Sheridan heir plans suit to fight suicide ruling

Adamant that the investigation was bungled, Mark Sheridan is preparing to challenge the ruling that his father, Cooper Health System CEO John P. Sheridan Jr., fatally stabbed his wife, set their home on fire, and killed himself.

In the coming weeks, Sheridan, a prominent 41-year-old lawyer, plans to file a lawsuit in Superior Court in hopes of changing his father's manner of death, now listed as a suicide.

The legal maneuver ventures into rarely charted legal waters in New Jersey - and provides no certainty that the family will prevail in clearing their father's name, experts say.

Challenging the finding by the state Medical Examiner's Office and the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office may be not only an arduous task, but lengthy and costly. Though requests to amend death certificates are common, changing a manner-of-death finding, as in the Sheridan case, is rare.

"In my experience, requests from family members to change a manner of death on a death certificate are fairly uncommon," said Marcus Nashelsky, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners.

Last year, according to the New Jersey Department of Health, nearly 7 percent of the more than 73,000 death certificates filed were amended - some simply fixed for misspelled names, incorrect dates, or updated causes of death.

The department doesn't track how many times a manner of death has been amended, spokeswoman Donna Leusner said.

After a six-month investigation, Somerset County Prosecutor Geoffrey D. Soriano's office concluded last month that John Sheridan repeatedly stabbed his wife of 47 years, Joyce, and himself, and set fire to their master bedroom Sept. 28 in their Montgomery Township home.

Fueling the effort to overturn the suicide ruling is the contention by Mark Sheridan and his brothers, Matt, Dan, and Tim, that the investigation was "botched" and prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence for that conclusion.

"The prosecutor's job was to find the truth. Unfortunately, all the family can do is demonstrate that their conclusion is unsupported by the evidence," Mark Sheridan said. "We cannot prove alternatives because of the lack of an investigation. I wish we got to conduct the investigation, but we didn't."

Sheridan is prepared to show that his father's death should be ruled "undetermined," if not a homicide. The family is likely to provide testimony from Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired early in the case to conduct an autopsy on John Sheridan and review the one performed on Joyce.

Christopher J. Dalton, a Newark-based lawyer and a former deputy attorney general, said New Jersey lacked a clear avenue to challenge medical examiner rulings. He waged a similar court battle - one he called a "difficult, difficult process."

Dalton represented the widow of Paul Kenny, a deputy attorney general who was struck and killed by an NJ Transit train at a platform in Bridgewater in 2006. The death was ruled a suicide, but those close to him, including Dalton, said Kenny exhibited no signs to indicate that.

A psychological autopsy commissioned by the state found "within a reasonable degree of medical certainty" that Kenny did not commit suicide. Despite that, the state refused to change its finding.

A four-year legal struggle by Kenny's wife that twice reached the state Supreme Court ensued. The state finally agreed to review the case. The end result, for those who knew Kenny, was disheartening: The state Medical Examiner's Office stood by its previous decision.

"I don't accept it was a suicide. I know it wasn't," Dalton said, remembering Kenny as a mentor. "While we weren't successful, at this point that's just a piece of paper."

Like Kenny's wife, the Sheridan family says life insurance is not an issue, indicating that the truth, not money, is at stake. The sons believe some evidence - and, to some extent, the lack thereof - indicate a third party's involvement in the deaths.

"It would be difficult for the family to come forward with any definitive proof to convince the prosecutor to change his mind," said former Burlington County Prosecutor Stephen G. Raymond, who has no involvement in the case. "The conclusions seem to make sense."

The prosecutor's final report said John Sheridan was noticeably out of character in the days before his death, which his family disputes.

Elliot Atkins, a forensic psychologist who has represented insurance companies and beneficiaries in contested suicide cases, said the case may hinge on whether the family can make a compelling case about John Sheridan's state of mind.

"If nothing was happening in John Sheridan's life that would make him take his life, let alone kill his wife, that would be the most persuasive step for them to take," said Atkins, who has conducted psychological autopsies. "It cries out for this."

John Sheridan, 72, a Republican, had ties to powerful social and political groups in the state. He was a former state transportation commissioner and worked closely with three governors. He "doted" over his wife, a retired schoolteacher, relatives say.

The Prosecutor's Office declined comment on the case, citing the pending suit.

Mark Sheridan says the investigation was so poorly conducted that it may be impossible to determine what happened in his parents' bedroom. The family plans to offer a $250,000 reward in hopes of information that identifies who caused the deaths.

Baden, according to an open letter Mark Sheridan penned to Soriano, disputed the state medical examiner's conclusion that wounds on John Sheridan were "hesitation wounds," consistent with suicide.

Baden was also the first to inform the sons that a wound nicked their father's jugular, and that his wounds were made by a smaller weapon not recovered by authorities.

Joyce Sheridan, 69, was killed with a large carving knife from the kitchen that was found on the bed with a large serrated bread knife. John Sheridan was found trapped under an armoire that partly blocked the door that would have prevented an intruder from escaping, authorities told the Sheridan family. The family, however, noted another bedroom door leads outside.

Baden has not spoken publicly about his findings, and the Sheridan family declined an Inquirer request to speak with him.

"The level of proof is somewhat of a moving target in that manner of death by a medical examiner should be a conclusion that is the most reasonable explanation based on the information available," Nashelsky, of the national medical examiners group, said, speaking generally.

The state Medical Examiner's Office declined to discuss the Sheridan case or respond to questions about those seeking changes to death certificates. A spokesman last week said "it is not common to receive" a request for a manner-of-death change.

The family has highly criticized the investigation, alleging that the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office, convinced from the start that the deaths were a murder-suicide, failed to properly search the house and relied on insufficient DNA evidence.

"You never go in with a preconceived notion. That is the No. 1 downfall of a detective," said Edward Rocks, a retired Philadelphia detective who spent decades on the homicide squad, adding that some evidence did seem indicative of an intruder. He said the Sheridan family "most certainly has a reasonable mission" in its legal quest.

"If I get the answer that this was a murder-suicide, then I am done," Mark Sheridan said Friday of the legal challenge.

Atkins, the forensic psychologist, said the outcome may be "a bitter pill for them to swallow."

In cases such as the Sheridans', "it's not always possible to answer the question" of what happened, he said.

If the suicide ruling is changed, it's unclear what, if any, impact it would have on the prosecutor's closed investigation.

"If it says homicide, that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the prosecution," said criminal defense lawyer Glenn Zeitz, who has no connection to the case. "They had better get their ass in gear and go find out who killed them."

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Inquirer staff writer Jonathan Tamari contributed to this article.