Suspicion - S2 The Billionaire Murders | E6 Family Matters

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

All the money in the world can’t buy happiness and the home of Honey and Barry Sherman tells that story. Honey was tough on the kids. Barry was a soft touch. Riches were doled out unevenly and there was division over each other’s lives. Then there were the four cousins who went after Barry in the courts. This is episode six 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, investigative reporter Kevin 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. Audio Sources: CityNews, Sherman Memorial

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. But I see my shrink now every week, but I usually only see him every two weeks. I am clean and sober-like, but I don't want to relapse. Wait till you taste that, Kevin. Delicious. Kerry Winter and I are in line at a hot table restaurant shortly after police announced his cousin Barry and wife Honey were victims of a targeted double murder. Carey encourages me to try the lasagna in a steaming tray, and he's right. It's excellent. He's the first of the extended Sherman family who has agreed to talk. I want him to tell me about Barry the person, his connections to family, and the role his immense wealth played in those

relationships. Carey says he'll do his best, but he wants to make it clear he still thinks it's murder-suicide, and Sherman lawyer Brian Greenspan is part of the cover-up. But this family's worth billions. And Barry actually snapped and killed money and tried to stage it like a suicide. Because of their billions and they have the access and the money to hire a guy like Greenspan, they shouldn't have the right to rewrite history.

If Barry snapped and killed her, it's done. It's finished. I'd picked an out-of-the-way table, but two guys sit down nearby and one does a double take, recognizing Kerry from a television interview where he revealed he'd long fantasized about cutting Barry's head off and rolling it down the Apotex sidewalk. The guy gives Kerry a thumbs up. Over lunch, Kerry starts telling me about the good days he had with his cousin Barry before their relationship went off the rails. I mean, there was 15 years.

That man didn't just give me lots of money and bang for all my custom homes. But he was a real mensch to me. He was very kind to me. Kerry's six feet tall, has a thick head of wavy dark hair. He's got big, powerful hands from years of working construction. I notice his face has bright red marks on it. This is early in my investigation when one theory out there was that Kerry was the killer. I'm wondering if he's been in a struggle or a fight. He says no. He's getting laser treatment to heal a skin condition. Kerry starts talking about the old days with Barry.

His voice, well, he sounds like a radio DJ to me, energetic and expressive. Here's a story. Every year, you get these little photos of your children from school. And he'd often ask me, bring your kids up to see me. This is back in the early 90s. And I always tell my kids, we're going to go and see Cousin Barry, go in and give him a big hug. And he'd always take those pictures and put it on his desk in these frames right beside his own shoulder. Very few people could walk through the security doors of Appletex. Literally walk through the doors, go down the hall, second door to the right,

Jack's office, third door was Barry's. Honey could do that and me. Cary and his three siblings, Tim, Jeff, and Dana, were the children of Lou Winter, Barry's uncle. Lou was the generic pioneer who gave Barry his start. When Lou died, Barry purchased Lou's company, Empire Drugs, then sold it, and a couple of years later, Barry founded Apotex. Cary and his brothers were little kids when that happened. Barry was in his 20s.

They reconnected when Cary was an adult, and he would often just hang around the Apotex office. We would talk. We'd talk about love. We'd talk about his unhappiness. We'd talk about his unhappy marriage. As Barry started his meteoric rise, he began funding enterprises started by C Carrie, Jeff, and Dana,

and bought them houses, cottages, funded businesses, about $15 million in total. Generous, for sure, but later, Carrie would see these as financial handcuffs. Still, they were family. But I'll never forget one time we were talking, and he looked at me and he says, you know why I like you? Do you know why I like when you come up and see me? And I said, no. I said, because you're always so euphoric, you make me laugh.

He said that to me. I said, I make you laugh because you make me laugh. 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 6, Family Matters. Barry Sherman's mantra, how he liked to make money and give it away, didn't leave a lot of time for family. Other than a safari in Africa when the kids were very young, I haven't heard of too many trips with Honey and Barry.

