N.J. political operative gets 24 years for contract killing of colleague he says was blackmailing him

NEWARK — The case had all the makings of a Hollywood thriller — and one that threatened sequels with the potential to scandalize New Jersey politics.

Sean Caddle, a prolific Democratic campaign consultant, shocked the Garden State with his confession last year that he’d hired hit men to kill a friend and former employee. His lawyer’s statements — that his client was cooperating in that and other investigations — set off a frenzy over what Caddle might tell the FBI about the powerful politicians he’d once worked for, including U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez and former State Sen. Ray Lesniak

But as a federal judge sentenced Caddle on Thursday to 24 years in prison for the murder of fellow political operative Michael Galdieri, Trenton breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Caddle’s cooperation — though “extensive” — had effectively reached its conclusion, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee M. Cortes told the court. No other indictments were likely. There remained no more shoes to drop.

In the end, the most scandalous thing to emerge from Caddle’s arrest was detail of the bizarre murder-for-hire plot that set it off in the first place.

“This is one of the most unusual and heinous crimes I’ve encountered as a judge,” U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez said as he announced the 45-year-old’s punishment. “It’s a coldhearted killing. He killed a friend.”

Caddle — a street-level political operative who’d made a name for himself in North Jersey politics as a consultant adept in the shadowy world of super PAC spending — told Vazquez last year that he’d paid $15,000 to the two contract killers who’d fatally stabbed Galdieri, 52, at his Jersey City apartment on May 22, 2014, and then later lit it ablaze.

But in the months after Caddle’s guilty plea, both he and prosecutors remained tight-lipped on the motive for the slaying.

Court papers filed in advance of Thursday’s hearing shed new light.

Galdieri had been blackmailing him, Caddle had told the FBI according to the filings, and had threatened to “go public about certain things he had seen, done and heard while working for Caddle on campaigns.”

Caddle told investigators the threat was serious enough that he felt compelled to orchestrate Galdieri’s murder or risk the end of his political career.

Caddle’s role in the slaying came to light only after the men he’d hired — Bomani Africa, 62, a former MOVE associate from Philadelphia, and George Bratsenis, 74, a septuagenarian stickup artist from Connecticut — ratted him out after being charged in a series of unrelated bank robberies in 2015.

» READ MORE: Before murder-for-hire plot that shook New Jersey, key player led a prolific criminal career

Bratsenis had told investigators he’d met Caddle through the operative’s brother after the two served time together in the same New Jersey prison. Upon his release in 2013, Bratsenis said, Caddle offered him a job working on campaigns with him and Galdieri.

But it took only months before Caddle approached him asking to have Galdieri killed. It was Bratsenis who looped in Africa to help and, after stalking Galdieri for days, they eventually attacked him — repeatedly stabbing him in the neck, head and torso — and left him dying in a pool of blood as they doused his apartment with gasoline.

» READ MORE: A North Jersey murder-for-hire is ‘eerily similar’ to the 2014 deaths of John and Joyce Sheridan, their son says

Bratsenis and Africa are now serving prison terms of 16 and 20 years, respectively, for their roles in the plot.

And though Caddle immediately confessed after being confronted and volunteered to help prosecutors investigate other crimes, Cortes said Thursday that none of the assistance he provided overshadowed the seriousness of Galdieri’s slaying.

“This was a premeditated and planned murder … done for a paltry sum of money,” the prosecutor told the court. “He was so self-obsessed that he would have an irreplaceable human life ended simply for fear for his business. There’s no amount of regret or cooperation that can make up for that.”

In this case, however, the judge noted, there didn’t appear to be much of either.

Prosecutors said Caddle sat for multiple lengthy interviews, shared hundreds of pages of documents with the FBI and made dozens of surreptitious recordings of others.

His cooperation led to one new set of charges — the indictment of Tony Teixeira, former chief of staff to New Jersey Senate president Nicholas Scutari, who admitted last year he’d conspired with Caddle to bilk money from campaigns they’d worked on together between 2014 and 2018 by overcharging for Caddle’s services. Teixeira awaits sentencing next month.

And although Caddle’s lawyer, Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., noted Thursday that his client had provided the government “additional assistance in other matters,” prosecutors declined to discuss them or explain why they hadn’t resulted in other cases.

They still urged the court to accept the plea deal they’d struck with Caddle to forgo the mandatory minimum life sentence that comes with a federal murder-for-hire conviction in exchange for the information he provided.

“If the government doesn’t bring a case in those instances,” Cortes said, “we don’t talk about them and we don’t talk about why.”

Vazquez seemed less impressed.

Though he agreed to accept the basic outlines of Caddle’s plea deal — sparing him a life behind bars — the judge described his stint as an FBI cooperator as “self-serving.” The 24-year sentence he imposed exceeded what prosecutors had sought by nearly a decade.

Vazquez noted that Caddle had secretly begun recording others in his orbit even before he was accused of Galdieri’s murder, suggesting he thought such tapes could help him if he were ever caught.

“He was already looking to protect his own skin,” the judge said.

Caddle, meanwhile — dressed in an untucked casual plaid shirt with no tie — said nothing when it came time for him to address the judge. He’d been confined to house arrest since he was charged in January 2022. His lawyer said Thursday they’d make “no effort to minimize, explain or excuse” Galdieri’s slaying.

Still, Vazquez concluded that Caddle had attempted to do exactly that.

When asked before sentencing what he would have done differently, Caddle told court probation officers that he “should have surrounded himself with a different class of people with higher moral character,” the judge said.

And yet, Vazquez scoffed, “it was Mr. Caddle’s idea to have his friend killed because Mr. Caddle didn’t want to be exposed.”

And after all the talk about who else his cooperation might help put in jail, it was ultimately Caddle who left Thursday’s hearing escorted by U.S. Marshals, his wrists locked in handcuffs and his future foreclosed by a nearly quarter-century prison sentence.