January 4, 2023 • 54 mins
In 2017, Canadian billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman were discovered dead in their Toronto-area mansion, in a gruesome tragedy that remains unsolved in the modern day. Police initially declared the case a murder-suicide -- a conclusion no one found accurate. In the first part of this two-part series, Ben, Matt and Noel dive into the troubling details of this crime, from the initial investigation up to the profoundly disturbing details of how the murders were carried out, all leading to a single, still-unanswered question: Who killed the Shermans, and why?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Grading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel, and they
called me Ben. We are joined with our guest producer
j J. Causeway Pause, Way, j J Press pause pause Way,
j J b d pause Way. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. As you are listening, folks,
(00:46):
would like to welcome you to three. We are recording
one of the last things will do in twenty twenty two,
and we thought what better way to end the year
for us, and what better way to start the year
with you then to go to an unsolved mystery, a
very deep one that gets very murky very quickly. As
(01:09):
a matter of fact, I would say, um, today's episode
is a study in extremes, the extremes of financial wealth,
the very high reaches of it, in the extremes of
brutal crime. On December, as far as people can tell,
as far as forensics assures us, a tragedy struck. The
(01:31):
Sherman family, a couple living out in Canada. Here are
the facts. It's a good life. It's good to be king,
you know what I mean. Oh yeah, well they're they're
definitely lords, right at least Um very certainly was a
lord of drugs, a drug lord. He wasn't literally a
(01:57):
drug lord, yes, okay, but man the dance involved. But
uh yeah that's what you're thinking. Uh. Not not a
drug lord in the sense of one of these movies
or TV shows you might watch. He was the owner
of a company that produced generic drugs, so generic versions
(02:18):
of all those big name drugs you see the all
the commercials for um. And he was living with his wife, Honey,
who was a philanthropist of great note. Uh, they were
just living the dream man. Yeah. And and the idea
about lord of lord of a dance I when you
get to this, because he wasn't just a pharmaceutical drug
(02:39):
lord for having fun with the term. But he definitely
knew how to make money dance. Uh. He was as
involved with finance, non related to the pharmaceutical industry as
he was with drugs. Uh. He's an engineer, as a
keen mind for business at the height of his fortune.
He personally had an s estimated well, it's tough when
(03:03):
you talk about billionaires. He had an estimated three point
two billion dollars in personal net worth in seventeen in Canada.
That made him somewhere between the twelfth to fifteen richest
individual in the country. Really makes you wonder about those
other eleven, Right, do they have meetings, did they get together?
(03:23):
What are the schedules? Like, we'll never know, um, but
maybe let's learn a little bit about his background just
so you can get a sense of this person. If
you are uh, if you live in Canada or have
spent time in Canada, you almost certainly know the name
Barry Sherman, but you definitely know the name of his company. Yeah,
(03:44):
he started a career in pharmaceuticals when his uncle Louis
Lloyd Winter's estate UH let him take over Empire Laboratories,
which is the company that his uncle ran, and in
nineteen seventy four Barry would form his own pharmaceutical company
called uh Apo te Po Tex Yeah, indeed incorporated. Um.
(04:06):
He led this company to greatness, at least you know
drug greatness. He led them to become the biggest manufacturer
of generic drugs and all of Canada. It's kind of
a big deal. Um. The company alone employees thousands of
folks and they sell drugs in a hundred and fifteen countries.
So well, we can't exactly say that he you know,
(04:27):
started from what first base, you know, square one, from nothing. Uh,
he definitely did, you know, do what we have often seen,
you know, folks like even though what's his name, Ben?
We talked about him on Raculous History recently, Donald Trump, Well, Donald,
I think I think he's not this example. It's uh
Getty who you know, the younger son of the original
(04:49):
you know, Getty fortune holder. He did take his father
was very stingy. He did take some seed money and
then turn it into something of of use. So this
guy's sort of again he had a little bit of help,
a little bit of push, but he, you know, definitely
was a smart fellow, um who made the most of
this opportunity that he was given. Oh yeah, and there's
there's an interesting note here too, because uh, I love
(05:12):
that you're pointing this out. So he gets he gets
his original spot as a tycoon in this industry due
to his uncle, his uncle's passing. His uncle had four kids,
and they did not get uh, the ability to run
Empire Laboratories. They got a or according to them, they
(05:33):
each were promised a five percent stake in the business.
And they were very angry with Barry Sherman. Right, yeah,
we're laying some groundwork. They were very angry when he
shut them down in court because he was selling Empire Laboratories,
which also further propelled him towards the capitol and position
he needed to create Apotex or Apotex. And it's weird
(05:58):
to think about, like cutting off the family tree in
kind of a not great way, berry, little pruning, you
know what I mean. Uh, maybe why you don't do
business with family. But family discord aside. He had. It
was a long time marriage with Honey, which you mentioned earlier.
(06:20):
Matt his spouse, Honey Sherman. They married in nine one
and they had four children of their own, three girls,
one boy, and Honey was Honey was known in many
different ways by many different people. You can find accounts
of folks who live in the area who say that
(06:42):
she was very rude at the coffee shop or very privileged.
But that's what you know. Waking up with a billion
dollars will do to people sometimes and uh, then you'll
see other people saying that she did tremendous good As
a philanthropist. She was very active in especially in charities
associated with the Jewish community in Canada and abroad. So
(07:05):
they were trying to put their money towards some charitable actions.
This is not to say that they had no enemies.
The people who knew the Shermans were not unanimously members
of a Sherman fan club. As a matter of fact,
Barry was known for being a bit of a bulldog. Yeah,
as you said, he he knew the drug game, the
(07:27):
manufacturer of them, but mostly the sale of them. He
also knew how to put his money to work for him, right,
so any profits that he brought in he could make
those singing dance. But he also really seemed to enjoy
taking people to court when he needed to or when
he felt like there was to gain. Litigious, was he yeah, yeah,
(07:53):
oh very much so um And some of it's weird
because he was actually in his day, he was the
most litigious individual in all of Canada. It's another extreme
of this larger than life figure. And about so an
estimate might have been from the author Kevin Donovan. But
I saw an estimate that said maybe around half of
(08:17):
his courtroom battles were just out of necessity being a
generic drug manufacturer. But then another half were just that
he was. He was a real hot and cold guy.
If he loved you, he loved you, and he's a
big fan, and he would support you even when his
friends told him not to. And if he thought you
would wronged him, he would do evil things, very petty
(08:41):
things like he wins that lawsuit against his four cousins
right after he sells their father's company. And then he
when he wins the lawsuits not enough. This is true story.
He goes back to the court and he says, Uh,
these four people have to pay me a million dollars
for my troubles. The court later kicks it down to
uh three dollars, but he's already financially ruined them. He
(09:05):
just wanted to twist the knife. Uh. That's the environment
we're moving in, and that's his family. Um, so you know,
naturally you're you're this high, you're at this threshold in
the upper echelons of business. There's a lot of ruthlessness
involved in getting there, and maintaining that king of the
(09:25):
hill position. So naturally this guy is gonna have rivals.
Of course, naturally they're gonna be people who maybe got
burned in a lawsuit or uh, feel like he did
them dirty in a business deal, and they don't think
of him as their best friend. You know. Uh, they're
not in his MySpace top eight if my space is
still around. Um. But you'll hear a lot of people say,
(09:48):
that's just that's his business, that's just the breaks, that's
how the sausage gets made. That's how you succeed in
a profit motivated ecosystem, until that is, something goes wrong.
In December, horror struck one of the most powerful families
in Canada. Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, and now,
(10:13):
even five years later, their deaths remain unsolved, leading more
than a few people to speculate there may be a
conspiracy of foot Here's where it gets crazy. The Shermans
were last seen alive on the thirteenth September at the
headquarters of apitex Um, where they were taking the look
(10:33):
giving the once over and the approval for some design
changes to a new house that they were building. Miss
Sherman was getting ready to take a trip to Miami
a few days later, and Mr Sherman is going to
join her a week later. And the Shermans, we just
we should just note here they had built a house earlier,
so they're building this new house, right, but they had
earlier built a house in the nineteen eighties, and this
(10:56):
house they were preparing for sale. So if anyone who's
gone through that process, you know that they were basically
having to go to the old house pretty frequently make
repairs or at least overseas repairs and things that were
being done to that house. And that happens to be
where they head at some point um on either December. Yeah,
(11:16):
and there's you'll see some conflicting reporting about this, uh
this kind of forty eight to seventy two hour period
between December and December. But here here's what we know
from the official records. All right, Like, like Noel said, December,
last time anybody publicly admits to seeing them, Like they're
(11:38):
careful phrasing there on the Just a few days later,
a pair of Real It's Tours is giving a tour
of this mansion in Toronto, and it's around midday uh.
And as they get to the bottom of the house,
they're doing the walkthrough. You know, you're buying a mansion,
it's a significant investment. You want to look at the
(11:59):
knooks and crannies. So they get toward the bottom of
the house, to the basement, and then they find the
bodies Barry and Honey Sherman, fully dressed, and they're positioned,
we should say, beside their indoor basement swimming pool, semi seated,
(12:20):
side by side, belts tied around their necks, attached to
the railing of the indoor pool. Yeah, and um, at
least I think it was. In Barry's case, he was
kind of leaned back because that belt was keeping him
up right. Um, really messed up, really really messed up.