But if someone was in trouble, Barry was there. He liked to fix problems. That pattern was laid down with his four young cousins. I was on and off drugs the whole time I knew Barry. He actually was instrumental in getting me off drugs. Because Dan, my younger brother, also had a severe drug problem, and he had bankrolled at least one, if not two, treatment centers, which was like 20 grand at the time. Kerry's late brother Dana was, Honey's friends have told me, charming, with movie star good looks.

He worked at a golf resort Barry owned, but was fired because he was sleeping with the female golfers. He also had a serious drug problem. Barry funded a couple of rehab treatments, none successful. Dana wound up dealing drugs and was charged by police in Western Canada with a murder-for-hire plot over unpaid drug debts. Barry hopped on a plane and bailed him out. But just a few weeks later, Dana was dead of a drug overdose. For Kerry, a graduate of a good British college, drug addiction started with a form of cocaine while he was backpacking in Peru.

Barry used to say, you're on drugs too, you're on drugs too. I'm not going to minimize it. He said, I'm not so bad, I'm not so bad. And then we made a deal. He said, if you can't stay off drugs, I'm going to send you to a treatment center. And I had a fear of treatment centers because there was a revolving door for my brother, Dan. The idea of a treatment center didn't sit well with Kerry. He proposed a different plan.

So I said, I'll tell you what, bro. Let me work in the warehouse for three months. He gave me a pair of boots, and I pushed this little trolley cart up and down these jowls, just pulling drugs off the shelves. I was like an order picker. And then I'd take it to this big table where they'd package it up. It was like in the shipping department. And I'll never forget the 90th day.

I walked in Barry's office. I dropped the boots on the floor, and he says, so you going to treatment? I said, no, Barry, I'm coming up to 30 days clean. His eyes opened up. He says, say that again? It was around this time that Kerry says Barry made a most unusual request. One that Kerry would announce in shocking fashion to the world five weeks after Barry and Honey's bodies were found. Here's Kerry in an interview recorded by the Daily Mail and played on City News in Toronto. In an interview with the British tabloid, the 56-year-old claims his pharmaceutical tycoon cousin had once asked him in the 90s to help hatch a plan to kill his wife, but eventually decided not to go through with it.

I made a call knowing that my friend Louis could easily set it up because he was a quasi-gangster and he knew a lot of bad people. And he said, the body will go missing. There's not going to be a bullet in the back of the head or a car exploding. She's going to go missing. And I said, Barry, Louie wants you to know that if we push this button, there's no turning back. I've changed my mind. You know, you're right. Taking out my wife, you know, it's not a good thing. Now, Kerry made the same claim to me and others in the media. He told me he suggested that Barry simply divorce Honey. But I know that he couldn't handle her getting half his money. And I said, but Barry, you've got so many billions hidden.

All you do is give her a couple billion. And he says, you don't get it. She's not getting the money. I found his claim impossible to verify, though I did speak to an old friend of his who recalled Kerry talking about the murder plot back in the 1990s. But I've always thought there was a less sinister explanation. That Carey, when he was hanging around with bad people,

was talking big one day. And Barry called him on it. I know Barry had a nerdish, almost scientific fascination with the rough side of life. Yes, he often asked about what it was like to take drugs. He wanted to know what that was like.

I said, Barry, crack is a really bad drug. He said, when you smoke it, you get this fucking rush. He goes, what's that rush like? So I described it to him. I said, but after you get really paranoid. He goes, why? I said, oh, I know. It's like the psychosis sets and you get fucking weird

and you start looking around and get all weird. He goes, is that what happens to you when you do that? I said, yeah. Yeah, that's what it was like to shoot heroin. I told him. I said, I'd like doing that drug. I put it to Carrie that maybe Barry was not serious about any of this, drugs or murder. Just curious.

And perhaps Barry said one day, hang on, Carrie. You say you have all these underworld drug connections. How bad are they? Are they killers? And you egged him on and Barry said, are you telling me you could get someone killed? Like my wife? In the restaurant, Kerry sat back and listened quietly to my theory, his fork toying with the last bit of lasagna on his plate. I think it might be right. I know for sure. He talked about it. Kerry was adamant about one thing.

