Pharma billionaire and wife found dead in 'suspicious' case

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Cutting to the nub of things, I don't see this as a professional hit. Having said that, in the world of crime, where rationality is not usually first up to bat, anything is possible.

Theoretically, it could be pros trying to make this look like the work of amateurs, but that, to me, is overcomplicated and convoluted. Possible but highly unlikely.

If I were investigating this crime I would be going over the movements of the Winter brothers in minute detail and thinking about things very thoroughly.

The criminologist said that the crime looked "personal" to him. Business can be personal too. It doesn't have to involve family or a double crossed friend to be personal, but the manner with which this crime was carried out seems almost deranged. Kerry Winter said in the interview embedded previously that he would have relished cutting off Mr. Sherman's head and rolling it around the parking lot of Apotex, but didn't do it, or anything else.

I'm sure the police have the Winter brothers under the microscope.

It is unfortunate that The Fifth Estate failed, in my opinion, to fully exploit the opportunity presented by the interview with Kerry Winter. The interviewer, Bob McKeown, is a highly respected investigative journalist who will always be remembered for exposing George W. Bush's assertion of having seen the impact of the first aircraft into the World Trade Center on 9/11 on television at a time when that first impact had not yet been televised. For a mainstream journalist, at that time, to challenge President Bush, took a certain amount of journalistic integrity.

One contrasts The Fifth Estate interview of Kerry Winter with Andrew Jarecki's interview of Robert Durst for the documentary series The Jinx.

Jarecki's team planned the final interview with Durst very carefully and, although the interview did not seem to be scripted in detail, Jarecki, brilliantly, got Durst to admit on camera that he could not tell which of two addresses, on letters sent to Susan Berman and the Los Angeles Police Department, that he had written. He couldn't tell the addresses (the hand printing) apart and one of them was believed to have been sent to the police by Susan Berman's killer, telling them where to find her body. This was the key moment in an otherwise innocuous interview, when Durst believed that he was home free. This is the moment that Jarecki nailed him, and so rattled him, that later in the washroom, still wearing a hot microphone, believing himself to be out of earshot, he admitted to "killing them all".

The golden moment for Bob McKeown came right at the end of his interview with Kerry Winter when he said,

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

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

Kerry Winter is very controlled giving his answer. There is a lot of head movement as he does so. It makes it difficult to study his face carefully as he speaks, although at one instant, the raised eyebrow, to me at least, he appears to be peeking out from behind a mask.

To my way of thinking Bob McKeown went to a pro forma question when he asked if Kerry Winter had done the killings. It's the sort of thing Winter would undoubtedly have prepared for. I'm wondering what would have happened if McKeown had skipped a move after setting the question up and had asked if Mr. Winter knew who did the killings, first.

At the very least it might have thrown Kerry Winter out of his rhythm.

a reply to: ipsedixit

I think 'organized crime hit' explains why it took so long for police to admit it was murder rather than a murder/suicide.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

I wish you had elaborated a little more. The way you write it, it sounds as if you believe the police are reluctant to accept organized crime hits as murders.

The way I see this, "murder/suicide" is the least likely possibility in this case. In order of preference I would say, personal vendetta style murder, murder within the family, murder by a business rival, murder by a professional acting for any of the above. In the last case, I think a professional would do the crime in the manner indicated only under protest (if he really was interested in his customer's welfare, i.e., his own welfare since they are the same in this situation) because doing it that way would simply move police interest up the line to one of the other categories.

WARNING! VERY GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING POST.

I had a thought recently about this case. I was thinking that it might pay the police forensics people to carefully examine the footwear that Barry and Honey Sherman were wearing. I would be looking for fibres, fingerprints and DNA samples on the exterior of the footwear. It's too late to examine the deceased couple's ankles. Presumably that would have been done during the autopsy.

The staging of the crime has always struck me as peculiar. I think I understand now why it was done that way. I think the Shermans were still alive when they were strung up and that somebody who really didn't like them, held their feet out horizontally, watching them slowly strangle to death.

