Pharma billionaire and wife found dead in 'suspicious' case

a reply to: ipsedixit

update www.dailymail.co.uk...

dozens of lawsuits.....government probe into$1100 a plate funraiser....charity cutbacks....they have donated millions to schools and hospitals...but in 2015 they donated 0...in 2016 they gave $66,000.00....they were having construction done another house they own...but that was stalled..

one of their daughters just had a baby and another daughter is going to get married...and during the holiday season...terrible timing for the daughters

Part One

There are a lot of advantages to hiring a defense attorney to conduct a parallel investigation of a murder of a member of one's own family, parallel that is, to a police investigation which might, in due course, come to consider one a suspect in the crime.

One might make disclosures to an attorney that were highly incriminating and yet because of the privilege accorded to attorney/client communications, those incriminating disclosures might never come to light in court.

If, as in this case, the defense attorney were to hire very competent former police detectives to conduct this parallel investigation, as has been done, these investigators might flush out all manner of awkward facts about the case, facts that, in due course, the police themselves might uncover.

Having knowledge of these facts as early as possible would enable a defense attorney to craft a well thought out response to whatever evidence the police might eventually present in court.

In addition to this, a defense attorney, considering the sorts of things his own investigators have told him that the police are likely to discover on their own, might want to limit police access to his clients, access that the police might assume, on the face of it, at the beginning of a case, to be reasonable and without malice intended, but which might be the occasion of some costly pratfall by the defense attorney's client.

The most sticky point of all is the case where the parallel investigation because of its privileged access, and disclosures obtained under attorney/client privilege, actually obtains evidence in the case which is not turned up by the police investigation and then withholds that evidence, thereby preventing the police from conducting a successful investigation.

The legal rules on this situation are, no doubt, thoroughly understood by the Sherman family attorney, Brian Greenspan.

The Toronto newspapers have not, in print, considered this sort thing. I'm certain that people in the various newsrooms have hashed it over among themselves.

The business of withholding evidence, under attorney/client privilege by a private investigator came into the investigation of the disappearance of Kathie Durst, as told in Andrew Jarecki's documentary film, The Jinx: the Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

There was also the feeding of false information to the press, information known to the Durst family and to the police and believed at that time, by the police certainly, by the family perhaps, to be true.

This was the notion that Kathie Durst was seen after her last known meeting with her husband, in South Salem, N.Y., the night of her disappearance. It was reported in the press that she had been seen by a doorman, returning to a penthouse apartment in New York City, occupied by her and her husband, whom she had left at the house in South Salem earlier in the evening.

The police detective involved in the case at that time believed that this "fact" (subsequently proven to be untrue) had been leaked to the press by someone inside the Durst family circle, since the information was known to the Durst family and to the police but to noone else. The detective speculated that Susan Berman, a friend of Robert Durst had been the person who leaked this false piece of exculpatory information to the press on behalf of Robert Durst to help relieve press pressure on him.

The matter is discussed at 9:58 of the following linked video:

bmovies.is...

Closer to home, the Sherman family has expressed concerns about police interaction with the press, specifically the information, "from police sources" that the police impression of the scene where the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were found, was of a murder/suicide, an assumption universally rejected by members of the Sherman family and friends of the deceased couple.

The Mayor of Toronto, John Tory, has spoken to the police about the Sherman family's concerns.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

"Most of the mayor's conversation with the Sherman family involved him expressing condolences. The family did raise a concern that they were seeing information in the media before it was communicated to them by police," Mr. Peat said in an e-mail.

"The mayor conveyed those concerns to Toronto Police. He conveyed those concerns dispassionately and did not make any requests of police, but simply relayed their concerns about communication of information, similar to what he would do when other families he contacts have concerns with police or anyone else."

The police might well view this intervention by the mayor as political pressure and also as an attempt by the family to move close to the investigation.

Of course the family has the right to be kept abreast of developments in the investigation. There is nothing unusual about that and nothing about their request, in itself, that indicates any special leverage coming from them.

However it is also potentially problematic if the police decide that a person or persons within the family are possible suspects in a case of murder. Statements made by the police to the press can sometimes be of a strategic nature, designed to influence the behavior of a suspect. The Sherman family shouldn't have input on that sort of thing.

