Police sought clues in Sherman estate plans
The Toronto Star has won court-approved access to police investigative documents in the now four-year-old Barry and Honey Sherman murder case, and the information is being released at intervals, not all at once. In today’s instalment, the Star reveals that homicide detectives have dug into Barry Sherman’s estate planning.
In Barry Sherman’s office at Apotex in mid-December 2017, homicide detectives discovered every surface — desk, tables, couches, chairs, even parts of the floor — awash in papers. The brilliant scientist, with a PhD before he was 25, was a visual person — he wanted his tasks front and centre. Among the stacks of generic drug documents and lawsuits, police also found an “autobiography” Barry was writing and a photograph of Barry with his wife, Honey, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In one pile, detectives spotted a copy of an airplane ticket Barry had purchased for a Dec. 24 flight to Fort Lauderdale to join Honey for a holiday break. These details and more are contained in court documents recently released following a Toronto Star challenge.
What detectives did not find in the Sherman office or their home was the last will and testament for either of the Shermans. For reasons still sealed by a judge’s order, police wanted to know the estate planning details for the murdered couple, and they reached out to people who knew the Shermans for assistance.
So secretive are the police that while they have released to the Star what they learned when they later obtained the estate documents, they refuse to say where and how many times this information appears in their requests for search warrants and production orders — though they have confirmed the Sherman estate information appears in “a number of” the requests put before Ontario court Justice Leslie Pringle. Pringle has authorized all of the police requests for searches.
It was chaos when police first showed up at generic drug giant Apotex’s Signet Road headquarters in mid-December 2017. At the front entrance, bouquets of flowers were placed in a temporary memorial where Barry had always parked his car.
Employees and executives were stunned, the normally bustling offices quieted by the news that Barry and Honey’s bodies had been found in the basement swimming pool room of their home late on the morning of Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. They had been dead for 36 hours and the newly released documents provide the clearest summary yet of the crime scene, stating they “were tied by the neck to a threefoot-high railing using individual belts.” The bodies were positioned in the most remote part of the 4,000-square-foot basement at their Old Colony Road home, tucked in one corner, the feet of the seated Shermans almost touching the wall, their backs to the pool.
Fast forward to several weeks after the deaths, a time when police were still pursuing the murder-suicide theory. A protocol was set up between Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General and Apotex lawyers — the lawyers would decide what homicide detectives could see and what was privileged legal material. Eventually, police were given copies of Barry’s estate documents by Brad Krawczyk, Barry and Honey’s son-in-law. According to the newly unsealed police documents, Brad “voluntarily provided” copies of Barry’s two wills to homicide detectives. Brad is married to Sherman’s daughter Alexandra; he was one of four estate trustees Barry had appointed to handle his affairs, and he works at Sherfam, Barry’s holding company.
Here is what police learned, according to recently released documents relating to Barry’s wills. No will was ever discovered for Honey, though the Star has interviewed a confidant of Honey’s who says Honey told her three weeks before she died that she had “updated” her will at a lawyer’s office. The confidant provided this information to the Toronto police a few weeks after the Sherman bodies were found.
The copies of Barry’s two wills are dated May 13, 2005. One was a primary will that would proceed to probate (primary wills include such items as real estate, and shares that trade on a public market) and the secondary will contained private holdings, including Sherfam, the family holding company, which owns Apotex. Both gave identical directions on where the money was going in event of death.
The police documents detail that both wills stipulated that, should Barry die before Honey, Honey would be given the “net annual income” of all of Barry’s holdings, paid to her on a quarterly basis “or in periodic payments as Honey Sherman directs.” Honey was also to be paid for her “comfortable maintenance and benefit” as determined by the trustees (also called executors). The Star’s sources say that Barry’s fortune was close to $10 billion.
Police then note Barry’s wishes once Honey was no longer alive: “Upon the death of Honey Sherman the residual of the estate shall then be divided in equal shares for each child of Bernard Sherman,” according to the police documents, prepared on Jan. 18, 2018, after a detective read the wills.
The stipulation for how the four children would receive money following their parents’ deaths is as follows, according to the police documents: Between the ages of 25 and 34, the four children were to receive portions of the estate. Once a child reached 35, they would have one-quarter of the estate.
