The Billionaire Murders

by Kevin Donovan

  There would often be a negative spin on what Sherman said, Winter told me. Winter asked him about an Alaskan cruise he’d taken with Honey. His cousin’s response, said Winter, was “Fucking icebergs.” One day, when Sherman gave him a lift, Winter noticed Sherman’s car radio was broken and asked him if he planned to get it fixed. “Fucking music, it all gives me a headache,” Winter recalled Sherman saying. By his own admission, Winter was high during many of these conversations, and the accuracy of his recollections, along with Sherman’s purported use of profanity, has been questioned by the friends of Sherman to whom I have related this information. They also vehemently challenge a much more outlandish recollection that Winter recently made public.

  Winter claims that in the mid to late 1990s, he twice had conversations with Sherman in which Barry asked him to arrange a contract killing of Honey. Apparently, the request came out of the blue. “He asked me in his office at Apotex. I was surprised he would ask me,” Winter recalled in an earlier interview I did with him six weeks after the Shermans died. A friend of Winter’s told me he recalls Winter telling him of Sherman’s request at about the time of the alleged conversation. Winter has said that Sherman would often tell him he was unhappy with his marriage, and that was how the discussion moved, according to Winter, to discussions of arranging a hit man. In Winter’s interviews with other media following the Shermans’ deaths, one of them a British publication that flew a reporter to Canada, he was definite about this and said that his cousin told him he wanted Honey “whacked.” As a result, Winter said, he contacted an underworld connection but never went further with the plan.

  Winter said that he’d grown nervous and suggested another approach. “Why don’t you just get a divorce?” he said he asked Sherman.

  “There is no way she is getting half of my money,” Sherman allegedly told him.

  I have asked Kerry Winter if it is possible that Sherman was merely asking odd but theoretical questions about hiring a hit man out of some morbid fascination, possibly brought on by Dana’s recent involvement in a contract killing or by boasts from Kerry that he “knew people.” Perhaps Sherman was just interested in the concept of hiring a killer, just as he was curious about what it was like to shoot heroin? Maybe Sherman was asking, hypothetically, “Okay, are you saying you could have someone killed? Like my wife, for example?” As odd a comment as it would be, Sherman was known to have an unusual sense of humour and an interest in unusual topics.

  To the possibility that Sherman was asking a completely hypothetical question, Kerry Winter replied: “Maybe”; “It could have been”; “I’ve said my memory is not the best, but I know we talked about it.”

  Winter said he considered setting up a “hit” because during this time he felt increasingly beholden to Sherman, who was funding his businesses and at one point providing him with a $20,000 monthly living allowance.

  Meanwhile, Kerry’s older brother Jeffrey was digging around in provincial archives, searching for details of the deal that saw Barry Sherman and Joel Ulster purchase Empire Laboratories from their father in 1967. (Jeffrey was seven at the time, Kerry was six, Dana was five, and Tim, the oldest, was nine.) Jeffrey spent several weeks combing through musty documents in long-stored boxes that spelled out, in bare bones fashion, the sale to Sherman and Ulster. As Jeffrey would write in court papers he eventually filed, he was surprised at what he did not find: nothing that spelled out the nitty-gritty of the deal. He began to suspect that his late father’s drug business had been worth much more than what Sherman and Ulster paid. The sale was managed by Royal Trust, which had been appointed as trustee for the Winter estate and was to oversee the money Lou and Beverley Winter left for their children. Jeffrey was attending Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, during his early sleuthing. Using a legal database, he came up with the name of James Church, a man who worked for Lou Winter as national sales manager and continued in that role under Sherman and Ulster. Jeffrey located Church, who eventually filed an affidavit for the cousins stating that Empire was profitable and well managed when Sherman purchased it.

  Sherman, in his “A Legacy of Thoughts” and elsewhere, had described Empire in less than glowing terms: vitamin C tablets were crumbling, the machinery was antiquated, top managers were incompetent. In his affidavit, Church acknowledges that some of the business did drop off when Lou Winter died, but, he said, as national sales manager, he was “never aware of any financial troubles.”

