SERIALously - 221: Real-Life Succession: Billionaire Couple Murdered. Toxic Secrets & Bizarre Staged Scene.
Episode Date: December 9, 2024On December 15th, 2017, billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman didn’t follow their typical morning routine. Their maid noticed that they were nowhere to be found. Not long after, there would be ...a shocking discovery near their indoor pool. Barry and Honey were both dead, and the investigation into this case would leave everyone stunned… Sono Bello Visit https://www.sonobello.com/ae Audible Go to https://www.audible.com/ae Junes Journey Download June’s Journey for free by clicking the link: https://bit.ly/serialously Quince Go to https://www.Quince.com/ae for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns Manscaped Go to https://www.manscaped.com and use code AE for 20% off and free shipping!  Shop the Merch: www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ SERIALously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/ About Me: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: 10toLife@WMEAgency.com Sources: Crime Beat TV CTV News CBC News Toronto Star Toronto Sun CBS News
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Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise.
I gotta just apologize right out of the gate today because if it sounds like I'm underwater,
I'm not.
I just have a really gnarly cold tis the season.
And if you're watching the YouTube version of this, then you know,
this cold has like knocked me on my ass. So much so that when I got out of bed this morning,
I was like, can't put on makeup, can't do my hair, gonna just wear a cozy sweater set.
I look like Rudolph because I've been blowing my nose so much. But I knew I needed to get this
story out to you guys because it is one of the craziest stories
I think I have ever heard. So I'm here in my studio on the mic and look like a kind of like a sick
little ghost, but anyway I even got like the headband it looks like I'm going to a ski lodge. I just
couldn't be bothered to get myself presentable today, so I apologize. But this is me in all
my glory. No makeup, fresh-faced, Rudolph red nose. But anyway, so the reason why I say
I couldn't wait to talk with you about this case is because it truly is crazy. I mean,
you've got an excessive amount of wealth, it takes us to Canada, there's a double murder,
and there's also like this undertone for me at least of like the
Staircase murders remember that case with the guy who had like multiple wives who died at the base of a staircase from a fall
And it was like super shady all those things
Not that that has any correlation with today's case and there isn't really a stool
There's kind of a staircase involved but like you'll understand as we go
So anyway, it is one that I haven't
been very familiar with either.
I had heard rumblings of it here and there
over the last couple of years, but never in a detailed way.
I think because it takes place in Canada,
and sometimes it's difficult to source all of the details
from a Canadian case.
But we've got them.
We got all the details for you guys.
And so we
are going to jump right into this. I was betrayed. My cousin hurt me and now I
want to hurt him. So in December of 2017, Barry and Honey Sherman were in the
process of selling their 12,000 square foot home. You heard that right, 12,000
square feet. Now they lived in the wealthy
North York area of Toronto and Honey and Barry had custom built this house in the 1980s.
And it was huge, obviously, as if 12,000 square feet is not huge. It was massive. It had multiple
floors. It had tennis courts, a sauna, it even had an indoor pool.
It was truly what you picture when you think of the word mansion.
It was massive.
But for whatever reason, Berry and Honey had eventually decided to sell it so that they
could live closer to one of their children.
So on the morning of December 15th, 2017, their realtor, Elise Stern, was heading to
the house to show this house to an interested couple.
Now before the showing, Elise expected to meet up with the Shermans because they were going to give her
a very important home inspection report that she had asked for earlier.
So her plan was to get to the house a little bit early, meet up with the Shermans, get the report,
and then show the house or, you know, the property to this couple.
So when Elise got to the house around 10 or 10 30 a.m. and nobody was home, she was really annoyed.
I mean, first of all, it sucks when you make plans with people and they blow you off, right?
But also, she really needed that report. So it wasn't just rude, it was also making her job more difficult.
But still, the prospective buyers, the couple, showed up and they also brought along their personal real estate agent.
So Elise decided, you know, I'm not going to make this a total loss. At least we'll still show them
the house. I can get them the report later. Let's see how interested they are. Maybe we can still
make a sale, close the deal here. So she decided to show them around. And as they're making their
way through this 12,000 square foot mansion going room to room, tennis court to sauna,
all these areas walking through the house, they bumped into the Sherman's housekeeper. They stopped, spoke with the
housekeeper for a moment, just made a little bit of small talk, but then they kept on going on this,
you know, grandiose tour, and they kept just checking out all the rooms. After they toured
the majority of the home, eventually they got to the basement. But again, Elise now was finding
herself pretty annoyed at the Shermans, because they had a very interesting, I'll say
that lightly, interesting taste in art. They weren't into like nice peaceful
landscapes or nature or something, you know, beautiful night sky. They liked
things that were more unsettling. In the media room on the basement level, on top of a cupboard, the Shermans had life-sized
human statues made entirely of garbage.
Literally.
Entirely of trash.
Think old wooden tools, broken pipes, pieces of an old skateboard.
I mean, interesting idea, sure, maybe.
A little creepy in execution, if I'm going to be honest. And Elise had asked
the Shermans to take these statues, these art statues, down before the showing because
she felt like they might be a little bit off-putting, you know, not everybody is into
that type of vibe. She thought that they were a little weird and that they might even scare off
potential buyers. But there they were, still not only on display, but literally staring them in the face.
Now before she could hurry everybody along to another room, Elise also saw that the window
in the media room had been cracked open about six inches.
Now it was freezing at the time.
Remember, it was December in Canada.
So she felt like this was yet again another weird choice.
Like, why aren't you preparing this house for a showing? Now obviously the Shermans were the sort of people, if you will, that made some odd choices
here and there. That was clear enough by the fact that these human trash statues were still up. So
Elise sort of just kind of like mentally rolled her eyes and kept smiling for the buyer's sake,
just trying to be like, oh let's go, like sorry let me close this, it's a little cold, there's a draft,
but really just trying to appease them and, you know, not make this a total loss. So she moved along,
just trying to make everybody feel as normal as possible. Then they got to the garage, which,
by the way, was not even clean. And I've got to imagine that by this point, Elise wasn't just
annoyed or irritated. I would imagine that she was like getting pissed at the Shermans. Like, you're leaving this mega mansion in filthy condition when I'm trying to sell it.
Like, at least help me out a little bit here, right?
Now the garage floor, like I said, it was a disaster.
It wasn't clean.
The floor was covered with a bunch of papers.
There was a Blackberry phone.
There was a pair of driving gloves.
And what was interesting was Elise knew that that phone belonged to Barry because he was the only person who still used a BlackBerry in 2017. Everybody, for
the most part, moved on to Androids or iPhones, right? But he still used a BlackBerry. So
Elise paused. She tried to tidy up a little bit because what else was she supposed to
do in that moment, right? And then she tried to salvage the showing by moving to the most
exciting part of the house, the most grandiose, the one that would make your
jaw drop. And this particular room was where they had an underground lap pool.
Now I've never even heard of one of these things, guys. It was the first time, but
let me describe it. It had two lanes and a hot tub with it. The whole area was
surrounded by a three-footall metal rail, so nobody would
have to worry about slipping in and falling in. But it was like, to have one of those inside your
house, that's a pretty big deal, right? So they were all just standing there taking it in, looking
at this amazing pool, this amazing perk of buying this new home. But then the other realtor turned
to Elise and asked her, hey, what's that at the end of the pool? So Elise looked over to the far end of the pool.
And when she did, she saw a couple just sitting there,
quietly on the floor, upright, not moving,
just kind of frozen, just sitting and staring.
And they were right there near the edge of the pool.
