221: Real-Life Succession: Billionaire Couple Murdered. Toxic Secrets & Bizarre Staged Scene.

On December 15th, 2017, billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman didn’t follow their typical morning routine. Their maid noticed that they were nowhere to be found. Not long after, there would be a shocking discovery near their indoor pool. Barry and Honey were both dead, and the investigation into this case would leave everyone stunned…Sono BelloVisit https://www.sonobello.com/ae AudibleGo to https://www.audible.com/ae Junes Journey Download June’s Journey for free by clicking the link: https://bit.ly/serialously QuinceGo to https://www. Quince.com/ae for free shipping on your order and 365-day returnsManscapedGo to https://www.manscaped.com and use code AE for 20% off and free shipping! Shop the Merch:www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast Follow the podcast on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/ Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/annieelise All Social Media Links:https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ SERIALously FB Page:https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/ About Me:https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries:[email protected] Sources:Crime Beat TVCTV NewsCBC NewsToronto StarToronto SunCBS News

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:32Annie Elise?

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Sleep.

• 1:55Annie Elise?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Sleep with me, Annie E. Lice. I gotta just apologize right out of the gate today because if it sounds like I'm underwater, I'm not. I just have a real... Really gnarly cold tis the season. And if you're watching the YouTube version of this, then you know this cold has like knocked me on my ass so much so that when I got out of bed this morning, I was like, can't put on makeup, can't do my hair, gonna just wear cozy sweater set. I look like Rudolph because I've been blowing my nose so much. But I knew I needed to get this story out to you guys because it is one of the craziest stories I think I have ever heard.

• 2:39Annie Elise?

  So I'm here in my studio on the mic and look like a kind of like a sick little ghost, but anyway, I even got like the headband. It looks like I'm going to a ski lodge. I just couldn't be bothered to get myself presentable today. So I apologize, but this is me in all my glory. No makeup, fresh faced Rudolph red nose. But anyway, so the reason why I say I couldn't wait to talk with you about this case is because it truly is crazy. I mean, you've got an excessive amount of wealth. It takes us to Canada. There's a double murder. And there's also like this undertone for me at least of like the staircase murders.

• 3:19Annie Elise?

  Remember that case with the guy who had like multiple wives who died at the base of a staircase from a fall and it was like super shady? All those things, not that that has any correlation with today's case and there isn't really a well, there's kind of a staircase involved, but like you'll understand as we go. So anyway, it is one that I haven't been very familiar with either. I had heard rumblings of it here and there over the last couple of years, but never in a detailed way. I think because it takes place in Canada and sometimes it's difficult to source all of the details from a Canadian case. But we've got them. We got all the details for you guys. And so we are going to jump right into this.

• 3:58Speaker 06

  I was betrayed.

• 4:01Speaker 06

  My cousin hurt me.

• 4:03Annie Elise?

  I want to hurt him. So in December of two thousand seventeen, Barry and Honey Sherman were in the process of selling their twelve thousand square foot home. You heard that right, twelve thousand square feet. Now, they lived in the wealthy North York area of Toronto, and Honey and Barry had custom-built this house in the nineteen eighties. And it was huge, obviously, as if twelve thousand square feet is not huge. It was massive. It had multiple floors, it had tennis courts, a sauna, it even had an indoor pool. It was truly what you picture when you think of the word mansion. It was massive. But for whatever reason, Barry and Honey had eventually decided to sell it so that they could live closer to one of their children. So on the morning

• 4:46Annie Elise?

  of December fifteenth, two thousand seventeen, their realtor, Elise Stern, was heading to the house to show this house to an interested couple. Now, before the showing, Elise expected to meet up with the Shermans because they were going to give her a very important home inspection report that she had asked for earlier. So her plan was to get to the house a little bit early, meet up with the Shermans, get the report, and then show the house or, you know, the property to this couple. So when Elise got to the house around ten or ten thirty a.m. and nobody was home, she was really annoyed. I mean, first of all, it sucks when you make plans with people and they blow you off, right? But also, she really needed that report. So it wasn't just rude, it was also making her job more

• 5:27Annie Elise?

  difficult. But still, the prospective buyers, the couple, showed up, and they also brought along their personal real estate agent. So Elise decided, you know, I'm not going to make this a total loss. At least we'll still show them the house. I can get them the report later. Let's see how interested they are. Maybe we can still make a sale, close the deal here. So she decided to show them around. And as they're making their way through, this twelve thousand square foot mansion, going room to room, tennis court to sauna, all of these areas, walking through the house, they bumped into the Sherman's housekeeper. They stopped, spoke with the housekeeper for a moment, just made a little bit of small talk, but then they kept on going on this, you know, grandiose tour, and they kept just checking out all of the rooms. After they toured the majority of

• 6:10Annie Elise?

  the home, eventually, they got to the basement. But again, Elise now was finding herself pretty annoyed at the Shermans because they had a very interesting, I'll say that lightly, interesting taste in art. They weren't into like nice peaceful landscapes or nature or something, you know, beautiful night sky. They liked things that were more unsettling. In the media room on the basement level on top of a cupboard, the Shermans had life-sized human statues made entirely of garbage, literally entirely of trash. Think old wooden tools, broken pipes, pieces of an old skateboard. I mean, interesting idea, sure, maybe. A little creepy in execution, if I'm going to be honest.

• 6:55Annie Elise?

  And Elise had asked the Shermans to take these statues, these art statues, down before the showing because she felt like they might be a little bit off-putting, you know, not everybody is into that type of vibe. She thought that they were a little weird and that they might even scare off potential buyers. But there they were, still not only on display, but literally staring them in the face. Now, before she could hurry everybody along to another room, Elise also saw that the window in the media room had been cracked open about six inches. Now, it was freezing at the time. Remember, it was December in Canada. So she felt like this was yet again, another weird choice. Like, why aren't you preparing this house for a showing? Now, obviously, the Shermans were the sort of people, if you will, that made some odd choices here and there.

• 7:40Annie Elise?

  That was clear enough by the fact that these human trash statues were still up. So Elise sort of just kind of like mentally rolled her eyes and kept smiling for the buyer's sake, just trying to be like, oh, let's go. Like, sorry, let me close this. It's a little cold. There's a draft. But really just trying to appease them and, you know, not make this a total loss. So she moved along, just trying to make everybody feel as normal as possible. Then they got to the garage, which, by the way, was not even clean. And I've got to imagine that by this point, Elise wasn't just annoyed or irritated. I would imagine that she was like getting pissed at the Shermans. Like, you're leaving this mega mansion in filthy condition when I'm trying to sell it. Like, at least help me out a little bit here, right?

• 8:23Annie Elise?

  Like I said, it was a disaster. It wasn't clean. The floor was covered with a bunch of papers. There was a BlackBerry phone. There was a pair of driving gloves. And what was interesting was Elise knew that that phone belonged to Barry because he was the only person who still used a BlackBerry in 2017. Everybody, for the most part, moved on to Androids or iPhones, right? But he still used a BlackBerry. So Elise paused. She tried to tidy up a little bit because what else was she supposed to do in that moment, right? And then she tried to salvage the showing by moving to the most exciting part of the house, the most grandiose, the one that would make your jaw drop. And this particular room was where they had an underground lap pool. Now, I've never even heard of one of these things, guys. It was the first time, but let me describe it.

• 9:08Annie Elise?

  It had two lanes and a hot tub with it. The whole area was surrounded by a three-foot-tall metal rail, so nobody would have to worry about slipping in and falling in. But it was like, to have one of those inside your house, that's a pretty big deal, right? So they were all just standing there, taking it in, looking at this amazing pool, this amazing perk of buying this new home. But then the other realtor turned to Elise and asked her, "Hey, what's that at the end of the pool?" So Elise looked over to the far end of the pool, and when she did, she saw a couple just sitting there, quietly, on the floor, upright, not moving, just kind of frozen, just sitting and staring. And they were right there, near the edge of the pool. So that other real estate agent, who hadn't been in this house before, made a joke, kind of like,

• 9:53Annie Elise?

