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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In 2014, a prominent couple from New Jersey was found brutally killed inside their home. They each suffered multiple stab wounds and the house had been almost burned down to the ground.
But after the police wrapped up their investigation, they believed the couple died in a murder-suicide plot. However, those close to the Sheridans disagree they would have done something like this. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 228. The unexplained deaths of John and Joyce Sheridan. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Before we get to the episode, we've got two new Patreon supporters this week, Gaylene W. and Vicky. Thank you both so much. Now, let's get to this week's episode. This week's episode takes us to Skillman, New Jersey, an unincorporated part of Montgomery Township, a short distance from Princeton.
In 2014, John Sheridan, a former senior partner for a large law firm turned hospital executive, lived there with his wife, Joyce Sheridan. The couple had lived in the same house for the past 30 years and had four adult sons, Matthew, Dan, Tim, and Mark. In 2005, John became the CEO of Cooper University Hospital, the county's largest employer. Before that, he had a long career in politics.
As a lifetime Republican, he became friends with some of the state's most prominent political figures, including Chris Christie and Christine Todd Whitman. At one point, he even served on the transition teams for both of them. By 2014, he was earning well over $1 million a year and looking forward to retirement. His wife, Joyce, was a retired history teacher who loved antiques.
After retiring from teaching, she ran a small antique shop in town. But in 2014, Joyce's health wasn't in the best shape. On top of joint issues, she was also recovering from gastric bypass surgery and another procedure to fuse vertebrae in her neck. Besides a few minor health issues, John and Joyce Sheridan were certainly what you would describe as your well-connected upper-class couple.
They were wealthy, well-liked, gave to charity, and were undoubtedly successful. So when they mysteriously died in September 2014, inside the home they shared together for over 30 years, no one could quite understand why or who was responsible. And to this day, there are still so many more questions than answers.
At 6.13 a.m. on September 20, 2014, one of the neighbors called 911 to report John and Joyce's house was on fire. While on the phone with 911, the neighbor went over to the house and tried opening the front door, but they weren't able to get inside. He could hear some strange noises that sounded like a struggle was coming from inside the house, but he wasn't sure. All he could really do was wait for help to get there.
By the time Montgomery Township firefighters got to the house on Meadow Run Drive four minutes later, there wasn't much they could do but focus on putting out the fire. Once it was contained, first responders went inside the house up to the master bedroom because that's where most of the smoke was coming from, but they couldn't open it because a large piece of furniture was blocking the door. They tried calling out the Sheridans' names but got no response.
But once they managed to get inside, they found two bodies on the floor. John Sheridan was pronounced dead at the scene, and his wife Joyce died later on at the hospital. The police now had a double-death investigation on their hands. It's definitely not every day that a prominent couple like the Sheridans both end up dead inside their burned house. So they needed to figure out exactly what they were dealing with.
Was this an accidental fire and they just couldn't get out in time? Or did something else happen? Those answers came pretty much from the moment they got there. The police knew that this wasn't your typical fatal house fire, and here's why. For starters, the fire originated in the couple's master bedroom, and there were obvious signs of arson and foul play.
Next to their bodies, the police found an empty gas can, matches, and two knives. Second came the injuries themselves. Joyce's body was found lying face up on the floor just left of the couple's bed. She had multiple stab wounds to her face, chest, and neck, with second and third degree burns covering most of her body. She also had several smaller cuts on her arms and hands, suggesting defensive wounds.
John also had several stab wounds, and his body was found on the ground underneath a heavy wooden armor that had been set on fire and was blocking the door. He also had several broken ribs. But despite these obvious signs of foul play, the authorities didn't immediately release their causes of deaths, leading many people to only wonder what was really at play.
One week after their deaths, a memorial service was held for the couple at Patriots Theater at the Trenton War Memorial in Mercer County, New Jersey. Hundreds of people showed up, including many high-ranking politicians like New Jersey Governor Christie and his predecessors, Thomas Keene, Christie Whitman, and Jim Florio. But the mood at the funeral was just off. Not only were people there to come together and mourn the loss of people like John and Joyce Sheridan,
but everyone seemed to be there looking for answers to so many unanswered questions. The authorities had been very tight-lipped about what they found inside the house, and all most people really knew was that they died in a house fire. They had absolutely no idea about the stab wounds, knives found at the scene, or really anything else. Finally, over two weeks later, on October 17th, the police went public with some information about their initial investigation.