So that other real estate agent
who hadn't been in this house before made a joke,
kind of like, oh, are those other creepy statues? Why do they have so many creepy human statues everywhere? But Elise knew this property
backwards and forwards. She knew that that was not a set of statues, not at all. She had never seen
statues in this area of the house before. So she hurried the buyers out of the room, she ended the
tour, and then she went to go talk to the Sherman's housekeeper again. Elise told the housekeeper about what had happened, what she just saw, and she asked her to go check out the pool room.
See what was up. What's going on over there? Who are these people?
And by this time Elise believed that the couple that she had seen, those two people,
actually were Barry and Honey Sherman.
Like maybe they had blown off their appointment with her when they were supposed to give her the home inspection
so they could just sit by the pool, relax, maybe do some kind of
weird exercise or something like that.
Almost like, okay, do they think they're better than everybody that they can just sit by the
pool while I'm doing the showing even though we had a set meeting, that kind of thing.
But also on some level, Elise knew that something very wrong was going on here.
It was just this feeling in her gut, and it made her not want to
check on the Shermans herself. She didn't want to get too close. She just didn't want to do it. So
she asked the housekeeper to do it. So anyway, Elise was telling the housekeeper, like, look,
I don't want to deal with it. You go look. You're responsible for this house. You go check it out.
But right away, the housekeeper started freaking out, also refusing to go look at the couple down
by the pool in the basement.
So Elise asked her over and over again,
like, why, what's wrong?
Why won't you go?
Well, as it turns out,
the housekeeper also had a really bad feeling.
And it was actually something that she had been feeling
since the moment that she had showed up
for work that morning.
She had gotten there around 8 a.m. like she always did.
And at that time, she saw Honey's car in the driveway,
which was normal. It had snowed overnight, and the housekeeper didn't see any footprints or tire
tracks around the car. So the housekeeper knew that Honey hadn't driven anywhere since the evening
before, I mean at the absolute latest. But two things immediately stood out as being a little
bit weird. One, the newspaper was still sitting in the driveway. And two, the house alarm was turned off. Now usually, Barry would wake up before the
housekeeper even got there. He would turn off the alarm, he would get the morning
paper, then he would just go about his day. Honey always got up, drank a cup of
tea, ate two chocolate caramel turtle candies, which was like clockwork. Odd, I
know, but like clockwork. And then she would get dressed and get ready. So the thought was that if the paper was still outside, that must have
meant that Berry and Honey hadn't woken up yet, except if they were still asleep, the alarm should
have still been set and on, not turned off. So it just didn't add up. Either Berry was awake and up,
in which case the newspaper should have been inside, or they were still in bed,
in which case the alarm should have been on.
And even stranger was when the housekeeper went inside,
she couldn't find the Shermans anywhere.
She knew that they slept in separate bedrooms
because apparently Barry had a very bad insomnia
and he was also a really loud snorer.
So because of that, there was no way for them
to sleep together and get a good night of rest.
But when the housekeeper checked both rooms,
they were both empty.
Their beds were also made and their bathroom sinks
were entirely dry, like they hadn't been used
at all that morning.
So this was all really weird
and it made her feel a little unsettled.
But ultimately the housekeeper had a job to do.
And she also wasn't a detective. She wasn't putting things together in a sinister way,
just a little bit of a weird way. Her focus and her reason for being there was to clean,
which was what she did. And at one point, she also let the repairman fix the furnace.
So it was all pretty routine. But while she was cleaning the half bath on the main level,
she found Honey's phone on the floor.
Now, again, it was strange because Honey didn't usually use that bathroom at all.
And also, why would she just leave her phone right there out on the floor?
It doesn't make sense.
Now, besides the repairman, there was another person who showed up for an appointment that
morning.
A personal trainer who worked very closely with the couple.
Except the house, except the
housekeeper and the trainer didn't see any sign of Barry or Honey at the time
of that appointment, which again was just very weird. They were usually very
organized. They weren't the sort of people to just blow off an appointment
without calling or texting or, you know, notifying them that they had to
reschedule. So for a while the trainer just sort of waited around in case Barry
and Honey were just running late
and would show up to their appointment.
But once it was clear that they weren't going to show,
the trainer left.
And not long after that, Elise arrived for the showing.
And we all know what happened after that, right?
So anyway, when Elise was now telling the housekeeper
what she had witnessed in that room with the pool,
she couldn't help but freak out too.
She didn't quite
know how to put all of those pieces together, but she knew that something very strange and very
scary was going on. So Elise and the housekeeper were sort of debating. Neither one of them wanted
to go back to this pool room, but they knew that somebody had to. Somebody had to go and check it
out and investigate. And while all of this was going on, the gardener showed up as well, which, yeah,
it was December, but it seems like the Shermans
had a lot of people tending to their house all the time,
not only tending to their house, but tending to them.
I mean, there were people in and out of this house.
So once the gardener realized what was going on,
she actually volunteered to be the one
who would go downstairs and check it out,
see what was going on.
So the gardener grabbed a butter knife
and went down to the pool room in the basement.
But moments later, she ran back upstairs so fast,
she was shaking and her face
was just completely white with shock.
The couple sitting near that pool
were in fact, Honey and Barry Sherman.
And more than that, they were dead,
just sitting there upright.
And even weirder,
it looked like they had been dead for quite a while.
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Now before calling the police, Elise called Honey Sister Mary.
And I'll just say even to this day, there is a lot of confusion over why Elise did this.
One thought is that Elise wanted to make sure that Mary heard the news in a more personal way
before it started making headlines and before she saw it broadcast on television.
Because Barry and Honey were very wealthy and very well known in Toronto.
So it seemed like reporters would definitely jump on this story as soon as they possibly could. So this was kind of Elise's way and attempt to be thoughtful and to soften
the blow for Mary. Then Mary could call all of their other family members, including Barry and
Honey's children, before again, their deaths were just broadcast on the news. So then around 11 45
a.m., which was about an hour after Barry and Honey's bodies had been discovered
a lease called the police and the police arrived and immediately got to investigating the scene. Now as I said earlier
Barry and Honey's bodies were sitting in a very strange way just upright right there at the edge of the pool
But let me break it down even further for you, because it looked as though
they had been placed there on purpose. Both of them were sitting upright on the floor, with their
legs just completely stretched out in front of them. For each of them, their right leg was crossed
over the left one. They also both had jackets on that were half on. So if you can picture it,
the sleeves were over their arms, but the jacket itself hadn't been pulled up all the way over their back or over their shoulders.
Just kind of draping, almost like a shawl, if that makes sense. Both of them also had ligature marks around their wrists, so this suggested that their hands had been bound at one point.
Now Barry's glasses were still on because he wore glasses, but Honey's face was injured.
However, there wasn't much blood on her face,
and so it made the investigators think that
whatever this facial injury was,
it may have happened after she died,
and that that's maybe why it didn't really bleed very much.
And you might be wondering,
okay, well, if Barry and Honey were dead,
how were they holding these very specific poses?
What was stopping them from slumping over?
Well, remember the bar I mentioned
that was running around that whole pool,
the safety bar, the metal one?
Well, somebody had used a belt
to attach Barry and Honey's necks to this bar.
That's what was holding them upright.
And on top of that, they had been dead for a while.
Rigamortis had already set in and
their bodies were cold to the touch. However, the heat and the humidity in the pool room made it
very difficult for police to determine a cause of death at the time. But imagine that for a moment,
just posed, sitting there so perfectly, one leg, the same leg on both of them, perfectly crossed
over the other, jackets in place over there, you know,
in the crooks of their arms, but their sleeves on, and then sitting up straight strictly
because there's a belt that's attached to a metal pole behind them to like pose them.
It was very, very bizarre.
So once the police were done initially looking at the bodies, they went to go look around
the rest of the house.
And that's when they discovered those other weird statues in the media room.
And something about the statues seemed familiar.
And they quickly realized that Barry and Honey were posed exactly like the statues were.