I'm not faulting the mayor, or the family in this matter. I'm simply pointing out that we are right up against an area of concern.

Incidentally, I wrote this last night and I notice in this morning's Toronto Star, a story reporting that questions have been raised about the mayor's meeting with the police.

www.thestar.com... ard-chair-says.html

Tory’s actions fall within a grey area of the Police Services Act, which governs all board members, said former police services board chair Alok Mukherjee.

What Tory did for the Sherman family “creates the impression that a prominent family has special access to policing services,” said Mukherjee, who retired from the Police Services Board in 2015, and became a visiting professor at Ryerson University’s department of criminology and office of equity, diversity and inclusion.

“Whether this is true or not does not matter. Not every family or person has the ability to get the city’s mayor to be their spokesperson on a police investigation.”

At 9:37 of the following linked video, former NYPD detective Michael Struk, who was working the Kathie Durst case received a phone call from Robert Durst's lawyer, defense attorney Nick Scoppetta, requesting that all further communications from the police go through him. Struk described the call as "the classical lawyering up".

bmovies.is...

"If you've got nothing to hide and you dropped your wife off at the train station, why would you go out and hire a criminal defense attorney?"

was how Kathie Durst's brother, Jim McCormack, put it.

Part Two

Andrew Jarecki, in an interview, in the above linked video, with Robert Durst said,

"Nick Scoppetta was your lawyer, to defend you from the potential of accusations."

Durst replied, "He was my lawyer but he was supposed to find Kathie Durst. I mean if he could find Kathie Durst there'd be no accusations."

Jarecki, "Was he supposed to find Kathie?"

Durst, "Yes, it was the whole intent of it."

Jarecki, "Do you think Nick did work to try to find Kathie?"

Durst, "Yes, he brought in a private investigator who used to be a cop and, or, used to be a big cop in that precinct, . . . ahm, what was it . . Ed Wright."


Wright, in a telephone conversation with Mark Smerling, producer of The Jinx, said that he had been chief investigator of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.

Durst said,

"Ed Wright was able to get lots of stuff from the police. He knew the police. The police liked him. He was able to get information that was . . . theoretically unavailable. Who thought what. Who said what."

Smerling, in his telephone conversation with Wright, wondered if he could talk a little bit with Wright about what was going on in the case at that time, since Wright had access to Durst "at a time that was critical".

Wright's response,

"Yeah, but, at the time, I was working for Nick Scoppetta, who was representing him. So, anything that he had indicated to me during my interview, you know, it's privileged, same as whatever he said to Scoppetta."

Jarecki and Smerling's team obtained copies of Ed Wright's confidential 1982 reports to Scoppetta, the lawyer hired by Durst's father Seymour Durst, to represent Robert Durst.

The report was a record of inconsistencies in the accounts of the night Kathie Durst disappeared, given by his client, Robert Durst, and others.

The report is dealt with in the following linked video, starting at 13:15.

bmovies.is...

The real bombshell comes later in the report.

Detective Struk, lead investigator on the case at the time of the initial investigation, said that during the police investigation the doorman of the building where Kathie Durst had an apartment in New York City, told police that he had seen her returning to the apartment the night she is now assumed to have gone missing, after having left her husband, Robert Durst, at their home in New Salem.

However, in a subsequent interview with Ed Wright, the private investigator working for Robert Durst's attorney, the doorman said that he had not seen Kathie Durst on the night in question.

Struk says, "He would have been the guy to bring her up (to her 16th floor apartment) and if he didn't see her, she wasn't there."

This information, obtained by a private investigator, a former police detective of some stature, who knew the police and who was liked by the police and who could get information that was theoretically unavailable (according to Robert Durst), was not shared with the NYPD.

According to Detective Struk, the Durst family just backed further away from the investigation.

Thus far, in the case of the Sherman family deaths, there are no substantive similarities with the Durst case, but many of the elements of the framework within which the investigation of what happened to Barry and Honey Sherman will take place are strikingly similar to elements of the framework of the investigation of the disappearance of Kathie Durst. To my mind this is more than a little disturbing.

Kathie Durst is still missing.