Somerset County District Attorney Jeffrey Serrano announced that they felt confident that none of the Sheridan's four adult sons had anything to do with it. According to them, they all had alibis that checked out and weren't in the New Jersey area when the fire started. Cell phone activity also supported this.
But oddly enough, not long after this public announcement, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Matt Sheridan, one of the sons, was actually arrested on the day of the fire but was never charged with anything. Matt was 40 years old at the time and would sometimes stay at his parents' house in New Jersey. On the day of the fire, he apparently agreed to go down to the police station to be questioned.
And while he was there, he let authorities search his car. Inside, they found a small amount of cocaine, a digital scale, and plastic bags coated with white powder. So Matt was placed under arrest that same day, but it had nothing to do with his parents' deaths. And no actual criminal charges were ever filed against him, at least not then.
It's also important to mention here that he was several miles away in New York when the fire was reported, so he was officially cleared. Right from the beginning, it seemed like the authorities and the Sheridan family were at odds with one another. The Sheridans all seemed to suspect that an intruder broke into the house, murdered John and Joyce, and then set the place on fire.
But within only one week of what happened, the authorities made statements reassuring the public that there was no danger. In one public statement, they even said, quote, we are confident that there exists no threat to either the immediate neighborhood or the local community, end quote. So if there was no threat to the community, then what did the police seem to think happened?
Well, according to them, this was a clear case of murder-suicide. And here's why. The first clue was that there were no signs of forced entry at the house.
Now, I know we always talk about how important this is for investigators. Without any broken windows or broken doors, it usually suggests that someone from inside the house committed the crime or that the victims knew their killer and let them inside. So in the case of the Sheridans, the lack of forced entry suggested to the authorities that the person responsible was already inside.
Now, when firefighters first got to the house, almost every door except for the garage door was unlocked. Three doors at the rear of the house and the front door were also unlocked. The windows were all closed with no signs of attempted forced entry, and everything stored underneath or around the windows were left completely untouched.
The only window that was damaged were those on the second floor of the house, and those were broken by firefighters simply trying to put out the fire. None of the Sheridan's neighbors reported seeing anything suspicious that morning either. The police conducted a complete canvas of the neighborhood and didn't find anything. There were no reports of suspicious people or cars.
However, it is really worth mentioning here that neither Joyce nor John were known to lock their doors. They lived in a safe neighborhood and had no reason to believe that something like this would ever happen to them. So just because there weren't any signs of forced entry doesn't necessarily rule everything out.
Now, the next thing was that all of Joyce and John's personal items were found still inside the house. So it didn't appear to be any type of robbery. Joyce still had all of her jewelry on, including a ring on her right ring finger. She had earrings in both of her ears as well as a necklace.
Six folds of cash, which totaled over $950, were found inside of John's wallet, and his watch and cell phone were still sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Joyce's iPad was also still on the bedroom floor. More convincing than all of that was the forensic evidence.
Autopsies performed on John and Joyce were done at the Northern Regional Medical Examiner Office on September 29th and September 30th. They revealed that Joyce had eight wounds to the head, five were incised wounds, and three were stab wounds. She also had stab wounds to her chest that severed her aorta and several cuts on her arms and hands, suggesting defensive wounds.
there was some pretty significant bruising to the back of her left hand and to her right shoulder, also suggesting she had been in a struggle. Since the medical examiner didn't find any smoke in her lungs, she was likely dead before the fire started. John's autopsy also revealed stab wounds, but his were a little bit different. He had five wounds to his torso and neck area. Two were incised wounds and three were stab wounds.
All five of them were described by the medical examiner as, quote, superficial in nature and consistent with self-infliction. In other words, the medical examiner thought that John did these wounds to himself, and some of them were what he described as hesitation wounds. In other words, wounds that are commonly found in people committing suicide by cutting themselves. It's basically their way of testing the waters.
