200+ New Jersey Residents: Re-Open Sheridan Investigation

A Montgomery Township police officer sits in front of the partially burned home of John and Joyce Sheridan early Monday, Sept. 29, 2014, in Montgomery Township, N.J.

Three former New Jersey governors — Tom Kean, Jim Florio and Christine Whitman — are among signers of an open letter asking authorities to re-open the investigation into the 2014 deaths of Cooper Health System CEO John Sheridan and his wife, Joyce.

“The only truth in this terrible tragedy is that no one knows what happened on that September morning — not us, not the medical examiner, not the prosecutor,” the letter reads.

The Sheridans were found dead in their Somerset County home after a fire in September 2014. That March, authorities ruled the deaths a murder suicide, saying John Sheridan had stabbed his wife to death before the fire. Both were found with multiple stab wounds.

But the Sheridans’ sons have long disagreed with that ruling, and two independent investigators who studied the home at the request of the Inquirer said it looked more like a double murder. The open letter was first reported on by the Inquirer earlier Wednesday.

John Sheridan.

“We support the Sheridan family’s efforts to re-open the investigation into the murder of their parents by offering a substantial financial reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of John and Joyce’s killer(s),” the open letter reads. “But most of all we believe that John Sheridan — through his personal and professional life in New Jersey — earned the right to have his life and death assessed competently and accurately. At a minimum, that requires that the cause of death be changed by the medical examiner from suicide to undetermined.”

In addition to the three former governors, other signees include former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein, Cooper University Health Care Chairman George E. Norcross III and scores of friends of the couple.

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