MYSTERY: The Murders of Barry and Honey Sherman

Carter Roy (0:06)

This is Crime House.

In May of 2019, a demolition crew rolled up to a mansion on Old Colony Road, in one of the wealthiest corners of Toronto, Canada. The house was enormous. Six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a tennis court sitting on top of the garage, and underneath it all, a heated indoor swimming pool. The property wasn't being renovated or flipped. The family that owned it wanted it gone. So the excavators got to work. They tore through the bedrooms and brought down the walls. And when the house was rubble, crews filled in the pool and hauled everything away. When they were finished, one of the most exclusive addresses in Canada was a bare patch of dirt. The four siblings who grew up in that house asked for this. In their application to the city, a representative wrote that the property carried, quote, bad memories. That was an understatement. Seventeen months earlier, a real estate agent had walked a group of buyers through that same house and the tour ended downstairs, at the pool. When they arrived, two people were already down there, sitting at the edge of the water, side by side, their heads upright and their bodies completely still.

They were one of the most recognizable couples in Canada, worth billions. They had been building a bigger house across town, with a flight to Florida booked for that Monday. They never made it there.

Nearly nine years later, no one has been charged. No one has explained how they ended up in that room, and the reward for the answer has climbed to $35 million, without a single person ever coming forward to claim it. This is the story of Barry and Honey Sherman.

People's lives are like a story, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories, a Crime House Original powered by PAVE Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review, and follow the show. And for early ad-free access to every episode, subscribe to Crime House Plus. You'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or tap Try Free on the Murder True Crime Stories show page on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays, where I'm covering cases with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in multiple directions and every theory feels like a possibility. Remember, these episodes are also on YouTube with full video. Just search for Crime House Studios and be sure to like and subscribe. Today's case comes from Toronto, Canada, where Barry Sherman built Apotex, one of the biggest generic drug companies on the planet. At the time of his death in 2017, Forbes pegged his fortune at $3.2 billion, making him the 12th richest person in the country. His wife Honey was one of the most beloved philanthropists in Canada. When the two of them were laid to rest, the huge crowd of mourners included the Prime Minister. You would think a case with that much money and attention would be solved in a week. Instead, it's dragged on for nearly nine years through two competing investigations, a family at war with its own police force, and a war that's bigger than most lottery jackpots. All that and more coming up.

Barry Sherman was born in Toronto on February 25, 1942 His grandparents were Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Russia and Poland. By the time Barry came along, the family had built a modest, comfortable life. His father was a partner in a zipper company. His mother trained as an occupational therapist. Then when Barry was 10 years old, his father died of a sudden heart attack. His mother went back to work to keep the family afloat, and Barry poured himself into the one thing he could control. School. He turned out to be scary smart. He won a national physics contest in high school and went on to study engineering at the University of Toronto. During summers, he drove a delivery truck for his uncle, Louis Winter, who owned a small generic drug company called Empire Laboratories. It was grand work. Years later, in an unfinished memoir, Barry wrote that those summers would, quote, prove to be of critical importance to his future. He had no idea how right he was. On the fall of 1965, tragedy hit the Winter family twice in less than three weeks. Barry's uncle, Lou, died of an apparent aneurysm, and just 17 days later, Lou's wife, Beverly, died of leukemia. Their four young sons, Paul, Jeffrey, Carrie, and Dana were suddenly orphans. Barry was in his early 20s at the time, off at MIT working on his doctorate. When he heard the news, he made the executors of his uncle's estate an offer that, well, tells you everything about the business man he would become. He said he'd step in and run Empire for two months in exchange for $3,000, a car, and the right of first refusal if the company was ever sold. He gave them 24 hours to say yes or the offer was off the table.