Uncover - S21 E1: Bitter Pill | "The No Good, Terribly Kind, Wonderful Lives and Tragic Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman"

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

What does a Philadelphia junk artist have to do with the deaths of a wealthy Canadian pharma giant and his philanthropist wife? Maybe nothing, but it’s odd that their bodies were reportedly posed like a piece of junk sculpture that the Shermans displayed nearby. But this strange coincidence is just one of many in this most baffling of unsolved murder cases in Canadian history. Host Kathleen Goldhar goes on a byzantine journey to find out what kind of life do you have to live that your death spurns on multiple theories about who might have killed you, including some involving your closest family.For transcripts of this series, please visit here.Leo Sewell’s websiteMatthew Campbell’s The Unsolved Murder of an Unusual BillionaireSaul Rubinek’s IMDB

Celine Dion. My dream, to be an international star. Could it happen again? Could Celine Dion happen again? I'm Thomas Leblanc, and Celine Understood is a four-part series from CBC Podcasts and CBC News, where I piece together the surprising circumstances that helped manufacture Celine Dion, the pop icon. Celine Understood. Available wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

All episodes of our show are available right now. Binge listen to the entire series by searching for the no good, terribly kind, wonderful lives and tragic deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on Apple Podcasts. Alliance Gate Sound and CBC Podcast Production. I have lots of stashes. I have drawers with, well, these are corn holders. Also reading glasses in that drawer.

These are Hot Wheel cars. And these are Fisher Price people. Wooden spacers. Pens. I'm in Leo Sewell's studio in Philadelphia. Stopwatches or pocket watches. Leo calls himself a junk sculptor. And these are watch bands.

I don't know what's next. And he makes recycled art. Oh, keys. I've been doing things with keys. And these are lenses. It goes on and on. Leo spends his days collecting what other people get rid of. And whatever he finds, he stores here, in his immaculately organized workshop. There are shelves upon shelves, drawers upon drawers, all neatly labeled with what's inside.

Cat, horse, boxers, New York City, fish, elephant, stegosaurus. In his studio on this day, there's a six-foot-tall Liberty Bell, the Greek goddess Diana the Huntress, a pig, and a duck. Life-size flamenco out of basically brass. I love the feet. Yeah, they're glowy, aren't they? They're really beautiful. That flatware's got to finish.

We're here to talk about one of his sculptures, one he made a few decades ago. We show him a photo of it on our laptop. It's life-size of a man and a woman sitting together. He asks us to enlarge it and leans in. This is a couple that I feel quite sure that I made in the 70s. And, well, they look like they're within a foot of one another. And he's appropriately a little taller than she is. And I don't know, they look so

Sphinx-like. One leg is crossed over the other at the knee. And in her case, they're one knee's on top of the other. So both legs are crossed. And his arms, his left arm is on his left knee and his right arm is on his right thigh. And her arms, I believe, come together at the knee. This sculpture connects Leo in the most macabre way to the story that we're about to tell you. To my eye, they look rather stiff. One that is mysterious and dark, sensational and tragic, and it's unfinished. So I guess that would make them more robot-like. Less humanistic, maybe. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and this is the no-good, terribly kind, wonderful lives and tragic deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman.

Chapter One, Bitter Pill. I'm Kathleen. Nice to meet you. I'm really apprehensive about doing this. I know you are. And we're going to keep your hard not to draw any attention. This man has pulled up in a neon-colored sprinter van, and I have a microphone in his face even before he's out of the truck. But more than the bright vehicle and our recording equipment, we stand out because we're practically the only people on the street. We're talking in front of 50 Old Colony Road in the north end of Toronto.

Old Colony Road is right beside the bridle path, one of Canada's richest neighbourhoods. The houses are huge and they're set back from the road. Circular driveways are full of expensive cars, but most of the vehicles on the road this morning are service vehicles. Gardeners, pool guys, the trappings of the wealthy dot each winding street. And no one goes for a walk. There are few sidewalks. You do occasionally see a nanny with her charges or a super skinny, usually older woman,

out for a stroll with her small yappy dog. But that's it. So tell me about that day. December 15th, I think it was. December 15th, 2017. This man, whose identity we promised to keep secret, was scheduled to do some maintenance work at the home of a wealthy couple named Barry and Honey Sherman.

