Pharma billionaire and wife found dead in 'suspicious' case

originally posted by: queenofswords
Here is another article from May 2011 about someone else that is not happy with Barry Sherman and Apotex:

Orphans Fight RBC's Royal Trust and Apotex's Barry Sherman in Canada's Largest Lawsuits

And this from not even 3 months ago (Sept. 27, 2017)

Lawsuit seeking piece of Toronto billionaire Barry Sherman's fortune 'wishful thinking,' judge rules

Police meanwhile seems to think murder suicide

originally posted by: MindBodySpiritComplex

originally posted by: queenofswords
Here is another article from May 2011 about someone else that is not happy with Barry Sherman and Apotex:

Orphans Fight RBC's Royal Trust and Apotex's Barry Sherman in Canada's Largest Lawsuits

And this from not even 3 months ago (Sept. 27, 2017)

Lawsuit seeking piece of Toronto billionaire Barry Sherman's fortune 'wishful thinking,' judge rules

Police meanwhile seems to think murder suicide

The Winter orphans' father: Louis Lloyd Winter

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex


This just goes to show you that you are never too young to have a solid will and proper legal mechanisms in place should you and your spouse die early.

Louis Lloyd Winter and his wife, Beverley, died a little over two weeks apart in 1965 leaving four kids under the age of seven. Louis Winter was only 41 years old!

Royal Trust was supposed to look out for the children and administer on their behalf.

Their cousin, Bernard Sherman, it appears, never honored the agreements to provide the royalties and equity agreements. He sold out, re-invested, and carried on.

This kind of thing chaps my you-know-what. Those young heirs deserved their inheritance and they deserved a conscientious advocate working on their behalf.

a reply to: queenofswords

Sounds like your takeaway was the same as mine. Their kids got screwed.

Anyone that would bail on that trust agreement, like Sherman did, is neither good nor 'philanthropic.'

ETA: And that is not meant to absolve Royal Trust. They are primarily to blame. They should have anticipated that Sherman would try to bilk those kids out of their inheritance.

Billions of dollars weren't enough for Sherman.

I am thinking Sherman probably pissed off a lot of people.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Agreed.

Maybe it really was a murder-suicide. He could no longer live with what he had done to those kids. From what I read, they had a pretty tough time of it as they grew up. I think I read that one died of a drug overdose.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

What goes around comes around!

From a May 2013 Article

Forty-five women who had turned to Apotex for contraceptives to avoid having children are now looking to the Canadian drugmaker to help them pay for their babies or their abortions after they ended up pregnant.

Last month Health Canada issued an alert for the Alysena 28 birth control pills, made by Apotex, after it was discovered that some packages contained 14 active contraceptive pills and 14 placebos

Uh oh!

How about that, Bernard! (RIP)....you wouldn't help out four little kids related to you, and now you are responsible for helping monetarily to raise at least 45, maybe more.

originally posted by: queenofswords
a reply to: MotherMayEye

Agreed.

Maybe it really was a murder-suicide. He could no longer live with what he had done to those kids. From what I read, they had a pretty tough time of it as they grew up. I think I read that one died of a drug overdose.

If that's the case, I expect to see them in his will.

But...I won't hold my breath and I don't think they should either.

Barry Sherman sounds like someone that put on a good front for PR purposes to cover for the fact that he was a horrible human being.

a reply to: queenofswords


Karma. She really is a b*tch!

originally posted by: queenofswords
a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex


This just goes to show you that you are never too young to have a solid will and proper legal mechanisms in place should you and your spouse die early.

Louis Lloyd Winter and his wife, Beverley, died a little over two weeks apart in 1965 leaving four kids under the age of seven. Louis Winter was only 41 years old!

Royal Trust was supposed to look out for the children and administer on their behalf.

Their cousin, Bernard Sherman, it appears, never honored the agreements to provide the royalties and equity agreements. He sold out, re-invested, and carried on.

This kind of thing chaps my you-know-what. Those young heirs deserved their inheritance and they deserved a conscientious advocate working on their behalf.

The cousins lost their case earlier this year, and though they were to appeal they hadn't done so.
It seems to be true that they were offered equity of 5% of the Empire Company, and some product royalties at the time that Sherman purchased from the cousins late parents, while it is unclear if Sherman ever paid them anything, and the cousins losing their case leaves that scenario up in the air.

