Who killed Barry & Honey Sherman? What we know 7 years later

Who are Barry & Honey Sherman?

Bell Media, Lede, Crave

Barry Sherman was a Canadian businessman, CEO and philanthropist. He founded Apotex, a global pharmaceutical company, in 1974.

According to Forbes, Sherman’s company at one point employed over 10,000 people and quickly became one of Canada’s largest pharmaceutical companies, selling over 260 generic drugs in more than 115 countries.

Barry met Honey Reich through friends at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where Honey was volunteering and “looking to meet a nice Jewish doctor,” according to CBC News. She was introduced to Barry through his business partner’s wife, a nurse at the hospital.

The couple married on July 2, 1971. The couple had four children: Lauren, Jonathon, Alexandra and Kaelen.

Forbes reports Sherman was estimated to be worth US$3.2 billion (CA$4.1 billion) when he died, making him the 12th-richest man in Canada at the time.

As for Honey, she was involved in philanthropy work and was active in Toronto’s Jewish community.

Who killed Barry & Honey Sherman?

On December 15, 2017, Barry, 75, and Honey, 70, were found dead in their home in the North York area of Toronto.

According to CNN, the couple’s bodies were found next to their indoor pool by a realtor who was showing prospective buyers the house. The Shermans were fully clothed, had belts tied around their necks, and were attached to the pool railing. The couple reportedly died almost two days before they were discovered.

CBC reports the autopsy showed the couple died by strangulation. There were no signs of forced entry to their home.

Following the couple’s death, Toronto police initially declared that it could have been a murder-suicide, but that theory was widely disputed by the media, according to a CBC report.

One of the journalists who rejected that theory was Kevin Donovan, who reported on the case for the Toronto Star and later wrote a book titled The Billionaire Murders: The Mysterious Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman.

In an interview with CBC, Donovan said that Toronto police initially only looked at Honey’s murder and did not begin investigating Barry’s death until later.

Donovan claimed that a “turning point” in the investigation was when the Sherman family hired a forensic pathologist to do a second autopsy on the couple’s bodies.

“Dr. David Chiasson — who is the former chief forensic pathologist for Ontario — was hired by the family. It really was, in his opinion, a case of double murder. He found evidence that their hands had been bound at one point, but no ties were found at the scene,” Donovan told CBC.

In January 2018, six weeks after the Shermans’ deaths, Toronto police declared that after reviewing evidence, they had deemed that the couple was targeted and declared the case a double homicide.

In December 2021, four years after the murders, police released footage of a suspect who was captured on security video near the Sherman home around the time they believe the murders happened.

Over a year later, CTV News reported that police had received “hundreds” of tips related to the video and that they had moved on to a “new phase” of the investigation after efforts to identify the suspect were exhausted.

There have been many theories over the years regarding who was behind the death of the Shermans, including suggestions that it may have been a business deal gone sideways, a hit job paid for by a Big Pharma rival, or a more personal matter.

According to CTV, Honey’s sister Mary Shechtman believed the couple’s murder could have been motivated by religion as they were “strong supporters of Israel” and that Honey was vocal about being Jewish and also “would use phrases that were not politically correct” when speaking about people of “a certain ethnicity.”

Donovan reported that Shechtman also told police Honey had recently gone to a lecture “about stopping money from getting into Muslim fundamentalists’ hands.”

How much were the Shermans worth?

Barry Sherman’s pharmaceutical company, Apotex, was estimated to be worth around US$3 billion after he died, according to Bloomberg.

Estimates vary, but CBC reports the couple’s combined net worth was somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion at the time of their deaths.

What’s the latest on the Sherman case in 2024?

As of March 2024, the case remains unsolved and it’s unknown who killed the couple and why.

In November 2023, the Toronto Star reported that homicide detectives had executed the most recent search warrant in the case in December 2022, where they recovered “14,801 electronic files.”

The warrant papers reportedly say police are looking for information that would “further implicate or exonerate current persons of interest” in the investigation and reveal whether anyone had a motive to kill the couple.

The Star also reported that police have received information from outside Canada. It’s unknown what that information is.

Toronto police have both Sherman case files listed on their website under current homicide investigations.

What happened to Barry & Honey Sherman’s house?

Barry and Honey Sherman’s house at 50 Old Colony Rd. in North York was demolished in 2019, a year and a half after the couple was found dead inside.

In 2020, the North York land where the home once stood was purchased for $4.25 million by a 28-year-old woman who appeared to live nearby, according to the Toronto Star.

The vacant property went back on the market under a new address, 48 Old Colony Rd., in April 2023 for $6.5 million.

As of March 2024, the land is no longer listed on any multiple listing service (MLS), as it was initially in 2023, but it does still appear to be for sale. The property is now listed with the Daryl King Team for $7 million, where it’s described as a “rare” lot on one of the “most desirable streets in [the] GTA.”

Where are Barry & Honey Sherman’s kids now?

Barry and Honey Sherman had four kids: Lauren, Jonathon, Alexandra and Kaelen.

According to court documents, Barry Sherman left his entire estate to be evenly distributed among his four children in the event of his wife’s death, CTV News reported in 2021.

At the time, the estate papers said Barry’s will consisted of assets worth more than $124 million. However, that dollar amount doesn’t include the portion of his fortune “tied up in various holding companies.”

In December 2022, the couple’s only son, Jonathon, announced he was adding $25 million to the reward offered to solve the case. The family had already set up a reward of $10 million, so this addition brought the total to $35 million.

In 2023, Jonathon Sherman announced he was donating $52 million to the local Jewish community to build an NHL-sized hockey arena on the grounds of an existing Jewish community centre on Bathurst Street in Vaughan, north of Toronto, in honour of his parents. The Honey and Barry Memorial Arena is set to open to the public in 2025.

The Sherman children are also in a legal battle with their cousins. Honey’s sister’s children are suing the Sherman siblings over a trust they believe could be worth more than $500 million.

What’s the Barry & Honey Sherman docuseries?

In June 2023, Crave released a four-part true crime series called Billionaire Murders about the unsolved Sherman case.

The series, led by the Toronto Star’s Chief Investigative Reporter Kevin Donovan, features interviews, information from confidential sources and details about the crime scene.