A Princeton man whose gruesome cannibalistic killing shocked the country last year has been found dead inside a New Jersey jail cell in what authorities reportedly believe was a suicide.
Matthew Hertgen, a former college soccer player accused of murdering and mutilating his younger brother during a psychotic episode, was discovered unresponsive inside Mercer County Jail on May 8, according to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
Officials have not yet publicly released an official cause of death, though reports citing law enforcement sources indicate the death is being treated as an apparent suicide.
The 31-year-old had previously attempted suicide shortly after his February 2025 arrest, reportedly trying to hang himself inside his jail cell days after being taken into custody.
Hertgen became nationally infamous after prosecutors accused him of carrying out one of the most horrifying killings in recent memory inside the family’s upscale Princeton apartment near Princeton University.
Authorities said Hertgen brutally murdered his 26-year-old brother, Joseph Hertgen, during what experts later described as a severe schizophrenic psychotic break fueled by apocalyptic delusions.
According to investigators, Matthew used a knife and golf clubs to beat and stab his younger brother to death before tearing out one of Joseph’s eyeballs and consuming it. Prosecutors additionally alleged that he killed the family cat and set the animal on fire during the violent rampage.
Police discovered Joseph’s body lying in a pool of blood after responding to a 911 call reporting both a fire and a dead body inside the brothers’ luxury apartment on February 22, 2025.
The case quickly drew massive national attention not only because of the disturbing nature of the crime but also because the Hertgen family appeared outwardly successful and affluent.
The brothers were raised in Toms River, New Jersey, in a wealthy family headed by technology executive David Hertgen, president and CFO of internet provider WiLine Networks.
Joseph was remembered by friends and relatives as kindhearted, intelligent and deeply loved. He had graduated from the University of Michigan with a business administration degree before working in finance.
Court testimony later revealed that Matthew Hertgen had struggled with severe mental illness and schizophrenia for years before the killing.
Forensic psychologist Gianni Pirelli testified that Hertgen suffered from intense delusions involving religion, the apocalypse and spiritual visions. According to testimony, Hertgen believed at various times that he was Jesus Christ, God, the Anti-Christ or possessed multiple souls.
Pirelli further testified that Hertgen became consumed by the belief that a “sacrificial murder could save” the world after becoming fixated on themes from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s work known as the “Red Book.”
In March 2025, Mercer County Superior Court Judge Robert Lytle ruled Hertgen not guilty by reason of insanity after experts concluded he was suffering from severe schizophrenia during the killing, per the Daily Mail.
The ruling meant Hertgen avoided a traditional murder conviction and instead faced indefinite confinement in a psychiatric institution.
Now, just over a year after the horrifying crime stunned the nation, the man at the center of the case is dead as investigators continue reviewing the circumstances surrounding his apparent suicide.
