Suspicion | The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman - S2 The Billionaire Murders | E8 Perfect Storm

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Honey and Barry Sherman had nothing on their calendar, friends were away and Barry’s life was a who’s who of suspects. He also owed a lot of money. If there ever was a perfect time to commit a horrendous murder and get away with it, this was it. This is episode eight of “The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman,” a “Suspicion” podcast probing the strange case of the famous Toronto couple who were found strangled in their north Toronto home in 2017. For five years, reporter Kevin Donovan has covered the case for the Star, fought court battles to access documents on the police investigation and the Sherman estate, and wrote a book about it. Audio Sources: I24 News, Yes TV, CityNews, Global, Murder on the Orient Express movie

It's being called Torx Storm in recorded history. Hurricane Grace is accelerating off of St. Mel Island. What's it stars no force on Earth can stop you. These storms have polired it! You're gonna run right into this thing! Are they okay? No one knows. Please God get them there.

Call it the perfect storm. That's a clip from the trailer for the movie about a powerful hurricane that battered the East Coast of the United States in 1991. Journalist Sebastian Younger, whose book The Movie was based on, coined the phrase the perfect storm to describe a rare convergence of weather patterns. It's my belief that the murders of Barian honey Sherman were the result of another kind of perfect storm. Events that came together at a key time with deadly results. There were literally people accrined hysterically, right, walked in the front door right there.

People plazzed on the stairs, people embracing each other. I mean, I could barely make my way out to chair his office. That's Jordan Berman, one of the Apatex of Ice Presidents, describing how staff took the news of Barry Sherman's death. Though Barry openly mused at how someone might kill him one day, his employees were understandably stunned. Shock.

The shock of it, how it happened, everything. People just couldn't... they couldn't fatter. They couldn't make sense of it. In this episode, I'm going to look at my theory that the killer or killers took advantage of the great turmoil in the lives of the Sherman's just before the murders. And also, how key friends of the Sherman's

were out of town at the time, and there was an absence of scheduled events. This makes me think the killers knew their schedule. I think they chose this moment because they'd have time to cover their tracks and there'd be plenty of suspects. I'd absolutely nothing to do with Harry and Honeys Deb, Nero.

I want to be done on the record. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is the billionaire murders, both in, it was so up close and personal. It wasn't like a whack job by a massage or the Russians. It was somebody who was really angry, punched honey, strangled though. I've told you how Carrie went her, Barry's cousin, believes it was murder suicide, despite the forensic evidence of double murder. Yet at one point in our first interview, Carrie changed his tune. I mean, the person who did this really hated them. I don't know if it was disgruntled

at the architects of Boyd, and it's said that Rashemak, the Rashemakos, and being born. I agree with Carrie on that point. I've never believed some international assassin flew in and murdered the Sherman's. I think it was people close to them who did it themselves. In the first part of my perfect storm theory, the killers needed a series of red herrings for police to chase. I can't think of anyone who has been more open about his hatred for Barry Sherman than Carrie Winter. And just before the murders, Barry defeated Carrie and his siblings in their long-running

lawsuit seeking a billion dollars. The judge also awarded Barry $300,000 in legal costs. That ruling came down one week before the murders. In our interviews and in his interview with police, Kerry was adamant that he didn't kill his cousin. After that, I went home, as I usually do, and I watched an episode of P.D. on your cell Netflix. I checked with someone who was at his cocaine anonymous meeting that night. The man verified Kerry's attendance.

That meeting went until about 9 p.m., and it would have taken Kerry about a half hour to get to Old Colony Road. The timing just doesn't fit. I used to think the murders took place between 9 and 11 pm, but by 2023, my investigations showed the Sherman's were likely both dead closer to 9 pm. Now, to add someone else into the suspect mix, Kerry told me that he initially suspected his own brother, Jeffrey. That's because of a thought that occurred to Kerry the night before the murders, while he was meeting with his lawyer, Brad Teplitsky, at his home. So I'm going there to sign this after Dave and I cite it,

and I'll go to leave Brad's house because I'm only there about 10 minutes. And I sit to Brad, I sit to Brad, do you think it's ever crossed Barry's mind that my brother Jeffrey could go off the deep end and kill him? I tried to talk to Jeffrey for years, and then one day, he called me up out of the blue. He wanted to talk about his relationship with Barry, how his cousin helped him start several businesses over the years.