The Toronto Star tells us that,

www.thestar.com...

A private investigative firm, led by a well-respected, retired Toronto police homicide detective who touts “discretion” and “definitive final conclusions” for his clients has been retained by the family of Barry and Honey Sherman to probe the couple’s deaths.

Klatt Investigations is led by Tom Klatt, who spent 14 years in homicide, drug, and intelligence bureaus with the Toronto Police Service before his retirement in 1998, according to his website. He went on to co-found a different private investigative firm before launching his own outfit in 2015.

We know that the Sherman family have expressed concern about the press being given details of the police investigation before the family were informed of them.

In view of what happened in the investigation of the disappearance of Kathie Durst, it is reasonable to ask,

"Was Tom Klatt hired only to investigate the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman, as stated by Sherman family attorney Brian Greenspan, or, . . . was he also hired to investigate the police investigation of those deaths and if possible set up a back channel of communication between the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department and the Sherman family, so that the Sherman family would receive information about the case before the press did and possibly receive information from the police that was, in Robert Durst's expression theoretically unavailable?"

This latter case would be a serious problem for the police department.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

Hubris is always followed by nemesis.

Had to look the word hubris up. I didnt know what it meant.

hubris: exaggerated pride or self-confidence

:-)

The hiring of a criminal defense attorney suggests that the Sherman family are guarding against the possibility that the person responsible for the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman, might be a family member. It is reasonable to assume some degree of acknowledgement of that possibility, within the family.

We (and they) have been told that there was no forced entry into the house. No suicide note was found. Holiday plans and other events in the family were coming up. A scene of suicide, very possibly had been staged. We have been told in the press that the family themselves have rejected murder/suicide as an explanation for the deaths.

The winter coats.

The bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were found attached to a railing near the family swimming pool. They were wearing winter coats which had been pulled down around their arms.

www.thestar.com...

The Shermans were wearing winter coats that were pushed back away from the shoulders and down, which would have the effect of immobilizing the arms. No rope or plastic strap was found at the scene and sources have speculated to the Star that when Toronto police examined sewer pipes around the house they were looking for whatever was used as ties. Police also searched the roof of the house and used metal detectors on the property.

I can't think of any reason why a killer would require that a victim wear a winter coat, except to suggest that his victim had just returned home.

I can't think of a reason why a killer would want to do that, so I think it is reasonable to assume that the Shermans had in fact just returned home, or were just on their way out.

From/to where? Presumably the police know this and are determining whether it has a bearing on the crime.

Dr. David Chiasson, formerly the chief forensic pathologist for Ontario,

www.thestar.com...

. . . conducted a second autopsy days before the Dec. 21 funeral. . . . Chiasson’s conclusion, along with that of the private detectives present, is that it was a double homicide barring any other information that might come from the ongoing probe. Not murder-suicide. The ligature neck compression, sources say, was likely done by two men’s leather belts found at the scene wrapped around the necks of the victims. . . .

A key finding discovered in Chiasson’s autopsy were marks on both Barry and Honey Sherman’s wrists, an indication that each person’s wrists were bound together at some point, likely with rope or a plastic strap. An examination of the markings does not clearly determine if the hands were bound in front or behind. Their hands were not bound when the bodies were discovered.

The police have had toxicology tests done but have not revealed the results of those tests. The family has also had toxicology tests done and, according to the Toronto Star, those results

. . . are negative for any drug that could have caused their death.

That is where we stand.

Does anybody beside me find it just a little irritating that a wealthy family has arranged for a parallel investigation of the murder of relatives to take place and is issuing statements about that investigation's progress, and that this is all being fed to the public without question by at least one major newspaper in Toronto?

Has the Star or anyone else inquired about how much consultation is going on between the two investigations of the Sherman murders. There must be some formal arrangement. What is it?

It is very odd for parallel police investigations of a murder to be taking place with one of the investigations operating under attorney/client privilege.

There appears to be no way for the police department proper to have access to all the findings of the private investigators and on the other hand there is no way that the private investigators should be informed of all or even any of the findings of the Toronto Police Service, since the perpetrator(s) of the crime may be among the clients of the private investigators.