He'd worked inside the Sherman home many times over the past 20 years and had developed a kind of routine with them, mainly dealing with Honey. How would you describe her? Interesting character. What does that mean? Well, she was demanding. I knew I had to have my ducks in order when I talked to her. So she'd call me out if she didn't think something was right. Usually she yells down the stairs to me, screams something at me, and then I just continue on my day. But on this day, the house felt different. As soon as I walked downstairs, just something wasn't, didn't, to me, didn't, I'd been there for years and years, and she was always concerned about lights and doors and all that being kept closed and lights and doors were wide open and I just thought something was off. So on this cold December morning in this unusually quiet house

he continued downstairs to do his work in a room right beside the Sherman's indoor pool. A pool that had not been used in years. No I nobody goes down there. That was kind of a room that they hadn't used or I stopped servicing it years ago and I would always go down there previously but never anymore. From the basement, the garage, you can see the glass wall and you can see if there's lights on in that room and there was no lights. So he just went about his work, not knowing that just behind that glass wall, something terrible was hidden in the dark. Hours later, a real estate agent showing the newly listed house to potential buyers would come across a grisly scene. He's appropriately a little taller than she is.

The agent would open the door to the pool room and find Barry and Honey Sherman, The agent would open the door to the pool room and find Barry and Honey Sherman, suspended from belts looped around their necks, the other end attached to the pool railing. Police described them as being found in a semi-seated position. Media at the time reported that they both had their arms behind their backs, held there by their jackets, which had been pushed down from their shoulders. They're inanimate. You know, I don't make things move. That's artist Leo Sewell again, describing his sculpture. The Toronto Star's Kevin Donovan, who's covered this case extensively and written a book on the Shermans, reported that Honey and Barry may have been deliberately posed to look

like Leo's sculpture, a piece they owned and was on display in a nearby room. We've talked to dozens of people about this case. One person said, solve the question of why the bodies were posed like that and we'll solve the crime. Someone else said that the idea that the bodies were deliberately left to look like Leo's sculpture? No way. In the years since Barry and Honey Sherman were found dead, there have been hundreds of stories and blogs and theories.

There's only one certainty. This is a crazy story. And once you start digging, it's hard to stop. Grief and heartbreak in front of the mansion where the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were discovered on Friday. At this point, police say they have more questions than answers when it comes to the deaths of this billionaire Toronto couple. The police investigation is obviously very much still active. In the meantime, people who live in this North York neighborhood say they are still in shock.

To say the deaths of Honey and Barry Sherman shook the city and the country is an understatement. They were some of the wealthiest people in North America. Barry Sherman founded one of Canada's largest generic drug companies, and Honey was a fixture in the Toronto Jewish community. And they were powerful. A cast of Canada's who's who attended their funeral, including the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. But it was their gruesome deaths, the manner in which they were found, and a lack of any clear information about what happened to them,

well, that's what really caught everyone's attention. Very quickly, it became a big story. Like, there aren't a lot of stories from Canada that go global, and there certainly aren't a lot of stories from Canada that you get asked about at dinner parties in London and Paris, as I was, over the next few months,

that people would, when I would get asked where I was from, I'd say Toronto. I'd say, oh, do you know anything about this crazy murder? Matthew Campbell is a Canadian reporter and editor for Bloomberg Businessweek. Today, he's based in Singapore, but he used to work out of London. Where I did European and occasionally North American stories,

which is how I came into this story. But it's more than just the sensational aspects of their deaths that drew Matthew to the story. I was a year apart in school from Jonathan Sherman. Jonathan, one of Honey and Barry's four children. Both Jonathan and Matthew attended an expensive private school called Upper Canada College. There's rich and there's rich.

Like, certainly lots of people at UCC and the great majority would be from very privileged backgrounds. Being the child of billionaires who, depending on when you looked at it, were in the top 15 or 20 wealthiest families in Canada, that's something of a different enterprise. And I definitely knew that he was the scion of this incredibly wealthy family, the only son. But they had another, even closer association. And the other important point of familiarity was, I'm Jewish. I was raised in the Jewish community in Toronto. My parents were fairly prominent in the Jewish community, as, of course, the Shermans were far more prominent

in the Shermans' case. And they were well-acquainted in kind of a, not to the point, I would say, of being close friends, but certainly friendly and well-known to each other. Toronto's Jewish community is really tight. It's connected. And it just sometimes feels so small. There's pretty much one degree of separation between most Toronto Jews.

They know your cousin, or they worked with an uncle, or went to school with your mother. For example, my first cousin golfed at the same club as the Shermans. And my other cousin works with their real estate agent, but not the one that found the bodies. The community tends to stick together. We join the same clubs, live in the same areas, and send our kids to certain schools. Not everyone, of course. My parents didn't live in a Jewish area, but my cousins did, so one degree. And in this tight, connected community, the Shermans were titans.

