Will we ever know who killed Barry and Honey Sherman?

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings It’s not an exaggeration to call it one of the most famous unsolved murders in Canadian history. Honey and Barry Sherman were found dead in their North York mansion on December 13th, 2017. Toronto Police say the investigation is still very much open and active with detectives following up leads in five different countries. Not only is the case of the Barry and Honey Sherman Murder still open reporters as well as the police are still on the story, still fighting for access to documents in court, still figuring out exactly what went wrong in the days and the weeks after the murders that left the case. So cold for the past few years. The case may be cold but not frozen. See, every time the ice starts to form, something mysterious happens, police release a grainy video of a potential suspect, or we get word that the investigation has moved overseas or someone who enters the Sherman house as it’s about to be demolished, realizes that this is not how a house about to be demolished should look and all over again, we wonder, will we ever know what really happened to Berry and Honey Sherman? Who killed them and why? And why that person or persons have been able to evade justice for five years or will the ice eventually form and leave this case frozen in time as a famous whodunit. I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Kevin Donnovan is the Chief investigative reporter at the Toronto Star. He has been reporting on the Sherman murders since they happened. He’s written a book about them called The Billionaire Murders, and now a new podcast also called The Billionaire Murders. Looks into what we know and what we’re about to find.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hey, Kevin.

Kevin Donnovan Hello. How are you?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I’m doing well. I wanna start by asking you, and we’ve talked about the Sherman case before, but this is a huge in-depth, uh, narrative project that you’re doing with the new podcast. Why is this story so compelling to be worth, uh, that kind of in-depth exploration? Why are these particular murders so?

Kevin Donnovan I think for a number of reasons. First of all, it is a whodunit, uh, for a variety of reasons. This, uh, remains, uh, unsolved, uh, by the Toronto Police, uh, the biggest police force in Canada. Related to that, the police, uh, out of the gate made a lot of serious mistakes and my last podcast looked at a, at a series of mistakes in a, in an unknown case. And this one, I wanted to examine problems in a, in a big city murder and finding very similar mistakes. And I think to knit it together in a narrative will help people understand problems we have in our, our, uh, criminal investigation system and hopefully push the needle to making them a bit better.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And just briefly as we start, who were the Shermans?

Kevin Donnovan Honey and Barry Sherman were among the most, wealthy people in Canada, Jewish philanthropists and, and philanthropists, uh, in, in non-Jewish causes as well. Barry founded Apotex in the early 1970s, a generic, pharmaceutical company. Most people in Canada, if they’ve had any pharmaceutical products, probably ended up getting generics because government love when, when, uh, those are dolled out instead of the more higher cost, brand name pharmaceutical. They, uh, were, uh, interesting people, uh, intriguing I’ve, through their, uh, my investigation come to be quite, uh, fond of things they did, but they were odd ducks for sure.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings How so?

Kevin Donnovan Well, they both drove really old cars, but they’re billionaires. Uh, Honey had a pair of, uh, workout shorts that she, uh, darned herself for 20 years because why buy a new pair of shorts?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Kevin Donnovan Money was so much a part of their life and it colored, I think everything that they did. Uh, Barry often said he liked to do two things, make money and give it away. Enter four children into this and other relatives who all enjoy the fruits of what they call the bank of Berry.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Kevin Donnovan And that caused a lot of stress. It’s interesting. I think all of us think that money solves all the problems, but from my review of the Sherman’s, uh, lives, uh, it can actually make much bigger problems.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings In a moment we’ll get into, you know, the circumstances of their deaths and the early parts of the investigation that you touched on and that they’re touching on right now in the podcast. But you mentioned this case is still unsolved. It’s been more than five years. What is the status of the case right now? What are the police doing kind of as we’re speaking?

Kevin Donnovan Well, as we’re speaking, there’s one, uh, lone detective who was working on a series of requests for international search warrants, uh, five different countries. They won’t say which ones have information that the police believe will help them. Prove a case against an individual or individuals. The police are not actively going out talking to people. They haven’t interviewed a new person for a couple of years. They are going back to some sources, uh, uh, within the family who have some information and they’re just moving forward on it. It seems for me, I mean, I’ve been at this for five years moving with glacial paste.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Will it be solved one day?

