Experts say Sheridan case should be reopened

A new Somerset County prosecutor being sworn in Monday will have to decide whether to reopen the investigation into the 2014 deaths of former Cooper University Health System CEO John P. Sheridan Jr. and his wife.

Independent experts interviewed by the Inquirer said there are reasons to reopen the case and reconsider whether John Sheridan fatally stabbed his wife, Joyce, and then committed suicide. But, they acknowledged, the case presents complex investigative challenges that may prevent authorities from ever knowing with certainty what happened to the couple. Potentially valuable evidence may be gone or contaminated.

The new Somerset County prosecutor, Michael Robertson, also may decide another agency is needed, given the criticism of the way the case was handled.

Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the department of sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the state or Robertson should ask the FBI to investigate.

"For a situation like this, you need someone to come in at the federal level and review the files," said Kobilinsky, adding that there is an urgency to make a decision as evidence such as fingerprints, DNA, and blood deteriorates over time.

And, he said, the investigation must be headed by an authority with a strong law enforcement background and high level of credibility to address allegations by the Sheridans' four sons that the investigation headed by now former Somerset County Prosecutor Geoffrey Soriano was "botched" from the beginning.

"Calling it a murder-suicide is a real nice way to close the case," Kobilinsky said. "The children do not want to accept this, and I understand that because there are too many questions."

On Friday, Mark Sheridan, a son who spoke on behalf of the family, said he hopes the case is reopened quickly and handled by the agency with the most experience investigating "cold cases." Although Sheridan did not express an interest in a specific agency, he did say the Somerset prosecutor's office "should be kept as far away from the investigation as possible."

A dispute between Soriano and the sons - Mark, Matt, Dan, and Tim - turned public last March when the family alleged investigators ignored evidence of a possible intruder, and ruled the deaths were murder-suicide to cover up incompetence of the prosecutor's office and medical examiner.

Kobilinsky said if the two were murdered, a new investigation may not solve the case, but could answer lingering questions, most importantly whether a third party was involved.

The couple were found dead in their Montgomery Township home Sept. 28, 2014. The prosecutor's office concluded Sheridan, 72, stabbed his 68-year-old wife repeatedly, puncturing her aorta. He then set the bedroom on fire, and stabbed himself five times in the neck and chest, according to Soriano.

Soriano did not respond to Inquirer emails seeking comment about his removal from office last month or the handling of the investigation.

Gov. Christie said last week he had lost confidence in Soriano, who had served for six years, but didn't specify why.

"I don't have any opinion on the Sheridan matter," Christie said. "It would be inappropriate for me to express one even if I did."

Although Somerset's new prosecutor could be the one to reopen the case, so could the new acting Attorney General Robert Lougy, who on March 14 will replace John Hoffman, who resigned last month. Lougy currently serves as first assistant at the office and is a 10-year veteran. The state medical examiner, Andrew Falzon, appointed last June, also could decide the case needs another look.

There is growing support for the family. Last month, an open letter bearing signatures of about 200 people, including former governors Tom Kean, Christie Whitman, and James Florio asked that the case be reopened. One of those who signed was John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who described John Sheridan as a close friend and mentor.

Farmer, in a recent interview, said Mark Sheridan reached out to him soon after the deaths.

"He was trying to wrap his head around the fact that his father might have done this," Farmer said, explaining why he suggested the family hire forensic pathologist Michael Baden. Baden, Farmer said, would provide "peace of mind."

Instead, after Baden performed an independent autopsy, he found serious mistakes. Among the worst, which Farmer called an "eye opener," investigators did not recover a weapon that inflicted John Sheridan's wounds.

Farmer, who now teaches at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, said he is not "objective" when it comes to John Sheridan, whom he respected.

Farmer said he does not rule out that Sheridan could have killed his wife, but said it is not reflective of the person he knew. And, he said, there has been no credible evidence to support the murder-suicide conclusion.

"If you're going to label him a murderer then the forensic evidence must be ironclad," Farmer said.

Capt. James Clark, of the Philadelphia Police Department, has overseen thousands of death investigations during the last nine years as head of the city's homicide unit. He said authorities should try to reconstruct the scene if the case is reopened.

"The biggest thing that I would try to do is to test whatever blood was recovered from the house," Clark said, adding also that the attacker would have had a significant amount of blood on him. It's impossible, he said, that John Sheridan could have stabbed his wife repeatedly without getting much blood on himself.

In a March 2015 news release, Soriano noted one drop of Joyce Sheridan's blood was found on her husband's underwear. The press release also said DNA found on a carving knife taken from the Sheridan kitchen and found in the bedroom had been tested. The DNA was from a white male, but did not match John Sheridan. The knife was used on Joyce Sheridan, but had a blade too wide to cause the wounds on John Sheridan.

