The Billionaire Murders

by Kevin Donovan

  Gold suggested they concentrate on improving her balance, and Honey stood up, balancing on one leg, then the other. During the morning, the talk turned to the house plans. Working in concert with her sister, Mary, Honey had put the Old Colony Road house up for sale along with another house the Shermans had purchased and renovated in Forest Hill. That house and lot had been deemed too small for Honey’s grand vision of a mansion, and a second lot, a much larger, pie-shaped parcel just three blocks from daughter Alex and her husband, Brad, had been purchased. Ground had been broken on the new lot, and it would take two to three years to build. Now the Shermans had two houses for sale. “Whichever sells first, we will live in the other one until the new place is built,” Honey explained to Gold.

  The phone rang and Honey answered. It was a friend of the Shermans from Florida who was hoping to see them the following week. Gold was also expecting to be in Florida over the holidays, and Honey suggested they get together. Perhaps Gold could check out the home gymnasium in the Shermans’ condo and make suggestions on how to improve it? The condo had undergone a major renovation, including a $600,000 marble floor, a cost that Barry Sherman strongly objected to but agreed to pay. Once again, it raised the sore point between the couple that Honey did not have her own money.

  One of the other topics Gold and Honey Sherman discussed was the upcoming wedding of the Shermans’ youngest daughter, Kaelen, the following May. Instead of a local Toronto wedding with hundreds of guests, which Honey wanted, only family and a few of the young couple’s closest friends, and their parents’ closest friends, would be travelling to Mexico. There was tension over that, too. Honey would have preferred to throw a major Toronto wedding but had to settle for a backyard engagement party the previous summer. Kaelen was marrying an electrician, the son of an elevator repairman and a customer service manager at a home building company. There was concern in the Sherman family as to how Kaelen would handle being married to a man who had a good job but who was not rich. One sign of this was Kaelen’s request to her future in-laws that they ensure that all guests attending the wedding in Mexico provide a financial deposit in advance towards their accommodations. The family was taken aback by this, given the Sherman wealth.

  The session over, Gold said goodbye and headed downstairs. Wednesdays were almost completely devoted to Honey’s ongoing rehabilitation, and coming up the stairs was a woman who provided Honey with regular massage therapy. For the next three hours, the woman would work with Honey. The first two hours of this once-a-week massage session, Honey had told Gold, were extremely painful. Gold, massage therapists, physiotherapists, and doctors were all part of what Honey called her team. The next day Honey had an early-morning committee meeting at one of the charities she was involved with, but today was all about fitness.

  The ground floor of the Sherman household was a whirlwind of activity. Gold chatted briefly with Elise Stern, the real estate agent who shared the Sherman house listing with Judi Gottlieb, who was on holidays. Stern was preparing for the return visit that afternoon of prospective buyers, a couple who had toured the house a few days earlier. One worker was repairing a crack in the ceiling, someone else was doing painting touch-ups. Cleaners were vacuuming and wiping down surfaces. Gold walked out the side door, got into her car, and drove off. The sun was shining and she was pleased as she headed to her next client. Later, she would recall that she had rarely seen Honey and Barry so happy.

  * * *

  —

  The executive offices at Apotex were quieter than usual on Wednesday afternoon. Joanne Mauro was busy with several projects. Over the years, her duties had kept expanding. The joke, which was partially true in some respects, was that Mauro ran the company. Barry Sherman arrived in the late morning and worked in his office. Without Sherman and Kay hollering back and forth at each other through the connecting door, the atmosphere was missing its usual spark.

  Litigation continued to be a big part of day-to-day business. During the lunch hour that Wednesday, company president Jeremy Desai spoke to their in-house legal counsel about a pressing issue involving one of their many battles with a brand name company. As always, it was a “poker game,” as Desai describes it, and the Apotex lawyer wanted to know what hand to play. Desai checked to make sure Sherman was available and then arranged a 2:30 P.M. meeting in a small boardroom across from the executive offices. It was a routine meeting: two in-house lawyers, Desai, and Sherman. After an hour, a decision was made to wait until they received additional information from their regulator, Health Canada, before taking the next step. That would likely not come for a day or so. The meeting adjourned and the four men returned to their respective offices.