Kevin Donnovan Uh, I think so, but it’s going to take, I think somebody, uh, coming in the cold and saying, I’ve got information.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Aside from the identity of the killer or killers, what are the other huge questions, uh, that an investigation would still be trying to answer? Like, what’s in the way of making progress on this?

Kevin Donnovan Well, the, the Sherman’s bodies, uh, when discovered for reasons that I still don’t completely understand, it led police and the pathologist to think that it was a, a, a double suicide and one of the big questions for me is, is, is, is really how could you make such a big mistake, which colored the investigation for six weeks? The other question, and it goes back to money, is the police have said during a process in court that I’ve been involved in, where I’ve been asking detective questions, every six weeks about his investigation. He’s been very specific that the will, the estate of Barry and Honey Sherman, who got what, and who didn’t get what is a part, it’s embedded in the investigation. And that’s where I’m looking because the police have had ample opportunity to say, no, no, no, it’s nothing to do with, with Barry’s estate. They’ve said it has something to do with Barry’s estate. And that leads me down a whole bunch of different roads, which I’m still exploring. And, and the podcast will certainly in the later episodes, uh, really target, that would seem to narrow, uh, the list of suspects substantially. It, it does, except you have to remember a will gives money to people, in this case, the four children. Equally, there’s four kids and they split. They’re gonna split, uh, billions of dollars, uh, quarter, quarter, quarter, and quarter. There’s also who didn’t get money, and that person or persons could have a motive as well.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Let’s start with, um, the first episode of the podcast because it seems like an interesting place to start and you kind of touched on it. It’s called The Man on the Inside. Who is the man on the inside? Uh, what did he discover? Why is he important?

Kevin Donnovan The man on the inside is, uh, and calls himself Anex man. He’s an urban explorer. Uh, people in our, uh, community. You might, uh, know one and you, and you don’t know it. They like to go into abandoned houses and buildings just before demolition. And take videos and pictures. They take nothing else away. This particular one is, uh, a person who, uh, I obviously interviewed. He, uh, goes into the Sherman home just two days before it’s, it’s knocked down, it’s knocked down two, uh, years after the, uh, the, the murders took place. And he goes in and he finds a lot of interesting things that he thinks are evidence. I’ve seen his videos. Uh, his videos show that the house was still filled with all sorts of, uh, memorabilia, pictures, uh, furniture and all that went down with the, uh, demolition hammers.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Huh.

Kevin Donnovan But what he also notices is stuff that, in his words. Looks like things should have been in the Toronto Police Service, uh, evidence locker that were just left there. And that gave me a bird’s eye view. Cause of course, I’ve never been in the Sherman’s home, a bird’s eye view of mistakes, uh, that were made. Uh, and I think probably both by the police and by the private investigation team. They just didn’t do what we expect of, uh, investigators in this day. And maybe this is where we can get into a little depth.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So take me back to the day that their bodies were discovered. You know, the one mistake you’ve already mentioned is the misdiagnosis of, uh, a double suicide. But, but when you refer to the mistakes in the days afterwards, like, what are you talking about? Kind of walk me through it.

Kevin Donnovan Well, in the, the days after, the police are asking questions based on this theory of double suicide or, or murder, suicide, and are not asking people who could have done this, they’re saying, was there a health issue? Was, was there cancer? Or something like that. So that sent them down a road. Now the lead investigator on the case, she’s no longer attached to the case. She doesn’t even go to the crime scene for four days. There’s also something that I, I deal with, uh, in one of the episodes that’s, I, I can’t fault the Toronto police for, but I do fault the Ontario government. The Attorney General’s Ministry got into a deal with the Sherman Lawyers, which is the strangest deal that I’ve ever heard of. This is a homicide investigation. You know, we watch TV shows, the police go in, they get a warrant, they look at stuff.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Kevin Donnovan Police were not allowed to look at Barry Sherman’s laptop, his desk computer, his, uh, Blackberry or anything in his office for more than a month because the Sherman’s lawyers asserted privilege. And the Attorney General’s Ministry said, that’s fine. Uh, and so, It was actually up to the Sherman lawyers to decide what the police eventually saw. Police still haven’t seen everything. I, I’ve actually seen things that I don’t think the police have seen.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That sounds, you know, to a lay person, mind blowing that that could happen in not only just a murder investigation, but uh, an investigation into two incredibly wealthy philanthropists that were known all over the world, it, it shocked me that there was this actual deal and, and, and the deal, as I said, just allows the Sherman lawyers to decide what the police get to see. That was sealed from the public for a couple of years.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Huh.

