Suspicion - S2 The Billionaire Murders | E2 The Bodies

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

After Honey and Barry Sherman are found hanging, police sources say it is a murder-suicide and cause outrage among Sherman friends who believe otherwise. Veteran investigative reporter Kevin Donovan cold calls sources and gets a promising lead. This is episode two of “The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman,” a “Suspicion” podcast probing the strange case of the famous Toronto couple who were found strangled in their north Toronto home in 2017. For five years, Donovan has covered the case for the Star, fought court battles to access documents on the police investigation and the Sherman estate, and wrote a book about it. Toronto Star subscribers will also get exclusive early access to behind-the-scenes bonus episodes. If you are not a subscriber, use promo code PODCAST to save 10% on an annual subscription at thestar.com/subscribe. Audio sources: Washington Post, CTV, Canadian Press, Global, Toronto Police Services, CBS

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. Just hours after Barry and Honey Sherman's bodies were discovered, a Toronto tabloid, The Sun, announces that police are pursuing a theory of murder-suicide. Murder-suicide suspected in deaths of Toronto billionaire and wife. Barry Sherman, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, was found dead alongside his wife, Honey, in their Toronto mansion Friday morning, police sources told The Sun.

Officially, Toronto police aren't commenting on the tragedy, other than to call the deaths of one of Canada's richest couples suspicious. However, sources say police were working Friday night on the theory, the demise of the billionaire Apotex founder and his wife, which has stunned the city and those who knew them, mayton, a.k.a. The Night Scrawler, would later explain, he was in the middle of writing a story saying the Shermans were executed when his phone rang. It was not a double murder, a police source said. It's a murder-suicide, with him killing her, dragging her body to the pool,

hanging it, and then hanging himself. All the major news outlets, citing their own police sources, quickly confirmed the Toronto Sun's story. Canadian police are investigating the mysterious death of one of the nation's wealthiest couples found dead at their mansion in Toronto. The bodies of 75-year-old billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife Honey were found Friday. The Globe and Mail reports their bodies were found hanging from a railing on the edge of a basement swimming pool, and they say police are investigating a

possible murder-suicide. The news hits like a nuclear bomb among Sherman friends and family. They're angry, upset, incredulous. For the police to have said that he killed himself, it was impossible. Well, and I'm sure you've heard this from everybody you've spoken to, but when they first came out and said murder-suicide, you know, my comment to Fran, and she told, and created with me, my other friends, my wife,

I said, you know, that's the craziest thing I ever heard. And if anybody was going to do a murder, it would be any killing him. And did you share your thoughts on the theory of murder-suicide? I said it was impossible. First of all, he could never lift her.

She could never lift him. You know, when you talk about anybody, when they have inner strength, does anybody have inner strength? Well, they probably do. But he'd never have been able, she would have been such dead weight to lift her to get to a certain spot

without any marks on a flight. It was impossible. Impossible. You've just heard from three people who knew the Shermans well. Jack Kay, Barry's second-in-command at Apotex and one of his closest friends, Ed Sunshine, a Toronto businessman who knew the Shermans through charity circles, and Denise Gold, the personal trainer who helped them work out the day they died. They were unanimous in their belief that the murder-suicide theory was ridiculous and each had their own reason. And Jack Kay,

who, like his friend, did not believe in an afterlife, said it would be illogical for Barry to kill himself. This is it, my friend. Right? At least if you believe that your soul continues on and there's a better life. He would never take your life if you believe this is it. The Sherman family put out a statement the next day. Here's a CTV anchor reading it. We are shocked and think it's irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends, nor their colleagues believe to be true.

From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is The Billionaire Murders, the hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman. Episode 2, The Bodies I wasn't involved in the original coverage of the story. But when news of the Sherman's demise began to circulate, I remember chatting with my wife about it. She has a friend who knew the Shermans and who said the notion of Barry killing Honey was ludicrous. I made a flippant comment that this sort of thing happens all the time.