  "Oh, are those other creepy statues? Why do they have so many creepy human statues everywhere?" But Elise knew this property, backwards and forwards. She knew that that was not a set of statues, not at all. She had never seen statues in this area of the house before. So she hurried the buyers out of the room, she ended the tour, and then she went to go talk to the Sherman's housekeeper again. Elise told the housekeeper about what had happened, what she just saw, and she asked her to go check out the pool room, see what was up, what's going on over there, who are these people? And by this time, Elise believed that the couple that she had seen, those two people, actually were Barry and Honey Sherman. Like, maybe they had blown off their appointment with her when they were supposed to give her the Home inspection so they could just sit by the pool, relax, maybe do some kind of weird

• 10:37Annie Elise?

  exercise or something like that. Almost like, okay, do they think they're better than everybody? That they can just sit by the pool while I'm doing the showing, even though we had a set meeting, that kind of thing. But also on some level, Elise knew that something very wrong was going on here. It was just this feeling in her gut and it made her not want to check on the Shermonds herself. She didn't want to get too close. She just didn't want to do it. So she asked the housekeeper to do it. So anyway, Elise was telling the housekeeper like, look, I don't want to deal with it. You go look. You're responsible for this house. You go check it out. But right away, the housekeeper started freaking out, also refusing to go look at the couple down by the pool in the basement. So Elise asked her over and over again, like, why?

• 11:18Annie Elise?

  What's wrong? Why won't you go? Well, as it turns out, the housekeeper also had a really bad feeling. And it was actually something that she had been feeling since the moment that she had showed up for work that morning. She had gotten there around 8 a.m. like she always did. And at that time, she saw Honey's car in the driveway, which was normal. It had snowed overnight and the housekeeper didn't see any footprints or tire tracks around the car. So the housekeeper knew that Honey hadn't driven anywhere since the evening before, I mean, at the absolute latest. But two things immediately stood out as being a little bit weird. One, the newspaper was still sitting in the driveway. And two, the house alarm was turned off. Now, usually Barry would wake up before the housekeeper even got there. He would

• 12:01Annie Elise?

  turn off the alarm, he would get the morning paper, then he would just go about his day. Honey always got up, drank a cup of tea, ate two chocolate caramel turtle candies, which was like clockwork, odd, I know, but like clockwork. And then she would get dressed and get ready. So the thought was that if the paper was still outside, that must have meant that Barry and Honey hadn't woken up yet. Except if they were still asleep, the alarm should have still been set and on, not turned off. So it just didn't add up. Either Barry was awake and up, in which case the newspaper should have been inside, or they were still in bed, in which case the alarm should have been on. And even stranger was when the housekeeper went inside, she Couldn't find the Shermans anywhere.

• 12:45Annie Elise?

  She knew that they slept in separate bedrooms because apparently Barry had a very bad insomnia and he was also a really loud snorer. So because of that, there was no way for them to sleep together and get a good night of rest. But when the housekeeper checked both rooms, they were both empty. Their beds were also made and their bathroom sinks were entirely dry, like they hadn't been used at all that morning. So this was all really weird and it made her feel a little unsettled. But ultimately, the housekeeper had a job to do. And she also wasn't a detective. She wasn't putting things together in a sinister way, just a little bit of a weird way. Her focus and her reason for being there was to clean, which was what she did. And at one point, she also let the repairman fix the furnace. So it was all pretty routine.

• 13:30Annie Elise?

  But while she was cleaning the half bath on the main level, she found Honey's phone on the floor. Now again, it was strange because Honey didn't usually use that bathroom at all. And also, why would she just leave her phone right there out on the floor? It doesn't make sense. Now, besides the repairman, there was another person who showed up for an appointment that morning. A personal trainer who worked very closely with the couple. Except the housekeeper and the trainer didn't see any sign of Barry or Honey at the time of that appointment. Which again, was just very weird. They were usually very organized. They weren't the sort of people to just blow off an appointment without calling or texting or, you know, notifying them that they had to reschedule.

• 14:11Annie Elise?

  So for a while, the trainer just sort of waited around in case Barry and Honey were just running late and would show up to their appointment. But once it was clear that they weren't going to show, the trainer left. And not long after that, Elise arrived for the showing. And we all know what happened after that, right? So anyway, when Elise was now telling the housekeeper what she had witnessed in that room with the pool, she couldn't help but freak out too. She didn't quite know how to put all of those pieces together, but she knew that something very strange and very scary was going on. So Elise and the housekeeper were sort of debating. Neither one of them wanted to go back to this pool room, but they knew that somebody had to. Somebody had to go and check it out and investigate. And while all of this was going-

• 14:53Annie Elise?

  Going on, the gardener showed up as well, which yeah, it was December, but it seems like the Shermans had a lot of people tending to their house all the time. Not only tending to their house, but tending to them. I mean, there were people in and out of this house. So, once the gardener realized what was going on, she actually volunteered to be the one who would go downstairs and check it out, see what was going on. So, the gardener grabbed a butter knife and went down to the pool room in the basement. But moments later, she ran back upstairs so fast, she was shaking and her face was just completely white with shock. The couple sitting near that pool were in fact Honey and Barry Sherman. And more than that, they were dead, just sitting there upright. And even weirder, it looked like they had been

• 15:38Annie Elise?

  dead for quite a while.

• 15:44Annie Elise?

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• 16:29Annie Elise?

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• 16:49Annie Elise?

  Now before calling the police, Elise called Honey's sister Mary. And I'll just say, even to this day, there is a lot of confusion over why Elise did this. One thought is that Elise wanted to make sure that Mary heard the news in a more personal way before it started making headlines and before she saw it, you know, broadcast on television. Because Barry and Honey were very wealthy and very well-known in Toronto. So it seemed like reporters would definitely jump on this story as soon as they possibly could. So this was kind of Elise's way and attempt to be thoughtful and to soften the blow for Mary. Then Mary could call all of their other family members, including Barry and Honey's children, before, again, their deaths were just broadcast on the news.

• 17:31Annie Elise?

  So then, around 11:45 a.m., which was about an hour after Barry and Honey's bodies had been discovered, Elise called the police. And the police arrived and immediately got to investigating the scene. Now, as I said earlier, Barry and Honey's bodies were sitting in a very strange way, just upright, right there at the edge of the pool. But let me break it down even further for you, because it looked as though they had been placed there on purpose. Both of them were sitting upright on the floor with their legs just completely stretched out in front of them. For each of them, their right leg was crossed over the left one. They also both had jackets on that were half-on. So if you can picture it, the sleeves were over their arms, but the jacket itself hadn't

• 18:16Annie Elise?

  been pulled up all the way over their back or over their shoulders, just kind of draping, almost like a shawl, if that makes sense. Both of them also had ligature marks around their wrists. So this suggested that their hands had been bound at one point. Now Barry's glasses were still on, because he wore glasses, but Honey's face was injured. However, there wasn't much blood on her face, and so it made the investigators think that whatever this facial injury was, it may have happened after she died, and that that's maybe why it didn't really bleed very much. And you might be wondering, okay, well, if Barry and Honey were dead, how were they holding these very specific poses? What was stopping them from, you know, slumping over?

• 18:59Annie Elise?

  Well, remember the bar I mentioned that was running around that whole pool? The safety bar, the metal one? Well, somebody had used a belt to attach Barry and Honey's necks to this bar. That's what was holding them upright. And on top of that, they had been dead for a while. Rigor mortis had already set in and their bodies were cold to the touch. However, the heat and the humidity in the pool room made it very difficult for police to determine a cause of death at the time. But imagine that for a moment, just posed, sitting there so perfectly, one leg, the same leg on both of them, perfectly crossed over the other, jackets in place over their, you know, in the crooks of their arms, but their sleeves on.

