The Unsolved Murders of Barry and Honey Sherman

Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. It's Mor-ba-dee-do. It is. What's up, Red? I'm tired. It's been a long week. Me too. It's been a very long week and it's only about to be another one. I had my first recognizable panic attack this week. Yeah, it was really funny. She was explaining something that happened and her reaction and me and Aiden were like, that's a panic attack. They said, babe, that's a panic attack. She was like, yeah, I couldn't breathe and people were talking to me and I felt like I couldn't hear them or answer them and my heart was racing and my stomach flipped. I was like, yeah, that's a panic attack. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, welcome to the club, bitch. Don't have one of those. If you get that, if you get a chance. To make that decision. You don't ever have the chance to make that decision. Don't, you know, if it's ever given to you in decision form, like, just mark no. Yeah, check the no box on that. Never, never. Like, you know how when you go to a website and it's like, accept cookies for now or never accept cookies? What do you press? Never accept the cookies here. I allow them. You always allow them? All the time. I don't always. I go back and forth. I always allow them because I just, I'm like, oh, whatever. You just want to get to where you go. What even are they? They're like. The things that give, I think they're the things that give you like targeted ads. Oh, what? I like a targeted ad. I'm pretty sure. I'm a fucking sucker for a targeted ad. These pants, targeted ad. There you go. I like that. You know what? Worth it. I'm a sucker for it on TikTok, I would say. Yeah, these are from TikTok. Yeah. The TikTok shop. I remember when I was little, Papa would always clear, he'd go, I gotta clear the cookies on the computer. Well, and you do have to do that sometimes, I think, because they can like bog down your shit. Even on my, my phone? I think. Fuck. I don't know. I'm not in the business. He's nodding. He knows. He's a younger generation who's aware. Yeah, we trust, we trust what he says about cookies. Honestly, I don't give a fuck. I know like the cookies you eat. Yeah. That's the cookie side though. I know all about those. I made my first pumpkin loaf this week, the other day, this weekend actually. I'm going to steal some of that. Yeah, it's pretty. It smelled like fall in my home, even though it was like 100,000 degrees and soupy as hell outside. Yeah, I was going to make a cinnamon pumpkin coffee cake situation. But then Drew woke up before me and he was like, "Do you want to watch Vanderpump Rules all day?" And I said, "Ooh, yeah." Oh, my God. And so I laid on my couch and I watched Vanderpump Rules. And when I say all day, we've been only watching, maybe we've had like, I don't know, like five or six watch sessions. We're on season five. Yeah, you can really bang those out, because once you start, you can't stop. I have a confession to make, Ken Todd, kind of hot. Here's the thing. I get it. I get it, because you explained, when you first said it, I said, "Huh." And then you said, when he says, "I'll knock you spark out," when somebody disrespects Lisa. That's the thing, when he looks at him, that little fucking douchebag for disrespecting his wife, and he says, "I'll knock you spark out," I said, "It got hot in my living room." I said, "Ken Todd, I get it." I get it. I said, "Lisa, baby girl, I understand." Speaking of attractive people, thank you to everyone who's been tagging me in that wicker. I'm going to tell you what the premise is right now, and you are going to say, "What?" Okay. The response to this I've seen everywhere is, "This is our fault for asking for unique movies." Okay. But he plays, it's like this lady is in- What's the genre? I don't know. Okay. You said too niche of a question. Hold on, I'm going to- I'm going to say, "This is our fault for asking for unique movies." Okay. to thank you the people who had tagged me in it and has he shown me that wonderful world this is about appreciation yeah i love you guys uh so this is an unsolved case oh remains unsolved oh this is the unsolved murders of barry and honey sherman i've heard of this case pretty recent yeah um this was in 2017 this is canada yeah this is canada yep also a quick little side note found out tim tams australian not canadian what yeah blew my mind sorry i didn't give you your due australia because i love you guys that might have been me my bad who knows we'll both take credit for it yeah but we love australia and our australian listeners but you can get tim tams in canada and you can't get them in the united states yeah so that's crazy okay australia you did your big australia you did i mean canada you've done some great shit when it comes to food don't worry about it chips yeah don't worry about that but australia gotta give you your dues for tim tams especially the caramel ones in my opinion no um well you can like what you like i'm just saying bitch why did that that had like baby mama energy she's like i don't know your life bitch it's true it felt right yeah because after a long day at work i have to come home and stick i'm under my coffee table i don't know your life bitch oh all right we're gonna so i did all right we called her a bitch and now we can you guys joined in on that everybody did too uh so let's go back here now that i've given australia their due this was on the morning of december 15th 2017 two workers arrived at the home of barry and honey sherman in north york which is a wealthy suburban neighborhood in toronto canada the two women had arrived at 8 30 in the morning every friday for years it was very normal one was there to clean their very massive 12 000 square foot house holy shit and i can't even conceive yeah and then the other came to water all the plants oh hell yeah i think there was probably a lot as they walked up the long driveway they went past a for sale sign in the yard they were selling this massive house they opened the lock box that contained the key to the front door and they entered the locked house yes inside the house looked like it always did there was no sign of any disturbances or any forced entry the two women got to work pretty quickly and they started on the main floor and as they worked the silence that was in the house which was like pretty normal you know like it's not like there was like a ton of chaos always going on in this house or anything but the silence at this point was broken because they heard the sound of ringing coming from somewhere on the first floor okay so one of the women followed the sound of the door and they entered the locked house and they entered the locked house sound to one of the bathrooms where she found an iphone lying face down on the tiled floor but by the time she picked it up the collar had hung up also spooky on the bathroom floor yeah which like she didn't think anything of it so maybe she's found something like that before or maybe okay i don't know she just put it on the counter and kept cleaning now the first sign that something wasn't quite right was in the second floor primary bedroom for as long as she had been cleaning for the shermans she said that she had come to expect a kind of messy bedroom when she arrived each week nothing crazy just like the bed unmade you know the previous day's clothing may be scattered a little bit honey i really it's so hard but on that morning the bed was made and the room was pretty neat and tidy huh so she was like whatever it's just an anomaly maybe they just decided to pick up she's like shit they're turning over yeah she was like holy shit so she turned her attention to the surface you know the surfaces in the room and started dusting and just doing that stuff now at 10 a.m real estate agent elise stern