Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. On December fifteenth,
twenty seventeen, Elise Sterne was showing a group of prospective
buyers through the multimillion dollar Toronto mansion owned by pharmaceutical
billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey. Now Honey was
in the midst of building a new home for her
(00:28):
and her husband. The estimated thirty million dollar estate that
was nearer the city and her daughter and new grandchild
would include living quarters for all the stuff they'd need
on hand to help run it. So the one they
were currently in, with all its slightly outdated features, was
going on the market. Elise stern knew that the Shermans
wouldn't be around that day. Honey, she'd been told, was
(00:49):
on a trip, and Barry, who ran the highly successful
generic pharmaceutical company Arpitects, would be at work like usual,
So she grabbed the key from a lock box the
Shermans had left out for her and let herself in.
Now she took the buyers on a tour of the home,
pointing out its eclectic ears. She'd tried not to jump
scare them when they came across the life sized human
(01:10):
statues that recline on speakers in the media room, laughing
as they continued on their trek through the five bedroom home,
complete with tennis cordon sauna. Then Alice suggested they head
further into the basement to see one of the property's
more unique features, the indoor pool and hot tup. Now
like a lod of the mansion, it was also a
little outdated with its surround of those frosted glass brick walls,
(01:34):
but it was designed so that the occupants could swim
all year round, even in the depths of Canada's harsh winters.
As the group moved through the doors and into the
warmth of the room, they were surprised to see again
more human like artwork, this time two mannequins in that
familiar seated position like they'd seen in the media room,
but this time they were held up by their necks,
(01:55):
hanging from the low handrail at the far end of
the pool. Now only the pool lights were on, so
they were illuminating the space from below, making it quite
difficult to fully tell what was happening down the far end,
but at least knew this house and she knew there
was no extra artwork down here. She rushed the buyers
outside and then went up and voiced her fears to
(02:17):
the housekeeper. She sent the gardener down to confirm it.
They're dead, Alise would scream to the emergency dispatcher who
took her call. The discovery of the bodies of Barry
and Honey Sherman, one of Canada's richest couples, would set
off an investigation that, nearly eight years later, is still
not any closer to being solved, even with a thirty
(02:39):
five million dollar reward on the line for the person
who can shed light on what really happened to them.
But the Internet has theories. I'm Claire Murphy and this
is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most
notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the
(03:01):
most about them. We do need to start off today's
ap by saying that no one has ever been charged
in relation to the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman,
but there have been many who've been considered potential suspects,
either by the police themselves or Honey in Barry's family
members and netizens who have a lot to say about
this still unsolved double murder. Was it connected to Barry's
(03:24):
business dealings. He was considered, if maybe not big farmer,
decently sized farmer in Canada, and he had a lot
of court cases pending at the time of his death.
Was it a family member squabbling over an inheritance that
would make some of them instant billionaires If not one,
but both of the Shermans died, and who was the
(03:45):
mystery man seen walking away from the Sherman's home when
the dates believed they were killed. Despite the Shermans being
quite the philanthropists, donating to many charities and helping their community,
there are people who were not surprised by their deaths
or who had openly discussed how they'd imagine framing or
even killing them in the past. Even Barry himself had
(04:05):
openly discussed the fact that someone may try to take
him out one day. But could it have also been
a case of murder suicide. We'll explore all the theories
of how the Shermans ended up dead with Kevin Donovan,
a journalist with a Toronto Star and host of their
podcast Suspicion. He's also the author of the book The
Billionaire murders, he joins us. Now I'd like to start
(04:29):
with just giving us an idea of who Barry and
Honey Sherman were at the times of their death and
how they were perceived by the people around them in
the wider community. So can we start with Barry because
the overarching sense I get from the feedback from everybody
who knew him was that he was a chronic workaholic.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yes, that is the understivement of the century. Barry was
a chronic workaholic. He was seventy five years old at
the time of his murder. He grew up in a
harsh part of Toronto. Father died at a very young age,
and Barry had been called butterball by his tea teachers,
which is not something the teachers say these days, but
(05:10):
this was the fifties. And then he realized that he
needed to start working, and he worked for his uncle
Lou who was a pioneer in the generic pharmaceutical world
in the summer, and then Barry went to university in
the US did a PhD in Masters. In quick succession,
his uncle dies. Barry ends up buying his uncle's company
and not going to work at Nassau which was his
(05:33):
plan all along. And then he sells that company, sets
up Appitects, which is Canada's biggest generic Canada's only big
generic pharmaceutical company. And that's in the early seventies, and
then by the eighties he is a millionaire, and by
late nineties, early two thousands, he's a billionaire. Honey different upbringing.