• 19:39Annie Elise?

  And then, sitting up straight, strictly because there's a belt that's attached to a metal pole behind them to like, pose them. It was very, very bizarre. So, once the police were done initially looking at the bodies, they went to go look around the rest of the house. And that's when they discovered those other weird statues in the media room. And something about the statues seemed familiar. And they quickly realized that Barry and Honey were posed exactly like the statues were. Sitting upright, legs outstretched, right leg crossed over the left. I'm talking a carbon copy. Now, in the meantime, the news got word of what had happened and reporters just swarmed the house, just like Elise had been afraid of.

• 20:23Annie Elise?

  Rumors about the Shermans and their deaths were also going viral all over social media. And as I mentioned, the Shermans were extremely well-known in Toronto. And the neighborhood that they lived in was full of celebrities, CEOs, doctors, athletes, lawyers, really, you name it. So, once the police cars all came speeding in with their sirens on and their lights flashing, it definitely did not take long for people to start poking around and trying to figure out what was going on. Eventually, a detective came out to talk with the reporters. And he said that they were treating the deaths as suspicious. They weren't sure how they died, and there was no sign of forced entry in the home, but there was something suspicious at play. However, the detective-

• 21:06Annie Elise?

  Also said that they weren't looking for any suspects at that time. So that left everybody pretty confused, right? I mean, why wouldn't they be looking for any suspects? Especially if it was a suspicious double murder? Did they already maybe know who killed the Shermans? Well, the police gave an answer to those questions the following morning. And that's when they ruled that the two deaths were part of a murder-suicide plan. They believed that Barry had killed Honey, hit her in the face, dragged her body downstairs, tied her up, and then once she was dead or dying, he killed himself. Now, for a lot of people, especially the people who hadn't known Barry and Honey personally, that theory made enough sense to be believable.

• 21:50Annie Elise?

  So a lot of people just accepted the police's theory. But Barry and Honey's children and their close friends, they did not accept this. For one, they knew that Barry just didn't have the strength to kill Honey. He was older and honestly, not in great shape. Honey, on the other hand, she worked out regularly. She wasn't ripped like a bodybuilder or anything like that, but she definitely had decent muscle. And she was definitely strong enough that if Barry had attacked her, she would have been able to fight him off. And let's just say hypothetically, that Barry had the element of surprise on his side, or you know, something like that. I mean, maybe even if it seemed unlikely, maybe he did manage to overpower Honey. But even so, he definitely wasn't strong enough to drag her body downstairs and pose it that way.

• 22:35Annie Elise?

  Plus, this just wasn't something that they would do. Barry and Honey were happy people. They loved each other. And they had never said or done anything to make people think that they were violent or dangerous. I mean, you could look at their entire life stories, all the way back to when they were children, and you would never see any sign that anything like this was ever going to happen. As for Barry, he was born in Toronto in 1942. That's also the city where he grew up. His dad died when he was fairly young, leaving his mom to raise him and his siblings all by herself. But she did, and he had a happy home. Barry's nickname as a kid was Butterball Barry, all because he was pretty lazy, pretty introverted, and apparently always tired.

• 23:16Annie Elise?

  But the point is that even back then, he just wasn't someone who seemed physically capable of attacking someone and dragging their body around. When he reached high school, Barry started taking school a lot more seriously. He was especially good at math and science. So then people decided, you know, we're gonna stop calling him Butterball and start calling him a genius, which I gotta say, that's nice, that's a vast improvement. But he was just always thinking, always going over different possibilities and different ways of seeing things. Now, I mentioned before that he had really bad insomnia, right? But that's all because his mind would just race so much at night that he couldn't fall asleep. And when people were calling him a genius, they weren't kidding. When he was 16 years old, Barry went to college. Yeah, you heard that right, 16.

• 24:00Annie Elise?

  He went to the University of Toronto and he was one of the youngest people in his class. After graduating with a degree in engineering, he then went on to MIT to get his PhD in astrophysics. A true smarty. His end goal was to work at NASA. But that changed when he interned over the summer at his uncle's drug company called Empire Labs. Because that's where Barry saw firsthand just how much money you could make selling and creating new medicines. So eventually, he started his own company. And he called it Apotex. Then in 1970, Barry met Honey. Honey's birth name had been Anna, but she had officially changed it to Honey in high school. She was outgoing, adventurous, and truly the life of the party type of person.

• 24:45Annie Elise?

  She too had gone to the University of Toronto, and a mutual friend introduced the two of them to one another. They hit it off immediately and they got married the very next year in 1971. Both of them wanted kids, and Honey in particular wanted a very big family, but she had a really difficult time getting pregnant. And sadly, she suffered through multiple miscarriages. Eventually, she had their first child, a girl named Lauren. Then came the second child, Jonathan. Then Alexandra. And finally, a third little girl that they named Kalen. Now, the last three children were all conceived using surrogates. But it was the 1980s, and the technology around that time was not nearly as good as it is now.

• 25:26Annie Elise?

  So even though Barry was the donor, he wasn't the one who fertilized Honey's eggs. The surrogates used their own eggs, meaning that all four of Barry and Honey's children had different biological mothers, but they all had the same father, namely Barry. Now, some people think that this really affected the kids growing up. There's also rumors that Honey just wasn't very maternal in general, and also that she had an especially hard time being a good mother to the children who, you know, weren't biologically hers. There are also rumors that Barry favored all four kids over Honey, and Honey supposedly even told some friends that she was at the bottom of the family's, quote, "pecking order." Now, I haven't been able to verify that. It's really all just rumor. But I do know that while they were raising their kids,

• 26:11Annie Elise?

  they were also making a ton, a ton of money, thanks to Barry's company. So much money, that at the time of their deaths, Honey and Barry were literal billionaires. Billionaires with a B. Now Barry was also a huge workaholic. When the family went on vacation, Honey would take the kids out, you know, to have fun, to play around, but Barry would just stay back and take care of business issues remotely. He seemed to work all the time, and he used his money he was earning to make investments, trying to earn even more money. It was almost like this vicious cycle where if there's no glass ceiling, the limit does not exist. So grind, grind, grind. Not the most healthy thing, but I understand it. Now, in addition to spending their money on lavish vacations, their mega mansion, all of these things,

• 26:56Annie Elise?

  they were also very generous when it came to charities. Barry and Honey were both Jewish, and they donated a lot of their money to the Jewish charities in particular. They both had very close family members who had been affected by the Holocaust. So these charities were extremely important to them. And while Barry considered himself an atheist, Honey was extremely religious. They also donated millions of dollars to United Way, and they were also known to help struggling employees by giving them money, giving them cars, some of them even houses. Now, charity aside, and vacations and their home aside, Barry and Honey didn't really like to spend a lot. They had both grown up fairly poor and it sounds like they were still very careful with their budget.

• 27:41Annie Elise?

  Even though they technically didn't have to be at all anymore. They hardly ever flew first class even though they could obviously afford it. They liked to shop at thrift stores, they liked to shop at mega grocery stores like Costco, really trying to save and cut corners anywhere they could. In fact, Honey's Wallet, where she kept all of her money, was so badly beaten up that it was being held together by a rubber band. That's how it stayed closed. I mean, she did buy nice things, sure, she would buy designer shoes and handbags, but she almost never wore them. Most of her designer things just stayed in her closet, completely untouched. And her friends say that you would never have looked at Honey and thought that she was as wealthy as she was. They just didn't appear that way.

• 28:24Annie Elise?

  They also drove older cars and they would drive them until they were basically about to fall apart. And another example I'll just give you, not that it's, you know, necessary in this case, but just to level set, whenever Honey would go golfing and her friends would like hit the golf ball and lose it along the way in the brush or the sand or whatever, she would pick them up along the way and keep them, saying, "I'm keeping them so that I don't have to buy new golf balls." Kind of like stingy in a way to just be very careful, right? Very careful about their money. But I guess that's how the rich stay rich, right? Now, because they were so wealthy, they were of course also running in circles with other very wealthy people. In fact, they had so many friends that were rich and famous

• 29:06Annie Elise?

  that one of them was the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. He had even visited their home several times. Now, given how many important friends and family members they had, Barry and Honey's funeral was invite only. But get this, still even as invite only, 7,500 people came. 7,500 people to a funeral.

