Dead End True-Crime Podcast Leads To New Probe By NJ Attorney General

 For any true-crime podcast, nirvana is a law enforcement, a prosecutor, or a federal agency opening or reopening the true-crime case that they are broadcasting.

It's the smoking gun, if you will, that your podcast is on to something. 

And somebody else with expertise in investigating crimes thinks so, too.

That's why when The WNYC Studios podcast Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery raised questions about the botched murder investigation into a politically powerful married couple. The state sat up and took notice. 

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has reportedly opened a new probe into the case. 

“Our office is investigating this matter, and we will follow the evidence wherever it leads,” a spokesperson confirmed to “New York Public Radio” (WNYC).

The Dead End podcast began its season last month, and the investigation comes before the final episode has even been released. The podcast is hosted by New York Public Radio/WNYC Senior Reporter Nancy Solomon. The true-crime podcast tells the story of the September 2014 murder of former New Jersey Transportation Commissioner John Sheridan, who was found dead along with his wife Joyce Sheridan in their home in Skillman, New Jersey. 

 The couple were prominent Republican donors who were close with some of the most powerful people in the state. Both suffered multiple stab wounds and their house was set on fire. Although authorities initially declared it a murder-suicide, the Sheridan's’ eldest son, Mark, has lobbied for the case to be reopened. That has now happened, only this time the state’s top law enforcement agency is handling the investigation.

Solomon – who has been covering New Jersey politics for two decades – builds upon Mark Sheridan’s own investigation in the podcast. Through interviews with former governors, attorneys general, police detectives, and a prosecutor who helped take down the New Jersey mob, Dead End probes how the deaths of such a politically-connected couple could be ignored by top law enforcement agencies and left unresolved. 

“I have been mystified by this case since the Sheridan's’ deaths in 2014, and I’m eager to tell this story in a way that it hasn’t been told before: through the voices of the people closest to it,” said Solomon when the series was released in April. “An injustice was done to the Sheridan family, and it raises troubling questions about New Jersey’s political and criminal justice systems.”

Dead End is the debut production of the WNYC Studios Documentary Unit, a new initiative led by WNYC Studios dedicated to producing ambitious, highly-produced non-fiction long-form audio works.

“We’re excited to launch WNYC Studios new documentary unit with a podcast as doggedly reported and carefully crafted as Dead End,” said WNYC Studios VP Emily Botein. “Nancy has spent two decades covering New Jersey – from people in power to people on the street. This podcast reflects her encyclopedic knowledge of the state’s social and political landscape, and brings tenacity and humanity to her quest to get answers that are long overdue.” 

Mark Sheridan, the son of the murdered couple, also appears on the podcast. He told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the series “puts it all in one place in a pretty compelling narrative” while it remains a mystery who killed his parents. “We just want an investigation to be done,” he said. 

So is the investigation of  the murder of John and Joyce Sheridan a "dead end?" 

Time will tell as we wait to see if the investigation turns up substantive evidence that it was not a murder-suicide.