John Sheridan (New Jersey government official)
John P. Sheridan Jr. | |
|---|---|
 John Sheridan in his later years | |
| Commissioner of New Jersey Department of Transportation | |
| In office May 19, 1982 – May 4, 1985 | |
| Governor | Thomas Kean |
| Preceded by | Anne Canby |
| Succeeded by | Roger A. Bodman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 7, 1942 New Jersey Transit. At the time of his death, he was president and chief executive officer of Cooper Health System , which has since named one of its buildings after him.
killed his wife and then himself, setting the fire to make it appear they had died that way.[2]
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.[3] In 2022 the state reopened the investigation in the wake of a similar killing that also involved some people with political connections.[4] Early lifeJohn Patrick Sheridan Jr. was born September 7, 1942, in 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.[1]
He met Joyce Mitchko, of Lincoln Park, New Jersey, three years his junior, while he was tending bar in West Orange to pay for a law school.[2] The two married in 1967. Over the next decade they would have four children, all sons: twins Mark and Matthew, Daniel and Timothy. Joyce taught social studies[2] in the Cedar Grove and South Brunswick public schools.[1] His younger brother, Peter G. Sheridan, went to St. Peter's as well, and is currently a federal judge on senior status with the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.[2] CareerAfter law school he served in the Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti, lobbying state government on behalf of the firm's clients.[1]
Sheridan had also served as counsel to the 1981 election of Thomas Kean as governor. James Weinstein, who worked for Sheridan in that position and later became Transportation Commissioner himself, recalls that Sheridan got his department's goal accomplished through "patient, lawyerly arguments based on public policy and shared interests."[2]
In 1982, New Jersey Transit, created three years earlier to take over bus services around the state that private companies could no longer provide. Sheridan completed this takeover by the end of Kean's first term in 1985; he served on NJ Transit's board for several years afterwards.[1]
After leaving that position he returned to private law practice. He was not done with politics; in 1993, when Republicans retook the governor's mansion and state legislature, he served on Christine Todd Whitman's transition team. For 25 years he served on the Carrier Clinic's board.[1]
In 2005 he left Riker Danzig, where he had become a senior partner and the firm's co-manager, to take over as president and chief executive officer of Cooper University Hospital in Camden. He and the chairman of the hospital's board, George Norcross, a leading Democratic figure in South Jersey, worked together to use their political connections and knowledge to secure favorable rulings from regulators and public financing in support of Cooper's expansion plans. Several years later, this led to the merger with the MD Anderson Cancer Center and the opening of the only four-year medical school in South Jersey, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.[2] Sheridan did not leave politics completely during his time at Cooper. Shortly after taking the job, he helped his brother 2009 election of another Republican, Chris Christie, to the governorship, he served again on the transition team.[6]
DeathShortly before dawn on September 28, 2014, local firefighters responded to a report of flames at the Sheridans' house on Meadow Run Drive in the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro.[6]
A week later, a memorial service was held for John and Joyce at Patriot's Theater at the Jim Florio. Many of the public officials present praised John Sheridan's career and accomplishments. "The city of Camden is a different place because of his vision," George Norcross said.[6] The actual funeral was private.[1]
In March 2015, Geoffrey Soriano, the county prosecutor, ruled that their death was a murder-suicide in which John, possibly motivated by despair over an upcoming negative state report on the hospital's cardiac unit, had killed Joyce, then himself, and set the fire to conceal evidence. Mark Sheridan and his brothers strongly disputed that conclusion, and hired Michael Baden to do a second autopsy. He concluded that it was highly likely that a third person killed the two, especially given that the knife which had inflicted the fatal wounds could not be found.[2][7]
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.[a] Newspaper reporting about the case revealed extensive problems with the state's medical examiner system in general and how it handled the Sheridans' case in particular.[8] 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.[9][10] 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.[11] Later in 2016 Christie refused to renew Soriano's appointment,[12] reportedly claiming he had "lost confidence" in the prosecutor.[9] In 2017 Falzon officially changed John Sheridan's death certificate to say that the manner of death was undetermined.[3] Five years later, after Sean Caddle, a Matt Platkin noting the similarities to his parents' deaths. Caddle's hired killers had stabbed Galdieri repeatedly and attempted to cover their crime by starting a fire; a knife, possibly one missing from the Sheridans' home, had been found in the truck of a man who later pleaded guilty in the Galdieri murder the day after their bodies were found. Mark asked the authorities to reopen the case and examine the knife if they could; Platkin agreed to do so in May.[4]
LegacyIn May 2017 Cooper named one of its facilities after its late head. Sheridan Pavilion is a 160,000-square-foot (15,000 m2) five-story James McGreevey, along with former acting governor and state senate president Donald DiFrancesco, attended the dedication ceremony.[13]
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