(05:53):
She was a product of the Holocaust. Her parents were
in Nazi slave camps during the Second World War. She's
born in a displaced person's camp in nineteen forty seven,
and she ends up end the up in Canada with
her mom and dad and her young sister and they
meet as people used to, not through tinder, but through
(06:13):
being introduced to by a good friend of theirs, and
they marry in nineteen seventy three. And so at the
time of their death, they were one of Canada's I
would say, in the top five wealthiest couples. They were valued,
I believe at ten billion dollars Canadian dollars, and I'll
let you do the exchange rate for your listeners. And
(06:35):
they were you know, Barry was a workaholic, as you said, Claire,
and would work until ten thirty on almost every night
Honey was the driving force of the philanthropy of the family.
They gave away hundreds of millions of dollars over the
years to all sorts of Jewish they're Jewish couple and
non Jewish charities. And you know, they were unique billionaires,
(07:00):
a little bit like Warren Buffett in the US. You know,
drives an older car and lives in the same house forever.
You know, Honey had this pair of workout shorts that
she got a hole in the crotch and she'd darned
them instead of getting a new pair. And Barry, they
both drove old cars right up until their death, got
them fixed if they had too many rest spots. They
(07:22):
were very different.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
There's that iconic story of Honey giving Barry a sports
car for his birthday and him famously telling her to
take it back. They were pretty tired with their cash
at times.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
They were. I mean, they did, I would say, have
a unique relationship with cash. Yes, Barry was given a
sports car, but he wanted to keep his old fifteen
year old Mustang ragtop convertible with brakes that didn't work,
because how would you get a place to fix breaks
if you're a billionaires? There like that. At the time
(07:55):
of their death, they had two iPads that were so smashed,
just by the early model iPads, one on each side
of the master bedroom. You know, they never thought to
get a new one. They didn't know how to get
Netflix on the television. But they were building a thirty
million dollar mansion at the time of their death, which
(08:15):
was Honey's idea. Honey of the workout shorts, that she
would darn when they got a hole in them. She
wouldn't buy a new pair, yet she wanted a mansion.
So it's it's unique. It's a very different relationship with money,
and that was also an unusual relationship when it came
to their children, very parented by giving money to the kids,
(08:36):
more to some than others. There's four children. Honey didn't
like that. She wanted them to work and make their
own money, and that was one of the big sources
of tension in the Sherman family.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Well, can we talk about the day that the Sherman's
bodies were found. We know that they were initially discovered
by the real estate agent who was showing the potential
buyers through and then confirmed by the housekeeper that it
was actually Barry and honey hanging from the railings around
the pool. But before all the bodies were found, I
understand that the housekeeper had said that she had noticed
(09:12):
some things that seemed a bit odd when she arrived
to work that day, and in fact, the real estate
agent had also found a few odd things before those
bodies were discovered. What were the things that were kind
of out of place that day that made people think, oh,
that's a bit weird before they even knew something terrible
had happened.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, So it's Friday, in the middle of December of
twenty seventeen. The cleaning lady, Nelia, walks up as she
often does, to pick up an emil or newspapers, and
she sees that there's two copies of actually my own newspaper,
the Toronto Star, lying on the front doorstep. And this
is a Friday, and that seems odd to her. She
(09:54):
does not come on the Thursday. She had been there
earlier in the week, but somebody else would normally be there,
like the Shermans, to pick up the paper, so that's odd.
She goes to the side door. The Shermans, like I
think many people, including myself, are side door people. They
don't use their front entrance, so she goes to the
side door and she tries her key, and her key works.
(10:16):
She goes in, and then she notices that the alarm
was not set. The Shermans are not big on security.
They have no video or anything like that, but they
do lot. They put on their alarm every night, so
she thinks that's odd. And then she goes upstairs and
she sees that the bed is made in a way
that Honey would not have made it. So on the Thursday,
(10:38):
this is a Friday, she's expecting to find the bed
unmade because that's one of her jobs to do the
linen and tidy up the place. But she sees that
the bed has been made, but in reality it's been
made by a cleaning lady. On the Wednesday, which is
the last day the Shermans are alive, so that's unusual,
(11:00):
she expects to find Honey there. They had a plan
to make potato latkaz for Hanukkah celebration that night, and
Honey and Barrier not in the house, which is unusual.