This is a real conundrum. In the case of the disappearance of Kathie Durst it could be argued that such a situation led to two more murders as a result of investigators operating under the protection of attorney/client privilege withholding evidence that would undoubtedly have led to increased police pressure on the person who was eventually audio taped confessing to the crimes, Robert Durst.

We are told by the Toronto Star that words like "professional" are being spoken in investigative circles to describe the murders. I would say effective in that the victims are dead. I would say clumsy and ham handed in that the attempt to make the crimes look like a murder/suicide was unsuccessful. I would question why the "professional" killer(s) murdered Honey Sherman, as well as her husband.

Wouldn't a professional, hired by a business rival or antagonist simply wait until Mr. Sherman was alone and then kill him on the street, at a traffic light?

Here is how professionals handle a business related murder.

www.thestar.com...

It was 7:24 a.m. on Aug. 13, 1998, when Zarb and his partner responded to a report of a shooting at an industrial parking lot.

When they arrived, the body of Frank Roberts — the millionaire inventor of the Obus Forme backrest — lay on the ground next to his Mercedes Benz SL 500 with one bullet hole to the head and two to the chest.

If one accepts that these were professional killers, one must conclude that the professional killers were instructed to kill both of the Shermans. Who would want Honey Sherman dead and why? Eliminating both the Shermans, to my mind, argues for a perpetrator with something to gain if both Shermans were removed from control of their companies and assets.

That edges some unknown in the family into, at least, the penumbra of the shadow of suspicion in my opinion.

We are told that the toxicology tests arranged for by the Sherman family found no evidence of a drug that could have caused their death. That's vague and there are lethal drugs that can be undetectable after a short time in the body. The Shermans were not discovered until at least 24 hours after they were believed to have died.

It will be interesting to hear what the police have to say about this crime, but their position with the public has certainly been complicated by the parallel investigators and the media which is helping to establish their credibility and the authority of the parallel investigation.

Another bit of information on the Sherman murders has come out.

www.cbc.ca...

Private investigators also believe that Honey struggled with her killer or killers. She had cuts on her lip and nose, and was sitting in a pool of her own blood when she was discovered. However, there was comparatively little blood apparent on her upper-body clothing, suggesting that she had been face-down on the tile, bleeding, for some time before being bound to the handrail in an upright position, the source said.

Both investigations have said that there was no sign of forced entry to the home but I'm wondering if Honey Sherman's facial cuts are signs of forced entry. Was she trying to hold the door closed and then struck by it forcibly when it was pushed by an intruder?

Investigators believe she bled while lying on the floor near the swimming pool.

Police have not contradicted the toxicological findings (no sign of a lethal drug present) of the private autopsy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the two autopsies are in complete agreement. Police autopsy results have not yet been released.

To me the most significant fact about this case is the staging. It is clumsy, amateurish and could only be construed as an attempt to conceal what really happened to the Shermans. Why? To whom would it be more important that the police believe in some variation on suicide rather than murder?

The CBC reports that the couple's four children plan to have the home which is the scene of the crime demolished once their team of private investigators have finished with it.

I'm wondering if the lawsuit with Teva doesn't somehow play into this murder?
The shake up at Apotex, the CEO stepping down and perhaps the Sherman's would have blown the whistle on the company accepting secrets for profit? I wonder if they would have even been called to testify?

The Israel-based pharmaceutical company said in the lawsuit that it’s seeking damages from Desai and Apotex for “wilful and malicious misappropriation” of trade secrets. “Apotex and Desai used and continue to use Teva USA’s trade secrets and other confidential information to benefit Apotex’s own competitive product development, thereby allowing Desai and Apotex to improperly profit at Teva USA’s expense,” the lawsuit states.

www.thestar.com...

Yes. I can't remember where I read it now but a newspaper article had quotations from some person who was considered credible and who worked as some kind of private investigator for corporate interests. He was at a meeting where people from some company were actively discussing how to "compromise" Barry Sherman in order to coerce some sort of compliance in a business context. The impression was left that there were business people who were seriously disturbed by him and were ruthless enough to seek extralegal remedies.

I got the impression that nothing came of it at the time but that sort of thing may have occurred again at some point and may even have led to the couple's murder.

