Sources say police were working Friday night on the theory the demise of the billionaire Apotex founder and his wife, which has stunned the city and those who knew them, may have been a murder-suicide.
Sources close to the case believe Honey may have been killed in a secondary location in the $6.9-million Old Colony Rd. house and then moved to the location where she was later found with her deceased husband.
Warmington quoted someone he described as a “police source,” saying, “Forensics need to be done and post-mortems on the bodies, but at this stage it appears there was no forced entry and no evidence of anybody else in the house.”
In an explanatory piece Warmington wrote for his paper six weeks later, he told his readers how the Friday night unfolded for him, leading to the dramatic story on Saturday’s front page. In his first draft of the story, written on Friday evening, the day the Shermans were found, his planned first paragraph was “They were executed.” He had been standing outside the police tape at the Sherman house when someone he described as a “witness to the death scene” told him the Shermans both had belts wrapped around their necks and that “it was an execution.” Back at the office, Warmington pounded out his story and was about to hand it over to the copy editors when his phone rang. It was a police source. “It was not a double murder. It’s a murder-suicide, with him killing her, dragging her body to the pool, hanging it and then hanging himself,” the source said.
In a hold-the-presses moment (or, in the case of modern online journalism, a don’t-press-Send-yet moment), Warmington bought himself a few more minutes and changed his draft. In the story that went online in Saturday’s paper, he included a comment from Inspector Bryan Bott, the then head of homicide, who said, “At this time we are not searching for any suspects.” Warmington also quoted police sources saying “there was no forced entry and no evidence of anybody else in the house.” While the rest of the Toronto media described them only as “suspicious deaths” in their initial stories that Saturday morning, by the afternoon, around the time Michael Pickup was completing his second autopsy of the day, the rest of the media were falling in line with Warmington and the Sun. By late afternoon on Saturday, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, television and radio, all quoted confidential police sources saying that the active theory was murder-suicide.
Friends of the Shermans in Toronto and beyond reacted strongly. Businessman Frank D’Angelo, the flamboyant entrepreneur who had been backed by Sherman’s millions in ventures ranging from beer to movie production, told several reporters he was beyond crushed. “He was the best friend I ever had,” he told the Toronto Sun. “I don’t want to say anything until we understand what happened here. I have no way to cope to tell you how I am feeling right now.”
The Toronto Star reported comments from Sherman’s employees at Apotex: “Dr. Sherman gave his life to the singular purpose of our organization—innovating for patient affordability. Patients around the world live healthier and more fulfilled lives thanks to his life’s work, and his significant impact on healthcare and healthcare sustainability will have an enduring impact for many years to come. As employees, we are proud of his tremendous accomplishments, honored to have known him, and vow to carry on with the Apotex purpose in his honor.”
Murray Rubin, who had owned a pharmacy chain that did business with Sherman as far back as the 1970s, was asked about the possibility that it was a murder-suicide. He bluntly told The Globe and Mail, “That is impossible.”
There were others who paused and wondered. Maybe there was something to the murder-suicide story. Who knew what happened behind closed doors? Rumours flew. And unbeknownst to the Sherman family, Toronto Police began preparations to go before a judge for a search warrant to obtain medical records on Honey and Barry. Perhaps one was depressed? Or had cancer? Working on the theory of murder-suicide, police followed that sole line of inquiry, producing a sort of tunnel vision. That kind of single-focused investigation can have a negative effect on a case, because everything that is learned is viewed through that lens. And “the forty-eight-hour clock”—known in homicide investigations as the most consequential time in which to develop theories, examine clues, and seek suspects—was ticking. What was not known publicly then was that, at exactly the same time, many top officers of the Toronto homicide squad were involved in a fast-developing probe into the serial killing of gay men in Toronto by a landscaper named Bruce McArthur. The week before the Sherman deaths, detectives had a break in the case when they surreptitiously obtained photos from McArthur’s desktop computer in his apartment. The photos would be instrumental in eventually convicting him of eight murders. It is not unreasonable to conclude that from December 7, 2017, until the McArthur arrest on January 17, 2018, detectives who normally would have been part of the Sherman investigation were preoccupied with a high-stakes operation to prevent more murders. The reduced police resources meant that detectives on the Sherman case were often not homicide detectives at all but drawn from the fraud squad and other units within the large metropolitan force.