arrived the house like i said was placed on the market a few weeks earlier with an asking for help from the owner of the house and the owner of the house the listing price was 6.9 million i mean it's a 12 000 i was gonna say it's huge and elise was sharing the listing with another agent judy gottlieb everyone was super eager to sell the property obviously because that's a big commission that commission honey but the request for a showing that morning had come in at the last minute and elise hadn't been able to get a hold of barry or honey despite making several phone calls to them that morning she didn't want to miss the opportunity to put that's a hard house to sell i imagine not a lot of people are buying or in the market for a 6.9 million dollar house and elise was sharing the listing with another agent judy gottlieb and million dollar house yeah so she rolled the dice and hoped it would be acceptable to the perspective to bring the prospective buyers through that morning okay now a short time later a young couple arrived with their realtor and stern and they began the tour starting on the second floor she pointed out all the best features you know it had the typical stuff it was huge it was luxurious marble all that good stuff the first floor was equally impressive so they moved to the basement and stern continued to highlight all the unique features it had a very unique interior a very big heated garage that led out to the heated driveway there was a cedar sauna and all the storage storage areas that led to one of the home's biggest selling points a lap pool a lap pool yeah that's sick i want a sauna so badly i saunas stress me out oh bitch i i don't like being hot it just it gets everything out of you it makes me want to throw up i love it because i love to do if i go to like a spa or something i go into the sauna and then i go in the the cold pool and then i go into the hot tub wow yeah it's my it's my see that sounds like it would make me vomit really all that temperature dysregulation would fuck me up oh i love it i need to i can't it's probably like low-key not good for you i don't know like my my way but yeah i'm like doesn't that that would make me nauseous well when you go in the sauna you're like so so hot so you have to cool down but then i don't like being too cold so then i finish off in the hot tub there you go that's a little blunt yeah i would have bought it for sure yeah no for sure yeah easy yeah all cash yeah that's it when they reach the end of the hallway stern pressed the red button on the wall that disengaged the safety lock on the glass door which was just one of the many safety features built around the pool which is also good as they walked through the door elise stern stopped abruptly and she was startled because she found oh the shermans are home and so she said oh i'm so sorry and then she turned to the prospective buyers and politely ushered them out of the room and she said they're doing yoga i think we'll come back okay so elise stern had been so surprised to find them in the basement that she was too preoccupied with not intruding to notice that something was terribly wrong with the scene she had just witnessed by the pool they're doing you later she would tell the family she had initially thought the couple were quote performing some sort of odd meditation the realtor for the potential buyers had also caught a glimpse of the room and saw what he later described as quote something left over from halloween sitting by the pool two very different descriptions yeah which again like yeah very different descriptions i in that moment i don't know how you grasp what you see i don't know how they were found so yeah with the potential buyers now gone and quiet returning to the house elise's mind went back to barry and honey sherman because they kind of like ushered the so the buyers like the whole house yeah they went through the whole house holy shit and that was what was weird they were like you didn't notice us at all in the house like and then when we interrupted you like you just really didn't mind like you didn't come back out and be like oh like maybe that's why she thought they were like so transfixed yeah so maybe that's why she was like oh they must be meditating and she had told the like i guess the buyers were like a little weirded out by the whole thing so they were like oh we're just gonna leave okay so they leave it's quiet in the house again and elise's mind went back to barry and honey they were she said they were occasionally eccentric especially when it came to their taste in art and decor but in their mid-70s neither struck her as the type who would probably be into meditation or yoga like they just didn't have that vibe but she'd only caught a quick look before turning the buyers and their agent around so there was but she was like there was something about that scene that just felt wrong i didn't get a good look but like something was nagging up at me um but she couldn't put her finger on it okay now elise called out for the um the woman who was cleaning the house who was just quietly making her way through the second floor bedrooms uh and the woman came down to the second floor and she was like i don't know if you can hear me i don't know if you can hear me i don't know if you can hear me and like elise she had no idea the shermans were at home and she hadn't seen them since she and the other woman had arrived a few hours earlier so she was like they have not been upstairs in the house elise asked her to go downstairs and take a look into the pool room hoping the woman might be able to figure out what was going on or at least why something felt off to her yeah and a few minutes later the woman returned a shocked look on her face and she was visibly upset and having trouble even getting out words but eventually she managed to say call the police oh fuck so elise stern was right they were not meditating or doing yoga like her gut was telling her they were dead oh now they're this is like a real fact that like so when this happened in a um another case that i was reading about actually recently when people are confronted with incredibly tragic or like terrifying things yeah their first instinct isn't always to call the police yeah sometimes that just doesn't happen at first like in fact for you know whatever reason when elise stern picked up her phone she didn't dial 911 as the woman had asked but instead she called honey sherman's sister mary and she lived in florida and after hearing what elise had to say mary insisted she called the police immediately yeah and ultimately nearly 90 minutes passed between the discovery of the sherman's bodies and when the report was made to police okay that's a which is like a lot yeah like i can understand the initial like i've never been in the position of covering a dead body yeah well you have to think you know like calling somebody's sister and obviously reporting awful news like but yeah like that's a that's a different call than calling the calling the police well that's i think it's just like she might have been in shock she might have been just yeah you don't know you don't always act we all react differently in certain situations that's why we're always like a little on the fence about judging people like grieving and shit like because it's all a little different but 90 minutes yeah i'm like what happened there that's an hour and a half yeah that's what i don't understand and you don't really figure it out now a little before noon two toronto police officers arrived at the house along with two paramedics and a firefighter in the basement next to the pool they found the couple just as the woman upstairs said they would barry sherman was in a sitting position his legs outstretched with his right leg crossed over his left oh he was fully dressed his