Suspicion - S2 The Billionaire Murders | E10 Gift Bags and Blood Stains Part 1

Episode Date: December 14, 2024

In episode ten of “The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman” Kevin Donovan examines crime scene photos, including the injuries to Honey’s face, and the interior of the Sherman home to help us understand what happened in the last hour of Barry and Honey Sherman’s lives.  He also looks again at the police mistakes that led them down the murder-suicide path. The Billionaire Murders podcast is probing the strange case of the famous Toronto couple found strangled in their north Toronto home in 2017. For seven years, The Star’s Kevin Donovan has covered the case for the Star, fought court battles to access documents on the police investigation and the Sherman estate, written a best selling book on it and produced a Crave documentary. Listen to episode 11 now at thestar.com and episode 12 this coming Friday, December 20. 

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. It's 8 p.m., Wednesday, December 13, 2017. Honey Sherman parks her gold Lexus SUV at the side of her house, her normal spot. There's nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to indicate that Honey has less than one hour to live. She'd had, by all accounts, a great day. A workout and long massage at home in the morning, shopping for Hanukkah gifts for the grandchildren in the afternoon, and a meeting with Barry and three contractors to discuss plans for a mansion she had convinced him to build. Five weeks before, things hadn't been so good.

In a bitter email exchange, Barry had accused her of abusing him and their children for decades. But today, according to a good friend who saw Barry and Honey earlier in the day, all was well. Listen, you can always sense when there's tension between two people. And that day, they were clear. They were definitely free and clear that day. Another friend, who'd talked on the phone with Honey 90 minutes before she arrived home, told me the same thing. She sounded normal. Is he normal?

It was the kind of thing Honey did a lot from the car. Called to check in on someone she cared about. Just a quick chat. She was on her way home. At 8pm in December in Toronto, it's dark. The Sherman property, it's not well lit. It's a cold night, well below freezing. Snow has just started to fall.

Honey gets out of her SUV and walks a few feet to the side door of the house. Some people speculate that someone got into the house and were waiting for them. That's another friend of Honey's. I think she's right. The house, it's 12,000 square feet. Lots of places to hide. I think Honey opened the side door and walked in, right to the kitchen. She placed two gift bags on the round kitchen table and her bulky purse on a chair.

Then, it happened. She's attacked. Most likely by two people who were waiting in another room Or it's possible people were waiting outside and followed Honey into the house Regardless, there's a struggle Honey is 70, had multiple health issues But she's tough, strong She runs through the house, towards the front door and into a small powder room she never uses.

Clutching her phone, maybe trying to call for help. The phone falls to the floor, upside down beside the toilet. One of the attackers hits Honey on the right side of her face. An investigator source told me this was likely an attention getter. Someone flicking their hand or a weapon at her. The blow draws blood. A plastic bag is put over her head, not to kill her, but to stop the blood from her cheek wound getting on the attacker's clothes.

One of them takes out a big zip tie, the kind used to bind cables on a construction site. These cable ties are also used by the military to tie up prisoners on the battlefield. You can buy them at Home Depot or most gardening stores. Honey's wrists are bound, either in front of or behind her back. Across the city, Barry is sitting in his office at Apotex, the generic drug company he founded in the 1970s. He sends a routine email from his desk computer at 8.12 p.m. I still need these questions answered. Packaging. Is ARPL equipped to do the packaging, i.e. two rows each with different strength?

ARPL is one of the Apotex plants in India. The email is classic Barry. He's a billionaire who got there by micromanaging his 11,000 employees worldwide. If not, are we equipped to do in Toronto? If not, who will get it done? Who can answer? Sandra, awaiting samples. Barry usually stays at the office until 11 p.m.

But on this day, something makes him go home early. He sends one last email, this one to his second-in-command, Jack K. Jack's in New York with his wife attending a concert. The email to Jack is time-stamped, 8.23 p.m. Agreements with PMS, re-dejoxin and ipratropium. I can't find either. Do you have? Email sent.