And she notices that the sink is dry, and by
that time eight thirty on the Friday morning, she would
expect Honey to be up and to wash her face,
(11:20):
and so these are things that are tells to her,
but you know, she has no idea, you know, the reality,
the horror that is in the basement. And she later
tells the police investigators that she had and these are
her words, a black feeling when she walked in that house.
Very superstitious woman originally from the Philippines, so she feels
(11:40):
that something is off.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
The real estate agent also finds some paperwork randomly sort
of scattered on the ground around the garage and berries BlackBerry,
which is weird for anyone to be using a BlackBerry
by that stage, but kind of tracks with how they
were with technology at that stage, I guess on the
ground and she sort of tied is that up too?
So she she seems to think that maybe something's not
(12:03):
quite right too, but she's distracted by the fact that
she's got bias and has to show them around the property.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, and in fact, that discovery has made about a
minute before she discovers the bodies. It's ten o'clock in
the morning. Nelia, the cleaner's been there since eight thirty.
Ten o'clock at least the agent is there with another
agent and two clients. Houses for sale for six point
nine million had just gone on the market, and Barry
had promised to mark up a home inspection report and
(12:30):
bring it home for her, and she was expecting to
find that, perhaps on the kitchen table. She doesn't. She
goes to the basement after finishing the full tour, takes
the clients in, and that's where she sees the BlackBerry,
and she sees the home inspection report, a bunch of
papers in a folder, and she also sees gloves just
lying on a hallway which is immediately outside of the
(12:52):
garage door. The garage door where and Barry's car is
parked on the other side, so she thinks that's odd,
And then of course she makes a discovery.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Well, can we talk about what is actually in that room,
because as I've heard it described, when at last first
walks in and she turns the pool lights on, and
this isn't a basement, so there's no windows, there's no skylights,
so it's like from within, the pool is lit up
and they can see what looks like two human figures
on the other side the filing. Then there's a lappool,
(13:20):
so it's not a small pool. It's quite long and
they see them hanging there. So what is actually discovered
when someone goes to check on Barry and honey, what
does that scene look like?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Well, the scene is from the doorway of the pool.
It's just over forty five feet to where the Shermans
are our positioned, and you're quite right. It's a very
narrow lap pool and at the far end is a
safety railing kind of guarding the area where you get
into the pool. So it's just three feet high. So
at least the agent she sees in the distance these
(13:54):
two figures, and she's got clients with her, and her
heart starts to beat and then she thinks, oh, are
the Shermans doing yoga? One of the children, one of
the Sherman children, is a yogi out in Western Canada.
But then she thinks they're not doing yoga, there's something
around their necks. So she gets the clients out of there.
(14:15):
And then eventually the gardener who has shown up that
morning to water indoor plants. This is winter in Canada,
so it's no outdoor gardening. The gardener goes down and
gets a really close look. She comes within three or
four feet of the Shermans and I have the crime
scene pictures. I know what they look like. The Shermans
are quite obviously dead. Their tongues are purple, they're out
(14:38):
of their mouth. They are in a their position kind
of backwards like this, so they're in a seated position.
Their buttocks are on the floor, but they're tilting backward
and the force of the belt is around the back
of their neck. And Berry and Honey, both their shoes
are on. Berry's feet are crossed in a very passive manner.
(15:02):
His eyeglasses are perched neatly on his head. These are
all things that in my investigation, you know, the police
should have picked up as signs of a staged crime scene,
but they didn't. And then you know, the police are called,
and then then what happens is the not Toronto's finest
comes tramping in and one of the young officers who's
(15:25):
put in charge of the scene while they wait for
the homicide detectives, gives the three women present, the gardener
and the agent, and the cleaning woman separates them, puts
them in different rooms. And the cleaning woman does what
any self respecting cleaning person would do when she has
two hours to wait to be interviewed by police. She
starts cleaning, so she is cleaning the kitchen area and
(15:47):
the foyer, which are areas where the actual crime took place.
