Suspicion - S2 The Billionaire Murders | E12 Domestic Troubles and More

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

In episode 12 of “The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman” Kevin Donovan is joined by producer Raju Mudhar, as the two examine where the case is now and where it might go. But before that, voice actors read emails exchanges that took place between Barry, Honey and others that could show signs of a contentious household.     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.

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. Five weeks before the brutal murders of Barry and Honey Sherman, the couple had a toxic email exchange, an indication that the outwardly content Shermans were unhappy behind closed doors. When this exchange took place, Honey was away with girlfriends on a golf trip in the U.S. Barry was at home in Toronto. Honey wants Barry to attend a memorial in Montreal for one of Canada's most beloved musicians. Barry, the Leonard Cohen event. Please, go with me. Not going. Please, let's try to get along. Let's try to get along won't work

unless you understand what the problem is, and it appears that will never happen. I do understand, but I'm not alone in this. I would try, if you're willing as well, okay? Apparently you do not understand. You have been abusive to me for over 40 years. Whenever I've asked you to stop, the response has been you stop. You are also persistently abusive to the kids,

which you remain unable to see, and you remain insensitive in how you deal with them. Okay, I hear you. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is The Billionaire Murders. A bonus episode, domestic troubles and more. The email exchange you just heard, read by voice actors, I think it's one of the pieces of information police came across in the early days, something that made police think it was possible that Barry snapped, killed Honey, then killed himself.

The homicide detectives and a junior pathologist misdiagnosed the actual double murder, and I believe this added fuel to their murder-suicide theory. To me, though, it's just the way the Shermans were with each other and with their children. They didn't have a happy home life, and there are email exchanges with the children that could also be labeled toxic. Contrast that with this email from Barry around the same time

to the son of his best friend, Joel. Many businesses fail despite being potentially successful because the owners run out of money before cash flow turns positive. When I started Apotex, Honey kept telling me to close it down before I lost everything, and I nearly did lose everything.

Barry is straightforward, helpful, and generous. He was forever in search of a young person he could help and mold in business. His own children, they weren't interested in his advice. In your case, you won't be at risk. If you need more money for your half, I will provide it to you. If you succeed, you will be able to pay it back eventually out of profits. No interest. If not, it will be a gift from me. Also, I've had no recent update on how

your brothers and sisters are doing financially. If they too are in need of any assistance, I would like to know and would be more than happy to help. You're family and I love you all. Honey was good to her friends, too. Maybe a little controlling, but that was her nature. Here's an email she fired off just two days before the murders, telling several girlfriends she'll be in Florida in December and hopes to get together. Looking forward to getting together in Florida. I am coming south Monday, December 18th to Friday, January 12th. Barry is coming south for Monday, December 25th and going home with me January 12th.

Please let me know your date south ASAP so I can place in my calendar. In this next part, Honey tells them she wants to get together as couples, Barry included, an indication to me that whatever sparked the toxic emails the previous month has blown over. We'd love to arrange golf and or dinner with Barry December 25th on, as a couple only, as Barry doesn't really golf on his own. Please let me know if you're willing and able to play with us or arrange a dinner date. Finally, wherever there is room for me December 18th to 24th for golf, dinner, Maj, bridge and canasta, I am ready, willing and able.

Please let me know when and where. Looking forward to hearing back ASAP. XOXO, honey. 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.

We're doing business differently here in Manitoba at the Stu Clark Graduate School. It's an energy, a feeling, a buzz. You feel it in our professional services, on our work placements, in the connections you make with business leaders. It's unique, something you won't find anywhere else. This is the graduate experience at the Asper School of Business, where you can master your business career. A lot of the tension in the Sherman household related to their children and what I would call a mixed message parenting style. Honey was from the school of hard knocks. Her parents, Holocaust survivors, had been hard on Honey and her sister Mary. Their mother had the sharpest tongue. In turn, Honey was

tough on their four children. She berated them and sometimes their partners, wanting them to work harder, make a difference in life. Barry, not so much. He preferred to arbitrarily hand out millions of dollars as carrots to smooth things over, more to some kids than others. There was also a great deal of tension involving Barry and Honey and their lone son, Jonathan. Part of the reason for the tension was that Jonathan was gay, and Honey didn't approve. Another source of tension was that Jonathan didn't agree with how Barry was spending his money,