The Toronto Star has published articles today that fill in more detail on the Sherman case investigation, particularly as to the issuing of search warrants and police reasons for having specifics contained in those warrants withheld from the public.

www.thestar.com...

Due to the controversy surrounding the initial stages of the police investigation (the murder-suicide theory, now debunked), the Star argued in court that access to some or all of the warrant material would allow the public to scrutinize the activities of police. Why, for example, did the police think it was a murder-suicide?

In their response, the Toronto Police filed an affidavit from police detective Dennis Yim of the 32 Division, Major Crime Unit. He has been seconded to the homicide squad under the direction of Detective Sergeant Susan Gomes.

In court, Yim, and Crown attorney Peter Scrutton, provided numerous reasons to maintain the seal.

They also deal with issues around the two autopsies and how the police came to change their view of the case from murder/suicide to double murder. For more than a month Honey Sherman was the only victim listed on police search warrants. Does this indicate a possible fumble by investigators during the important early days of the investigation?

www.thestar.com... omicide.html

Veteran forensic pathologist Dr. David Chiasson stood beside Barry Sherman’s body on the stainless steel table, preparing to do a second, private autopsy. Natural light filtered through the frosted glass windows of the modern Ontario coroner’s building. Three private detectives, former homicide cops, stood nearby.

The skin was missing from around Sherman’s wrists, surgically removed by another pathologist several days before in the first examination, the official autopsy requested by the police. The same had been done to Honey Sherman’s wrists.

Why? Chiasson wondered. The answer, provided to Chiasson by the first pathologist, and other pieces of information learned that day last December eventually changed the police theory on the Sherman deaths from murder-suicide to double homicide.

edit on 9-5-2018 by ipsedixit because: (no reason given)

There has been a new development in the investigation of the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman.

www.thestar.com... r.html

The private investigation team assembled by the four children of Barry and Honey Sherman announced a $10-million reward and something unprecedented in Canadian history: a “public-private partnership” in which the Sherman family’s detectives will obtain tips and information and pass them on to the Toronto Police homicide squad.

Apparently the Chief of the Toronto Police Service is happy about the offer of a reward, but is more reserved about other aspects of the offer. The handling of evidence in this way might pose problems in court. This is being looked into by legal authorities.

The murder happened roughly ten months ago. The Sherman family legal team, in making this move, offering the reward and intensifying their parallel investigation of the crime, have cited examples of slowness in the police investigation, an alleged failure to fully examine the Sherman home where the murders took place and extended periods of time required to take fingerprints of people who have said that they were in the home close to the time of the murders.

I think the reward is definitely a good idea, but the channeling of tips and potential evidence through the Sherman team of investigators and their lawyer is problematic. Earlier in the thread I discussed this in detail in relation to the murder of Kathy Durst and the Durst family's use of their own investigator. It is alleged that they covered up evidence and stymied the police investigation of that crime. Robert Durst went on to murder two more people.

It has been said that the Sherman murders may have been related to Sherman's pharmaceutical business. Have the police looked into what difference the murder of Barry Sherman has made to the business. Has that murder led to any significant improvement in anybody else's fortunes or opportunities? That would be looking into the qui bono angle. Who profited?

If the crimes were revenge murders, revenge itself would be the profit. One would have to look carefully at Sherman's enemies. Kerry Winter, one of the sons of Sherman's first business partner would be one, for reasons explained earlier in the thread. A reward of ten million dollars might be quite useful here. Assuming that the Winter brothers had something to hide, which is not being alleged by me, their solidarity might not withstand a ten million dollar inducement to talk.

Police resources being limited, as they are, this case could take years to close, without help. The Sherman family appear to want results more quickly than that. Revenge again?

The relationship between the Toronto police and the Sherman family investigation team is not going smoothly, at least in the eyes of the Toronto Police Service. How significant this grinding of gears is, if it is significant, will not be known for a while. The reward offered by the Sherman family is probably the most important investigative tool being employed at the moment, barring the discovery of tell tale DNA by either of the teams' forensic investigators.