Generous philanthropists to Jewish causes. Their names graced the walls of universities, parks, art galleries, and hospitals across Toronto. And when they were found dead, it's all we could talk about. And some of us still are. Tell me what you learned happened that day, or what the police were saying. In the morning of that day, two real estate agents came to the house. They have a couple with them, and they go around the house, and they go downstairs. And one of the agents went in first ahead of her clients. And she then goes into the pool and sees something which I'm sure is an image that no one could ever forget of Barry and Honey side by side on the floor below a railing that ran around one end of the pool.

below a railing that ran around one end of the pool. And their necks had been secured to this railing with men's leather belts. They were dead, obviously. Barry had his legs extended forward and they were crossed at the ankles. And Honey was sort of slumped on her side. So it was a very strange scene. And of course, as you can imagine, an incredibly shocking scene. And the estate agent called 911. And from there, the police did eventually turn up.

And the rest unfolded over the remainder of that day. Over the next eight episodes, we're going to tell you a story about the mysterious deaths of Honey and Barry Sherman. We're going to dig into how the couple lived, their extraordinary wealth, how they generated it, and what it did to them, to their businesses and to their families. And why, in some ways, too much money may ultimately be what killed them. Because it isn't just what extreme wealth does for people. It's also about what it does to them. It's also about what it does to them. What kind of life do you have to live that when you're found dead,

there are multiple theories about who might have murdered you, including some involving your own family? In the years since Honey and Barry Sherman were found dead, the lack of justice has left a void that has been filled by online sleuths, investigative reporters, nosy neighbors, and conspiracy theorists. Even the Sherman's own maintenance guy has a theory. I think it goes further than just your everyday murder. I think it ties back to COVID. What do you mean? Because he's the manufacturer of the only remedy for, not remedy, but treatment for COVID.

He had a surplus. What was that? What was it? I think it's ivermectin, I think is my understanding. Oh, I see. So you think that somebody had some sense ahead of time this was happening? Yeah, it's my, again, it's my... Okay, so it just makes you nervous that you know that? There's ties to the underground world.

Somebody who's created this whole forest that we're living in right now. The conspiracies go deep. And I want to put it out there right from the get-go. We didn't approach this story with the intention of solving it. But we are going to pick through the theories that are out there.

Well, most of them. We might just leave the COVID drugs killed them theory right here. I think logic kind of breaks in a situation like this. And the other reason that there have been so many theories is nature abhors a vacuum. And, you know, in the absence of information, in the absence of arrests, in an environment, you know, in Canada where law enforcement is so incredibly allergic to providing meaningful information of any kind for any reason, people speculate and they project into that absence whatever they can come up with. And probably in the Sherman case, people

will be doing that for a very long time, unless and until there is some kind of resolution. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

I recognize those shoes. We have special shoes for you. Oh, you look good. You look so good. Thank you More special shoes for you. Oh, you look good. You look so good. Thank you. Nice to meet you. She's already, it's a podcast. We roll all the time. I'm always recording everything.

Mark Mendelson was a Toronto police officer for 28 years. For half that time, he was a homicide detective. Currently, I have a consulting company and a private investigation company. Producer Michelle Shepard and I met up with him at our offices. Mark retired from policing before the Sherman's deaths, but he knows his way around a murder investigation. So he offered to walk us through what likely happened after the bodies were discovered on December 15th.

What did you think when you first heard about it? Well, I thought what everybody else thought. You know, those magic words that were uttered by the detective who stepped outside after he'd been in the house. And, you know, I'll paraphrase, but essentially what he said was that there's no threat to public safety. I just wanted to alleviate some concerns in the neighborhood. So that's homicide detective Brendan Price outside 50 Old Colony Road,

talking to a small scrum of reporters on the night of December 15, 2017. 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. Two people are dead and the magic words, and we're not looking for any suspects, which is code word to every journalist in the world is suicide or double suicide. Or it was a murder-suicide. 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 down. I'm quite sure if that officer could walk those words back, I think they would. Because that set the tone for everything that flowed from that point on. Can you tell me what you think the cops would have seen to make them think it was a murder-suicide? I don't know what was running through their minds, and I don't know what their state of mind was. don't know what their state of mind was. I don't know what would lead them to believe that if it's accurate, what we've been told that they're both sort of hanging from their necks with a ligature from the railing in the swimming pool area, there was no rush to make a determination. And the only way you get that information is by doing interviews. You start with the people that

found the body. And I'm talking about a short period of time quickly like within hours you're you're sort of wrangling all these people the people that found the body um you know the the housekeeper the family the children and and you try and learn what the family is all about and not and you're not giving up information to them you know but it could be a simple question what's your mom's regular habit and practice when she comes home from wherever and that takes time so as you get all these little pieces of a puzzle together and put all these dots together you hope at the end of the day that the dots actually have a picture detective price never used the words murder-suicide, but the implication was clear. And the media ran with the idea that Barry killed his wife and then killed himself.

