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  • We turn to that murder mystery that has gripped Canada.

  • It did seem like you were watching

  • a work of fiction, not reality.

  • Tonight the mystery deepening behind

  • the double homicide of one of the world's richest couples.

  • But of course truth is often much stranger than fiction

  • as I learned as I went on with the reporting.

  • Their murder has shaken the political establishment

  • with many wondering who could have wanted

  • to see them dead and why.

  • This was just a seismic event in the history

  • of Canadian business and Canadian news.

  • Now police want to know who would want them dead.

  • We are now well over a year after their deaths

  • and they remain completely unsolved.

  • It's quite a macabre story in terms of how

  • Barry and Honey Sherman were discovered.

  • They were last seen, both of them, on December 13, 2018

  • which was a Wednesday.

  • They were trying to sell their home

  • and so their real estate agent was holding viewings

  • for prospective buyers and the agent had a couple

  • touring the home who were being shown

  • around the kitchen, the bedrooms,

  • and they were shown the indoor pool.

  • If you can imagine a line of people comes into the pool area

  • and sees this really gruesome tableau of

  • Barry and Honey Sherman suspended from a metal railing

  • that surrounded one end of the pool

  • with leather belts holding them up by the neck.

  • They were in kneeling positions facing away from the water.

  • She was kind of slumped on her side a little bit,

  • he was more upright.

  • There was then a 911 call

  • and the police were on the scene very soon afterward.

  • Now the billionaire founder of Canada's largest

  • drugs firm, Barry Sherman and his wife Honey have been

  • found dead at their home in Toronto.

  • Police describe the deaths as suspicious

  • but say they were not being treated as murder.

  • We discovered two bodies of people inside a home here.

  • The circumstances of their death appear suspicious.

  • Homicide detectives are leading

  • the investigation but there is still no indication

  • from police that the deaths are homicides.

  • Over the next 24 hours you began to see

  • anonymously sourced stories in some of the

  • Toronto papers to the effect that the police

  • were treating this as a murder-suicide

  • committed by Barry Sherman.

  • The Sherman's adult children put out a statement

  • saying that this was completely inconsistent

  • with the character of their parents

  • and they also put together their own investigative team.

  • And they actually did a second autopsy which is remarkable.

  • They found things that they believed indicated

  • this could not have been a murder-suicide,

  • narrow markings on Barry Sherman's wrists,

  • the scene was for lack of a better word, quite clean,

  • the way in which the murder scene

  • seemed to have been staged.

  • And then in late January

  • the police hold a press conference.

  • We believe now through the six weeks of work review,

  • we have sufficient evidence to describe this

  • as a double homicide investigation

  • and that both Honey and Barry Sherman were in fact targeted.

  • We are not police detectives, we do not have access

  • to the corpus of evidence, we are not going to solve

  • the crime, so my goal was create the richest portrait

  • possible of this very unusual person

  • and how he came to this very unusual end.

  • As head of Apotex,

  • the largest pharmaceutical company in Canada,

  • Barry's net worth was estimated

  • at over $4 billion at the time of his death.

  • Barry Sherman was a science guy.

  • He had a PhD in physics at MIT but he had become

  • an expert in generics and in drugs.

  • The generics business is a very tough one.

  • It is zero sum in the strictest sense of the term.

  • That means that if you're selling a branded drug

  • you have had a significant amount of your profit wiped out

  • and he was very tough in doing this, very uncompromising.

  • When you speak to people in the

  • branded pharmaceutical industry they sometimes refer

  • to Barry Sherman in unprintable terms.

  • It has been said, though there may be some exaggeration

  • in the numbers, that he would sometimes be involved

  • in as many as 100 lawsuits at any one time.

  • He was a guy who did not like to be crossed

  • and if someone did betray him or did something

  • that he felt was improper or disloyal, he would sue.

  • He was a tough guy.

  • Definitely someone who did not have a lot of friends

  • beyond his inner circle.

  • Barry Sherman did face multiple lawsuits,

  • among them a decade long battle with a group of cousins

  • who felt cut out of the Sherman business.

  • These murders had sort of a

  • Murder On The Orient Express quality to them.

  • There was a long list of theories out there.

