Serialously with Annie Elise
221: Real-Life Succession: Billionaire Couple Murdered. Toxic Secrets & Bizarre Staged Scene.
Mon, 09 Dec 2024
On December 15th, 2017, billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman didn’t follow their typical morning routine. Their maid noticed that they were nowhere to be found. Not long after, there would be a shocking discovery near their indoor pool. Barry and Honey were both dead, and the investigation into this case would leave everyone stunned… Sono Bello Visit https://www.sonobello.com/ae Audible Go to https://www.audible.com/ae Junes Journey Download June’s Journey for free by clicking the link: https://bit.ly/serialously Quince Go to https://www.Quince.com/ae for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns Manscaped Go to https://www.manscaped.com and use code AE for 20% off and free shipping! Shop the Merch: www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ SERIALously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/ About Me: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [email protected] Sources: Crime Beat TV CTV News CBC News Toronto Star Toronto Sun CBS News
Chapter 1: What happened to Barry and Honey Sherman?
hurry everybody along to another room elise also saw that the window in the media room had been cracked open about six inches now it was freezing at the time remember it was december in canada so she felt like this was yet again another weird choice like why aren't you preparing this house for a showing now obviously the shermans were the sort of people if you will that made some odd choices here and there that was clear enough by the fact that these human trash statues were still up
So Elise sort of just kind of like mentally rolled her eyes and kept smiling for the buyer's sake, just trying to be like, oh, let's go, like, sorry, let me close this, it's a little cold, there's a draft, but really just trying to appease them and, you know, not make this a total loss. So she moved along, just trying to make everybody feel as normal as possible.
Then they got to the garage, which, by the way, was not even clean. And I've got to imagine that by this point, Elise wasn't just annoyed or irritated. I would imagine that she was like getting pissed at the Shermans. Like, you're leaving this mega mansion in filthy condition when I'm trying to sell it. Like, at least help me out a little bit here, right?
Now the garage floor, like I said, it was a disaster. It wasn't clean. The floor was covered with a bunch of papers. There was a BlackBerry phone. There was a pair of driving gloves. And what was interesting was Elise knew that that phone belonged to Barry because he was the only person who still used a BlackBerry in 2017. Everybody, for the most part, moved on to Androids or iPhones, right?
But he still used a BlackBerry. So Elise paused, she tried to tidy up a little bit, because what else was she supposed to do in that moment, right? And then she tried to salvage the showing by moving to the most exciting part of the house, the most grandiose, the one that would make your jaw drop. And this particular room was where they had an underground lap pool.
Now, I've never even heard of one of these things, guys. It was the first time, but let me describe it. It had two lanes and a hot tub with it. The whole area was surrounded by a three foot tall metal rail, so nobody would have to worry about slipping in and falling in. But it was like, to have one of those inside your house, that's a pretty big deal, right?
So they were all just standing there, taking it in, looking at this amazing pool, this amazing perk of buying this new home. But then the other realtor turned to Elise and asked her, hey, what's that at the end of the pool? So Elise looked over to the far end of the pool.
And when she did, she saw a couple just sitting there quietly on the floor, upright, not moving, just kind of frozen, just sitting and staring. and they were right there near the edge of the pool. So that other real estate agent who hadn't been in this house before made a joke kind of like, oh, are those other creepy statues? Why do they have so many creepy human statues everywhere?
But Elise knew this property backwards and forwards. She knew that that was not a set of statues, not at all. She had never seen statues in this area of the house before. So she hurried the Byers out of the room, she ended the tour, and then she went to go talk to the Sherman's housekeeper again.
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Chapter 2: What unusual details surrounded the Shermans' home?
After graduating with a degree in engineering, he then went on to MIT to get his PhD in astrophysics. A true smarty. His end goal was to work at NASA, but that changed when he interned over the summer at his uncle's drug company called Empire Labs. Because that's where Barry saw, firsthand, just how much money you could make selling and creating new medicines.
So eventually, he started his own company, and he called it Apotex. Then in 1970, Barry met Honey. Honey's birth name had been Anna, but she had officially changed it to Honey in high school. She was outgoing, adventurous, and truly the life-of-the-party type of person. She too had gone to the University of Toronto, and a mutual friend introduced the two of them to one another.
