Page 21 - Bloomberg Businessweek-October 29, 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek October 29, 2018

I. THE SCENE OF THE CRIME despite Sherman’s avowed athe-
ism, a panoply of Jewish causes.
Last Dec. 15, two real estate agents arrived at a sprawling Canadian high society is a
modern house near the northern edge of Toronto. They small place, and everyone in it
were accompanied by a couple who were considering buy- was familiar with the Shermans,
ing the 12,000-square-foot mansion at 50 Old Colony Rd., not least because of their enthu-
recently listed for just shy of C$7 million. With five bed- siastic fundraising for the gov-
rooms, nine bathrooms, a gym, a sauna, a tennis court, and erning Liberal Party. Prime Barry and Honey
underground parking for six cars, it was one of the more Minister Justin Trudeau was in September 2017
impressive properties on a street lined with grand homes. among about 6,000 mourners at a memorial service held
The sellers, pharmaceuticals billionaire Barry Sherman, 75, a week after the deaths. During a long procession of eulo-
and his wife, Honey, 70, had lived there for more than two gies, affectionate recollections mixed with a sort of stunned
decades but were preparing to build a house closer to the incomprehension. Who could want to kill two people whose
center of the city. “humanity knew no bounds,” as Toronto Mayor John Tory
The Shermans weren’t supposed to be home that day. put it? How could a couple at the peak of society, with all the
It was midmorning, and a housekeeper was doing her security and confidence that great wealth afforded, come
semiweekly cleaning while another woman watered the to such a horrific end?
plants. The tour took in the hexagonal entrance foyer, with To the investigators who’ve been on the case for the past
its chandelier and black tile floors, and the spacious kitchen, 10 months—the police and a team of private detectives hired
soaked in natural light from a broad conservatory window by the couple’s four adult children—the crime presents a
over the sink. In the basement, the Shermans’ agent had series of contradictions. Police found no evidence of a
something more unusual to show off: a lap pool and hot tub, break-in, and the manner in which the Shermans were killed
handy in a city where winter weather can drag into April. was personal, even intimate. The official cause of death for
The pool was at the rear of the house, adjacent to a both was “ligature neck compression,” meaning strangulation
sunken garage and accessible from the rest of the basement by a cord or belt—painful, terrifying, and indicating a pas-
by a long, narrow hallway. The agent, entering first, was the sionate desire to see them suffer. Then again, the tidiness 49
one who found them. Barry and Honey, spouses of more of the scene suggested the work of professionals. With little
than 40 years, were side by side on the floor, their necks tied concrete information available, friends and colleagues have
with men’s leather belts to a metal railing, about three and projected a tangle of theories into the void, speculating var-
a half feet high, that ran around one end of the pool. Barry, iously about the culpability of rival drugmakers, disgruntled
heavyset with a crown of frizzy, thinning gray-and-brown ex-employees, and Russian-Israeli gangsters.
hair, was seated, legs extended forward and crossed neatly From the first reports, I took a close interest in the
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PETER J. THOMPSON/THE NATIONAL POST; ALINE SANDLER; RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR/GETTY IMAGES
at the ankles. Honey, who had a blond bob and an athletic deaths. I grew up in Toronto, a proud if irreligious mem-
frame, was slumped on her side and appeared to have been ber of the city’s Jewish community. The Shermans and
struck on her face. Their arms were drawn back, held in their influence were ever-present there; no museum, com-
place by coats pulled down below their shoulders. Both were munity center, or campus seemed to lack a space named
facing away from the water and fully clothed, although one after them or Apotex. Their son, Jonathon, and I attended
of the belts seemed to have been taken from Barry’s trou- the same high school about a year apart, and our parents
sers. It was impossible to tell how long they’d been dead. were well-acquainted. My father, also named Barry, served
Within hours, the deaths were the biggest story in Canada. a term as a Liberal member of Parliament in the 1990s, and
Barry Sherman was the chairman of Apotex Inc., a privately Apotex donated to his campaign. Later my parents inter-
held generic drug company that he founded in the mid-1970s. acted at times with the Shermans on the charity and social
It’s now the country’s premier pharmaceutical manufacturer, circuits. Initially, I was reluctant to write about their deaths,
accounting for as many as 1 in 5 Canadian prescriptions, and which seemed simply too close to home. Yet as the weeks
the rare large domestic drugmaker never to have been swal- wore on without answers, the story became impossible to
lowed up by a foreign rival. With a fortune that the Bloomberg ignore, and I booked a ticket to Toronto.
Billionaires Index placed at I’d assumed that in writing about Barry Sherman’s life, I
$3.6 billion at the time of his would be reporting on a world I knew. And while, yes, he was
death, Sherman was Canada’s a consummate member of Canada’s political and business
18th-richest person, and he and elite, comfortably atop a society that deserves most, if not
Honey were among the coun- quite all, of its international reputation for orderly predict-
try’s most generous philanthro- ability, he was also a financial gateway from the staid rou-
pists, supporting cultural and tine of boardrooms and balls to someplace less savory. The
educational institutions, anti- Police at the Shermans’ borders between those worlds could be surprisingly fluid for
poverty organizations, and, home on Dec. 15 Sherman. Sometimes they didn’t exist at all.