So that's, you know, one of the main mistakes in
the early days, but surely not the only one.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
What would have led police to suggest at the very
start of this investigation that it was a murder suicide.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Well, that's a question I've been trying to saw for
seven and a half years. There's an email chain between
Barry and Honey from a few weeks before they're clearly
not getting along. Barry writes to Honey that you have
been you Honey had been abusive to me and our
children for forty years. Honey had been trying to get
Bury to agree. Buy email there in different places. She's
(16:27):
on a golf trip, he's at the office, and she's
trying to get Bury. Hey, let's go and go to
Montreal and have a nice weekend. And that's when he
makes these quite strong remarks against his wife. I think
the police saw stuff like that and wondered if maybe
this was a case of murder suicide. The main problem
(16:50):
seems to be that the pathologist, relatively junior pathologist, is
called to the scene. That doesn't often happen in Canada.
Pathologist usually just does the autopsy. This pathologist came to
the scene and he misdiagnosed it. The police invest are
assigned to the case. She actually a veteran homicide detective. She,
(17:10):
for a reason that has never been explained, does not
go to the crime scene. Any watcher of crime shows,
listener to podcasts, the detective always shows up and so
by later that evening and not too late, media is
on the front lawn. This is a big story in
our country. Top billionaire, top philanthropist found dead. But junior
(17:33):
detective gives a press conference in which he says, at
this time there are no suspects to be going after
and so it's completely misdiagnosed. They don't change their diagnosis
of the crime until I come out with a story
on the second autopsies that were done by the Sherman
hired pathologist. And one of my things that really surprises
(17:56):
me is why did the police have to hear that
from me from my newspaper, The Toronto Star. Why didn't
the state trustees and the children of bearing honey, Why
didn't they call up the police and say, hey, do
you want to see this report. But anyways, that's why
media is necessary in the society.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Kevin Donovan, investigative journalist at the Toronto Star,
author of The Billionaire Murders and host of the Billionaire
Murders podcast. Up next, Kevin explains what the pathologists report
uncovered and why it changed what many believed about how
Barry and Honey died. Can we talk about the pathologists report?
(18:41):
What did that discover that led you to believe this
was not a case of murder suicide?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Oh, I mean it's glaring. The second pathologist does to
autopsies on Burian Honey the following week, just before the burial,
discovers that under the wrists when you do an autopsy,
degloving often occurs where the skin is pulled back and
he finds marks on the wrist which indicate to him
(19:09):
that they have been tied up while alive. He knows
they were alive because the type of microscopic damage to
the cells that he discovers only occurs if blood is pumping,
So that's the first thing. The belts that are around
their necks which are holding them in this semi seated
upright position, tied to the railing above them on the
(19:31):
pool deck. The belts don't aren't the method of their death.
There are thin ligature marks, quite thin from something that
has been likened to me as a cable tie, so
quite a large would have to be a twelve inch
cable tie used to tie cables together. That is most
likely what killed them. The belts are just holding them up.
(19:52):
So he finds these two things. And the real kicker,
of course, is none of these ties are found at
the scene. So I would say to the Toronto police,
how does he tire up, tie himself up, kill honey,
kill himself and then make these things van It's not possible.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Where does the police investigation go then? After that autopsy report?
As far as I can see, police have never officially
released a name of any potential suspect throughout this investigation.
So where does it go from there?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah? So the police, after our story comes out and
they have a big press conference announcing that after their
hard work, they have determined it as a double murder,
they start asking the question they should have asked all
along in the first six weeks before it was labeled
a double murder. They were asking people, and I have
all the witness statements, why would Barry do this to Honey?
(20:42):
They should have been asking who would have killed Barry
and Honey and killed them both? So the police start
doing all these interviews. They interview about two hundred and
fifty people, friends, relatives, children, business associates, charity associates, people
like that, and they're nowhere and they have only ever
(21:03):
labeled one person an actual suspect publicly. We don't know
who this person is. It's this infamous walking man who
is spotted caught on camera about a kilometer away from
the Sherman home. They don't know who he is. They
see him moving through the neighborhood. By the way, our CCTV,
at least in this area is not as good as
(21:26):
you see on television. There's not as much of it.
But they do catch this person walking towards the Sherman
house at around the time of the murders and walking
away from it. And the person that is between five
foot six and five foot nine, please say he's involved
in the murders, but they don't know who he is.
And one of the other big mistakes in this police
(21:47):
investigation is that they wait four years to show the
image of this walking man walking through the snow with
his apparently distinctive gait where he lifts his right leg
up slightly more than his left as he walks. Four
years is a long time to ask the public to
remember who somebody is. You know. They don't check airport's surveillance.
(22:09):
They don't check our Transit Commission buses, which are all
equipped with cameras. They don't do any of that stuff.