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While police assigned to the Sherman case watched over the Old Colony Road home, an uneasy and frustrated group of relatives and friends gathered late Friday afternoon at the home of Barry and Honey Sherman’s daughter Alexandra, known as Alex. People first had to comprehend the fact that the Shermans were dead, then process the rumours that grew stronger into Friday night: that police believed Barry had killed Honey then taken his own life. One person present described their emotional state as “a daze, everyone was in shock, crying and asking questions, all at the same time.”
Daughter Alex and her husband, Brad Krawczyk, lived in Forest Hill, not far from where Barry had grown up and just three blocks away from a building site where the Sherman parents were about to construct a mansion. Months later, Alex would play an important role in the search for answers in the Sherman deaths and an equally important role in the charitable affairs of her parents. But in December 2017, the thirty-one-year-old was focused on her career as a registered nurse working with the homeless, and on raising her family. She and Krawczyk, who worked for the Sherman family trust, had a four-year-old son, and weeks earlier, in November, their daughter had been born. Alex had been expecting a visit from her mother, who wanted to cook latkes for Hanukkah with her grandson—Alex and Brad’s four-year-old son—and had wondered why neither parent responded to text messages she’d sent the previous day and that morning. She learned the terrible news from her older brother, thirty-four-year-old Jonathon, who’d been told by their aunt, Honey’s sister, Mary Shechtman. A shaken Alex called their sister Kaelen and asked her to come to her house in Forest Hill. Meanwhile, Jonathon informed their sister, Lauren.
Lauren, forty-three, the oldest and unmarried, lived in Whistler, BC, but was on vacation with her son in Mexico. She made plans to return immediately. Kaelen, the youngest at twenty-eight, was in Toronto and headed over to Alex’s home. Jonathon had been in Japan with his husband, Fred, the previous week. When he’d called Alex about their parents, he told her that he’d just arrived that Friday morning at his cottage, about two-and-a-half hours northeast of Toronto. He said he would head back to Toronto. By the early evening, the three siblings had converged at Alex and Brad’s home, joining other family members and friends.
In the midst of the hubbub, longtime friends of the Sherman couple who were in attendance had quiet discussions about how the four siblings would deal with the sudden reality that they each had an equal share of their father’s fortune, estimated at roughly $4.7 billion. From conversations the Sherman friends had had with Barry and Honey over the years, they believed that none of the Sherman children were particularly good with money, though Alex had inherited their father’s dislike of ostentation and was intent on following her own distinct track in life, as separate as possible from the Sherman fortune.
The day their parents’ bodies were discovered, Kaelen had
been busy arranging an expensive “destination” wedding in Mexico for the following spring. She had met a young man on an online dating site two years earlier and they had grown very close. Kaelen called the young electrician—now working at Apotex courtesy of Barry Sherman—her “knight in shining armour.” Money was rarely withheld by Barry when the children put in their requests, which they did often. All four children were already living extremely comfortable lives, courtesy of their father’s generosity; their mother did not agree with Barry’s lavish approach towards their children. She believed it was the wrong way to raise children and secondly, she had observed over the years that Barry bestowed riches on their children and did not do the same with her. Of late, Barry was changing his approach to at least one member of their family: he told Kaelen to have repairs done on her existing car rather than buy a new one. People close to Kaelen say that Barry was displeased with a skyrocketing credit card bill his youngest had accumulated.
