Wednesday, December 13
BARRY SHERMAN WAS LYING ON HIS BACK on his bedroom floor. Stretching.
“I will pay you not to come here,” he said, looking up at the very fit, dark-haired woman standing over him.
“Barry, you have to do your exercises. Let’s do the lat pull-down next,” said Denise Gold, the family friend and personal trainer who visited the Shermans twice a week. The Shermans had a large master suite on the second floor of their Old Colony Road house, and at one end was a small home gym.
Sherman got slowly to his feet and walked to an exercise machine that was thirty years old, purchased when the house was built. The khaki golf shorts he was wearing were worn and creased. He checked his watch: 9 A.M. Thirty minutes left in his personal training session.
“Denise, I’m too old. I am going to die anyway. What’s the point?” Sherman sat on the vinyl-covered bench of the machine, reached up his arms, and, using as light a weight as he could get away with under Gold’s sharp gaze, began to gently pull the bar down.
“Barry, do this for Honey.”
Sherman checked his watch again. Thirty seconds had passed. “How is Bobby?”
Gold had trained Barry and Honey for several years. She also trained Fred and Bryna Steiner, who had referred her to the Shermans. Bobby was her dog, and Barry, who was not usually a pet lover, took an inordinate interest in hearing about the little Morkie, a cross between a Yorkshire terrier and a Maltese. “What did she do today?”
Gold liked that Sherman asked about her dog, but she knew it was just a delaying tactic. She ignored the question and asked her client to start doing some dumbbell curls. Normally, she trained with latex bands that she would hook around Sherman’s wrists to provide tension during movements, but today she decided to skip them and just use weights. Gold watched as Barry did his “old man walk” to a rack of dumbbells she had retrieved from the basement the previous week. With the need for the house to be constantly ready for showings, they had been stuffed in a corner of the cavernous furnace room down the hall from the lap pool and garage. Both Barry and Honey had a habit of piling chairs and counters with newspapers, mail, and clothing, and the realtors who had the listing had an ongoing battle to keep the home tidy for prospective buyers. Down on the basement level, which included the six-car garage, the lap pool and sauna, and the spacious furnace room, it had struck the trainer that someone could be in one of these rarely used spaces and the residents of the home would be completely unaware.
“This is really dumb,” Barry said, very slowly lifting a light weight. Gold encouraged him to put some muscle into it, and they chuckled when she remarked, “Not many people have the sort of power over you that I do, Barry.” Some days, when she trained Sherman, he was completely silent. That day, he was chatty. Looking around the bedroom suite, taking in the place he and Honey had custom built and lived in for three decades, Sherman said, “This place is worth twelve million dollars. It is crazy what it’s listed for: six point nine million. That’s insane. I don’t even know why we have to move.”
Gold had arrived just before 8:30 A.M. She entered through the side door on the right of the house. There was a wall that partially obstructed the view of the side entrance from the street. Honey’s light gold Lexus SUV was parked near it. The Shermans never used the front door for regular comings and goings. The newspaper was delivered at the front of the house, though, and part of Barry’s morning ritual was to open the front door, bring in the paper, and sit in the kitchen and read, sometimes even during the first part of the training session. The arrangement Gold and Honey had worked out was that she trained Barry from 8:30 to 9:30, Monday and Wednesday, unless he had a meeting or a hearing in court. Honey was up next for two hours. That morning, the first fifteen minutes of Gold’s time with Barry, as always, involved his breakfast. Frosted Flakes with milk, a few Ritz Crackers with peanut butter, one slice of processed cheese, and he was ready to go. It was all part of Barry’s attempt to shorten his workout time. Gold, extremely toned and health-conscious, had long ago given up trying to change the diet of either of the Shermans. On the fitness side, she did the best she could with Barry, a seventy-five-year-old captain of industry who trained only to please his wife. She put the breakfast food away and they headed upstairs. Along with some light weights, Gold had Sherman do walking lunges around a “track” she had designated on the second floor.