Police are calling the deaths suspicious, but they've also said they weren't looking for any suspects and that there is no danger to the public. and that there is no danger to the public. They've also said there's no evidence of any forced entry or even that anyone was in the home with the couple at the time. Some news outlets are quoting police sources saying that this is being investigated as a murder-suicide. So the kids were horrified by the idea that their father had killed their mother and killed himself, as anyone would be. This is Bloomberg reporter Matthew Campbell again.

So the very first thing they did was they put out a press release. The family statement reads, in part, We are shocked and think it's irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither the family, their friends, nor their colleagues believed to be true. Saying that they thought this was totally out of character with everything they knew about their parents and that they expected the police to do a full investigation and to not foreclose any possibilities, to not rule out that this had been a double homicide. possibilities to not rule out that this had been a double homicide.

In response, the family did something that most of us would never think to do, or could even afford to do. The day after their parents' bodies were discovered, they decided they were going to pay for their own separate investigation. They then went and hired Brian Greenspan, who, if I ever have the misfortune of being charged criminally in Canada, he's probably who I would call too. So they hired him not to defend them in the courts, because of course they weren't being charged with anything, but to represent their interests and to essentially push back on this emerging conclusion that this had been a murder-suicide.

So over the next few days, while the police were doing their work, the Sherman children were working with Brian Greenspan, putting a team together that would mirror the official investigation. That included doing a second autopsy. doing a second autopsy. The mystery is, as per normal protocol, both autopsies were done probably the next day. And they announced the cause of death at that time, I think it was manual strangulation,

or some form of that. The official cause of death was given as ligature neck compression, and Honey had injuries to her face. It was also revealed that the couple had been dead nearly 36 hours before they were discovered. But beyond that, the police didn't give much information. Nor should they, because, you know, you've got to keep things close to the vest. There's holdback evidence, things of that nature. But the family retained a forensic

pathologist, David Chason, who used to work in that office, in the coroner's office. I've done many murders with him. He's highly respected. And he came to a very different conclusion than the original pathologist did. And of course, you know what's going on in the background. You've got the chief pathologist and you've got everybody else huddling around going, OK, what do we do here? OK, we've got two divergent opinions as to what happened, both by, you know, respected and experienced pathologists. And now we've got to come up with something.

And it still took Toronto Police, I think about six weeks, before they came public and basically said, yes, we have a double murder. 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. targeted. It's unclear what went on behind the scenes. Why did the official police narrative move away from their original theory? Was there pressure from the powerful Sherman family and their famously tenacious lawyer? It certainly stands to reason that if you have a five or so week period where you think it's open and shut and you know who the murderer was and he's already dead, well, then there are lots of things you wouldn't do. There are lots of people you would not talk to, lots of documents you wouldn't pull.

And of course, I'm sure in many cases, that gap made no difference. You know, the bank records or surveillance tapes, they're still there five or six weeks later. But you have to wonder if there was evidence that could have been gathered if the police had been more aggressive about going after it sooner in the process. Brian Greenspan, the lawyer hired by the Sherman children, concluded that the original police investigation was misguided and that the Toronto Police Service, quote, conducted itself well below the standard of how a reasonable officer in a similar circumstance should have acted. Included in a long list of problems, Greenspan

and his team said that the police didn't vacuum the immediate area where the Shermans were found, maybe missing an important hair or some sort of fabric evidence. He also said that police failed to recognize that the bodies were staged and they criticized the investigators when it came to collecting fingerprints. My boss at the time had called the police just to let them know that we were there. We were in the house that day. So they didn't seem overly concerned at the time. He gave my name and all that, and nobody reached out that day. The Sherman's maintenance guy again, the one with the ivermectin theory, the one who went into the house early on the morning of December 15th, walked into the basement and went to work in a room right beside the area

where, unbeknownst to him, Honey and Barry Sherman's bodies were waiting to be discovered. How did you find out? My boss called me and says, did you hear? And I said, no, what? He says, well, you were at the Sherman's this morning and apparently they were found inside the house deceased. I'm like, house, deceased. I'm like, oh, Jesus.

