ALSO BY KEVIN DONOVAN
Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation
The Dead Times
Crime Story, The Hunt for the Body Parts Killer
(co-author Nicholas Pron)
VIKING
an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
Canada • USA • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
First published 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Kevin Donovan
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: The billionaire murders / Kevin Donovan.
Names: Donovan, Kevin, 1962- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189054212 | Canadiana (ebook) 20189054220 | ISBN 9780735237032 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735237049 (HTML)
Subjects: LCSH: Sherman, Barry, 1942-2017. | LCSH: Sherman, Barry, 1942-2017—Death and burial. | LCSH: Sherman, Honey, 1948-2017. | LCSH: Sherman, Honey, 1948-2017—Death and burial. | LCSH: Murder—Investigation—Ontario—Toronto. | LCSH: Philanthropists—Ontario—Toronto—Biography. | LCSH: Businesspeople—Ontario—Toronto—Biography. | LCSH: Pharmaceutical industry—Ontario—Toronto. | LCSH: Murder victims—Ontario—Toronto—Biography.
Classification: LCC HV6535.C33 T67 2019 | DDC 364.152/309713541—dc23
Cover and book design by Leah Springate
Cover images: (houses) Rick Madonik/Contributor/Getty Images; (sky) Markus
Gjengarr/Unsplash
v5.3.2
a
To Michael Cooke and John Honderich for giving me the assignment, and to Bert Bruser for making sure it was done right.
And to my wife, Kelly Smith, for laser focus and tough questions every step of the way.
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Kevin Donovan
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
1 Wrong Turn
2 Being Barry
3 Clues
4 Finding Honey
5 The First 48
6 Beginnings
7 The Trail
8 Make a Bit of Money
9 Family Matters
10 Building a Bigger Empire
11 King and Queen
12 Risky Business
13 Working Theory
14 The Day Of
15 Duelling Investigations
16 The Most Likely Scenario
17 Aftermath
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Photo Insert
PROLOGUE
IN THE YEAR LEADING UP TO HIS DEATH, Barry Sherman was consumed by one thought. What if he did not have enough time? Enough time to do everything he wanted to do in life. At seventy-five, he had already accomplished a great deal. He had built a generic drug empire, faced countless critics, and won more battles than he’d lost. He’d amassed a personal fortune approaching $5 billion. Still, he drove an older car, spent more hours at work than he needed to, and was perpetually unsettled. There was no God, of that he was certain, no afterlife. Consciousness ended with the grave. And so, every day, he did the one thing that was sure to make him happy. He worked.
It had always been that way. Outsiders, even friends who knew him well, were perplexed by Barry Sherman. For most people, if you earned that kind of money, you were entitled to spend it on items that made life more fun. But that was not something Barry Sherman did well. His contemporaries in the pharmaceutical world made their millions and accumulated—deservedly, most would say—the trappings of wealth: fine cars, first-class travel, a mansion in the city, and a cottage on a lake. Jack Kay, Sherman’s longtime second-in-command, drove an X-class Mercedes-Benz. At their offices at the Toronto headquarters of Apotex, immediately to the right of the front door, were two named parking spots, Barry Sherman’s and Jack Kay’s. Barry’s rusting convertible was a stark contrast to Kay’s gleaming Benz.
“Jack, don’t you worry about what our employees will think?” Sherman asked his friend on many occasions. “They work so hard, and while they’re well paid, they don’t make what it would take to afford that kind of car. I worry about what they would think.”
Kay would just shake his head.
What Sherman did do with many of his millions was give it away to causes he or his wife, Honey, deemed worthy. He made the money; Honey ensured it went to the right places, where the impact would be the greatest. Both were tireless fundraisers. Their four children, cousins, extended family, and close friends were also the beneficiaries of the Sherman family wealth, though it became a sore point at times when the children and other family members asked for too much. And their house was not a happy home—one parent harsh and critical, the other soft and patient.
This is a book about the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman and the twists and turns of the police and private investigations. But it is also a book about their lives, stretching back to grade school and through the successes and failures of growing an empire and raising a family. Creating a full portrait has been hampered by the secrecy surrounding the investigations into their deaths, and even more so by the belief of their family and some friends that the Sherman laundry, dirty or clean, should remain unaired. Another factor that played in the minds of many was their personal safety. With the killer or killers at large, there was real fear among family, friends, and business associates that they would strike again. Being linked to the Shermans when they were alive was something to which many aspired. In death, there was a risk.
The bizarre circumstances of their deaths would make headlines around the world. Plausible theories and wild speculations circulated in print and online, as police, private detectives, and forensic experts conducted their investigations. Was it a business deal gone wrong? International assassins, who flew in and out of Toronto after staging a macabre scene to buy time? Or was it a simpler, more commonplace killing, involving someone they knew?