When Barry and Honey died in late 2017, the eldest child, Lauren, was 43, Jonathon was 35, Alexandra was 32 and Kaelen was 27.
As noted by police, Barry had appointed four trustees: Jack Kay (his right-hand man at Apotex), son Jonathon Sherman, son-in-law Brad Krawczyk, and Alex Glasenberg, who ran the family holding company.
The Star won access to the entire Sherman estate file last June when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Sherman will should be made public. It had been sealed at the family’s request by a lower court.
However, this is the first time the police documents dealing with the will have been unsealed. Previously, during cross-examination in court by a Toronto Star reporter, a homicide detective said only that the estate documents were “embedded” in their investigation.
The police records that have now been partially unsealed are the information to obtain (ITO) documents that the police use to gain legal access to information they require to investigate a homicide case — such as banking and credit card records, cellphone information and medical records.
These 2,000 pages of documents, including the wills and estate information, have formed part of several police requests to get court authority for searches over the last four years.
Police refuse to say why they have included the Sherman estate information in their case. They have said, however, that they include information in an ITO only if it is important to the case.
Police have also not said what the estate information is helping them search for.
The majority of the police requests for search warrants and production orders have been for cellphone records and banking information of numerous people detectives have labelled “persons of interest.” Police will not identify those people. Police have also executed at least one search warrant to search a place, but police will not provide the Star with the address.
This week, the Star has asked the four Sherman children why police have considered the estate of their parents important enough to include it in their investigation.
As of publication, none of them had responded.
Previously, the Star asked Sherman son Jonathon during an interview in late 2020 if he thought that the fact that the estate information was part of the police probe was an indication that detectives at some point looked to see if family was involved. “I would hope they have looked at all the family,” Jonathon replied.
As with previous releases of ITO documents in the Sherman case, other pieces of information have been released, including numerous pictures of Barry’s office taken by a police forensic team, and a photo of the small laboratory he used to test out his scientific theories.
There’s a passing reference to the discovery by police of a photo of Barry and Honey, both well-known Liberal party supporters, posing with Trudeau and “another unknown male.” The man is not identified in the documents.
The documents give further proof of how careful the billionaires were with their expenditures. Honey had purchased a cheap ticket for her trip to Florida (she was scheduled to leave on Monday, Dec. 18) and Barry was to join her on Dec. 24. (The Shermans were murdered on Dec. 13). For Barry’s return trip from Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 24 he had used 17,500 Aeroplan points to pay for the trip.
The documents also reveal that police, when they first arrived at the Sherman home, were trying to determine if “any valuables had been taken from the home.” Police compared statements from a decluttering company (the Shermans had put their house up for sale) and photos from the real estate listing with the home when they arrived. The documents do not say if police believe anything was taken by the killer or killers.
With police earlier considering the possibility that the Shermans were depressed and either took their own lives, or one killed the other and then committed suicide, detectives obtained their medical records. They found no indication of depression, but did learn that since 2010 Honey had seen 101 different doctors (friends called her the “bionic woman” because she battled through so many ailments) and Barry saw 20 different doctors over the same period.
Newly unsealed police interviews show that the four Sherman children told police they were closer with their father than with their mother. An assistant to Honey spoke to police about the “tension between Honey and her children due to differing opinions and different lives.” The assistant also told police she had very recently “filled out a large and extensive medical questionnaire on Honey’s behalf.” No reason for this questionnaire is given in the police documents.
Kaelen Sherman, the youngest of the four, is quoted by police saying that “all of her siblings were closer with their father than with their mother.”
Police also found a copy of “what appeared to be an autobiography by Bernard (Barry) on one of the piles of documents in Barry’s office. It’s possible that this is a copy of the unfinished “Legacy of Thoughts” Barry penned years ago, which he used as part of his effort to have the case brought by his four cousins thrown out of court. That autobiography explains how Sherman and a partner came to found Apotex; he used it to prove to a judge a few months before the murders that his cousins (whose father — Barry’s uncle — gave Barry his start) were not deserving of a share in his Apotex wealth.
Police refuse to say why they have included the Sherman estate information in their case. They have said, however, that they include information in an ITO only if it is important to the case