However, one of the wounds to his neck caused a small perforation to the right jugular vein and was believed to be the fatal injury. There were no defensive wounds found anywhere on John's body. On top of the stab wounds, John had five broken ribs, two on the left side and three on the right, which the medical examiner thought was consistent with the armoire falling on top of him.
According to the autopsy reports, the elevated level of carbon monoxide in his blood and the presence of soot in his lungs suggested that he was still alive at the time the fire was started, so his cause of death was found to be sharp force injuries and smoke inhalation. What all of this suggested to the police was John killed Joyce before turning the knife on himself and setting the house on fire.
He was the one with hesitation wounds on his body, and Joyce was the one who had defensive wounds. So they thought he was the aggressor and she was the victim. Two knives were found in the master bedroom next to John's body. One of them was described as a large carving-type knife and was the knife they believed he used to stab Joyce. The second knife was a similar-to-a-bread-style kitchen knife.
and both of them came from a knife set from inside of the Sheridan's own kitchen. But, very interestingly enough, neither knife seemed to be consistent with John's stab wounds, possibly suggesting a third knife was used, but it was never recovered.
When the two knives were tested for DNA, Somerset County Prosecutor Gregory Soriano said that John's DNA, quote, could not be excluded as a possible contributor on the knife that caused Joyce's death, end quote. But this statement might be a little misleading because, according to the Sheridan's adult sons, the DNA testing on the knife was inconclusive.
The amount collected was insufficient to test for anything rather than just racial characteristics and gender of the source. So the only thing they could really determine at the state's lab was that the DNA from the knife came from a white male. So yes, the county prosecutor is correct. John cannot be excluded because he is a white male.
But he can't be definitively included as a contributor either. It is possible the DNA on the knife came from John, but it's also possible that it didn't. It's also not too surprising that his DNA would be on the knife at all because the knife belonged to the Sheridans. It was their knife. A half-empty gas can was also found in the master bedroom.
According to investigators, the can belonged to the couple and had been stored in the garage prior to the start of the fire. Testing by the State Forensic Science Lab revealed that John's DNA was found on the handle of the gas can. But that's not too much of a shock either because it was his gas can. So of course his DNA is going to be on it.
What was described as a poor pattern of gasoline was found in the master bedroom around the bed on the floor. And there was also a flattened box containing wooden matches and individual wooden matches on the floor next to John's body. The same wooden matches were found in the first floor living room next to the fireplace. So this all suggests that everything used to start the fire came from with inside the house.
On top of the knives, DNA was also collected from some of John's clothing, specifically his underwear, and when it was tested by the state's forensic science lab, the DNA turned out to be a mixed sample, and neither John nor Joyce could be excluded.
Clippings and scrapings were taken from underneath Joyce's fingernails, and DNA testing on those samples found the presence of male DNA. And once again, John couldn't be excluded. There was a small amount of blood found outside of the master bedroom, on the staircase, and on the wall against the stairs. But aside from that, and the blood found inside the master bedroom, there wasn't any blood found anywhere else in the house.
But according to the police, the blood on the staircase probably came from first responders. That's because the blood appeared to be on top of the soot marks, suggesting that the fire was started first and then the blood got there. So in theory, this was caused by first responders when they removed John and Joyce's bodies from the master bedroom and took them downstairs.
Now outside of the house, detectives searched through everything they could find to help support this murder-suicide theory. For everything to line up and make sense, they needed to figure out why John would have killed his wife and then himself. So they dug into the couple's cell phone records, emails, and any other records that might suggest problems in their marriage. They looked for evidence of an affair, financial problems, and even evidence of domestic violence.
Authorities conducted interviews with over 180 friends, family, and coworkers, but none of it really led to anything significant. They didn't find anything quote-unquote major that could have lead to something like this. The only sign that either one of them might have had a reason to be unhappy was from John's job.
Some of his co-workers described his behavior leading up to the fire as, quote, out of character, very upset, and some even described him as withdrawn. According to one of John's co-workers, John was specifically worried about the effect an upcoming state report on high death rates at his hospital's cardiac unit, which they expected to be very negative, might have.