specifically how Barry supported his friend, businessman, Frank D'Angelo. In an email chain written 10 years before the murders, in 2008, the Sherman's eldest daughter, Lauren, complains about Barry's poor treatment of her brother, Jonathan. Barry fires an email back to Lauren. Lauren, your emails are frightening. They're increasingly accusatory and extreme. I know without doubt that I'm a loving father to all four of my children,

and there's nothing I would not do to try to ensure your happiness. Yet you continuously paint me as a monster and see no fault whatsoever in yourself or any of your siblings. Around the same time, Barry wrote this email to his son, Jonathan. John, I want you to know that despite any belief that you may have to the contrary, I love you very much and always will, and there is little I would not do to help you find happiness. I think it is essential that you understand that I do love you very much and want what is best for The animosity between Barry and Jonathan continued. Just before the murders, Barry asked Jonathan to pay back $50 to $60 million he'd loaned Jonathan for his business.

Jonathan told me he and his father actually got along well. He said, this is just how billionaires and their sons interacted. I have hundreds of emails between the Sherman family members who sometimes vetted emails with a counselor before sending them out, lest they have too nasty a tone. With emails, it's sometimes hard to decipher what's really going on behind the scenes. The last email chain I have is between Barry, Honey, and their daughter Alexandra, trying to arrange a Hanukkah dinner. The subtext is that Alexandra didn't like her mother just dropping in to see the new baby whenever she wanted to.

Here's Honey's final email in the chain, written the day before she died. You can tell she's trying. Could we have Hanukkah on Friday? I just found some eggless recipes for latkes on the net. Couldn't figure out where to find recipes before. Could make them Friday in order to celebrate. Could also drop by today, Tuesday, or tomorrow, Wednesday, but without latkes. Please let all know what you prefer. Also, what should we do re-gifts? I have one gift I know he will like. Any suggestions? I have a clear ball that lights when you bounce it. 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 luck metal. Request your quote today. We're doing business differently here in Manitoba at the Stu Clark Graduate School. It's an energy, a feeling, a buzz. You feel it in our professional services,

on our work placements, in the connections you make with business leaders. It's unique, something you won't find anywhere else. This is the graduate experience at the Asper School of Business, where you can master your business career. I'm joined today by Raju Mudar, one of the producers on our Billionaire Murders podcast series. Raju, families can be tough, right? You know, I think, Kevin, it's one of these things that you've been on this for so long, and I think one of the lines that you've said to me before is, murder reveals all secrets.

As in, you know, when someone is murdered, there's an investigation, and nothing stays behind closed doors. Petty squabbles, money troubles, family troubles. And I think, you know, one of the things that we haven't really heard from is from the four children. They're not public figures, but we don't hear them talk about their parents and about continuing the charity of Berry and Honey, particularly around the anniversary of the murders, which is in mid-December. Why do you think that is? Well, it's a good question. The Sherman children never were public figures prior to this murder. And I mean, there's been no time in, it's been seven years in any of the anniversary press

conferences, the police have held where one of the children or all of them stands up and makes a plea for help, which is unusual and very different than what we see in other cases that we cover. So coming into this, they weren't public figures. They don't want to be public figures. And people, of course, are entitled to their privacy. I'm surprised, though, that one of them doesn't stand up and make a statement. It's unfortunate. So what we're left with is my own digging around. doesn't stand up and make a statement. It's unfortunate.

So what we're left with is my own digging around. I've interviewed the son, Jonathan, and one of the daughters, Alexandra, and that provided a lot of the information that we've had in this series and in the stories in The Star, but there's nothing coming from them right now. And I think they want this all to just go away. That's my feeling. It just feels to me that it's just so high profile and there's so much

interest. Now, we've heard about some of the email exchanges and the toxic emails between Honey and Barry and how that may have influenced the cops. What is your take on that exchange? Yeah, those toxic emails that our voice actors read, something I obtained just in the last couple of months. And I don't know exactly when the police got them, but I know that they got them fairly early in the investigation. And so, you know, the police start off for five or six weeks, they're investigating this as a murder-suicide. They find this email and chain and perhaps others that I've not found yet. And you look at that and you say, yeah, that could be a husband who is so mad at his wife, he's accusing her of abuse that he snaps and kills her. And you've just heard some of the

