The Billionaire Murders

by Kevin Donovan

  It was Canadian Conservative senator Linda Frum, a friend of the Shermans, who first provided me with a detailed interview. Then Frum and my own friend Bonnie Druxerman convinced two ladies known as the “golf girls” to speak to me. They were among Honey’s closest friends, and all of a sudden the stories and laughs and keen insights tumbled out. After ultimately spending many hours speaking to numerous confidants, including Honey’s best girlfriend, Bryna Steiner (formerly Fishman), I have decided the initial reluctance of some to speak was born out of a fear that, by talking about Honey Sherman in detail, the truth would come out: that she was a very real and quite normal person, a billionaire who kept a cheap cooked chicken from Loblaws and a Costco jar of Moishes pickles in the refrigerator to snack on; a mother who had difficult relationships with her children; a golfer who would bang her club when she had a bad shot; and a friend to many who, despite her incredible network and tireless efforts in the charitable world and her own generosity to her friends, was always worried she would be left out. “Please include me,” she would say.

  * * *

  —

  The decade-old Lexus SUV headed south on Interstate 79. Honey Sherman, feet in sandals because they were less painful than shoes, had the pedal to the floor. Which was surprising to her friends Dahlia Solomon, in the passenger seat, and Anita Franklin, in the back seat with three sets of golf clubs and Sherman’s giant suitcase pressed against her. Wedged between the seats was a large green box of Nature Valley granola bars. Whether in Toronto or on the road, Sherman always travelled with a box in the car, to munch on when she was driving and to hand out to people begging at stoplights. It was surprising how fast she was driving that day, because not far back they had been stopped by a state trooper and given a speeding ticket. Sherman was still chuckling over that episode. The trooper was very short. There was some debate in the car over his precise dimensions, but it was generally agreed he barely topped five feet, and it was comical to see him staring up at them through the open window. This was not Sherman’s first speeding ticket, and it was not their first golf trip.

  “Are we going to stop?” Solomon asked.

  “No,” said Sherman, smiling.

  Franklin stayed silent. She knew better than to get involved.

  The destination was Kiawah Island Golf Resort, in South Carolina, just south of Charleston. Home to some of America’s top public golf courses, with dramatic views of the coastline. It’s an island separated from the mainland by the Kiawah River, and inland are meandering lagoons and salt marshlands. Bald eagles soar above, bobcats roam the wetlands, and, offshore, dolphins play. On some holes, golfers have to be careful not to drive the ball into the giant water hazard: the Atlantic Ocean. Door to door from Toronto to Kiawah, it is eighteen hours of straight driving. Franklin does not drive on the highway. That left Sherman and Solomon to share the task, with Sherman insisting on doing most of it.

  The three women met when their kids were little. Franklin had actually known Sherman when they were both at the University of Toronto, but Franklin found her too loud and their friendship did not click. It was not until they found each other again in the late 1970s that they became close. Sherman, Solomon, and Franklin each had at least one child of roughly the same age, and the carpooling needs of a busy schedule drew them together, either driving to Hebrew school or to after-school sports, dance, or musical activities. When the kids were still small, they all travelled as families together, taking ski trips and visits to Florida and going to the beach in the summer. Once the children were adults, Sherman, Solomon, and Franklin began taking golf trips on their own, often two or three a year. This November trip to Kiawah would be their last trip as a threesome; they returned to Toronto just over a month before the Shermans died.

  There was a chance Sherman might have to leave her friends early, as Honey and Barry’s daughter Alex was expecting her second child any day. Sherman said they would be fine; the baby was not due until several days after their planned return. If they received word the baby was coming earlier, Sherman would fly back from Charleston and Solomon would drive back with Franklin. Their relaxed conversation about that issue and many more was typical for three good friends on a road trip. The Shermans were millionaires when the three ladies met, then became billionaires. But Solomon and Franklin said you would never know it, the way Honey acted. “She was just a regular girl,” Franklin says.