To me the staging of the bodies is not the sort of thing that professional killers hired by a corporate interest or professional rival would do.

I think it is more likely that a professional killer being hired to remove Barry Sherman from the scene would tell his client to wait for the Shermans to go to Florida and take care of it there.

The fact that the murders were done in the family home alone suggests family involvement. Of course home invasions occur but the vast majority of people killed in their homes are, surely, killed by family members. The staging, to me amateurish, unconvincing, spur of the moment(?), also suggests an attempt to direct the police away from a criminal investigation. That's not the sort of thing a professional killer is going to be worried about in most circumstances, and if it were, the deaths would have been made to appear accidental.

The Shermans were last seen alive on Dec. 13. Bodies were discovered Dec. 15, by a real estate agent. The Shermans were not discovered by family members. No alarm was raised by family members. The time span is too short to be absolutely indicative of some family member(s) shying away from the scene, but the thought arises.

The scenario as presented by investigators would indicate more than one perpetrator involved, maybe more than two or more than three. That's to kill (strangle, yet!) two people in their home with a minimum of disturbance and a clean getaway. That's too many people (mouths) to be a professional job (of this sort), but if it were a professional job, the scenario suggests considerable familiarity with the Sherman's routines and with the house itself, which brings it all back home again, with high probability.

Jan 26 Apotex CEO Jeremy Desai steps down amid allegations of trade secret leaks

The lawsuit from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. accuses Barinder Sandhu, who worked as a senior director of regulatory affairs for Teva's U.S. generics division, of leaking trade secrets and other confidential information to Desai while being in a romantic relationship with him.

Apotex president and CEO steps down amid allegations of trade secret leaks

Jan 26 Police says Apotex founder Barry Sherman and wife Honey were murdered

Toronto homicide detectives have confirmed Barry and Honey Sherman were targeted and killed six weeks ago, strangled, then held upright by leather belts looped around the smooth stainless steel railing of their home’s indoor pool.

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, police say

Jan 23 Private investigators believe Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered by multiple killers

The new information contradicts a widely circulated theory that Barry and Honey Sherman died as a result of a murder-suicide — a notion that is regarded as fiction by those who knew the Shermans well.

The team of private investigators believes that the Shermans were, in fact, killed on Dec. 13, two days before they were found. This conclusion is based on the fact that Honey was wearing the same clothes she was last seen in, on Dec. 13, according to the source.

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered by multiple killers, private investigators believe: source

Dec 16 Pharma billionaire and wife found dead in 'suspicious' case

Dec 13 Date of murder according to private investigators

July 07 Teva Files Lawsuits against Apotex

Teva, the world’s largest maker of generic pharmaceuticals, said the wrongdoing went beyond pillow talk to violations of the Defend Trade Secrets and Computer Fraud and Abuse Acts, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia on July 7.

Sex, drugs, and sharing trade secrets

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

. . . and then there is this.

en.wikipedia.org...

At the time of his death, Sherman was under investigation because of a fundraiser he had held for Justin Trudeau in April 2015, allegedly contrary to Canada's lobbying rules.[35] Sherman filed a lawsuit in May 2016, attempting to quash the investigation. "There is basis to conclude that Mr. Sherman is in breach of ... the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct as a consequence of his involvement in the organization of a fundraising event for the (Liberal Party)," according to Phil McIntosh, director of investigations at the Office of the Lobby Commissioner. If that had been proven, Sherman would have been banned from lobbying for five years.[36]

There has been a new development in the Sherman murder case. Barry Sherman's cousin, Kerry Winter, with whom Sherman had been litigating over an asserted right to part of the Apotex fortune has come forward to deny involvement in the deaths of the Shermans and to claim that twice in the 1990s Barry Sherman had asked him to kill Sherman's wife, Honey.

He will be interviewed by police this week. Mr. Winter has had a checkered past, although he now says that he is clean and sober. His father was Barry Sherman's mentor, who taught Mr. Sherman about the generic drug business, through which Mr. Sherman achieved his great wealth.