Billionaire snaps, kills wife, then himself. My wife's friend wanted me to investigate. She listed off her reasons. How none of the Sherman friends or family had seen any unusual behavior. How they had a new grandchild, they were making plans for trips to Florida and Japan, stuff like that. I countered, saying,

no one ever knows for sure what's going on inside a person's head. I pointed to numerous media articles citing police sources calling it a murder-suicide. The reporters were veterans with great contacts. It's not that I don't think police screw up. I just assumed the Homicide Aid team had caught this high-profile case. You know, I came to the Star from New York and Chicago, and in those newsrooms, there was only one thing better than a good murder,

and that was a murder at a good address. And this was certainly that. It was an amazing, awful tragedy for the family, for the couple, for the town. That's my boss at the time, former Star editor Michael Cook, recalling his first impressions of the story. Michael lives for the front page and drives reporters hard. His boss, the late John Hondrick, then the chairman and part owner of the Toronto Star,

travelled in high society circles, and he was hearing the cops got it wrong. Michael recalls Hondrick coming into the newsroom, waving his arms, not pleased. Now, the Star has always been, since Joseph Atkinson days and even today, the Star has always been at the front and center of every big story in this city. And we weren't at the front and center of this one, and Hondrick wanted us there. So I chatted with him about it, and we decided very quickly to pull Kevin, Kevin Donovan, off what he was doing. Michael came over to my desk in the newsroom. This would be three weeks after the bodies were discovered. Kevin, first of all, you've got to find out, for the front page,

you've got to find out how they died. And then if they were murdered, I want you to find out who'd done it. So, no pressure. But where to begin? I went online and traveled back to the day the bodies were discovered, looking for clues from police statements. The 911 called for a medical complaint. Three-tiered response, meaning police fire and ambulance show up. Toronto Police Constable David Hopkinson is standing outside the Sherman home in the early evening hours of Friday, December 15, 2017, facing a crush of reporters. He's a uniformed officer who works for the Public Affairs branch of the Toronto Police Service. Hopkinson is tall, well-spoken, holds his own despite having a dozen microphones hovering near his cheek. Our information was that there were two bodies discovered.

If there's one rule of thumb to beginning an investigation, it's to first review all public information. Sometimes things get missed in the heat of a breaking story. Back in the 1980s, when I started reporting, you'd have to go to the newspaper's morgue files, giant Rolodexes that contained clip files on stories carefully cut out of the paper by white-haired librarians. These days, it's all on the web. But even three weeks in, there was not much. On day one, Hopkinson even refused to confirm the victim's identities. The first hint, police didn't think it was murder. This is being investigated as suspicious, but if it is not suspicious, if this was an accidental death or, you know, a medical issue, we would never release the names of the people involved here.

That is for the family to release. We have officers that are blocking off the scene. We have officers that are searching the neighborhood, maybe for security cameras, video, any kind of evidence that we might get. After Hopkinson left, the TV reporters did their hits for the nightly news shows, making sure they had the Sherman home and the yellow police tape behind them. This was a big story on a slow news day. Around 7 p.m., cameras documented the Sherman bodies being removed,

rolled out the front door on stainless steel gurneys into a waiting coroner's van. Then a new police officer came out, this one a detective, wearing a suit, tie, and a dark blue overcoat. Global Television recorded his statement. I just wanted to alleviate some concerns in the neighborhood. I know that events such as this can be very concerning to the community. And 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.

And that's about all I can say with regard to that. The situation otherwise is the same. We will be getting a lot more answers tomorrow following the post-mortem examinations. But I just want to put people in the area's minds at ease. I can say that we did not observe any signs of forced entry to the building. And so at this point, indications are that we have no outstanding suspect to be going after. I've watched Detective Brandon Price give that impromptu press conference a dozen times. What he didn't tell the media, but the locals knew, was that there'd been a recent rash of break-ins.

People were on edge. Even the Shermans had one. Thieves went in through their skylight the year before. Maybe that's all Price was trying to do, tell people this wasn't a break-in. But those comments and Hopkinson's earlier remarks, telegraphed to veteran reporters that police believed this was a murder-suicide.