bomber jacket pulled down slightly in a way that would have kept his arms pinned at his side and he was still wearing his glasses so you can kind of see why maybe she did look like they were just sitting or like stretching were it not for the fact that he was very clearly dead when you came close to him one could have easily assumed that he was just sitting down resting by the pool okay now beside barry was honey sherman his wife of 47 years oh she too had her coat pulled down off her shoulders at to keep her arms to her side and unlike barry who looked completely undisturbed really honey had an injury on her face like she had been struck by something or someone yeah as far as the paramedics could tell the couple had been there for at least a day maybe more rigor mortis had already come and gone the only thing holding them in a sitting position were the leather belts wrapped around their necks i was just wondering how they were still they were secured tightly to the three foot high railing surrounding the pool so they were sitting so they were staged like they were hanged what the fuck and also wearing their jackets yeah that's so bizarre now hours later the sherman house was filled with uniformed officers detectives crime scene technicians like most of the houses on old colony road the shermans didn't have security cameras outside the pool so they were sitting outside the house which is strange yeah uh there was though a security camera in the pool room unfortunately it had never been set up so it was useless oh fuck there was also the problem of the workers who derived that morning by the time the bodies had been discovered and the police were called they had the cleaning woman had basically finished her work effectively wiping away any potential fingerprints or evidence which is not her fault that's literally her job but that's such a tragedy what a thing to you know outside of the bodies by the pool in the basement nothing about the same scene really seemed unusual outside of them right with an estimated net worth of 4.6 billion dollars holy shit barry sherman would have made a perfect target for this kind of like a robbery yeah but as far as anyone could tell nothing in the house was missing what it just doesn't sound like a robbery yeah and the the woman who was cleaning didn't remember finding anything being disturbed when she when she arrived beside the phone like and the the bedroom was not disturbed more neat and tiny or tinier than it had ever been when they arrived for work that morning the two women had found the door locked and they used the key in the lockbox to enter and for those lock boxes you have to have a code well that makes you think did somebody have that code who had the code had the code exactly the rest of the entrances were all locked and there was no sign of forced entry i fucking hate a lockbox yeah you now late that afternoon surrounded by reporters on the front lawn of the sherman house investigators gave the first of what would be many many press conferences about the case uh constable david hopkinson told reporters the circumstances of their deaths appear to be suspicious i'd say so brother wow thank you thank you for that thank you now his statement was brief i'd say so but it was followed by a second statement a few hours later this time from detective brandon price according to price he said there was no sign of forced entry and no obvious motive he said i just wanted to alleviate some concerns in the neighborhood at this point indications are that we have no outstanding suspect to be going after okay in other words the deaths may have been suspicious but investigators didn't seem to find out didn't seem to think it was a homicide maybe or maybe just that they thought it was somebody that was clearly targeting them or was like in their circle yeah now as the founder chairman and ceo of apotex inc one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in canada barry sherman had a significant public profile and the news of his death was a shock to the city's elite circles um mayor john tory told a reporter i'm shocked and heartbroken to learn that barry and honey sherman were forced to leave the city of canada and the city of canada was forced to leave found dead in their home today i've had the privilege of knowing them both well for many years they also like that's that just sounds like the sweetest couple i know barry and honey and honey who that is a really cute 47 years yeah and her name was anna but she was just called honey that's so cute now that sentiment was shared by ontario health minister eric hoskins uh he said i cannot begin to find the words to express my deep sorrow and profound sadness at the tragic loss of my dear friends barry and honey sherman but hoskins was quick to add that the public should be careful about the fact that barry and honey sherman were forced to leave the city of canada not to jump to conclusions said toronto police are investigating and i hope that investigation will be able to provide answers for all of us who are mourning this tremendous loss if this is determined to be a homicide all the identity information identifying who we found and circumstances may be released but let's say this was an accident or something then the family deserves some privacy i don't know how that would be an accident though they they they theorized pretty quickly okay in the days that followed the discussion of barry and honey sherman was discovered the press and public grew increasingly frustrated with the toronto police because they remained very tight-lipped about the investigation but sometimes that's a good thing sometimes that's a good thing i would beg to say that it's probably because he's a pharmaceutical ceo that they were being like yeah which would be frustrating you know to not know what the hell is going on yeah yeah um but they were refusing to reveal like any details and behind the scenes there was a significant contingent of the investigation who believed that while certainly suspicious looking they felt that it seemed more than likely that barry had murdered honey then killed himself but this was a murder suicide okay there was no sign of forced entry nothing appeared to be missing and it was only honey who appeared to have suffered a physical injury before death that said there was no evidence to support the murder suicide theory which is likely why investigators kept it among themselves at least for a day or so okay on december 17th an article appeared in the toronto star reporting that according to a source within the department quote toronto police are investigating the possibility that the deaths of billionaire barry sherman and his wife were a murder suicide by the end of the day the story had been picked up by other print and cable news outlets in ontario then the u.s and then everywhere that would just be such as obviously like it can happen but that would be the strangest setup for a murder suicide it would definitely be strange and they that plays into you know the doubts yeah okay yeah so there's there's a strain well and there's no evidence to support it when it comes right down to it okay and but they had nothing to go off of so they had to start somewhere it was it was irresponsible in my opinion to throw that into the news right away because if you don't have anything that says that then don't don't say that i wouldn't even say that about it but you know and interesting that it was a source within the department it's like yeah you hush hush hey you now according to the anonymous source within the toronto police the theory was that barry had strangled his wife in a rage then took his own life a notion that to everyone who knew them seemed completely absurd and impossible yeah um the sherman's children said in a statement to the press our parents shared an