(12:44):
But it definitely seems as though they were posed right. Yeah,
that's that's one of the that's where this starts to
get a little bit true Detective season one, To be
honest with you, So, at the times of their deaths,
Barry is seventy Honey is seventy years old. She has
a bruise on her face. Both bodies have been restrained
(13:08):
with coats pulled over their arms. Later autopsies would confirm
they died due to strangulation. Although that seems pretty clear
at the scene, you gotta let forensics do their work
right and and look for all the details that indicate,
you know, whether or not something was a suicide. Shout
out to Epstein's hyoid bone. Seriously, right, always the little
(13:32):
tell tale signs. Um, and we've got something along those
lines here from the author of The Billionaire Murders, a
guy named Kevin Donovan. The body seemed to have been
purposefully arranged. Um. This is again, this is like true
detective kind of you know, serial killer, elaborate kind of
behavior kind of stuff. The body seemed to have been
(13:53):
purposefully arranged in an imitation of two life size sculptures
that existed in the couple's home, not far at all
from where they were fed. Right, Yeah, you can look
at a photograph of this sculpture. We want to note
that poor Leo Suel is not a suspect. There are
(14:16):
a lot of suspects here, just to be honest with you,
but Leo is not what He's just a guy making
a living through his art, which is an awesome thing
to be able to do. Then probably never imagined that
he would be involved with something like this, even tangentially
it's it's kind of like a found object art sort
of like outsider art kind of vibes and to his
(14:38):
junk sculpture, and this dude was active in the seventies. Um,
And I mean they're they're cool pieces, if not creepy
unto themselves, I have to say at all, they look yeah,
I mean when you look at it with all the
whatever pipes and little pieces, it kind of looks like
skinned humans, but like in a weird junkyard kind of
(15:00):
way it is. And they're sitting on top of speakers,
like fight speakers first of all, as an audio file,
that is not a good place for that's gonna cause
some serious vibrations and not going to get the best quality,
okay out of your speakers when you've got these metal,
you know, monstrosity sitting on top of that's guys. Yeah,
(15:21):
to make money by spending a bunch of money on
a frivolous things. I say as I as I drink
dirt coffee out of like uh a spaghetti jar from
probably two thousand and nine. Uh, I know what you mean,
Like it is disquietly because they are Yeah, they were
not popular with the kids. These are life size figures.
(15:44):
Uh something gives it a crash test. Dummies vibe to
me almost and and you can see how you know,
if you grow up anybody who's grown up with life
size sculptures or mannekins or stuff like that, you realize
how that can creep you out as a kid. And
they had apparently in the past, all four of the
kids had asked their parents, please put these just somewhere else.
(16:08):
If you can't throw them away, just put them somewhere else.
But the mother, Honey, liked them so much, she really
enjoyed them, so she said, no, it's our house, they're
staying here. When she actually borrowed them or or asked
to have them from a friend who had them displayed.
After Oh man, I'm sorry, but I can't remember the
(16:29):
exact thing from the research, but they some um place
that had them displayed closed down, and they were they
were taken by a couple and then Honey was like,
I really like those. I want to put them in
my basement. And that's what happened. Yeah. Yeah, Because she's
so big in the world of the arts and charity
(16:49):
and philanthropy that organizations want to please her, as do people,
so it's kind of a social coup for them to
be able to say, I give this gift to you. Anyway,
we're harping on these statues because the bodies when they
are found, even even if you had never seen the
statue before, the bodies when they're found are in a
(17:12):
very similar position to life size statues, to corpses, as
as though arranged as though in homage to the statue. Right,
and when Kevin Donovan, who was probably the world's foremost
expert on this case now when he is looking into
the origin of the sculpture, he's the guy who uh
(17:34):
finds the artist Leo. He said that everything he looked
into about this from when he was first writing about
it at the Toronto Star too when he came out
with his book, he just couldn't figure out why they
were staged. Pretty confident is that they were staged that
way on purpose. But he said, I don't know what
(17:58):
it means, but quote, I can't see how it doesn't
mean something what I mean just like again, I'm gonna
stop with the True Detective references after this, but just
like a rust coal right in the very first episode
of True Detective Season one. Uh, no spoilers, but what
a show. Uh, this is unfortunately real life. So we're
(18:22):
we're setting up some of this stuff about the statute.
That's one of many unanswered questions here. Uh. And if
you want to go to the answers, right then, naturally
where do you start. You start with the people who
knew the Shermans and the authorities who are put on
the case. So we're gonna pause for a word from
our sponsors, and then let's let's go right to Toronto
(18:45):
p D. Let's see what they have to say. All right,
let's jump back in here, and we're still in December fourteen,
December fifteen, two thousand seven, team, and we're we're looking
at statements from the Toronto Police, and you know, it's
(19:07):
really just questions about did any associates of the Sherman's
hear from them within that window? Did anyone, you know,
have any idea what their plans were in that immediate term?
Were they heading back to that house for a specific reason? Uh,
you know, just any information? And according to the Toronto Police,
there was nothing to go on here. There were no leads.
(19:29):
According to anybody who knew them, they hadn't seen them
for at least two days or around two days. And
when they start looking at the crime scene, you know,
with the strange staging of the victims, with those weird statues,
you look, you look for signs of entry. Did somebody
bust in through a window to gain access to them
and kill them? Well, it's a little weird because there
(19:54):
are no signs of forced entry, right, any kind of
like brute force trauma to any door do or anything
like that. But there were there was some weirdness. Yeah,
Like I believe it was. One of the doors was unlocked,
which is something their household staff. Yes, folks, they had
a staff. Their household staff knew, right, they had a
door that it was typically unlocked for convenience. Uh. There
(20:17):
was also an open window, but no no signs that
either had been forced. Clearly not a kick door operation.
Someone either was let into the home or someone knew
where which methods of entry would be feasible and would
leave the would have the sorry lowest likelihood of leaving
(20:40):
a trace. I got two things here, guys. According to
the reporting, this is something that Sherman's would do often,
Like you said, ask the staff to leave a couple
of entries open on purpose, or they would do it
on purpose just to leave stuff unlocked. Yeah, that baffles me.
(21:01):
Is it like some kind of like kinky game or something.
I'm sorry, I don't need to be I think it's
just a very foreign idea to the three of us
in particular, that you would ever just leave your house
a lock to instruct them to do it. It's almost
like they're rolling the dice a little bit, you know
what I mean. I don't know. Well, I mean, if
(21:22):
you're just going to kind of forget to do it
or not worry about it too much, but we shouldn't
the standard protocol just always be just locked the door
when you're done, like if you're leaving, you know, And
maybe this was See this is something that we don't
have fully answered, Like was this a habit that had
gone on for years right there? This will be an
important question. Or was this something that had happened relatively
(21:44):
recently as they were transitioning to their new abode, or
did it have something to do with someone who would
toward the house recently as a potential buyer, which I okay,
a little inside job right there. We go, We're we're
assigning some sophistication. Now, uh, and this actually, as we'll see,
(22:05):
this is not your ordinary crime of opportunity by any means.
So the other thing, they had recently installed a lock
box that the staff was using to come and go.
So it is reasonable for us to assume that they
had some of their people maybe coming in and moving
possessions or checking on stuff or you know. Um and
(22:28):
and again to show the house, to show the house
key and people. Yeah, and so something weird happens in Toronto. Um,
the police, not the band, the Toronto p D. Initially
the police were called in, but their schedule was just
too massive, and you know, they're mainly musicians nowadays. But
(22:50):
Toronto p D was called in as a replacement. And
they initially called this a murder suicide, the idea being, uh,
in their initial statements that Barry Sherman strangled, asphyxiated his
wife many years and then did the same to himself.
(23:13):
The public was not buying this. I mean, the belt,
you know, it's typically a hallmark of suicide, you know,
but it also seemed to serve the purpose of kind
of posing them as well in the situation. Yeah, that's
part of it. Like the if that narrative was true
and they just coincidentally ended up in positions very much
(23:34):
like those statues. It's one of those things where you
would almost have to prove it was a coincidence. Now,
how chilling though, if it were that and it were
Barry that did the posing, and then he would have
to like pose that post himself that way and then
do the thing. But also, you know, you kind of
spas them, and things happen as you die. It'd be
(23:56):
hard to maintain that pose postmortem without some kind of
fixing it up. No matter how good or evil, how
how how socially great or unremarkable, a person is pretty
much all go the same way unless they're vaporized instantly,
you know, they shoved a little. It's the great equalizer.
(24:22):
Every party means no, but I mean, we're we're trying
not to make this incredibly um dark, I guess, but
it is. It is. It is a dark subject, and
I think we're raising valid points. Right, there's just not
enough information, But there's a lot of stuff that sticks out,
(24:43):
like the cell phone, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're talking about the murder suicide initial thing. Then they
the police kind of switch gears pretty soon after that
because there is additional evidence that they find at the scene,
and one of those things is honey cell phone that
you're talking about, that was found owned in a powder
room that according to associates and friends who knew her,
(25:05):
she never used that thing. That wasn't like the place
where she goes and her cell phones in there, and
they believe, at least the one of the working theories
is that she fled something or someone and made it
to that powder room as possibly an attempt to dial
authorities or you know, dial for help basically with her phone.
(25:26):
Um do we are we gonna talk about this? The
other weird thing is a stack of papers that I
guess Barry had and his gloves m M yeah, yeah,
lay it on us. Well, those were found very near
the entrance, the side door entrance to the home where
both Honey and Barry would always just kind of go
into the house. So it seems as though perhaps he
(25:48):
walked into the home and was either immediately confronted by
someone or heard something that made him run, like put
that stuff down and take off right. Because he's not
like most people. He's not the kind of guy who
gets to the door to his house and says, oh,
let me just drop all my stuff outside. You know
what I mean? Uh, I can't. I can't walk into
(26:10):
my house with my gloves. What am I a farmer?
You know? He's not that kind of dude. But yeah,
they they do take a while to revise their findings
based on this evidence, and they come back and they
have these serious of press statements and they say, and
they're talking to Toronto Star as well, and they say,
(26:30):
we are now treating this case not as a murder suicide,
but as a double homicide. And um, some of this
is informed by professionals who look at the scene. Right.