Others, who were close to Joyce, said that she seemed worried in the days leading up to that September 28th fire because she knew something was bothering John at work, and she also noticed that his behavior and demeanor just seemed off. Neither John nor Joyce's toxicology reports were much help to investigators. Neither one showed anything unusual.
John's blood had the signs of the heart medication he took, and Joyce had a high level of prescription painkillers. But this wasn't entirely uncommon because, remember, she was experiencing some health issues around the time of her death. So these were all painkillers that were prescribed to her by her doctors, and all of the levels were considered therapeutic. All of this led the authorities to one conclusion—
On March 27, 2015, the county prosecutor officially ruled John and Joyce's death as a murder-suicide. The narrative became this. John killed Joyce, then killed himself. They didn't find a motive or a reason, but they didn't feel like they needed one. According to them, the forensic evidence at the scene simply spoke for itself.
So that was it for county officials. Case closed. Murder-suicide. But is the case really closed? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip.
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That's betterhelp.com. All four Sheridan sons were angry after the Somerset County prosecutor announced their findings of a murder-suicide. In no alternative universe did the mom and dad they knew their entire lives would do something like this.
So within just a few days of the fire, they reached out and hired a private forensic pathologist to look at the case and perform a second autopsy, Dr. Michael Bodden. Like we've talked about in so many episodes of the show, Dr. Michael Bodden is a world-renowned forensic pathologist who has worked on many high-profile cases over the years. He was also the chief medical examiner for New York City.
So it was huge to get someone like him to look at the case. On Saturday, October 4th, 2014, Dr. Bodden performed a second autopsy on John and reviewed the original autopsy report for Joyce. Now, before we talk about what Dr. Bodden found differently in his autopsy,
there was something that he and the county medical examiner both agreed on. And that was the belief that there was a third knife used, but it was never recovered. According to both of them, John's stab wounds weren't consistent with either knife found in the bedroom. So again, this suggested a third knife was used. But where was that knife? Well, we don't know. And again, it was never found.
Strange if this really was a murder-suicide. How could John manage to kill himself and then at the same time hide a third knife? Detectives went back to the house on October 5th to try and find this quote-unquote missing knife, but all they found was a piece of re-solidified metal which had apparently melted during the fire. During the original search by crime scene investigators back on September 28th,
The metal piece was found and photographed embedded in the hardwood floor next to John's body. It was sent to the New Jersey State Police Office of Forensic Sciences lab to be tested, but not much was left. All they could really determine was that the piece of metal was 2 inches wide by 6 1⁄2 inches long with a mass of about 132.5 grams.
And although the properties of the metal were consistent with a knife, they couldn't say for sure if it really was. It's also possible that the piece of metal came from the knob of the furniture that was found on top of John's body. In his report, Dr. Bodden doubted that John's injuries were self-inflicted.
Because the angle of John's neck wound was downward and slightly forward, he believed that that was more consistent with being attacked. He also argued that if John had stabbed Joyce that many times, then some of her blood should have been on him, but none was. As part of his investigation, Dr. Bodden consulted with Dr. Henry Lee, another very prominent figure in the forensic science community.
Dr. Henry Lee looked at the DNA found on the knives in the gas can. Remember, the state forensic lab said that they could not exclude John as a contributor. They also said the sample came from a white male, but that was it. While Dr. Henry Lee said he found a genetic pattern within the DNA that did not match any male member of the Sheridan family.
So this essentially excluded John and completely contradicted the state's reports. When it came to what Dr. Bodden believed happened, he said he thought it was far more likely the Sheridans were victims of a homicide. Maybe only one of them was the intended victim, or it's possible they were both targeted.
In an article by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dr. Bodden said, quote, if it's murder-suicide, it's a very unusual murder-suicide, end quote. He also said that when suicides involve fire, the suicidal person usually uses fire on themselves, not to destroy evidence.