enthusiasm for life and commitment to their family and community totally inconsistent with the rumors regrettably circum circulated in the media as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths yeah i'd be pissed if my parents were married for 47 years and then the second they die everyone's like oh they did it to each other yeah and that's and also it's like say what you want about you know like billionaires and like we all feel a certain way and like pharmaceutical ceos and all that i we all understand that sentiment but kids they have kids and those kids don't have anything to do with anything that people might or might not have been involved in you know what i mean like that's the point that's the part that always makes me feel bad it's like the kids yeah and to have that kind of stuff being like thrown around it's like they have they're dealing with like very real emotions and you know it's like that always makes me sad for them that they don't get a say in how it's portrayed you know yeah it's it you can dehumanize people too easily yeah just like for for their sake and um the statement went on to say we are shocked and think it's irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true we urge the toronto police service to conduct a thorough intensive and objective criminal investigation and urge the media to refrain from further reporting as to the cause of these tragic tragic deaths until the investigation is complete yeah from the moment the police got to the sherman's house a few days earlier investigators appeared to treat the deaths with a pretty casual indifference that didn't match the bizarre scene in the basement because it's like that's a weird scene yeah like that's a weird scene that's one of the weirdest that we've discussed these aren't people who just got like and this is isn't to say that this is like okay or anything like that but it's like it's not a scene that they've come across very often you know like these aren't like gunshot wounds and left on the floor right which is horrific and tragic but something they have unfortunately probably seen before detectives i feel like this is something you probably haven't it's a it's a weirdly staged scene well and that's the biggest thing is the staging like they're wearing their jackets he has his legs crossed there's belts around their neck they're tied next to their pool like tied to the railing like i feel like that would just be like this is weird like isn't anybody thinking of this because if i'm like again weird things happen but if it was a murder suicide i don't think that's typically yeah what everybody's come across before and those kinds of cases yeah no matter what no matter what you feel or what you think that it's a strange scene yeah it's very strange it's so strange to me that they're still wearing their jackets i don't know why i'm so stuck on that yeah it's weird no days later the case was still being treated as a suspicious death yeah handled by officers working out of the 33rd precinct with rumors about unsupported theories being leaked to the press and maybe investigators did really believe that the sherman's death was a case of murder suicide or maybe it was just a rumor among the precinct and it had gotten out of control like we don't know as far as the family was concerned it was absolute nonsense and not a theory that they were willing to even slightly pursue yeah just days before their deaths honey had been excitedly planning a trip for the two of them to visit family in florida and they just welcomed a brand new grandchild oh oh that's far yeah as far as anyone knew they had everything to look forward to and were still completely devoted to one another after nearly five decades together yeah like it just didn't work out for them it just didn't seem like that was in the cards obviously nobody knows everything that's going on behind closed doors usually when you when you dig a little bit something that's the thing and usually you can sense a little bit of something it just didn't seem like that was in the cards at all yeah now just one day after the rumors of a murder suicide leaked several officers were sent to the medical examiner's office to be on hand during the autopsy and were expected to take notes and be ready to receive any samples or evidence now this was technically the first time this was technically the department's protocol but it was not a practice that the department had been very strict about in the past because a lot of people don't want to be at an autopsy yeah um but they definitely wanted them there for like crimes that definitely had a criminal element to it so it was a step in the right direction it was a sign that the department was starting to take the case more seriously and were open to the possibility that they had indeed been murdered now pathologist dr michael pickup was assigned to conduct both autopsies and it would be his responsibility to determine whether there was any truth to the rumors that had been circulating okay under normal circumstances such a high profile case would have been uh handed to ontario's chief pathologist who was dr michael polinen but he was unavailable so it went to his like unofficial second in command michael pickup okay uh now among the more important findings noted in pickup's report was that barry's hyode bone which was a small bone in the neck that supports the tongue and allows for swallowing it was completely intact and it was not found in the contact okay now the hyode bone is pretty fragile so in cases of violent strangulation or hanging it's pretty common for it to be broken i'm sure if you've been listening you've definitely heard that the same would be true if the individual were subjected to a quick tightening around your neck like would happen with a belt it would let your hyode hyode bone would likely break break yeah in fact cases of strangulation where the hyode bone was not broken were most often cases of suicide in which the individual slowly tightens a ligament and the hyode bone is not broken around their neck or drops for a short distance okay um sherman removed the bone and set it aside for closer inspection then he continued working his way down the body now that hyode bone that would have supported the murder suicide to be honest but the rest of barry's body did not now barry was 75 years old and he wasn't like super muscular like wasn't like you know like wasn't a gym rat that's 75 at the time investigators believe barry had quote overpowering his wife in another part of the house strangled her dragged her down a flight of stairs and positioned her beside the pool holding her in a seated position with a leather belt around her neck so if she was like dragged i feel like there would be evidence of that on her body yeah and that would have honestly been hard for a young man to do yeah like that would have taken a lot yeah considerable effort and as the autopsy went on things only got more confusing around barry's wrists there appeared to be some sort of abrasions as though his wrists had been bound with rope or something at some point before his death okay but when the bodies were discovered neither of the victims hands were bound now although the pathologist couldn't determine whether barry's wrists had been bound in front or behind his back he was fairly confident that he had indeed been bound at the wrist which further weakened the murder-suicide theory yeah now moving to honey dr pickup started at the head and began working his way down and the most notable difference between barry and honey was that like we said before she had a fresh wound on her face right before she had a fresh wound on her face right after she had been shot she had a whole bruising indicating that she died not long after she was struck uh-huh now unfortunately the pathologist was