More search warrants and production orders have been issued. The objects of these authorizations have not been disclosed to the public.

www.thestar.com... ice.html

A bag filled with fibres vacuumed from the indoor pool room where murder victims Barry and Honey Sherman were discovered has been turned over to Toronto police detectives by the Sherman family private investigation team.

That handover comes several weeks after police warned the Sherman family’s lawyer they would seek a judicial warrant if potential evidence was not immediately handed over, sources close to the case have told the Star.

An earring discovered in the driveway has also being turned over by the private team.

The development continues an acrimonious relationship that has been building for ten months between the Sherman family and Toronto police.

Correction: Kerry Winter is not the son of Barry Sherman's first business partner, but rather the son of Sherman's uncle, who gave Barry Sherman his start in the generic drugs business and whose company Sherman, with a partner, eventually bought following this person's death. Terms of the purchase eventually became the subject of lengthy litigation between Sherman and Kerry Winter and his brothers.

There has been a new development in the account of the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman.

www.thestar.com...

While Barry and Honey Sherman lay dead in the basement of their Toronto home, a lone man went in and out of their house three times, according to an account of security camera footage seized by Toronto police.

Between 9:11 a.m. and 10:16 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2017, (the morning after the Shermans are believed to have been murdered) the man walked from a four-door sedan parked in front of the Sherman house on Old Colony Rd., appeared to enter the house through the front door, then came back outside. He did this three times, for a total of 29 minutes inside the Sherman home, before driving off.

Obviously this is quite interesting. Has an appeal been made for the individual seen in the video to come forward? Not to my knowledge.

According to the Star the police did not look at security footage for at least six weeks after the Sherman's bodies had been discovered. There is a suggestion that since the police are thought to have regarded the case as a murder suicide at first, there was no interest in surveillance video from the neighborhood.

In contrast to the police, who have been close lipped about the video footage, the Sherman's lawyer has been more informative.

Brian Greenspan, a lawyer for the Sherman family, said his private investigators have a copy of the video footage from the house and it is “inconclusive” — they cannot determine who the man is, what kind of car it is or the man’s exact movements.
. . .

Here is what is in the security video footage, according to the account provided to the Star from notes taken by the owner of the surveillance camera.:

At 9:11 a.m. a dark-coloured four-door sedan driving west on Old Colony Rd. stops and parks immediately in front of the Sherman house. It does not drive into the circular driveway. Three minutes after the car is parked, a man gets out and at 9:14 a.m. he walks to the Sherman house and enters through the front door. He remains in the house for 12 minutes.

At 9:26 a.m., the man emerges from the house, walks back to his car and gets in. He remains in the car for just under 11 minutes, then gets out of his car, walks back to the house and enters through the front door at 9:37 a.m. This time he remains in the house for eight minutes.

At 9:45 a.m., the man walks back to his car. This time he stays in his car for about 21 minutes, before walking back to the house and entering through the front door at 10:06 a.m. He remains in the house for nine minutes, then emerges, gets into his car and drives slowly west towards Bayview Ave. at 10:16 a.m.

Did the visitor have a key to the house? Was the door unlocked? When the real estate agent discovered the bodies the next morning, did she find the door unlocked?

These are important questions.

The Star notes that there was an unexplained delay in calling the police. The bodies were discovered about 10:00 AM but police were not on the scene until about 11:46 AM.

The video, which was obtained from a neighbor, is on a seven(?) day loop, which records over itself. The neighbor, whose account of what is on the video is described above, did not view the video from the Wednesday on which the Shermans are believed to have been killed, but presumably the police have viewed it.

The video also shows a man and a woman entering the house on the Monday, Dec 11th, two days before the likely date of the murders, Dec. 13. The neighbors, in talking to police, had mentioned seeing a couple they did not recognize in the neighborhood. Their video confirmed this recollection.

The Star tells us that the video had, apparently, not been reviewed by January 25, 2018.

Is the Sherman's lawyer Brian Greenspan talking too much?