Barry and Honey did not get along. He not only had disdain for her, and that she would need a little, but that he had a terrible temper, treating him like a piece of garbage, and also the nagging from Honey and making derogatory comments how he couldn't dress himself. And one time she said,

do you believe this, Carrie? Your cousin's going to come home tonight and I have to dress him because he couldn't coordinate a pair of slacks and a jacket, shirt and tie. Like, just bitter, cheap. That there was turmoil

between Barry and Honey in years past comes up in the police interviews with the four Sherman children. These are statements taken at a time when police were still chasing the murder-suicide theory. Cops were looking for an explanation as to why Barry would kill Honey. Lauren, the eldest, told a detective that

growing up her parents were the swearing and screaming type, but their arguments never got physical. Daughter Alexandra called her parents were the swearing and screaming type, but their arguments never got physical. Daughter Alexandra called her parents' relationship difficult, but this improved over time and Lauren said that in recent years, her parents were getting along better and were seen holding hands in public. Carrie's knowledge of Barry and Honey's relationship sounded historical, not current. The guys beside us get up to go. One of them insists on shaking Kerry's hand. I can see Kerry likes the notoriety.

And you have to understand, my hatred of Barry, my disdain for him, was only because of his portrayal and his lies. The dispute began when his brother Jeffrey stumbled over an option agreement from Barry's purchase of Empire Labs back in the 1960s. If you recall, Lou Winter, Barry's uncle and the owner of Empire, had died suddenly, leaving behind a wife and four young children, Carrie, Jeffrey, Dana, and Tim. Barry saw this as an opportunity to get into generic drugs. He included the option to make his offer more attractive to the trust company looking after affairs for the Winter Children. Carey and his siblings would later argue in court that this option entitled them to a one-fifth

share in Apotex, roughly $1 billion today. Without Empire, they said, there'd be no Apotex. In turn, Barry argued the option agreement was worthless, that it lapsed when Barry sold Empire two years after he bought it. It would only have been exercised if Barry still owned Lou's company when the four kids reached 21. I think that option is one of the earliest examples of Barry Sherman creating a legal document to advance his own interests. But just before the cousins took Barry to court, Kerry brought his kids to an Apotex Christmas party for one last time. He took me on the parking lot and he said, you know, there's not too many people in the world that have a cousin, Barry. I said, well, I know Barry.

I know that. He says, do you know that? I said, yeah, yeah, I know that. He says, no, I don't think you do. You're thinking of coming after me, but you should think twice because you won't beat me. Do you understand that? You don't know who I am yet? I said, I know who you are.

He says, I'm good to you. I give you everything you want. Why do you want to come after me? The lawsuit got vicious on both sides. Kerry said at one point he decided, forget the money. He wanted something bigger. His father lose name on a hospital and something else. I said to Barry once, I don't want 20% of apothecary.

I don't want anything, Barry. I just want you to tell me the truth. Why do you keep lying to me? Do you know how many years he lied to me about the option? In the fall of 2017, Kerry and his siblings lost their fight. The case over, Barry asked for $1 million in legal costs.

The judge knocked that down to $300,000. This is another piece of information that feeds into my perfect storm theory, events just before the murders. But for now, let's think of this sad family tale that took 50 years to write. I've talked to friends of Barry and they say the lawsuit both saddened and angered him. Frank D'Angelo, who was on the receiving end of Barry's generosity for years, has this take on why Barry fought his cousins so hard. Dr. Sherman, this is the type of guy he is. Barry will give you the sky, the sun, and the moon. But if you fuck with him, you hit Barry with a fly swatter, he's going to hit you with a fucking slide jabber. 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. It's funny. The Sherman wealth is so much a part of their story, but I don't think Barry or Honey were ever comfortable with money or cared about how much they had.

I think Barry would have happily continued to fund his cousins if they'd not asked for, in his opinion, too much. This awkward relationship with finances influenced how the Shermans managed, or rather did not manage,

the expectations of their own children. If you stop and think about it, growing up incredibly wealthy comes with its own set of problems. You see, Barry and Honey were millionaires by the time they were 40, billionaires in their 50s, but they weren't spenders. Their clothes were cheap. Honey wore those same workout shorts for 20 years. She bought belts on sale at Canadian Tire.