Jeffrey didn't give me an alibi for the Wednesday night, but he said he had nothing to do with the murders. Now, Jeffrey has fallen on hard times. He's bipolar and not being able to work. His marriage broke up too. Back in 2017, he was living like a bit of a hermit in his house west of Toronto. Now he's living in a shelter. To me, the cousins are red herrings,

and a reminder that by the time of the murders, Cousin Danna was dead, and Tim, the eldest of the brothers, he never really had much involvement with Barry. To close out their part of the story, the cousins continued their legal fight long after Barry was dead, but eventually lost. And the Sherman children never asked for that $300,000 in legal costs. A labor strike is set for Israel on Sunday in response to pharmaceutical giant Teva's newly announced layoffs. The largest generic drug company in the world is planning to lay off some 1,750 people, a quarter of its Israeli staff. In the fall of 2017, months before the murders,

there was great turmoil in the generic pharmaceutical world, both at Apatex and internationally at Apatex's great rival, Teva. A downturn in generic drug prices hit Teva very hard. Teva is one of Israel's leading companies in the way General Motors once was one of America's bedrocks. Now, there's a backstory with Teva and Apatex. In the old days, Barry Sherman's only real Canadian rival was a company called Nova Farm, run by Leslie Dan, like Barry, a philanthropist businessman. Leslie sold to Teva in 2000, and the rivalry continued.

To put company size and perspective, Teva was Goliath, the biggest generic company in the world, with six times the revenue of Apatex's David. Both were fighting for market share, and behind the scenes, there was a nasty bit of litigation between Teva and Apatex, involving Barry's scenes, there was a nasty bit of litigation between Teva and Abatex involving Barry's CEO, Jeremy Desai. It is nothing.

There's nothing to talk about now. Jeremy was Barry's hand-picked CEO, a fellow scientist who bury a door. The year before the murders, Teva had alleged to the FBI that Decy and a female Teva executive had a romantic relationship and the Teva executive was emailing Decy information on a generic drug and development. The FBI investigated and no charges were ever laid. Not satisfied, Teva sued Apatex six months before the Sherman murders. Apatex and De, denied all allegations. But I know from Toronto police documents

that other execs at Apatex wanted Barry to fire to say, they'd had enough of him. Barry backed me 120% and I said, as recent as like 30 days prior to, he said, we're going, we're going all out. You go, I need your commitment over the next three to five years. Barry's unwavering support for his beleaguered CEO led to whispers in the pharma community that Barry was a quarterback of a plan to steal Teva information.

And when Barry was killed, those whispers intensified. Maybe Teva was responsible. That's when the rumors really started to spin. The Israeli drama Fouda was a Netflix hit in 2017. Fouda, which means chaos, cemented the idea that Israeli fighters are efficient, ruthless killers. I've looked into the Teva Hitman conspiracy theories, and I just don't see it. Yes, Teva didn't like Barry Sherman, and Apatex and both companies were in financial difficulty at the time, but Teva had at least eight other generic companies it was battling for market share, all much

bigger than Apatex, and their founders and CEOs were never killed. Still, there was one additional piece of the Teva Jeremy-designed puzzle that raised suspicions after the murders. So, there were certainly dramatic developments into the investigation into the death of Barry and Honey Sherman. But on top of all of that, more drama, the CEO of the company that Sherman founded, he resigned just hours ahead of the police news conference. Yeah, the timing is quite interesting.

So as you say, just about an hour before that dramatic news conference by Toronto detectives today, we got word that Jeremy D. Sy had resigned as the president and CEO of AppleTex, the generic drug company that Barry Sherman founded, the company that made him his billions of dollars. In a statement to me, AppleTex said that the resignation was effective immediately and it was for Dr. D. Sy to pursue other opportunities. Now, there's no indication that the resignation was in any way linked to the news conference today, but certainly the timing's raising eyebrows.

Jeremy was adamant in his interview with me. He resigned to pursue other interests, and there was nothing to the Teva allegation. Privately, company insiders told me that with his protector gone Jeremy was simply no longer welcome as i dug into the business affairs of bary Sherman i found other business grudges just before the murders a warning for would be lovers about a form of fraud that is breaking hearts and emptying bank accounts romant scammers start with a fake profile on a dating app or social media site. They lure these victims into believing that they have found a match online and at some point they will defraud them.