“The quality of the footage is such that we are not able to confirm it,” said Greenspan, who has spoken to one of the homeowners and said he does not doubt the “veracity” of what the homeowner says. Greenspan said it is possible that the original — which no longer exists — was a better version than the copy. “I don’t know what (Toronto police) have done with it,” he said.

There is another interesting little tidbit in the Star story.

During the Star’s interviews on Old Colony Rd. over the past two weeks, one other neighbor gave an additional piece of information: that six weeks following the discovery of the Shermans’ bodies, a Toronto Police Service detective showed up at his door to ask questions. “His business card said he was from the ‘cold case squad,’” the man told the Star.

Which begs the following questions:

Do Toronto Police Service officers working "cold cases" have their own special business cards?

Were "cold case" officers being pressed into service on the Sherman case because the police had been caught "flat footed" (couldn't resist, sorry) by the results of the Sherman's second autopsy's double homicide conclusion?

Is somebody impersonating Toronto police officers?


Why go in and out 3 times in the space of an hour and then drive away? Had the murder really happened on the 13th, or was it the 14th? Did one of the Shermans answer the door and let the person in or did the person have a key? Was the door unlocked? Was the visit in aid of "clean up" or a search for some document or lost object? Who was the visitor?

There has been some grumbling coming from the Sherman family's lawyer, Brian Greenspan, to the effect that his team of private investigators have been sharing all of their information with the Toronto Police Service but is getting nothing coming the other way. He has said that his team is concerned not to interfere with the Toronto Police investigation of the murder, but to be sure of doing that, it would be helpful to know what the Toronto Police Service is doing.

I'm not a professional but I think the Toronto Police Service should, under no circumstance, be sharing information of any sort with the Sherman family investigators. If they were to do so, the Sherman family and its investigators would have to occupy even more police attention, as objects of investigation than they already do occupy. That's just not realistic.

The family in offering a ten million dollar reward in the case, has already done a great thing which could turn out to be very helpful. The mere fact that it hasn't been claimed as yet, is even telling in its own way. I would say that it rules out some kind of home invasion gone wrong, for one thing.

The family, if it feels it necessary, should continue with their own investigation, and simply turn the information they discover over to the police. Period. Doing it any other way could potentially open up a can of worms.

Reading the account of what the security camera saw between 9:11 AM and 10:16 AM at the Sherman's house, it is difficult to imagine that this leisurely sequence of movements to and from a car parked in front of the house, could be connected to the murder of the Shermans.

It begs the question, who, in the normal course of their business, moves back and forth between their car and the interior of a client's home three times and then drives away?

Were the Shermans still alive on the morning of Dec 14th?

It seems highly unlikely that a guilty someone, inside the house with the deceased Shermans, would have opened the door to a visitor.

Thus it seems highly likely, to me, that the Shermans were still alive on Dec. 14th.

There has been another development in the story of the Sherman murders.

www.thestar.com... ead.html

Toronto Police were investigating a mysterious 911 call down the street from Barry and Honey Sherman’s home at the same time as the Apotex founder and his wife lay dead or dying, a Star investigation reveals.

The investigation of the 911 call was going on at approximately the same time that an unidentified individual and his vehicle were caught by a surveillance camera near the Shermans' home. Reading the Star story, it appears to me as if the individual seen in the video must be a police officer. The behavior, back and forth to the door three times, the time spent on the "job" (an hour?), argues police activity.

The police are still playing things extremely close to the vest. I wonder if the 911 call was made by the Shermans' murderer. One thinks of Robert Durst's letter to the police in Los Angeles telling them where they would find a "cadaver".

Does this mean that the police might possibly have a voice recording of the Shermans' murderer?

From reading the linked article and reading between the lines, it is likely that the 911 call was made from a cell phone. It is likely also that the call was cut off before much, if anything, was said.

Is this another attempt by the oh so clever murderer to manipulate the police investigation by laying a false trail for them to follow? Did the 911 caller, calling from a cell phone in the neighborhood, say that he was calling from a particular address, to which the police went on a wild goose chase?

Is there a pattern of behavior in this, the crime scene staging and the false 911 call?