They hit it off immediately, and they got married the very next year, in 1971. Both of them wanted kids, and Honey, in particular, wanted a very big family, but she had a really difficult time getting pregnant, and sadly, she suffered through multiple miscarriages. Eventually, she had their first child, a girl named Lauren.
Then came the second child, Jonathan, then Alexandra, and finally, a third little girl that they named Kaylin. Now, the last three children were all conceived using surrogates, but it was the 1980s, and the technology around that time was not nearly as good as it is now. So even though Barry was the donor, he wasn't the one who fertilized Honey's eggs.
The surrogates used their own eggs, meaning that all four of Barry and Honey's children had different biological mothers.
but they all have the same father namely barry now some people think that this really affected the kids growing up there's also rumors that honey just wasn't very maternal in general and also that she had an especially hard time being a good mother to the children who you know weren't biologically hers there are also rumors that barry favored all four kids over honey and honey supposedly even told some friends that she was at the bottom of the family's quote pecking order
Now, I haven't been able to verify that. It's really all just rumor. But I do know that while they were raising their kids, they were also making a ton, a ton of money thanks to Barry's company. So much money that at the time of their deaths, Honey and Barry were literal billionaires. Billionaires with a B. Now, Barry was also a huge workaholic.
When the family went on vacation, Honey would take the kids out, you know, to have fun, to play around, but Barry would just stay back and take care of business issues remotely. He seemed to work all the time, and he used his money he was earning to make investments, trying to earn even more money. It was almost like this vicious cycle where if there's no glass ceiling, the limit does not exist.
So grind, grind, grind. Not the most healthy thing, but I understand it. Now, in addition to spending their money on lavish vacations, their mega mansion, all of these things, they were also very generous when it came to charities. Barry and Honey were both Jewish, and they donated a lot of their money to the Jewish charities in particular.
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Chapter 3: How did the investigation unfold after the discovery?
The first 48 hours after a murder are incredibly important for an investigation. and the police had made so many mistakes in those first few days. First of all, the murder scene had not been secured. At all. On the day that the bodies were discovered, the housekeeper just kept cleaning the house, even after the police had arrived.
She did this just to keep herself busy, and the police didn't stop her. I mean, not at first, it took a while before a police officer told her to stop. But by that point, who knows how much evidence she had already scrubbed away. Now, the realtor, Elise, had also kept telling the police, you've got to go check the lockbox at the front of the house. Make sure that the spare key is still there.
And you've probably seen those lockboxes if you've ever gone to look at a potential new house or new apartment. I also think some Airbnbs use them as well. It's like a little box that hangs on the door handle or sometimes it's on a water pipe. It has a code on it. And when you open it, you can get the key out.
So basically, Elisa's theory was that maybe the killer got into the lockbox and got the key out. And that's how they made it into the house without leaving any signs of forced entry that they had a key. So she was encouraging the police, go check, see if the key is still there, right? Seems like
a really standard, logical thing to do, except for whatever reason, even though Elise told them this multiple times, they didn't check the box. Elise had to call them over and over repeatedly, asking them and calling them over the course of weeks to check this box, until finally, after several weeks went by, they went and checked out this lockbox.
Now, in all fairness, when they did, the key was still inside of it. But you have to wonder why it took them so long to check, right? In general, the police didn't find a whole lot of evidence. But frankly, it also doesn't sound like they were looking all that hard in the first place. Plus, on top of that, the Shermans didn't have a very advanced or high-tech security system.
Even though they lived in this huge mansion, they had no cameras outside, no cameras inside. They only had alarms and motion on the doors and windows. Now what they did find was Honey's phone, which the housekeeper had already seen in that half bathroom upstairs.
They found all those papers on the floor of the garage, the driving gloves, and the blackberry, Barry's blackberry, that was on the floor of the garage. But that was really it. So basically, the detectives only managed to find the evidence that Elise and the housekeeper had already spotted on their own.
Now, one good thing was that the investigators eventually pulled security footage from the medical office that Barry owned. Specifically, footage from the afternoon before Barry and Honey had died. So this was Wednesday, December 13th. And in the clip, Barry and Honey were meeting with the architects who were building their new house.