Clark and Kobilinsky, of John Jay College, said that DNA could be valuable to determine whether there was a third party involved. However, it's possible that there was not enough DNA to develop a full profile, they said.

Mark Sheridan said investigators did not dust the house for prints because they believed the attack was confined to the master bedroom.

Clark said the entire Sheridan home should have been dusted for prints in 2014. By now, fingerprints could be gone.

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JOHNSTOWN, Pa. - In January, a deputy attorney general and two agents walked into a judge's chambers here with questions. They wanted to discuss a meeting decades earlier that had ended with a "monster" priest being allowed to go free.

Back in 1985, Cambria County Judge Patrick T. Kiniry had been a local prosecutor, and met with Bishop James Hogan to discuss a priest suspected of sexually abusing children. As leader of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, the bishop had outsize influence in the area. Kiniry, a former altar boy, had been excited to meet him.

Hogan didn't dispute the claims about the Rev. Francis McCaa that day.

But nothing happened.

McCaa, suspected of abusing at least 15 boys, some as young as 8, lived another two decades without ever being charged.

"You have to understand: This is an extremely Catholic county," Kiniry allegedly explained this year when Deputy Attorney General Daniel J. Dye and two agents came to talk to him about the case.

Such cozy alliances between law enforcement and church officials were pervasive and a central theme in a 147-page grand-jury report last week on decades of clergy sex abuse in the central Pennsylvania diocese.

The findings, released Tuesday by Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, recommended no criminal charges. But, recounting evidence and conversations like the one with Kiniry, they vilified two bishops and members of law enforcement for enabling 50 abusive priests and religious leaders to damage "hundreds" of children over two generations.

Much of what was found in the diocese mirrored patterns seen elsewhere since the clergy sex-abuse scandal began with Boston in 2002. Still, the Altoona allegations, castigating the diocese for repeatedly and systemically ignoring or hiding the abuse, may stand apart in another way - the length of time they took to finally come to light.

In 1994, an 11-week civil trial in Altoona of a predatory Catholic priest included some of the first signs nationally of a diocese where superiors who knew about and tolerated serial sex abuse. Yet 20 more years would pass before investigators decided to ask: How bad was the problem here?

"Disgusted," Richard Serbin, the attorney in that landmark case of the Rev. Francis Luddy, said after last week's findings. "This report could have been done by one of Kane's predecessors in 1994."

In sometimes graphic detail, the grand jury outlined dozens of instances of abuse but found none that could be prosecuted. Offenders had died, the statute of limitations had expired, or victims did not wish to go public.

According to the report, victims got little traction with police and prosecutors, even as one bishop disbursed settlements using a chart that dictated payouts according to severity of abuse: as little as $10,000 for over-the-clothes fondling, up to $175,000 for sodomy.

"I extend my most heartfelt and sincere apology," the diocese's current leader, Bishop Mark Bartchak, said Thursday. "I apologize to the victims, to their families, to the faithful people of our diocese, to the good priests of our diocese, and to the public."

His predecessor, who was blamed throughout the report for hiding the abuse, was less conciliatory. In a response filed in court, an attorney for Bishop Joseph Adamec called the criticism against the now-retired church leader "unfounded."

"It appears the grand jury was not provided with a full and balanced set of facts," the filing said.

In the days after releasing the report, Kane's investigators received calls with tips from about 200 people to a new hotline. They stressed the case is not closed.

And yet, as those calls poured in, unquestioning support for the church lingered.

Even at Holy Name Church in nearby Ebensburg, where decades ago McCaa was abruptly removed and later transferred out of state after abusing boys in the sacristy, the rectory, and during confession.

"People knew why," parishioner Patricia Serotkin, 65, said after Mass on Wednesday morning.

But still, she said, parishioners kept coming back. And, even on the morning after the report's release, no one mentioned it, she said.

"The people here are so simple, so solid," Serotkin said. "Their faith is almost unshakable."

Altoona and Johnstown may seem like blips on the map, a pair of towns frozen in time. But they were ahead of their time when it came to publicly airing Catholic priest abuse.

Yellowed buildings, a gazebo at the town square, and a church on virtually every block give Johnstown the feel of a place untouched by change. Known most for the catastrophic 1889 flood that killed 2,200 people, the onetime steel town almost three hours west of Harrisburg now has less than a third of the 68,000 who thrived on its industry a century ago.

Religion is everywhere. "Violators will be Baptized!" blares a towing sign in one church parking lot.

