Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti, lobbying state government on behalf of the firm's clients.

Death

Shortly before dawn on September 28, 2014, local firefighters responded to a report of flames at the Sheridans' house on Meadow Run Drive in the Skillman section of Montgomery Township, in southwestern Somerset County. Smoke was coming from one area of the second floor that turned out to be the master bedroom. After entering through the unlocked front door, the firefighters went upstairs and easily put out the fire, fueled by gasoline that had been poured on the floor as an accelerant. Also on the floor, they found the bodies of John and Joyce, lying face up. John was pronounced dead at the scene,

While they did not dispute that their father had died of the stab wounds and smoke inhalation, the Sheridan brothers campaigned vigorously to have John Sheridan's manner of death changed to "undetermined" from suicide, based on Baden's recommendation, and for Soriano to not be reappointed county prosecutor when his term expired. (In New Jersey, unlike most other states, the chief lawyer responsible for prosecuting criminal offenses at the county level is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate, to serve a five-year term, rather than being elected by the voters of the county.) A detective who had investigated the case early on claimed in a suit, later dismissed, against the prosecutor's office that he had been retaliated against after complaining that other detectives mishandled and even threw away key evidence in the case.

After Governor Christie appointed a new state medical examiner, Andrew Falzon, in 2016, 200 politically prominent New Jerseyans, including three former governors and two former attorneys general, wrote the new medical examiner an open letter asking that John Sheridan's death certificate be amended as his family wanted. Later in 2016 Christie refused to renew Soriano's appointment, reportedly claiming he had "lost confidence" in the prosecutor.