The wife of a New Jersey hospital executive who was found unconscious along with her husband in their master bedroom after a fire last year died from a stab wound to her chest that punctured her aorta, authorities say. Her husband also died, though it's not clear how.
New Jersey Attorney General's Office spokesman Paul Loriquet confirmed Wednesday that 69-year-old Joyce Sheridan was stabbed to death, providing a new detail in the deepening mystery surrounding the couple's demise. Previously, officials had only said that she was a homicide victim.
A cause and manner of death have yet to be determined for her 72-year-old husband, Cooper University Health System CEO John Sheridan.
Sheridan and his wife were found unconscious by firefighters responded to a blaze in the master bedroom of their Skillman home on Sept. 28. The blaze was later ruled an arson.
A who's-who of New Jersey politics attended a Trenton memorial service for the couple last October. More than four months later, there is just as much mystery about their deaths.
Before becoming an executive at the hospital and throwing himself into efforts to revive its home city of Camden, John Sheridan had other public policy roles, working for governors and as a lawyer. He was the architect in the 1980s of Gov. Tom Kean's road-building fund.
One of the couple's four sons, Mark Sheridan, is a prominent Republican election law lawyer.
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There have been no arrests in the case and no suspects named.
A neighbor reporting a fire in the home told 911 dispatchers that he heard banging coming from inside the house shortly before first responders arrived.
The neighbor could be heard saying that he saw smoke coming from the house and "somebody's trying to get out, they're banging on the door," according to the 911 recording posted on NJ.com shortly after their deaths.
Though the caller may have thought he heard someone banging, subsequent interviews with the caller and the first responding police officer led investigators to conclude the sounds were from the fire itself, Capt. Jack Bennett, a spokesman for the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office, said.