At precisely 9:30, Barry looked at Gold. “Is that enough? Is it over?” he asked.
Gold released him, and Sherman headed off to shower and get dressed for work. He kept his clothes in another room upstairs. Honey came into the master suite and began her session. Twenty minutes later, when Honey was doing some active stretching lying on the floor, Barry walked in, ready to head for Apotex. Gold noticed how quickly he walked when he was not trying to get out of exercising. She often felt Sherman was showing off for his wife when he did this. Around his waist was a leather belt Honey had given him, one of two cheap belts she had purchased recently—on sale for $9.99 each—at Canadian Tire. One was a thirty-four-inch belt, the other a thirty-six-inch belt. For weeks, the two identical belts had remained on a padded bench in the room, along with several piles of shirts and sweaters. Today, he had decided to wear one of them.
“Barry, that’s too tight for you,” Honey said from the floor.
“It’s perfect,” he replied. The belt was cinched tight at hip level, his ample stomach protruding over the leather.
Honey got up and kissed him on the cheek. As her husband turned to leave, Honey said, “Barry?”
He looked at his wife, nodded, and gave his trainer a peck on the cheek.
“I’ll see you at the office at five,” Honey said. The couple had a meeting in an Apotex boardroom with the architects designing their new home in Forest Hill.
Sherman went downstairs and drove off in his convertible Mustang GT. It was just after 10 A.M. His day’s schedule included an afternoon meeting with Jeremy Desai to deal with a pressing Apotex issue. Since Jack Kay was away in New York with his wife at a concert, he would check in with executive assistant Joanne Mauro to see what else needed his attention.
Kay had bought the concert tickets in June, when he, Sherman, and the thalassemia researchers were being honoured at the Cooley’s Anemia Foundation, in New York, for their work developing Ferriprox and bringing it to market. Though the controversial drug had its detractors in the research world, including Nancy Olivieri, the foundation said its members considered it a lifesaver. Foundation board member Maria Hadjidemetriou, a New York City realtor and a thalassemia patient, thanked Sherman and the researchers at the event. “Ferriprox is a miracle drug,” she said. “It saved my life. It removed the lethal levels of iron from my heart.” After the speeches lauding Sherman for his “leadership” and the researchers for developing the product, there was a charity auction to raise funds. Honey had bid on tickets to see Andrea Bocelli, the Italian tenor. She encouraged Jack Kay to bid too, and when Kay bid a bit higher, she stopped. As a result, Kay and his wife had gone to New York that day to see the production the following night.
Denise Gold had two hours with Honey, who, unlike Barry, was very focused on her session. “I will never give up,” Honey said, anytime Gold suggested her client take it a bit easier. When Gold first started coming to the Shermans, she had often told Honey that playing five games of golf a week was not the best exercise for someone who had so many physical ailments. Today, she concentrated on improving Honey’s mobility, loosening her joints, helping her rehabilitate the replaced shoulder. Honey was so sore, it was difficult for her even to put both arms behind her back. She was having a hard time holding just a one- or two-pound weight, but she gritted her teeth and powered through. A physiotherapist had given Honey a series of light exercises, and Gold helped her keep on task. Gold had long ago learned to follow Honey’s cue: assist her, but do not tell her what to do.
In the same way that Barry Sherman never wilted before a legal battle, Honey Sherman refused to give in to her arthritis and other infirmities. “She challenged herself all the time,” Gold says. In 2010, a time when she was having difficulty walking some days, Honey entered a Dancing with the Stars–style competition to raise money for the Baycrest Foundation in Toronto. She hired Russian-born Toronto dance instructor Michael Zaslavskiy. A promotional video shows Honey explaining her plan. “I am stepping out of my comfort zone, but I am willing to work hard to try not to fall flat on my face. My husband thinks I am nuts for doing this.” The video shows Honey practising dance moves in the months leading up to the competition, including while on a visit to the Great Wall of China. “That which doesn’t make you vomit makes you stronger,” she says in the video. Zaslavskiy, seen in the video putting Honey through some fairly strenuous dance moves, smiles, wipes his brow, and says, “Was a good workout. She even make me sweat.” Honey and her dance-instructor partner took top honours at the gala with a smooth number that was a mixture of swing dancing and jive. In another dance competition she took part in, this one with Toronto businessman David Cynamon as her partner, they dressed up in full costume as “Honey and Cher.”