other emails that Barry and Honey sent to close friends and in Barry's case to children. It's just such a different tone than the way Honey and Barry converse with each other and the way they talk to their kids. And, you know, it's sad. Your comment is quite astute about how murder reveals everything. And in any murder case, you know, we see this on crime dramas all the time, it's usually like the red herrings that come out at the start of the show. Maybe somebody is having an affair, you know, somebody was,, somebody was not nice to somebody else in the family, and that comes out in the investigation. The challenge for the police and for us at the Toronto Star

is to sift through all that and find out what really counts, what is really behind the murder. But there are a lot of these red herrings that investigators encounter on the way. Jimmy, you talked to Jonathan, that five-hour interview in the cold garage during the pandemic. You know, what does he have to say about this? And of course, there is this notion that he was involved that has even come from some of his siblings. So where do you think he is right now with all of this?

Yeah, so just to take listeners back, during the pandemic, Jonathan granted me an interview, invited me up a place north of Toronto, this 100-acre compound. He invited me into a very cold garage. It was wintertime, and we sat socially distanced, six feet apart, no masks. And he let me ask him any questions that I wanted to. And one of the things that he came out with is that his sister, Alexandra, she's the one with the grandchildren we just heard the email about, that Alexandra believed, at least at the time, that Jonathan was involved. And so I asked him, you know, any involvement in the case? And he said no.

And he made a couple of what I thought were unusual comments. One of them was, I don't know anybody who can plan a murder in three weeks. And then he also said, I am the only person who knows that I wasn't involved. He denies it strenuously. But that claim by the sister to him, but also, more importantly to the police, has caused a super rift. I mean, this is not family of four children sitting down to a Hanukkah dinner or any other type of family celebration. The three sisters are allied together, and Jonathan is on the other side. But there's also a financial reason to that.

Jonathan, as a person who fancied himself really the business mind of the four of them, he wanted to run the whole show after Barry died. And the sisters who have their own advisors around them, and they're all billionaires now, by the way, because the money was left equally to the four of them, the sisters rebelled at that. And so there's these kind of two sources of tension between them.

And it's just sad for me seeing that a family can be so fractured and they can't come together in this grief. And, you know, that full interview with Jonathan can be heard on episode seven of our podcast series. Funny that you mentioned the word seven. Seven years in, where is this case? Well, the case, according to the Toronto Police, is very much, quote, active and ongoing. To me, the case is, if not a cold case, very close to being cold.

The police have not filed any search warrants or production orders to get new information for well over a year. I've been in court trying to find out what they're doing, and the best I can say is that they're not interviewing anybody new. There's this one lone detective, Detective Constable Dennis Yim, who spends every day from 7.30 in the morning until mid-afternoon sifting through thousands of business records, financial transactions of Barry's, trying to find that one needle in this murder haystack that will help him close the case.

To me, this is going to go on and on for years and years. And normally, the Toronto Police, after five years, declare a case cold, and it goes to the cold case squad. I actually think because of the success of Toronto's cold case squad in some recent cases, it is time to have fresh eyes on it. Fresh eyes can make a big difference in a homicide case. Now, it's funny, you mentioned Detective Yim. I know you have cross-examined him previously, and because of this entire story, you've had to go to court with some legal advice,

but play the role of a lawyer in this. You've been back to court recently. What's the latest in your fight to unseal police documents? First of all, the judge who was in charge of this case, and this is the judge who, Justice Leslie Pringle, who authorized all of these search warrants, which produced 4,000 pages of documents. She has permitted some to be unsealed. I probably have got about 50%, 60% of it unsealed. She just retired. So now a new judge has been assigned to the case.

And this is a judge who is not the judge who sealed all the warrants. And so the process I'm involved right now in, I've cross-examined Detective Yim again. I think it's my ninth time cross-examining him. And this cross-examination takes place in a public courtroom. Nobody's ever showed up to watch me, which I always find intriguing, which is actually easier to cross-examine when nobody's watching you, when you're not a lawyer.

