Suspicion - S2 The Billionaire Murders | E8 Perfect Storm

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Honey and Barry Sherman had nothing on their calendar, friends were away and Barry’s life was a who’s who of suspects. He also owed a lot of money. If there ever was a perfect time to commit a horrendous murder and get away with it, this was it. This is episode eight 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, 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: I24 News, Yes TV, CityNews, Global, Murder on the Orient Express movie

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. It's being called the worst storm in recorded history. Hurricane Grace is accelerating off of Sable Island. Once it starts, no force on Earth can stop it. These storms have collided. You're going to run right into this thing. Are they okay? No one knows. Please, God, get them there.

Call it the perfect storm. That's a clip from the trailer for the movie about a powerful hurricane that battered the east coast of the United States in 1991. Journalist Sebastian Younger, whose book the movie was based on, coined the phrase the perfect storm to describe a rare convergence of weather patterns. It's my belief that the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman were the result of another kind of perfect storm, events that came together at a key time with deadly results. There were literally people crying hysterically.

I walked in the front door right there. People collapsed on the stairs, people embracing each other. I mean, I could barely make my way up to Jerry's office. That's Jordan Berman, one of the Apotex vice presidents, describing how staff took the news of Barry Sherman's death. Though Barry openly mused at how someone might kill him one day, his employees were understandably stunned. Shock. The shock of it, how it happened, everything. People just couldn't,

they couldn't fathom it. They couldn't make sense of it. In this episode, I'm going to look at my theory that the killer or killers took advantage of the great turmoil in the lives of the Shermans just before the murders. And also, how key friends of the Shermans were out of town at the time and there was an absence of scheduled events. This makes me think the killers knew their schedule. I think they chose this moment because they'd have time to cover

their tracks and there'd be plenty of suspects. I had absolutely nothing to do with Mary and Honey's death. Zero. I want to put done on the record. 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 8 perfect storm

if somebody as you believe somebody did them both in it was so up close and personal. It wasn't like a whack job by Mossad or the Russians. It was somebody who was really angry, punched honey, strangled them. I've told you how Kerry Winter, Barry's cousin, believes it was murder-suicide, despite the forensic evidence of double murder. Yet at one point in our first interview, Kerry changed his tune. I mean, the person who did this really hated them. I don't know if it was disgruntled or apothecary's voice. I don't see the Russian mock. The Russian mock goes in and boom. I agree with Carey on that point. I've never

believed some international assassin flew in and murdered the Shermans. I think it was people close to them who did it themselves. In the first part of my perfect storm theory, the killers needed a series of red herrings for police to chase. I can't think of anyone who has been more open about his hatred for Barry Sherman than Carrie Winter. And just before the murders, Barry defeated Carrie and his siblings in their long-running lawsuit seeking a billion dollars. The judge also awarded Barry $300,000 in legal costs. That ruling came down one week before the murders. In our interviews and in his interview with police,

Kerry was adamant that he didn't kill his cousin. Wednesday night I attended a 12-step program. I attend regularly. After that, I went home, as I usually do, and I watched an episode of Peaky Blinders on Netflix. I checked with someone who was at his Cocaine Anonymous meeting that night. The man verified Carrie's attendance. That meeting went until about 9 p.m., and it would have taken Carrie about a half hour to get to Old Colony Road. The timing just doesn't fit. I used to think the murders took place between 9 and 11 p.m., but by 2023, my investigation showed the Shermans were likely both dead closer to 9 p.m.

Now, to add someone else into the suspect mix, Carrie told me that he initially suspected his own brother, Jeffrey. That's because of a thought that occurred to Carey the night before the murders, while he was meeting with his lawyer, Brad Toplitsky, at his home. So I'm going there to sign this affidavit, and I sign it, and I'm about to leave Brad's house because I'm only there about 10 minutes. And I said to Brad, I said, Brad, do you think it's ever crossed Barry's mind that my brother Jeffrey could go off the deep end and kill him? I tried to talk to Jeffrey for years. And then one day he called me up out of the blue. He wanted to talk about his relationship with Barry, how his cousin helped him start several businesses over the years.