As they often did during the morning workout at 50 Old Colony, the two women chit-chatted throughout the session. One of Honey’s pet peeves, which she often brought up with Gold, was how long she had to wait to see the various doctors who treated her. One of the incongruities Gold had noticed about Honey was that she often waited longer than people she spoke up for. When friends—Gold was one of them—needed to get treatment for a family member, Honey or Barry would make a phone call and doors would open. In Gold’s case, her sister’s husband had been terminally ill some years back, and the family hoped to get him into Baycrest’s palliative care ward. The waiting list was long. But once a volunteer and major donor got involved, the man was in a palliative bed thirty-six hours later. When Gold’s daughter wanted to go on a special ten-day educational trip called Birthright Israel, which seeks to connect young Jewish adults with Israel and their Jewish identity, no spaces were available. Honey stepped in, and Gold’s daughter was given an extra spot. “They were just giving, wonderful people,” Gold says.
Like her husband, Honey did not wear workout attire commensurate with her wealth. She wore an old pair of workout shorts she had owned since moving into Old Colony Road in the late 1980s. When there was a hole in the seat of the pants, she took it to a seamstress in the neighbourhood for repairs. “What’s wrong, they’re perfect!” Honey said when Gold suggested she get a new pair.
They had become good friends over the years, but Gold knew she was not on Honey’s “A or B list.” Still, they had a real connection and at times they would halt in the middle of a session and head off to rummage through Honey’s closets. It boggled Gold’s mind that the woman who wore a tattered pair of workout shorts had closets filled with multiple copies of designer jackets worth thousands of dollars, all purchased on sale, many never worn. There was a hoarder mentality about Honey, perhaps stemming from her upbringing.
When the pain became too much for Honey during a session, she paused, went to her night table, and got an unlabelled bottle of pills. Inside was an assortment of pills of different colours, all generic. Honey would shake out two that would help, take them with water, and return to the workout.
Gold suggested they concentrate on improving her balance, and Honey stood up, balancing on one leg, then the other. During the morning, the talk turned to the house plans. Working in concert with her sister, Mary, Honey had put the Old Colony Road house up for sale along with another house the Shermans had purchased and renovated in Forest Hill. That house and lot had been deemed too small for Honey’s grand vision of a mansion, and a second lot, a much larger, pie-shaped parcel just three blocks from daughter Alex and her husband, Brad, had been purchased. Ground had been broken on the new lot, and it would take two to three years to build. Now the Shermans had two houses for sale. “Whichever sells first, we will live in the other one until the new place is built,” Honey explained to Gold.
The phone rang and Honey answered. It was a friend of the Shermans from Florida who was hoping to see them the following week. Gold was also expecting to be in Florida over the holidays, and Honey suggested they get together. Perhaps Gold could check out the home gymnasium in the Shermans’ condo and make suggestions on how to improve it? The condo had undergone a major renovation, including a $600,000 marble floor, a cost that Barry Sherman strongly objected to but agreed to pay. Once again, it raised the sore point between the couple that Honey did not have her own money.
One of the other topics Gold and Honey Sherman discussed was the upcoming wedding of the Shermans’ youngest daughter, Kaelen, the following May. Instead of a local Toronto wedding with hundreds of guests, which Honey wanted, only family and a few of the young couple’s closest friends, and their parents’ closest friends, would be travelling to Mexico. There was tension over that, too. Honey would have preferred to throw a major Toronto wedding but had to settle for a backyard engagement party the previous summer. Kaelen was marrying an electrician, the son of an elevator repairman and a customer service manager at a home building company. There was concern in the Sherman family as to how Kaelen would handle being married to a man who had a good job but who was not rich. One sign of this was Kaelen’s request to her future in-laws that they ensure that all guests attending the wedding in Mexico provide a financial deposit in advance towards their accommodations. The family was taken aback by this, given the Sherman wealth.