It takes place typically over one or two days. I've completed that, and now in the new year, I'll be arguing based on a lot of cases from the Supreme Court that this is time that we need to put more scrutiny on this case. Through what the Toronto Star has been doing in this, we have been able to show that the police and the justice system made a lot of mistakes. I believe there's more mistakes

that are embarrassing to the Toronto police that are in these documents. And also, you know, as an investigative reporter, I'm hoping that I will find some more clues to who did it. The police, we hold them up to this high bar, but investigative reporters can figure things out too. So those two reasons, scrutiny of the case, find new clues, that's what I'm arguing for.

That will take place early in the new year. Kevin, you said the police need fresh eyes. Do you think a new judge might change how things might go in the future for you? Yeah, the new judge, Justice David Porter, he was called to the bench recently. He is a judge who was previously in private practice. He was, I think, did work in white-collar crime. Very different than the sort of thing that normally comes into a Ontario Court of Justice courthouse. I think, in my experience so far,

he's been very reasonable in his rulings. And yeah, I think he's not... I mean, I liken what I was doing for the past seven years with the other judge, who was great and allowed me into her courtroom as a non-lawyer. But I was basically like asking,

the parent says you can't have the keys to the car, and then you go back and ask the same parent for keys to the car. Justice Pringle had sealed everything. I'm asking her to unseal stuff. This judge, Justice Porter, he hasn't sealed anything.

He is, it's basically like I'm doing an appeal, and so I feel confident. When last we spoke, you and I discussed some of the crazy theories out there. Do you still get those from people? I do get them, and I got one that really got my heart pounding this summer. I was contacted as reporters often are by somebody who was using a fake email

address. And the person directed me to use an app so that I could have a confidential conversation. We went back and forth. The person purported to be a woman. There was a picture. I could never figure out who this person was. And what the person eventually told me was that she had the key to this case. She had been driving. Okay, so the Shermans are,

we now know were murdered on Wednesday, December 13. She claims that at 1.30 on the Thursday, the next day, she was driving by the Sherman house looking at properties for sale in the area. Sherman's house was for sale, as you'll recall. And she saw this scene. She said she saw Honey Sherman run out of the front door. A man wearing a hat grabbed her and pulled her back into the house.

And my first comment to her was, well, they were already dead. But then I thought, the police have never said how they know they were dead on the Wednesday. I said, well, can I see this video? And then we went back and forth. And Reggie, this goes over a couple of days. And finally, she sends me what purports to be a screenshot of a video. And you know, if you look at a video on an internet site, you'll see where the cursor runs along the bottom. And she stopped it at a certain point. And there's this image, which she said was at 1.30. There's this man, it appears to be Honey Sherman. And I started looking at it, started getting very excited, and I thought, you know, this is it.

This is going to be really important. But at the time, we'd been doing some reporting, star on these deep fakes, and where somebody manipulates photos. And I started looking at it in more detail, and then I went online to find out where the sun was at 1.30 on Thursday, December the 14th in 2017. And it was just completely off. The shadows were off.

It looked like a manipulated photo. The person said they had a video. I said, well, look, can I see the whole video? And then she came back to me and she said this. She said, Mr. Donovan, if you publish this picture that I've sent you, this screenshot of the video, if you publish that on the front page of the Toronto Star tomorrow, then I'll know that you're serious and I'll send you the video.

And I said, we can't do that. We have to verify things. And that's the last I heard of this individual. Kevin, it's been seven years. Why do you think interest remains so high in this case? It's a whodunit. If there had been an arrest in the first month or so, you and I wouldn't be sitting here. Well, first of all, Barry and Honey are very important people in Canada. They were public figures. And apart from Barry running our biggest drug company, Apotex,

he, and believed very strongly in helping the Canadian economy, both of them, led by Honey, were very big philanthropists. So that is one of the interests. But the fact that they were murdered in such a bizarre way and that there's so many suspects and it remains a whodunit, it's the same drive that makes people watch crime TV shows, read Agatha Christie books where there's all sorts of suspects. Everybody has a theory.

I think my theory is that's what drives the interest in this. My last question to you, what keeps you interested in this story? Oh, it's that the story, as we say in the business, has legs. I'm continuing to receive information. In the last few months, I obtained detailed photos of the crime scene, which have helped me really understand more about what happened. Sources are still talking to me. There's still information out there. If that ever dries

up, then I would move away from the story. But so far, I'm still learning. And I expect if there's no arrest, you and I'll be back here next year. Kevin, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so very much. Thanks for being on, Reggie. 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. Fozo. 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.