ONE
WRONG TURN
ON THE MORNING OF FRIDAY, December 15, 2017, family, friends, and colleagues of Barry and Honey Sherman woke, shook off sleep, and set about their normal routines. But for some, a nagging thought persisted. Something was amiss. An email not returned, an empty desk in the executive office, a vacant seat at a charity boardroom table. At 50 Old Colony Road, in Toronto’s suburban North York, snow was softly dusting the ground, melting quickly on the heated driveway and obscuring any footprints that may have been made on the front lawn or unheated steps over the previous two days. It had been cold, ten degrees below freezing, and as the sun rose behind clouds, it promised to be another grey, wintry day in Canada’s biggest city. Many of the people who owned homes on the street had already flown south to escape the cold weather, so it was not unusual at this time of year for a house in the neighbourhood to be quiet. At the rear of the house was an outdoor pool, long closed for the season, a tennis court surrounded by a fence, and two patios. In a basement underneath the tennis court, stretching north on the property, was a lap pool rarely used by the homeowners. In front of the house, one vehicle was parked on
the circular driveway, a light gold Lexus SUV that was ten years old. Judging by the snow lining its fenders and windows, it had been there at least overnight. Beside it, on the left, was a long bed of snowball hydrangeas, their withered brown flower heads perked up by little hats of fresh snow. A ramp to the right of the Lexus led down to a closed garage door that opened into a six-car underground garage nestled in the basement of the house with utility and recreation rooms on the ends closest to the road, and the lap pool at the far north end.
At 8:30 A.M., two people arrived on a clockwork schedule: a cleaning lady on her regular Friday visit, and a woman who came twice a week to water the plants in the home. The cleaning lady parked in the centre of the circular drive. The woman who came to water the plants trudged along the street, passing the large For Sale sign at the curb. The house had been on the market three weeks with an asking price of $6.9 million. Just the day before, a Toronto magazine had revealed publicly for the first time that the property was for sale: “Pharma Titan Barry Sherman is selling his modern North York mansion.” Inside 50 Old Colony, the woman watering the orchids and other plants filled her can and went from room to room. The cleaning lady got busy as well. Hanukkah had begun the previous Tuesday evening and included in her assigned duties today was helping Honey prepare potato latkes, which she would cook later that day at the home of one of the Sherman children. The main floor was 3,600 square feet, anchored by a grand entrance topped with a chandelier and a curved staircase heading up to the second floor. The six-bedroom house, including the expansive lower level, was well over 12,000 square feet in total.
Both women began their chores on the main floor. While they were working, a phone rang. The cleaning lady followed the sound into a powder room, where she found an iPhone lying on the tiled floor. By the time she picked up the phone it had stopped ringing. When she moved upstairs, she noticed that the bed in the master bedroom had not been slept in and that the room was unusually tidy. Normally, on cleaning day, the bed was unmade and clothes from the night before were casually strewn on the bed or a chair. The cleaning lady busied herself dusting surfaces and picture frames.
Around 10 A.M., Elise Stern arrived. Dark-haired, with a thin, angular face, Stern was a twenty-year veteran real estate agent who shared the listing for the house with Judi Gottlieb, who was the senior realtor on the file. Just the other day, Gottlieb had shown the house to two men who struck her as odd ducks. But in her business you met all kinds. Gottlieb and her husband were now in Florida on vacation, and in her place Stern was showing the house today. Gottlieb was a longtime friend of the Shermans and had travelled with Honey internationally, including an unforgettable visit to India. Elise Stern was involved because she was close friends with Honey Sherman’s sister, Mary Shechtman, who helped her wealthy older sister with all of her real estate transactions. There was some confusion over whether it was okay to have a showing today. Both Stern and Shechtman had tried to reach the Shermans that morning to make sure it was all right, but they’d had no luck. A couple, a man and woman, were interested in the property, and Stern decided she would take a chance on bringing them to the house. She ushered them in the front door along with their agent.
The Old Colony Road property was purchased as a building lot by Barry and Honey Sherman in 1985, and they set about constructing what in its day was a spectacular home that soon had its own story to tell. The story involved a protracted trip through the courts—something not uncommon for the Shermans—with the Shermans alleging poor building practices on the part of the contractors and emerging as winners, recouping most of the money they had spent to build the house. Now, after many years, the Shermans were moving to an even nicer address, closer to growing grandchildren, on a large pie-shaped lot in Forest Hill, one of Toronto’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, and a house—complete with a retractable roof over one portion—that would easily cost $30 million or more to build, decorate and furnish.
A short online item in Toronto Life magazine announcing that the Sherman home on Old Colony was on the market described the thirty-year-old property as a “poured-concrete colossus” and noted the extensive use of opaque glass block throughout, a popular building material in the 1980s that let light into private spaces. Still lovely, and immaculately kept, it was nevertheless dated. With the modern penchant of knocking down houses and building new ones, the agents knew they would need just the right purchaser. Then again, the lot was large enough and well located and a builder might want to tear the home down and start from scratch. The area, inhabited predominantly by Jewish families for decades, was now home to a growing number of Chinese and Russian families.