Barry had his uniform, khaki pants, white shirt, brown jacket, but he was happiest wearing an Apodex lab coat. And just look at their two aging vehicles. Both had accidents the year they died. Barry had a fender bender on Highway 401 heading home, and Honey hit a deer driving home from a friend's cottage. These cars were 15 and 10 years old, respectively, and both Barry and Honey got a mechanic to do cheap repairs they boasted about to friends and family. Maybe they were a little like investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett, worth over $100 billion. He still lives in a five-bedroom house in Omaha he bought in 1958 and drives around in a seven-year-old Cadillac.

There was something in their brains that was just odd. They didn't... Well, in their way, they did, I guess. In everybody else's view, certainly in mine, they never enjoyed their material success. That's Toronto real estate mogul Ed Sunshine. He's also a philanthropist, a self-made man whose parents were survivors of Auschwitz. Like Honey, Ed was born in a displaced persons camp.

He'd worked hard all his life and enjoys the fruits of his labors. He never understood the Sherman approach. Now they were going to build this big house in Forest Hill, and they had a lovely house, a little colony, quite beautiful. But other than that, they, you know, in many ways, I thought with Barry in particular, it was schtick, if you know what I mean. It was like it had become his thing. I mean, and I'm not trying to brag or anything.

I happened to drive a Bentley, a Comfort. Barry also liked them. So he saw my car, shipped it down to Florida for the winter. And we were in the same building in Florida. So one day, Barry and I are both downstairs. And it's valley, you can't park yourself. So my car comes driving up and looks at my So valet, my car comes driving up. He looks at my car.

And then his car comes driving up. And he had, actually, he didn't have his own car down there. He had a rent-threat car. And, you know, he looks at my car. He saw the top was down already. And he said, is that your car? He said, did you rent that car? I said, no, it's my car from home.

I send it down here for the winter, you know, convertible as much as you sit home in the winter. And he said, why would you buy a car like that? I said, because I really like it. I said, it drives great. I said, look at it, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful car. And then we both looked at the car. It literally was a chevette.

Senator Linda Frum, who worked with Honey on fundraising projects, recalls an interaction with Barry that unsettles her to this day. She'd invited them to her cottage for the weekend. By the way, the Shermans didn't own a country place. They thought it a waste of money. Linda is the daughter of the late Barbara Frum, one of Canada's most famous broadcast journalists, and she's married to a wealthy real estate developer. Linda was helping her staff clear the table after dinner,

and Barry lingered in the dining room. And then he spoke about, you know, we have so much, we enjoy all these beautiful things, and then he did go further and say you know refer to to my the two housekeepers who help in in the kitchen and he said you know why should we be served and they are doing serving and we're the ones like cool who decided that who decided that some people have to serve some will served. He was struggling with this idea that the whole evening had been kind of a, you know, sort of a cosmic injustice. Then there's Honey. She didn't like Barry handing out millions to his cousins.

After all, she was frugal in her day-to-day life. She'd lament that, despite being a billionaire's wife, she didn't even have her own money. Yes, she had a credit card, but Barry controlled the purse strings. On her trips with the golf girls, they didn't charter a jet or even fly commercial. Instead, they drove 15 hours in Honey's old Lexus and pooled money for gas, snacks, and accommodations. And when the three of them got to the modest condo Honey had arranged,

the same thing happened that always happened. Honey, we did, I put one, two, three, because we're going to get different, like, you know, we're going to pull numbers, right, for the rooms. And one was absolutely enormous. It had like a suite of its own. Then there was like, it was like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and, you know, the Baby Bear. So I pull number one, which is the huge one. Neda pulls number two, which is the Mama Bear size. And Honey pulls the little one. And any time I've been with her, when we travel to my house,

we always get the better room. I says, Honey, take the room. She never did. For Barry and Honey, money was for needs, not for wants. That was Barry's credo. Honey quoted it to her friends when they raised eyebrows over things like the used Timex watch Barry bought at a yard sale. When it came to flying, Apotex executives have told me

that they would fly business class to a business meeting and Barry would be in economy. Ed Sunshine once asked Barry about his flying habits when they were getting on a plane. I said, you know what, Barry? I said, I don't know why you like to sit in the back. And he looked at me and he said, if I could get a cheaper fare and I flew standing up, I'd take that one. I said, okay, Barry, good luck on finding that fare. Once kids were added to the mix, that frugality got complicated. Some got more, some got a lot less. The line between needs and wants blurred.