unable to figure out how she had got the injury to her face but honey's injuries were similar to her other injuries were similar to her husband's the neck muscles and thyroid cartilage had been injured in the same manner and her hyoid bone was still intact oh hers was too okay yep finally there was the cause of death it was clear from the evidence that the shermans had died of neck compression um and during that their trachea and larynx were closed off which prevents breathing although the marks on the necks match the belts found at the scene making it likely that there was that they were the murder weapon dr pickup noted that he could only speculate that the belts at the scene were the same used to kill them also while he may not have put it in his report it occurred to dr pickup that if it this was in fact a suicide it was a surprisingly elaborate one that seemed overly complicated and very difficult right and again the wrist the binding of the wrist just made it no it wasn't that's too weird now although it would be several more weeks before the sherman's deaths were classified as homicides detectives from the toronto homicide squad were added to the investigation right after the autopsy in the absence of evidence or leads the detectives turned to you know personal histories hoping they could find someone there yeah now barry sherman was born in toronto ontario on february 25th 1942 he was the son of herbert and sarah sherman uh he actually had an unfinished memoir that he was writing oh um and he had started writing it in 1996 and he wrote his quote first 10 years were unremarkable he grew in forest hill and grew up in forest hill a wealthy suburb of toronto that would eventually be annexed and incorporated into the city itself his father was the president of the america trimming company a corporation that made zippers and his mother was a homemaker okay now by all accounts barry's early childhood was the first time barry sherman was born in toronto his early life was pretty remarkable like unremarkable but that changed in 1952 when he was just 10 years old one morning in mid-november herbert sherman went to work and a few hours later he suffered a massive heart attack at his desk killing him instantly oh my god and he was only 47 jesus it turned out that he had a heart defect that he had known about but had not told anyone about oh that's really sad barry wrote obviously he should have told her meaning his mother yeah but he theorized that his father would have perceived the knowledge as a burden so he kept it to himself yeah at the time of his death he owned a small stake in the zipper company so he was able to leave some money to his wife but it was not enough to care for two children so she had to go back to work as like a occupational therapist okay now despite dealing with the sudden death of his father barry was smart and committed to getting good grades and later developed a real aptitude for math and science uh he later wrote although i do not know to what extent if any i was affected by my father's death a psychologist said that the drive to achieve which i later exhibited was caused at least in part by resulting insecurity okay which like okay maybe after he graduated from high school barry went to work for his uncle lou winter at one of the two uh pharmaceutical factories winter owned in toronto um lou and uh kevin donovan who we have uh linked in the show notes he wrote uh lou winter was not a surrogate father but he was someone sherman looked up to his uncle was a surrogate father and he was a surrogate uncle was incredibly successful professionally and financially and barry saw that such power and wealth offered considerable opportunities in life i mean yeah when barry enrolled at the university of toronto the next year he chose to pursue a degree in chemistry eventually reaching the top of his class by graduation and chemistry is hard as fuck and sherman wrote it seems that the tougher things got the better i did now the year after he graduated uh barry was working at his uncle's company when his first big break came at the time barry was a surrogate father and he was a surrogate uncle barry's aunt and uncle were on vacation so when a call came in from a major distributor regarding the purchase of generic aspirin barry saw it as an opportunity to prove himself in the business world taking the initiative he got on the phone with the supplier and quote negotiated the purchase of a substantially increased quantity at a substantially lower price when his uncle returned and learned of the deal his nephew had made he was very very pleased okay um just giving succession yeah it really is barry said although i did not know at the time these summers at empire laboratories would later prove to be of critical importance to my future career now his intention had been to graduate from college and pursue a graduate degree in aeronautics but the universe had other plans what the fuck is aeronautics aeronautics yeah doesn't that have to do with like flying oh maybe arrow or like airspace kind of things couldn't tell you aeronautics the science and art of designing building and operating flight capable machines that's cool it makes sense sense there let me see that is cool that that that takes some know-how that's next level now after just one year at the massachusetts institute of technology mit barry got a call from his sister to tell him that uncle lou had died oh at just 41 years old oh that's gotta be like pretty haunting he had suffered an aneurysm at the office jesus the employees called an ambulance but by the time that got to the hospital it was too late a few months later his aunt beverly lou's wife died from leukemia which left the couple's four small children orphaned oh and barry later recalled i couldn't adopt them myself i was just a kid myself no you're like 20 something instead the children went to live with a local family he offered to buy shares in his uncle's company after his death especially since the company was having financial issues but that offer was initially rejected oh now barry returned to boston and finished his phd but his experiences with his uncle's businesses had sparked an intense interest in science and business for him so he wanted to combine them so after graduating from mit he went back to toronto determined to become his own boss his own company hell yeah now by the time barry got back to canada the financial problems with the company uh they got so much worse and he wasn't part of the company but they were a lot worse and the company had become insolvent once again barry offered to buy the shares in the four young cousins would all be entitled to work at the company and have the right to purchase five percent of the company's shares provided certain conditions were made okay which like five percent i was gonna say that's a little low bear i was like excuse me barry yeah like you can do a lot better than that yeah five percent is a little crazy i don't know a lot about shares but like it feels like that's not a lot you know business and all yeah exactly now this time the bank decided to take him up on his offer and using money borrowed from their parents barry and his long time long uh lifelong best friend joel ulster purchased the shares for 450 000 damn now when barry and joel settled into their new company they were pretty surprised to learn that things were a lot worse financially than they anticipated just two years later they decided to sell the company to one of the biggest customers international chemical and nuclear corporation making icnc the owners of empire the actual company the deal was a financial boon for sherman and ulster but the sale voided the previous contract that allowed the benefits for his cousins oh where once they would have been provided for financially and had guaranteed