  In his pursuit of the case, Jeffrey asked Royal Trust if he could see the documents it had on file related to the sale of Empire more than twenty years earlier. Royal Trust refused. Jeffrey retained lawyers and eventually won a court order that allowed him to inspect the documents. One of the items he discovered was a four-page document known as the option agreement. It formed part of the deal Sherman put forward when he purchased Empire. Royal Trust had turned down Sherman’s first offer to purchase Empire, and as part of his second offer, he stipulated that if the children of Lou and Beverley Winter “desire,” they could be given jobs at Empire upon reaching the age of twenty-one, and, if they were interested, they could purchase 5 percent of the issued shares of Empire after two years’ employment. The caveat to this was that Sherman and Ulster would still have to own Empire at the time. However, the two young businessmen sold Empire to ICN several years after they purchased it. When that option was discussed at an Ontario Court of Appeal hearing in 2018, after the Sherman deaths, and when the cousins were still fighting his estate, a justice of the court called the Sherman option “a sweetener” to secure the deal.

  Jeffrey Barkin, who was now assisted by brother Kerry Winter, kept digging. They hired private investigators to dig up information, even securing the services of an investigator in Puerto Rico to try to determine (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) the value of an Empire-related holding Lou Winter had there at the time of his death. During this time, according to their own affidavits, they were asking Barry Sherman what he knew of the sale. When they began asking questions about the option, Sherman said, according to their court filings, that it simply did not exist. While this was going on, Sherman continued to fund his cousins’ business ventures. He loaned them each, at 7 percent interest, millions of dollars but secured the loans as mortgages against each property they purchased, and also had his cousins sign legal documents saying that if they defaulted on the loans, he could recoup his losses from the money each had been left in their parents’ estate. The interest rates were roughly the same as market rates at the time, and it appears Sherman did not collect on the interest charged but rather let it accumulate.

  In 2007, the three surviving cousins and Julia Winter, as her late husband Dana’s representative, sued Barry Sherman and Apotex. The claim moved through the courts for more than a decade. Essentially, the cousins were asking for $1 billion, a calculation based on 20 percent of Sherman’s estimated net worth. Their logic was that had they, as a group (5 percent each), been able to buy into Empire, they would have owned 20 percent between them. And since they contend it was Empire’s eventual sale that led Sherman to found the now multi-billion-dollar Apotex, they have told various judges they are deserving of one-fifth of that fortune.

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  —

  As my lunch with Kerry Winter at the St. Clair Avenue diner was winding down, he explained his point of view.

  “You have to understand. My hatred of Barry, my disdain for Barry, was only because of his betrayal and lies. I said to Barry once, ‘I don’t want twenty percent of Apotex. I don’t want anything, Barry. I just want you to tell me the truth. Why do you keep lying to me?’ Do you know how many years he kept lying to me about the option agreement?”

  Sherman, in his court pleadings, maintained that he never lied. Ultimately, he contended, the option agreement did exist but it was a worthless document. Yet it is a document that generated a great deal of anger and many disputes. Winter said he believed, and still does, that Sherman
funded the brothers’ enterprises and lifestyle not out of duty but to keep them financially handcuffed to him. Winter has also stated that Sherman’s generosity was intended to stop the cousins from pursuing the option issue. The year before the cousins sued Sherman, Winter said he had a conversation with the Apotex founder at a social event at the company. It was the annual Christmas party, and Winter always brought his children, even though he was not working there any longer. He said Sherman gestured for him to come out to the parking lot. They stood against the wall of the building as Sherman spoke. “You know, there aren’t too many people in the world that have a Cousin Barry,” Winter said Sherman told him.

  “Oh, I know that,” Winter said he replied.

  “Do you know that? I don’t think you do. You’re thinking of coming after me. You should think twice. Because you won’t beat me. You don’t know who I am yet.”

  Winter said he responded, “Barry, I know who you are.”