Friends of the Sherman couple say Lauren and Jonathon, the oldest two, had received tens of millions of dollars from Barry at an early age to invest in real estate and businesses. Lauren devoted some of her money to a children’s party event planning company but in recent years describes herself online as “an advocate of mental, physical and spiritual health” and provides yoga instruction in a small studio in her home; she also offers counselling to people suffering from trauma, depression and other mental health issues. Jonathon had been involved in several businesses and was now running a self-storage firm, apparently financed by Barry. He lived with his husband on a wooded country estate north of Toronto and, according to a family member, had a gun collection which he used for target practice, and was known as someone with much more expensive tastes than his notoriously penny-pinching father. Barry drove an old car and flew economy; Jonathon drove a Tesla and flew first class. In contrast, Alex and Kaelen had received more modest financial contributions from Barry when they turned twenty-one, plus help purchasing homes, cottages, and condominiums. Kaelen, through a series of companies headquartered at Apotex, purchased several residential properties in Toronto (each cost between $2 million and $4 million), which she rents out to tenants. Sherman friends say Barry supported Kaelen financially in this venture as a way to provide her income she could consider her own. Following university, Alex had travelled to Canada’s north to work with Indigenous people and then settled on a career as a nurse at a shelter for the homeless in Toronto. Though she and her husband had a nice house, they were not conspicuous consumers. Both drove a Toyota hybrid vehicle and tried to maintain a modest lifestyle.
It was to Alex that the family looked for strength that Friday, when news of the deaths reached them. In a time of crisis, it would have been more usual to gather at the Old Colony Road home, but that was now a crime scene, though what the crime was remained a mystery. At Alex’s house, visitors looking for distraction were happy to hold the new baby or play with the toddler, who ran around oblivious to the unfolding drama. There was discussion, which intensified each hour that weekend, over what exactly had happened. In the first few hours, with so few details available, some theorized that somehow the Sherman couple had been accidentally electrocuted near their pool. But as more details reached the family from people who had seen the bodies that morning, the conversation turned to murder, and who had done it. People’s suspicions about who had done it ranged from the Sherman cousins, angry at having lost a major lawsuit against their former benefactor, to Barry’s friend Frank D’Angelo, the latter theory being that D’Angelo and Barry Sherman had become involved with underworld people and that Barry and Honey were killed as retribution. Both theories were hotly denied in the months to come from the cousins and D’Angelo. Mourners who arrived bringing condolences and food found solace in Alex, but not in Jonathon, at least not immediately. When Jonathon and his husband Fred arrived shortly after 5 P.M., Jonathon hugged people who were waiting outside, then walked into his sister’s house and threw himself on the floor, crying, “Oh my God, oh my God.” He remained sitting on the floor and called out, “I need a drink,” say people standing nearby. A bottle of Scotch was produced. Later, Sherman friends, including Bryna Steiner, who had arrived with her husband, Fred, say Jonathon leaned against her, crying on her shoulder. Others recall that Jonathon was completely composed later in the evening. His sister, Alex, sat on the couch with her new baby, saying little for long stretches of the evening. It was clear to other mourners that, as is often the case, people grieve and deal with shock in completely different ways.
Among the mourners was Jack Kay, one of Barry Sherman’s closest friends and the man who had helped him build Apotex. Kay, who would for a time take over Apotex following Sherman’s death, had been with his wife in New York for the previous two days and had just returned to Toronto in the early evening after receiving a panicked call from Alex. Had Kay been in Toronto on Thursday, he would have noticed Sherman’s absence from the office suite they shared and most likely would have gone looking for his friend.
Not all close members of the Sherman family could be there that Friday afternoon and evening. Barry’s sister, Sandra Florence, and her husband, Mike, were at their winter home in Palm Desert, California. On hearing the news, they had rushed to get a flight back on Friday but could not get on a plane until the following day. Honey’s sister, Mary, who had been at her winter condo in Florida, arranged a private jet and flew home early Friday evening. When a car dropped her off at Alex’s home, she came in and announced her presence by yelling and crying. At one point, Mary walked up to Bryna Steiner, Honey’s oldest and dearest friend, and screamed at her, not stopping until others told her to calm down. Not normally a drinker, Mary had downed several alcoholic drinks while en route from Florida to calm her nerves, and mourners whispered to each other that she was drunk. Other than Barry, no family member was closer to Honey than Mary. Honey had looked after her when they were growing up and protected her from the wrath of their stern and unpredictable mother. Honey and Barry had financially assisted Mary and her husband, Allen, according to Sherman insiders, investing in a retail jewellery business that subsequently went bankrupt, owing Sherman and other creditors roughly $40 million; and helping the couple purchase a series of residential properties in Toronto, which Mary rented out to tenants, providing a steady source of revenue. (Mary disputed this in a July 2019 email to me in which she maintained that she invested in real estate “using my money and getting mortgages from the bank.” As well, she wrote, “I also helped Honey & Barry clean up real estate “messes” created by others so Barry would not lose money. He ended up pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars/millions, from losses he would have otherwise had. Nothing between Honey, Barry and myself was ever formal or written down. We just all contributed what we could when we could.”)
