Police in one of New Jersey’s wealthiest zip codes are investigating the death of a well-liked financial adviser while her significant other, a prominent lawyer who also has an MBA, is on the run in his BMW, police are telling NorthJersey.com.
Essex County, N.J., police say James R. Ray III, 55, is charged in the death of Angela Bledsoe, 44, who recently moved with her daughter, Alana, 6, from her home in Crown Heights in New York’s borough of Brooklyn to Ray’s home in Upper Montclair.
On Tuesday morning, authorities carried out Bledsoe’s body, riddled with bullets, from the home they’d shared.
Bledsoe was well known in her community, active with fellow alumni of Florida A & M University, with her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, and with politics. She’d previously worked with JPMorgan Chase and most recently, Securities America in New York, NorthJersey.com reported.
“This is very shocking,” New York State Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte told the news organization.
Bichotte, who is from Brooklyn, worked with Bledsoe as a volunteer.
“She was someone I adored, just adored,” Bichotte told NorthJersey.com. “She was an awesome, beautiful and intelligent person.”
Bichotte said they both met in 2005 meeting of Deltas when Bichotte was a Wall Street banker and Bledsoe a financial advisor.
“Angela was the chair of Delta Sigma Theta’s economic development committee,
Bichotte said. “She was very successful and independent, but also modest, humble and quiet. And she was very, very smart.”
Bledsoe gave birth to her daughter, fathered by Ray, in 2012, but may not have known that at the time, Ray also was in a long-term marriage with a woman named Cheryl, NorthJersey.com reported. At the time, Ray and Cheryl had two children in their 20s, the news organization reported. Ray also settled a sexual harassment suit for $35,000 with a paralegal who claimed Ray wanted to make her his “third wife” and that he was a polygamist.
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Neighbors and friends said they knew little about the couple or their relationship, and one neighbor spoke of trying to befriend Bledsoe.
“It seemed as if she deliberately did not want to chat,” the neighbor, Anat Soudry, told NorthJersey.com. “It left a weird impression on me.”
Soudry said local police asked if she thought Bledsoe might have been scared of something.
“It retrospect, that may have been it,” Soudry said. “I did register it as not being normal.”