  He said Sherman looked at him directly. “I’m good to you. I give you everything you want. Why do you want to come after me? You are getting bad advice from lawyers and bad advice from your friends. They don’t have a Cousin Barry. You do. Think twice.”

  Winter said it was conversations like these and his belief that Sherman had stolen his future from him that led him to have fantasies of decapitating his cousin in the Apotex parking lot and “rolling his head” down the pavement.

  “I have been angry at Barry for so many years,” Winter said in one interview with me. “I think, more than money, what would have made me happy would have been if he acknowledged my father and mother’s contribution to his life and donated money to create the Lou and Beverley Winter wing at some hospital.”

  * * *

  —

  One of the questions I asked everyone I interviewed for this book was “Where were you on the evening of Wednesday, December 13, 2017, the time when Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered?” It was a question that most answered readily. I asked Kerry Winter that question the first time I spoke with him, in late January 2018. It was during a telephone call with both Winter and his lawyer on the civil case, Brad Teplitsky.

  “I had absolutely nothing to do with Barry and Honey’s death. Zero. I want to put that on the record.” Winter made that comment immediately after he revealed that he had fantasies of murdering Barry Sherman, and also that Sherman had once asked him to arrange the murder of Honey. Those comments, which Winter made to the Star, CBC’s The Fifth Estate, a British paper, and other media outlets, led his sister-in-law, Julia Winter, to file an affidavit in court questioning his sanity and suggesting that in the wake of the Sherman murders, Kerry had suffered “some form of a nervous breakdown” and could no longer provide instructions to their mutual lawyer. Winter, who appears unfazed by any critique of his actions, told me what he was doing that Wednesday night. He said that after his day job in construction, he attended his regular Twelve Step program for his addiction issues, then went home and “watched an episode of Peaky Blinders on Netflix” and went to sleep. A man who attends the same Twelve Step program and has been friends with Winter since childhood confirmed Winter’s attendance that evening. Winter said he had an early shift the next morning and was up and out the door at dawn. Twice divorced, he has a girlfriend but she lives on Canada’s west coast and he lives alone. He acknowledged there was nobody who could confirm that he spent the entire night at home.

  As to his sometimes erratic and angry comments about Barry and Honey Sherman, including those made on prime time television, Winter says he is merely speaking what he considers to be the truth. That includes, he says, his ongoing belief that the Toronto Police are covering for the Sherman family and that Barry really did murder his wife, then kill himself. As for his own involvement in the deaths, Winter says the days of him knowing people in the underworld who would be capable of murder are long past.

  “I am six years sober. I’m a wonderful father. I work full time. I haven’t done a drink or drug in six years. I view myself as rehabilitated and recovered. I no longer associate myself with street people, drug dealers, criminals.”

  TEN

  BUILDING A BIGGER EMPIRE

  JEREMY DESAI HAD A DAY OFF FROM HIS JOB with a generic pharmaceutical company in London, England, in the summer of 2002 when Barry Sherman came calling. A marathon runner with a lean, wiry build, Desai had always been a big believer in karma. Upon reflection, he decided the fact that the phone call to offer him a new direction in life had come on a vacation day was a sign. Time for a change. Desai had heard of the maverick Canadian generic entrepreneur. Big Pharma spent a lot of time trying to stay ahead of people like Sherman and Apotex and had a lot of names for the generic companies. The “dark side” was the one Desai always used when he worked for brand name companies. Sherman was looking for a new director of research and development, and his headhunter firm suggested Desai, who had recently switched to the generic world. Come to Canada for an interview and see what we are all about, was the message from Sherman. Not long after, Desai was sitting in a chair across from Barry Sherman at Apotex’s headquarters on a Saturday morning. His sister, who lived in Toronto, had dropped him off with a plan to shop and return in a couple of hours. Desai was dressed in his best suit and tie. Sherman was in jeans and an old shirt that seemed two sizes too small for the billionaire. “We don’t do ties here,” he said.