  The trip began on November 5, 2017. Sherman picked each of them up before 9 A.M., remarkably early, given her track record. Her SUV had recently received extensive repairs. While driving back from a trip north of Toronto a few months before—Honey at the wheel, Barry in the passenger seat—they hit a deer. Many of their friends, including Bryna and Fred Steiner, suggested that Honey get a new vehicle. She did a lot of driving, and after all, she could afford whatever type of car she wanted. As she often did, Honey delegated the trip to the repair shop to Allen Shechtman, her sister’s husband. After Honey paid the $5,000 repair bill, she proudly showed the Lexus off to her friends. “Good as new,” she told the golf girls. As they always did on a trip, each woman put $200 in a kitty for incidentals like lunch and coffee on the drive down. Sherman driving, they headed south, through Buffalo and on to South Carolina. Sherman did not like to stop, and if they did, it wasn’t for long. Conversation included their children, their husbands, their next trip to Pebble Beach, previous trips, including a golf expedition to Ireland, and a deep discussion of trade issues between Canada and the United States. When any issue was broached by her friends, Honey would drill down on the subject, asking questions about the topic and what her trip mates thought of the issue. Music was rarely played; it just got in the way of the conversation among the three friends, who referred to themselves as Thelma, Thelma, and Louise, a nod to the road trip movie Thelma and Louise. They checked out one discount mall on the way, tried on a few shirts, and each bought something, because, they all agreed, this was what you did on a road trip when you passed a mall.

  “We were brutally honest with each other,” Franklin notes. Sherman had a habit of insisting her girlfriends buy clothes one size too small, and she did the same. On one of their shopping trips, there was a fierce discussion.

  “It fits!” Sherman said.

  “It doesn’t fit,” Solomon said.

  Sherman walked over and tugged at the fabric of the shirt Solomon had put on. “It fits.”

  Sherman then selected a pair of pants and tried them on.

  “Honey, it’s up your ass,” Franklin said.

  The three women roared with laughter. Sherman bought the pants. A billionaire with drawers full of brand new, never-used designer wallets at home, Sherman paid with cash from the oversized wallet she always carried: battered, brimming with receipts and notes, and held together by a thick rubber band.

  Back on the road, Franklin mentioned, inadvertently, a restaurant many kilometres ahead on the route that promised great sandwiches, and Sherman made sure they found it. “Inadvertently,” because on previous trips they had learned not to fuel their friend’s single-minded desire to seek out something new, especially a particular fast food place. A battered and fried “blooming onion” was one unhealthy treat they had tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid years before. This time, it was a sandwich joint that Sherman was set on. Four hours later she pulled to a stop at the restaurant, and while Franklin and Solomon were getting out and stretching, Sherman was already in the lineup.

  “Hello!” she said to the order taker. Her voice boomed around the small restaurant, a little raspy from her throat operation due to cancer, but still the loudest in the diner. “What do they order here the most?” The clerk mumbled something about a large sandwich that was popular. “We’ll take one. And onion rings.”

  By the time Solomon and Franklin walked in, the order was well on the way to being made. It arrived with three drinks and a large plate of onion rings. As always, Sherman had her go-to drink: Diet Coke,
with a little ice and a wedge of lemon. And they were on the road again.

  An email Sherman sent to her friends a month before the November golf trip reveals that she was, as always, the trip planner. As her friends said, the Shermans could probably have purchased the whole Kiawah Island resort, but when Honey travelled with her girlfriends, in fact when she did most things, even for charity and business, she was economical. Once, when boarding a flight, Barry and Honey walked past some Apotex executives sitting in first class. The Shermans, on their way to the economy section, went by with a smile. “I hope I can fly first class one day,” Honey joked. (They did fly first class, but usually only on overseas flights.) Her email to Franklin and Solomon before their November trip laid out in detail, virtually all in lower case, what she’d planned: “all is done—can cancel up to 1 week out—so that means this coming Monday October 30—total cost for the 3 of us including the golf (and accommodations) is $4,035 US. we r not staying at the hotel—it was far more expensive—we have a lovely 3 bedroom, 3 bath villa overlooking the ocean with a balcony—recently refurbished—full kitchen so we can grab a breakfast & a snack &/or lunch.”