We'll get to them in a second. But the Sherman
family is a financial powerhouse, right. They have a lot
(26:52):
of differences. Money can come between people. But they go
past the police. They go and hire their own kind
of private investigation team, and they release his statement just
before the police press conference, where they say, we anticipate
the police will reach the same conclusion as our p
(27:16):
I s, which is that this is a homicide, that
our parents were murdered, and uh, things just get stranger.
Public speculation grows. The police are searching for any leads
and at almost every single turn they found more questions
than answers. All Right, So one question, um that comes
(27:37):
to mind first is why did it take so long
for the police to rule the deaths a double homicide? Um?
It was a tall order for just about anybody uh
involved from the start. Um that Barry Sherman would kill
his wife and then himself. Also, if Honey had been
murdered in a different part of the house, Barry would
(27:59):
have had to drag her body down to the side,
you know, the scene where they were found, this kind
of tableau, kind of scene. Um. And he was you know,
he he was older and lacked the strength to to
likely be able to do that, let alone the whole
posing thing that we we talked about a minute ago. Um.
So it's pretty unlikely that he would have been able
(28:21):
to do that even part of that, and even less
possible once we examined some additional details. Um, there are
marks on both of their wrists that indicated that they
had possibly been zip tied at some point. Um. So
that's super sketchy, and it really renders that scenario entirely unlikely. Yeah,
(28:43):
I want to point something out here. The home that
they were in is roughly twelve thousand square feet. Twelve
thousand square feet, that's a huge home. And if you
imagine just carrying the weight of the deadweight of a
human body, or even you know, carrying someone who is
still alive, who's maybe unconscious or something, down a huge
(29:04):
set of stairs and across a really long way to
the pool where they were found. Uh it is it
doesn't seem possible. I may have missed it. Where where
where do we see that there is a belief that
she was killed another part of the house. Uh, the
idea that she had the brasier, the bruise on her
on her face, and that are the location of that
(29:25):
cell phone. Got it? So there's there's no like sale bathroom,
pretty much like a powder room. Like you said that.
So so for those of us playing along at home,
you'll start to notice more and more things point to
the possibility of not a crime of passion or of opportunity,
but something premeditated, something planned, which looks more and more
(29:51):
like what we could call a professional exercise. Uh, and
that's what we call, yeah exercise? Sure, yeah, I mean
there you know again, I think of movies like seven
and like uh, even like Taxidermiah is a real weird
one where a guy like taxidermis himself at the end.
(30:12):
Spoiler alert, it's it's it's kind of in the name, um,
but yeah, really the the tab again, I keep seasing
this work, and this is what they always use in
these psychoanalytical kind of like murder movies, the tableau, you know,
the scene that was laid out. Another really interesting show,
the Spanish show called epitaphios Um that is on HBO.
It's it's older, but it's like really good. It's just
(30:35):
like a like a murder mystery where this murderer is
acting out all of these kind of clues in the
way he's leaving the body. And again not trying to
like in this to fiction. It's obviously real life and
this horrible thing that happened these people, But you can't
help but go there if you're a fan of this
kind of true crime fiction stuff, right, yeah, agreed. I
mean here's the thing. Uh, you can sadly already draw
(30:56):
a sharp contrast between the way the law treats double
homicides of non billionaires and double homicides of people who
have a lot of political and social and financial heft.
The it's very clear that the Sherman family's private team
(31:17):
was able to put some extra oomph into the investigation.
And it's not a ding on the police forces, who
are often understaffed, underfunded, and overworked. Right. But another voice
that changed their opinion was the chief medical examiner for
the county. The chief medical examiner heard the initial explanation
(31:40):
the doctor May Chase, and Dr. Chase went on record saying,
if this is a murder suicide by hanging, it will
be the first one recorded in history. Um, which might
sound a little hyperbolic. Can we unpack that a little bit,
meaning like that both died from hanging, that would be
there because a murder suicide, you know, well, at least
(32:05):
here in the States, it's it's often gonna be UH
firearm related or firearm power. But still it took a
like your question is great because it did take six
weeks before the police switched their conclusion. And again, Kevin Donovan,
who has done so much awesome journalism on this UH,
(32:26):
says you can tell that Donovan is a little, at
the very least put diplomatically confused by some of the
initial actions of the Toronto p d H. He says,
you know, they ignored crucial evidence video footage from a
neighbor's home. We'll get to in a moment. Uh. And
(32:47):
then he also notes, which is very surprising to me,
you guys, I mean, we're not legally experts. We don't
do crime scenes. But he says they didn't collect d
n A, they didn't dust for for fingerprints in a
timely fashion. Yeah. Well, I mean that's nuts. That is nuts,
(33:07):
And and it's because they were treating it like a
self inflicted incident at the house. Right, if it's a
murder suicide, they don't have to worry about anybody else
who may or may not have been in that house
at the time, so they don't have to even think
about that. And if you're operating that way as a
police force for six full weeks, you are gonna lose
(33:28):
a ton of stuff that you could have probably picked
on initially. Yeah, exactly, because there is a ticking clock,
you know. And then we talked about the sculpture. But
we've gotta make one more point too, in if this
is the work of you know, a professional or career operator,
(33:48):
then why what gives with the bodies that's not necessary
to accomplish the task. That's something extra, right, That's that's
the order in Guacamo, to be very crass about it.
That's upon request, and it's probably more expensive if we're
if we're talking about, you know, just to say the
quiet part out loud, a paid hit well in the
(34:09):
time spent at a murder scene, yes, even more important. Right,
A professional would be painfully aware of that, right, and
they would already have an exit strategy right, possibly out
of the country if they're smart. And on some level
that means there's a symbolic meaning to the the statues
in the posing, But we don't know what that what
(34:33):
that's supposed to symbolize. We don't know who that message
is supposed to have meaning for. It's like, um, it's
you know what, it's on the level of a Russian
number station. It's something weird. But where is that message
supposed to be sent? Yeah, you gotta have the you
gotta have the key to decipher it, you know. Otherwise
(34:53):
what even is it? Guys, I'm just having a thought
and we should probably say this for the end. But
if you're let's say, and equally wealthy or almost as
wealthy person who wants to have something like this done
and you could easily afford it. Um, you may also
have strings to pull in the police department to get
(35:15):
them to investigate it as a murder suicide. Just putting
that out there, it's a very good thing to put out.
It's also a thing you see. I'm sorry I keep
doing this. It's just kind of where my knowledge of
this kind of stuff comes from. In crime shows, where
there'll be some brass that doesn't want to to declare
that we've got ourselves a serial killer, or doesn't want
to rule it a certain way because of political reasons
(35:37):
or perhaps because of pressure from some direction or another,
just like Jaws, the novel Jaws, where where they're they're
covering up the shark attacks to seaside town for towards.
It's very no. It has nothing can commeon do with Jaws.
As a matter of fact, we can say conclusively add
to the list, uh people who definitely did not do
(35:57):
this the sculptor Leo Sewell and every sharkfind any known species. Uh.
So there's this other question when you're talking about powerful forces, Matt,
I love that because it could be an equally powerful
person who is holding a grudge knowing that they can
touch people in in the law enforcement infrastructure such that
(36:21):
things get lost, things get buried, things get abstained, but
they don't have to live in town. What what if
this tragedy is somehow related to the pharmaceutical industry. That's
one of the first things people started to speculate about, right,
because the pharmaceutical industry overall is a huge business. It
(36:44):
is global, it can sometimes act like a state actor.
It's just very powerful. Um. And we found his source
that uh, we thought you all would enjoy because we
do talk about the importance of knowing the providence of
a source. Right. So Pharma Voice dot com, a little
(37:06):
bit of a scute source, addresses this directly and they
say they dismissed the idea of a plot by big
pharma actors entirely. They say, you know, it's a common
conspiracy theory. And then they say that there are rumors
there was a generic drug manufacturer out of Israel that
(37:26):
could have done it, or that the Clinton Foundation was
ordered the hit because APITEXS was sending generic drugs to
Puerto Rico, Haiti and Rwanda. Uh. And this guy again,
Kevin Donovan, talk about punishing the honor student this guy
says he continues to get calls today with people either
(37:50):
asking him about a potential connection to big pharma or
kind of telling them or seeming like they know well.
But but also like, I mean, I know you're not
talking about drug cartels, but if you're talking about bad
actors from another country wanting to kind of make an
impact or like send a message, you don't do something
mega cryptic, you like chop their heads off or something,
you know, you leave a calling card and maybe I mean, yeah,
(38:12):
like polonium in Russia, right for all those dangerous third
story windows. I think in this case that that calling card,
whatever it is, again, it's the posing of the bodies,
you know, Barry maccab But the I don't know, the
main thing that gives any sand to the idea big
(38:33):
of a pharmaceutical actor being involved or that somehow motivating
the deaths is that Barry had a ton of legal enemies, right,
Oh yeah, And I would just I want to give
this quote Ben that you found from what is this
Jeffrey Robinson's book book book title if you want to
look it up as Prescription Games, Money, ego and Power
(38:54):
inside the Global pharmaceutical Industry. And Robinson, the author of
this book, actually talked with Barry, and Barry had something
very interesting to say. You should do it, you should
do it, Okay, sure um. According to the author, Barry
told him that he was surprised one of his competitors
hadn't quote knocked him off already unquote. This is, of course,
(39:17):
before his passing hyperbole. Maybe yeah, I mean he's kind
of joking with her, like, I've really gotten over on
a bunch of these other companies. So it's weird they
haven't taken me out right, you know. And and the
weirdest thing is a lot of that comes down to intonation,
doesn't it. There's a huge difference between sand I'm surprised
(39:37):
they haven't knocked me off already, or I'm surprised they
haven't knocked me off already, you know what I mean.