  The Apotex owner opened a file on his desk and pulled out a neatly stapled collection of papers that included Desai’s resumé. After graduating with a PhD in pharmacy, Desai had spent most of his career working in research at various brand name firms, including GlaxoSmithKline, a company whose products Sherman had made generic copies of numerous times. While at those companies, Desai was involved with teams that specialized in finding scientific ways to make patents airtight. Then he had taken a senior job at a British generic company that, like Apotex, was run by an entrepreneur. Sherman flipped through the pages in the Desai folder, then tore them in half and threw them into the recycling bin beside his desk. “All this is garbage,” he told Desai. “Talk to me about yourself.”

  Four minutes into Desai’s monologue, Sherman held up a hand. “The job’s yours,” he said. He explained that Apotex was doing well, but he wanted to take it to the next level, and he was looking to inject a bright light with pharmaceutical smarts into the executive stream. Sherman had a specific goal in mind: to one day produce fifty billion individual dosages a year. “My HR head told me, if I like the person, I have to keep my cards close to my chest,” he said. “But what the hell, it’s my company. You are my new head of global research and development.”

  It would take several months before Desai accepted the position, and what happened between that Saturday morning at Apotex and his taking the post cemented a feeling of loyalty. Desai’s wife and children (two boys, aged three and nine at the time) were not keen on leaving England. His elderly mother had recently moved into their London house, and she also was reluctant to move to another country. Once back in England, Desai told the headhunter to thank Sherman for the opportunity but tell him he was passing. The following Saturday morning, Desai slept in after a Diwali festival party. When he got up, his eldest son told him a “Barry Sherman” had telephoned and would be calling again that afternoon. When Sherman called, he told Desai that he was at a wedding in Chicago and had heard that the man he believed would be his future chief of research had passed on his offer. “Jeremy, there are only two people who can do this job, you and your twin brother,” Sherman said. “And I know you don’t have a twin brother. Take a week and give me your final decision.”

  Desai was flying to New York for the New York City Marathon the following weekend. In the British Airways lounge, he decided he could not run this gruelling race with the job offer hanging over him. Why not take Sherman’s offer? Desai had been impressed by how straightforward Sherman was and by his “humanity.” He made a snap decision, printed out the of
fer sheet, signed it, and faxed it from the airline lounge. Just as Sherman had said to Jack Kay twenty years before, Desai says his new boss told him, “You’re my guy. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

  Desai moved to Canada on his own for the first few months, since it was still the middle of the school year. When he returned to England in the summer of 2003 to help with the final packing for the family move, he noticed his mother was unwell. Never one to visit doctors, she had to be persuaded by Desai to go for tests. Within a few days, doctors had diagnosed colon cancer. The prognosis was that she had eighteen months to live. Desai called Sherman and said he was sorry, but since his mother would not be covered by Ontario health insurance, he did not think he could return to Apotex. Sherman did not even pause. Desai was to bring her over with his wife and children, he said, and he would cover her medical expenses and ensure she got the best treatment. Desai’s mother lived only six weeks after they arrived in Canada, but Sherman’s gesture forged a bond of loyalty between the two men. Both Sherman and Jack Kay attended the funeral. When Desai’s sister, the one who had driven him to the Toronto job interview, was later struck by the same form of cancer their mother succumbed to, Sherman again offered to help. Desai’s sister battled her cancer for thirteen years, and Sherman supported Desai throughout, never worrying that the man who had become his company president was occasionally missing work to sit with his sister at medical appointments. “Family is family,” Sherman told him.

  “Barry took away the pinch points and the pain,” Desai recalls.

  Desai thrived at Apotex and was eventually appointed to the job of CEO as both Sherman and Jack Kay moved out of the day-to-day operations to concentrate on the big picture. As Sherman had done with other key executives over the years, he compensated Desai well, including providing a $3.15-million interest-free loan for the purchase of a $3.175-million Toronto home soon after Desai moved to Canada. In all the years they worked together, Sherman never wavered in his belief that Desai was key to Apotex’s growth.