New Twist in Montgomery Murder Mystery

By Barbara A. Preston | April 7, 2022

Before selling their parents’ Montgomery Township home, Mark Sheridan and his brothers “arranged for pieces of blood-spattered drywall to be cut out and removed,” according to an article in New York Magazine.“ Today, that material sits in storage in a lab that does private crime-scene investigations; preserved for the day when it might be needed as evidence.” (“The Knife Twist,” New York Magazine, Feb. 2, 2022.)

A Montgomery police officer sits in a car at the Sheridan household at 49 Meadow Run Drive in September 2014.

News of a murder-for-hire case in Jersey City has given the family new hope for answers to the deaths of their parents, John and Joyce Sheridan who died on September 28, 2014. The Somerset County prosecutor’s office had concluded that John Sheridan stabbed his wife to death, set the house on fire, then used a different knife to kill himself.

John and Joyce Sheridan. John was the former NJ Transportation Commissioner, and a major figure in the state Republican Party.

The sons have always denied this conclusion, according to articles in The Montgomery News archives. Recently, the sons sent a letter to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office and the NJ Attorney General’s office. They are asking officials to review “eerily similar” parallels between their parents’ murder, and a Jersey City murder — each of which included high level political operatives, deaths by knives, and cover-up fires.

The Connection

Sean Caddle, a 44-year-old NJ campaign consultant who had prominent NJ Democratic Party members as clients, recently pleaded guilty to paying two men to kill a Jersey City man. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Caddle admitted to paying “thousands of dollars of cash” to unnamed persons on or about May 22, 2014 to kill an unnamed man in Jersey City. “

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After entering the apartment, [the hired killers] stabbed the victim to death ... and then set fire to the victim’s apartment,” according the announcement. Caddle is currently in home detention in Hamburg, Sussex County, on a $1 million bond and may face life in prison.

On March 23, a career criminal named George J. Bratsenis from Connecticut pleaded guilty to charges that he stabbed a man to death in a murder-for-hire scheme for political consultant Caddle. The victim, Michael Galdieri, was also a politico, and the son of former NJ State Sen. James Galdieri (D-Jersey City). Bratsenis, 73, told U.S. District Court Judge John Michael Vazquez that he “met with Caddle in April 2014 to arrange for the murder of Galdieri.” Bratsenis admitted he conspired with a Philadelphia man, Bomani Africa, and that the two murdered Galdieri in his Jersey City apartment on May 22, 2014.

Sheridan’s Request

Mark Sheridan’s letter asks for “a DNA sample from the knife to see if there is a match for either of my parents’ DNA” to see if it was the weapon used in the parents’ murders. The attorney general and Somerset County prosecutor had no comment.