So all that evidence has just gone unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
And do they find anything in the home itself that
might give them some idea like whether this was a robbery,
was anything taken? Did they find any you know, paperwork
or money missing, or anything that might give us an
idea as to why this walkingman targeted Berry and Honey.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
They don't find anything that will help them, either forensically
or as you mention, related to a robbery. Honey's purse
which was found in the kitchen. I think she was surprised.
And I should say that this murder takes place two
days before the bodies are found. They find the police
look in her purse and there's seventy five hundred dollars
(22:58):
in cash there in her wallet, so you know, thief
might have taken that. They find Berries black Bear, I mean,
Barry was a titan of Canadian industry, and if you're
killing Berry to try and get the secrets of the company,
BlackBerry would be a good place to start. Barry had
a password of one, two, three four on his phone,
(23:20):
which was quite well known. They're not interested in anything
like that. Computers remain at the home of the iPads
I mentioned. Nothing is taken as far as anybody knows.
So my opinion, this is a murder of two people
that they wanted dead. And then the question is obviously
(23:41):
who did it?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
In comes the internet theories as to who this walking
man is and what his motives might have beaten. Can
we talk about the idea that maybe he's a contract
killer and why he might have been contracted to take
out Barry and Honey.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, So I don't believe that the walking man is
the killer. I think he's a lookout and that's a Kevin.
But as far as the Internet, I mean, the internet
has a lot of theories. The contract killer one I
have discounted because Barry had a lot of business enemies,
There's no doubt about it. There's a book on the
(24:19):
pharmaceutical wars from years ago, and Barry is quoted in
it saying, I know I've got enemies. If they want
to kill me, they can shoot me coming out of
my office at ten thirty or eleven at night. Barry
comes home early this night for a reason that I
don't know. It's very unusual for him to come home early.
They're both in the house. I think that a contract
(24:40):
killer would not kill somebody in their house. There's too
much a danger of being captured, of leaving something forensic
on them. I think these are amateurs and the Internet
is wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Let's pivot a little and talk about the family, because
they have been scrutinized by Internet theorists as potentially being
involved in barryon Honey's death. So I guess the first
of cole is the ones who've kind of outwardly said
that they were happy that they were dead, and that
(25:13):
is the cousins. So they are the children of Barry's
uncle who passed away and whose company Barry purchased because
they were little children when their father died.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
So Barry bought his uncle's company. Can you explain what
happened after that into why the cousins were very unhappy
with Barry and Honey.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, so there's four four male cousins of Barry and Yes.
In the nineteen sixties, when Barry bought their father's company,
Empire Labs, which is a very small generic firm at
a time when generics were not big in the world.
It was just starting out, so great business opportunity, which
is why Barry bought it. Those kids were all under
(26:00):
the age of ten. The one that you'll see most
often on the internet is Carrie Wench, who is the
kind of being the main spokesperson for the four of them,
and he's somebody that I have come to know fairly
well over the years. So Barry over as they grow up, he,
according to Carrie, does look out for the cousins. He
(26:20):
gives them over the next couple of decades about fifteen
million dollars in total. That's in buying homes, cottages, cars,
things like that, funding the business of one of them, Jeffrey.
And you know Barry's account would be I did everything
to help them. They all struggled with various issues, either
(26:42):
mental health issues or drug issues in the early nineteen nineties.
One of them is looking through a court file and
it's the court file related to the estate of their
late father, and he's wondering, you know, how did Barry
become so successful. There's just all these stories to the
family that, you know, Barry bought their dad's company. And
(27:04):
he finds a document which really brightens his day, and
he and his siblings start talking about it, and they
believe that this document indicates that they are entitled to
a billion dollars, one fifth of Barry's new company's worth.
And they go to court and they sue Barry, and
(27:26):
they lose their case just before the murders. They lose
it in September. The murders are in December, but just
a couple of days before the murders, the judge in
this civil case between Barry and the cousins, the judge
awards legal costs to Barry. Now, Barry doesn't need three
hundred thousand dollars. He'd wanted a million, but the judge said, look,
(27:48):
these guys don't have a lot of money. But he
makes this award. And I believe this is part of
what I call the perfect storm theory all the different
things that were happening leading up to the murders, which would,
in the murderer's eyes, would give red herrings. Now, Carrie,
the main spokesperson of the four cousins, doesn't help himself
(28:09):
by going on national television and talking to me, but
sometimes TV does have quite an impact. He gives an
interview in which he says, I used to fantasize about
cutting Barry's head off and rolling it down the sidewalk
at Barry's company. And Carrie gives an interview to the police,
given interviews to me and many others, and he says
(28:31):
he didn't do it. In fact, he thinks it's a
murder suicide and it's a massive police cover up. So
that's the cousins, And you know Carrie. You'll see Carrie
pop up on Reddit or web slews occasionally. He's quite
fascinated by this himself. He's got his own theory and
he's entitled to them.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Next, we talk about the Sherman children and why some
of them were considered potential suspects. Let's talk about the children.