employment should they want it they now had nothing and that was essentially their inheritance yeah so that was fucked up that's a stain yeah that's not good now one year later in 1971 sherman and ulster went on to form apotex a pharmaceutical company that like empire manufactured generic drugs okay that was also the year barry met honey reich and uh her name was anna but they called her honey she's like so cute i can't get yeah she was born in austria in 1947 in a post-war camp for displaced people oh my god just a few years earlier her parents uh naftuli and helen reich had been freed from a nazi work camp by the allied forces and would eventually emigrate to canada settling in toronto honey's parents owned and operated a small shoe store in downtown toronto and the family lived in a small home in new york north york um honey's sister mary later recalled our parents bought a house and rented out every square inch of it despite the chaos of living in a boarding house the reichs managed to provide for their children and were generally very supportive and kind parents nice after graduating from high school honey enrolled at the ontario college of education and pursued a teaching degree okay never one to like downtime while she was completing her teacher training in the late 1960s honey took a volunteer job at mount sinai hospital for the summer she was very into film uh philanthropy thank you i almost said philanthropic no i i almost do that every time i say it because you go to say like philanthropy yeah philanthropic it's so hard she was very into she was very philanthropic yes she was very into charity she was a yeah oh my philanthropist yeah you're right let's stop saying words it's hard not me helping you and then getting absolutely it's hard to say but yeah she took a volunteer job at mount sinai hospital and that's when she met and befriended cindy ulster a nurse and the wife of barry's business partner joel there it is cindy and honey developed a fast friendship and eventually she introduced her to honey they started dating and by 1971 honey and barry were married so sweet to anyone who knew of them both honey and barry were the classic case of opposites attract really where he was very quiet and reserved and just kind of like head down do your work honey was loud she was outgoing she loved to throw a party she loved to socialize my kind of gal that said it seems little is known about their personal relationship dynamic okay by the time apotex was making massive profits honey regularly donated to local causes and attended all manner of events and fundraisers but she often did that alone she would leave barry home or like to work okay so she just like he just wasn't like super social it was her thing for sure okay now by late january 2018 barry and honey's deaths were formally classified as homicides okay but if detectives were hoping to find a clue to their killer's motive or identity in the victim's past they were very frustrated when nothing was really jumping out at them as far as anyone could tell honey especially was very well liked and a very active member of the community and she was a very active member of the community and she was a very active member of the community and she was a very active member of the community with no enemies yeah i mean barry definitely had some stuff going on that i think this gets super complicated and his particular business and pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals yeah yeah that's tough the problem wasn't so much that investigators couldn't find any leads or information but it was that everyone they talked to seemed unwilling or unable to provide anything of value after interviewing 127 people and investing more than a thousand hours into the case most things seem to point back to sherman's company apotex okay unfortunately when it came to getting any information from the execs at apotex no one was forthcoming yeah gom said legal complexities and some executions have been challenging given the litigious nature of barry sherman's businesses in particular the search and seizure of electronics in barry sherman's workspace at apotex it turned out that i mean it was pretty much stonewalling is what they're describing but it was a little more complicated than that according to defense lawyer anthony moustakalos if you're dealing with a company that's got a ton of lawsuits going on the company has an obligation to protect its legal rights so it's not that they would resist the warrant but they would have to call lawyers to say we want to make sure we're only giving them what is related to their investigation and nothing else yeah it's super complicated basically apotex had a lot of legal battles related to their manufacturing at this at the time they were in a lot of lawsuits all of which had to be considered with regard to what information they released to the police and the press okay they couldn't just hand information that was being used in a lawsuit yeah that's like privileged yeah and it's just if it's being used in this lawsuit for something else you can't now throw it out into the public now regardless of how it was framed gomes and the rest of the investigation team felt certain the key to breaking the sherman case was hidden somewhere in apotex and they really thought it was probably in barry's like private communications okay and it turned out there was good reason to believe that can they not get his private communications they had their struggling to get a warrant for any of it wow even though because again it's on a company computer okay so it's like not for most of his life barry sherman's public persona was that of a wealthy intelligent and somewhat aloof businessman with a knack for making money but there was another side of barry that the press and public didn't know a lot about okay in april 2018 mclean's magazine published a piece that investigative journalists had spent months researching that exposed barry's more questionable side of his financial life okay the piece referred to sherman as quote a hard-nosed strategic genius but it also said he quote conducted business with known criminals he was a billionaire driven to litigation less by money than something more primal a sense of a sense of righteous certitude that propelled him to prevail at any cost so he was dealing with some shady characters giving it's giving logan roy it is giving logan roy in addition to this exactly now thank you kendall i had to no problem in addition to his questionable financial dealings the ongoing investigation by the toronto police and canadian journalists revealed that despite barry and honey's status as quote charity royalty and fixtures on the gala circuit barry shrewd and often ruthless approach to deal making had made him a long list of enemies over the course of his 50 year you know 50 plus year career in the industry i don't think you often get to billionaire status without making enemies a lot of times along the way you gotta have the longest list of enemies if you're reaching billionaire status that's just how i feel that's yeah now the question was which also i'm like it can't be worth that no it can't be worth that i don't think so that's just my opinion is i don't think it's worth and you know the amount of shit that is going to surround you to get to billionaire status that you'll never be able to spend in your lifetime or your family that's my biggest thing you know you'll never be able to spend it in your lifetime and your kids won't spend that like that time that's crazy we'll we'll leave it there because i feel like we could talk about this for a long we could really get into it but uh but the question was had barry angered one or more of those enemies to the extent that they sought revenge by doing something so heinous killing him and his wife and also like