Here's Jonathan during his eulogy, describing his father's very generous financial support. You were also my business partner. When I entered your office about five or six years ago with my good friend Adam, we told you about our plan to start a business together, and you were so incredibly supportive and excited. We had the world's shortest shareholder agreement, which basically said anything, anytime. As our third partner, you watched from the sidelines and gleaned with pride as we began building our businesses. You were always available to help us with funding and guidance. Jonathan has told me his father gave him roughly $125 million

to fund his self-storage business and a cottage marina. From my research, I think it was actually much more. Lauren, the eldest, also received a lot of money from Barry. Friends say they were told he gave her $100 million to invest in stocks and businesses. Contrast that with the youngest Sherman child, Kaylin, who had for years been asking Barry to buy her a $60,000 car, an Infiniti QX60. Days after her parents died, Kaylin ordered one from a dealership, telling family, that is what he wanted me to do. Alexandra, the third child, certainly received money, but nowhere near what Jonathan and Lauren did. It's clear Barry and Honey had different theories on wealth and how to bring up children,

but they were allied on one thing from day one. They wanted kids. Like many young couples, they test drove other kids before they had their own. Barry and Honey babysat Joel Alster's children, and Barry loved to roll around on the carpet, playing with the toddlers. But having children proved a struggle for Honey. She wanted kids desperately,

but she had such a problem. That's one of Honey's oldest friends, Bryna Steiner. She and Honey went to Teachers College together, and she and her husband Fred were starting a family the same time the Shermans wanted to. Honey had a series of miscarriages, but gave birth to Lauren in 1975. She's the only one of the four who have both Barry and Honey as a biological parent.

After Lauren was born, the Shermans turned to surrogacy, which was relatively new at the time and not common in Canada. Using Barry's sperm, and in each case, a different surrogate mother in the U.S., using an egg from that mother, came three more Sherman children, Jonathan in 1983, Alexandra in 1986, and Kaylin in 1990. Barry flew the mothers to Canada so the children would have Canadian citizenship. As the Sherman family grew,

the daily duties of raising the children went to honey. But friends say that as the children grew older, it was Barry they would call for help. Here's Barry's friend, Joel Ulster. I mean, you know, when his kids were older, and of course he wasn't home a lot, but he was always available. Just in the middle of a meeting,

the phone would ring and be one of the kids with a problem. He's always available. I mean, not home available. When he wasn't needed, maybe, but always, when he was needed, he was there. In the middle of the night, problems they had that I won't talk about, but he was always there. He was the one looking after her. He was the one dealing with all that stuff.

To say the relationship between Honey and the children was strained is a gross understatement. Mary, Honey's sister, told me that Honey referred to her children as the Nazis, a horrible descriptor, particularly coming from someone with Honey's upbringing. She told her friends that the children controlled her. In the family pecking order, she was at the bottom. And perhaps as a reaction, Honey was tough on the kids. Here's one example. After Lauren's seventh birthday party,

Honey gathered up all the presents and put them in her room, not letting her open them for several weeks. Honey's friends think she was trying to stop their firstborn from being spoiled. The children grew up to see Barry as a softer touch. Because he was easier and more, I guess, empathetic. I mean, he had strong ideas what they should do and stuff, but it didn't matter that they didn't do it. It didn't change how he dealt with it. You know what I mean, he had strong ideas what they should do and stuff, but it didn't matter that they didn't do it. It didn't change how he dealt with it.