Sitting upright, legs outstretched, right leg crossed over the left.
I'm talking a carbon copy.
Now in the meantime, the news got word of what had happened
and reporters just swarmed the house,
just like Elise had been afraid of.
Rumors about the Shermans and their deaths
were also going viral all over social media.
And as I mentioned, the Shermans were extremely well-known
in Toronto and the neighborhood that they lived in
was full of celebrities, CEOs, doctors, athletes, lawyers, really, you name it. So once the police cars
all came speeding in with their sirens on and their lights flashing, it definitely did not
take long for people to start poking around and trying to figure out what was going on.
Eventually, a detective came out to talk with the reporters, and he said that they were treating the deaths
as suspicious.
They weren't sure how they died,
and there was no sign of forced entry in the home,
but there was something suspicious at play.
However, the detectives also said
that they weren't looking for any suspects at that time.
So that left everybody pretty confused, right?
I mean, why wouldn't they be looking for any suspects,
especially if it was a suspicious double murder?
Did they already maybe know who killed the Shermans?
Well, the police gave an answer to those questions
the following morning.
And that's when they ruled that the two deaths
were part of a murder-suicide plan.
They believed that Barry had killed Honey,
hit her in the face, dragged her body downstairs,
tied her up, and then once she was dead or dying, he killed himself.
Now for a lot of people, especially the people who hadn't known Barry and Honey personally,
that theory made enough sense to be believable, so a lot of people just accepted the police's
theory.
But Barry and Honey's children and their close friends, they did not accept this. For one, they knew that Barry just didn't have the strength to kill Honey.
He was older and honestly not in great shape. Honey, on the other hand, she worked out regularly.
She wasn't ripped like a bodybuilder or anything like that, but she definitely had decent muscle
and she was definitely strong enough that if Barry had attacked her,
she would have been able to fight him off.
And let's just say hypothetically
that Barry had the element of surprise on his side
or something like that.
I mean, maybe even if it seemed unlikely,
maybe he did manage to overpower Honey,
but even so, he definitely wasn't strong enough
to drag her body downstairs and pose it that way.
Plus, this just wasn't something that
they would do. Barry and Honey were happy people. They loved each other, and they had never said or
done anything to make people think that they were violent or dangerous. I mean, you could look at
their entire life stories all the way back to when they were children, and you would never see any
sign that anything like this was ever going to happen. As for Barry, he was born in Toronto in 1942.
That's also the city where he grew up.
His dad died when he was fairly young, leaving his mom to raise him and his siblings all
by herself.
But she did, and he had a happy home.
Barry's nickname as a kid was Butterball Barry, all because he was pretty lazy, pretty
introverted, and apparently always tired.
But the point is that even back then,
he just wasn't someone who seemed physically capable
of attacking someone and dragging their body around.
When he reached high school,
Barry started taking school a lot more seriously.
He was especially good at math and science.
So then people decided, you know,
we're gonna stop calling him Butterball
and start calling him a genius,
which I gotta say, that's nice.
That's a vast improvement,
but he was just always thinking,
always going over different possibilities
and different ways of seeing things.
Now I mentioned before that he had really bad insomnia,
right, but that's all because his mind would just race
so much at night that he couldn't fall asleep.
And when people were calling him a genius,
they weren't kidding.
When he was 16 years old, Barry went to college.
Yeah, you heard that right.
16.
He went to the University of Toronto and he was one of the youngest people in his class.
After graduating with a degree in engineering, he then went on to MIT to get his PhD in astrophysics.
A true smarty.
His end goal was to work at NASA.
But that changed when he interned over the summer at
his uncle's drug company called Empire Labs.
Because that's where Barry saw firsthand just how much money you could make selling
and creating new medicines.
So eventually, he started his own company.
And he called it Apotex.
Then in 1970, Barry met Honey.
Honey's birth name had been Anna,
but she had officially changed it to Honey in high school.
She was outgoing, adventurous,
and truly the life of the party type of person.
She too had gone to the University of Toronto,
and a mutual friend introduced the two of them
to one another.
They hit it off immediately,
and they got married the very next year in 1971.
Both of them wanted kids, and Honey in particular wanted a very big family,
but she had a really difficult time getting pregnant. And sadly,
she suffered through multiple miscarriages.
Eventually she had their first child, a girl named Lauren.
Then came the second child, Jonathan, then Alexandra, and finally,
a third little girl that they named Kaylin.
Now the last three children
were all conceived using surrogates,
but it was the 1980s, and the technology around that time
was not nearly as good as it is now.
So even though Barry was the donor,
he wasn't the one who fertilized Honey's eggs.
The surrogates used their own eggs,
meaning that all four of Barry and Honey's children
had different biological mothers,
but they all have the same father, namely Berry.
Now, some people think that this really affected
the kids growing up.
There's also rumors that Honey just wasn't
very maternal in general,
and also that she had an especially hard time
being a good mother to the children
who, you know, weren't biologically hers.
There are also rumors that
Barry favored all four kids over Honey, and Honey supposedly even told some friends that
she was at the bottom of the family's, quote, pecking order. Now, I haven't been able to
verify that. It's really all just rumor, but I do know that while they were raising their kids,
they were also making a ton, a ton of money thanks to Barry's company. So much money that at the time of their deaths,
Honey and Barry were literal billionaires,
billionaires with a B.
Now Barry was also a huge workaholic.
When the family went on vacation,
Honey would take the kids out, you know,
to have fun, to play around,
but Barry would just stay back
and take care of business issues remotely.
He seemed to work all the time and he used his money he was earning to make investments,
trying to earn even more money.
It was almost like this vicious cycle where if there's no glass ceiling, the limit does not exist.
So grind, grind, grind.
Not the most healthy thing, but I understand it.
Now, in addition to spending their money on lavish vacations, their mega mansion, all of these things, they were also very generous when it came to charities.
Barry and Honey were both Jewish, and they donated a lot of their money to the Jewish
charities in particular.
They both had very close family members who had been affected by the Holocaust, so these
charities were extremely important to them.
And while Barry considered himself an atheist,
Honey was extremely religious.
They also donated millions of dollars to United Way,
and they were also known to help struggling employees by giving them money, giving them cars,
some of them even houses.
Now charity aside, and vacations and their home aside,
Barry and Honey didn't really like to spend a lot. They had both
grown up fairly poor, and it sounds like they were still very careful with their budget,
even though they technically didn't have to be at all anymore. They hardly ever flew
first class, even though they could obviously afford it. They liked to shop at thrift stores,
they liked to shop at mega grocery stores like Costco, really trying to save and cut
corners anywhere they could.
In fact, Honey's wallet where she kept all of her money
was so badly beaten up that it was being held together
by a rubber band.
That's how it stayed closed.
I mean, she did buy nice things.
Sure, she would buy designer shoes and handbags,
but she almost never wore them.
Most of her designer things just stayed in her closet,
completely untouched. And her friends say that you would never have looked almost never wore them. Most of her designer things just stayed in her closet, completely
untouched. And her friends say that you would never have looked at Honey and thought that she
was as wealthy as she was. They just didn't appear that way. They also drove older cars,
and they would drive them until they were basically about to fall apart. And another example I'll just
give you, not that it's necessary in this case, but just to level set. Whenever Honey would go golfing
and her friends would like hit the golf ball and lose it along the way in the brush or the sand or
whatever, she would pick them up along the way and keep them saying, I'm keeping them so that I don't
have to buy new golf balls. Kind of like stingy in a way to just be very careful, right? Very careful
about their money. But I guess that's how the rich stay rich,
right? Now, because they were so wealthy, they were of course also running in circles with other
very wealthy people. In fact, they had so many friends that were rich and famous that one of
them was the prime minister, Justin Trudeau. He had even visited their home several times. Now,
given how many important friends and family members they had, Barry and
Honey's funeral was invite only. But get this, still even as invite only, 7,500 people came.