how would they gain access to their that's the other thing there's no forced entry right and the doors were locked like what unless somebody like would it be possible that somebody didn't like close the lockbox all the way is that a thing i guess i don't i don't really know what the lockbox looked like that's a good question yeah i think those lockboxes are pretty secure because i mean that's a it's a lot of liability secure but at the same time like maybe if it's not closed properly i don't know what do these lockboxes even look like lockbox it's usually like a big like padlock looking thing that you put like a code into see but there's various different kinds i feel like it would be tough to not close it properly yeah yeah but could it have been like some kind of setup where it was intentionally not closed properly i mean maybe you know sure i'm getting into or it's somebody who knows the lockbox code well that's it that's the simplest obvious yeah you know um now it wasn't as though barry himself had not considered this yeah being a issue like security being an issue for him but it's so interesting they didn't have cameras yeah that's the thing now in a late 90s interview he acknowledged that he was an easy target for you know potentially murder um he said perhaps i'm surprised that hasn't happened that's got to be a wild thing to come to terms yeah now in the 20 years that followed that interview as apotex expanded around the world becoming serious competition for countless other drug companies that list of potential enemies only grew and he was already worried about them and it grew exponentially and one considers sherman's investments outside of the pharma industry which was in diamonds the film industry horse racing among others wait sorry what was it what was his investments outside of the pharma industry diamonds film industry horse racing other shit horse racing shit gets that list gets watch peaky blinders my friend and that's watch the peaky blinders industry yeah you don't want that shit the film industry give me a lab grown any day like god god damn god damn like that shit you know this is the perfect time keep it quiet on the creek this is you got to keep it quiet on the creek in those industries i heard the kids are saying that and i love it ash informed me that the kids are saying are not saying down low or anything as much well that's what i think i'm she's she's she's found out that this could could potentially be a new thing is keep it quiet on the creek and at first it it seemed too much for me because i'm just sick of new things coming it grew on her but then i was like wait that does feel like some kind of like 20s 30s slang where it's like keep it quiet you can hear somebody with like a transatlantic accent saying it you know so i like a little smoke yeah i'm just saying hey keep it quiet on the creek i had to use it i do like that i'm obsessed with it i hope the kids start using it to be honest yeah i'm okay with that one it's better than six seven yeah um yeah that when when you first start this you say oh what could have happened like what you know and then you're like oh wow and then you sit there you're like oh no there's about a hundred different avenues to go down a hundred different avenues but still strange circumstances with no forced entry that's what i can't wrap my head around that's what really brings me back yeah like huh unless it's some kind of like and this is theoretical unless it's some kind of like inside job where somebody knows a code and shares it with somebody else and like it's very strange it's all very strange now all of the more insidious activities that were discovered during this period significantly like we were just saying complicated matters for investigators it's a lot of avenues to go down yeah exactly like and you know it's they didn't really need to dig too deep to find all this stuff like barry was actively involved in various legal battles that out as of recent years before they were um murdered had become pretty heated oh shit uh there was the lawsuit against the employee of apotex who was fired for allegedly stealing drug formulations which eventually led to the more serious allegations of corporate espionage um and outside of the company and we're not saying like you know anything about this is just another ongoing legal battle that he was obviously in was with his four cousins the children of lou and beverly winter oh who were suing over what they said was their lost inheritance oh fuck there was also the fact that the shermans had recently placed their home on the market which is stressful you know under any circumstances but also they had to open up their home to strangers so who knows if somebody came and looked at the house here's the other thing they possibly like somebody could have come and looked at the house and seen the code exactly watch the person enter it so i want i'm like where's the list of people that looked at that house yeah and there is supposed to be a list yeah now despite all the potential suspects and motives uncovered in their investigation into especially into the dealings at apotex and the countless hours invested in taking witness statements by the end of 2018 detectives were no closer to finding the sherman's killer than they were on day one the team of private investigators hired by the sherman family was also extremely unsuccessful in finding any kind of lead according to journalist matthew campbell the case was a series of contradictions on the one hand there was the obviously personal nature of the murders quote painful terrifying and indicating a passionate desire to see them suffer yeah and it really was that but he said on the other hand the tidiness of the crime scene and the lack of evidence left behind suggested the work of a dispassionate professional someone who had done this um and he wrote with little concrete information available friends and colleagues have projected projected a tangle of theories into the void speculating variously about the culpability of rival drug makers disgruntled ex-employees and gangsters oh fuck now amidst all the wild speculation from the public investigators were tight-lipped about the homicide squad's investigation by then the spring of 2019 the once massive team of investigators assigned to the case had been whittled down to just five detectives working full-time on it most of their time was spent digging through a seemingly endless number of electronic documents and correspondence but eventually that paid off okay in april homicide detectives reported that they had quote an idea of what happened to the shermans but they not only refused to share the theory with the press they actually went so far as to petition a judge to get all public documents related to the case sealed well that makes you wonder how fucking big that goes yeah like who who's that in the center of that theory detective dennis yim said i think everyone everything needs to be sealed because if the information were to be revealed potential suspects would take steps to get rid of other evidence oh yeah more espionage now the contents of these documents would remain sealed and detectives theories as to what happened appeared to go nowhere by the end of 2019 the detectives private detectives hired by the sherman family closed their case citing a lack of evidence or new information they just said we can't move forward okay the toronto police also started to rethink their approach as the case was getting colder and colder rather than pursuing new leads or witnesses they shifted their attention to the surveillance video footage taken from the security cameras that were around the home like in the home oh they so they did have some in the home only in some places i think okay so they were trying to review them for anything but i don't