Watching, I wondered what Price saw at the crime scene to make police go down the murder-suicide route. And the lead homicide detective assigned to the case, Sergeant Susan Gomes, she didn't even go to the crime scene, which made me wonder, why not? Was it a case of, it's just a suicide, send the junior officer? Over the next three weeks, the police story did not waver. The Globe and Mail said the couple was found hanging from the railing of their basement pool, and that investigators theorized the 75-year-old billionaire killed his wife and then took his own life. One of the Toronto Star reporters on the file in the early days was Victoria Gibson.

She kept the story alive with enterprise pieces about the Shermans, one describing Honey as the ultimate connector with the best Rolodex in town. Another story focused on the notoriously litigious Barry, how he recouped most of the $2.3 million paid to build the old Colony Road house by suing builders for shoddy workmanship. Despite all of the media coverage, I noticed none of the family and only a few friends had spoken. People like that are ground zero in any journalistic investigation. The only comments by people really close to the Shermans came during the funeral. I tracked down a copy and watched it. These last few days have been really fucked up for my family.

That's Jonathan Sherman, one of the four Sherman children and their only son. If ever a crisis would strike, we always had two people to call for help. One would provide calmness, level-headedness, and perspective. And the other would instantly take charge of the situation. As my sisters and I congregated for two days, waiting to hear any facts other than through Twitter and the unreliable news media, I kept expecting my parents to walk through the front door and say, everything will be fine.

We've taken control of the situation. Jonathan is speaking to an audience of more than 7,000 people, including Canada's Prime Minister and hundreds of Apotex employees wearing Blue Company t-shirts. It would be three years before Jonathan would sit down and speak with me, but we'll come to that later. Hello, I'm Joel Ulster, and I'm Barry's oldest friend. We met 59 years ago, when we were 16, and immediately became best friends.

As teenagers do, we talk for hours and hours about life, and ultimately came to the same conclusions about religion and human nature and life in general. Barry became part of my family. We were like brothers. During high school, we fantasized about being in business together and after Barry graduated from U of T and then MIT, I quit my accounting course, and in 1962, we incorporated as Sherman and Ulster

and bought the pharmaceutical company. Joel is someone I would eventually spend many hours with, and he would help me with the timeline of Barry's meteoric rise to riches. But his words at the funeral, though nice, didn't help me. Here's Linda Frum, a Canadian senator and good friend of Honey's. Recently I asked Honey what motivated her in her life. Why did she live the way she did, so focused on others, so consistently engaged in acts of charity, rather than the usual selfish pursuits of billionaires.

She answered that she was sure being the daughter of Holocaust survivors had much to do with it. And I don't doubt that this was true. Honey was well aware that evil and brutality are powerful forces in this world. Senator Frum's eulogy gave me the first inkling I had of Honey's tough start in life, but it didn't move the ball. Here's Mary Sheckman, Honey's sister. My sister wasn't just my sister

for all of those of you who knew us. She was my best friend, and she was my other half. We completed each other's sentences, and we never went anywhere without the other. And my brother-in-law, I knew him from the time I was 19. He was my brother-in-law. He was also my surrogate father. And both of them had been taken away at once. Mary looked to me like that one family member who knew all the secrets, but she wasn't

returning my phone calls. Now, you may be wondering, given that my first assignment was to figure out how they died, why am I trying to speak to friends and family? I was casting a wide net, hoping they could help me understand the Shermans and whether there was any indication of trouble. And I also knew that police are out there asking questions and sometimes they let things slip. There's no science to investigative reporting, but there is a method. Talk to everyone.

Now, some people were talking. For example, Kerry Winter, Barry's cousin. He was convinced it was a murder-suicide. This family's worth billions. And Barry actually snapped, killed Honey, and tried to stage it like a suicide. Because of their billions... Kerry is one of four siblings who are cousins of Barry Sherman. Their father was Barry's uncle.