  Aside from his Apotex business on Wednesday, Sherman had the meeting with Honey and the architects from Brennan Custom Homes later in the day. Brennan was designing the new home in Forest Hill, and Sherman told friends he was not pleased with the estimated costs of the project. Sherman had also likely brought to the office that morning a copy of the home inspection report on Old Colony Road and let his agents know he was going to have a close look at any deficiencies it listed. He was convinced his house was worth much more than the listed price. The meeting with the architects for the new house had originally been scheduled for the day before, Tuesday, but had to be changed to accommodate everyone’s schedules. That had prevented Sherman’s annual attendance at Frank D’Angelo’s Christmas lunch on Tuesday. Sherman had told D’Angelo in advance that he would not make it, and when the Tuesday architects’ meeting was shifted to Wednesday, it was too late to get out to the lunch at Mamma D’s. He had apologized to D’Angelo Tuesday night by phone, saying he would be there next year for sure. D’Angelo recalls the late-night call from Barry. “He said he was sorry he couldn’t make it and I busted his balls for missing. He really liked those lunches.”

  At 5 P.M. on Wednesday, Honey Sherman pulled into the executive parking spot, taking Kay’s space because he was out of town. Another car, carrying two men from Brennan Homes, arrived shortly after, parking beside Desai’s Jaguar. Barry Sherman met his wife and the architects in the lobby, and they all retired to the boardroom in the executive suite.

  Anyone entering into a home design and building contract with the Shermans would have to know that they had a difficult track record with builders and architects. The first house they built, in the 1970s, resulted in Sherman suing the builder and winning back some of his costs related to what he argued were deficiencies in the project. With Old Colony Road, Sherman took the designers and builders to court, again citing deficiencies. That case took six years to wind through the court system. Sherman testified that the twelve-thousand-square-foot house was a “disaster” when they took possession. The case was settled with all but two of the contractors, and Sherman ended up recouping $2 million of the $2.3 million cost to build the home in the mid 1980s. Sherman continued court actions against the remaining two contractors, claiming they were negligent in the design of the heating and air conditioning. He ultimately lost those relatively small legal battles and had to pay $110,000 in legal costs when a judge determined that, yes, there had been negligence, but there was no proof the Shermans had suffered from the actions of the two contractors.

  The new Forest Hill house the Shermans planned to construct was sixteen thousand square feet on a twenty-five-thousand-square-foot lot, purchased in 2016. Friends of the Shermans say that the estimated cost, according to Honey, including purchase of the lot and building the mansion, was at least $30 million and likely more. Where Old Colony Road was big and comfortable, this house would be a true mansion. Work was underway on the foundation in the fall of 2017. As described by the Toronto Star’s Victoria Gibson, the planned brick and stone residence had a massive forty-one-foot-long retractable glass roof over an indoor pool, which, weather permitting, would become an outdoor pool at the flick of a switch. The home would have four very large bedrooms, a two-sided fireplace in the living room, extensive patios and garde
ns, an elevator, and a garage with a car lift so that one vehicle could be raised up and another parked beneath. Other notable features included a sizable home gym and a specially constructed paper shredder in the second-floor office. For the couple that did not like having staff and only had a cleaning lady once a week, there would be staff living quarters in the basement. With an eye to Honey’s physical limitations and the couple’s advancing age, an elevator was planned and Mary, Honey’s sister, had recently asked the father of Kaelen’s fiancé if he could install an elevator and “give Honey a good price.” Having already spent many unpaid hours fixing the dumbwaiter at Old Colony Road as a favour to his future in-laws, the fiancé’s father was surprised that Mary would think he would overcharge. “Of course I will, anything for my future family,” the man told Mary.

  That Wednesday evening, Jeremy Desai had an Apotex staff Christmas party to attend at a local restaurant. As he was heading out the door shortly after 5 P.M., he received the update from Health Canada that Apotex needed. Normally, he would have popped in to tell his boss, but he noticed Honey’s Lexus in Jack Kay’s parking spot and decided he would speak to Sherman the next day.