  • Someone who everyone looked at very quickly

  • was Barry Sherman's cousin, Kerry Winter,

  • the son of Lewis Winter, the founder of Empire Laboratories,

  • the company where Barry worked as a student

  • and later ended up owning and Kerry

  • and his siblings have been engaged in a legal battle

  • alleging that he owes them 20% of Apotex,

  • that they were done out of their inheritance.

  • He cared about one thing, money, making lots of it

  • and not caring who he destroyed, who he stepped on.

  • That is a very bitter legal battle and it's one where

  • Kerry has expressed publicly and otherwise a lot of anger,

  • said some things that certainly did not

  • make him less of a suspect.

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

  • But here he is, over a year later, walking free

  • and unarrested so I think it's safe to say

  • that he had nothing to do with this.

  • Police say they are still talking

  • to neighbors, witnesses, family members,

  • business associates, anyone who knew anything

  • about the Sherman's lives or even their last hours.

  • One of the things I was astounded by

  • when I started reporting this story,

  • and it's something that I really had no inkling of,

  • was the extent of some of Barry Sherman's entanglements

  • with really inadvisable financial deals, businesses,

  • and this put him in to bed financially with a lot of people

  • who really most high level pharmaceutical executives

  • would never have anything to do with.

  • Kevin Trudeau, now in jail, another convicted fraudster

  • called Shaun Rootenberg convinced Barry Sherman

  • to invest in a online trivia app.

  • The introduction in that case was made

  • by someone called Myron Gottlieb.

  • Gottlieb and Rootenberg had actually met in jail

  • and the most dramatic of these involvements

  • over the years was someone named Frank D'Angelo.

  • He is something of a B-list celebrity in Canada.

  • He's well known as a director of movies

  • that don't typically get great reviews.

  • Barry Sherman invested in most of these films.

  • Do what you gotta do.

  • You're trouble for me Angelo.

  • I met Frank for lunch and he is a colorful guy

  • to say the least.

  • If you wanna talk about unprintable language,

  • he certainly uses a lot of it.

  • I just felt that I owed it to Barry

  • to give my two cents.

  • You know I don't think I'll ever get over this

  • incredible tragedy, this senseless act,

  • as long as I live on this planet.

  • You can see the appeal of hanging out with him

  • for Barry, particularly because he would've been

  • so dramatically different from the other people

  • who Barry Sherman would've seen

  • and dealt with on a daily basis.

  • Meeting Frank was not uncomfortable at all.

  • He was happy to help, he had checked me out.

  • He knew about me.

  • I think I found him on Facebook and sent him a note

  • asking if he would meet and after a few days he responded

  • and said that he would.

  • But he did make clear to me, he pulled me close as we were

  • leaving that first lunch, and said you know,

  • do the right thing for my friend

  • and if you don't I'm gonna come to London and find you.

  • He had been questioned by the police.

  • He is emphatic that he had nothing to do with the murder

  • but he is of course emblematic, indicative,

  • of the tone of some of these financial entanglements

  • and those entanglements are to many people very suspicious.

  • Hank Idsinga, the acting inspector

  • of the homicide squad, says the investigation into

  • who killed Barry and Honey Sherman is still very active.

  • I feel for the family and the friends.

  • It's dragging on, it has been a year.

  • As an attempt to reignite an investigation,

  • The Sherman family has asked me to announce the offer

  • of a reward of up to $10 million dollars for information leading

  • to the apprehension and prosecution of those responsible

  • for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman.

  • Truth is very strange, you know.

  • Truth is much stranger than fiction,

  • that's why I love this job, is that you keep finding out

  • that what happens in the real world is just as weird

  • or weirder than Hollywood could every come up with.

  • It seems pretty clear to all involved that something

  • that Barry Sherman got involved in went wrong

  • and came back at him.

  • If you think about the crime, it is remarkable in many ways.

  • One of the things that's remarkable is that

  • his wife was killed and the other thing that I think

  • has confounded a lot of the investigators

  • is when there are hits, it's usually a bullet,

  • it's usually quick, it's done cleanly, efficiently,

  • in a way that allows a quick getaway.

  • Barry and Honey Sherman were strangled to death.

  • So there's this confusing tangle of evidence

  • that for the police and for anyone else trying

  • to understand this, it doesn't all point in one direction

  • and that's I think what is so tantalizing about this

  • as a mystery in some way and I think it's a mystery

  • that's going to endure.

We turn to that murder mystery that has gripped Canada.

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