Like it's very small things. But but like the all
of this is rich fertile soil for speculation, but it's
not proof. It's just people saying, hey, we know aspects
(39:59):
of the pharmaceutical industry are super shady. Hey we know
this guy went hard and business dealings. But if we're
looking for evidence, then we need to look at things
like that surveillance video, which you can see online right now. Uh,
you just can't. It's not super helpful, but I think
it's it's damning when you consider the context. Yeah, well,
(40:22):
why don't we Why don't we take a break. You
go watch that video and then come right back and
we'll talk about it and we're back. Let's let's describe
the video a little bit. It's like, you know, um, like, no,
you have you have one of those cameras, right, you
(40:42):
have a front door camera, Yeah, I have the ring Yeah,
so so you can see footage from that camera angle.
But it's it's not like, uh, it's a stationary camera, right, Yeah,
usually mount them somewhere or you know, have them be
placed somewhere kind of innocuous or hidden. But yeah, it's
like a wide angle, kind of fish eye type lands.
(41:03):
So definitely grabs a good bit of stuff. It's a
pretty pretty wide shot. And this is this is something
to keep in mind, like hopefully you were able to
watch the video over the break. In this video, keep
in mind our friends for more tropical climbs. This is
Canada and it's the time of the year when there's
snow everywhere. What does snow mean footprints, right, Uh, there's
(41:29):
a residential street that's not like right next to the
Sherman estate, but it's it's very near to the Sherman home. Man.
If you look at this footage, which is police got
from someone living in the area, uh, it's security camp footage,
not hi def or anything like that of a guy
of a figure walking down the sidewalk sometime passes and
(41:56):
what is almost certainly the same figure walks back the
way it. Hey, you'll hear this called the walking man
footage sometimes, but police can't even tell it's a man.
There's like one thing they know about this figure. Yeah,
they kind of know the height of this person, somewhere
between five six and five nine. I would imagine there'd
be formula you could use to see how the lens
(42:17):
distortion and like you know, other stationary objects and all
of that and kind of cross reference and get an
accurate representation of that from even kind of crappy surveillance footage. Yeah,
I mean, it's definitely it's an estimate, right of how
tall that person is, because y'all, this person has a
(42:37):
gate that is very unique. Well, the way they walk
is unique, and that's one of the reasons that you
can say, oh, this is the same person that went
that away and then came back in this way. Matter
what it was, I wonder if it was just like
you know they keep on trucking guy, you know from
the our Crumb cartoons, or I mean like like a
real wide legged kind of waters like a verb kent thing,
(43:02):
perhaps a bit of a saunter. Yeah, I'm interested, Well
it wasn't. He definitely wasn't like on some docy dough energy.
Wasn't you know, skipping along. But but a lot of
us listening along today would say, well, if I see
somebody with particularly unusual gait, uh in this kind of climate,
(43:25):
it can mean a couple of things. It can mean, uh,
they are injured. One, it could mean but they were
If they were injured, they were injured before they went
wherever they were going. Too. It could just suck to
walk in rough, rough weather. Right. Maybe maybe they're they're
cold and they're just tired of walking. So what made
him turn around? Right, that's a good point. Maybe their
(43:46):
shoe is broken a little bit. Yeah, maybe maybe they
Here's the other thing. I'm not saying this is true,
but maybe they have a concealed weapon, right, And it
would have to be it would have to be something
that was concealed in such a way that it was
(44:06):
affecting their gait. You would need to be an expert
on a couple of things to be able to tell
what someone was carrying by the way they were walking. Right,
even even like um, even people with a lot of
experience and spotting, you know, a concealed firearm, they'll be
able to tell by the way someone moves or the
(44:28):
way their jacket is sitting on the wh Yeah, exactly,
that they won't be able to guess the specific firearm. Yeah,
they might be able to guess the type or the
size of of of object that they're they're concealing. But no,
I mean, I don't know that anything that you could
conceal like that would like change your walk in a
significant way. There would be some telltale sign. I guess,
(44:49):
a shotgun, but stupid Sassburg down a pant leg and
I was like, uh, probably wouldn't be able to do that, right,
I guess. I just don't think of those as the
kinds of weapons you conceal unless you're doing some sort
of trench coat yeah, or down the pant leg cartoonish
kind of thing, you know, or you're aware there's a camera, right,
(45:10):
so you mess up your gate just like verbal kent
spoiler uh, to get away uh or to not be identified? Right.
That is a very clever idea, mat and I like that,
and it also it also explains the big problem with
the idea of a concealed weapon. If you are caught,
you run into anybody and you've got you've got a weapon,
(45:32):
and you can't explain why you have it, where you're
going to, where you're coming from, right, then you have
immediately escalated the problems evolved in your situation. So, okay,
so there's a sketchy person, and if you know, it's
very reasonable to say, what if this person just just
(45:53):
someone who had to like walk to a neighbor's house,
someone who forgot something somewhere and they walk and they're
like crap, they walked out and then they walked back right. Uh?
Possibly right. But if that's the case, if this is
an innocent person, why have they not come forward whether
you have to be identified? What what gives? Right? I mean?
(46:16):
One possibility would be that they were doing something shady
that was unrelated and they just didn't want to get caught,
you know, like they're they're sneaking out to party or
maybe to like buy drugs or have illicit sexual stuff.
Uh so they're not going to come forward in that case.
But that's that's like winning the lottery twice for that
(46:38):
to happen, you know. Yeah, because I don't want to
get back to this concept of the open door and
open window. Yeah, just a little bit, because I really
I think the timing of the house sale factors into
this in some way. And that lock the like you
(46:59):
like you said, the what do they call is it
a lock box? The thing that you put out on
the front of a door, so a real turk and
it's just like a little little mat usually come from
Master Locks, the company, and it's just got a little
window and then you know, you know, a little Yeah,
some of them are fancier, but I think a lock
it's a type of lock box very specific purpose to
fit around a door knob. I think there's something to
(47:23):
someone touring the home and unlocking a window while they're
on that tour, because that is a really effective way
to create an opening for yourself if you're planning to
return at some point. Yeah, that I agree with you,
because that is an efficient way that houses get cased.
But it's also it also would only be worth that
(47:48):
further exposure if someone uh didn't know the basement was
typically unlocked, you know they would they would have to
not know that, or maybe they're super buttoned up and
they get the window just as insurance as a second right,
which you would want redundancy ideally, but like then you
(48:11):
but then you have to see I love spending this
out right, Um, then then you would have to ideally
have another person involved, because I'm certain that everybody who
toward the house got questioned. Right, it's it's a it's
a mansion. It's a mansion in Toronto, which has a
(48:32):
crazy cost of living. Even then the real estate prices
were nuts, So it's a very specific demographic. It's going
into these mansions. Well then here here it is, Ben,
here's the scenario. Uh, some very wealthy person who could
actually purchase that home toward it, maybe with a spouse,
with their family or alone, and they opened the window
for the professional they hired to enter later. Right, Because
(48:56):
at a certain level, you don't do a lot of
stuff yourself. You have a staff of some sort, right, uh,
whether that's cleaning your house or cleaning out your your
your vengeance list that it's also anomalous though, because knowing
the weather at that time, why would you have a
window open? I wouldn't. No, most people would not write. Uh.
(49:19):
So I think for all of us and probably our
fellow listeners, that lack of forced entry is um is
a key sticking point, right It's it's a problem with
all the scenarios that we try to walk through. So
let's go back to our expert, author Kevin Donovan, author
(49:40):
and journalist Kevin Donovan, who says that this, based on
the other research he conducted, this to him, indicates that
the murderer must have somehow been incredibly familiar with the
interior of the home, and not just that, but likely
had a pretty suffici sticated working knowledge of the sherman's
(50:02):
routine and schedules. And that's kind of why if you
are you know what, that's kind of why some of
us put a lot of energy into uh, not having
an easily discernible routine, right like other than other than
(50:24):
when we are podcasting or when we know we're getting
together to do stuff for hang out, the three of
us don't know where the other ones are. I think
it's just a good policy. Come on, all right, come
on now, let's just leave it there. Let's just leave
it there. We do you guys, look just everyone. We
(50:46):
we do some like mutual I don't know. I think
it's just a game of cat and mouse fun tracking
each other thing. It's it's fun. It's like what we
do for fun. Who are you doing like a royal
we because on this show? What you don't do that? Uh? Yeah,
(51:08):
you know. Here's a here's a trick though, if you
do think that someone is doing some kind of untoward
tracking and you need to throw them off for any reason, right,
one of the things that you can do very easily
is just figure out how much time you need to
buy and then take your phone, your cell phone, and
(51:28):
put it on like put it on mass transit where
it will get stolen and someone else will take it. Uh,
you could, if you want to involve someone else, put
it in like a privately owned car or something with
their consent. It's the only way it's legal. Yeah. The
best thing for me is record like high fidelity television
show with a separate mic, then play that back in
(51:54):
a place in your house that has a television has
a capability to play that that content and then go
do your business. But but make sure you it sounds
of you watching the TV inside the recording. Yeah, I
like that one. It's a it's a little extra work,
(52:14):
like our our conversation where you and I were very
much saying that you gotta reheat pizza in the pan.
