Like many others in the eleven-thousand-employee company, Dawson was shaken by the news two days before of Barry Sherman’s death. He had read all the media stories, particularly the reporting that stated “police sources” believed it was a murder-suicide. Dawson refused to believe that. He did not know Barry Sherman well, but he’d often had interactions with him at Apotex. All had been positive, though he did recall that while some days Sherman would be chatty, on other days the Apotex boss would pass him in the hall, head down, some papers in his hand, clearly preoccupied and not prepared to stop and talk. They did have one inside “joke” together. Both liked tomato juice. When Sherman found out that one of his security guards liked the same beverage he did, he brought in extra and told him to help himself. “You’ve got good taste,” Sherman told him.
It was the security camera footage at Apotex that was of interest to a very tired-looking Toronto Police detective on the morning of Sunday, December 17. She had been buzzed into the building after she showed her identification badge and had begun to explain to Dawson and his supervisor what she was after. Dawson was surprised the police had not come sooner. It had been two days since the bodies were discovered. Though security and policing were not his true calling, he had watched enough crime dramas to know the drill. Two prominent billionaires found dead in their home under very suspicious circumstances, according to the papers. That is what’s known in the police world as a “red ball” or a “media case,” two terms used to describe a high-profile investigation that will develop under the critical eye of the public, the media, politicians, and the family—in this case, a very wealthy and well-connected family. Dawson had also heard, and he was pretty sure this was common knowledge, that the first forty-eight hours in a murder investigation were key. Now the papers were saying that police believed it was a murder-suicide. But still, in case it was a double murder, and, judging from what he had read, quite a violent one, why were the police only now coming to look at security footage? The movements of people leading up to their death was quite important, Dawson thought. Then again, if it was a murder-suicide, maybe their movements were not a big deal. These were just some of the thoughts going through the young security guard’s head as he helped the detective understand what viewpoints and coverage were available from the cameras.
“I have been up three days straight,” the detective told Dawson. She had been working on the case since the bodies were discovered on Friday just before noon. Now it was Sunday. She had brought a mass data storage device with her so she could take away a digital copy of the last four days of footage. Dawson offered to go through the video and make printouts of a few key sightings if that would help, and the detective agreed. Dawson had been on a daily shift since the previous Thursday. He knew from chatter around Apotex that the Shermans had last been seen on the Wednesday. Apparently, the couple was building a mansion, and early on the Wednesday evening they had met in an Apotex boardroom with the team of architects that was designing the home. Out of a sense of duty—he thought somebody should do this—Dawson had checked many of the video feeds since he came on shift. He wanted to see when the Shermans left on Wednesday and whether anyone followed them.
With the detective sitting in the control room, Dawson set the computer to the time codes he had noted, then he displayed the video for those time codes. Sherman had been working in his office at Apotex since late morning on the Wednesday. Shortly before 5 P.M., Honey Sherman and a group of men, presumably the architects, entered the Apotex reception area. Dawson could tell from an exterior camera that they had come in separate vehicles. Barry Sherman met them and they went into a boardroom. At about 6:30 P.M. the meeting concluded and Barry Sherman walked his wife and the architects out. He was apparently staying later, which was normal. Honey Sherman left in her gold Lexus SUV, driving south on Signet Drive, the road that fronted the main Apotex building. The architects left in their own vehicle. Sherman went back to his office to continue working. At around 8:30 P.M., Sherman left the Apotex building and got into his rusting 1997 two-door silver Mustang GT convertible. Sherman’s parking spot was the closest to the front door, beside the space, empty at this hour, belonging to his longtime second-in-command, Jack Kay. As his wife had done earlier, Sherman drove out and turned south on Signet Drive. Due to the media coverage of their deaths, Dawson now knew where the late boss of Apotex lived, at 50 Old Colony Road. That would be a typical route for someone who had to get onto the southbound lanes of the nearby expressway before turning east to get to his home.
Dawson gave the detective the printouts of screen captures showing time codes and the arrival and departure of both Barry and Honey Sherman. Dawson also copied the four days of video footage the detective requested onto her mass storage device. Police, he figured, would have the resources to efficiently comb through all of it in great detail and quite quickly, looking for any clues in the comings and goings at Apotex that might shed light on the mysterious deaths of his employer and his wife.
That weekend, Dawson noticed people he had never seen before in the parking lot around the Apotex headquarters. They were men, some scruffy looking, in teams of two, sometimes leaning on a car in the parking lot. Whenever a senior executive left the building, the men would get in their car and follow. The men were part of a large security team employed by an Israeli company recommended by Bank Hapoalim, the Israeli bank Apotex used. With the Shermans dead, the four trustees Barry Sherman had left in charge of his estate decided that there was a risk of violence and had hired a team of men who at one time had guarded Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They were not armed but had experience in self-defence and martial arts and used a sophisticated communication system to keep in touch. Beginning that weekend, the four heirs—Lauren, Jonathon, Alex, and Kaelen—and others, including trustees and senior Apotex executives, had an application called Octopus installed on their phones. If any of them needed help, they only had to touch the app, which would alert a quick response team, in addition to the bodyguards assigned to them.