7,500 people to a funeral.
The service began with the singing of a traditional Jewish
prayer followed by a famous Holocaust song.
It had special significance to the Shermans who were committed
to Holocaust education.
Afterwards, Honey's sister Mary and the couple's son,
Jonathan, delivered emotional eulogies.
She would always call on my kids and all she ever do is tell me how much she loved them.
She loved my children like her own.
A moment to look around this room and consider the enormous impact
that this is having on everyone gathered here today.
Feel each other's love and know how much you all meant to my mother and my father.
The CBC's Linda Ward is standing by at the memorial in Mississauga.
So Linda, describe the events there today.
Just a very powerful and emotional service this morning and really starting with a prolonged
moment of silence as those caskets were brought in
and then the family members surrounding them,
embracing each other, dignitaries standing as well.
And all the thousands of people who have shown up
standing to pay their respects as well
as this service got underway.
And then the couple's son
Jonathan took the the podium and asked for a moment, just a moment to breathe he
said. And then a cantor delivered a very emotional song, her voice breaking with
emotion as she sang that. Jonathan then came back to speak about his parents and about how he said the last few
days have been, quote, messed up and how he has had to deal with mourning as well as so
many questions surrounding his parents' passing, frustration, he said, with speculation and
unreliable reports, of course, all those questions surrounding still the circumstances
around their death and many theories being put out there in the media.
But he spoke to the crowd today, crowd of thousands really, about the support and what
it means to him and the family.
We are taking some comfort in knowing that you two are together forever,
and neither of you had to suffer like we are suffering now.
You were like a lock and for us, and for so many
others.
We promise to carry on your legacy of greatness and giving, from now until forever.
And looking out at the crowd of people wearing blue, Apotec's employees who have filled this room,
5,400 seats, almost all taken.
He said that he does take comfort from knowing
that they are there.
He also spoke about, and as did many family members today,
who spoke, spoke about their philanthropy
and how much they donated to charity.
This couple, they say, have earned their place in heaven.
And the couple that gave so much,
they say that what they're asking for
is for the people who are trying to remember them in life
to do so through that charity, to give to charity
in their memory.
Of course, the family going through this with,
as I mentioned, all these unanswered questions
surrounding how the couple died. They are asking for privacy during this with, as I mentioned, all these unanswered questions surrounding how the couple died.
They are asking for privacy
during this very, very difficult time.
They're gonna be having a private shiva
following today's service.
So anyway, I just wanted to give a little bit of backstory.
That's what Barry and Honey were like when they were alive.
That's how they met, that's how they grew up.
But now the big question, of course, was how did they die? Like I mentioned before, the police couldn't immediately determine a cause of death
when they found the bodies. However, the autopsy showed that the two of them had been strangled
and they had also likely died on the night of Wednesday, December 13th, meaning that their
bodies had been sitting in that pool room for about 36 hours before they were discovered.
Even more strange, the marks around their necks were so fine, so thin, that the medical
examiner realized that they hadn't been strangled with the belts that were holding them up and
attaching their bodies to that bar.
It actually looked as though they had been strangled with a rope instead. And if not a rope, something very similar.
The marks around their wrist also looked like they might have been from zip ties.
However, the police didn't see any zip ties at the scene or anywhere in the home.
Now, the autopsy never revealed what caused the injuries to Honey's face.
And the medical examiner also couldn't tell whether their deaths were from a murder or
a suicide.
So, the police stuck with their original theory that Barry had killed
Honey and then killed himself. Which doesn't really make a lot of sense at
the surface level, right? If they both died from strangulation and he then
posed himself in a belt but he didn't strangle himself with that belt, how does
that work? And if he strangled himself with a rope, where's the rope? So if you're thinking,
that makes no sense. You're definitely not
alone because the Sherman Children also
just did not accept this.
And they ended up holding a press
conference condemning the police department
for not investigating the deaths further.
Take a listen. Police are required
by law to maintain a certain professional
standard in their approach to
investigations.
But in this case, at this stage of the investigation, the manner in which the Toronto Police Service
conducted itself fell well below that standard of how a reasonable officer in similar circumstances
should have acted.
For the family, the most perplexing and upsetting aspect of the investigation was the failure to
recognize the obvious, that the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were staged
post-mortem in a very deliberate manner. This entire process has caused needless
additional pain and suffering to the Sherman family. Regrettably, it has become
clear to them that despite the active pursuit
of search warrants and exploring other investigative avenues, police resources have neither been
properly managed nor effectively utilized. The Sherman family has asked me to announce
the offer of a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the apprehension and prosecution
of those responsible for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman.
Call centre has been established to collect tips and information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It will be live monitored from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily and monitored by voice message overnight.
The leads will be analyzed and vetted and any meaningful information will be conveyed
immediately to the Toronto Police Service.
So after this, they decided to hire their own forensic analyst, who happened to also
be a retired police officer.
And when they did that, they asked for a second autopsy.
Well, the new autopsy was consistent with the first one.
It said that Barry and Honey died from strangulations,
that the belts were not used to strangle them,
but it still wasn't clear what the actual murder weapon was.
But the big difference here was that this second autopsy report
put their manner of death down as homicide. and they did this for a couple different reasons. First, it didn't make
any sense for Barry to tie up Honey's wrists, then cut off the zip ties, then
hang her by the pool. Plus, remember Barry had marks around his wrist too, so why
would he tie himself up? Barry also literally owned a drug company, meaning
that even if he did want
to murder his wife and then take his own life, he had access to all kinds of pills
and other medications that he could have used to do it in a very quick, easy, and
painless way. It just didn't make sense for him to do something so brutal if he
didn't need to. So all in all, the Polisis theory just did not make much
sense on a logical level. Not at all.
However, they still weren't persuaded by these new findings.
For an entire month, they kept saying that their original theory was right.
They were still treating it as a murder-suicide.
And in fact, that didn't change until January 26, 2018.
That's when the Toronto police held a press conference and announced that they now believed
that Barry and Honey had died in a double homicide.
During this press conference, they also put out a public request for tips and they started
looking into suspects.
However, as you can imagine, they had already lost an incredibly valuable amount of time.
The first 48 hours after a murder are incredibly important for an investigation, and the police
had made so many mistakes in those first few days.
First of all, the murder scene had not been secured at all.
On the day that the bodies were discovered, the housekeeper just kept cleaning the house,
even after the police had arrived.
She did this just to keep herself busy and the police didn't stop her.
I mean, not at first, it took a while before a police officer told her to stop. But by that point, who knows how much evidence she had already scrubbed away.
Now, the realtor, Elise, had also kept telling the police, you've got to go check the lockbox
at the front of the house. Make sure that the spare key is still there. And you've probably
seen those lock boxes if you've ever gone to look at a potential new house or new apartment. I also
think some Airbnbs use them as well.
It's like a little box that hangs on the door handle
or sometimes it's on a water pipe.
It has a code on it.
And when you open it, you can get the key out.
So basically, Elisa's theory was that maybe the killer
got into the lock box and got the key out.
And that's how they made it into the house
without leaving any signs of forced entry
that they had a key.
So she was encouraging the police, go check,
see if the key is still there, right?
Seems like a really standard logical thing to do,
except for whatever reason,
even though Elise told them this multiple times,
they didn't check the box.
Elise had to call them over and over repeatedly,
asking them and calling them over the course of weeks
to check this box until finally,
after several weeks went by,
they went and checked out this lock box.
Now in all fairness, when they did,
the key was still inside of it,
but you have to wonder why it took them so long to check,
right?