• 29:35Speaker 07

  The service began with the singing of a traditional Jewish prayer, followed by a famous Holocaust song. It had special significance to the Shermans, who were committed to Holocaust education. Afterwards, Honey's sister Mary and the couple's son Jonathan delivered emotional eulogies. She would always call on my kids. Because all she ever do is tell me how much she loved them. She loved my children like her own. A moment to look around this room and consider the enormous impact.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  That this is having on everyone gathered here today.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Feel each other's love and know how much you all meant to my mother and my father.

• 30:19Speaker 07

  The CBC's Linda Ward is standing by at the memorial in Mississauga. So Linda, describe the events there today.

• 30:27Annie Elise?

  Well, just a very powerful and emotional service this morning and really starting with a prolonged moment of silence as those caskets were brought in and then the family members surrounding them, embracing each other, dignitaries standing as well, and all the thousands of people who have shown up, standing to pay their respects as well as this service got underway. And then the couple's son, Jonathan, took the podium and asked for a moment, just a moment to breathe, he said. And then a canter delivered a very emotional song, her

• 31:08Annie Elise?

  voice breaking with emotion as she sang that. Jonathan then came back to speak about his parents and about how, he said, the last few days have been, quote, "messed up" and how he has had to deal with mourning as well as so many questions surrounding his parents' passing. Frustration, he said, with speculation and unreliable reports. Of course, all those questions surrounding still the circumstances around their death and many theories being put out there in the media. But he spoke to the crowd today, crowd of thousands, really, about the support and what it means to him and the family.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  We are taking some comfort in knowing that you two are together forever and neither of you had to suffer like we are suffering now. You were like a lock and a key, each pretty useless on your own.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Together, you unlocked the whole world for yourselves, and for us, and for so many others. We promise to carry on your legacy of greatness and giving, from now until forever.

• 32:28Annie Elise?

  And looking out at the crowd of people wearing blue, Apatex employees who have filled this room, 5,400 seats, almost all taken. He said that he does take comfort from knowing that they are there. He also spoke about, and as did many family members today, who spoke, spoke about their philanthropy and how much they donated to charity. This couple, they say, have earned their place in heaven. And the couple that gave so much, they say that what they're asking for is for the people who are trying to remember them in life to do so through that charity, to give to charity in their memory.

• 33:10Annie Elise?

  Of course, the family going through this with, as I mentioned, all these unanswered questions surrounding how the couple died. They are asking for privacy during this very, very difficult time. They're going to be having a private shiva following today's service. So anyway, I just wanted to give a little bit of backstory. That's what Barry and Honey were like when they were alive. That's how they met, that's how they grew up. But now, the big question, of course, was, how did they die? Like I mentioned before, the police couldn't immediately determine a cause of death when they found the bodies. However, the autopsy showed that the two of them had been strangled, and they had also likely died on the night of Wednesday, December 13th, meaning that their bodies had been

• 33:51Annie Elise?

  sitting in that pool room for about 36 hours before they were discovered. Even more strange, the marks around their necks were so fine, so thin, that the medical examiner realized that they hadn't been strangled with the belts that were holding them up and attaching their bodies to that bar. It actually looked as though they had been strangled with a rope instead, and if not a rope, something very similar. The marks around their wrists also looked like they might have been from zip ties. However, the police didn't see any zip ties at the scene or anywhere in the home. Now, the autopsy never revealed what caused the injuries to Honey's face. And the medical examiner also couldn't tell whether their deaths were from a murder or a suicide.

• 34:36Annie Elise?

  So, the police stuck with their original theory. That Barry had killed Honey and then killed himself. Which doesn't really make a lot of sense at the surface level, right? If they both died from strangulation and he then posed himself in a belt, but he didn't strangle himself with that belt. How does that work? And if he strangled himself with a rope, where's the rope? So if you're thinking, "Uh, that makes no sense", you're definitely not alone. Because the Sherman children also just did not accept this. And they ended up holding a press conference condemning the police department for not investigating the deaths further. Take a listen.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Police are required by law to maintain a certain professional standard in their approach to investigations. But in this case, at this stage of the investigation, the manner in which the Toronto Police Service conducted itself fell well below that standard of how a reasonable officer in similar circumstances should have acted. For the family, the most perplexing and upsetting aspect of the investigation was the failure to recognize the obvious. That the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were staged post-mortem in a very deliberate manner. This entire process has caused needless additional pain and suffering to the Sherman family. Regrettably, it has become clear to them

• 35:55Speaker 00

  that despite the active pursuit of search warrants and exploring other investigative avenues, police resources have neither been properly managed nor effectively utilized. The Sherman family has asked me to announce the offer of a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the apprehension and prosecution of those responsible for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman. A call center has been established to collect tips and information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will be live monitored from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM daily and monitored by voice message overnight.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  The leads will be analyzed and vetted in any

• 36:43Annie Elise?

  Meaningful information will be conveyed immediately to the Toronto Police Service. So after this, they decided to hire their own forensic analyst, who happened to also be a retired police officer. And when they did that, they asked for a second autopsy. Well, the new autopsy was consistent with the first one. It said that Barry and Honey died from strangulations, that the belts were not used to strangle them, but it still wasn't clear what the actual murder weapon was. But the big difference here was that this second autopsy report put their manner of death down as homicide. And they did this for a couple different reasons. First, it didn't make any sense for Barry to tie up Honey's wrists, then cut off the zip ties, then hang her by the pool.

• 37:27Annie Elise?

  Plus, remember Barry had marks around his wrist too, so why would he tie himself up? Barry also literally owned a drug company, meaning that even if he did want to murder his wife and then take his own life, he had access to all kinds of pills and other medications that he could have used to do it in a very quick, easy, and painless way. It just didn't make sense for him to do something so brutal if he didn't need to. So all in all, the police's theory just did not make much sense on a logical level. Not at all. However, they still weren't persuaded by these new findings. For an entire month, they kept saying that their original theory was right. They were still treating it as a murder-suicide. And in fact, that didn't change until January 26th, 2018.

• 38:12Annie Elise?

  That's when the Toronto Police held a press conference and announced that they now believed that Barry and Honey had died in a double homicide. During this press conference, they also put out a public request for tips, and they started looking into suspects. However, as you can imagine, they had already lost an incredibly valuable amount of time. The first 48 hours after a murder are incredibly important for an investigation. And the police had made so many mistakes in those first few days. First of all, the murder scene had not been secured, at all. On the day that the bodies were discovered, the housekeeper just kept cleaning the house even after the police had arrived. She did this just to keep herself busy, and the police didn't stop her. I mean, not at first. It took a while before a police officer told her to stop.

• 38:57Annie Elise?

  But by that point, who knows how much evidence she had already scrubbed away? Now, the realtor Elise had also kept telling the police, you've got to go check the lockbox at the front of the house. Make sure that the spare key is still there. And you've probably seen those lockboxes if you've ever gone to look at a potential new house or new apartment. I also think some Airbnbs use them as well. It's like a little box that hangs on the door handle, or sometimes it's on a water pipe. It has a code on it, and when you open it, you can get the key out. So basically, Elise's theory was that maybe the killer got into the lockbox and got the key out. And that's how they made it into the house without leaving any signs of forced entry, that they had a key. So she was encouraging the police, go check, see if the key is still there, right? Seems like a really standard, logical thing to do.

• 39:40Annie Elise?