When he turned over the video of the four days leading up to and including the day the Shermans were last seen alive, Dawson did not realize that due to a security function, the footage from the Apotex cameras could only be viewed on the Apotex system. More than a month later, in January 2018, Toronto Police detectives on the Sherman case contacted Apotex again. “We just got around to looking at the footage, and we can’t read it on our system,” the detective said. “Can you help?” Dawson and others at Apotex were again surprised. Given the high-profile nature of the case, they expected police would have immediately combed through the footage. Dawson and his boss got to work, converted the file, and provided police with footage they could view.
A similar situation occurred with the video from the home across the street from 50 Old Colony Road. The homeowners had approached police on the Friday the bodies were discovered. Time was of the essence, as the homeowners’ system kept only seven days of video. Each day, another day of video was overwritten. A uniformed officer guarding the house had promised to send an officer over. Saturday, the homeowners asked another officer, who again promised someone would be sent across the street. Still no officer came. Sunday, the couple was leaving for a ski trip. They asked again, this time calling a number they were given for a detective working on the case. Finally, a detective arrived to take a copy of the previous seven days of video just before the couple left on their trip. The couple had viewed some of the video and had noticed that on the Thursday, the day before the bodies were discovered and one day after the Shermans were last seen alive, a dark, four-door car drove west on Old Colony Road at 9:11 A.M., and parked on the street out front of the Sherman residence. They watched the grainy footage as a man got out of the car, and walked back and forth to the Sherman front door. The couple recorded the time codes and in total the man appeared to enter the house three times, for a total of twenty-nine minutes inside the house. Finally, he returned to his car and drove of
f west. The couple could not make out the man’s face or the license and style of car.
It is possible, say others who later saw the video, that the man only stood outside the door, not entering the Sherman house. The couple never thought to look at the Wednesday video, which presumably shows when the Shermans arrived home and if anyone was following them. Still, they thought the Thursday video was important. As news reports had revealed to them, the Shermans were dead in the basement at that time. Six weeks after the couple had handed over the video, a police detective arrived at their home to show them blurry photos of a man and a woman captured by another video camera on the street. No explanation was given by the detective. The homeowners said they had seen a couple walking on the street on the Monday, but the photo appeared to show a different couple.
“What about the man who went into the house on the Thursday?” one of the homeowners asked the detective.
“What man?” the detective asked. She went on to explain that she had been working non-stop, had significant daycare issues to deal with in her family, and that she had to “rely on my team” to scan the video and tell her what was on it.
The mystery of that Thursday deepened a year later when a neighbour down the street told me that at the exact time when that man was standing at the Sherman door, a police officer came to her door in response to what he described as a “911 call” that police believed had come from her house. She had not made a 911 call and both her telephone and home security alarm provider confirmed that. The officer did not say when the call was received or whether it came from a landline or cellular telephone. This fueled speculation by members of the Sherman family that the call may have come from the Sherman house roughly ten doors away and that it was somehow linked to the murders. Was it possible that the man in the dark sedan parked in front of the Sherman house was a plainclothes police officer following up on the 911 call? Or was it something as routine as a person trying to deliver a package, or see a house listed for sale? As with so many things in the Sherman case, one revelation led to another mystery.
* * *
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The funeral of Barry and Honey Sherman was set for Thursday, December 21. Normally, it would have been held at Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel, a Jewish funeral home. Big though Benjamin’s was, it was anticipated that more than seven thousand people would attend the Sherman funeral, such was their popularity in the Jewish community and in the business world, both in Toronto and internationally. The funeral service would be held instead at the International Centre, in Mississauga, a place typically home to trade shows. In the previous few days the centre had hosted a Christmas celebration called “Jingle and Mingle” and a giant trade show featuring footwear and clothing. By Wednesday morning, the day before the funeral, staff had begun to set up 7,500 chairs with the help of Benjamin’s, which would convert the aircraft-hangar-size space into a funeral home and run the service.