In general, the police didn't find a whole lot of evidence,
but frankly, it also doesn't sound like they were looking
all that hard in the first place.
Plus on top of that,
the Shermans didn't have a very advanced or high-tech security
system, even though they lived in this huge mansion.
They had no cameras outside, no cameras inside, they only had alarms and motion on the doors
and windows.
Now, what they did find was Honey's phone, which the housekeeper had already seen in
that half bathroom upstairs.
They found all those papers on the floor of the garage, the driving gloves, and the blackberry,
Barry's blackberry that was on the floor of the garage.
But that was really it.
So basically, the detectives only managed to find the evidence that Elise and the housekeeper
had already spotted on their own.
Now, one good thing was that the investigators eventually pulled security footage from the
medical office that Barry owned.
Specifically, footage from the afternoon before Barry and Honey had died. So this was Wednesday, December 13th.
And in the clip, Barry and Honey were meeting with the architects who were building their new house.
It was going to be closer to downtown Toronto, but it's not like they were downsizing by any means.
It was now going to actually be bigger at 16,000 square feet.
This house had basically been the main thing in Barry and Honey's lives at the time. They had spent
so much time planning it, building it, working out the details, and just making it a big focus
and a big priority. So here they were in a clip meeting with the architects discussing the plans.
Then at around 6 30, Honey left the office after the meeting and she went home.
Barry stayed for a little while longer, but he left around 8pm.
Now the police believe that Honey was ambushed as soon as she got home.
They also think that she ran into that guest bathroom, that half bath, and tried to call
911, but was attacked and then brought back downstairs.
And I will say right now that it is hard to prove this theory.
If she did try to call 911, there's absolutely no record of it.
The call didn't go through, they didn't see any evidence of that, at least that's what
the detectives say anyway, but this was the theory.
So then they believe that Honey was killed.
And then that the attacker or attackers ambushed Barry in the garage when he got home, which
explains why the papers were on the floor, his phone was on the floor, and things were
just kind of scattered all over the garage floor.
They think, okay, surely he must have dropped all of those things when he was attacked.
Then they believe that the attacker brought him to the pool room and killed him there.
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You are going to love it. Bury and Honey Sherman, billionaires, philanthropists, were murdered in their home in December 2017.
Using a mix of the Sherman home's real estate photos and Toronto Star images, I am going
to present the most likely scenario for what happened at 50 Old Colony Road.
This is Honey's Alexis SUV on the afternoon
of Friday, December the 15th.
Police were already inside going over the crime scene.
It is likely the Shermans had been dead 36 hours.
They were last seen alive together on Wednesday
at Barry's Apotec's offices.
Honey headed home first.
She always parked here, to the left of the ramp
to the underground garage and close to the side door.
Here, you get a better view of the door,
which was often unlocked.
Barry and Honey rarely used the front door of their house.
Later on Friday, their bodies would be taken out that way,
carried upstairs from the basement and across the Grand Central Hallway.
The side door Honey normally used opens into a vestibule leading to the laundry room,
kitchen and breakfast area.
Honey was likely home by 8pm.
The only obvious sign of her movements inside the house after she arrived
is the location of her iPhone.
The realtor who discovered the bodies noticed Honey's iPhone
in a powder room friends say she never used, located at the front of the house.
The iPhone with its jeweled case was
sitting upside down on the edge of the vanity. Sherman family and
friends speculate Honey may have ran there to escape her attacker.
There are
two possible stairway routes for an attacker moving Honey from the main
floor to the basement. One is in the middle of the house leading down from
the grand hallway on the main floor to the basement rec room. The other is at
the back, a spiral staircase which ends in the basement closer to the pool where the
bodies were eventually found. It has been speculated by family, friends and forensic
experts that some of the postmortem damage to Honey's face was caused by her being
dragged down the stairs. Two puzzling findings to note given that Toronto police said there
was no sign of forced entry when they arrived.
First, an open basement window. With the house for sale, the wall under a window in a front room had been painted to cover water damage. The window was left open to air out the smell.
The day the Sherman bodies were discovered, the realtor and clients touring the house
noted the window was open about six inches. The other finding of note was an unlocked
outside door near the underground garage where Barry parked his car. The rarely
used door leads into a stairwell. Steps go up to the patio outside on the west
side of the house. The realtor noticed that door was unlocked. It's
possible this is how the killer or killers entered and left the Sherman
home undetected. Barry Sherman would have driven his car down the ramp and
parked in one of six spots. There are two exit doors from the garage, a small door
into a utility room and a double door into the hallway by the spiral staircase. The realtor touring Klein's that Friday morning discovered
two items just outside the door near the staircase. A home inspection report Barry
had promised to bring home from the office and his leather gloves. The realtor,
not realizing the significance, picked both up and put them on a knee-high ledge
in the hallway.
It is likely that Barry Sherman was grabbed at the spot
his gloves and papers were dropped.
The attackers would have then moved him
past the spiral staircase and down along hallway
with the sauna and other rooms on the left
and the garage on the right.
At the end of the hallway is a door to the pool area.
This is the pool room where the bodies were discovered. So this was basically all of the evidence that they had.
However, a neighbor did call the police
and tell them that they found some interesting footage
on their own security cameras,
which happened to be pointed right at an angle
where they could see some parts
of the Sherman home. Now from this footage, the police knew that on Thursday, December 14th,
a car pulled up to the house. A man walked out, went to the front of the house, and then a few
minutes later, this man went back to his car. And he did this a few times, so many times in fact,
that he stayed parked in front of the Sherman home for 29 minutes
Almost a half an hour just going back and forth now because of the angle that that camera happened to be pointed at it
Was impossible to tell if he actually went inside the house or not
It cut it off right where you would be able to see that but after seeing this footage the police started making some other big key
discoveries like how the Shermans But after seeing this footage, the police started making some other big key discoveries,
like how the Shermans weren't quite as beloved as they had maybe thought at first.
In fact, some people had reasons to want Barry dead.
With more on this, I'm joined by former FBI agent Brad Garrett.
He joins us today from Washington.
Brad, good morning.
Good to see you.
So autopsies have now revealed the cause of death to be ligature neck compression, strangulation.
Homicide detectives have taken over.
What does this tell us about what might have happened?
What are investigators looking for?
Well, they're clearly looking for the link
between the bad guy or bad guys and this couple.
Now, having said that, it's...
I'm going to be surprised if it's not somebody
in a known circle of associates or friends. I mean, if you look at the type of homicide that's
occurred and what's been described, at least in the media, is that these bodies were actually
sort of displayed hanging. Now, that sets up a whole different dynamic of what the
bad guy is trying to tell the
rest of us as to why they were
killed and to actually make sort
of a statement about it.
So that's going to play into
potentially who you're looking
for.
And so what would make you
think, then, that it's someone
that would know the couple?
Well, maybe not personally.
I mean, someone could have been sent there.
I'm only suggesting that whoever is driving this crime has some sort of relationship with
one or both of them, because this is not the type of homicide that occurs because somebody
breaks in your house. This is clearly someone who, you know, were they were they trying to get information out
of them? Did they go there with the sole purpose of killing them? You know, my
question would be, it's going to be maybe something in between only because of the
way they died. There's a lot of easy ways, unfortunately, to end someone's life. This
is not the easy way to do it.
And particularly when you talk about if you're going to have to manipulate people into a
particular position, are they fighting you?
Are they not fighting you?
I mean, there's all of these things that add time, energy, and also, and this is very important,
you leaving you the bad guy clues, because they probably touched whatever
the ligature is, ropes, et cetera.
There could be hairs and fibers and some distinguishable things on the clothing of the victims.