Jeffrey didn't give me an alibi for the Wednesday night, but he said he had nothing to do with the murders. Now, Jeffrey has fallen on hard times. He's bipolar and not been able to work. His marriage broke up too. Back in 2017, he was living like a bit of a hermit in his house west of Toronto. Now he's living in a shelter.

To me, the cousins are red herrings, and a reminder that by the time of the murders, cousin Dana was dead, and Tim, the eldest of the brothers, he never really had much involvement with Barry. To close out their part of the story, the cousins continued their legal fight long after Barry was dead, but eventually lost. And the Sherman children never asked for that $300,000 in legal costs. A labor strike is set for Israel on Sunday in response to pharmaceutical giant Teva's newly announced layoffs. The largest generic drug company in

the world is planning to lay off some 1,750 people, a quarter of its Israeli staff. In the fall of 2017, months before the murders, there was great turmoil in the generic pharmaceutical world, both at Apotex and internationally at Apotex's great rival, Teva. A downturn in generic drug prices hit Teva very hard. Teva is one of Israel's leading companies in the way General Motors once was one of America's bedrocks. Now, there's a backstory with Teva and Apotex. In the old days, Barry Sherman's only real Canadian rival was a company called Nova Farm, run by Leslie Dan, like Barry, a philanthropist businessman. Leslie sold to Teva in 2000, and the rivalry continued. To put company size in perspective, Teva was Goliath, the biggest generic company in the world, with six times the revenue of Apotex's David. Both were fighting for

market share and, behind the scenes, there was a nasty bit of litigation between Teva and Apotex involving Barry's CEO, Jeremy Desai. It is nothing, there's nothing to talk about now. Jeremy was Barry's hand-picked CEO, a fellow scientist who Barry adored. The year before the murders, Teva had alleged to the FBI that Desai and a female Teva executive had a romantic relationship, and the Teva executive was emailing Desai information on a generic drug in development. The FBI investigated, and no charges were ever laid. Not satisfied, Teva sued Apotex six months before the Sherman murders. Apotex and Desai denied all allegations.

But I know from Toronto police documents that other execs at Apotex wanted Barry to fire Desai. They'd had enough of him. Barry backed me 120%. And I said, as recent as like 30 days prior to, he said, you know, we're going all out. He said, I need your commitment over the next three to five years. Barry's unwavering support for his beleaguered CEO

led to whispers in the pharma community that Barry was a quarterback of a plan to steal Teva information. And when Barry was killed, those whispers intensified. Maybe Teva was responsible. That's when the rumors really started to spin. The Israeli drama Fauda was a Netflix hit in 2017. Fauda, which means chaos, cemented the idea that Israeli fighters are efficient, ruthless killers. I've looked into the Teva hitman conspiracy theories, and I just don't see it.

Yes, Teva didn't like Barry Sherman, and Apotex and both companies were in financial difficulty at the time, but Teva had at least eight other generic companies it was battling for market share, all much bigger than Apotex, and their founders and CEOs were never killed. Still, there was one additional piece of the Teva-Jeremy Desai puzzle that raised suspicions after the murders. So there were certainly dramatic developments into the investigation, into the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman.

But on top of all of that, more drama. The CEO of the company that Sherman founded, he resigned just hours ahead of the police news conference. Yeah, the timing is quite interesting. So as you say, just about an hour before that dramatic news conference by Toronto detectives today, we got word that Jeremy Desai had resigned as the president and CEO of Apotex, the generic drug company that Barry Sherman founded, the company that made him his billions of dollars. In a statement to me, Apotex said that the resignation was effective immediately

and it was for Dr. Desai to pursue other opportunities. Now, there's no indication that the resignation was in any way linked to the news conference today, but certainly the timing's raising eyebrows. Jeremy was adamant in his interview with me. He resigned to pursue other interests and there was nothing to the Teva allegation. Privately, company insiders told me that with his protector gone, Jeremy was simply no longer welcome. As I dug into the business affairs of Barry Sherman, I found other business grudges just before the murders. A warning for would-be lovers about a form of fraud that is breaking hearts and emptying bank accounts.