"It's one of those cities you would see in an old movie," said Kelli Walerysiak, a 28-year-old restaurant manager and native.

Altoona, about 50 miles northeast, has fared only marginally better, with highways destroying its once-vibrant role as a Pennsylvania Railroad hub. Today, its population is 46,320, compared with a 1930 peak of 82,000.

As the jobs and population dwindled, loyalty to the church did not. With 90,000 Catholics across an eight-county region, the diocese remained a powerful influence, even as it shrank.

In 1987, Serbin filed a civil lawsuit in Altoona against the diocese and Rev. Luddy on behalf of a former altar boy. When it went to trial in 1994, it was just the fifth abuse case taken to a civil jury, according to BishopAccountability.org.

Ultimately, jurors sided with the victim.

But despite a trove of damning documents and testimony about what the church knew, no criminal probe followed.

Not even after the 2002 Boston scandal that sparked cases worldwide. In the central Pennsylvania diocese, Catholics accepted it and moved on.

"No matter what the priests do, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus Christ," William P. Gaspar, 78, a retiree, said after Mass on Thursday at St. Benedict Church in Johnstown. "We all make mistakes. Some are worse than others."

One he referred to was the Rev. Dennis Coleman, a priest at St. Benedict who molested at least three 13-year-old boys in the 1980s, according to the grand jury report. Coleman did this, the grand jury found, after church officials knew he had previously abused a 10-year-old boy at another parish.

Coleman, who died in 2014, would take boys on camping trips and "hypnotize" them, the grand jury found. Several more years would pass before he was suspended. At one point, the grand jury said, Coleman was offered a job at the Cambria County Courthouse - with help from a judge.

"He was a real skunk, I guess," Gaspar said.

The clergy sex-abuse report on the Altoona diocese is only the eighth of its kind and the first issued in more than a decade. Prior ones, including from Rockville Centre, N.Y.; Philadelphia; and Boston became public after the 2002 scandal.

What sparked it was a case that exploded into view in Johnstown in 2013 - reports that an athletic trainer at Bishop McCort High School had abused children in Ohio before arriving in Cambria County.

The trainer, Brother Stephen Baker, a Franciscan, stabbed himself in the heart at St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg in January 2013, just days after the media reports about his past in Ohio.

After months of exploration, Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan in December 2013 referred the case to the Attorney General's Office, she said last week.

Kane's office brought the case before a grand jury in April 2014.

Last August, agents raided diocesan offices in Hollidaysburg and carted off 115,042 documents from filing cabinets and a so-called secret archive of documents kept under lock and key. More than two dozen would later sort through it all.

"As Special Agents of the Office of Attorney General stood inside an organization devoted to the tenets of scripture and morality," the grand jury wrote, "they found themselves surrounded with evidence of an institutional crisis of child sexual abuse."

Internal notes of meetings revealed conversations between bishops and police or prosecutors who allowed the diocese to handle cases themselves - including mentions of the 1985 meeting between Hogan and Kiniry.

The grand jury also heard testimony that illustrated the church's tight grip over civil leaders.

"In Johnstown, I would basically pick the mayor; I would pick the chief of police," Msgr. Philip Saylor, who served under Hogan several decades ago, told grand jurors.

Dye, the deputy attorney general who led the investigation, said he and his team initially were shocked by what they found in the files.

"You had everybody - the district attorney admitting in his chambers in Cambria County - that this was how it worked back then," Dye said. "Almost as though we were the strange aliens that just didn't grasp things."

Not all cases detailed in the report went without prosecution.

One handled by federal authorities ended last week when the Rev. Joseph Maurizio, 70, was sentenced to more than 16 years in jail.

But Maurizio's federal conviction came by no expeditious process: In 2009, a woman from Richmond, Va., had informed top diocesan officials that children at a Honduran facility for orphans allegedly had been abused by Maurizio during his trips to the region.

The woman, Elizabeth Williams, said the diocese resisted, even after she showed church officials videos of the children describing what had happened. Months later, Williams received a letter from a diocesan attorney.

"At that point, it became clear to us that they were not working in good faith," Williams, former president of ProNiño USA, the Virginia-based nonprofit, told the Inquirer last week.

Federal authorities arrested and charged Maurizio in late 2014.

State prosecutors last week would not say whether charges were in the offing - only that their probe was continuing.

In an interview, Kane said the report displayed a profound fear that police and even prosecutors felt. Of being labeled a "bad Catholic." Or being excommunicated.

"That's not an excuse," Kane said. "But that was one of their excuses."

mpanaritis@phillynews.com

610-313-8117 @Panaritism

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