As the snow continued to fall, the agents and clients toured the upper two floors, with Elise Stern pointing out the features: the expansive master bedroom with a section dedicated to gym equipment and a large sitting area with couches, television, and fireplace; the spiral staircase that allowed residents to go from the master bedroom and sitting area on the second floor to the basement; the marble bathrooms and Jacuzzi tubs; the five other bedrooms; the many nooks and crannies for a family to enjoy. The owners raised four children in the house, and Stern showed off all the room for spreading out.
The tour continued back on the main floor: a large kitchen that could certainly use updating but had been ground zero for many an event; the spacious dining room, where a future prime minister had dined not too long before; bathrooms big and small. Then Stern led them down to the lower level using the spiral staircase. At the bottom, they passed a sheet metal art installation depicting a life-sized woman leading a sheep by a rope around its neck. Stern walked ahead of the agent and his clients. The lower floor was much bigger than the other levels, its footprint extending under the tennis court out back. Stern led the way down a wide hallway lined by glass block, the garage to their right, and storage, bathroom, and a large cedar sauna to their left. She stooped to pick up some stapled-together pages from the tiled floor. That was odd, she thought. It was a home inspection report for 50 Old Colony. Someone must have dropped it coming in from the garage. Stern continued to a locked glass door at the end of the hallway, pressed a red safety button at shoulder height to release a magnetic lock, and walked in, outlining as she did so the features of the lap pool they were about to see.
Stern stopped abruptly, not letting the clients advance. “Oh, I am so sorry,” she said, then turned suddenly and pushed the small group back. “They are doing…yoga. We’ll come back.” In an instant, Stern’s eyes had swept the rectangular room. She had taken in the strange tableau and reacted.
In one of the rooms upstairs, the Shermans had another art installation, this one of two life-sized human figures, male and female. Both Stern and Gottlieb had found it unusual, but just as clients viewing a home could sometimes be different, so too could the homeowners. Real estate agents, successful ones, learned not to judge. In Stern’s quick look into the pool room, it seemed like there was a similar art installation positioned by the pool. Then her brain caught up, adrenalin surged, and her heart beat faster. She apologized and said they could all view the pool room at a later date if there was interest. Still, as she related to the Sherman children later, at that moment she wondered if the Sherman couple were performing some sort of odd meditation.
Trying not to appear overly rushed, Stern escorted the clients and their agent upstairs. They were upset at being told to leave so quickly. The agent in particular was angry. He would later tell a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter that he initially thought what he saw in his brief glance into the room was something left over from Halloween and that his clients, from mainland China, were superstitious and considered the experience a “bad omen.” Stern calmed the agent and his clients down, chatted with them for a few minutes, made sure they had a copy of the listing, shook hands, and said goodbye. She then called to the cleaning lady and the woman watering the plants. The cleaning lady, who occasionally helped Honey Sherman in the kitchen, was getting the fl
our, potatoes and other supplies ready to assist Honey with their Friday morning cooking plan. Something was off, Stern told the two women, the image of what she had glimpsed so briefly now coalescing in her mind. Not an art installation, she thought. Not a Halloween display. Not meditation.
Stern asked the cleaning lady to go down and look into the pool room. She came back a few minutes later, shaken. She had difficulty speaking. “Call the police,” she stammered, and she described what she had seen. Stern did not immediately call the police. Instead, she called Mary Shechtman in Florida, who told Stern to call the police. Then Shechtman hung up and started dialing numbers for the Sherman children, getting through first to Jonathon Sherman, Barry and Honey’s son. Finally, after a delay of almost ninety minutes from the discovery of the bodies, a call was made to the Toronto Police 911 system from the house on Old Colony Road. Police records show it coming in at 11:43 A.M. Within one minute, police were en route, along with two paramedic crews and firefighters. Two officers and the paramedics entered the front door, passed under the chandelier, and quickly tramped down to the pool area. As first responders, their job was to save lives, and no care was taken to preserve the scene.
Barry Sherman, multi-billionaire founder of Apotex and well-known philanthropist, was in a seated position, legs outstretched, the right leg crossed neatly over the left, his back to the lap pool. He was wearing his glasses, perched undisturbed on his nose. His bomber-style jacket was pulled slightly off his shoulders and down, which held his arms at his sides. Beside him, Honey, his wife of forty-seven years, known as the “queen” of Toronto’s Jewish community, was in a similar position, the light coat she wore also pulled off her shoulders, holding her hands at her sides. They were both VSA, paramedic and police code for “vital signs absent.” A quick estimate by the paramedics suggested the couple had been dead for at least a day if not more. Rigor mortis, the condition where the muscles stiffen after death, had passed, and the limbs were relaxed and limp. The reason they were still in a sitting position and had not slumped over or tipped back into the pool was that each of the Shermans had a man’s leather belt around their neck that was tied above their head to the three-foot-high stainless steel railing around the end of the lap pool. Both were fully dressed, their coats over top of clothes they had worn that day. Barry’s face was untouched; Honey’s was damaged, but by what was unclear.
The Billionaire Murders Page 1