  Except for whatever reason, even though Elise told them this multiple times, they didn't check the box. Elise had to call them over and over, repeatedly, asking them and calling them over the course of weeks to check this box. Until finally, after several weeks went by, they went and checked out this lockbox. Now, in all fairness, when they did, the key was still inside of it. But you have to wonder why it took them so long to check, right? In general, the police didn't find a whole lot of evidence. But frankly, it also doesn't sound like they were looking all that hard in the first place. Plus, on top of that, the Shermans didn't have a very advanced or high-tech security system. Even though they lived in this huge mansion, they had no cameras outside, no cameras inside.

• 40:24Annie Elise?

  They only had alarms and motion on the doors and windows. Now, what they did find was Honey's phone, which the housekeeper had already seen in that half bathroom upstairs. They found all those papers on the floor of the garage, the driving gloves, and the BlackBerry, Barry's BlackBerry that was on the floor of the garage. But that was really it. So basically, the detectives only managed to find the evidence that Elise and the housekeeper had already spotted on their own. Now, one good thing was that the investigators eventually pulled security footage from the medical office that Barry owned. Specifically, footage from the afternoon before Barry and Honey had died. So this was Wednesday, December And in the clip, Barry and Honey were meeting with the architects who were building their new house.

• 41:08Annie Elise?

  It was going to be closer to downtown Toronto, but it's not like they were downsizing by any means. It was now going to actually be bigger at 16,000 square feet. This house had basically been the main thing in Barry and Honey's lives at the time. They had spent so much time planning it, building it, working out the details, and just making it a big focus and a big priority. So here they were in a clip, meeting with the architects, discussing the plans. Then at around 6:30, Honey left the office after the meeting and she went home. Barry stayed for a little while longer, but he left around 8:00 PM. Now, the police believe that Honey was ambushed as soon as she got home. They also think that she ran into that guest bathroom, that half-bath, and tried to call 911, but was attacked and then brought back downstairs.

• 41:52Annie Elise?

  And I will say right now that it is hard to prove this theory. If she did try to call 911, there's absolutely no record of it. The call didn't go through, they didn't see any evidence of that, at least that's what the detectives say anyway, but this was the theory. So then, they believe that Honey was killed. And then that the attacker, or attackers, ambushed Barry in the garage when he got home, which explains why the papers were on the floor, his phone was on the floor, and things were just kind of scattered all over the garage floor. They think, okay, surely he must have dropped all of those things when he was attacked. Then they believe that the attacker brought him to the pool room and killed him there.

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• 43:00Speaker 04

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• 43:11Speaker 01

  Barry and Honey Sherman, billionaires, philanthropists, were murdered in their home in December 2017. Using a mix of the Sherman home's real estate photos and Toronto Star images, I am going to present the most likely scenario for what happened at 50 Old Colony Road. This is Honey's Lexus SUV on the afternoon of Friday, December 15th. Police were already inside going over the crime scene. It is likely the Shermans had been dead 36 hours. They were last seen alive together on Wednesday at Barry's Apptech's offices. Honey headed home first. She always parked here, to the left of the ramp to the underground garage and close to the side door.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Here, you get a better view of the door, which was often unlocked. Barry and Honey rarely use the front door of their house. Later on Friday, their bodies would be taken out that way, carried upstairs from the basement and across the grand central hallway. The side door Honey normally used opens into a vestibule leading to the laundry room, kitchen, and breakfast area. Honey was likely home by 8:00 PM. The only obvious sign of her movements inside the house after she arrived is the location of her iPhone. The realtor who discovered the bodies noticed Honey's iPhone in a powder room friends say she never used, located at the front of the house.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  The iPhone with its jeweled case was sitting upside down on the edge of the vanity. Sherman family and friends speculate Honey may have ran there to escape her attacker. There are two possible stairway routes for an attacker moving Honey from the main floor to the basement. One is in the middle of the house, leading down from the grand hallway on the main floor to the basement rec room. The other is at the back, a spiral staircase which ends in the basement closer to the pool where the bodies were eventually found. It has been speculated by family, friends, and forensic experts that some The postmortem damage to Honey's face was caused by her being dragged down the stairs.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Two puzzling findings to note, given that Toronto Police said there was no sign of forced entry when they arrived. First, an open basement window. With the house for sale, the wall under a window in a front room had been painted to cover water damage. The window was left open to air out the smell. The day the Sherman bodies were discovered, the Realtor and clients touring the house noted the window was open about six inches. The other finding of note was an unlocked outside door near the underground garage where Barry parked his car. The rarely-used door leads into a stairwell. Steps go up to the patio outside on the west side of the house. The Realtor noticed that door was unlocked.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  It's possible this is how the killer or killers entered and left the Sherman home, undetected.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Barry Sherman would have driven his car down the ramp and parked in one of six spots. There are two exit doors from the garage. A small door into a utility room, and a double door into the hallway by the spiral staircase. The Realtor touring clients that Friday morning discovered two items just outside the door near the staircase. A home inspection report Barry had promised to bring home from the office, and his leather gloves. The Realtor, not realizing the significance, picked both up and put them on a knee-high ledge in the hallway.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  It is likely that Barry Sherman was grabbed at the spot his gloves and papers were dropped. The attackers would have then moved him past the spiral staircase, and down a long hallway, with a sauna and other rooms on the left, and the garage on the right. At the end of the hallway is a door to the pool area.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  This is the pool room where the bodies were discovered.

• 47:15Annie Elise?

  So this was basically all of the evidence that they had. However, a neighbor did call the police and tell them that they found some interesting footage on their own security cameras, which happened to be pointing Right at an angle where they could see some parts of the Sherman home. Now, from this footage, the police knew that on Thursday, December 14th, a car pulled up to the house. A man walked out, went to the front of the house, and then a few minutes later, this man went back to his car. And he did this a few times, so many times, in fact, that he stayed parked in front of the Sherman home for 29 minutes, almost a half an hour, just going back and forth. Now, because of the angle that that camera happened to be pointed at,

• 47:57Annie Elise?

  it was impossible to tell if he actually went inside the house or not. It cut it off right where you would be able to see that. But after seeing this footage, the police started making some other big key discoveries, like how the Shermans weren't quite as beloved as they had maybe thought at first. In fact, some people had reasons to want Barry dead.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  With more on this, I'm joined by former FBI agent Brad Garrett. He joins us today from Washington. Brad, good morning. Good to see you. So autopsies have now revealed the cause of death to be ligature neck compression, strangulation. Homicide detectives have taken over. What does this tell us about what might have happened? What are investigators looking for? Well, they're clearly looking for the link between the bad guy or bad guys and this couple. Now, having said that, it's, I'm going to be surprised if it's not somebody in a known circle of associates or friends. I mean, if you look at the type of homicide that's occurred and what's been described, at least in the media,

• 49:01Speaker 03

  is that these bodies were actually sort of displayed, hanging. Now, that sets up a whole different dynamic of what the bad guy is trying to tell the rest of us as to why they were killed and to actually make sort of a statement about it. So that's going to play into potentially who you're looking for. And so what would make you think then that it's someone that Would know the couple.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Well, maybe not personally. I mean, someone could have been sent there. I'm only suggesting that whoever is driving this crime has some sort of relationship with one or both of them. Because this is not the type of homicide that occurs because somebody breaks in your house. This is clearly someone who, you know, were they trying to get information out of them? Did they go there with the sole purpose of killing them? You know, my question would be, it's going to be maybe something in between, only because of the way they died. There's a lot of easy ways, unfortunately, to end someone's life. This is not the easy way to do it. And particularly when you talk about if you're going to have to manipulate

• 50:13Speaker 02

  people into a particular position, you know, are they fighting you? Are they not fighting you? I mean, there's all of these things that add time, energy, and also, and this is very important, you leaving you the bad guy, leaving clues. Because they probably touched whatever the ligature is, ropes, etc. There could be hairs and fibers in some distinguishable things on the clothing of the victims. So, you know, there's a lot of unknowns here, but a lot of potential evidence as the police move forward.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  And given the effort, I'll call it, that was put into this, into their deaths, do you think that one person could have done this on their own? Or would there be more people involved?

