Joseph Ragan via video from the Cape May County jail during a hearing on Feb. 12.
His defense attorney claims that Joseph Ragan may be nothing more than “a patsy” who was used by others in the commission of a terrible crime.
But the prosecution argued that Ragan played an active role in the alleged premeditated murder of his fiancée and attempts to make her death appear as a suicide.
Those dramatically different views of Ragan emerged in a Cape May County courtroom Tuesday during his detention hearing on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The hearing culminated when Superior Court Judge Christine Smith rejected Ragan’s request to be released pending trial, ordering him to remain in the Cape May County jail without bail.
“This appears to be a premeditated murder. He does pose a danger to the community, clearly,” Smith said of Ragan while refusing to let him out of jail.
Ragan is accused of helping to kill his fiancée, Emily Cruddas, by shooting her up with a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2023 in an attempt make her death look like a suicide.
Cruddas, 21, of Upper Township, had just gotten out of the hospital, where she was sent following a suicide attempt after the miscarriage of the child she and Ragan were expecting.
Before the miscarriage, Cruddas spoke of her joy of sharing a child with Ragan.
“I’m so excited to have you by my side through thick and thin,” she wrote in a TikTok post Jan. 18, 2023, that included a photo collage of her and Ragan and a picture of four positive pregnancy tests.
Emily Cruddas posted on TikTok about the love she shared with Joseph Ragan. He is now facing murder charges in her death.During the detention hearing Tuesday, Assistant Prosecutor Edward Shim alleged that Ragan conspired with Cruddas’s sister, Sarah Errickson, to murder Cruddas on Feb. 17, 2023.
“He said, in fact, he himself called it a murder and implicated himself in the process,” Shim said while referring to statements Ragan made to investigators.
According to Shim, Errickson had given her sister Xanax in an attempt to incapacitate her. Later, Ragan held his hand over Cruddas’s mouth while Errickson injected her sister with about 10 to 15 bags of fentanyl to kill her, Shim said.
Ragan allegedly waited by Cruddas’s side for seven hours before she died.
“This was a deliberate, premeditated homicide of his girlfriend,” Shim said. “He was taking a helpless victim and killing her.”
Errickson has also been charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Another person, Timothy Barrus – who was engaged to Errickson at one point – called 911 the next day in 2023 to report what initially appeared to be a drug overdose.
Ragan allegedly told State Police of his part in the overdose death shortly after Cruddas died. But it would be nearly two full years before Barrus would come forward to corroborate Ragan’s story. Barrus has not been charged at this time.
Ragan was arrested on Jan. 30 in Iowa, where he was apparently living, and then extradited to New Jersey.
During the detention hearing, Ragan was shackled and dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit.
Ragan’s defense attorney, Thomas Rossell, argued unsuccessfully during the hearing for Ragan to be released from jail.
Rossell said the alleged motive for the crime was a plot by Errickson to kill Cruddas to inherit the Upper Township home that the sisters shared.
“He has no motive to kill the deceased. That was his girlfriend,” Rossell said of Ragan.
Rossell went on to say that if Ragan had any role at all in the crime, it was because he was set up by Errickson.
“Patsy, for lack of a better word, and a fear of his own life,” Rossell said.
Following the detention hearing, Smith scheduled a pre-indictment conference for Ragan for March 17.