  The meeting with the architects ended at 6:30 P.M. Sherman ushered everyone out the door, said goodbye to Honey—who, according to a family member, went to a mall on the way home to pick up Hanukkah presents for her grandchildren—and went back to his office. Magnetic locks at Apotex activate at 5 P.M., so unless someone had a special pass, there was no way back into the building. Apotex security cameras show Honey and the architects, in separate vehicles, pulling onto the main road outside the building and heading south. Joanne Mauro had gone home, and Sherman worked on some of his projects in the quiet of the evening. It had been a busy fall, both for Apotex and some of Sherman’s other financial adventures. There was his investment in The One condominium complex to help out friend Sam Mizrahi. He had a small lawsuit in progress with a man he alleged to have scammed him out of $100,000, and examinations for discovery were upcoming. He also owed a $400 million payment to a brand-name firm due to a settlement that had been recently reached. But as Sherman told his business associates, he would live to fight another day. Most notable among his lengthy personal court actions, Sherman had finally emerged victorious from his battle with Kerry Winter and his other cousins. Jack Kay’s daughter, Katherine Kay, was his lead lawyer on that case, and Sherman was, as with all his legal cases, closely involved in coordinating tactics. Wanting to exact some form of punishment, they had asked the court to award Sherman $1 million in legal costs, but the judge reduced the amount to $300,000. The cousins were appealing, so that payout was in limbo. Still, a victory for Sherman. And capping that victory, Sherman had been informed that he was to be awarded Canada’s highest honour. Though he was a man who never seemed to boast, he wrote to Fred Steiner and Joel Ulster on November 29 that, “I was advised today by the Governor General’s office that I have been appointed to the Order of Canada, but it is confidential until announced on Dec. 29.”

  The upcoming weekend would provide a break from his many battles. Joel Ulster and Michael Hertzman were coming to Toronto for a visit. On Sunday night, a dinner at Riz restaurant in Toronto was planned to celebrate Jeff Ulster’s new venture into podcast advertising. Mark Ulster, who Sherman had assisted years before with a job at Apotex and financial support, would also be at the dinner with his wife. Jeff and his wife had extended the invitation to Barry and Honey, but as was often the case, Honey had taken over, booking her favourite restaurant and sending out emails to ensure everyone would be on time. They would be heading to the dinner at Riz immediately after a Hanukkah brunch at Kaelen’s fiancé’s parents’ house. Monday, Sherman would begin the day as usual with a training session with Denise Gold. Honey would be on her way to Florida, where Barry was planning to join her mid-week. She would have a couple of days with her sister, Mary, to catch up and gossip and discuss their various real estate situations. As friends would tell police and the media in the coming days, both Shermans had a great deal to look forward to, and much to be happy about.

  The question of happiness was something that Barry Sherman often pondered, his friends say. In his 1996 memoir, he wrote that the root of happiness comes from the instinctual desire to “eat, drink, copulate, protect ourselves and our young, and cooperate with others.” Happiness, he wrote, was best defined as the satisfaction of these drives. On two recent occasions, close friends Fred Steiner and Leslie Gales had separately commented to Sherman that he must be happy, given his many successes. To both of them, Sherman replied simply, “What is happiness?”

  At 8:13 P.M., Sherman composed an email on his desktop computer at Apotex about some routine drug matter and sent it to Jeremy Desai, copying lawyer Harry Radomski. Around 8:30 P.M., he left the office. Security cameras record him getting into his old Mustang GT, backing out of his spot, driving out onto Signet Drive, and heading south.

  * * *

  —

  Friday, December 14, shortly after 9 A.M.

  “Joanne, it’s Mary.”

  Mauro had just arrived at her desk. Honey’s sister, Mary Shechtman, was on the phone from Florida. “Have you seen Barry? I need to talk to one of them.” Shechtman, who was helping with the sale of the Shermans’ house, was trying to reach Honey about some prospective buyers. She had called and sent emails and text messages, but no luck. Honey had been scheduled the day before, Thursday, to attend a regular 8 A.M. committee meeting at the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. When her chair remained empty, nobody was particularly alarmed. Their busy benefactor likely had a doctor’s appointment or a family matter to deal with.

  “Okay,” Mauro said. “No problem. You keep trying Honey, and I will try Barry.”

