Deaths of John and Joyce Sheridan

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On September 28, 2014, John Sheridan, a former New Jersey Transportation Commissioner and health care executive, was found dead along with his wife Joyce in their home in Skillman, New Jersey, United States. The bodies were found in the house's master bedroom by firefighters responding to a fire emergency, with both exhibiting stab wounds. The case was initially believed by the Somerset County prosecutor's office to have been a murder-suicide and they wrote a public report to this effect.

However, even before the official report's release, the Sheridans' sons challenged this conclusion. Based on a second autopsy performed by forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who wrote his own report, he believed it was more likely that their parents had been murdered by an intruder who set the fire in an attempt to destroy evidence. The Sheridan sons exercised considerable political influence to have the finding of murder-suicide overturned; a 2016 open letter to change the finding, addressed to newly appointed state medical examiner Andrew Falzon, was signed by 200 prominent state residents, including three former governors and two former state attorneys general. In 2017 Falzon officially changed the manner of John Sheridan's death from suicide to undetermined. Five years later, State Attorney General Matt Platkin reopened the case after guilty pleas in a similar murder also involving political connections.

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