The session over, Gold said goodbye and headed downstairs. Wednesdays were almost completely devoted to Honey’s ongoing rehabilitation, and coming up the stairs was a woman who provided Honey with regular massage therapy. For the next three hours, the woman would work with Honey. The first two hours of this once-a-week massage session, Honey had told Gold, were extremely painful. Gold, massage therapists, physiotherapists, and doctors were all part of what Honey called her team. The next day Honey had an early-morning committee meeting at one of the charities she was involved with, but today was all about fitness.
The ground floor of the Sherman household was a whirlwind of activity. Gold chatted briefly with Elise Stern, the real estate agent who shared the Sherman house listing with Judi Gottlieb, who was on holidays. Stern was preparing for the return visit that afternoon of prospective buyers, a couple who had toured the house a few days earlier. One worker was repairing a crack in the ceiling, someone else was doing painting touch-ups. Cleaners were vacuuming and wiping down surfaces. Gold walked out the side door, got into her car, and drove off. The sun was shining and she was pleased as she headed to her next client. Later, she would recall that she had rarely seen Honey and Barry so happy.
The executive offices at Apotex were quieter than usual on Wednesday afternoon. Joanne Mauro was busy with several projects. Over the years, her duties had kept expanding. The joke, which was partially true in some respects, was that Mauro ran the company. Barry Sherman arrived in the late morning and worked in his office. Without Sherman and Kay hollering back and forth at each other through the connecting door, the atmosphere was missing its usual spark.
Litigation continued to be a big part of day-to-day business. During the lunch hour that Wednesday, company president Jeremy Desai spoke to their in-house legal counsel about a pressing issue involving one of their many battles with a brand name company. As always, it was a “poker game,” as Desai describes it, and the Apotex lawyer wanted to know what hand to play. Desai checked to make sure Sherman was available and then arranged a 2:30 P.M. meeting in a small boardroom across from the executive offices. It was a routine meeting: two in-house lawyers, Desai, and Sherman. After an hour, a decision was made to wait until they received additional information from their regulator, Health Canada, before taking the next step. That would likely not come for a day or so. The meeting adjourned and the four men returned to their respective offices.
Aside from his Apotex business on Wednesday, Sherman had the meeting with Honey and the architects from Brennan Custom Homes later in the day. Brennan was designing the new home in Forest Hill, and Sherman told friends he was not pleased with the estimated costs of the project. Sherman had also likely brought to the office that morning a copy of the home inspection report on Old Colony Road and let his agents know he was going to have a close look at any deficiencies it listed. He was convinced his house was worth much more than the listed price. The meeting with the architects for the new house had originally been scheduled for the day before, Tuesday, but had to be changed to accommodate everyone’s schedules. That had prevented Sherman’s annual attendance at Frank D’Angelo’s Christmas lunch on Tuesday. Sherman had told D’Angelo in advance that he would not make it, and when the Tuesday architects’ meeting was shifted to Wednesday, it was too late to get out to the lunch at Mamma D’s. He had apologized to D’Angelo Tuesday night by phone, saying he would be there next year for sure. D’Angelo recalls the late-night call from Barry. “He said he was sorry he couldn’t make it and I busted his balls for missing. He really liked those lunches.”
At 5 P.M. on Wednesday, Honey Sherman pulled into the executive parking spot, taking Kay’s space because he was out of town. Another car, carrying two men from Brennan Homes, arrived shortly after, parking beside Desai’s Jaguar. Barry Sherman met his wife and the architects in the lobby, and they all retired to the boardroom in the executive suite.