One of Barry Sherman's unusual investments was in a business created by Sean Rootenberg, a convicted fraudster who had served prison time alongside an old friend of Barry's, Myron Godly. Myron and his wife were longtime friends of the Sherman's, and he's best known as the theater and prasario, a phantom of the opera fame, who is convicted of fraud at the live-ent accounting scandal. Routenberg and Godly pitched Barry on a concept called Trivia for Good, a smartphone app that claimed to a generate revenue by pushing advertisements on the user. Unbeknownst to Barry, there never was an app. Meanwhile, Rootenberg was scamming women in what is known as romance fraud.

In the weeks before the murders, Barry went after Rootenberg in the courts, hard. The Appadex billionaire was only out about $150,000, but he wanted financial blood. This type of business deal is a sort of thing at which his good friend Fred Steiner would just shake his head. He didn't have time to spend micromanaging them, okay? And that's why he got lost.

He hurt a lot of deals too. You know, he would trust in people, put money with him. Barry gave his friend, Myron, a pass, but brought the full force of his litigation team down on Routenberg. The morning of the day, he was murdered. Barry had his lawyers file new documents against the con artist. To some media who later wrote about this case, it looked like Routenberg might have had something to do with the murders.

You know, kill Barry in retaliation. I don't think so. It's just one part of the perfect storm that made December 2017 an opportunistic time to murder the Sherman's. Routenberg, by the way, was eventually sent back to prison, six years for stealing a woman's life savings. Many of Barry's investments also left his second in command, Jack K. shaking his head. Once Barry made the decision to do A, B, or C, whether I'd get greened with A, B or C or not, he was the owner, he was the decision maker. My job was to operationalize. Whether I agreed with him or not. And my luck by choice is, we're in its hat many.

On a number of occasions, I vehemently disagree. And my wife and I had the discussion. And look, we socialized with Barry at high. And my wife would say, Barry discussion, and I looked, we socialized with Barry at Honey, and my wife would say, Barry, you're gonna force them to resign. We'll be right back. Now, something else about the days and weeks just before the murders. Even though Barry was pouring millions of dollars into schemes in the latter half of 2017, including $65 million to rescue a condo skyscraper project in Toronto run by a man named Sam

Mizrahi. He was also facing a crushing debt. Toronto Police interview December 17, 2017. Brad Crotchack interview with Detective Brandon Price, homicide unit. Barry seemed quietly, but not sad despite losing a total of about a billion dollars in lawsuits in the last three months. He was maintaining that he wasn't going to pay them and that they were financially stable. Everyone was told everything was fine. That's a statement to homicide detectives by Brad Crotchek, Barry's son-in-law, read by a voice actor.

At the time, Brad was married to Alexandra, Barry and Honey's daughter. Brad told police that Barry had recently remarked that he was in financial difficulty. As you heard in our last episode, Barry had just lost a $580 million case. It's confusing, but Barry apparently told Brad it was a billion-dollar case, and the police documents don't explain this discrepancy. No matter the amount, Barry told Brad he wasn't going to pay. But at the same time, Barry was asking his son Jonathan to take out mortgages and repay 50 to 60 million dollars to help cover this massive judgment. I'm not going to kill my dad because he needs 50 million bucks to get through a crisis.

That's a comment Jonathan Sherman made to me during an interview, read by a voice actor. Just before the murders, Barry told his son he needed money, and he was telling business associate Frank D'Angelo, who Barry had supported for so many years, that he might have to close his businesses down if the bottom line didn't approve. These are just some of the events in Barry's life that contributed to this part of the perfect storm. Just like in the movie Knives Out or the Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express, plenty of suspects to muddy the water for the real killers.

If there was a murderer, what is going on? And there was a murderer. The murderer is with us. And every one of you is a suspect. And who are you? My name is Erkule Poahoe, and I am probably the greatest detective in the world. Only Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot was not assigned to this case, not even close.