  Sherman’s email sets out her plans for golf each day, plus dinners, with each paying her own way. Yes, her friends thought some of Sherman’s behaviour—ordering food for them before they sat down, for example—was a bit controlling, but over the years they had come to accept that this was just the way Honey Sherman was, and they loved her.

  They drove through rain, sleet, and snow on the northern part of the journey. November was rutting season, and they saw a lot of dead deer on the highway, particularly when the road travelled through heavily treed areas. Sherman drove very fast despite having recently struck and killed a deer and having just received a speeding ticket from a state trooper. Solomon was “shit scared” they were going to have an accident. Another of Sherman’s habits was to play “gas roulette,” seeing how long she could go after the gas gauge showed empty. At 3 A.M., just shy of their final destination, Sherman took an off ramp and pulled into a gas station to fill up before they entered the resort. Solomon emerged from the passenger seat to stretch her legs and looked at Sherman and Franklin.

  “Thelma and Thelma?” she said to them. “Next time we do this, Louise isn’t coming. I will meet you by plane.”

  They checked into their villa and, as was their practice, drew straws. Sherman, and it always seemed to happen this way, ended up with the lesser of the three rooms and settled in happily. Despite having managed to get going relatively early on day one of the trip, Sherman had not completely lost her teenage habit of sleeping in, and Franklin and Solomon knew they would be in charge of waking her up at 8 A.M. They would get up earlier and have breakfast and coffee, then one of them would go into Sherman’s room to rouse her. Sherman just poured a cup of coffee into a travel cup, grabbed a yogurt, and they would head out with their clubs for eighteen holes. At home, the three played at Oakdale Golf and Country Club, and they were perpetually trying to get better scores. Breaking a hundred was the target, although all three had surpassed that years before, after a road trip to the Peek’n Peak resort, in New York State, where they hit thousands of balls with a pro.

  On this trip they stuck to Sherman’s schedule, golfing each day and dining together at night. Sherman played each day despite her considerable physical ailments. In the preceding decade, she had pushed through throat cancer, two hip replacements, a shoulder replacement, perpetually sore feet, and severe rheumatoid arthritis that, of late, was causing painful nodules to appear near her finger and toe joints. Her friends called her “the bionic woman,” because there was so much titanium in her body and because of her incredible stamina and strength. After her cancer diagnosis in 2015, Honey drove herself to radiation appointments at the hospital. What amazed her friends during golf games was that their billionaire friend would at various points wander off into the brush or a shallow gully, pull out a plastic grocery bag, and begin collecting golf balls lost by other golfers. This despite having hundreds of brand new golf balls in her Toronto home and Florida condominium. At times, when Honey struggled to pull herself out of a gully with a bag of balls, her friends would have to give her a hand. They were used to helping her and happy to do it. On this trip as for all others, Sherman had packed too much, and due to their friend’s infirmities, Franklin and Solomon helped carry her luggage.

  “She brought fifty pairs of shoes. I am not kidding you. We told her, never again!” Solomon recalls, laughing. Adding to the weight on previous trips was the hoard of newspapers Sherman had been amassing, sections she had not had a chance to read due to her busy schedule. Her friends had recently cured her of that habit, saying it was simply too much to carry.

  There was still plenty of evidence Honey had an insatiable appetite for information and in place of the papers on this trip she talked, listened, and asked questions.

  Each night at Kiawah, the three women sat on their balcony and giggled and chatted. No alcohol. Each had a couple of Diet Cokes and ice.

  “We never ran out of things to talk about,” Franklin says.

  Their final day of golf was Friday, November 10. The plan was to put in a full round of golf, then head home. Sherman loved to golf and was frustrated she was not improving. She saw every opportunity to golf as a chance to have a better outing.

  “She was a nice golfer,” Franklin recalls. “She has limited motion, so all of her balls were straight. She never went sideways.”

  Water features were her undoing.

  Scene: A Kiawah golf course. Sherman hits a ball up and into the pond. Solomon and Franklin have just hit their balls cleanly, landing them on the fairway on the other side.