So there's a lot of unknowns here, but a lot of potential evidence as the police move forward. And given the effort, I'll call it, that was put into this, into their deaths, do you think
that one person could have done this on their own, or would there be more people involved?
Well, it would be difficult, particularly if both individuals are conscious at the time.
This is very hard to do all that if you're just one person. I'm gonna guess it's going to be more than one person.
The police have described the residents
as no apparent force entry.
Now, that can mean a number of things.
Someone had a key or they left the door unlocked
or somebody followed them into the house.
So I don't know that I read a lot into that
at this particular juncture, but the real key is going to into the house. So I don't know that I read a lot into that at this particular juncture, but the real
key is going to be the following.
It's going to be friends, associates, business situations, et cetera, around one or in particular
Mr. Sherman.
And we'll have to see where that goes.
But this didn't happen just because somebody is upset.
This happened for a
reason. This is sort of a payback on something that occurred. And that's where the police,
they have to get to whatever that is. Now, Barry obviously made a lot of money at his medical
company, but that wasn't the main way that he got to be so wealthy. He would often joke that at his drug company, selling drugs was
just a side business, and that their main business was suing other people. He was even known as the
most litigious man in all of Canada. That's a direct quote. In total, he had filed roughly
1200 cases against the Canadian government, and he had sued a ton of other people over the years as well.
One of his lawsuits even took more than 30 years to be settled. And I gotta just say,
I loathe people like this because anybody can sue anybody for any reason, right? And oftentimes,
more than not, people will just settle because it's less expensive than paying all of your
attorney fees, the court fees, all of these things. But that's why I loathe people,
because they're just like really taking advantage
of the system and other people.
Like it's not extortion, obviously,
but like it is some, it's like adjacent to that.
Like, you know you're gonna get some sort of money
out of them if they settle.
So it's like, you're just a bad human, in my opinion,
if you do that.
Not that it makes it okay to be murdered,
but like I loathe people who do stuff like that. And he would sue people for almost
anything. His friends said that if you hit Barry with a fly swatter, he would literally
come at you with a sledgehammer. That is a comparison that they gave, which is really gnarly,
I gotta say. So needless to say, these lawsuits made Barry a lot of enemies over
the years. A lot of people didn't like him because they were afraid that he would find some excuse
to take them to court, all to make himself more money at their expense. Now, ironically, Barry was
known to make comments that, quote, it wasn't fair that some people got stepped on while other people
did the stepping, even though it's pretty clear that he's the one who did the stepping, right?
But he also seemed to be bothered by the fact that some people were rich and others weren't.
Almost as though he felt owed this, entitled to being wealthy. And apparently he was only angry when he saw himself as the one getting
stepped on. He had no problem screwing over other people to make a quick buck. And on top of that, his medical company that he created, they claimed to be a company that was, quote,
for the people, but they still way overcharged for the drugs that they sold.
And just listen to this quote that a professor from the University of Ottawa gave about Barry.
He said, Canadians pay more for generic drugs than almost every other country. He sought to manipulate our
system to enrich himself and impoverish Canadian patients who used his drugs." End quote. And that
was just a quote from one person. Other people called Barry, the only person I have ever met with
no redeeming features whatsoever. Another quote, a deplorable human being. So hearing all of that, you might
not be surprised to hear that the list of potential suspects of people who might want Berry and even
Honey dead, that list was long. Some people actually even pointed the finger at Berry and
Honey's own family. Right after their death, many people thought that the kids and Honey's sister
Mary must have had something to do with it because they wanted money.
And Honey's sister Mary supposedly got a lot of money
from Honey.
According to her, Honey had promised to give her
$300 million before she died, right before she died.
And when Mary didn't get what she wanted,
she supposedly threw a huge fit and just started yelling,
started raging.
Now, the thing is, Mary couldn't have committed the murders herself because she was in Florida She supposedly threw a huge fit and just started yelling, started raging.
Now the thing is, Mary couldn't have committed the murders herself because she was in Florida
when it happened.
She flew from Florida to Toronto after the murders happened on a private jet, which let's
just say like super glamorous, right?
But again, you get a sense of just how much money she had.
And that being said, if she had the kind of money to book private jets, surely she also
could have afforded to hire a professional to do her dirty work for her, right? So the fact that she was technically out of the
country at the time of the murders, it didn't exactly exonerate her. Now, even though some
people suspected Mary, a lot of people were really giving a lot of side eye to Barry and
Honey's children. They were all different from one another and from Barry. They didn't have his workaholic personality and none of them wanted to
take over the company business after Barry died. Their oldest child Lauren was
a yoga teacher and a counselor. Their second daughter Alexandra was a little
more similar to her parents in the fact that she didn't really like to show off
with money and she was very charitable. She was a registered nurse, she was
married and had children, and she was the closest
out of the kids to her parents.
In fact, the new house that Barry and Honey were building was really close to Alexandra
and her family.
Their youngest child, Kaylin, was about to get married to a man that she met online.
Now, she was more interested in money, and she definitely had a bit of a spending habit.
Her parents paid for her credit cards, but apparently they were about to completely cut her off right before they died.
And Kaylin had also recently asked her parents for a brand new car because she had gotten in a car accident.
But her parents told her no. They said no, you should just get your old one fixed like any normal person would do.
Just because you get in a car accident doesn't mean you get a brand new car, especially if it's not totaled. Like, no.
Well, apparently after their deaths, Kaylin went and bought a brand new car.
And she claimed that it's what her dad wanted her to do. Which, yes, that is a direct quote.
And then we get to Barry and Honey's son, Jonathan, who really rose to the top in terms of people who
were getting suspicious or being blamed or being looked at.
People have said that Jonathan acted really weird after his parents' death.
He was reportedly very dramatic at the funeral.
He would flip-flop between crying, then acting hysterical,
then going and acting completely stoic and normal,
almost as though it was performative.
Jonathan also had a pretty difficult relationship with Barry.
You see, Jonathan kept going to Barry, saying that he had all of these different ideas for new businesses.
He just needed an investor. He just needed a little bit of money to make it happen. So
Barry would give Jonathan some money, but then the business would flop and then Barry
would be out of that money. Barry had also loaned Jonathan a huge amount of money. I'm
talking more money than most people will, not most people,
more money than anyone usually will ever see in their life.
He had loaned Jonathan somewhere between $50 and $60 million.
But he told Jonathan that he would have to pay all of that money back with interest.
And by 2017, Jonathan had not repaid any of that debt.
And Barry was then apparently
starting to get annoyed. He told Jonathan that he was going to have to pay him back, and he was
serious. But this apparently made Jonathan very mad. He sent some angry texts and Barry was kind
of snippy back and all in all things looked pretty tense between the two of them. But it's worth
noting that this exchange and this like friction between the two of them happened just two weeks before the murders.
But Jonathan wasn't the only person who Barry loaned money to.
He gave money to multiple family members and friends who all wanted to start their own businesses.
Many of these businesses weren't successful, but in those cases,
Barry wasn't as demanding about being repaid as he was with his son, Jonathan.
Jonathan argued that he was genuinely trying
to be a successful businessman,
that he was in the office every day,
that he actively worked with all of the employees who,
according to him, really liked him as a boss.
Jonathan argued that other people that Barry gave money to
weren't as dedicated to their businesses as he was,
but Barry seemed to stick to his guns
and he kept pushing Jonathan to pay
him back. The problem was, Jonathan didn't have that kind of money. He couldn't have repaid his
father even if he wanted to. And frankly, there was nothing to suggest that Jonathan was willing
to give up this lavish, fancy life that he was living. And here's where things get really
interesting. Barry's will said that he was going to leave everything to Honey.
That the kids would not get a single cent unless Honey died when he did.
So Jonathan would then have a motive for killing both his father and Honey.