Now, the second part of my perfect storm theory relates to why I think Wednesday, December 13, 2017 was chosen for the murders. I can tell you that all of us in App Redux are thrilled chosen for the murders. That's Barry Sherman in the summer of 2017, speaking in New York to the Cooley's Anemia Foundation, a group that supports people with a fatal blood disease called thalassemia. Barian fellow Apidex scientists were being honored for developing the drug pharaprox that many say is literally a lifesaver. Now, this drug is not without controversy, and researcher Nancy Oliveieri continues to

criticize Apidex for not paying attention to side effects. That story deserves a podcast of its own, but I'm telling you about it because of how the New York visit affects the Sherman timeline. I went to New York with my wife to hear Andre Butchelly at Madison Square Gardens. Jack K is describing how what happened at that New York event in the summer of 2017. happened at that New York event in the summer of 2017, led to him being away from Toronto when Barry and Honey were murdered. He gets emotional recalling this. They raffled at the Kool-Eason Namia functioned tickets for a hundred butch all. The Swarajah. I sat at the table with honey and buried my wife and I, you know, Fernando and his wife

and my good, his wife and King time for a different action, these tickets, honey bit. She bit ex, I can't remember what it was. And nobody else was bidding. So I said to my wife, it says, bid. So whatever honey bid, we bid a pie. Nobody else bid. I thought that I could engage honey, right? And we'd raise the stakes and I'd quit. Honey dropped her hand. And Jack and his wife bought the tickets. On her own. Jack and his wife flew to New York on Wednesday, December 13.

Hours before Barry and Honey would be murdered. By the time Butchelli took the stage at Madison Square Gardens on the Thursday evening, the Sherman's had been dead for a day. Jack and Barry worked physically close to one another for more than three decades. They had a joining offices at Apatex and the connecting door was always open. Jack would have noticed Barry's absence and he says he would have sounded the alarm. And they would have known that I wasn't going to feed him. Mary Sheckman, honey's sister and best friend, left for Florida on the Thursday morning.

Like many people, she has her own theory on who was involved in the murders, and I've promised to keep that between us, though she shared her suspicions with the police. Jack and Mary were not the only close people in Bering Honey's life who were away at this time. I'm Sheila Stanley. I've been Honey Sherman's personal assistant for two years. My job includes taking care of bills, scheduling, keeping Honey's devices in line, dressing Honey for events, other random jobs.

That's a voice actor reading from Sheila Stanley's statements to police shortly after the bodies were discovered on the Friday. Sheila said she last saw Honey at 2.40pm on the Wednesday afternoon, right after Honey's massage ended. I'm usually at Old Colony from 10am till mid-afternoon, Monday to Friday. But that week, Honey had given her Thursday and Friday off. I was at home preparing for a family trip to Cuba. Thursday and Friday off. The detective asked Sheila, given that Honey had a variety of staff in and out of the house, was anybody scheduled for Thursday?

Thursdays? There's no one normally scheduled to come. The detective asked Sheila, how would someone access Honey's schedule, and the schedule for appointments at all colony? Honey didn't have a password on her phone or iPads. She kept all of her scheduled events in her Google calendar, which was linked to those devices. She liked me to print out her calendar appointments, and she kept them all clipped together with

a fat black clip, kept on her desk beside the computer. She didn't like waste, so she used paper that was already printed on one side. Let's talk about the Sherman House. You've heard how it was a beehive of activity on the Wednesday. The day the Sherman's will be murdered. The house was listed for sale. There were cleaners, painters, realtors, and a showing. Plus, a barian honey had a personal trainer at the house,

and honey had a masseuse. But nothing was booked for Thursday. That day, Sherman Realtor Elise Stern was trying to reach honey to a range of Friday showing, but her calls and emails were not returned. Others were surprised that the radio silence from barian honey, but nobody took action. Honey had a charity meeting on the Thursday morning, but when her chair in the boardroom was empty, nobody followed up. Barry's lawyer, Harry Rodomsky, also found it odd not to hear from Barry, but he didn't do anything about it.

I sent him an email on the Wednesday night just laying out some stuff that it wanted his advice. I thought it was kind of odd that I hadn't heard from him all day Thursday. And so I think I flew to Florida on Thursday night. Barry's schedule was kept by Joanne Morro, his personal assistant at Appetex. I've been told that Barry's passwords were always some version of 1, 2, 3, 4, and that was a running joke at the office and among people close to him. Joanne told me that Barry, as the boss, came and went as he pleased, and with the arrival of his daughter, Alexandra's second child, he did sometimes visit with his grandkids in the afternoon.