And in the 1960s, he gave Barry his start in the generic pharmaceutical business. Carey and his siblings would later sue Barry, claiming he stole their family company and owed them a billion dollars. That lawsuit ended just before

the murders, with Barry winning. Carey painted a very different picture of Barry Sherman than those who spoke at the funeral. This is a man I don't really think had any friends. He had people he would go to Oakdale with. He had people he would see at parties or Jewish functions. This is a man that if there was 300 people in the ballroom, he'd be the guy in the corner going like this. He was like an awkward gimp. He was a very strange man. Like there's so many stories I could tell you to illustrate,

like a billionaire who sneaks into movies, a billionaire who would walk into Swiss Chalet and want to know what was on special, a billionaire who would drive a fucked up shitty car, a billionaire who hated music. I said to him once, we're in his car and the radio was broken. I said, why don't you get your radio fixed, Barry? He goes, I don't like music.

I said, Barry, hold on a second. You got jazz, you got blues, you got opera, classical. All different types of music. All gives me a fucking headache. Here's a story. He goes off the coast in Alaska from Vancouver all the way up the coast with Honey. He came back and I said to him, Barry, how was your holiday? Did you have a good time with Honey on the cruise?

Ah, fucking icebergs. Kerry was convinced, and still is, that Barry killed Honey and took his own life. He's told me this in several interviews, and repeated these thoughts to a British newspaper and CBC's Fifth Estate. He's also infamously said Barry once asked him to kill Honey, and that he used to dream of cutting off Barry's head and rolling it down the sidewalk outside Apotex. As intriguing and disturbing as Kerry's comments were, he had no proof it was murder-suicide. I decided to change

tack and look for information about the deaths themselves. After a day of silence on the mysterious deaths of one of Canada's richest couples, Toronto police made an announcement tonight that hit like a lightning bolt. All the news channels carried a brief item two days after the bodies were found. The autopsy results. We learned the cause of death for pharmaceutical billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey.

It came in a cold clinical forensic description. Death by ligature neck compression. Strangulation. 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. Havelock Metal. Request your quote today.

I looked up the police news release and it told me nothing more. Autopsies concluded ligature neck compression. Now, ligature is a broad term. It could be a cord, a belt, or a thin zap strap, those large plastic ties soldiers use as handcuffs for prisoners in the battlefield. As to the neck compression, that means that the ligature compressed the neck until the person was dead. Takes just 10 to 15 seconds for a person to be unconscious. Death would follow soon after if the ligature stayed tight. To understand this further, I wanted to learn if there was something about the diagnosis of ligature neck compression that would help me understand this murder-suicide theory. Rather than just Googling, I can just imagine the ads I would start getting on Facebook

and Instagram, I tried to think of someone who could give me a primer. One name came to mind. Can I touch it? Yeah. Oh, jeez. Hi, Jenny. Hi. This is yours,ez. Hi, Jenny. This is yours, right? Now, why is it so light?

It's all carbon. Everything's carbon fiber. Everything. That's me talking to Dr. Jim Cairns in his home in Orangeville, northwest of Toronto. We're discussing his pride and joy, a $20,000 Colnago bike. Outside his home when I parked, I noticed his license plate, C-O-L-N-A-G-O, Colnago. The bike, the C60 model, has its own wall mount just inside the front door. Above it, a photo of Jim racing back in the day. And then this is all the electronics. And this is all carbon-fired. Everything's all carbon-fired. When you say electronics shift, how do you shift?

Jim Cairns is retired, but for many years he was Ontario's deputy chief coroner. Think Quincy from the old TV show. He's tall, always wears a nice suit, has a shock of white hair. Trained in Belfast, moved to Canada with his wife Jenny in the 1970s, I've known him since I covered a police shooting inquest he presided over in the late 1980s. As an investigating coroner, he's dealt with thousands of cases. I went to him because though coroners do not do autopsies, pathologists do, he knows the system inside and out. As I started asking him questions about strangulation, I noticed his

answers were more specific than I expected. With the Irish gift of the gab, Jim sometimes goes off on tangents. Not this time. If you're strangled and it's done with force, then you'll fracture your hyoid bone and maybe your thyroid cartilage in the throat. But if it's done with a soft ligature, you don't have to fracture the hyoid bone. So if the hyoid bone is fractured, that definitely means it's a homicide. But if it's not fractured, then it could be a homicide or it could be a suicide. I asked him pointedly, Jim, are you involved in this case? Long pause.