It's also reported that Jonathan didn't have the best relationship with Honey because Jonathan
was gay and supposedly she did not approve of that.
Jonathan was married, but some of his past partners
have said that Honey just never made them feel welcomed.
Now, Jonathan also told a reporter during all of this
that his own sisters thought that he was the one
who killed his parents,
which that's a pretty big deal, right?
When your own family members are saying things like that,
it's worth paying attention,
except he also said that they were just jealous because he was his parents'
favorite child, which after reading more about Jonathan, I don't know,
that doesn't really seem to be true.
But Jonathan and the other kids weren't the only suspects, not at all,
not by a long shot.
Some people were pointing the finger at one of Barry's closest friends,
a man named Frank D'Angelo. Now,
Frank was a smooth talker and also a wannabe businessman.
He had met Barry while he was working as a juice salesman, and over the years, Frank
became one of Barry's closest friends.
Barry helped Frank with a ton of different business ideas, and one of them was a craft
beer brewing company.
Barry funded the entire idea and even sent Frank on trips all around Europe so that he could learn as much about beer as he possibly could.
They even sponsored a hockey team in Canada for extra advertising and PR.
But the business was largely a failure.
And a lot of people reported that it tasted just like any other cheap beer, but the only difference being it had a very expensive price tag. And I haven't been able to verify this,
but it's been said that Barry loaned something like $200 million
or maybe even more to Frank.
This over the course of their entire friendship.
And it was money that Frank never had to pay back.
Or so Frank thought.
Now, Frank didn't have the best reputation.
At one point, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman who he had been planning to hire for the company.
Frank was acquitted,
but only because there wasn't enough evidence against him.
The judge who was overseeing the case
even said he thought that Frank did it,
but legally, they couldn't do anything
without some kind of proof.
And as the rumor went, this was all a deal breaker for Barry.
He was going to fully cut Frank off entirely.
And understandably, that made Frank very angry.
He had a very short fuse and he was money hungry.
He was just kind of like an icky person in general.
He liked living the high life
and he was only able to do that because of Barry's money.
So the question was, would Frank snap and kill Barry
when he was looking at the possibility
of losing access to all of his money.
Some say yes, but some say no. Now if Frank killed Barry in a moment of anger,
why would he also kill Honey? Plus, with the way that their bodies were so carefully and
meticulously placed, it seemed like whoever had killed them was really taking their time,
and even maybe trying to make some kind of statement.
It just didn't fit with a crime of passion.
But there was another person, another person that they hadn't looked at
and that could crack this whole case wide open.
But would it?
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So the final person who people really started suspecting was one of Barry's cousins, Carrie Winter.
Now remember when I said Barry worked for his uncle's drug company before he started
his own?
Well, that company was owned by Carrie's dad, Lou.
Then Lou died suddenly from a brain aneurysm and his wife died shortly after, leaving Carrie
and his three brothers,
who were all still very young, orphaned.
The four boys were adopted by a couple
who was then later accused of being abusive to them.
So all in all, it was just a really bad situation.
Now, as for Lou's company, Empire Labs,
the plan was for the board to run everything
until the winter boys were adults.
Once they were old enough to take over, they would. Now this all happened while Barry was still in college, and he really
didn't like the way that the board and the CEO that they had appointed were running things.
Basically, he felt like they were running it into the ground, and that they would go
out of business before the Winter Boys ever even had a chance to take over. So Barry and
a close friend ended up borrowing money from their parents and they bought Empire Labs.
And he and his friend were able to build the company back up
and in five years, they sold the company for $2 million.
Barry gave some of that money to the Winter Boys,
but then he used the rest of it to start his own company.
So as the Winter Boys grew older,
they felt it wasn't fair that Barry had sold Empire Labs
to start his own company. Basically, it seemed like Barry had sold Empire Labs to start his own company.
Basically, it seemed like he had sold out their future for his own financial benefit.
But Barry defended himself, saying that Empire Labs was going to fail, and by saving and then
selling the company, he got the boys more money than they would have ever made otherwise. In his
mind, he had every right to sell the company. He even continued to support the Winter Boys,
buying them houses, cars, money, and jobs.
He even invested in their businesses
that they ended up starting for themselves.
But still, think about it.
Barry became a billionaire,
thanks in part to his new medical company.
So no amount of houses, cars, and investments,
none of that was going to come close to making up
for what the boys thought had been stolen from them.
They even claimed at one point
that they should own 20% of Barry's medical company,
since the four of them together had owned 20% of Empire Labs before he sold it.
And Kerry ended up confronting Barry about it.
But Barry said that he built this company himself and that he didn't owe the Winter Boys anything.
Then, Kerry tried to sue Barry for $1.5 million.
It became this huge legal battle that lasted over 10 years. Then, Kerry tried to sue Barry for $1.5 million.
It became this huge legal battle that lasted over 10 years.
But in the end, the judge sided with Barry, and the judge even ordered Kerry to pay Barry
back for all of his legal fees.
On top of that, Kerry often talked publicly about how terrible Barry and Honey were, how
ungrateful they were.
And after the murders, he even talked about how they deserved
what had happened to them. So yeah, the main reason people suspected Carey is because he's been so
outspoken about his dislike of Honey and Barry even after the murder. In fact, he said that he
danced around his house and celebrated when he found out that Barry and Honey were dead.
He straight up said that he had a reason to kill Barry, And more than that, he even made a plan to do so.
But his plan apparently wasn't at all like how Barry and Honey actually died.
Carrie said that his plan was to just sit and wait outside of the medical company that Barry
had started and attack Barry as he left the building. Then he would decapitate him and just
wait by his car until the police finally came and arrested him. Which, I gotta say, not a very well thought out plan, but I get it.
If all you want is revenge and you don't even care what happens to yourself,
then yeah, maybe Blitz attack, decapitate, and just sit there and wait for the police.
But it doesn't sound like a fully formed plan to me.
But I think we all can agree in any event that something just wasn't quite right with Cary, right?
But he wasn't ever named an o
a lot of people who know
brothers point out that w
they received a huge inher
a lot of that money was w
vacations, drugs and a bu
things. So it seemed like
willing to do anything, e
just to get his hands on some more money.
I probably had reasons to lash out, to do the dirty deed.
But Kerry Winter says he is innocent.
What's more, he's making an extraordinary accusation
against Barry Sherman, the Fifth Estate's Bob McHughen,
spoke with Winter and put his claim to the test.
He works as a construction site supervisor, a far cry from the wealth and power his billionaire
cousin Barry Sherman enjoyed.
And Kerry Winter is bitter.
He cared about one thing, money.
Making lots of it.
And not caring who he destroyed, who he stepped on.
I was betrayed.
My cousin hurt me, and now I want to hurt him.
Police have determined Barry and Honey Sherman were both victims
of a targeted homicide.
But now Kerry Winter insists, without evidence,
that Barry could have killed his wife.
Because Winter claims in the late 1990s,
Barry Sherman asked him to arrange a contract hit on her.
There was a time in his office that he turned to me
and he said, Carrie, I want you to do me a favor.
And I said, what's that, Barry?
He said, I want you to whack my wife.
And I said, come on, Barry.
You want me to kill your wife?
He goes, I didn't say you.
You know some people. Could you arrange that for me? What do you believe, members on, Barry, you want me to kill your wife? He goes, I didn't say you. You know some people.
Could you arrange that for me?
What do you believe members of the family
and their legal representatives will say about this?
I think they would say that he's possibly lying.
He's trying to drag Barry's good name through the mud.
He's got a hidden agenda.
He's got a vendetta. He's being spiteful, vengeful. His claim is unsubstantiated, so we put Kerry Winter
through a three-hour lie detector test,
administered by John Galianos,
a former Quebec homicide investigator
and a veteran polygraph examiner.