Anyone entering into a home design and building contract with the Shermans would have to know that they had a difficult track record with builders and architects. The first house they built, in the 1970s, resulted in Sherman suing the builder and winning back some of his costs related to what he argued were deficiencies in the project. With Old Colony Road, Sherman took the designers and builders to court, again citing deficiencies. That case took six years to wind through the court system. Sherman testified that the twelve-thousand-square-foot house was a “disaster” when they took possession. The case was settled with all but two of the contractors, and Sherman ended up recouping $2 million of the $2.3 million cost to build the home in the mid 1980s. Sherman continued court actions against the remaining two contractors, claiming they were negligent in the design of the heating and air conditioning. He ultimately lost those relatively small legal battles and had to pay $110,000 in legal costs when a judge determined that, yes, there had been negligence, but there was no proof the Shermans had suffered from the actions of the two contractors.
The new Forest Hill house the Shermans planned to construct was sixteen thousand square feet on a twenty-five-thousand-square-foot lot, purchased in 2016. Friends of the Shermans say that the estimated cost, according to Honey, including purchase of the lot and building the mansion, was at least $30 million and likely more. Where Old Colony Road was big and comfortable, this house would be a true mansion. Work was underway on the foundation in the fall of 2017. As described by the Toronto Star’s Victoria Gibson, the planned brick and stone residence had a massive forty-one-foot-long retractable glass roof over an indoor pool, which, weather permitting, would become an outdoor pool at the flick of a switch. The home would have four very large bedrooms, a two-sided fireplace in the living room, extensive patios and gardens, an elevator, and a garage with a car lift so that one vehicle could be raised up and another parked beneath. Other notable features included a sizable home gym and a specially constructed paper shredder in the second-floor office. For the couple that did not like having staff and only had a cleaning lady once a week, there would be staff living quarters in the basement. With an eye to Honey’s physical limitations and the couple’s advancing age, an elevator was planned and Mary, Honey’s sister, had recently asked the father of Kaelen’s fiancé if he could install an elevator and “give Honey a good price.” Having already spent many unpaid hours fixing the dumbwaiter at Old Colony Road as a favour to his future in-laws, the fiancé’s father was surprised that Mary would think he would overcharge. “Of course I will, anything for my future family,” the man told Mary.
That Wednesday evening, Jeremy Desai had an Apotex staff Christmas party to attend at a local restaurant. As he was heading out the door shortly after 5 P.M., he received the update from Health Canada that Apotex needed. Normally, he would have popped in to tell his boss, but he noticed Honey’s Lexus in Jack Kay’s parking spot and decided he would speak to Sherman the next day.
The meeting with the architects ended at 6:30 P.M. Sherman ushered everyone out the door, said goodbye to Honey—who, according to a family member, went to a mall on the way home to pick up Hanukkah presents for her grandchildren—and went back to his office. Magnetic locks at Apotex activate at 5 P.M., so unless someone had a special pass, there was no way back into the building. Apotex security cameras show Honey and the architects, in separate vehicles, pulling onto the main road outside the building and heading south. Joanne Mauro had gone home, and Sherman worked on some of his projects in the quiet of the evening. It had been a busy fall, both for Apotex and some of Sherman’s other financial adventures. There was his investment in The One condominium complex to help out friend Sam Mizrahi. He had a small lawsuit in progress with a man he alleged to have scammed him out of $100,000, and examinations for discovery were upcoming. He also owed a $400 million payment to a brand-name firm due to a settlement that had been recently reached. But as Sherman told his business associates, he would live to fight another day. Most notable among his lengthy personal court actions, Sherman had finally emerged victorious from his battle with Kerry Winter and his other cousins. Jack Kay’s daughter, Katherine Kay, was his lead lawyer on that case, and Sherman was, as with all his legal cases, closely involved in coordinating tactics. Wanting to exact some form of punishment, they had asked the court to award Sherman $1 million in legal costs, but the judge reduced the amount to $300,000. The cousins were appealing, so that payout was in limbo. Still, a victory for Sherman. And capping that victory, Sherman had been informed that he was to be awarded Canada’s highest honour. Though he was a man who never seemed to boast, he wrote to Fred Steiner and Joel Ulster on November 29 that, “I was advised today by the Governor General’s office that I have been appointed to the Order of Canada, but it is confidential until announced on Dec. 29.”