So the Shermans have four children, and they have all
got their own sort of individual stories about their relationship
(29:12):
with their parents and their parents' money. Can you just
talk us through the four kids and sort of at
the time of Barry and Honey's death, while some of
them perhaps have been considered as potential suspects.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, So the first child Blarren is Lauren in the
nineteen seventies, and Lauren is the only one who is
a biological child of both Barry and Honey. Honey had
a series of miscarriages leading up to Lauren's birth and after,
and so they made the determination that they would try surrogacy,
which was quite new to Canada in the late seventies
(29:47):
early eighties. Bury, through some lawyer, I think, found three
different women in the United States, three different states, and
those are the mothers. I don't know who they are.
There's a lot of tension over the years between Honey
and her kids, and they would say to her very
meanly at times, you're not our mother, and in three
(30:09):
of them that was the truth. Biologically, the pecking order
in the family was Barry first, the four kids, and
then Honey, and so the kids all got different money.
The two eldest, Lauren and Jonathan, got more than the
two youngest. One of the two youngest doesn't have a
(30:31):
great interest in money. The other one probably would have
liked to get some more. One of the sisters and
this has caused a big rift in the family Alexandra.
She has told police that she believes her brother, Jonathan
is somehow involved. Jonathan's an interesting gentleman. At the time,
he was thirty five when this happened. He was the
(30:53):
only one of the Shermans that had an interest in business.
He did not want to work in the pharmaceutical business.
He wanted to have his own business, and he chose
the personal self storage industry. He has a company called
Green Storage and Barry we call the Bank of Barry.
What I've heard is called the Bank of Berry funded
him well over one hundred million dollars over the years.
(31:16):
And these storage companies are you see them around Ontario.
A couple in Toronto and good real estate. I think
it's possible he's just assembling these four real estate anyways,
But a year into the murder investigation, his sister Alexandra
tells police that she thinks her brothers involved, and I
(31:37):
end up going to interview Jonathan one day. It was
one of the more interesting interviews of my forty year career.
We met in a garage north of Toronto during the pandemic,
unheated garage. It was in the middle of the winter,
freezing cool. And one of the things he provided me
(31:58):
is something that might explain why somebody would think that
he is the murder. It's a series of emails he
had with his dad, Barry, just leading up to the murders.
Barry is saying, I want fifty to sixty million dollars
of the money I gave you. I want it back,
I need it back now. When will you do this?
Tell me when? And this is just before Jonathan and
his husband leave for Japan, which is a few weeks
(32:20):
before the murders. And then Jonathan I said, look it,
you know you're the one. And Jonathan's the one who
tells me his sister thinks he's a suspect. And I said,
are you involved in the murders of your parents? And
he says, he makes a number of interesting statements. One is,
I don't know anyone who could plan a murder in
three weeks. When I put to him this the emails
(32:41):
which he's given me, I mean I wouldn't have him
without him. The email is saying that his dad was
trying to get money back, and then Jonathan doesn't give
the money back. He said, that's how billionaires converse with
their sons. So and he says he had nothing to
do with it and loved his parents. I asked him,
you know, have the police looked at you? And he said,
(33:02):
I would hope they would look at all four of us,
because that's what they should do. He has his own
or of.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Course, well if you look at it, so Barry in
his will leaves everything to Honey. But then Honey doesn't
have a will in order to distribute that money that
would have been hers if it had just been Barry
who's been murdered. So do the children just get all
that money in the inheritance?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
They do? And I should say that I believe Honey
did have a will. Somebody that I interviewed to was
somebody that's a medical person that dealt with Honey just
a week and a half before, remembers Honey very clearly
saying that I'm just getting my will updated. So that's
pretty interesting. But no will has ever found. What happened
(33:48):
is it's a very simple will. There's no specific money
for charity. Or anything like that, but all the kids
at age thirty five get one quarter of the wealth.