It's just it's a little extra work, but it improves
the end result. This conversation just went through a couple
of very strange places. But um, but yeah, they're So
(52:37):
what we're doing is we're we're endeavoring to think in
a very grounded way through the problems, right because again,
even the police investigation, even the private investigation, just lead
to more questions so far as we know now at
this point, You know, folks, we we only do two
part episodes when we feel very strong only about what
(53:00):
we need to get to, and this is one of
those situations. So we're going to pause here at part
one of who killed the Sherman's and we're gonna return
in our very next episode with part two. But in
the meantime, we want to know what you think. That's right,
let us know what you think. You can reach us
at Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff
(53:23):
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(53:45):
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(54:06):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Grading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel, and they
called me Ben. We are joined with our guest producer
j J. Causeway Pause, Way, j J Press pause pause Way,
j J b d pause Way. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. As you are listening, folks,
(00:46):
would like to welcome you to three. We are recording
one of the last things will do in twenty twenty two,
and we thought what better way to end the year
for us, and what better way to start the year
with you then to go to an unsolved mystery, a
very deep one that gets very murky very quickly. As
(01:09):
a matter of fact, I would say, um, today's episode
is a study in extremes, the extremes of financial wealth,
the very high reaches of it, in the extremes of
brutal crime. On December, as far as people can tell,
as far as forensics assures us, a tragedy struck. The
(01:31):
Sherman family, a couple living out in Canada. Here are
the facts. It's a good life. It's good to be king,
you know what I mean. Oh yeah, well they're they're
definitely lords, right at least Um very certainly was a
lord of drugs, a drug lord. He wasn't literally a
(01:57):
drug lord, yes, okay, but man the dance involved. But
uh yeah that's what you're thinking. Uh. Not not a
drug lord in the sense of one of these movies
or TV shows you might watch. He was the owner
of a company that produced generic drugs, so generic versions
(02:18):
of all those big name drugs you see the all
the commercials for um. And he was living with his wife, Honey,
who was a philanthropist of great note. Uh, they were
just living the dream man. Yeah. And and the idea
about lord of lord of a dance I when you
get to this, because he wasn't just a pharmaceutical drug
(02:39):
lord for having fun with the term. But he definitely
knew how to make money dance. Uh. He was as
involved with finance, non related to the pharmaceutical industry as
he was with drugs. Uh. He's an engineer, as a
keen mind for business at the height of his fortune.
He personally had an s estimated well, it's tough when
(03:03):
you talk about billionaires. He had an estimated three point
two billion dollars in personal net worth in seventeen in Canada.
That made him somewhere between the twelfth to fifteen richest
individual in the country. Really makes you wonder about those
other eleven, Right, do they have meetings, did they get together?
(03:23):
What are the schedules? Like, we'll never know, um, but
maybe let's learn a little bit about his background just
so you can get a sense of this person. If
you are uh, if you live in Canada or have
spent time in Canada, you almost certainly know the name
Barry Sherman, but you definitely know the name of his company. Yeah,
(03:44):
he started a career in pharmaceuticals when his uncle Louis
Lloyd Winter's estate UH let him take over Empire Laboratories,
which is the company that his uncle ran, and in
nineteen seventy four Barry would form his own pharmaceutical company
called uh Apo te Po Tex Yeah, indeed incorporated. Um.
(04:06):
He led this company to greatness, at least you know
drug greatness. He led them to become the biggest manufacturer
of generic drugs and all of Canada. It's kind of
a big deal. Um. The company alone employees thousands of
folks and they sell drugs in a hundred and fifteen countries.
So well, we can't exactly say that he you know,
(04:27):
started from what first base, you know, square one, from nothing. Uh,
he definitely did, you know, do what we have often seen,
you know, folks like even though what's his name, Ben?
We talked about him on Raculous History recently, Donald Trump, Well, Donald,
I think I think he's not this example. It's uh
Getty who you know, the younger son of the original
(04:49):
you know, Getty fortune holder. He did take his father
was very stingy. He did take some seed money and
then turn it into something of of use. So this
guy's sort of again he had a little bit of help,
a little bit of push, but he, you know, definitely
was a smart fellow, um who made the most of
this opportunity that he was given. Oh yeah, and there's
there's an interesting note here too, because uh, I love
(05:12):
that you're pointing this out. So he gets he gets
his original spot as a tycoon in this industry due
to his uncle, his uncle's passing. His uncle had four kids,
and they did not get uh, the ability to run
Empire Laboratories. They got a or according to them, they
(05:33):
each were promised a five percent stake in the business.
And they were very angry with Barry Sherman. Right, yeah,
we're laying some groundwork. They were very angry when he
shut them down in court because he was selling Empire Laboratories,
which also further propelled him towards the capitol and position
he needed to create Apotex or Apotex. And it's weird
(05:58):
to think about, like cutting off the family tree in
kind of a not great way, berry, little pruning, you
know what I mean. Uh, maybe why you don't do
business with family. But family discord aside. He had. It
was a long time marriage with Honey, which you mentioned earlier.
(06:20):
Matt his spouse, Honey Sherman. They married in nine one
and they had four children of their own, three girls,
one boy, and Honey was Honey was known in many
different ways by many different people. You can find accounts
of folks who live in the area who say that
(06:42):
she was very rude at the coffee shop or very privileged.
But that's what you know. Waking up with a billion
dollars will do to people sometimes and uh, then you'll
see other people saying that she did tremendous good As
a philanthropist. She was very active in especially in charities
associated with the Jewish community in Canada and abroad. So
(07:05):
they were trying to put their money towards some charitable actions.
This is not to say that they had no enemies.
The people who knew the Shermans were not unanimously members
of a Sherman fan club. As a matter of fact,
Barry was known for being a bit of a bulldog. Yeah,
as you said, he he knew the drug game, the
(07:27):
manufacturer of them, but mostly the sale of them. He
also knew how to put his money to work for him, right,
so any profits that he brought in he could make
those singing dance. But he also really seemed to enjoy
taking people to court when he needed to or when
he felt like there was to gain. Litigious, was he yeah, yeah,
(07:53):
oh very much so um And some of it's weird
because he was actually in his day, he was the
most litigious individual in all of Canada. It's another extreme
of this larger than life figure. And about so an
estimate might have been from the author Kevin Donovan. But
I saw an estimate that said maybe around half of
(08:17):
his courtroom battles were just out of necessity being a
generic drug manufacturer. But then another half were just that
he was. He was a real hot and cold guy.
If he loved you, he loved you, and he's a
big fan, and he would support you even when his
friends told him not to. And if he thought you
would wronged him, he would do evil things, very petty
(08:41):
things like he wins that lawsuit against his four cousins
right after he sells their father's company. And then he
when he wins the lawsuits not enough. This is true story.
He goes back to the court and he says, Uh,
these four people have to pay me a million dollars
for my troubles. The court later kicks it down to
uh three dollars, but he's already financially ruined them. He
(09:05):
just wanted to twist the knife. Uh. That's the environment
we're moving in, and that's his family. Um, so you know,
naturally you're you're this high, you're at this threshold in
the upper echelons of business. There's a lot of ruthlessness
involved in getting there, and maintaining that king of the
(09:25):
hill position. So naturally this guy is gonna have rivals.
Of course, naturally they're gonna be people who maybe got
burned in a lawsuit or uh, feel like he did
them dirty in a business deal, and they don't think
of him as their best friend. You know. Uh, they're
not in his MySpace top eight if my space is
still around. Um. But you'll hear a lot of people say,
(09:48):
that's just that's his business, that's just the breaks, that's
how the sausage gets made. That's how you succeed in
a profit motivated ecosystem, until that is, something goes wrong.
In December, horror struck one of the most powerful families
in Canada. Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, and now,
(10:13):
even five years later, their deaths remain unsolved, leading more
than a few people to speculate there may be a
conspiracy of foot Here's where it gets crazy. The Shermans
were last seen alive on the thirteenth September at the
headquarters of apitex Um, where they were taking the look
(10:33):
giving the once over and the approval for some design
changes to a new house that they were building. Miss
Sherman was getting ready to take a trip to Miami
a few days later, and Mr Sherman is going to
join her a week later. And the Shermans, we just
we should just note here they had built a house earlier,
so they're building this new house, right, but they had
earlier built a house in the nineteen eighties, and this
(10:56):
house they were preparing for sale. So if anyone who's
gone through that process, you know that they were basically
having to go to the old house pretty frequently make
repairs or at least overseas repairs and things that were
being done to that house. And that happens to be
where they head at some point um on either December. Yeah,
(11:16):
and there's you'll see some conflicting reporting about this, uh
this kind of forty eight to seventy two hour period
between December and December. But here here's what we know
from the official records. All right, Like, like Noel said, December,
last time anybody publicly admits to seeing them, Like they're
(11:38):
careful phrasing there on the Just a few days later,
a pair of Real It's Tours is giving a tour
of this mansion in Toronto, and it's around midday uh.
And as they get to the bottom of the house,
they're doing the walkthrough. You know, you're buying a mansion,
it's a significant investment. You want to look at the
(11:59):
knooks and crannies. So they get toward the bottom of
the house, to the basement, and then they find the
bodies Barry and Honey Sherman, fully dressed, and they're positioned,
we should say, beside their indoor basement swimming pool, semi seated,
(12:20):
side by side, belts tied around their necks, attached to
the railing of the indoor pool. Yeah, and um, at
least I think it was. In Barry's case, he was
kind of leaned back because that belt was keeping him
up right. Um, really messed up, really really messed up.