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Well, it would be difficult, particularly if both individuals are conscious at the time. This is very hard to do all that if you're just one person. I'm going to guess it's going to be more than one person. The police have described the residence as no apparent forced entry. Now, that can mean a number of things. Someone had a key, or they left the door unlocked, or somebody followed them into the house. So, I don't know that I read a lot into that at this particular juncture. But the real key is going to be the following. It's going to be friends, associates, business situations, etc.

• 51:39Annie Elise?

  One or in particular, you know, Mr. Sherman. And, you know, we'll have to see where that goes. But this didn't happen just because somebody is upset. This happened for a reason. This is sort of a payback on something that occurred.

• 51:56Annie Elise?

  And that's where the police, they have to get to whatever that is. Now Barry obviously made a lot of money at his medical company. But that wasn't the main way that he got to be so wealthy. He would often joke that at his drug company, selling drugs was just a side business. And that their main business was suing other people. He was even known as the most litigious man in all of Canada. That's a direct quote. In total, he had filed roughly 1,200 cases against the Canadian government. And he had sued a ton of other people over the years as well. One of his lawsuits even took more than 30 years to be settled. And I gotta just say, I loathe people like this because anybody can sue anybody for any reason. Right?

• 52:40Annie Elise?

  And oftentimes, more than not, people will just settle because it's less expensive than paying all of your attorney fees, the court fees, all of these things. But that's why I loathe people because they're just like really taking advantage of the system and other people. Like it's not extortion, obviously, but like it is some, it's like adjacent to that. Like you know, you're going to get some sort of money out of them if they settle. So it's like, you're just a bad human, in my opinion, if you do that. Not that it makes it okay to be murdered, but like, I loathe people who do stuff like that. And he would sue people for almost anything. His friend said that if you hit Barry with a fly swatter, he would literally come at you with a sledgehammer.

• 53:21Annie Elise?

  That is a comparison that they gave, which is really gnarly, I gotta say. So needless to say, these lawsuits made Barry a lot of enemies over the years. A lot of people didn't like him because they were afraid that he would find some excuse to take them to court, all to make himself more money at their expense. Now ironically, Barry was known to make comments that, quote, "It wasn't fair that some people got stepped on while other people did the stepping." Even though it's pretty clear that he's the One who did the stepping right, but he also seemed to be bothered by the fact that some people were rich and others weren't. Almost as though he felt owed this entitled to being wealthy. And apparently he was only angry when he saw himself as the one getting stepped on.

• 54:04Annie Elise?

  He had no problem screwing over other people to make a quick buck. And on top of that, his medical company that he created, they claimed to be a company that was quote for the people. But they still way overcharged for the drugs that they sold. And just listen to this quote that a professor from the University of Ottawa gave about Barry. He said, Canadians pay more for generic drugs than almost every other country. He sought to manipulate our system to enrich himself and impoverish Canadian patients who used his drugs. End quote. And that was just a quote from one person. Other people called Barry, the only person I have ever met with no redeeming features whatsoever. Another quote, a deplorable human being.

• 54:48Annie Elise?

  So hearing all of that, you might not be surprised to hear that the list of potential suspects of people who might want Barry and even Honey dead. That list was long. Some people actually even pointed the finger at Barry and Honey's own family. Right after their death, many people thought that the kids and Honey's sister Mary must have had something to do with it because they wanted money. And Honey's sister Mary supposedly got a lot of money from Honey. According to her, Honey had promised to give her three hundred million dollars before she died, right before she died. And when Mary didn't get what she wanted, she supposedly threw a huge fit and just started yelling, started raging.

• 55:29Annie Elise?

  Now, the thing is, Mary couldn't have committed the murders herself because she was in Florida when it happened. She flew from Florida to Toronto after the murders happened on a private jet, which let's just say like super glamorous, right? But again, you get a sense of just how much money she had. And that being said, if she had the kind of money to book private jets, surely she also could have afforded to hire a professional to do her dirty work for her, right? So the fact that she was technically out of the country at the time of the murders, it didn't exactly exonerate her. Now, even though some People suspected Mary. A lot of people were really giving a lot of side eye to Barry and Honey's children. They were all different from one another and from Barry. They didn't have his workaholic personality and none of them wanted to take over the company business

• 56:14Annie Elise?

  after Barry died. Their oldest child Lauren was a yoga teacher and a counselor. Their second daughter Alexandra was a little more similar to her parents in the fact that she didn't really like to show off with money and she was very charitable. She was a registered nurse, she was married and had children and she was the closest out of the kids to her parents. In fact, the new house that Barry and Honey were building was really close to Alexandra and her family. Their youngest child Kalen was about to get married to a man that she met online. Now, she was more interested in money and she definitely had a bit of a spending habit. Her parents paid for her credit cards, but apparently they were about to completely cut her off right before they died. And Kalen had also recently asked her parents for a brand new car because she had gotten in a car accident, but her

• 56:57Annie Elise?

  parents told her no. They said, "No, you should just get your old one fixed like any normal person would do. Just because you get in a car accident doesn't mean you get a brand new car, especially if it's not totaled." Like, no. Well, apparently, after their deaths, Kalen went and bought a brand new car. And she claimed that it's what her dad wanted her to do. Which, yes, that is a direct quote. And then we get to Barry and Honey's son, Jonathan, who really rose to the top in terms of people who were getting suspicious or being blamed or being looked at. People have said that Jonathan acted really weird after his parents' death. He was reportedly very dramatic at the funeral. He would flip-flop between crying, then acting hysterical, then going and acting completely stoic and

• 57:42Annie Elise?

  normal, almost as though it was performative. Jonathan also had a pretty difficult relationship with Barry. You see, Jonathan kept going to Barry, saying that he had all of these different ideas for new businesses. He just needed an investor. He just needed a little bit of money to make it happen. So Barry would give Jonathan some money, but then the business would flop, and then Barry would be out of that money. Barry had also loaned Jonathan a huge amount of money. I'm talking more money- than most people will not most people more money than anyone usually will ever see in their life. He had loaned Jonathan somewhere between fifty and sixty million dollars. But he told Jonathan that he would have to pay all of that money back with interest.

• 58:25Annie Elise?

  And by two thousand seventeen, Jonathan had not repaid any of that debt. And Barry was then apparently starting to get annoyed. He told Jonathan that he was gonna have to pay him back and he was serious. But this apparently made Jonathan very mad. He sent some angry texts and Barry was kind of snippy back and all in all, things looked pretty tense between the two of them. But it's worth noting that this exchange and this like friction between the two of them happened just two weeks before the murders. But Jonathan wasn't the only person who Barry loaned money to. He gave money to multiple family members and friends who all wanted to start their own businesses. Many of these businesses weren't successful, but in those cases Barry wasn't as demanding about being repaid as he was with his son Jonathan.

• 59:08Annie Elise?

  Jonathan argued that he was genuinely trying to be a successful businessman. That he was in the office every day, that he actively worked with all of the employees who, according to him, really liked him as a boss. Jonathan argued that other people that Barry gave money to weren't as dedicated to their businesses as he was. But Barry seemed to stick to his guns and he kept pushing Jonathan to pay him back. The problem was Jonathan didn't have that kind of money. He couldn't have repaid his father even if he wanted to. And frankly, there was nothing to suggest that Jonathan was willing to give up this lavish fancy life that he was living. And here's where things get really interesting. Barry's will said that he was going to leave everything to Honey.

• 59:50Annie Elise?

  That the kids would not get a single cent unless Honey died when he did. So Jonathan would then have a motive for killing both his father and Honey. It's also reported that Jonathan didn't have the best relationship with Honey because Jonathan was gay. And supposedly she did not approve of that. Jonathan was married, but some of his past partners have said that Honey just never made them feel welcomed. Now Jonathan also told a reporter during all of this that his own sisters thought that he was The one who killed his parents, which that's a pretty big deal, right? When your own family members are saying things like that, it's worth paying attention. Except he also said that they were just jealous because he was his parents' favorite child.