Barry grabs a bulky document off a desk piled high with files and heads out the door. It's less than a 30-minute drive to his home on Old Colney Road. Despite his wealth, his car is a rusted Mustang with bad brakes, and Barry has a lead foot. He pulls into his driveway at 9 p.m., presses the fob

for the garage door that leads underground. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is The Billionaire Murders. Episode 10, Gift Bags and Bloodstains, Part 1. We believe now, through the six weeks of work review, we have sufficient evidence to describe this as a double homicide investigation. Susan Gomes, the Toronto Police homicide detective you just heard,

made that statement the day police announced that Barry and Honey Sherman were victims of double homicide following an explosive story we published in the Toronto Star that prompted police to take a second look at the forensic pathology. That was six weeks after the bodies were found. The case was no longer a murder-suicide, as originally thought, when a junior officer, Brandon Price, said this to reporters the night their bodies were discovered.

I can say that at this point in the investigation, though it is very early, we are not currently seeking or looking for an outstanding suspect. Now, homicide detective Gomes never went to the crime scene when the bodies were there, didn't go for four days, which is highly irregular. Gomes not going to the crime scene is just one of the many problems with the Sherman investigation, which went off the rails from the start. Police missed some of the fingerprints and palm prints at the scene.

They didn't check transit or airport security video from that night. And they continually asked friends and family why Barry would have killed Honey instead of the better question, who would have killed them both? Who had the most to gain from them both being dead. Both Honey and Barry Sherman were in fact targeted. That's one thing Gomes did get right. She made it clear that billionaire titan Barry Sherman was not the only target. What evidence police have to prove this has not been made public.

Detective Sergeant Gomes has since been promoted and moved to another unit in the police. Price, the detective whose comment outside the Sherman crime scene signaled the incorrect murder-suicide theory, was also promoted. He now leads the Sherman investigation. Price gives occasional updates. Here's one from three years ago. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Brandon Price. I am a detective sergeant with the Toronto Police Service Homicide Squad. Four years ago, the Toronto Police Service responded to an emergency call for service at the home on Old Colony Road.

When officers arrived, they located Barry and Honey Sherman deceased within their residence. It was later determined that both had died of ligature neck compression. As for me, I've spent a lot of time on this case. I've done more than 80 investigative stories in the Toronto Star, our podcast, a best-selling book, and a television documentary series. The amazing thing is, seven years in, I'm still learning new information. I've got the crime scene photos now, a lot more police and private detective documents, I speak to Sherman's sources all the time, and every six months I go to court and cross-examine

the lone homicide detective working the case, part of my ongoing attempt to unseal more police documents. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. You'll hear more about that in an upcoming episode. Over the years, on all kinds of investigations, I've learned the importance of repeatedly going over what I've discovered. It becomes a bit of an obsession. I do it to see how each piece of a growing puzzle fits. With the Sherman murders, it's all about finding who killed Honey and Barry and keeping a watch on police investigators and the justice system. If they can screw up in such a high profile case, what about all the other cases? That's what this ongoing series is about. And if you will allow me, I'm going to break the fourth wall here to use that old theatre

term. If you followed our reporting, some of this information you will know, some of it will be new. But I've stitched the old and new information together to help make sense of it all. Now, I'm going to take you through the last day of the Sherman's lives. We'll be right back. This is Kevin Donovan. I've been around building and renovation projects my entire life, so I can tell you it's important to make your next roof the last one your house, cottage, or building will ever need. Do it once, do it right, do it now. Have a lock metal. Request your quote today. Today on The Morning Show,

dishes from down under. Curtis Stone cooks up his favorite sweet and savory meals. You're recycling wrong. Should you be fined for your blue bin blunders? Wednesday, December 13, 2017. That's a global morning show waking up their audience with what I call nice-to-know news. Recycling bins, a chef, fun stuff.

Nothing unusual in Toronto that day. It was chilly, grey, just what you'd expect in December in Canada's largest city. Also, just another day at the Sherman House on Old Colney Road, beginning with a breakfast of champions for Barry. Oh, what did he eat? Frosted flakes, maybe some Ritz crackers with peanut butter, a piece of processed cheese.

Denise Gold, one of the small army of personal trainers Honey employed to keep them fit, is the first person to see Barry and Honey that morning. The couple, Honey was 70, Barry was 75, had very different approaches to fitness. Honey's friends called her the bionic woman. Knee and hip replacements, thyroid cancer. She believed, as I suppose everyone should, that you have to keep moving to keep moving. Barry, not so much. But when told by Honey, he did it.