(12:44):
But it definitely seems as though they were posed right. Yeah,
that's that's one of the that's where this starts to
get a little bit true Detective season one, To be
honest with you, So, at the times of their deaths,
Barry is seventy Honey is seventy years old. She has
a bruise on her face. Both bodies have been restrained
(13:08):
with coats pulled over their arms. Later autopsies would confirm
they died due to strangulation. Although that seems pretty clear
at the scene, you gotta let forensics do their work
right and and look for all the details that indicate,
you know, whether or not something was a suicide. Shout
out to Epstein's hyoid bone. Seriously, right, always the little
(13:32):
tell tale signs. Um, and we've got something along those
lines here from the author of The Billionaire Murders, a
guy named Kevin Donovan. The body seemed to have been
purposefully arranged. Um. This is again, this is like true
detective kind of you know, serial killer, elaborate kind of
behavior kind of stuff. The body seemed to have been
(13:53):
purposefully arranged in an imitation of two life size sculptures
that existed in the couple's home, not far at all
from where they were fed. Right, Yeah, you can look
at a photograph of this sculpture. We want to note
that poor Leo Suel is not a suspect. There are
(14:16):
a lot of suspects here, just to be honest with you,
but Leo is not what He's just a guy making
a living through his art, which is an awesome thing
to be able to do. Then probably never imagined that
he would be involved with something like this, even tangentially
it's it's kind of like a found object art sort
of like outsider art kind of vibes and to his
(14:38):
junk sculpture, and this dude was active in the seventies. Um,
And I mean they're they're cool pieces, if not creepy
unto themselves, I have to say at all, they look yeah,
I mean when you look at it with all the
whatever pipes and little pieces, it kind of looks like
skinned humans, but like in a weird junkyard kind of
(15:00):
way it is. And they're sitting on top of speakers,
like fight speakers first of all, as an audio file,
that is not a good place for that's gonna cause
some serious vibrations and not going to get the best quality,
okay out of your speakers when you've got these metal,
you know, monstrosity sitting on top of that's guys. Yeah,
(15:21):
to make money by spending a bunch of money on
a frivolous things. I say as I as I drink
dirt coffee out of like uh a spaghetti jar from
probably two thousand and nine. Uh, I know what you mean,
Like it is disquietly because they are Yeah, they were
not popular with the kids. These are life size figures.
(15:44):
Uh something gives it a crash test. Dummies vibe to
me almost and and you can see how you know,
if you grow up anybody who's grown up with life
size sculptures or mannekins or stuff like that, you realize
how that can creep you out as a kid. And
they had apparently in the past, all four of the
kids had asked their parents, please put these just somewhere else.
(16:08):
If you can't throw them away, just put them somewhere else.
But the mother, Honey, liked them so much, she really
enjoyed them, so she said, no, it's our house, they're
staying here. When she actually borrowed them or or asked
to have them from a friend who had them displayed.
After Oh man, I'm sorry, but I can't remember the
(16:29):
exact thing from the research, but they some um place
that had them displayed closed down, and they were they
were taken by a couple and then Honey was like,
I really like those. I want to put them in
my basement. And that's what happened. Yeah. Yeah, Because she's
so big in the world of the arts and charity
(16:49):
and philanthropy that organizations want to please her, as do people,
so it's kind of a social coup for them to
be able to say, I give this gift to you. Anyway,
we're harping on these statues because the bodies when they
are found, even even if you had never seen the
statue before, the bodies when they're found are in a
(17:12):
very similar position to life size statues, to corpses, as
as though arranged as though in homage to the statue. Right,
and when Kevin Donovan, who was probably the world's foremost
expert on this case now when he is looking into
the origin of the sculpture, he's the guy who uh
(17:34):
finds the artist Leo. He said that everything he looked
into about this from when he was first writing about
it at the Toronto Star too when he came out
with his book, he just couldn't figure out why they
were staged. Pretty confident is that they were staged that
way on purpose. But he said, I don't know what
(17:58):
it means, but quote, I can't see how it doesn't
mean something what I mean just like again, I'm gonna
stop with the True Detective references after this, but just
like a rust coal right in the very first episode
of True Detective Season one. Uh, no spoilers, but what
a show. Uh, this is unfortunately real life. So we're
(18:22):
we're setting up some of this stuff about the statute.
That's one of many unanswered questions here. Uh. And if
you want to go to the answers, right then, naturally
where do you start. You start with the people who
knew the Shermans and the authorities who are put on
the case. So we're gonna pause for a word from
our sponsors, and then let's let's go right to Toronto
(18:45):
p D. Let's see what they have to say. All right,
let's jump back in here, and we're still in December fourteen,
December fifteen, two thousand seven, team, and we're we're looking
at statements from the Toronto Police, and you know, it's
(19:07):
really just questions about did any associates of the Sherman's
hear from them within that window? Did anyone, you know,
have any idea what their plans were in that immediate term?
Were they heading back to that house for a specific reason? Uh,
you know, just any information? And according to the Toronto Police,
there was nothing to go on here. There were no leads.
(19:29):
According to anybody who knew them, they hadn't seen them
for at least two days or around two days. And
when they start looking at the crime scene, you know,
with the strange staging of the victims, with those weird statues,
you look, you look for signs of entry. Did somebody
bust in through a window to gain access to them
and kill them? Well, it's a little weird because there
(19:54):
are no signs of forced entry, right, any kind of
like brute force trauma to any door do or anything
like that. But there were there was some weirdness. Yeah,
Like I believe it was. One of the doors was unlocked,
which is something their household staff. Yes, folks, they had
a staff. Their household staff knew, right, they had a
door that it was typically unlocked for convenience. Uh. There
(20:17):
was also an open window, but no no signs that
either had been forced. Clearly not a kick door operation.
Someone either was let into the home or someone knew
where which methods of entry would be feasible and would
leave the would have the sorry lowest likelihood of leaving
(20:40):
a trace. I got two things here, guys. According to
the reporting, this is something that Sherman's would do often,
Like you said, ask the staff to leave a couple
of entries open on purpose, or they would do it
on purpose just to leave stuff unlocked. Yeah, that baffles me.
(21:01):
Is it like some kind of like kinky game or something.
I'm sorry, I don't need to be I think it's
just a very foreign idea to the three of us
in particular, that you would ever just leave your house
a lock to instruct them to do it. It's almost
like they're rolling the dice a little bit, you know
what I mean. I don't know. Well, I mean, if
(21:22):
you're just going to kind of forget to do it
or not worry about it too much, but we shouldn't
the standard protocol just always be just locked the door
when you're done, like if you're leaving, you know, And
maybe this was See this is something that we don't
have fully answered, Like was this a habit that had
gone on for years right there? This will be an
important question. Or was this something that had happened relatively
(21:44):
recently as they were transitioning to their new abode, or
did it have something to do with someone who would
toward the house recently as a potential buyer, which I okay,
a little inside job right there. We go, We're we're
assigning some sophistication. Now, uh, and this actually, as we'll see,
(22:05):
this is not your ordinary crime of opportunity by any means.
So the other thing, they had recently installed a lock
box that the staff was using to come and go.
So it is reasonable for us to assume that they
had some of their people maybe coming in and moving
possessions or checking on stuff or you know. Um and
(22:28):
and again to show the house, to show the house
key and people. Yeah, and so something weird happens in Toronto. Um,
the police, not the band, the Toronto p D. Initially
the police were called in, but their schedule was just
too massive, and you know, they're mainly musicians nowadays. But
(22:50):
Toronto p D was called in as a replacement. And
they initially called this a murder suicide, the idea being, uh,
in their initial statements that Barry Sherman strangled, asphyxiated his
wife many years and then did the same to himself.
(23:13):
The public was not buying this. I mean, the belt,
you know, it's typically a hallmark of suicide, you know,
but it also seemed to serve the purpose of kind
of posing them as well in the situation. Yeah, that's
part of it. Like the if that narrative was true
and they just coincidentally ended up in positions very much
(23:34):
like those statues. It's one of those things where you
would almost have to prove it was a coincidence. Now,
how chilling though, if it were that and it were
Barry that did the posing, and then he would have
to like pose that post himself that way and then
do the thing. But also, you know, you kind of
spas them, and things happen as you die. It'd be
(23:56):
hard to maintain that pose postmortem without some kind of
fixing it up. No matter how good or evil, how
how how socially great or unremarkable, a person is pretty
much all go the same way unless they're vaporized instantly,
you know, they shoved a little. It's the great equalizer.
(24:22):
Every party means no, but I mean, we're we're trying
not to make this incredibly um dark, I guess, but
it is. It is. It is a dark subject, and
I think we're raising valid points. Right, there's just not
enough information, But there's a lot of stuff that sticks out,
(24:43):
like the cell phone, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're talking about the murder suicide initial thing. Then they
the police kind of switch gears pretty soon after that
because there is additional evidence that they find at the scene,
and one of those things is honey cell phone that
you're talking about, that was found owned in a powder
room that according to associates and friends who knew her,
(25:05):
she never used that thing. That wasn't like the place
where she goes and her cell phones in there, and
they believe, at least the one of the working theories
is that she fled something or someone and made it
to that powder room as possibly an attempt to dial
authorities or you know, dial for help basically with her phone.
(25:26):
Um do we are we gonna talk about this? The
other weird thing is a stack of papers that I
guess Barry had and his gloves m M yeah, yeah,
lay it on us. Well, those were found very near
the entrance, the side door entrance to the home where
both Honey and Barry would always just kind of go
into the house. So it seems as though perhaps he
(25:48):
walked into the home and was either immediately confronted by
someone or heard something that made him run, like put
that stuff down and take off right. Because he's not
like most people. He's not the kind of guy who
gets to the door to his house and says, oh,
let me just drop all my stuff outside. You know
what I mean? Uh, I can't. I can't walk into
(26:10):
my house with my gloves. What am I a farmer?
You know? He's not that kind of dude. But yeah,
they they do take a while to revise their findings
based on this evidence, and they come back and they
have these serious of press statements and they say, and
they're talking to Toronto Star as well, and they say,
(26:30):
we are now treating this case not as a murder suicide,
but as a double homicide. And um, some of this
is informed by professionals who look at the scene. Right.
We'll get to them in a second. But the Sherman
family is a financial powerhouse, right. They have a lot
(26:52):
of differences. Money can come between people. But they go
past the police. They go and hire their own kind
of private investigation team, and they release his statement just
before the police press conference, where they say, we anticipate
the police will reach the same conclusion as our p
(27:16):
I s, which is that this is a homicide, that
our parents were murdered, and uh, things just get stranger.