Dr. David Chiasson was at the coroner’s office early that Wednesday. When Dr. Jim Cairns, Ontario’s former deputy chief coroner, had asked him on behalf of the Sherman family to conduct the second autopsies, Chiasson had been of two minds. On the one hand, he enjoyed a challenge, and judging by the news reports describing the mysterious deaths, this was going to be both a fascinating post-mortem and one fraught with scientific questions that would be tough to answer. But on the other hand, he had dealt with a great deal of politics when he was Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist, and he did not enjoy that side of a high-profile job. He was not entirely sure he wanted to face that kind of stress again. But he’d made his decision, and he hoped he could shed some light on what had happened to the Sherman couple. He was also being well paid for the work, as were Cairns and the former police officers on what appeared to be a steadily growing private investigation team.
Chiasson had invited both Dr. Michael Pickup, who performed the first post-mortems, and the Toronto Police detectives working the case to the second autopsies. The police, a mix of divisional and homicide officers, had declined. Pickup agreed to go. He did not request permission from his boss, Dr. Michael Pollanen, and later Pickup would catch heat for not at least informing Ontario’s chief pathologist.
Chiasson faced a major hurdle in taking on the assignment. Conducting a second autopsy is very different from doing the first. When a first autopsy is done, the body is in the condition it was found in at the death scene. The first post-mortem disrupts the body through major incisions, removal or cross-sectioning of organs, and the removal through biopsy of parts of the skin to determine the age of bruises or cuts. Having Pickup present was key to Chiasson being able to conduct a successful second set of post-mortems. As with the description of the official autopsy, neither Chiasson nor Pickup would agree to be interviewed. This account is pieced together from people with knowledge of what happened that day.
It was important to Chiasson that he not misinterpret anything done in the first round the previous Saturday. Pickup told Chiasson that he had not finalized his report. In fact, the official autopsy report would not be finalized for more than a month. Pickup had not reached a conclusion on the manner of death, and three theories were being considered: murder-suicide, double suicide, and double homicide. Pickup had made a determination of the medical cause of death—ligature neck compression—but he was not prepared to state with 100 percent certainty what caused the compression. Blood and oxygen flow had been cut off by something being wrapped around their necks, but the police had not made a determination as to the type of ligature, although the leather belts were a strong candidate. The medical cause of death had been released by the Toronto Police to the public late Sunday night. The public was told that the homicide squad was overseeing the investigation, but police said it was not classified as a homicide.
When reporters inquired over these first few days, police would say only that the investigation was continuing. To be fair to the Toronto force, at no time did Toronto detectives say publicly and on the record that they believed it was a murder-suicide. But privately, police sources continued to tell reporters that murder-suicide was the working theory, which inflamed the family and friends of the Shermans. While Jim Cairns had been looking for a second forensic pathologist, the Shermans’ bodies had remained in temperature-controlled storage at the coroner’s building. Embalming and visitation are not part of the Jewish funeral custom, so it was possible to conduct the autopsies on Wednesday and have the funeral on Thursday.
Winter was setting in. On Old Colony Road, a police forensics team continued to go through the house. A special city truck had been brought in to help officers search through the sewer drains, but no explanation was given to the media about the purpose of this. Officers were also seen walking over the snow-covered roof of the house, but again no explanation was given to reporters. In fact, the Sherman house had been one of many broken into in the neighbourhood over the past two years by bandits, still on the loose, who gained access through second-floor windows and doors. In the Sherman house, burglars entered through a skylight. It is quite likely that police were looking to see if anyone had tried to do so again.
If he was going to do a second set of post-mortems, Chiasson wanted it done right, and that meant having experienced investigators in the room to make observations and notes. When Michael Pickup performed the official autopsies on the Shermans the previous Saturday, Toronto Police detectives were present. Joining Chiasson from the private team that morning were former Toronto homicide detectives Tom Klatt, Ray Zarb, and Mike Davis. Also present were two former forensic identification officers, now retired, one who had been with the Toronto Police and the other with the Ontario Provincial Police. The former ID officers were in the room to make detailed observations and to ensure the chain of custody for any samples taken, which Sherman lawyer Greenspan insisted on. Even though this was an unofficial investigation, Greenspan wanted anything discovered by his team to stand the legal test of a criminal court, if it came to that.
Shortly before 9 A.M., Barry Sherman’s body was wheeled in. In the days when Chiasson had conducted autopsies for the province, it had been in the old coroner’s office in downtown Toronto. This would be the first time he performed a post-mortem examination at the new state-of-the-art building in Toronto’s North York. The task ahead of him was formidable. It was like being asked to complete a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. The process of conducting an autopsy involves cutting the body open, removing organs or sections of organs for analysis, and taking fluid and other samples, including skin biopsies. Dr. Pickup’s autopsy, which had determined that both Shermans had died by ligature neck compression, had been typically invasive. The other problem was that, unlike when he had conducted official post-mortems at the direction of police investigators, Dr. Chiasson had no access to the scene where the body was found. That was why Dr. Pickup was present.
The Billionaire Murders Page 8