His slot was 8.30 a.m., but he killed 15 minutes by munching on a less-than-nutritional breakfast. Then it was upstairs to what he thought of as sort of an exercise purgatory. You know, then he'd do his little thing. He'd look at his watch, and then literally his little thing. He'd look at his watch, and then literally 30 seconds later, he'd look at his watch again. And, you know, we used to banter about, you know, how many times can you look at your watch?

The time goes really slow when you look at your watch. Barry finishes and heads off to shower. Honey starts her workout. This is all in an alcove just off the master bedroom. She's focused, pushing her own physical limits. Then Barry comes back into the room. He's showing off something that he is wearing for the very first time. A new belt.

So he came in and he was wearing the belt. And she says, Barry, that looks too tight for you. This is the belt that will be around Barry's neck later that night. These belts had been in the bedroom for months. Honey had purchased two of them, one a 34 inch and one a 36 inch, at Canadian Tire for $9.99. Barry proudly displays it, his stomach protruding over the belt, which gives rise to Honey's comment. He goes, it fits perfectly because, you know, on a lot of men, there's stomach, so you can wear a smaller belt, stomach goes on top of it. A lot has been made about this belt.

I think it was a coincidence that Barry chose this day to wear it for the first time. The other belt, I don't know if that was the one used on Honey. If it was, then it suggests to me the killers didn't arrive with a full plan on how to stage their victims. They invented the staging part that night, and they had to go upstairs to get another belt. I'll get into more of this when I talk about the crime scene. The chit-chat over, Barry leaves. His last words before he left while I was training her was, or she said to him, one of them, I'll see you at five. I'll be at the office. They had a meeting. Barry leaves the house and drives to Apotex. Honey does her two-hour workout, followed by a two-hour massage. Downstairs, the Sherman house is a beehive of activity as real estate agent Elise Stern gets a place ready for showings.

Old Colony was recently listed at $6.9 million, which Barry thought was ridiculously low. Just look at this place, he said to anyone in earshot that morning as he left. It's amazing. In reality, the 34-year-old house was dated. In the basement that morning, two painters were doing some emergency touch-ups. It turns out even billionaires paint over water damage near a window rather than fixing the problem. Before Honey leaves, she chats with her longtime assistant, Sheila Stanley, who manages her schedule and does odd jobs.

Sheila and her family are heading away on vacation later in the week. Honey says, Sheila, it's fine. Take Thursday and Friday off. Sheila says, this is appreciated. Normally, she's always around to help Honey. I'm usually at Old Colony from 10 a.m. till mid-afternoon, Monday to Friday. So, no Sheila there on Thursday. In fact, nobody is scheduled to be at the Sherman house the next day. No personal trainers, no cleaners, and no showings booked to see the house. This is

significant. Proof to me that someone had an insider knowledge of the Sherman schedule. Sheila said that would be easy to do. Honey didn't have a password on any of her devices, and Barry's password was 1234. Early in the afternoon, Honey heads off to do some gift shopping. It's the second day of Hanukkah, and she has grandchildren to buy for. She'll go to at least two large malls, hunting for the perfect gift. Meanwhile, Barry works away at Apotex,

noodling into every part of the multi-billion dollar company friends refer to as his fifth child. Barry's a workaholic, and he doesn't like being at home. Barry's timings were, I'm on early. I would get to the office at 5 in the morning and leave around 6. Barry used to come in around 10.30, 11, but leave around 10.30, 11. That's Jeremy Desai, who was the CEO of Apotex at the time. He recalls absolutely nothing out of the ordinary with Barry or Apotex that Wednesday,

one meeting after another, putting out fires. It was a Wednesday. Again, it was a litigation strategy that we were trying to settle with a brand company in Canada for Canadian litigation. Apotex, a private company, had $1.6 billion annual revenue in 2017, the year of the murders. If you've had a generic drug in Canada, it was most likely the Apotex brand. To keep growing, Barry was always in one

battle or another. One of the IP lawyers called me around lunchtime in-house and said, Jeremy, we've got to make a decision. What do you think Barry's going to say? I said, look, we're running out of time now. Let's set up a meeting with Barry in the afternoon, which he did. Jack Kay, Barry's longtime second-in-command at Apotex, would normally have been at that meeting. But Jack and his wife were on the way to New York on a trip that Honey had a hand in.

Both couples had been at a gala that summer for a blood disorder charity, Barry supported. There was an auction for tickets to an Andrea Bocelli concert. It came time for, they were going to auction these tickets. Whoever was doing the auction, I don't even remember who it was. Honey bid. She bid X. don't even remember who it was, Honey bid. She bid X. I can't remember what it was.