One month after the fire, an insurance adjuster inspecting the house found a bent fireplace poker in a nearby bathroom. This was strange because there wasn't a fireplace on the house's second floor. So why would a fireplace poker be up there in the first place? The police photographed the poker during their initial investigation of the fire, but it was never collected or put into evidence.
and according to the Sheridans, this fire poker might have been used to break John's ribs, not the wooden armoire that the police claimed. Barry Jensen, the police photographer who took a picture of the poker, doesn't think that this necessarily disproves their murder-suicide theory. According to him, quote, if someone's going to hit him with a fire poker, they're going to finish the job, end quote.
He also questioned why an intruder would have gone downstairs to get it, plus the two or three knives. He wouldn't need that many weapons. He could have just used the knife or the fire poker. The Sheridans allowed a reporter from the Enquirer, Barbara Boyer, to tour the house after the deaths, and she believes it was entirely possible that an intruder could have gotten the fire poker.
Anyone entering the house from the unlocked back door would have seen it in the immediate vicinity of the fireplace and the rack poker that it was taken from. She even thought that it would make the perfect weapon of opportunity. The Sheridan's sons complained that investigators couldn't rule out an intruder without making sure there weren't any unidentified fingerprints in the house.
According to them, the police never looked for prints or trace blood anywhere throughout the house. If they had, they might have found something proving this intruder theory or something to disprove the murder-suicide theory. Not even the fire poker was tested for blood or fingerprints. At the time of the Sheridan's death, the New Jersey State Medical Examiner System was under a lot of public scrutiny.
The state didn't even have a chief medical examiner for six years because of so many issues going on. And when a chief would get the job, they either quit right away or moved on to something else. Other issues were that some of the state's counties failed to get reaccredited by the National Association of Medical Examiners, the board that oversees everything.
Even the medical examiner who performed John and Joyce's first autopsy wasn't board certified, even though he had been doing autopsies since 1997. Eddie Leavos, the medical examiner who did the parents' case, also came to work in New Jersey after resigning from the New York City Medical Examiner's Office in
following an incident where he had revised a finding of death in the case of a Queens three-year-old from homicide by blunt force trauma to natural death by brain aneurysm. But despite making the change three weeks after the original autopsy, following a review with a colleague, he failed to notify either the authorities or the child's family for almost a year.
So this was something that the Sheridan sons really took issue with, and they wondered if all the problems the department was experiencing might have had any negative effect on their parents' case. The Sheridan sons also didn't like the fact that there wasn't a chief medical examiner in office to supervise Leah Vose, the one who performed their parents' autopsies.
One mistake he apparently made was to misreport John Sheridan's height and weight on the death certificate. So if he made a mistake about something as simple and basic as that, what else might he made a mistake about? The family also didn't like how close he thought the medical examiner was to the prosecutor's office.
According to the family, the county prosecutor had multiple meetings with the medical examiner in the weeks before he released the autopsy results, and they believed that some of these meetings might have been used to help convince him to rule this as a murder-suicide. Now, not surprisingly, both the medical examiner's office and the prosecutor's office have denied all of the family's claims.
Not every forensic pathologist needs to be board certified to carry out autopsies. And both of the offices have denied any unethical relationship. In December 2014, the family submitted Dr. Bodden's report from John's second autopsy to the state's attorney general and chief medical examiner, asking that their father's cause of death be changed to undetermined.
But months went by without a response. It wasn't until the family filed a lawsuit against the state that they finally heard something back. The state's initial response was that the lawsuit should be dropped because it lacked standing, saying, quote, no legal basis exists to compel a medical examiner to change his position about a manner of death, end quote.
However, the initial three-judge panel agreed with the family and said the lawsuit did have standing. Now, two major things happened while this lawsuit was still pending in the courts. Number one, in February 2016, over 200 high-ranking state residents, including three former governors, two former attorney generals, and a former justice of the state Supreme Court,
all signed an open letter asking the medical examiner to change his findings. Number two, three months after that, a Somerset County detective filed a whistleblower lawsuit claiming, quote, that it was common knowledge among detectives assigned to the forensic unit that the Sheridan evidence was improperly collected, improperly preserved, and subsequently destroyed.
and that he had been retaliated against for complaining about this, end quote. In his whistleblower complaint, this detective claimed that most of the people working in the forensic unit that tested evidence in this case basically had no business being there. Most of them weren't experienced enough to handle a case like this.