Public speculation grows. The police are searching for any leads
and at almost every single turn they found more questions
than answers. All Right, So one question, um that comes
(27:37):
to mind first is why did it take so long
for the police to rule the deaths a double homicide? Um?
It was a tall order for just about anybody uh
involved from the start. Um that Barry Sherman would kill
his wife and then himself. Also, if Honey had been
murdered in a different part of the house, Barry would
(27:59):
have had to drag her body down to the side,
you know, the scene where they were found, this kind
of tableau, kind of scene. Um. And he was you know,
he he was older and lacked the strength to to
likely be able to do that, let alone the whole
posing thing that we we talked about a minute ago. Um.
So it's pretty unlikely that he would have been able
(28:21):
to do that even part of that, and even less
possible once we examined some additional details. Um, there are
marks on both of their wrists that indicated that they
had possibly been zip tied at some point. Um. So
that's super sketchy, and it really renders that scenario entirely unlikely. Yeah,
(28:43):
I want to point something out here. The home that
they were in is roughly twelve thousand square feet. Twelve
thousand square feet, that's a huge home. And if you
imagine just carrying the weight of the deadweight of a
human body, or even you know, carrying someone who is
still alive, who's maybe unconscious or something, down a huge
(29:04):
set of stairs and across a really long way to
the pool where they were found. Uh it is it
doesn't seem possible. I may have missed it. Where where
where do we see that there is a belief that
she was killed another part of the house. Uh, the
idea that she had the brasier, the bruise on her
on her face, and that are the location of that
(29:25):
cell phone. Got it? So there's there's no like sale bathroom,
pretty much like a powder room. Like you said that.
So so for those of us playing along at home,
you'll start to notice more and more things point to
the possibility of not a crime of passion or of opportunity,
but something premeditated, something planned, which looks more and more
(29:51):
like what we could call a professional exercise. Uh, and
that's what we call, yeah exercise? Sure, yeah, I mean
there you know again, I think of movies like seven
and like uh, even like Taxidermiah is a real weird
one where a guy like taxidermis himself at the end.
(30:12):
Spoiler alert, it's it's it's kind of in the name, um,
but yeah, really the the tab again, I keep seasing
this work, and this is what they always use in
these psychoanalytical kind of like murder movies, the tableau, you know,
the scene that was laid out. Another really interesting show,
the Spanish show called epitaphios Um that is on HBO.
It's it's older, but it's like really good. It's just
(30:35):
like a like a murder mystery where this murderer is
acting out all of these kind of clues in the
way he's leaving the body. And again not trying to
like in this to fiction. It's obviously real life and
this horrible thing that happened these people, But you can't
help but go there if you're a fan of this
kind of true crime fiction stuff, right, yeah, agreed. I
mean here's the thing. Uh, you can sadly already draw
(30:56):
a sharp contrast between the way the law treats double
homicides of non billionaires and double homicides of people who
have a lot of political and social and financial heft.
The it's very clear that the Sherman family's private team
(31:17):
was able to put some extra oomph into the investigation.
And it's not a ding on the police forces, who
are often understaffed, underfunded, and overworked. Right. But another voice
that changed their opinion was the chief medical examiner for
the county. The chief medical examiner heard the initial explanation
(31:40):
the doctor May Chase, and Dr. Chase went on record saying,
if this is a murder suicide by hanging, it will
be the first one recorded in history. Um, which might
sound a little hyperbolic. Can we unpack that a little bit,
meaning like that both died from hanging, that would be
there because a murder suicide, you know, well, at least
(32:05):
here in the States, it's it's often gonna be UH
firearm related or firearm power. But still it took a
like your question is great because it did take six
weeks before the police switched their conclusion. And again, Kevin Donovan,
who has done so much awesome journalism on this UH,
(32:26):
says you can tell that Donovan is a little, at
the very least put diplomatically confused by some of the
initial actions of the Toronto p d H. He says,
you know, they ignored crucial evidence video footage from a
neighbor's home. We'll get to in a moment. Uh. And
(32:47):
then he also notes, which is very surprising to me,
you guys, I mean, we're not legally experts. We don't
do crime scenes. But he says they didn't collect d
n A, they didn't dust for for fingerprints in a
timely fashion. Yeah. Well, I mean that's nuts. That is nuts,
(33:07):
And and it's because they were treating it like a
self inflicted incident at the house. Right, if it's a
murder suicide, they don't have to worry about anybody else
who may or may not have been in that house
at the time, so they don't have to even think
about that. And if you're operating that way as a
police force for six full weeks, you are gonna lose
(33:28):
a ton of stuff that you could have probably picked
on initially. Yeah, exactly, because there is a ticking clock,
you know. And then we talked about the sculpture. But
we've gotta make one more point too, in if this
is the work of you know, a professional or career operator,
(33:48):
then why what gives with the bodies that's not necessary
to accomplish the task. That's something extra, right, That's that's
the order in Guacamo, to be very crass about it.
That's upon request, and it's probably more expensive if we're
if we're talking about, you know, just to say the
quiet part out loud, a paid hit well in the
(34:09):
time spent at a murder scene, yes, even more important. Right,
A professional would be painfully aware of that, right, and
they would already have an exit strategy right, possibly out
of the country if they're smart. And on some level
that means there's a symbolic meaning to the the statues
in the posing, But we don't know what that what
(34:33):
that's supposed to symbolize. We don't know who that message
is supposed to have meaning for. It's like, um, it's
you know what, it's on the level of a Russian
number station. It's something weird. But where is that message
supposed to be sent? Yeah, you gotta have the you
gotta have the key to decipher it, you know. Otherwise
(34:53):
what even is it? Guys, I'm just having a thought
and we should probably say this for the end. But
if you're let's say, and equally wealthy or almost as
wealthy person who wants to have something like this done
and you could easily afford it. Um, you may also
have strings to pull in the police department to get
(35:15):
them to investigate it as a murder suicide. Just putting
that out there, it's a very good thing to put out.
It's also a thing you see. I'm sorry I keep
doing this. It's just kind of where my knowledge of
this kind of stuff comes from. In crime shows, where
there'll be some brass that doesn't want to to declare
that we've got ourselves a serial killer, or doesn't want
to rule it a certain way because of political reasons
(35:37):
or perhaps because of pressure from some direction or another,
just like Jaws, the novel Jaws, where where they're they're
covering up the shark attacks to seaside town for towards.
It's very no. It has nothing can commeon do with Jaws.
As a matter of fact, we can say conclusively add
to the list, uh people who definitely did not do
(35:57):
this the sculptor Leo Sewell and every sharkfind any known species. Uh.
So there's this other question when you're talking about powerful forces, Matt,
I love that because it could be an equally powerful
person who is holding a grudge knowing that they can
touch people in in the law enforcement infrastructure such that
(36:21):
things get lost, things get buried, things get abstained, but
they don't have to live in town. What what if
this tragedy is somehow related to the pharmaceutical industry. That's
one of the first things people started to speculate about, right,
because the pharmaceutical industry overall is a huge business. It
(36:44):
is global, it can sometimes act like a state actor.
It's just very powerful. Um. And we found his source
that uh, we thought you all would enjoy because we
do talk about the importance of knowing the providence of
a source. Right. So Pharma Voice dot com, a little
(37:06):
bit of a scute source, addresses this directly and they
say they dismissed the idea of a plot by big
pharma actors entirely. They say, you know, it's a common
conspiracy theory. And then they say that there are rumors
there was a generic drug manufacturer out of Israel that
(37:26):
could have done it, or that the Clinton Foundation was
ordered the hit because APITEXS was sending generic drugs to
Puerto Rico, Haiti and Rwanda. Uh. And this guy again,
Kevin Donovan, talk about punishing the honor student this guy
says he continues to get calls today with people either
(37:50):
asking him about a potential connection to big pharma or
kind of telling them or seeming like they know well.
But but also like, I mean, I know you're not
talking about drug cartels, but if you're talking about bad
actors from another country wanting to kind of make an
impact or like send a message, you don't do something
mega cryptic, you like chop their heads off or something,
you know, you leave a calling card and maybe I mean, yeah,
(38:12):
like polonium in Russia, right for all those dangerous third
story windows. I think in this case that that calling card,
whatever it is, again, it's the posing of the bodies,
you know, Barry maccab But the I don't know, the
main thing that gives any sand to the idea big
(38:33):
of a pharmaceutical actor being involved or that somehow motivating
the deaths is that Barry had a ton of legal enemies, right,
Oh yeah, And I would just I want to give
this quote Ben that you found from what is this
Jeffrey Robinson's book book book title if you want to
look it up as Prescription Games, Money, ego and Power
(38:54):
inside the Global pharmaceutical Industry. And Robinson, the author of
this book, actually talked with Barry, and Barry had something
very interesting to say. You should do it, you should
do it, Okay, sure um. According to the author, Barry
told him that he was surprised one of his competitors
hadn't quote knocked him off already unquote. This is, of course,
(39:17):
before his passing hyperbole. Maybe yeah, I mean he's kind
of joking with her, like, I've really gotten over on
a bunch of these other companies. So it's weird they
haven't taken me out right, you know. And and the
weirdest thing is a lot of that comes down to intonation,
doesn't it. There's a huge difference between sand I'm surprised
(39:37):
they haven't knocked me off already, or I'm surprised they
haven't knocked me off already, you know what I mean.