• 1:00:32Annie Elise?

  Which, after reading more about Jonathan, I don't know, that doesn't really seem to be true. But Jonathan and the other kids weren't the only suspects, not at all, not by a long shot. Some people were pointing the finger at one of Barry's closest friends, a man named Frank D'Angelo. Now Frank was a smooth talker and also a wannabe businessman. He had met Barry while he was working as a juice salesman and over the years Frank became one of Barry's closest friends. Barry helped Frank with a ton of different business ideas and one of them was a craft beer brewing company. Barry funded the entire idea and even sent Frank on trips all around Europe so that he could learn as much about beer as he possibly could. They even sponsored a hockey team in Canada for extra advertising and PR.

• 1:01:16Annie Elise?

  But the business was largely a failure. And a lot of people reported that it tasted just like any other cheap beer, but the only difference being it had a very expensive price tag. And I haven't been able to verify this, but it's been said that Barry loaned something like $200 million or maybe even more to Frank. This over the course of their entire friendship. And it was money that Frank never had to pay back, or so Frank thought. Now Frank didn't have the best reputation. At one point, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman who he had been planning to hire for the company. Frank was acquitted, but only because there wasn't enough evidence against him. The judge who was overseeing the case even said he thought that Frank did it.

• 1:01:59Annie Elise?

  But legally, they couldn't do anything without some kind of proof. And as the rumor went, this was all a deal breaker for Barry. He was going to fully cut Frank off entirely. And understandably, that made Frank very angry. He had a very short fuse and he was money hungry. He was just kind of like an icky person in general. He liked living the high life and he was only able to do that because of Barry's money. So the question was, would Frank snap and kill Barry when he was looking at the possibility of losing access to all of his money? Some say yes, but some say no. Now, if Frank killed Barry in a moment of anger, why would he also kill Honey? Plus, with the way that their bodies were so carefully and meticulously placed,

• 1:02:41Annie Elise?

  it seemed like whoever had killed them was really taking their time and even maybe trying to make some kind of statement. It just didn't fit with a crime of passion. But there was another person, another person that they hadn't looked at and that could crack this whole case wide open. But would it?

• 1:03:06Annie Elise?

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• 1:03:42Annie Elise?

  So the final person who people really started suspecting was one of Barry's cousins, Carrie Winter. Now, remember when I said Barry worked for his uncle's drug company before he started his own? Well, that company was owned by Carrie's dad, Lou. Then Lou died suddenly from a brain aneurysm, and his wife died shortly after, leaving Carrie and his three brothers, who were all still very young, orphaned. The four boys were adopted by a couple who was then later accused of being abusive to them. So all in all, it was just a really bad situation. Now, as for Lou's company, Empire Labs, the plan was for the board to run everything until the Winter boys were adults. Once they were old enough to take over, they would. Now, this all happened while Barry was still in college,

• 1:04:26Annie Elise?

  and he really didn't like the way that the board and the CEO that they had appointed were running things. Basically, he felt like they were running it into the ground and that they would go out of business before the Winter boys ever even had a chance to take over. Barry and a close friend ended up borrowing money from their parents and they bought Empire Labs. And he and his friend were able to build the company back up. And in five years, they sold the company for $2 million. Barry gave some of that money to the Winter Boys, but then he used the rest of it to start his own company. So as the Winter Boys grew older, they felt it wasn't fair that Barry had sold Empire Labs to start his own company. Basically, it seemed like he had sold out their future for his own financial benefit. But Barry defended himself, saying that Empire Labs was going to fail.

• 1:05:11Annie Elise?

  And by saving and then selling the company, he got the boys more money than they would have ever made otherwise. In his mind, he had every right to sell the company. He even continued to support the Winter Boys, buying them houses, cars, money, and jobs. He even invested in their businesses that they ended up starting for themselves. But still, think about it, Barry became a billionaire, thanks in part to his new medical company. So no amount of houses, cars, and investments, none of that was going to come close to making up for what the boys thought had been stolen from them. They even claimed at one point that they should own 20% of Barry's medical company, since the four of them together had owned 20% of Empire Labs before he sold it. And Carrie ended up confronting Barry about it.

• 1:05:53Annie Elise?

  But Barry said that he built this company himself and that he didn't owe the Winter Boys anything. Then Carrie tried to sue Barry for $1.5 million. It became this huge legal battle that lasted over 10 years. But in the end, the judge sided with Barry, and the judge even ordered Carrie to pay Barry back for all of his legal fees. On top of that, Carrie often talked publicly about how terrible Barry and Honey were, how ungrateful they were. And after the murders, he even talked about how they deserved what had happened to them. So yeah, the main reason people suspected Carrie is because he's been so outspoken about his dislike of Honey and Barry, even after the murder. In fact, he said that he danced around his house and celebrated when he found out that Barry and Honey were dead.

• 1:06:37Annie Elise?

  He straight up said that he had a reason to kill Barry. And more than that, he even made a plan to do so. But his plan apparently wasn't at all like how Barry and Honey actually died. Carrie said that his plan was to Just sit and wait outside of the medical company that Barry had started and attack Barry as he left the building. Then he would decapitate him and just wait by his car until the police finally came and arrested him. Which, I gotta say, not a very well thought out plan, but I get it. If all you want is revenge and you don't even care what happens to yourself, then yeah, maybe blitz attack, decapitate, and just sit there and wait for the police. But it doesn't sound like a fully formed plan to me. But I think we all can agree in any event that something just wasn't quite right with Kerry, right? But he wasn't ever named an official suspect.

• 1:07:22Annie Elise?

  And a lot of people who know Kerry and know his brothers point out that when their parents died, they received a huge inheritance. Unfortunately, a lot of that money was wasted on expensive vacations, drugs, and a bunch of other unnecessary things. So it seemed like Kerry might have been willing to do anything, even commit murder, just to get his hands on some more money.

• 1:07:43Speaker 06

  I probably had reasons to lash out, to, uh, to do the dirty deed.

• 1:07:50Speaker 07

  But Kerry Winter says he is innocent. What's more, he's making an extraordinary accusation against Barry Sherman. The fifth estate's Bob McEwen spoke with Winter and put his claim to the test.

• 1:08:03Speaker 06

  He works as a construction site supervisor, a far cry from the wealth and power his billionaire cousin Barry Sherman enjoyed. And Kerry Winter is bitter. He cared about one thing: money. Making lots of it. And not caring who he destroyed, who he stepped on. I was betrayed. My cousin hurt me. And now I want to hurt him. Police have determined Barry and Honey Sherman were both victims of a targeted homicide. But now Kerry Winter insists, without evidence, that Barry could have killed his wife. Because Winter claims in the late 1990s, Barry Sherman asked him to arrange a contract hit on her.

• 1:08:47Speaker 06

  There was a time in his office that he turned to me and he said, Kerry, I want you to do me a favor. And I said, what's that, Barry? He said, I want you to whack my wife. And I said, come on, Barry. You want me to kill your wife? He goes, I didn't say you. You know some people. Could you arrange that for me?

• 1:09:04Speaker 07

  What do you believe members of the family and their legal representatives will say about this?

• 1:09:12Speaker 06

  I think they would say that he's possibly lying. He's trying to drag Barry's good name through the mud. He's got a hidden agenda. He's got a vendetta. He's being spiteful, vengeful.

• 1:09:26Speaker 07

  His claim is unsubstantiated. So we put Carrie Winter through a three-hour lie detector test administered by John Galliano, a former Quebec homicide investigator and a veteran polygraph examiner. While not admissible in court, polygraphs are commonly used by police officers to determine truthfulness. Are you lying when you say that Barry Sherman told you that you wanted his wife killed?