He also claimed that parts of the Sheridan's bedding was never tested and that blood collection swabs weren't properly stored after they were collected. So that means they were most likely contaminated. The same thing could be said about evidence envelopes that weren't properly taped shut.
So all of this is to say that most of the forensic evidence might have been compromised because this detective claimed that the state's forensic lab was negligent. Well, as soon as this detective brought up some of these concerns, he was allegedly reassigned to a different unit within the police department.
Besides negligence, this whistleblower complaint also alleged detectives had lied about any search for fingerprints outside of the Sheridan's master bedroom. When asked by the county prosecutor if they had dusted the house's doorknobs and windowsills, they said they had used, quote, the flashlight technique to look for prints, end quote. But what exactly is a flashlight technique when it comes to fingerprints?
By January 2017, there had been significant progress made. The family's lawsuit was successful, and the new state medical examiner, Andrew Falzon, changed John's death from suicide to undetermined. Even though Falzon believed that John's wounds were self-inflicted, since this third knife was never recovered from the house, he didn't feel comfortable leaving a suicide ruling.
So basically, without the knife, the next best conclusion was in fact undetermined, in his opinion. He also thought that the fire probably damaged a lot of potential evidence that might have shown what really happened. It might have taken a while and a lot of public pressure, but the Sheridan's case was officially reopened five years later.
According to a May 2022 press conference, Stephen Barnes, a spokesman for the acting attorney general, said that they were reopening the investigation. But nothing else was really said beyond that. They refused to explain why they were reopening it or what new evidence they had. They just said it was now considered an open case. Not long after that press conference, there was another strange update.
In early 2022, political consultant Sean Cato pleaded guilty to the May 2014 murder of Michael Gardieri, the son of state senator James Gaudieri. Even though Sean Cato wasn't the one who actually committed the murder, Cato admitted to paying two men to kill Gaudieri inside his New Jersey apartment.
After the two men stabbed him to death, they set the apartment on fire. Well, as soon as the Sheridans heard about this, they thought it resembled their parents' case in so many ways. Most obvious was being stabbed to death and having their house set on fire. But there was something more than just that.
One of the men Sean Gadel hired for the murder was a guy named George Bratsenis, and the other was someone named Bomani Africa. Well, both of these guys had a long history of committing crimes together, and both had also been charged with robbing a bank in 2014, just days after the Sheridans were killed.
When George was arrested in Connecticut for the robbery, the police found a quote, long bladed kitchen knife inside his car, among other things connected to the bank robbery. Well, according to the Sheridan Sons, they think that this kitchen knife found inside his car might be the long lost knife that was used to stab John.
The family sent another letter to the state attorney general's office to see if the knife could be tested for DNA, but it's unclear whether anything has been done on it yet. It might be one of the reasons that the case was reopened in 2022, but nothing has been confirmed, and no definitive connection between this murder case and the Sheridan's case has ever been established.
As it stands today, the exact details surrounding the deaths of John and Joyce Sheridan remain unknown. All we really know, based on the forensic evidence, is that Joyce was murdered and her husband John's death is listed as undetermined. Was this really a murder-suicide like the police initially thought? If that's the case, where's the third knife that is supposedly still missing? And what was John's motive?
Based on interviews with the Sheridan's co-workers and friends, John's behavior did seem off in the days leading up to the fire. So, was all of that a sign of what was to come? Did an intruder break in and do this? But what was their motive? And if it was an intruder, why didn't they bring anything with them?
Everything used in the crime came from inside the Sheridan's home, including the gasoline used to start the fire and the knives. So if someone broke in because the couple never locked their front door, then they did so without bringing anything with them. They also didn't take anything. Why was that heavy piece of furniture blocking the bedroom door and on top of John's body?
Did John put it there to try and slow down first responders? Or did someone else do that with the same intention? Or did something else happen inside that home that not even the forensic evidence can explain? Not murder, not suicide, but something else. Completely inexplicable. To share your thoughts on this story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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