From there, everything in my head started spinning, trying to think. Like I said, it just didn't feel right from the second I walked in the door. So I was like, wow. I was pretty surprised. When did you finally hear from the police? Like, several weeks. Several weeks. I mean, doesn't that seem like a long time to wait to contact somebody who was in the house the day that the bodies were found? It does make you wonder what was overlooked that night or in the days and weeks that followed the

discovery of their bodies. Especially when six weeks later, the police change their tune and announce it's a double homicide. So it is in this, this time of shifting narratives, that Honey and Barry Sherman's deaths took on a life of their own. Gossipers whispered about family conflict and fights over money. Online sleuths connected the smallest, barely visible dots to sketch out far-fetched theories. And then came the questions about Barry himself. He was described as obsessive, vengeful, and aggressively litigious. Did he take it too far with the wrong person? And what about Barry's business, generic drugs,

and his long, drawn-out, expensive fights with Big Pharma? Billions to be made and lost. Was it a business deal gone bad? Someone in the family. Maybe it was the Russian mob or even Mossad. Even the Clintons were implicated. The couple with more conspiracy theories attached to their name than the Shermans. It takes on a life. I mean, you could ask every fifth person in this city, what about Honey and Barry Sherman? And somebody's, they're going to have a theory. You go into any restaurant. I can't go anywhere. Anywhere that I go and I run into people that I know to this day, what do they always say? What do you think of the Shermans? Oh, well, here's what I heard. Okay. I know a cousin, a cousin of mine. she's a fourth cousin, but she knew somebody who used to deliver flowers there 15 years ago.

And when she stopped delivering flowers, she gave that business to another person. Amid the cacophony of voices trying to figure out this case, the cops, the private investigators, the conspiracy theorists, and, of course, the podcasters, let's add one more. The fact that there are imponderables does not prevent intelligent beings from coming to some conclusions with a high degree of confidence in their correctness, based on observations and logical deduction. This is Barry Sherman.

Well, Barry's writings, performed by actor Saul Rubinick. Saul Rubinick is a Canadian actor, best known for his roles on TV shows like Hunters and Frasier, and films like Unforgiven and True Romance. He's also Jewish, and like Honey, his parents were Holocaust survivors. He even looks a little bit like Barry. Serengeti, Tanzania, December 27, 1996. One of the things police did find when they eventually searched Barry's desk at his office

was a copy of his unfinished autobiography entitled A Legacy of Thoughts. I admit to being a workaholic. This is from the preface. This is day eight of my two-week vacation with my wife, Honey, and four children, Lauren, Jonathan, Alexandra, and Kaylin. Usually, when going on vacation, I take business files along and am in frequent contact with my office. This time, however, I took no files and have been incommunicado.

It occurred to me today that there is no better time than now to put pen to paper and begin to write a text that has been forming in my mind for some time. A legacy of thoughts was never published, maybe because it was never finished. I have always been very conscious of my personal mortality. I have enjoyed considerable success in building the Apotex group of companies, which probably will survive me.

However, memories are brief, and even should there survive some physical manifestation of my existence, my thoughts will be forever lost unless I commit them to paper. Barry's written words now survive him, and maybe in hearing how he describes his life, we can find some clues as to who ended it or why. I thus set out to write this text in the perhaps arrogant belief that what I have to say may be of use or interest to my progeny and others.

Do you have a working theory? No, I don't. Hillary Clinton? Apparently not. She's alibied. She's alibied. But I mean, everyone's going to have a theory, but they're making these decisions in a bubble. They don't have the information. They don't know the details. Yeah, Brian Greenspan put together an investigative team. $10 million reward. Have you seen anybody write a check? No. And they haven't written a check because nobody has the answer.

Or they have more money than $10 million. That's a possibility too. that's a possibility too. Coming up on the no-good, terribly kind, wonderful lives and tragic deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman. Barry didn't come from a wealthy family. He could project arrogance, but he was also humble

and he was incapable of putting on airs. This is a perfect storm of conspiracy theory. It's got all the ingredients, none of the answers, total vacuum of information. They were so shocked by the deaths and I was so shocked by the deaths. He wasn't this loving, kind person giving money away, pillar of the Jewish community. He cared about one thing, money, making lots of it, and not caring who he destroyed, who he stepped on, or who he fucked over, like me and my brothers. Michelle Shepard. Lisa Gabriel is our producer. It was executive produced by Charlie Webster, along with Lisa Gabriel and myself. Andrea Varsany is our associate producer. Our technician is Laura Antonelli. Sound design and mixing by Reza Daya. The role of Barry Sherman is played by Saul Rubinick. Stuart Cox is the executive producer for Antica. This is a Lionsgate Sound co-production

with CBC Podcasts. Lionsgate Sound, engineered by Pilgrim Media Group in collaboration with Antica Productions, exclusively for CBC.