Then, aye, yes, I am. And this is the story he told me, how he ended up working for the Shermans, thanks to a call from their private investigator. It was Tom Klatt, OK? So Tom Klatt phoned me and said, Jim, because I'd worked for him in a few other cases. He says, Jim, I've been hired by Brian Greenspan. We want a private investigation and we want a second autopsy. And Brian Greenspan has asked me to call you. Can you recommend somebody to do the second autopsy?

And Brian would like it to be a pathologist from the United States. The Shermans were discovered on a Friday. The next day, forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Pickup did the autopsies for the police with homicide detectives, including lead investigator Susan Gomes, present. Dr. Pickup was relatively junior, but he did go to the Sherman home when the bodies were there,

something that is quite rare for a pathologist. After completing his autopsies, Dr. Pickup told detectives the cause of death was ligature neck compression. But as to the manner of death, it could be one of three. Double suicide, murder suicide,

or double homicide. That news filtered out to the Sherman investigative team put together by Toronto lawyer Brian Greenspan. He asked investigator Tom Klatt, a retired homicide detective, to get him a second opinion. Klatt called Cairns. The retired coroner was at home chatting with his wife Jenny

when the call came in. Listen, Kevin, I can tell you that we were sitting here when we heard, Jenny and I heard the results of the autopsy. I said, Jenny, that's bullshit. And Jenny says, Jim, just relax, you're retired. Just let it go. But Jim could not let it go.

The funeral was in four days. He got on the phone. The Sherman team wanted an American pathologist who would not worry about challenging local authorities. The first person Jim Cairns called was Dr. Mary Case, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County, Missouri. And I said, Mary, it's Jim Cairns. He said, Jim, I was about to call you. He said, you don't realize in the United States, this case from Toronto in the forensic circles, that's just buzzing everywhere. Because if this is a murder-suicide by hanging, it has to be written up. It'll be the first one recorded in history. Cairns got to the point. Mary, that's why I'm calling you.

We would like to ask you, would you come up to Toronto and do the second autopsy? I said, Jim, nothing would give me greater pleasure, but this was coming up to Christmas and you were about to do it. I said, I'm sorry, but it'd be two or three weeks before I could do it. Cairns kept working the phones. None of his American contacts were available, either because of the holidays or because they were not licensed to practice in Ontario. With Greenspan's permission, he called Dr. David Chason,

a highly respected doctor who was Ontario's former chief forensic pathologist. Chason, now working at a Toronto hospital, agreed. He arranged to conduct the second autopsies at the Provincial Coroner's Building, the same place Dr. Pickup did the first set. Five retired police investigators from the Greenspan team, including Tom Klatt, were there to observe. The Greenspan team invited Toronto homicide detectives. They declined, but someone else showed up. The pathologist who did the first autopsy, he agreed to come to the autopsy. And he came to the autopsy and he showed David all the photographs of the scene.

And he showed him the photographs of his first autopsy. Having doctor pick up there was invaluable. First autopsies, by their nature, take the body apart. The chest is opened, organs removed, skin is pulled completely off in some places, a technique known as degloving, to search for hidden forensic clues. Openings are made in the cheek to inspect the mouth. The skull is cracked, the brain removed. Dr. Pickup was a guide for Chason as he did his work. I should tell you, I've seen the autopsy photos, and they're not for the faint of heart.

Chason asked him, quite rightly, because I remember David doing second autopsies. He said, you know, I want to make sure that I don't misinterpret something that's an artifact from the first autopsy. So he agreed to come. And actually, he's a relatively young pathologist. But he's frightened of Michael Palanin. And he just didn't have the balls to call this a double homicide. And I think he was really hoping that David would do that for him.

