Rafael Román Martel

Five days later, Mr. Shaw, 61, was found dead in his luxury high-rise apartment in what the police suspect was a suicide.

The quick biography of Mr. Shaw, who died on Tuesday, is that he was a longtime Democratic operative who worked for former Gov. Jim Florio and Senator Frank R. Lautenberg before diving into the notoriously shadowy world of Hudson County politics.

The unabridged version, though, is that Mr. Shaw was not always quite what he wanted people to believe.

Some friends speak of the Jack Shaw they still believe was the straightest of arrows and the kindest of souls. But there was also the Jack Shaw who fled Illinois after being investigated on suspicion of mishandling $50,000 from a Democratic organization, and was later accused by a business partner in New Jersey of embezzling money to support a drug habit.

There was the Jack Shaw who was known for being a gregarious storyteller who, with his red hair, red beard and rotund frame, reminded some of Santa Claus. But there was also the Jack Shaw who was described by close friends, like William O’Dea, a Hudson County freeholder, as being so private that few knew of his gastric bypass surgery, cancer and heart trouble, or of his recent bankruptcy.

There was the Jack Shaw, too, who liked to bill himself as the ultimate political power broker. But there was also the Jack Shaw who had become such a political has-been that when he was arrested last week, Thomas V. O’Neil, a veteran political consultant, reacted in the same way that many did: “I thought he was dead.”