  “Goddammit,” Sherman says, hitting another, and another. “You girls are better golfers than I am.” Then another shot, and the ball is over.

  “Good shot, Honey,” Solomon calls.

  “I’ll tell you when it’s a good shot,” Sherman grumbles, before adding one of her favourite lines. “Even a blind squirrel can find a nut.”

  Further on up the course, and the three women have been joined by another golfer to make a foursome, a “nice man” who has been drinking perhaps a bit too much vodka. Franklin believes he had “a quart” in him by the time he hit his first ball. Solomon, to be polite, is chatting with him, and her voice, as booming as Sherman’s, can be heard metres away while Sherman is trying to concentrate on her putt.

  “I can’t stand that goddamn Dahlia,” Sherman says, doing her best to keep a smile off her face. She makes the short putt. In friendly golf, a “gimme” is a putt that is so close to the hole that a golfer just picks the ball up under the assumption that nobody misses a two-inch putt. Not Sherman. It slows the game, but she insists on taking every shot.

  The round over, a quick bite, and Sherman got behind the wheel of her Lexus and pointed the car north, back to Toronto and the cold of the coming winter. Solomon and Franklin had changed into warm clothes. Sherman stayed in her golf skort and had slipped on some sandals. They talked non-stop for the first few hours. Solomon recalls how Honey always had a story. If she had been to hear someone give a talk in the previous few months, she would recount what he or she had said. Or she’d give them vignettes from trips. She and Barry had met the Pope on a visit to Italy. She told them that story, adding in details of a unique bridge she saw on the trip. Or she would talk about art, Banksy and Basquiat. Never about money, or where she stayed, or what she purchased. Franklin recalls, “I would always write to Honey after a visit and say, ‘It was such a pleasure talking to you. I always learn something.’ ”

  They arrived home at 5 A.M. Solomon had driven the last five hours with her two trip mates fast asleep. Before all conversation in the car stopped at midnight, they’d discussed plans for the next trip.

  Sitting in her living room beside Franklin six months after the Shermans died, Solomon recalls a Yiddish saying: “Mann tracht und Go
tt lacht.” Translation: “Man plans and God laughs.”

  FIVE

  THE FIRST 48

  THE SECURITY CONTROL ROOM AT Apotex headquarters in Toronto was a repurposed closet—long, narrow, and windowless. Five surveillance monitors were attached to a white cinderblock wall, with cables feeding into the main computer. The view on the monitors changed frequently, recording on a computer hard drive movements in hallways, rooms where scientific studies were being carried out, the manufacturing section, where millions of doses of various drugs were made, and the executive suite from which Barry Sherman, Jack Kay, and others ran the multi-billion-dollar business. It’s a thirteen-building complex. Outdoors, cameras were trained on the parking lots and the streets around Apotex.

  Andrew Dawson’s job was to watch all the monitors in the control room and look for anything odd or unusual. Dawson was a part-time security guard working his way through university, with plans for a big career in computer science. He and other shift security workers were also under instruction to conduct hourly “wellness checks” whenever a senior executive was working late in the evening or on the weekend, dropping by the executive’s office and saying a quick hello. That was usually either Sherman on the first floor or the company president, Jeremy Desai, on the second.

  Security is important in the drug manufacturing field. There are always concerns about theft of intellectual property and the theft of products that would yield a high price on the street. At any given time, for example, Apotex has storage drums filled with $1.3-billion worth of active pharmaceutical ingredients to make painkillers—hydromorphone and other opioids—locked behind concrete-and-steel walls more than half a metre thick in the highest-security facility of its kind in Canada. The door to the main storage facility weighs 4,500 kilograms and has a fingerprint lock that only two people can open. There are also concerns of a more minor nature. Dawson had been helpful several years earlier in capturing the “fruit thief,” an Apotex employee from the pill production line who had briefly dated the Shermans’ youngest daughter and, after they broke up, was believed to have been stealing sandwiches and fruit from the executive suite refrigerator. It seemed the man had become used to using the refrigerator when he was close to the family. He was caught on a security camera and was fired.