Plea in Murder-for-Hire Plot Revives Questions About 2 Unsolved Deaths

At dawn on Sept. 28, 2014, John Sheridan and his wife, Joyce, were found dead in their home north of Princeton, N.J. They had been stabbed, and a gasoline-fueled fire had been set in the bedroom near their bodies.

At the time of his death, Mr. Sheridan, 72, a former New Jersey transportation commissioner with close ties to several of the state’s governors, was the president and chief executive of Cooper Health System, which operates a major medical center in Camden, N.J. He and his wife had been married 47 years.

A county prosecutor ruled the deaths a murder-suicide. But the couple’s four sons objected strongly, highlighting what they said were damning gaps in the investigation. Three former New Jersey governors were among 200 people to sign a letter saying there were “compelling reasons” to reopen the case. In 2017, a state medical examiner reversed the murder-suicide finding and said the manner of death was inconclusive.

The case remains unsolved, but it bubbled back up in an unusual way on Friday, when one of the couple’s sons urged New Jersey authorities to revisit it in light of newly public details about another 2014 death he called “eerily similar.”

The new details emerged last week when Sean Caddle, a veteran New Jersey political consultant, pleaded guilty to hiring two men to kill an associate, Michael Galdieri. Mr. Galdieri was found fatally stabbed in May 2014 in his Jersey City apartment, where a fire had been set.

“As you may be aware,” the son, Mark D. Sheridan, noted in a letter to New Jersey’s acting attorney general and the Somerset County prosecutor, “those facts are eerily similar to the circumstances surrounding the death of my parents.”

Mr. Sheridan, a lawyer in private practice, said that Mr. Caddle’s admission justified the skepticism he and his brothers have long harbored toward official explanations for his parents’ deaths.

“Your offices all but laughed at my family’s suggestion that my parents’ deaths were anything other than a murder-suicide,” he wrote. “Indeed, both offices openly mocked the idea of a killing for hire involving a stabbing with a fire set to destroy evidence.”

Mr. Sheridan declined further comment when contacted by email.

A spokesman for the acting attorney general, Andrew J. Bruck, said the office had received the letter but declined further comment. Officials with the Somerset County prosecutor’s office did not return calls.

Mr. Sheridan asked in his letter that the authorities locate and test what a federal court filing describes as a “long-blade butcher’s knife” recovered on Sept. 29, 2014 — the day after his parents’ bodies were found — by Trumbull, Conn., police officers investigating a bank robbery there.

“The Somerset County Prosecutor’s office inquired of my brothers and me multiple times regarding a knife that was missing from the knife block in the kitchen,” Mr. Sheridan wrote. He suggested prosecutors obtain DNA evidence from the knife found in Connecticut to determine whether it is linked to his parents’ deaths.

Mr. Sheridan learned of the Connecticut knife amid news coverage of Mr. Caddle’s plea: The man in whose possession it was found in September 2014, George Bratsenis, was identified by Mr. Caddle as one of the men he hired to kill Mr. Galdieri, according to a transcript of his plea hearing.

The other man, Bomani Africa, named Mr. Bratsenis as his accomplice while pleading guilty to his role in the killing last week, a court transcript shows.

Lawyers for Mr. Bratsenis, who has not been charged in the case, and Mr. Africa did not return calls seeking comment.

It is unclear how Mr. Caddle came to hire the two men, who he says traveled from Connecticut and Philadelphia to commit the murder, or why he wanted Mr. Galdieri, a 52-year-old son and grandson of onetime state lawmakers, killed.

Also unclear is when federal investigators took over the investigation. A spokeswoman for the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office referred questions to the U.S. attorney’s office in Newark. A spokesman there did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Bratsenis, 73, and Mr. Africa, 61, have lengthy criminal histories that include numerous robberies, court and prison records show. Both are currently awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty several years ago to charges stemming from the Trumbull bank robbery, according to court records.

Mr. Bratsenis, a Connecticut native, and Mr. Africa, who was born in Paterson, N.J., have been incarcerated at various federal and state prisons. They were on the same cell block at one penitentiary, New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, for seven years and, according to prosecutors, formed a criminal bond.

“Either during their time in prison or soon after both were released,” one court filing says, the two men “planned to rob banks together.”

Mr. Sheridan’s call to revisit his parents’ death was just one piece of the fallout from Mr. Caddle’s admission. Another was the disclosure in court by his lawyer that Mr. Caddle has been cooperating with the F.B.I. in an “important investigation.”

“You know he’s signed on as a cooperating witness,” the lawyer, Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., told a federal judge while arguing for favorable bail terms at Mr. Caddle’s Jan. 25 plea proceeding, according to a transcript.

“I don’t want to place a lot of detail on this record,” Mr. Jacobs added. “I will simply leave it at this: As recently as today, he has been working, collaborating, with the F.B.I. in developing an important investigation.”

Mr. Jacobs, a South Jersey defense lawyer whose high-profile clients have included accused gangsters like the reputed Philadelphia crime boss Joseph Merlino, declined to elaborate when contacted by phone.

Mr. Caddle’s plea took those who know him by surprise. The revelation of his agreement with the government caused speculation to swirl in New Jersey political circles about where his cooperation might lead.

Born in Jersey City, Mr. Caddle grew up to become a fixture in the rough-and-tumble world of North Jersey politics. His clients have included Democrats in local, state and federal races, among them the retired State Senator Raymond Lesniak and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. More recently, he worked on a failed 2020 Atlantic City referendum pushed by Mr. Lesniak, casino owners and others to alter the city’s governing structure.

Mr. Galdieri’s sister declined on behalf of his family to comment on Mr. Caddle’s plea last week, but his brother, Richie, addressed Mr. Caddle directly on social media in bitter terms.

“You hugged me and cried with me and my family,” he wrote on Facebook. “The whole time it was you.”

After pleading guilty, Mr. Caddle, 44, was released to home confinement and ordered to wear an ankle monitor. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 7. A news release announcing the plea said he faced the possibility of life in prison, but his plea agreement shows that prosecutors have agreed to recommend a sentence of 12 ½ to 25 years if he satisfies its terms.

Mr. Caddle is married, has three children and lives in a townhouse in Hamburg, N.J., near the state’s northern border with New York, according to the transcript of his plea hearing. He told the judge he was taking medicines for anxiety and to wean himself from an opioid addiction.

As part of his bail argument, Mr. Jacobs told the judge that Mr. Caddle — who admitted paying thousands of dollars to have Mr. Galdieri killed — was a “pauper” with a “history of liens and judgments” and pending debts that included “a couple months on a car, a couple months on rent.”

“He’s broke,” Mr. Jacobs explained, “and it takes money to flee, is my point.”

Kitty Bennett, Sheelagh McNeill and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.