Mark Sheridan asks prosecutors to examine similarities between murder-for-hire case, parents’ deaths

New Jersey attorney Mark Sheridan wants prosecutors to examine similarities between the mysterious and still-unsolved September 2014 deaths of his parentsand a recently solved Jersey City murder that took place four months earlier.

Democratic political consultant Sean Caddle pleaded guilty Tuesday to hiring two men to kill Jersey City political operative Michael Galdieri, who had worked with Caddle. One of the hitmen, 61-year-old Bomani Africa, pleaded guilty Wednesday, over a year after negotiating a deal with prosecutors. Another alleged accomplice, George Bratsensis, has been named in court but not yet charged.

Galdieri was stabbed to death and his apartment set on fire. Sheridan’s parents, John and Joyce, were found dead that same year, both of stab wounds. Their bodies were left in a room in their Somerset County home that had been set on fire. Prosecutors initially called the case a murder-suicide but eventually walked that back under pressure from the Sheridans’ children.

“I know that neither of you were in charge of your respective offices at the time of my parents’ deaths. However, you should be aware that each of your offices all but laughed at my family’s suggestion that my parents’ deaths were anything other than a murder suicide,” Sheridan, a top Republican attorney in New Jersey, wrote to acting state Attorney General Andrew Bruck and Somerset County Prosecutor Michael Robertson. “Indeed, both offices openly mocked the idea of killing for hire involving a stabbing with a fire set to destroy evidence.”

Sheridan copied U.S. Attorney Phil Sellinger on his letter.

Speculation about the Sheridan deaths has been a dark undercurrent in New Jersey political circles for seven years, and it intensified this week due to its apparent similarities with Galdieri’s killing.

Citing a news report, Sheridan’s letter noted that Bratsenis — who like Africa has a decadeslong rap sheet — was arrested in connection with a bank robbery in Connecticut on Sept. 29, 2014, the day after the Sheridan deaths. In the car Bratsenis was driving when he was stopped, according to the report, police found a long-bladed kitchen knife. Sheridan said prosecutors had asked his family about a missing kitchen knife.

Africa was later arrested in connection with the same bank robbery.

“As we all know, the Somerset County Prosecutors office never recovered the knife used to kill my father at the scene of the alleged murder-suicide,” Sheridan wrote. “Moreover, the Somerset County Prosecutors office inquired of my brothers and me multiple times regarding a knife that was missing from the knife block in the kitchen.”

Sheridan asked the prosecutors to reach out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut, which prosecuted the bank robbery case, to compare the evidence, including whether the knife matches the Sheridan’s set.

“Perhaps, if you are so inclined, you might even ask for a DNA sample from the knife to see if there is a match for either of my parents’ DNA or the unexplained male DNA reference in the State Police report related to my parents’ deaths,” Sheridan wrote.

Caddle, who despite pleading guilty to murder-for-hire is confined to his Hamburg home pending sentencing,is cooperating with prosecutors.