I know Barry would take the afternoon or a day he'd spend time with his kids, so that day when he didn't come in, yeah, it was kind of odd, but at the same time, oh no, you know what, Alex just had her other baby, the baby was only, I think, four weeks older at the time. So it wasn't really out of the norm. Jeremy Desai, the CEO of Apatex, was also wondering where Barry was that Thursday. He'd sent emails and not heard back.

That was highly unusual. Oh, he was prompt like anything. I mean, if you wrote an email at midnight, one minute past midnight, you get a response back. And that's how he elaborated. So the day passed, I got by worried because very unusual for Barry not to respond. And I told the police all this too, actually,

because they wanted to know the, you know, my views of thinking was, and I said, the last email was 8.13, and we never got a response to them on the following morning. Frank Ang said, the last email was 8.13 and we never got a response to them on the following morning. Frank D'Angelo, the businessman Barry funded, had frequent phone calls with Barry. On the Monday, Barry had sent regrets by email, saying he couldn't make Frank's Christmas lunch on the Tuesday.

Barry called Frank on the Tuesday night to apologize. Yeah, and he called me Tuesday night to apologize that he couldn't, that he didn't make it and I was bustin' his balls. It was around 10 o'clock. I said, hi Frank, it's Barry. I know it's you. And I busted his balls a little bit. I can't believe you didn't show up.

I've told you that Barry and Honey's son, Jonathan, has suspicions that Frank was somehow involved in the murders. He's told the police about his suspicions. Frank says that's ridiculous, but the police did ask him about his whereabouts on the Wednesday. He told them he worked at his bottling plant all day, then drove to his home north of Toronto, where he spent the entire evening with his partner, who is pregnant with twins. I've interviewed her and she confirms this. Frank said he also told the homicide detectives that their house has several CCTV cameras and he invited the police to have a look to confirm his story.

They never did. There's cameras, there's fucking cameras everywhere, there's ring when you walk out, when you leave, when you come in. I asked Jonathan, if he or his siblings kept in close touch with their parents. I sadly didn't. I never spoke to my mother on the phone. Maybe once a year? And my father, the same thing.

We don't have regular phone contact because I was in the office. I would see him in the office. I certainly didn't know their comings and goings. All I knew was that my dad was going to be in town on a certain date because I had my own Christmas dinner that he was going to be coming to. Every family is different, of course. But on a personal note, I do wonder if our adult children would get worried if they didn't hear back from me or my wife. I hope so.

As to Jonathan, he said he didn't have that type of relationship with his parents. The call and email logs I've been able to see do show that each of the four adult children of the Shermans reached out in some fashion during the 36-hour period between the murders and the discovery of the bodies. Jonathan sent an email Thursday asking his father if he'd come to a staff Christmas party for his storage company. Alexander sent photos of her children on Thursday by text. Friday, she tried to touch base with her parents about a planned Hanukkah dinner that was to be held that evening at her house. Intriguingly, that dinner was to have been on the Tuesday or Wednesday night, but honey changed the date to Friday.

Daughters Lauren and Kalen both called Barry on the Friday. Those show up as missed calls, and I don't have access to any messages that were left. When the Sherman children did not hear back from their parents, they took no action. I explored all of this with Jonathan. He agreed with me on one issue. The timing of the murders is key. I never knew when or where my parents were, but the killers probably did. It would be pretty simple to check all the emails and phone records to get an indication

of who was most in contact with my parents and would have known they're coming and going. It would be pretty obvious that I could not have known their schedule because we didn't talk regularly. A perfect storm. Great turmoil in Barry's life leading up to the murders and the people closest to Honey and Barry were away. I think the killers had intimate knowledge of their schedule and this gave them time to cover their tracks. In their wake, the killers left a mystery, a who done it. But they also created four new billionaires. Next time, on the final episode of the billionaire murders.

It is the last will and testament of the man at the center of one of the biggest unsolved murder cases in Canada. Recently released court documents shedding light on how Barry and Honey Sherman divided up their massive estates. The billionaire murders, the hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman, is written and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan. It was produced by Sean Pattenden, Rezue Moudar, Alexis Green, and JP Foso, additional production from Brian Bradley and Crawford Blair. Sound and music was created by Sean Paddendon. In this episode, Jonathan Sherman was voiced by Mark Ladder.

Look out for my book, The Billionaire Murders, and coming later this year, The Crave Documentary by the same name. you