Romance scammers start with a fake profile on a dating app or a social media site. They lure these victims into believing that they have found a match online and at some point they will defraud them. One of Barry Sherman's unusual investments was in a business created by Sean Rutenberg, a convicted fraudster who had served prison time alongside an old friend of Barry's, Myron Godlieb. Myron and his wife were longtime friends of the Shermans, and he's best known as the theater impresario of Phantom of the Opera fame, who was convicted of fraud in the Live Ant accounting scandal. Rutenberg and Godley pitched Barry on a concept called Trivia for Good, a smartphone app that claimed it would generate revenue by pushing advertisements on the user. Unbeknownst to Barry, there never was an app. Meanwhile, Rutenberg was scamming women in what is known as romance fraud. In the weeks before the murders,

Barry went after Rutenberg in the courts, hard. The Apotex billionaire was only out about $150,000, but he wanted financial blood. This type of business deal is the sort of thing at which his good friend Fred Steiner would just shake his head. He didn't have time to spend micromanaging them, okay? And that's why he got hurt in a lot of deals too. You know, he would trust in people, put money with them. Barry gave his friend Myron a pass, but brought the full force of his litigation team down on Rutenberg. The morning of the day he was murdered, Barry had his lawyers file new documents against the con artist.

To some media who later wrote about this case, it looked like Rudenberg might have had something to do with the murders. You know, kill Barry in retaliation. I don't think so. It's just one part of the perfect storm that made December 2017 an opportunistic time to murder the Shermans. Rudenberg, by the way, was eventually sent back to prison,

six years for stealing a woman's life savings. Many of Barry's investments also left his second-in-command, Jack Kay, shaking his head. Once Barry made the decision to do A, B, or C, whether I agreed with A, B, or C or not. He was the owner. He was the decision maker. My job was to operationalize, whether I agreed with it or not. And my luck,

my choices were, and it's happened many, on a number of occasions, I vehemently disagree. And my wife and I had the discussion. And look, we socialized with Barry and Honey, and my wife would say, Barry, you're going to force him to resign. 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. Re requests your quote today.

Now, something else about the days and weeks just before the murders. Even though Barry was pouring millions of dollars into schemes in the latter half of 2017, including $65 million to rescue a condo skyscraper project in Toronto run by a man named Sam Mizrahi. He was also facing a crushing debt. Toronto Police interview, December 17, 2017. Brad Krawcheck interview with Detective Brandon Price, Homicide Unit Barry seemed quiet lately, but not sad despite losing a total of about a billion dollars in lawsuits in the last three months. He was maintaining that he wasn't going to pay them and that they were financially stable. Everyone was told everything was fine. That's a statement to homicide detectives by Brad Krawcheck, Barry's son-in-law, read by a voice actor.

At the time, Brad was married to Alexandra, Barry and Honey's daughter. Brad told police that Barry had recently remarked that he was in financial difficulty. As you heard in our last episode, Barry had just lost a $580 million case. It's confusing,

but Barry apparently told Brad it was a billion-dollar case, and the police documents don't explain this discrepancy. No matter the amount, Barry told Brad he wasn't going to pay. But at the same time,

Barry was asking his son Jonathan to take out mortgages and repay $50 to $60 million to help cover this massive judgment. I'm not going to kill my dad because he needs $50 million to get through a crisis. That's a comment Jonathan Sherman made to me during an interview, read by a voice actor. Just before the murders, Barry told his son he needed money,

and he was telling business associate Frank D'Angelo, who Barry had supported for so many years, that he might have to close his businesses down if the bottom line didn't improve. These are just some of the events in Barry's life that contributed to this part of the perfect storm.

Just like in the movie Knives Out or the Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express, plenty of suspects to muddy the water for the real killers. If there was a murder... What is going on? Then there was a murderer. The murderer is with us.

And every one of you is a suspect. And who are you? My name is Hercule Poirot, and I am probably the greatest detective in the world. Only, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot was not assigned to this case, not even close. Now, the second part of my perfect storm theory relates to why I think Wednesday, December 13, 2017, was chosen for the murders. I can tell you that all of us at Apotex are thrilled that we have had the opportunity to participate in achieving something that has benefited Thalassemia patients.