Kevin Donnovan And I think it was sealed, from embarrassment of the Attorney General that they made this, this deal. And so the point of doing this podcast is, of course, the, the Sherman murders are the main focus of it, but it’s everything that happens around these complicated cases that I want to expose. I mean, as you know, that’s what we’re in the business of doing, trying to show problems so that in the future, one hopes, uh, in, in all types of investigations, uh, there’ll be fewer of these mistakes.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When you say that, uh, the urban explorer who was in the house before it was demolished, saw things, there were evidence that had been left around. Can you gimme like some concrete examples? What are we talking about?

Kevin Donnovan Uh, things like, uh, uh, diaries, uh, uh, who they were going to see just a few days before, plans for getting together, uh, with people right after, a lot of paperwork. And, and, and Barry and Honey, particularly Barry was, uh, I think it would be fair to say, was messy. He had stuff everywhere and so the Urban Explorers video shows the desk, and I would expect that desk to have removed for starters and given away to charity, but at least empty of all this paperwork, diaries, plans, nothing.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Now, let’s assume the police photographed it, but I think they should have had the originals with them. You cover a lot of investigative cases and sometimes those are murders. Like I’m not asking a rhetorical question here, but how unusual is it to just see the evidence lying?

Kevin Donnovan What I’ve done is it’s, it’s gone to, uh, you know, retired homicide in investigators, not just in Toronto, but elsewhere. And I’ve asked them, and they say that they’ve never heard of anything like this. You’re supposed to seize everything. There’s a process. Uh, there’s lots of person power, the Toronto police to do this. And another example is, the police didn’t take, uh, what’s called exclusionary, dna and fingerprints from people who would naturally have been near the Sherman’s, personal trainers, friends, family. They didn’t take that for nine months and that shows me that they were not as serious about this case as they, as they led all of us in the media to believe. Right? And, and the importance of that is, you’re in a crime scene. They’ve, they’ve been murdered in this house. So you wanna know who was in the house for the, for natural reasons. A personal trainer that morning is a good reason to be in the house. And, and this woman, you’ll hear from her in the podcast, she describes, you know, she’s touching the weights, she’s touching their, you know, bodies, helping them do various movements. They don’t show up for nine months to ask for her fingerprints.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Kevin Donnovan Uh, people who were in the Sherman’s car, Honey, loved to go away on trips with her girlfriends. And, uh, one of the neat things about Honey, uh, is that although she’s a billionaire, she drove this old car, they all pooled money for snacks on the road. Not your typical billionaire, but the, the people who were with her in the car and sharing driving duties just before the murders. They’re have never been fingerprinted. And yet I know the police, uh, have explored and are exploring a theory that somebody got into Honey’s car at, uh, the night she’s murdered. And I’ve seen pictures of the police examining her steering wheel, obviously taking fingerprints.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Shouldn’t they have taken her friend’s fingerprints to make sure they’re not gonna end up looking for them as the killers.

Kevin Donnovan It’s just, it’s a cascade of mistakes.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Listen, all I do is read crime novels, and I feel like I know that already.

Kevin Donnovan Of course you do. And that’s the, the thing is that, you know, police, when I’ve questioned them on this, they, they take the position of, well, we know how it’s done. But the other thing that I’ve learned, which was shocking to me. In businesses these days, uh, there’s processes for making sure that mistakes don’t happen again. The Toronto Police has no program like that. They have no way to audit an investigation.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Huh.