The house was for sale, though why a robber should expect nobody in the house doesn't make any real sense per se.

Hard to know what was going on, if anything, while pharmaceuticals are a historically controversial industry anyway.

Sherman by all accounts was also pretty smart with a PhD in astrophysics.
So, it's still hard to fathom a decision to commit suicide in his position, unless there is some all encompassing event on the horizon that most don't know about.

a reply to: smurfy

I can't help but go back to the editing of Bernard Sherman's wikipedia page on February 23, 2010 by a 'Johnathan Vrozos.'

link to my earlier comment

His edit notes:

Deleted a link that incorrectly associated the individual to organized crime figures within Canada. He is an upstanding citizen worth over $3Billion, prob posted by lawsuit claimants

There's no Contributor page for him on wikipedia. I had to google him:

Mayor Rob Ford says he was simply fulfilling a campaign commitment when he met in February with a businessman who was successfully sued for driving away with more than $500,000 in others’ money after the 2003 post-SARS benefit concert and who said he paid police officers the same year for help obtaining a liquor licence for his bar.

An hour-long dinner with the businessman, entertainment impresario Johnathan Vrozos, was listed on Ford’s itinerary for 7 p.m. Feb. 4. Questioned about the meeting during a media scrum Wednesday morning, Ford said Vrozos had won the meeting by bidding on it at a fundraising golf tournament.

Ford defends meeting with impresario involved in ‘fraud’ at SARS event

I just want to remind everyone about Rob Ford...deceased Mayor of Toronto:



So, there is this organized crime, government, crack, fraud, pharmaceutical company chain of connections.

***

I think a quick determination that there is no foul play (that this is a murder/suicide) is going to be very telling.

It would take a very long time to really, really look at Sherman and determine that there's no cause or reason to suspect foul play.



ETA: OH, and add SARS to that chain of connections, too.

a reply to: queenofswords

This link.

This was written by an employee with serious health effects allegedly caused by working at Apotex?

Did you see these photos? My honest impression....it looks like exposure effects caused by the production of something as bad as meth, crack, crank.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
a reply to: queenofswords

This link.

This was written by an employee with serious health effects allegedly caused by working at Apotex?

Did you see these photos? My honest impression....it looks like exposure effects caused by the production of something as bad as meth, crack, crank.

That was hard to read! I had only read parts of it, but after reading the whole thing, I don't know what to think!

Did you read the segment where he begged the US Justice Dept. for help, saying that Bernard Sherman is a drug lord

(Illegally obtain stored, processed and distributed controlled substances / narcotics often heavily contaminated)

I actually got the impression that accusations were being made that there was some experimental stuff going on in unsuspecting populations. Hard to wade through all the info., and sometimes incoherent or muddled presentations of proof.

a reply to: queenofswords

The author was not polished in writing or stating his/her case. But the claims are so very serious. And there is this photographic evidence presented...is it real?

I find that link you posted to be alarming.

Anyway...it's still up...I assume Barry Sherman hasn't used any legal measures to have it shut down. That says something, IMO.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

It is hard to reconcile two very different views of Bernard "Barry" Sherman. One that considers him a monster and the other that considers him a great leader and philanthropist.

One of the first to respond to his friends' deaths was a Dr. Eric Hoskins who said this in a tweet:

I am beyond words right now. My dear friends Barry and Honey Sherman have been found dead. Wonderful human beings, incredible philanthropists, great leaders in health care. A very, very sad day. Barry, Honey, rest in peace.

Dr. Eric Hoskins is a politician in Canada and a medical doctor that co-founded War Child Canada,

a multimillion-dollar Canadian charitable organization that works to raise funds for relief and development programs in support of war-affected children around the world

wikipedia

The two totally different views of the same man are baffling to say the least.

a reply to: queenofswords

Public face v. private face maybe?

a reply to: MotherMayEye

I wonder if Barry Sherman was part of the War Child charity.

An odd case. Apparently they were found hanged. Police suspect murder-suicide, but family is not sure.

Murder-suicide would have been my first guess, though it is difficult to hang another person. I would suspect that he killed her and then killed himself.

link

In about ten years, this stuff will cease. you know why? Because there will be something called Rule of Law and everyone will be forced to abide by it. Meaning, no one will have rights. No one will care, and no one will be able to live without their Personal Computing devices.

This case is starting to take on a somewhat familiar form, at least as these things go in Toronto and as covered in The Toronto Star.

www.thestar.com...