That's Barry Sherman in the summer of 2017, speaking in New York to the Cooley's Anemia Foundation, a group that supports people with a fatal blood disease called thalassemia. Barry and fellow Apodex scientists were being honored for developing the drug Fariprox that many say is literally a lifesaver. Now, this drug is not without controversy, and researcher Nancy Olivieri continues to criticize Apodex for not paying attention to side effects. That story deserves a podcast of its own, but I'm telling you about it because

of how the New York visit affects the Sherman timeline. I went to New York with my wife to hear Andre Bocelli at Madison Square Gardens. Jack Kay is describing how what happened at that New York event in the summer of 2017 led to him being away from Toronto when Barry and Honey were murdered. He gets emotional recalling this. They raffled at the Cooley's Anemia Function tickets for 100 bachelli. Sorry. I sat at the table with Honey and Barry, my wife and I,

and Fernando and his wife and Mike and his wife, and King Time for they were going to auction these tickets. Honey bid. She bid X. I can't remember what it was. And nobody else was bidding. So I said to my wife, I says, 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 pire. Nobody else bid. I thought that I could engage Honey, right? And we'd raise the stakes and I'd quit. Honey dropped her hand. Jack and his wife bought the tickets. Honourable Shelley.

Jack and his wife flew to New York on Wednesday, December 13, hours before Barry and Honey would be murdered. By the time Bocelli took the stage at Madison Square Gardens on the Thursday evening, the Shermans had been dead for a day. Jack and Barry worked physically close to one another for more than three decades. They had adjoining offices at Apotex, and the connecting door was always open. Jack would have noticed Barry's absence, and he says he would have sounded the alarm. And they would have known that I wasn't going to be there. Mary Sheckman, Honey's sister and best friend, left for Florida on the Thursday morning.

Like many people, she has her own theory on who was involved in the murders, and I've promised to keep that between us, though she's shared her suspicions with the police. Jack and Mary were not the only close people in Barry and Honey's life who were away at this time. I'm Sheila Stanley. I've been Honey Sherman's personal assistant for two years. My job includes taking care of bills, scheduling, keeping Honey's devices in line,

dressing Honey for events, other random jobs. That's a voice actor reading from Sheila Stanley's statements to police shortly after the bodies were discovered on the Friday. Sheila said she last saw Honey at 2.40pm on the Wednesday afternoon, right after Honey's massage ended. I'm usually at Old Colony from 10am till mid-afternoon, Monday to Friday. But that week, Honey had given her Thursday and Friday off. The detective asked Sheila, given that Honey had a variety of staff in and out of the house, was anybody scheduled for Thursday?

Thursdays? There's no one normally scheduled to come. The detective asked Sheila, how would someone access Honey's schedule and the schedule for appointments at Old Colony. Honey didn't have a password on her phone or iPads. She kept all of her scheduled events in her Google Calendar, which was linked to those devices. She liked me to print out her calendar appointments, and she kept them all clipped together with a fat black clip kept on her desk beside the computer. She didn't like waste, so she used paper that was

already printed on one side. Let's talk about the Sherman house. You've heard how it was a beehive of activity on the Wednesday, the day the Shermans will be murdered. The house was listed for sale. There were cleaners, painters, realtors, and a showing. Plus, Barry and Honey had a personal trainer at the house, and Honey had a masseuse. But nothing was booked for Thursday. That day, Sherman realtor Elise Stern was trying to reach Honey to arrange a Friday showing, but her calls and emails were not returned. Others were surprised at the radio silence from Barry and Honey, but nobody took action.

Honey had a charity meeting on the Thursday morning, but when her chair in the boardroom was empty, nobody followed up. Barry's lawyer, Harry Radomski, also found it odd not to hear from Barry. But he didn't do anything about it. I sent him an email on a Wednesday night just laying out some stuff and wanting his advice. I thought it was kind of odd that I hadn't heard from him all day Thursday

and so I think I flew to Florida on Thursday night. Barry's schedule was kept by Joanne Morrow, his personal assistant at Apotex. I'd been told that Barry's passwords were always some version of 1234, and that was a running joke at the office and among people close to him. Joanne told me that Barry, as the boss,

came and went as he pleased. And with the arrival of his daughter Alexandra's second child, he did sometimes visit with his grandkids in the afternoon. I know Barry would take the afternoon or a day, he'd spend time with his kids. So that day when he didn't come in, yeah, it was kind of odd, but at the same time, oh no, you know what, Alex just had her other baby,

the baby was only, I think, four weeks old at the time. So it wasn't really out of the norm. Jeremy Desai, the CEO of Apotex, was also wondering where Barry was that Thursday. He'd sent emails and not heard back. That was highly unusual. Oh, he was prompt like anything. I mean, if you wrote an email at midnight, one minute past midnight, you get a response back. That's how he operated. So the day passed. I got quite worried because it was very unusual for Barry not to respond. And I told the police all this too, actually, because they wanted to know my views of thinking. I said the last email was 8.13 and we never got a response to the one on the following morning.