Like it's very small things. But but like the all
of this is rich fertile soil for speculation, but it's
not proof. It's just people saying, hey, we know aspects
(39:59):
of the pharmaceutical industry are super shady. Hey we know
this guy went hard and business dealings. But if we're
looking for evidence, then we need to look at things
like that surveillance video, which you can see online right now. Uh,
you just can't. It's not super helpful, but I think
it's it's damning when you consider the context. Yeah, well,
(40:22):
why don't we Why don't we take a break. You
go watch that video and then come right back and
we'll talk about it and we're back. Let's let's describe
the video a little bit. It's like, you know, um, like, no,
you have you have one of those cameras, right, you
(40:42):
have a front door camera, Yeah, I have the ring Yeah,
so so you can see footage from that camera angle.
But it's it's not like, uh, it's a stationary camera, right, Yeah,
usually mount them somewhere or you know, have them be
placed somewhere kind of innocuous or hidden. But yeah, it's
like a wide angle, kind of fish eye type lands.
(41:03):
So definitely grabs a good bit of stuff. It's a
pretty pretty wide shot. And this is this is something
to keep in mind, like hopefully you were able to
watch the video over the break. In this video, keep
in mind our friends for more tropical climbs. This is
Canada and it's the time of the year when there's
snow everywhere. What does snow mean footprints, right, Uh, there's
(41:29):
a residential street that's not like right next to the
Sherman estate, but it's it's very near to the Sherman home. Man.
If you look at this footage, which is police got
from someone living in the area, uh, it's security camp footage,
not hi def or anything like that of a guy
of a figure walking down the sidewalk sometime passes and
(41:56):
what is almost certainly the same figure walks back the
way it. Hey, you'll hear this called the walking man
footage sometimes, but police can't even tell it's a man.
There's like one thing they know about this figure. Yeah,
they kind of know the height of this person, somewhere
between five six and five nine. I would imagine there'd
be formula you could use to see how the lens
(42:17):
distortion and like you know, other stationary objects and all
of that and kind of cross reference and get an
accurate representation of that from even kind of crappy surveillance footage. Yeah,
I mean, it's definitely it's an estimate, right of how
tall that person is, because y'all, this person has a
(42:37):
gate that is very unique. Well, the way they walk
is unique, and that's one of the reasons that you
can say, oh, this is the same person that went
that away and then came back in this way. Matter
what it was, I wonder if it was just like
you know they keep on trucking guy, you know from
the our Crumb cartoons, or I mean like like a
real wide legged kind of waters like a verb kent thing,
(43:02):
perhaps a bit of a saunter. Yeah, I'm interested, Well
it wasn't. He definitely wasn't like on some docy dough energy.
Wasn't you know, skipping along. But but a lot of
us listening along today would say, well, if I see
somebody with particularly unusual gait, uh in this kind of climate,
(43:25):
it can mean a couple of things. It can mean, uh,
they are injured. One, it could mean but they were
If they were injured, they were injured before they went
wherever they were going. Too. It could just suck to
walk in rough, rough weather. Right. Maybe maybe they're they're
cold and they're just tired of walking. So what made
him turn around? Right, that's a good point. Maybe their
(43:46):
shoe is broken a little bit. Yeah, maybe maybe they
Here's the other thing. I'm not saying this is true,
but maybe they have a concealed weapon, right, And it
would have to be it would have to be something
that was concealed in such a way that it was
(44:06):
affecting their gait. You would need to be an expert
on a couple of things to be able to tell
what someone was carrying by the way they were walking. Right,
even even like um, even people with a lot of
experience and spotting, you know, a concealed firearm, they'll be
able to tell by the way someone moves or the
(44:28):
way their jacket is sitting on the wh Yeah, exactly,
that they won't be able to guess the specific firearm. Yeah,
they might be able to guess the type or the
size of of of object that they're they're concealing. But no,
I mean, I don't know that anything that you could
conceal like that would like change your walk in a
significant way. There would be some telltale sign. I guess,
(44:49):
a shotgun, but stupid Sassburg down a pant leg and
I was like, uh, probably wouldn't be able to do that, right,
I guess. I just don't think of those as the
kinds of weapons you conceal unless you're doing some sort
of trench coat yeah, or down the pant leg cartoonish
kind of thing, you know, or you're aware there's a camera, right,
(45:10):
so you mess up your gate just like verbal kent
spoiler uh, to get away uh or to not be identified? Right.
That is a very clever idea, mat and I like that,
and it also it also explains the big problem with
the idea of a concealed weapon. If you are caught,
you run into anybody and you've got you've got a weapon,
(45:32):
and you can't explain why you have it, where you're
going to, where you're coming from, right, then you have
immediately escalated the problems evolved in your situation. So, okay,
so there's a sketchy person, and if you know, it's
very reasonable to say, what if this person just just
(45:53):
someone who had to like walk to a neighbor's house,
someone who forgot something somewhere and they walk and they're
like crap, they walked out and then they walked back right. Uh?
Possibly right. But if that's the case, if this is
an innocent person, why have they not come forward whether
you have to be identified? What what gives? Right? I mean?
(46:16):
One possibility would be that they were doing something shady
that was unrelated and they just didn't want to get caught,
you know, like they're they're sneaking out to party or
maybe to like buy drugs or have illicit sexual stuff.
Uh so they're not going to come forward in that case.
But that's that's like winning the lottery twice for that
(46:38):
to happen, you know. Yeah, because I don't want to
get back to this concept of the open door and
open window. Yeah, just a little bit, because I really
I think the timing of the house sale factors into
this in some way. And that lock the like you
(46:59):
like you said, the what do they call is it
a lock box? The thing that you put out on
the front of a door, so a real turk and
it's just like a little little mat usually come from
Master Locks, the company, and it's just got a little
window and then you know, you know, a little Yeah,
some of them are fancier, but I think a lock
it's a type of lock box very specific purpose to
fit around a door knob. I think there's something to
(47:23):
someone touring the home and unlocking a window while they're
on that tour, because that is a really effective way
to create an opening for yourself if you're planning to
return at some point. Yeah, that I agree with you,
because that is an efficient way that houses get cased.
But it's also it also would only be worth that
(47:48):
further exposure if someone uh didn't know the basement was
typically unlocked, you know they would they would have to
not know that, or maybe they're super buttoned up and
they get the window just as insurance as a second right,
which you would want redundancy ideally, but like then you
(48:11):
but then you have to see I love spending this
out right, Um, then then you would have to ideally
have another person involved, because I'm certain that everybody who
toward the house got questioned. Right, it's it's a it's
a mansion. It's a mansion in Toronto, which has a
(48:32):
crazy cost of living. Even then the real estate prices
were nuts, So it's a very specific demographic. It's going
into these mansions. Well then here here it is, Ben,
here's the scenario. Uh, some very wealthy person who could
actually purchase that home toward it, maybe with a spouse,
with their family or alone, and they opened the window
for the professional they hired to enter later. Right, Because
(48:56):
at a certain level, you don't do a lot of
stuff yourself. You have a staff of some sort, right, uh,
whether that's cleaning your house or cleaning out your your
your vengeance list that it's also anomalous though, because knowing
the weather at that time, why would you have a
window open? I wouldn't. No, most people would not write. Uh.
(49:19):
So I think for all of us and probably our
fellow listeners, that lack of forced entry is um is
a key sticking point, right It's it's a problem with
all the scenarios that we try to walk through. So
let's go back to our expert, author Kevin Donovan, author
(49:40):
and journalist Kevin Donovan, who says that this, based on
the other research he conducted, this to him, indicates that
the murderer must have somehow been incredibly familiar with the
interior of the home, and not just that, but likely
had a pretty suffici sticated working knowledge of the sherman's
(50:02):
routine and schedules. And that's kind of why if you
are you know what, that's kind of why some of
us put a lot of energy into uh, not having
an easily discernible routine, right like other than other than
(50:24):
when we are podcasting or when we know we're getting
together to do stuff for hang out, the three of
us don't know where the other ones are. I think
it's just a good policy. Come on, all right, come
on now, let's just leave it there. Let's just leave
it there. We do you guys, look just everyone. We
(50:46):
we do some like mutual I don't know. I think
it's just a game of cat and mouse fun tracking
each other thing. It's it's fun. It's like what we
do for fun. Who are you doing like a royal
we because on this show? What you don't do that? Uh? Yeah,
(51:08):
you know. Here's a here's a trick though, if you
do think that someone is doing some kind of untoward
tracking and you need to throw them off for any reason, right,
one of the things that you can do very easily
is just figure out how much time you need to
buy and then take your phone, your cell phone, and
(51:28):
put it on like put it on mass transit where
it will get stolen and someone else will take it. Uh,
you could, if you want to involve someone else, put
it in like a privately owned car or something with
their consent. It's the only way it's legal. Yeah. The
best thing for me is record like high fidelity television
show with a separate mic, then play that back in
(51:54):
a place in your house that has a television has
a capability to play that that content and then go
do your business. But but make sure you it sounds
of you watching the TV inside the recording. Yeah, I
like that one. It's a it's a little extra work,
(52:14):
like our our conversation where you and I were very
much saying that you gotta reheat pizza in the pan.
It's just it's a little extra work, but it improves
the end result. This conversation just went through a couple
of very strange places. But um, but yeah, they're So
(52:37):
what we're doing is we're we're endeavoring to think in
a very grounded way through the problems, right because again,
even the police investigation, even the private investigation, just lead
to more questions so far as we know now at
this point, You know, folks, we we only do two
part episodes when we feel very strong only about what
(53:00):
we need to get to, and this is one of
those situations. So we're going to pause here at part
one of who killed the Sherman's and we're gonna return
in our very next episode with part two. But in
the meantime, we want to know what you think. That's right,
let us know what you think. You can reach us
at Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff
(53:23):
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why not send us an email. We are conspiracy at
(53:45):
iHeart radio dot com. Yeah. Stuff they don't want you
(54:06):
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