So he came, he showed him all the photographs of the scene and Palanin was pissed off with that. As an aside, you've just heard the name Michael Palanin. Dr. Palanin was the chief forensic pathologist and Dr. Pickup's boss. Cairns is referring to some provincial office politics unrelated to the Sherman case. Cairns and referring to some provincial office politics unrelated to the Sherman case. Cairns and Palanin, they never got along. As Chason worked his way through his autopsies, two things stood out. Both had been noted by Dr. Pickup, but he did not make a final

interpretation. It was clear that the Sherman's wrists had been tied while they were alive and that finding was most apparent on Barry's wrists. Chason noted damage to the tissue and blood vessels under the skin of all four wrists, the type of damage that only occurs if the person is alive and blood is circulating. Second, underneath the skin where the belts circled their necks, was evidence that a thin ligature, just a couple of centimeters wide, had been applied. This thin ligature killed them, not the belts. Here's Dr. Cairns describing the wrist finding and Dr. Chason's own eye test, looking at police photos that showed the positioning of the bodies in the pool room.

And then the fact that there's ligatures around the wrists. And then David was able to see the photographs, which I haven't seen, off the scene, and that they're clearly not hanging, you know, they're seated. Having seen those crime scene photos and interviewed people who saw the bodies that day, I cannot for the life of me understand why police did not immediately label this a double murder. The Shermans are both seated,

tipped back at the waist at an extreme angle. There's a bit of blood on Honey's face from her nose and a cut just above her right eye. One of my sources later speculated to me that was an attention getter, someone flicking their hand or an object at her. Other than that, there is nothing that indicates a struggle. Their arms are passively at their sides, Barry's legs are stretched out, the right leg neatly crossed over the left at the ankles.

Honey's feet are also outstretched, but slightly apart. It looks like they were staged after death. As to the belts, any pressure from the belt loops comes at the back of their necks, not the front, where a strangulation would occur. And that brings us to the hyoid bone, a U-shaped bone in the front of our necks. I want to go back to something you have already heard from Dr. Cairns, because it is a key finding. If you're strangled and it's done with force, then you'll fracture your hyoid bone and maybe your thyroid cartilage in the throat. But if it's done with a soft ligature, you don't have to fracture the hyoid bone and maybe your thyroid cartilage in the throat. But if it's done with a soft ligature,

you don't have to fracture the hyoid bone. So if the hyoid bone is fractured, that definitely means it's a homicide. But if it's not fractured, then it could be a homicide or it could be a suicide. And this was a soft ligature, so there were no fractures of the hyoid bone. The Sherman's hyoid bones were not fractured.

Dr. Pickup, the less experienced pathologist, took this as an indication it was most likely suicide. But Dr. Chason had once co-authored a paper, with Dr. Palanin, actually, that looked at suicides and homicides and determined that, well, sometimes the hyoid bone is fractured, sometimes it's not. Suicide or homicide is not relevant. For Dr. Chason, leaving the autopsy suite that day and taking a train to his home east of Toronto, there was only one determination. Chason called Jim Cairns later that day.

So David calls me, said, Jim, this is a double homicide. Without a shadow of a doubt, they've been strangled. It's a double homicide, period. I have to tell you that Jim was a confidential source of mine for two years, but he's given permission for me to name him in this podcast. After our initial chat, I kept going back, hungry for more details, going over the ones he had provided. But one source does not a story make. And so I took his information and bounced it off people who had

independent knowledge of the crime scene. These were people who only talked to me because I had, thanks to Cairns, some information. One person, my codename for him is Zero, confirmed what Cairns said, with a caution. Yes, Barry and Honey had been tied up while alive, but it was impossible to tell if their wrists had been tied in front or behind. Over muffins and coffee at an out-of-the-way diner, Zero then raised what to him was the obvious question. How does Barry kill Honey when his wrists are tied?