And nobody else was bidding. So I said to my wife, I said, bid. So whatever Honey bid, we bid a pile. Nobody else bid. I thought that I could engage Honey, right? And we'd raise the stakes and I'd quit. I think Jack being out of town was significant in the same way the absence of Sheila Stanley,

Honey's assistant, was significant. Jack and Barry were extremely close friends and they worked in adjoining offices and communicated constantly each day. I think the killers knew Jack would be away and wouldn't miss Barry at the office on Thursday. Also, Mary, Honey's sister and best friend, was heading out of town to Florida. I think the killers chose a time when all of these people close to the Shermans were away. Okay, back to Wednesday. Jack is on his way to the concert.

Barry and his CEO are at the office dealing with the ongoing legal drug wars that are their lives. Thinking back to his friend Barry, Jeremy said the man was far from slowing down. In fact, they'd just talked about ramping up production. And he goes, Jeremy, you've got to help me to do this in the next three to five years. We want to make 50 billion tablets, and we want to have these plants here and these plants here. Apotex had so far produced 25 billion generic doses,

from cholesterol drugs to nasal sprays to pretty much every other kind of drug. Barry wanted to double production in his lifetime. He had a boundless energy, which is why the early police theory that he'd taken his own life seemed nuts to his colleagues. Plus, how he died. You'd think a pharmaceutical genius would have chosen a lethal dose of pills over strangulation, called ligature neck compression, in the autopsy reports. His friend Jack Kay says the police theory just made no sense. We always used to kid that they were going to live to 120. In Jewish, Moses lived to 120.

And he wanted to live to 120. It means up to 120. In Jewish, Moses lived to 120. And he wanted to live bis 120, means up to 120. And then I said, well, when you get to 120, Barry, you're going to want another 20. He says, of course. Jack says Barry felt he had a duty to live. I mean, he used to kibitz and say, I can't die, Jack. The world can't get along without me. Really? Really. Wow. I have to live forever. We'll be right back.

This is Kevin Donovan. I've been around building and renovation projects my entire life, so I can tell you it's important to make your next roof the last one your house, cottage, or building will ever need. Do it once, do it right, do it now. Have a lock metal. Request your quote today. Just after 5pm that Wednesday, Jeremy, Barry's CEO, heads to Barry's office to give him some positive news on the issue they'd been grappling with. Jeremy looks out the window and sees Honey's SUV parked in Jack K's spot. I saw Honey had parked the Lexus.

So I said, OK, I'm not going to. I'll talk to Barry tomorrow. I won't disturb him. Honey had arrived along with three builders. It was a scheduled meeting to discuss plans for the Sherman's new house. Barry met them in a small conference room near his office. Joe Brennan was the lead, a veteran of custom home builds. The Shermans, at Honey's urging, were moving out of Old Colony and building a $30 million mansion in Forest Hill, a more upscale part of Toronto than where they'd raised their four children. Barry had grown up in Forest Hill and their daughter Alexander lived there. So did Honey's sister Mary.

Brennan, the builder, won't speak to me. I've asked a voice actor to read his statement to police. You know, it was a completely normal meeting. We were discussing window selection. I met them years ago on a trip to Israel. When they decided to build a new house, that's when they contacted me. Honey liked Barry to be at the planning meetings, especially when engineering or technical things were discussed. Originally, the meeting was to be at Old Colony, but it was changed to Apotex. That's also significant. It gave the killers time to get into the house

and get ready for Honey and Barry to come home. The problem is, nobody can recall who made the change. And then, there's something else. Yeah, apparently Barry always stayed at the office until 11 p.m. at night, working. But Honey said something that made me think Barry needed to be home earlier that evening. The problem is I can't recall what the reason was. Another important piece of the puzzle. I recently wrote to Brennan and asked him to rack his brain about why Barry needed to go home early. I told him that it might literally solve the case.

So far, no response. Here's why I think this matters. We know Honey went home at 8 p.m. and was attacked almost immediately. If Barry had not arrived home until 11 p.m. or later, the killers would have had to wait three hours. I think that would be an unacceptable risk. Presumably, they wanted to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

Here's what I think. Someone lured Barry home early. Now, how did this happen? A text message? Email? I think it's more likely it was by a phone call or an in-person chat, so there would be no written record. By the way, through sources, I've been able to see partial phone logs on Barry's electronic devices.