Frank D'Angelo, the businessman Barry funded, had frequent phone calls with Barry. On the Monday, Barry had sent regrets by email, saying he couldn't make Frank's Christmas lunch on the Tuesday. Barry called Frank on the Tuesday night to apologize. Yeah, and he called the Tuesday night to apologize. Yeah, and he called me Tuesday night to apologize that he didn't make it

and I was busting his balls. It was around 10 o'clock. He said, hi Frank, it's Barry. I go, I know it's you. And I busted his balls a little bit. I go, I can't believe you didn't show up. I've told you that Barry and Honey's son, Jonathan,

has suspicions that Frank was somehow involved in the murders. He's told the police about his suspicions. Frank says that's ridiculous, but the police did ask him about his whereabouts on the Wednesday. He told them he worked at his bottling plant all day, then drove to his home north of Toronto, where he spent the entire evening with his partner, who is pregnant with twins. I've interviewed her, and she confirms this. Frank said he also told the homicide detectives

that their house has several CCTV cameras, and he invited the police to have a look to confirm his story. They never did. There's cameras. There's fucking cameras everywhere. There's ring when you walk out, when you leave, when you come in. I asked Jonathan if he or his siblings kept in close touch with their parents. I sadly didn't. I never spoke to my mother on the phone. Maybe once a year. And my father, the same thing. We don't have regular phone contact because I was in the office. I would see him in the office. I certainly didn't know their comings and goings. All I knew was that my dad was going to be in town on a certain date because I had my own Christmas dinner that he was going to be coming

to. Every family is different, of course. But on a personal note, I do wonder if our adult children would get worried if they didn't hear back from me or my wife. I hope so. As to Jonathan, he said he didn't have that type of relationship with his parents. The call and email logs I've been able to see do show that each of the four adult children of the Shermans

reached out in some fashion during the 36-hour period between the murders and the discovery of the bodies. Jonathan sent an email Thursday asking his father if he'd come to a staff Christmas party for his storage company. Alexandra sent photos of her children on Thursday by text. Friday, she tried to touch base with her parents about a planned Hanukkah dinner that was to be held that evening at her house.

Intriguingly, that dinner was to have been on the Tuesday or Wednesday night, but honey changed the date to Friday. Daughters Lauren and Kaylin both called Barry on the Friday. Those show up as missed calls, and I don't have access to any messages that were left. When the Sherman children did not hear back from their parents, they took no action. I explored all of this with Jonathan. He agreed with me on one issue. The timing of the murders is key. I never knew when or where my parents were, but the killers probably did. It would be pretty simple to check all the emails and phone records

to get an indication of who was most in contact with my parents and would have known their coming and going. It will be pretty obvious that I could not have known their schedule because we didn't talk regularly. A perfect storm. Great turmoil in Barry's life leading up to the murders, and the people closest to Honey and Barry were away. I think the killers had intimate knowledge of their schedule,

and this gave them time to cover their tracks. In their wake, the killers left a mystery, a whodunit. But they also created four new billionaires. Next time, on the final episode of The Billionaire Murders. It is the last will and testament of the man at the center of one of the biggest unsolved murder cases in Canada. Recently released court documents shedding light on how Barry and Honey Sherman divided up their massive estates. 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 Pattinson, Raju Mudar, Alexis Green, and J.P. Fozzo.

Additional production from Brian Bradley and Crawford Blair. Sound and music was created by Sean Pattinson. In this episode, Jonathan Sherman was voiced by Mark Ladder. Look out for my book, The Billionaire Murders, and coming later this year, The Crave documentary by the same name. Hi, I'm Chris Gethard, and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number, thousands of people try to call.

I talk to one of them, they stay anonymous, I can't hang up. That's all the rules. I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings. Crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh. Somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's going to happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today. Beautiful Anonymous.