The financial press always has said the Barrier is worth
just under five billion dollars. I understand my sources that
it's closure to ten billion, but a lot of that
(34:09):
money is salted at various places around the world. But yeah,
and a long way to answer your question, they're billionaires now,
all four of them.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
I guess you've already touched on Barry's business practices that
potentially could have made him a target. But he was
involved in a lot of lawsuits in the lead up
to his death. And I mean, for those who don't
understand how generic pharmaceuticals work, you're making low cost versions
of drugs that big farmer have been spending millions of
(34:38):
dollars developing and then hoping to recoup that money, and
they sell it. And so Barry's accused of stealing some
of those formulas for those drugs, amongst various other things.
Have they ever tied any of Barry's business stealings into
potential motives.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Barry is At the time of his murder, people were
saying he's the most litigious person in Canada. That's true,
but the numbers are ram up because in Canada, the
way it works with a generic pharmaceutical, if you want
to break a patent, you have to do it legally,
and you can only do that through the court system.
(35:17):
So if you go to the electronic registry you would
see his name and his company many times. That's just
because he's the biggest and he has to go to court.
So it's not the most litigious in terms of him
suing people, you know, claiming they owe him money. There
are some cases like that. In fact, the people who
(35:37):
built the house that he ultimately died in he bankrupted
the contractors by claiming in court and a judge agreed
with him that they screwed him by not having a
doing a good enough job on the contracting. So he
is a tough guy when it comes to things like that.
As far as the businesses, I mean, I've heard lots
of people say big Farmer rubbed Berry out. To me,
(36:00):
that doesn't make a lot of logical sense. Barry had
a big company by Canadian stand. The next biggest company, Teva,
which you'll see in some of the internets lose. It's
an Israeli company that bought Barry's big Canadian rival many
years before Teva's ten times the size of Appitects and
(36:21):
Apptex kept going after Barry died. Now, the kids did
sell it off, for sure, they didn't want to be
in the pharmer business, But Appitects is still a thriving company,
still based in Toronto, and I don't think a lot
changed in the market share. I also think that big
pharmaceutical companies, they sue, they don't kill, and I know
(36:44):
that the internet is alive with suggestions that they do kill,
but I've never seen any evidence of that. And I
try and keep to the facts, you know, which is
I think the best way to behave in some of
these cases. But it's interesting reading these theories.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
I think something is really interesting in amongst all this
story is the housewherean honey died, because after they died,
it was really just left there for quite some time afterwards,
no one lived in it. It was essentially abandoned with
all of their belongings still inside. It seemed that their
children didn't want to go and sort through their parents'
(37:23):
things or take away any mementos or memories of their parents.
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You think, yeah, the kids did go there. The photos
I have that were taken just before the house was
knocked down by the kids. They had legal authority to
do it because they were the owners, and they got
the city to allow them to knock it down. By
the way, they wanted it knocked down because they said
to the city, we can't know that this place is
(37:50):
still there. The memories are too difficult for us. I
think they didn't want somebody to make a documentary going
through that house.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Quite frankly, an urban explorer did go through it at
one stage, though, didn't he And he took some photos
which then he was threatened over I understand.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Not threatened. So I encountered this, this individual and urban explorer,
and he went in a literally two days before the
house was knocked down. He'd been watching it. He went in.
He had a really bad feeling when he went in.
And I have his photos, but he hasn't given me
(38:26):
permission to run them. And why doesn't he want them
public because he says, I'm afraid that I'll be charged
by the police with trespassing, and he was trespassing. But
it's an interesting look at the house because it's a
house that's trapped in time. I mean, very little had
changed since that day the bodies were discovered. There's pictures
(38:46):
on the walls and you know, stuck to bulden boards
of a Baryon Honey, you know, you know, cuddling together.
There's nice family pictures and as far as I know,
that went down with the wrecking ball.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
So everything inside that house that belonged to Baryon Honey
was demolished with the house.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, including I think the ulptures that are in the basement,
which I think are part of this case. The Shermans
liked unusual art, and they have two American American sculpture made,
these two life size sculptures using garbage, parts of skateboards,
things like that. One is clearly male, one's clearly female.
(39:25):
And they are in a seated position, not too dissimilar
to how the Sherman's looked. And they're in the basement
just before at least just before the murders, and I
think they're probably buried under all that rubble right now.