The upcoming weekend would provide a break from his many battles. Joel Ulster and Michael Hertzman were coming to Toronto for a visit. On Sunday night, a dinner at Riz restaurant in Toronto was planned to celebrate Jeff Ulster’s new venture into podcast advertising. Mark Ulster, who Sherman had assisted years before with a job at Apotex and financial support, would also be at the dinner with his wife. Jeff and his wife had extended the invitation to Barry and Honey, but as was often the case, Honey had taken over, booking her favourite restaurant and sending out emails to ensure everyone would be on time. They would be heading to the dinner at Riz immediately after a Hanukkah brunch at Kaelen’s fiancé’s parents’ house. Monday, Sherman would begin the day as usual with a training session with Denise Gold. Honey would be on her way to Florida, where Barry was planning to join her mid-week. She would have a couple of days with her sister, Mary, to catch up and gossip and discuss their various real estate situations. As friends would tell police and the media in the coming days, both Shermans had a great deal to look forward to, and much to be happy about.
The question of happiness was something that Barry Sherman often pondered, his friends say. In his 1996 memoir, he wrote that the root of happiness comes from the instinctual desire to “eat, drink, copulate, protect ourselves and our young, and cooperate with others.” Happiness, he wrote, was best defined as the satisfaction of these drives. On two recent occasions, close friends Fred Steiner and Leslie Gales had separately commented to Sherman that he must be happy, given his many successes. To both of them, Sherman replied simply, “What is happiness?”
At 8:13 P.M., Sherman composed an email on his desktop computer at Apotex about some routine drug matter and sent it to Jeremy Desai, copying lawyer Harry Radomski. Around 8:30 P.M., he left the office. Security cameras record him getting into his old Mustang GT, backing out of his spot, driving out onto Signet Drive, and heading south.
Friday, December 14, shortly after 9 A.M.
“Joanne, it’s Mary.”
Mauro had just arrived at her desk. Honey’s sister, Mary Shechtman, was on the phone from Florida. “Have you seen Barry? I need to talk to one of them.” Shechtman, who was helping with the sale of the Shermans’ house, was trying to reach Honey about some prospective buyers. She had called and sent emails and text messages, but no luck. Honey had been scheduled the day before, Thursday, to attend a regular 8 A.M. committee meeting at the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. When her chair remained empty, nobody was particularly alarmed. Their busy benefactor likely had a doctor’s appointment or a family matter to deal with.
“Okay,” Mauro said. “No problem. You keep trying Honey, and I will try Barry.”
It was not unusual at all for Barry Sherman to arrive late to the office. In fact, he rarely showed up before 10:30 A.M. His absence the previous day was uncharacteristic but not completely out of the ordinary, particularly since he’d become a grandparent. Once in a while, he spent at least part of the day with daughter Alex, who had just had her second child. Alex had, on the Thursday, wondered why her parents did not respond to texts she sent with photos of their new grandchild, born just a month before. But they had been at her house the previous week, and Alex knew Honey was dropping by that Friday, so she was not overly concerned about the lack of response. In interviews later, though, both Mauro and Desai agreed it was unusual that Barry had not replied to emails sent Thursday night about Apotex business. Since Sherman had first started using a BlackBerry, many years earlier, Mauro had always known him to respond with great speed, sometimes instantly. An insomniac, he often fired off emails in the middle of the night.
After ending her call with Shechtman, Mauro sent Sherman a short email. “Hey. How are you? Are you coming in today?”
No reply.
An hour later, Shechtman called back. Her voice was high-pitched and hard to understand. “Something’s happened. Something’s happened to them.”