That night Mary made a claim to anyone who would listen that Honey had promised her a gift of $300 million. It was one of a series of odd statements that family members made during this understandably confusing time. Kaelen was heard to say that she was finally going to purchase the new car she wanted because her father had recently given her the okay and “that is what he wanted me to do.” Kaelen ordered a new Infiniti QX60 sedan within a week. And when she arrived the next day, daughter Lauren reportedly commented, “Well, if it had to happen, it was not the worst time in their lives to be murdered—they had finally gotten to know my son.” Among the friends who showed up to give support in those terrible first few hours were Kaelen’s fiancé and his parents. Their family had been getting to know the Shermans in advance of the spring wedding and had been expecting Barry and Honey in two days at a Sunday Hanukkah brunch at their home north of Toronto. Just a few days before, Honey had texted the fiancé’s mother to ask, “what’s the dress code?” Casual, Honey was told.
At about 8 P.M., a detective from the Toronto homicide squad arrived. He asked to speak to family, and they gathered around him in a room at the back of the house. Three siblings, Alex, Jona
thon, and Kaelen, and Honey’s sister, Mary, and Jack Kay followed the detective into the room. Mary turned around and screamed at Kay, “He said just family!” Kay, who had worked alongside Barry Sherman since the early 1980s and had a brotherly connection with the Apotex founder, was taken aback. He withdrew from the room.
The detective spoke briefly. He said he could confirm that two bodies had been found in the Old Colony Road home and that they were investigating the deaths. He said he could not tell them more at this time. Asked why he was so late in coming to speak to them, the detective, according to a family member, said that he had received the call earlier in the day but had to pick up his children from daycare and feed them before driving to Alex and Brad’s house. That admission struck family members as an indication that the police did not consider this a high priority case.
Alex, who witnessed Mary’s antics with both Bryna Steiner and Jack Kay, and heard her claim about a $300-million promise from Honey, told Mary that if she was going to stay, she would have to refrain from any outbursts as it was too upsetting, particularly with young children around. It was the beginning of a major rift in the family that would deepen over the next weeks and months. Mary was later disinvited from her niece Kaelen’s wedding and cut off from the Sherman family fortune.
The histrionics of Mary aside, what dominated the discussion among the Shermans and their friends that Friday evening were the comments they heard police make to TV cameras outside the Sherman home. While it would be hours before the bombshell newspaper reports that boldly suggested murder-suicide, there was enough in the early police comments—no forced entry, no search for suspects—to outrage the people following developments on social media, television and radio. Those who knew the Shermans well found the “no forced entry” comments particularly odd. Honey always left her side door unlocked. And as Barry’s friend Joel Ulster put it, “the ‘no forced entry’ comment is just ridiculous. How do you get in Barry and Honey’s home? You just knock on the door and they let you in, that is the kind of people they were. Nice, welcoming people.” The Sherman children, particularly Alex, wanted answers but did not know where to begin. That feeling intensified when, late on Friday evening, Alex received a call from a relative of the late Rochelle Wise. Wise and her husband, David Pichosky, were a Toronto Jewish couple who had been murdered in Florida in 2013, and the case remained unsolved. The relative of Rochelle Wise knew Alex and wanted to deliver a simple message: hire a private detective. Wise’s family had become frustrated with the efforts of the Florida police and had hired a private investigator, who had been helpful, though charges had never been laid. Alex was told the Sherman family needed to do the same to have any hope of solving the crime.
The Billionaire Murders Page 5