And since neither of them are tied up when found, what happened to the ties and ligatures used on their necks? None matching the wounds were found at the scene. I left the meeting with zero and headed to the Star. Michael Cook, my editor, put the story on the front page the next day. We were contradicting the police version of events. Our headline read, They were murdered. Big black type above a photo of Barry and Honey. A few days later, the police responded. I'm Constable Carolyn Duclut, and I am here today to introduce Homicide Detective Sergeant Susan Gomes, who will be providing an update on the Barry Sherman and Honey Sherman investigation. It's Friday, January 26, 2018, six weeks after the Sherman's bodies were discovered.

I'm at a packed news conference at Toronto Police Headquarters. I can barely see the lectern that the constable is standing in front of because of all the TV cameras. My sources told me that when our story hit the front page, the Toronto Police Chief read it, saw that Dr. David Chason had conducted a second set of autopsies, he ordered the homicide detectives to interview Chason. Here's the Sherman lawyer, Brian Greenspan, explaining the second pathologist's finding. The conclusion of Dr. Chasen's post-mortem examination of Barry and Annie Sherman, it became clear that they were both murdered. The Toronto Police Service should not have drawn any conclusions which suggested self-inflicted injury. The homicide squad had no choice but to go public.

Thank you for all attending this news conference today. At 11.44 a.m. on Friday, December the 15th, 2017, we responded to a 911 call to 50 Old Colony Road. Officers attended the address and located Barry Sherman and Honey Sherman deceased. Detective Sergeant Susan Gomes is wearing a white shirt and a black blazer. She has square-shaped black glasses, and she doesn't make eye contact with the journalist facing her. Instead, she looks down at papers on her lectern. Post-mortem examinations were conducted at the province's coroner's office forensic pathology unit by a forensic pathologist.

The cause of death for both Shermans was ligature neck compression. The manner was undetermined, with the only presented options being double suicide, homicide suicide, or double homicide. From the outset of this investigation, we have followed the evidence, and we were live to the issue of an undetermined manner of death. There's always some good-natured ribbing among reporters at press conferences. Everyone is competing for the best story, and there were lots of familiar faces in the crowd. One leaned over and asked me, nervous? You know what? I was. What we have come to learn so far in our investigation that I'm willing to confirm with you today

is that Honey and Barry Sherman were last seen alive in the evening hours of Wednesday, December the 13th, 2017. Neither of the two had communicated with friends, family, or associates from that time frame until their discovery on Friday, December the 15th. There are no signs of forced entry on all access points to the home. 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. They were wearing their clothing. We believe now, through the six weeks of work review, we have sufficient evidence to describe this as a double homicide investigation, and that both Honey and Barry Sherman were in fact targeted. Reporters peppered Gomes with questions. Why did it take so long being the most prominent? Gomes didn't bite. Asked if she knew who leaked the murder-suicide theory, she said she had no idea.

Gomes did answer one question, this one about Dr. Chason and the second autopsies. I think it was all a test that was done, that there were remarks on Barry and Honey Sherman's risks. and the second autopsies. I'm not going to discuss any other evidence with respect to anything outside of what I've already told you today. I have spoken to the second forensic pathologist. But there was one thing Gomes did go back to several times, something that I think is key to the second forensic pathologist. But there was one thing Gomes did go back to several times, something that I think is key to the case.

She said that she believes the killer or killers were looking to murder both Barry and Honey, not just Barry, as some believed. I believe that they were targeted. Next time on The Billionaire Murders. The timing of this individual's appearance is in line with when we believe the murders took place. Based on this evidence, we're classifying this individual as a suspect. 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 was created by Sean Pattenden. Look out for my book, The Billionaire Murders, and coming later this year, the Craved documentary by the same name.

You've just heard episodes one and two of The Billionaire Murders, The Hunt for the Killers of Honey and Barry Sherman. Over the next few weeks, we're going to do something a little different. To help you understand what's coming next on this series, in Episode 3 and beyond, we're giving you some behind-the-scenes episodes. The first, The Clintons Did It, is available next week for subscribers of the Toronto Star and for everyone else the following week.

We'll continue to give subscribers early access to episodes and listeners of this podcast can get a 10% discount on an annual subscription by using promo code podcast at thestar.com forward slash subscribe. Our full series will resume

with episode three in early April.