Nothing stands out. I'm fighting to overturn the seals on all of his electronic devices. In the interview with Brennan, police asked, as they did with everyone, was there any concern that one of them was fooling around or that they were being stalked? Nope, not at all. Never got any sense of any infidelity and no, no safety concerns. Nothing like that. The builders meeting ends at 6.15. Honey and the Builders leave Apotex, Honey in her Lexus SUV, the three Builders in Brennan's car. One of the other Builders, Danny Greenglass,

says Honey must have pocket-dialed him by mistake because while they were driving, she called. All he heard was giggling for about 20 seconds, and Honey hung up. That's around the same time Honey called a friend, whose voice you heard at the start of this episode, Honey calling in to check on how the woman's husband was recovering after an operation. Honey sounded completely normal, the friend told me. After the call, Honey drives to Bayview Village Mall to complete her shopping, arriving there around 7 p.m. She visited the CIBC ATM and made a withdrawal.

I don't know how much she withdrew, or why she made a withdrawal, but I can tell you Honey had $7,500 in her wallet by the time she headed home. Now ATM limits are a lot lower than that, so presumably she was taking out money to supplement what was already in her wallet. It's quite likely it was to give holiday tips or bonuses to staff. Just before 8 p.m., Honey gets back into her Lexus and heads home. At the time, Bayview Village Mall didn't have security cameras outside, so there's no video record of this. One of the early police theories was that someone got into the Lexus with her at the mall.

Someone Honey knew. But I found nothing to support this, beyond some idle gossip overheard by a man in a fitness club hot tub and passed on to police. From the mall to the Sherman home on Old Colony is a ten-minute drive. Honey parks on the right side of her house, leaving room in the driveway should Barry decide to drive down the ramp and park in the underground garage. Honey collects her purchases from her car and enters through the

side door. From crime scene photos police took the day the bodies were discovered, I can see what the kitchen looked like that night. It's cluttered, the Shermans were pack rats and it was a constant battle for the realtor to keep the place tidy. On the round kitchen table, there's a water purifier filter, a narrow wicker basket of packaged snacks like you might see in a cheap hotel, a package of orchid fertilizer, and a document with a check attached. I can't read the writing on the document in the photo. It's just too blurry.

Surrounding the table are six chairs. Stuff is piled on two of them. One has a clear plastic box of files with clothes piled on top and a copy of the book The Human Body. Another chair has a big bag of Toronto Star newspapers jammed inside. Honey's friends say

she was in the habit of lugging around newspapers to read whenever she had the time. In the photo, you can see the two gift bags Honey purchased that day sitting neatly on the table. On the chair closest to the gift bags, you can see Honey's purse. One of the gift bags is from a department store called The Bay, the other from Baby Gap. There's also what appears to be a fabric bag with a bread product in it, maybe a snack she just bought at the mall. Judging from the way these items are placed,

it looks to me like she had time to calmly set them down. Then she's attacked. Honey gets away, runs to the front of the house, her phone in her hand. I think it's possible she tried to make an emergency call with the SOS function on her iPhone. The attackers catch up to her in the powder room at the front of the house. She drops the phone on the floor. Then one of the attackers hits Honey, striking her cheek. She's bleeding.

A plastic bag is put over her head, according to investigators. They determined that because of the mottled pattern of dried blood on her face when her body was eventually found. By the way, no plastic bag with blood on it was found at the scene. At this point, the attackers bind Honey's wrists together with what investigators believe was a large plastic zip tie. Investigators don't know if her hands were tied in front or behind

her back. It's now about 8.20pm. This is likely around the time that Barry, still at work, sends his last email of the day and heads for home. Next time on The Billionaire Murders. Honey and Barry Sherman were found deceased in the lower level pool area, hanging by belts from a poolside railing

in a semi-seated position on the pool deck. The Billionaire Murders, The Hunt for the Killers of Honey and Barry Sherman, is written and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan. It was produced by Sean Pattenden, Raju Mudar, Alexis Green, and J.P. Fozzo. Additional production from Brian Bradley and Crawford Blair. Sound and music by Sean Pattenden.

Look out for my book, The Billionaire Murders, and the Craved documentary by the same name. you