The pool was of course filled in, and there was
another beautiful pool outside. And now that house, it's changed
hands twice, it's still got the what we call hoarding
(39:47):
around it, black hoarding a bit of an eyesore on
the street, and so far nobody has decided to build
a new house.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
So in amongst the facts, the things that you have discovered,
the things that you've reported on over the years, and
all of these internet theories about potentially who is involved,
all the theories that are held by the family members
and others, is there one that you think prevails over
all of them where we stand currently, like eight years
(40:17):
nearly after they did.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Well. So I'll tell you what I say when I'm
asked this question. Should I ever be able to reveal
who I think did it, It's going to be in
my newspaper, The Toronto Star. Somebody said that I have
given people in my reporting the ingredients to make a pizza,
but I'm asking people for now to make their own pizza.
The theory that I have is I believe the same
(40:41):
theory that the Toronto Police have. They just can't prove it,
and I can't prove it, and I don't have the
resources that they have. This was, according to the police.
You know, a crime of money, and money is the
motive here not surprising giving someone a billionaire. I think
there was inside knowledge of the Sherman's movements Barry comes
(41:04):
home early on that Wednesday night. He never comes home early.
He parks in the garage. He doesn't usually park downstairs.
That would give the killers a lot easier to get
a two hundred pound man into the basement swimming pool
if he comes in to the basement underground garage. The
Shermans have nothing. They're killed on a Wednesday. They got
nothing going on on the Thursday. Some key people are
(41:26):
out of town. Aunt Mary, the sister is very second
in command, is away down in New York with his
wife at a concert. There's no cleaning lady coming on
a Thursday. I think that somebody knew that this was
the day that would give them some breathing, breathing time
to get away. Now, I don't think it's because they
wanted the contract killer to get on a plane. I
(41:47):
just think they wanted I think they wanted a stage
like it was a murder suicide. And then they got
very lucky because they didn't get the A team, They
didn't even get the B team.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
At the Toronto Police, with what you know and what
you believe the Toronto Police know, do you think it's
possible that we'll ever solve this one?
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It was solved as an interesting choice of words. I
think the police believe they have solved it, but they
can't prove it. You know, these days, I think defense
lawyers are getting better and better. This case has been
muddled from start to finish, and so I believe that
the Toronto Police have decided that, with legal assistance of
(42:29):
a Crown attorney, that they're not laying a charge until
they are absolutely sure that it'll stand up in court.
So I think they're still trying to build a case.
They've recently turned to artificial intelligence some help. I think
the police would be wise to hand this over to
a new investigator with fresh eyes. They don't seem to
want to do it. They just want to have this
(42:50):
one guy who's now down to half his day's detective.
Yim just plodding away, occasionally firing off a search warrant,
getting some business information. And I think it's a cold
case that somebody smarter than the current people need to
enliven again.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Just finally, when's the last time there was anything breaking
in this case? And has there been any new developments
in recent years?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Well, the developments come usually every six months. So I'm
not a lawyer, but I go to court and I
am allowed to cross examine the detective to try and
unseal information. So I mean, I'm looking in a rear
view mirror at the police investigation and getting these thousands
of pages, you know, bit by bit unsealed. There's been
(43:38):
nothing from the police other than four years into the case,
the revelation of this walking man. There's been nothing like that.
I do have a couple of people who want to
say they want to speak to me. They've hired lawyers
and we're trying to arrange a way that they will
be protected and they can pass on information to me. Claire.
(43:58):
It could be, you know, complete rumors that they're passing
on one of them. I find quite intriguing. But as
far as a break in the case, when I've asked
the police that they say they haven't had any breaks.
They're waiting for that person to walk in the door
and say I heard something at a bar and I'm
(44:19):
going to tell to you. But so far that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
At the end of twenty twenty two, Jonathan Sherman offered
a thirty five million dollar award for any information that
leads to the arrest of the person or people who
killed his parents. He said, closure will not be possible
until those responsible for this evil act are brought to justice.
So far, not one person has given any information that
(44:47):
has moved the case any closer to being solved. Thank
you to Kevin for helping us tell this story. You
can find his book The Billionaire Murders at the Lincoln
Our show notes, as well as Kevin's podcast with a
Toronto Star. True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast
hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by Tarlie Blackman
with audio you are designed by Jacob Brown. Thanks so
(45:08):
much for listening. I'll be back next week with another
true Crime Conversation