Grieving relatives of Barry and Honey Sherman have sought the help of a legal heavy hitter to conduct their own investigation into the couple’s deaths.

Toronto lawyer Brian Greenspan confirmed to the Star Wednesday night that he is offering informal help to the family of the billionaire philanthropist and his wife, whose mysterious deaths have shocked the city.

“I have been serving as a resource person for the Sherman family and Barry and Honey were people who I admired and respect,” Greenspan said.

“The family did contact me to be a resource person for them and I’ll fill that role.”

Greenspan said he had no further comment on how the investigation would be conducted or when it will begin.

Greenspan is a prominent defense attorney and as everyone knows, the job of a defense attorney is to find the guilty and see that they receive due process of law. At least sometimes that is what happens (in movies). Other times the guilty find the defense attorney and seek to evade judicial sanctions for crimes committed. Other times people who have been charged hire a defense attorney to represent their interests in a case. These latter are sometimes guilty and sometimes innocent.

Hiring a defense attorney to represent one in an investigation is something that is not done often.

Now lest there be any cynical individual in Toronto who might be moved to question the motives of those who hire defense attorneys to conduct or supervise or represent them in police investigations of murder or murder suicide or anything serious involving their families, the Toronto Star has given us a little history lesson legitimizing and normalizing this practice.

www.thestar.com...

Sherman family’s private investigation is a bid to understand unexplained circumstances

In making the decision to conduct a private investigation, the Sherman family joins a list of other families who have made the same decision after a loved one died suddenly

Why does this last article even exist? Who saw the need for this article? Why do the Sherman family need to have their activities legitimized in this case? Why is this case being lumped in with a collection of dissimilar events and situations?

Sadly, this is not the first time the Toronto Star has been involved in this sort of advocate journalism on behalf of an eminent person facing serious interest from the police.

Here are some reflections on what we know so far about the Sherman case.

sherman.htmlwww.thestar.com...

A post-mortem was conducted on the Shermans Saturday and Sunday. Toronto police soon released a statement saying the cause of death for both Shermans had been “ligature neck compression.”

The pathological term describes death from hanging or strangulation with a ligature — an object such as a belt or rope.

A police source told the Star that the couple was found together, by their indoor pool, hanging off a nearby structure in a semi-sitting position.

globalnews.ca...



The structure referred to, above, from which the Shermans were found hanging, in a semi-sitting position, could possibly have been the railings near the edge of the pool. We can't see enough of the area to see if there are any other structures that would answer the requirements of the description given.

If the initially reported police hypothesis of a "murder/suicide" were accurate, it would be an odd choice of methods, given an assumed easy access to drugs that a couple at the head of a generic drug giant might be thought to have.

Apotex makes a version of the tranquilizer Halcion, under the generic name Triazolam. The toxicology report in this case will be of great interest to the police.

The choices in this case, for detectives, would seem to be suicide pact, murder/suicide, and double murder.

The initial police response to the scene they were presented with, was that it was a situation of murder/suicide, according to police sources quoted in the press.

If this was the impression desired by the murderer(s), success was achieved, briefly. Friends and family, upon hearing the police "rumor", were unanimous in rejecting it.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

Mr. Sherman talked business with a handful of friends at a reception in Toronto a few weeks ago for federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, a party hosted by Senator Linda Frum.

At that party, Mr. Sherman made it clear that he still loved what he was doing and had no plans to leave Apotex, according to a Bay Street executive who knew the couple well.

Mr. Sherman gave no hint there were any financial problems at Apotex, the executive said.

The couple were planning a dinner party with a number of Toronto friends at their winter home in Palm Beach later this month; informal invitations went out last week, asking when a number of couples were free.

No note was found.

Let us suppose for a moment, that the last choice, double murder, is what happened.

A question immediately arises, "Why the staging?" Why not just leave the bodies where they were murdered, i.e., on the floor near the pool, or on the floor in some other part of the house?

One thought that comes to mind is that staging the bodies that way, in the case of murder, might have been an attempt to conceal the manner of death, to make a manual strangulation using a ligature appear to be a suicidal death by hanging.

The venue of the staged hanging is not very convincing. Could it have been an improvised afterthought?

Were either or both of the deceased drugged?

All we can do is wait for more information.

Oh, and one wonders if the house will now be taken off the market.