Kevin Donnovan And again, I’ve tried very hard to find examples of investigative steps they’ve taken that were great and I haven’t found any.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Just another one to um, um, sound like I’m piling on, but the, you know, a year ago we all saw the picture of the walking man that the police believe is a killer or one of the killers, right? Police don’t release that image for four years and they release it, asking the public, Hey, do you know this guy?

Kevin Donnovan Yeah.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings It’s been more than five years you’ve been on this investigation, um, the whole time. I guess I’m wondering, how is the flow of information after all this time? I know there was a ton of reporting at first. You’ve stayed on it, there were tips back then. Are you still getting tips now and where are they leading you?

Kevin Donnovan I continue to get tips. I, I got one this morning that I’ve gotta have a phone call with person who used to work at Apotex who wants to tell me something. I, I check them all out. The analogy I have used is that, uh, firefighters. An alarm goes off, you have to check out the fire. Usually there’s not a fire. Usually the tips are, are, are crazy. One of my episodes deals with the, the Clinton Conspiracy Theory that the Clintons were somehow involved in this. That one is pretty easy to dismiss, but what I’m trying to do is gather all the information and I suspect the police are doing the same thing. I, I think you have to listen to everybody and, and see where it goes because you know, you never know.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You don’t want to give away the upcoming episodes of the podcast just yet, but what are listeners, especially those who are really interested in this case and who have been following your reporting in the Star, what are they gonna learn that they maybe haven’t learned, uh, from your reporting up to this point?

Kevin Donnovan Well, For starters, they’ll hear the voices of people that I’ve interviewed, you know, because there’s, as you well know, a little bit more space, uh, uh, on the airwaves than in, in a, in a daily newspaper. You’ll hear more context, uh, and, and, you know, certainly more, more theories from people of what they think happened. My book came out in 2019, and I know so much more now. Recently I’ve seen the crime scene photos, so there’ll be an episode where I, I really, it’s not for the squeamish, but I’ll really dig into what the actual scene was, and I think more importantly, the movements of the Shermans just before and the movements of other people just after the murders. So it’s that sort of information where, I mean, I’m, I’m developing new information all the time. And so once they get to the eight episodes of the podcast and there are four behind the scenes episodes, they’ll have a, I think, a quite a, a rich understanding of, of literally everything I know.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Last question is what’s gonna happen now?You know, you mentioned right off the top that you think eventually this case will get solved. What do you expect to see in the coming months or given the timeline of this maybe years?

Kevin Donnovan Well, I’m always expecting an email alert from the Toronto Police Service, a press conference update coming from on the Sherman case. Uh, that hasn’t happened yet. I’ll be back in court in three months. Uh, questioning the detective again and, and what I’m hoping to find out is, What’s going on in these five countries that the police, uh, are pursuing information in? I, I think that’s the key thing, that that’s the only investigative avenue the police have right now. And it’s, it’s, I think it’s financial information. I speculate it’s, uh, that they believe that somebody was, was paid either in, uh, in money or in some sort of, uh, you know, let’s say property, something like that. A person who was involved in, in the killings. So that’s, that’s what I’m targeting in right now. From where I, I’m looking, there’s nothing else that the police are focusing on in this case, except that international attempt, uh, at gathering new information.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Kevin, thanks for this. Thanks for your work on, uh, this investigation and looking forward to listening to the rest of the podcast.

Kevin Donnovan Thanks for having me on.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Kevin Donnovan, the Chief Investigative Reporter at the Toronto Star and the host of the Billionaire Murders, which you can find, as you well know, wherever you get your podcasts. That was the big story. Also available wherever you get podcasts, and of course, At the Big Story podcast.ca, talk to us on Twitter at the Big story fpn. Call Us. Leave a voicemail, (416) 935-5935 or email us hello at the Big story podcast.ca. If you want to listen to this podcast on a smart speaker, you can just ask it to play The Big Story podcast. If you want to listen to this podcast without advertising, you can subscribe for a bargain price by going to Apple Podcasts and select. The big story. Plus, thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Have a great weekend. We’ve got something extra in store for you tomorrow, and then we’ll talk Monday.