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Chapter 4: What were the initial theories about their deaths?
Barry gave some of that money to the Winter Boys, but then he used the rest of it to start his own company. So as the Winter Boys grew older, they felt it wasn't fair that Barry had sold Empire Labs to start his own company. Basically, it seemed like he had sold out their future for his own financial benefit.
But Barry defended himself, saying that Empire Labs was going to fail, and by saving and then selling the company, he got the boys more money than they would have ever made otherwise. In his mind, he had every right to sell the company. He even continued to support the Winter Boys, buying them houses, cars, money, and jobs.
He even invested in their businesses that they ended up starting for themselves. But still, think about it. Barry became a billionaire, thanks in part to his new medical company. So no amount of houses, cars, and investments, none of that was going to come close to making up for what the boys thought had been stolen from them.
They even claimed at one point that they should own 20% of Barry's medical company, since the four of them together had owned 20% of Empire Labs before he sold it. And Carrie ended up confronting Barry about it. But Barry said that he built this company himself and that he didn't owe the Winter Boys anything. Then, Carey tried to sue Barry for $1.5 million.
It became this huge legal battle that lasted over 10 years. But in the end, the judge sided with Barry, and the judge even ordered Carey to pay Barry back for all of his legal fees. On top of that, Carey often talked publicly about how terrible Barry and Honey were, how ungrateful they were. And after the murders, he even talked about how they deserved what had happened to them.
So yeah, the main reason people suspected Carrie is because he's been so outspoken about his dislike of Honey and Barry, even after the murder. In fact, he said that he danced around his house and celebrated when he found out that Barry and Honey were dead. He straight up said that he had a reason to kill Barry, And more than that, he even made a plan to do so.
But his plan apparently wasn't at all like how Barry and Honey actually died. Carrie said that his plan was to just sit and wait outside of the medical company that Barry had started and attack Barry as he left the building. Then he would decapitate him and just wait by his car until the police finally came and arrested him. Which, I gotta say, not a very well thought out plan. But I get it.
If all you want is revenge and you don't even care what happens to yourself, then yeah, maybe blitz attack, decapitate, and just sit there and wait for the police. But it doesn't sound like a fully formed plan to me. But I think we all can agree in any event that something just wasn't quite right with Carrie, right? But he wasn't ever named an official suspect.
And a lot of people who know Carrie and know his brothers point out that when their parents died, they received a huge inheritance. Unfortunately, a lot of that money was wasted on expensive vacations, drugs, and a bunch of other unnecessary things. So it seemed like Carey might have been willing to do anything, even commit murder, just to get his hands on some more money.
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Chapter 5: What evidence did the police find at the scene?
The police have gone through the computer data, the phone data, and hundreds of people that were linked to Barry and Honey. They also checked out all of the surveillance camera footage from the neighborhood, including some that they didn't publicly release until late 2021.
That footage is of someone, probably a man, walking outside on Wednesday, December 13th, 2017, aka the night that Barry and Honey died. You can't see this person's face or any other identifiable features. It's just someone dressed in all dark winter clothes walking through the snow in an area near Barry and Honey's home.
However, the police do think that this person likely has some sort of military background, and they think this based on the way that this person is walking.
This is the person detectives now say is wanted for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman. Investigators say it's unclear if the suspect was working alone or with someone else.
But on the evening of December 13th, 2017, two days before the billionaire couple was found dead next to the indoor pool in the basement of their mansion, the suspect was tracked on video, arriving by foot in the area of 50 Old Colony Road and later leaving from that same address.
The suspect also disappears from camera view during the time frame that investigators determined the murders took place.
We undertook these investigative steps, exhaustive investigative steps, to identify this individual. And now having gotten to the point where we have not been able to do so with these videos, this is now the prudent time to release this to the public and seek the public's assistance.
Police can only say the suspect is between 5'6 and 5'9 and believe his actions were suspicious that night.
We were able to eliminate pretty well every other person on the video footage that we've obtained. And so we're left with a very glaring sort of unknown with this individual that requires an explanation if there's a legitimate one.
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