  It was not unusual at all for Barry Sherman to arrive late to the office. In fact, he rarely showed up before 10:30 A.M. His absence the previous day was uncharacteristic but not completely out of the ordinary, particularly since he’d become a grandparent. Once in a while, he spent at least part of the day with daughter Alex, who had just had her second child. Alex had, on the Thursday, wondered why her parents did not respond to texts she sent with photos of their new grandchild, born just a month before. But they had been at her house the previous week, and Alex knew Honey was dropping by that Friday, so she was not overly concerned about the lack of response. In interviews later, though, both Mauro and Desai agreed it was unusual that Barry had not replied to emails sent Thursday night about Apotex business. Since Sherman had first started using a BlackBerry, many years earlier, Mauro had always known him to respond with great speed, sometimes instantly. An insomniac, he often fired off emails in the middle of the night.

  After ending her call with Shechtman, Mauro sent Sherman a short email. “Hey. How are you? Are you coming in today?”

  No reply.

  An hour later, Shechtman called back. Her voice was high-pitched and hard to understand. “Something’s happened. Something’s happened to them.”

  FIFTEEN

  DUELLING INVESTIGATIONS

  DETECTIVE KRISTIN THOMAS TURNED on the tape recorder, gave her name and badge number, and announced for the record that she was beginning an interview with Denise Gold, Sherman family friend and their personal trainer. It was Saturday, December 16, 2017. One day after the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were discovered, Toronto Police had set up a temporary investigative office at 32 Division, the closest division to the Old Colony Road home. The official autopsies had been done earlier in the day.

  “I was one of the last people to see them alive on Wednesday,” Gold told Thomas, a fraud investigator at one of the Toronto Police divisions. Thomas, like fifty other officers from various parts of the force, had been asked to help out with the Sherman investigation in the early days of the probe. Some homicide detectives who likely would have worked the Sherman case were unavailable as the investigation into serial killer Bruce McArthur came to a dramatic head. Another det
ective canvassing homes on either side of the Shermans’ house produced a card from the Toronto Police “Cold Case” squad, according to a neighbour. This, just a few days after the Sherman deaths. Gold was at the police station because earlier on Saturday, she had seen on television that police were asking the public for help in the Sherman investigation. She called the general police number and was asked to come in. Thomas was one of the detectives assigned to conduct interviews. At the time, and for the next six weeks, Toronto Police were actively probing the theory that Barry killed Honey, then killed himself.

  Gold had been with both Shermans on Wednesday, first training Barry for an hour, then Honey for two hours. She had heard the news of their deaths on Friday afternoon. The next morning, she had seen in the media a suggestion that the deaths were a murder-suicide.

  “It’s ridiculous,” Gold recalls telling Detective Thomas. “There is just no way.”

  “What was their relationship like?” the detective asked her, following up with questions about whether the couple were fighting or there were signs of tension.

  Gold said everything seemed normal that morning. In fact, she had left their house thinking both Barry and Honey “were in a really good mood.” They were chatty with each other, and she noticed that when Barry had got dressed and came to say goodbye to Honey, he strutted into the room, seemingly showing off his strength after the workout. “I can always sense tension in people,” Gold told the detective. “Not them. They were free and clear.”

  The detective asked if Barry Sherman had any marks on his wrists when Gold saw him on Wednesday. That question took her aback. Thomas provided no explanation, which is normal when police conduct an interview; they do not want to give away any information that could be spread as gossip or, in future, hurt their case. Gold told the detective she could not recall seeing any. Often, when training Barry, she used elastic latex bands, looping them on his wrists, and had him do small exercises to strengthen his arms. Wednesday, she had not used them. The detective did not ask her about Honey’s wrists. There was nothing more to the interview, no other questions that stood out to Gold. In the days and months after she was interviewed, she wondered why police had not taken her fingerprints or a DNA swab. Gold loved reading mysteries and watching detective shows on TV and had more than a passing knowledge of basic police techniques. After all, she thought, her DNA was all over the Sherman home, on the weights and other items she used to train Barry and Honey, for example. Weren’t police supposed to take DNA swabs and fingerprints from people known to have been at a crime scene so as to eliminate those people as suspects? Dahlia Solomon and Anita Franklin, who had recently been on that long golf trip with Honey, wondered the same thing. “I thought, our DNA is all over that Lexus,” Franklin recalls. The police would not begin taking any DNA or fingerprints until nine months later. In September 2018, a forensic identification officer with the Toronto Police visited Gold at home and took a DNA swab and her fingerprints.