While not admissible in court, polygraphs are commonly used
by police officers to determine truthfulness.
Are you lying when you say that Barry Sherman told you that you court, polygraphs are commonly used by police officers to determine truthfulness.
Are you lying when you say that Barry Sherman told you that you wanted his wife killed?
No.
Carrie Winter failed.
There's something that you're hiding in.
I failed.
Yeah, you failed. Yeah, you failed.
Winter seemed shaken, all of which begs another question.
Could Carrie Winter have murdered the man
he readily admits he hated so much?
I probably had reasons to lash out, to do the dirty deed.
This would be asked of you by anybody.
Did you kill Honey and Barry Sherman?
Absolutely not.
I had nothing to do with it. I don't know who did it.
Toronto police have asked him to come in for an interview. Winter says they told
him he is not a suspect and that there is no evidence. He is. Now aside from all
these suspects who were close to the couple, some people think that Barry and
Honey's deaths were the result of a burglary gone wrong. Their neighbor had a
string of break-ins in the year leading up to Barry and Honey's deaths were the result of a burglary gone wrong. Their neighbor had a string of break-ins in the year leading up to Barry and Honey's deaths, and in fact somebody had already
broken into their home once before. The burglars literally climbed onto the Sherman's roof, then
opened the skylight and kind of like rappelled down into their home like it's out of a movie.
But after the murders, the police went and checked the roof and checked that same skylight,
and they said that there was no evidence that anybody got in that same way a second time around.
And I have to say, if it was a burglary gone wrong, it doesn't make sense to me that the killers
would take the careful time to pose the two of them so carefully, just like those statues.
I don't know, Honey and Barry's bodies were posed in such a specific way that it just feels personal to me.
Now, none of the people that we just talked about were ever listed as official suspects.
The police have gone through the computer data, the phone data, and hundreds of people
that were linked to Barry and Honey.
They also checked out all of the surveillance camera footage from the neighborhood, including
some that they didn't publicly release until late 2021.
That footage is of someone, probably a man, walking outside on Wednesday, December 13,
2017, aka the night that Barry and Honey died.
You can't see this person's face or any other identifiable features.
It's just someone dressed in all dark winter clothes walking through the snow in an area
near Barry and Honey's home.
However, the police do think that this person likely has some sort of military background,
and they think this based on the way that this person is walking.
This is the person detectives now say is wanted for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman.
Investigators say it's unclear if the suspect was working alone or with someone else.
But on the evening of December 13th, 2017,
two days before the billionaire couple was found dead
next to the indoor pool in the basement of their mansion,
the suspect was tracked on video arriving by foot
in the area of 50 Old Colony Road
and later leaving from that same address.
The suspect also disappears from camera view
during the timeframe that investigators determined
the murders took place.
We undertook these investigative steps, exhaustive investigative steps,
to identify this individual.
Now having gotten to the point where we have not been able to do so with these videos,
this is now the prudent time to release this to the public and seek the public's assistance.
Police can only say the suspect is between 5'6 and 5'9
and believe his actions were suspicious that night.
We were able to eliminate pretty well every other person
on the video footage that we've obtained.
And so we're left with a very glaring sort of unknown with this individual that requires an explanation if there's a legitimate one.
We were able to find the street and the home where the video surveillance was taken from.
It's not even on Old Colony Road but more than a kilometer away from the Sherman home,
which suggests that the suspect walked quite a distance to and from the crime scene.
Police say they tracked the suspect
walking through many surveillance videos
leading up to and coming from Old Colony Road
and released this video because it was the best quality
of the suspect they had.
This man lives on the street.
Do you ever walk over to Old Colony Road?
Yes.
How long does it take to walk there from here?
10, 15 minutes.
Neighbors are anxious for an arrest.
Yes, I hope so. We
really hope so. The lead detective hopes that this video will bring in the one
tip he needs, leading to a break in this four year old case and perhaps an
arrest.
And police would not say if the suspect was picked up or dropped off after
walking to and from this crime scene on Old Colony Road. Also, the fact that
police could not track
this person's cell phone means that the suspect
either didn't use it or left it at home that night,
which I'm told could be the sign
that this person is a professional.
Now, if you're wondering, okay, so was it some sort
of military person? Was it a professional hit?
I don't know. I can't give you the answer to that.
It seems like it's possible,
but the suspect pool is so large.
And as far as we know,
nobody has come forward about who this person is
in that video.
The Sherman children are even offering a reward
of $35 million for anybody that has any important information
regarding the case.
But still no one with credible information
has come forward.
Police have received hundreds of tips, but none of them have proven to be helpful at all. case. But still, no one w has come forward. Police
of tips, but none of them
helpful at all. In seven
the fifth anniversary of
and honey Sherman. And to
Alexandra car chuck issu
behalf for a family that
heart is broken. My loss
Children have lost their grandparents.
We miss their guidance, love, and wisdom."
What's so crazy about this is with the massive pool of suspects, with a $35 million reward
on the table, which I gotta say is pretty enticing for someone, despite all of that,
to this day, the case still remains unsolved.
We don't know who killed Berry and Honey Sherman.
Was it Jonathan?
Frank?
Carrie?
Someone else entirely?
Did somebody hire a hitman?
Did the Sister Mary hire a hitman?
A group of hitmen?
And why?
Or do you think it really was a murder-suicide, even though I can't wrap my mind around that?
One of the number one causes of homicide is money, right?
It's financially
driven. Whether it's the life insurance policy or sometimes an affair, whatever it is. So they had
copious amounts of money and a lot of people, a lot of enemies, a lot of people who would have
wanted hands on their money and wanted them dead. So I think when you have access to that kind of
money, could you hire a professional? Absolutely. But I guess the question is who? This is a case that has fascinated people
ever since Barry and Honey's bodies were discovered inside that pool room.
And pretty recent too. 2017. That's not that long ago.
It's just such a bizarre case. And in this day and age, how do two
incredibly well-connected billionaires with tons
of obvious enemies get murdered,
then have their bodies displayed in some sort of weird, posed, precise ritualistic way, maybe,
I don't know, and the killers still haven't been found. How is that possible? Especially when you
have a $35 million reward on the table. I don't know. but that's why I said I don't care how sick I am
I needed to talk to you guys about this case once we got all the information from Canada because like it's blowing my mind
Who do you think was responsible? Do you think it was a professional hit?
Do you think it was a family member or do you think it was a murder-suicide?
Let me know in the comment section on YouTube or in the Q&A section on Spotify
Or if you're listening on Apple, let me know in the review section, because I am baffled.
And maybe I'll even put a poll over on Spotify.
Do they still do polls?
I don't know if they still do, but if they do,
I'll put a poll over on Spotify,
because I wanna know what you guys think,
because I genuinely, I don't know.
I really have no idea what to make of it.
I definitely don't think a murder, suicide, but I don't know.
So let me know what you guys think, but this is a wild one. I mean, you don't even see
cases with that kind of- you don't see life with that kind of money. It's just
unbelievable. All right, I'm gonna go put VIX all over my face and my chest and
try to close my eyes, but I appreciate you guys tuning in to today's episode
with me. Thank you so much. I will be back on the mic with you on Thursday
with Headline Highlights,
where we are breaking down everything true crime
going on this week.
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take a quick second.
It'll take you literally three seconds to do it.
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You just find the top corner
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You will get notified and you won't miss any of them. Alright guys. Thanks again and until the next one be nice
Do not kill people don't brag about money and
I don't know
Maybe don't loan your family tens of millions of dollars because even if you're trying to be nice
Maybe it'll give them motive to kill you. I don't know. But loan me that money. That'd be great. Alright guys, thanks so much and
I'll talk to you soon. Bye.