You know what I mean? The Sherman home was not a happy one. Tensions over money, tensions over lifestyle. Honey was not accepting of Jonathan when he came out as gay. And neither Jonathan's long-term boyfriend Andrew or his eventual husband Fred felt comfortable around Honey. There were also tensions over what they were doing with their lives. Barry wanted his kids to work at Apotex with an eye to one of them rising up through management. None were interested. This turmoil

led to years of therapy. One of my sources shared emails between Barry, Lauren, and Jonathan. These were also shared with the police. They're upsetting to read, and they give a very different perspective from those of Barry's friends, who paint a picture of Barry doing his best to help his kids. Here's one from Lauren in 2008. She was 33 at the time, living in Western Canada. You say that you love us kids, but your actions show that you don't.

You have always hated Kaylin, and it's pretty obvious that you hate John too now. These folks are my siblings, my team. As such, I feel hate towards anyone who hates on them. In the email chain, Lauren is writing in defense of Jonathan, who was upset that their father was continuing to fund Frank D'Angelo's businesses. That's a sore point in the family, which I'll get into later. Lauren, who runs a yoga and therapy studio, and who herself received millions from Barry, talks about the toxic effect of money. You have worked very hard to make money for your whole life. At this point, making more money won't help you at all. In fact, I think that having produced too much money is a big part of your our problem. Perhaps it's time to slow down at work and start spending time nurturing loving

relationships with your kids. On your deathbed, I doubt that you'll be thinking, gosh, I wish I made another billion dollars. I bet you'll be thinking, gosh, I wish I loved my kids better. I really wasted my life. I am so sorry. Barry responds, increasingly accusatory and extreme. I know without doubt that I am a loving father to all four of my children, and there is nothing that I would not do to try to ensure your happiness, yet you continuously paint me as a monster. For years, I have tried to speak to the four Sherman children. It's actually quite normal for the family members of murder victims to speak to journalists, especially when a crime is unsolved.

Family wants to keep the story alive in the press with hopes that it will urge police on. Not so with the Shermans. In my almost four decades of reporting, I've never found a family veil more difficult to lift. Neither Lauren or Kaylin have ever agreed to be interviewed. But in time, I was able to speak to their sister, Alexandra. She's a nurse by training, has worked in northern Canada helping people with low income, and of all the children, she's the least interested in wealth. She has spoken of how proud she was of their father.

Like, I loved him, I respected him, and, you know, he did a lot of wonderful things for the world and for Apotex. In my interviews, Alexandra doesn't speak much about her dad as a father and never speaks about Honey. But it's clear she looked up to her dad as a business leader. My dad had values and morality and principles and respect. And Appotex employees were treated well. It's like a family.

You know, like if you saw an employee struggling, he would help no matter what the situation. And Appotex has, you know, 11,000 plus employees. There's something else about Alexandra. A shocking turn in the already difficult family dynamics. Roughly one year after Barry and Honey were murdered, Alexandra began developing a belief that her brother Jonathan was somehow involved. It came after a visit to his cottage in eastern Ontario.

I heard the story from numerous sources, and also that she went to police with her suspicions. Naturally, I wanted to ask Jonathan about this. Leading up to the publication of my book, and a series of stories on the case in the Toronto Star, I asked Jonathan by email if he had anything to do with the murders. In a letter he wrote back to me, copying the Toronto Homicide Squad, he referred to the allegations that he was involved as insane accusations. He suggested that I was hearing these allegations

from people that he considered persons of interest in the murders of his parents. And then, in late 2020, I heard a new allegation. You'll recall Jonathan's comments at the funeral of his father's strong financial support for his businesses. My sources were telling me that in the weeks leading up to the murders Barry was cutting Jonathan off. Using an email address Jonathan had set up to communicate with me

I reached out. I invited him to provide context and explanation to finally give me an interview. On December 15, exactly three years to the day his parents' bodies were discovered, Jonathan emailed me. Come to my home north of Toronto, he said,

and come alone. Next time on The Billionaire Murders. I could tell you things that would make you go, oh shit. There is information out there that would make you go, holy fucking shit. It's unbelievable. 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 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.