think they never said that anything was on them when asked a spokesperson for the toronto police department told reporters quote the investigation is very active but they said it was by no means in the final stages okay i don't know what that means whether or not the case was truly very active is unknown but if it was it wouldn't stay that way for much longer as the months went on the case went completely cold fuck it remained an active case in the technical sense at least one investigator assigned to it but it was for all intents and purposes regarded largely as pretty inactive now it turned out that the 2020 statement from the toronto police indicating the case was still active was to be the last the agency would make for some time and in the absence of official statements from investigators theories from the public just continued to flourish now there had always been theories around the murders being linked to financial problems at apotex which were strengthened by the release of previously sealed documents released in 2021 among other things the documents showed that the company was facing a 500 million dollar lawsuit and had very recently laid off several employees as a result of financial downturn now according to an executive at apotex the company's financial trouble wasn't likely to have anything to do with the murders they said barry would not be phased by apotex's financial situation as apotex was only one part of sherman's holdings and they have other money okay by 2025 the remaining detective on the case dennis yim he's still on it admitted that the investigation had essentially led nowhere he said i'm playing blind i don't know what to do with it i don't know what to do with it i don't know what to do with it on the field what the fuck although yim seemed willing to admit a lack of progress on the case after eight years he remained as silent on details as the police force had ever been when asked whether he could elaborate on rumors that they had a quote person of interest in the murders he said he said i can't comment on that so that's a yes the absence of statements and information from investigators allowed obviously for conspiracy theories and speculation around the case to flourish oh yeah at the same time reports like kevin donovan reporters like kevin donovan who had covered the case since the beginning have done their best to fill in the gaps in the timeline often to the frustration and annoyance of investigators also because they're trying to keep everybody quiet For instance, during his investigation, Kevin Donovan, Donovan discovered evidence that Honey Sherman had tried to call 911 during the attack. Oh, fuck. But the call failed to go through. So her phone being face down on the bathroom floor or a phone being face down on the floor. Oh, my God. That was probably hers. Oh, that's awful. So she might have been like attacked in the bathroom. And that was upstairs. Oh, my God. So what makes me it's like they obviously came in the house and I think they surprised them. Yeah, ambushed them. Yeah. Now, according to Donovan, quote, police won't answer questions about this, but documents confirm police did conduct tests of the 911 service in relation to the Sherman investigation. That's giving the Scarpetta. Yeah, it is. Now, Detective Dennis Yim is confident the case will be solved. He said, I believe we have knowledge to solve this case. That's what he told a reporter in late 2025. It's been almost 10 years, brother. Unfortunately, for the time being, how and when that day will come is anyone's guess. That's the last we have. That's it. That's it. We have no fucking clue what happened. What? You're just going to leave me there? I'm so sorry. Holy shit. It's too bizarre to not talk about. And I'm maybe they will solve this someday and we can do an updated thing. But like for him to say he's confident, I feel they don't always say that. I'm just like. I'm just like, what? Yeah. Like, what? I have so. I'm so. I have so many questions. Interesting. Yeah. I think the family, the Sherman family has offered like a pretty substantial reward at one point for information. But. Yeah, it's it's really wild. Yeah. And I think. Yeah, there's like they're still looking into security cameras. They're still looking. They're still looking into the neighborhood security cameras. I was going to say, did other people have cameras? I don't think they found anything like compelling too wild. And I'm like, no. Did they find anything on the bodies or like on their clothes? It was super clean. And that's why they think it was like a professional job. Well, not only that, it also makes you wonder, like, yeah, sure, it could be professional. And like, it makes sense with all the money and all the like spooky stuff tied to it. But then it makes you wonder, did somebody know that this cleaning schedule, did they know that the cleaning people were going to be coming the very next day? That's what I wonder. Like, if they had been watching, they figured out the routine. They knew they would come in and they put them. They put Barry and Honey in a place in the house that would take a while because it's in the basement. Yeah. It's in a place that, like she said, you had to press the button to get into. It had a secure. They had like a safety door. So it's somewhere where people wouldn't just normally go to first. Well, and especially they wouldn't be found for a while. Right. So it's like the cleaners. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So the cleaners start at the top and they go to the bottom. And I think that's generally it makes sense that a cleaner would go from top to bottom because otherwise you're going to traipse through the whole house again. It's like mopping the floor like backwards. Like, so they put them on the bottom floor. Yeah. Because they knew eventually after cleaning any evidence out of the house. Yeah. That they would eventually find them. But by that time. At that point, you've cleaned everything up. That feels. I do really wonder about that. Like it's part of it. It definitely does. To me, at least. But this, it goes so deep with all the possible enemies and all the financial ties and, you know, unfortunately, like criminal ties that that might not even have anything to do with it. Yeah. I can understand why this would be like a super frustrating case to investigate. It must. Because they're just that, like you said, that the different ties in the business world. Because it's so many different businesses. Are so varied. That's the thing. It's so varied that it would just be impossible. You know what? So, like, we do have a way of covering a case. And then it's like this weird phenomenon. So maybe the universe is just like, I don't know, figure it out now. Yeah, I hope so. You know? Wow. Well, let me give you a fun fact. Yeah. Wow. This is cool. Sleep researchers calculate that humans spend about two hours dreaming every night, which adds up to five to seven years on over an average human lifespan. Damn. So you dream for six years of your life. Wow. Isn't that kind of cool? That is crazy. That's kind of beautiful. I love that. I hope you're not having nightmares, though. I love that a lot. Imagine if you have just, like, a lot of nightmares. That would suck. And you just do that for, like, six years. Yeah, that would really suck. That's not fun. So, like, have good dreams, okay? Yeah, have good dreams, y'all. Sweet dreams, please. Sweet dreams, y'all. All right. Well, with that being said, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you have nightmares for six years because that'd be brutal. And not so weird that this case doesn't get solved because I have a lot of questions and I would like them. Can you give us some answers, please? Yeah. What the actual fuck? I don't know. I don't know. Thanks for watching!