• 1:09:49Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:09:50Speaker 07

  Carrie Winter failed. There's something that you're hiding.

• 1:09:54Speaker 06

  So I failed?

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, you failed. Yeah, you failed. Winter seemed shaken, all of which begs another question. Could Carrie Winter have murdered the man he readily admits he hated so much?

• 1:10:07Speaker 06

  I probably had reasons to lash out, to do the dirty deed.

• 1:10:12Speaker 07

  This would be asked of you by anybody. Did you kill Honey and Barry Sherman?

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  Absolutely not. I had nothing to do with it. I don't know who did it.

• 1:10:25Speaker 07

  Toronto police have asked him to come in for an interview. Winter says they told him he is not a suspect and that there is no evidence he is.

• 1:10:33Annie Elise?

  Now, aside from all of these suspects who were close to the couple, some people think that Barry and Honey's deaths were the result of a burglary gone wrong. Their neighbor had a string of break-ins in the year leading up to Barry and Honey's deaths, and in fact, somebody had already broken into their home once before. The burglars literally climbed onto the Sherman's roof, then opened the skylight and kind of like rappelled down into their home, like it's out of a movie. But after the murders, the police went and checked the roof and checked that same skylight. And they said that there was no evidence that anybody got in that same way a second time around. And I have to say, if it was a burglary gone wrong, it doesn't make sense to me that the killers would take the careful time to pose the two of them so carefully, just like those statues. I don't know.

• 1:11:18Annie Elise?

  Honey and Barry's bodies were posed in such a specific way. that it just feels personal to me. Now, none of the people that we just talked about were ever listed as official suspects. The police have gone through the computer data, the phone data, and hundreds of people that were linked to Barry and Honey. They also checked out all of the surveillance camera footage from the neighborhood, including some that they didn't publicly release until late 2021. That footage is of someone, probably a man, walking outside on Wednesday, December 13th, 2017, AKA the night that Barry and Honey died. You can't see this person's face or any other identifiable features. It's just someone dressed in all dark winter clothes, walking through the snow in an area near Barry and Honey's home.

• 1:12:02Annie Elise?

  However, the police do think that this person likely has some sort of military background, and they think this based on the way that this person is walking.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  This is the person detectives now say is wanted for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman. Investigators say it's unclear if the suspect was working alone or with someone else, but on the evening of December 13th, 2017, two days before the billionaire couple was found dead next to the indoor pool in the basement of their mansion, the suspect was tracked on video, arriving by foot in the area of 50 Old Colony Road and later leaving from that same address. The suspect also disappears from camera view during the timeframe that investigators determined the murders took place. We undertook these investigative steps, exhaustive investigative steps, to identify this individual.

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  And now, having gotten to the point where we have not been able to do so with these videos, this is now the prudent time to release this to the public and seek the public's assistance. Police can only say the suspect is between 5'6" and 5'9", and believe his actions were suspicious that night. We were able to eliminate pretty well every other person on the video footage that we've obtained.

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  And so, we're left with a very glaring sort of unknown with this individual that requires an explanation, if there's a legitimate one. We were able to find the street and the home where the video surveillance was taken from. It's not even on Old Colony Road, but more than a kilometer away from the Sherman home, which suggests that the suspect walked quite a distance to and from the crime scene. Police say they tracked the suspect walking through many surveillance videos, leading up to and coming from Old Colony Road, and released this video because it was the best quality of the suspect they had. This man lives on the street.

• 1:13:53Annie Elise?

  Do you ever walk over to Old Colony Road?

• 1:13:55Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:13:56Annie Elise?

  How long does it take to walk there from here?

• 1:13:58Speaker 07

  10, 15 minutes.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  Neighbors are anxious for an arrest.

• 1:14:02Speaker 07

  Yes, I hope so. We really hope so.

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  The lead detective hopes that this video will bring in the one tip he needs, leading to a break in this four-year-old case, and perhaps an arrest.

• 1:14:14Speaker 03

  And police would not say if the suspect was picked up or dropped off after walking to and from this crime scene on Old Colony Road. Also, the fact that police could not track this person's cellphone means that the suspect either didn't use it or left it at home that night, which I'm told could be the sign that this person is a professional.

• 1:14:32Annie Elise?

  Now, if you're wondering, okay, so was it some sort of military person? Was it a professional hit? I don't know. I can't give you the answer to that. It seems like it's possible, but the suspect pool is so large. And as far as we know, nobody has come forward about who this person is in that video. The Sherman children are even offering a reward of $35 million for anybody that has any important information regarding the case. But still, no one with credible information has come forward. Police have received hundreds of tips, but none of them have proven to be helpful at all. In seven days, it will mark the fifth anniversary of the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman. And today, their daughter Alexandra Karchuk issued a statement on behalf of her family that reads in part,

• 1:15:17Annie Elise?

  "My heart is broken. My loss is immeasurable. My children have lost their grandparents. We miss their guidance, love, and wisdom." What's so crazy about this is with the massive pool of suspects, with a $35 million reward on the table, which I gotta say is pretty enticing for someone. Despite all of that, to this day, the case still remains unsolved. We don't know who killed Barry and Honey Sherman. Was it Jonathan, Frank, Carrie, someone else entirely? Did somebody hire a hitman? Did the sister Mary hire a hitman? A hitman, a group of hitmen and why? Or do you think it really was a murder-suicide? Even though I can't wrap my mind around that. One of the number one causes of homicide is money, right?

• 1:16:02Annie Elise?

  It's financially driven. Whether it's the life insurance policy or sometimes an affair, whatever it is. So they had copious amounts of money. And a lot of people, a lot of enemies, a lot of people who would have wanted hands on their money and wanted them dead. So I think when you have access to that kind of money, could you hire a professional? Absolutely. But I guess the question is, who? This is a case that has fascinated people ever since Barry and Honey's bodies were discovered inside that pool room. And pretty recent too, 2017, that's not that long ago. It's just such a bizarre case. And in this day and age, how do two incredibly well-connected billionaires with tons of obvious enemies

• 1:16:43Annie Elise?

  get murdered, then have their bodies displayed in some sort of weird, posed, precise ritualistic way, maybe? I don't know. And the killers still haven't been found. How is that possible? Especially when you have a $35 million reward on the table? I don't know. But that's why I said, I don't care how sick I am. I needed to talk to you guys about this case once we got all the information from Canada because like, it's blowing my mind. Who do you think was responsible? Do you think it was a professional hit? Do you think it was a family member? Or do you think it was a murder-suicide? Let me know in the comment section on YouTube or in the Q and A section on Spotify. Or if you're listening on Apple, let me know in the review section. Because I am baffled and maybe I'll even put a poll over on Spotify.

• 1:17:28Annie Elise?

  Do they still do polls? I don't know if they still do, but if they do, I'll put a poll over on Spotify. Because I want to know what you guys think because I genuinely, I don't know. I really have no idea what to make of it. I definitely don't think a murder-suicide, but I don't know. So let me know what you guys think, but this is a wild one. I mean, you don't even see cases with that kind of, you don't see life with that kind of money. It is just unbelievable. All right, I'm going to go put Vicks all over my face and my chest and try to close my eyes. But I appreciate you guys tuning into today's episode with me. Thank you so much. I will be back on the mic with you on Thursday with headline highlights where we are breaking down everything true crime going on this week. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet,

• 1:18:10Annie Elise?

  take a quick second. It'll take you literally three seconds to do it. It's totally free. You just find the top corner of whatever podcast app you're listening on and press follow. And that way as new episodes get uploaded and some hint hint surprise bonus episodes, you will get notified and you won't miss any of them. All right, guys. Thanks again. And until the next one, be nice. Do not kill people. Don't brag about money. And I don't know, maybe don't loan your family tens of millions of dollars because even if you're trying to be nice, maybe it'll give them motive to kill you. I don't know. But loan me that money. That'd be great. Um, all right, guys. Thanks so much. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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