I find it surprising that despite the acrimony between Mr. Winter and Mr. Sherman, that Winter never informed the police about the requests to kill Mr. Sherman's wife. This leaves me somewhat incredulous. Mr. Winter agrees with the first publicized theory of the crime, that it was a murder/suicide, and praises the job the police are doing.

www.thestar.com...

As to an alibi, during the period in mid-December when the Shermans were likely killed, Winter was at a12-step program for Cocaine Anonymous the evening of the day they were last seen alive, and at work as a construction site manager the next day. In between, he said he watched an episode of Peaky Blinders on Netflix, and slept. He lives by himself.

Winter said he still doubts the police determination that the Sherman deaths were murder and made the incredible accusation in an interview with the Star that Barry Sherman twice asked him in the 1990s to kill Honey.

“He asked me in his office at Apotex. I was surprised he would ask me,” said Winter. Asked by the Star if he ever told the police of this alleged request to kill Honey Sherman, Winter said he did not, but he did tell two friends. He said he did not tell his brothers then, but has recently.

This is worth looking at. It fills in a lot of detail on the long running dispute between Barry Sherman and the children of his mentor, the Winter brothers. Kerry Winter appears in the video, telling the story of his confrontation in the courts with Barry Sherman, outlining the reasons for his animosity toward Mr. Sherman. These originated with the sale of Kerry's father's (Louis Lloyd Winter) company, Empire Laboratories, to Barry Sherman, nephew of the senior Winter, and his friend Joel Ulster.

en.wikipedia.org...

To facilitate the corporate acquisition, Barry and Joel Ulster (Sherman and Ulster Limited) offered five-percent equity options to each of the four children and a fifteen-year royalty on four of its patented products (Globe and Mail, November 24, 2007). Litigation was before the courts concerning the purchase of the corporate assets and brands from the Winter children's estate, as Sherman and his partner never paid the royalties nor provided the promised equity in the businesses.[2] In September 2017, an Ontario Superior Court justice ruled against the cousins saying the case was "wishful thinking, and beyond fanciful."[3][4] At the time of the judgement, a lawyer for the cousins said they would appeal, though no appeal occurred, and Sherman died a few months later under unknown circumstances.[3]

He also takes a lie detector test, excerpts of which are shown in the video along with the response of a criminologist who observed the test. One gets a sense of Kerry Winter's personality. My impression is of a conflicted person. He says his conscience is clear. He did fail the lie detector test on the question of whether Barry Sherman had asked him to murder Honey Sherman.

a reply to: ipsedixit

If murdered it must have been done by at least two people. How can you be sure to control two victims... And the way it was done was very personal.. The one who wanted these two elderly people dead wanted them to go out brutally and possible to sent out a message.. Someone made the link with the clinton foundation.. If you do some research into to people who died under suspscious circumstances around the clintons you will notice some murders are just as brutal.. If you ask me it is done by a professional hitman whoo knows how to enter a home and leave it without leaving a trace of himself behind. A person with no sense of moral, guilt or ethics.. a psychpath for hire...or psychopaths for hire. And the one who hired them a psychopath of a completely different level.

Maybe there is no connection but first thing that came to mind was this cruel murder of this pilot, his family...and the family dog. That was possibly related because he wanted to whisleblow...or write a book with sensitive 2001 september 11th information. Those murders were just as bizar.

On the other hand... just listen...and look how this actor...I mean cousin is talking about his hatred for the Shermans. This guy kerry...and his brothers would be my suspects number one. I am not a psychologist but my first impression is that he has all the trades of a sociopath. He is strongly convinced there is no evidence leading to him being at that murder scene.. He himself said to have the contacts for sending a hitman to Honey.

a reply to: zatara

I agree for the most part. The criminologist also believed the murders were "personal" in some way. It's possible that the interviewer fumbled the ball when he said that there was one question he had to ask Kerry Winter and that is did you kill Barry and Honey Sherman.

A more productive question might have been "Do you know who killed Barry and Honey Sherman?"

I can see any family with means wanting to hire their own investigative team , especially considering the bumbling the Toronto PD has been doing on this case and on others (like the gay serial killer they ignored for years).

The police were adamant when the story hit that it was a murder suicide. I’ve read the crime scene wasn’t protected properly. It was also stated that they believed that Barry, a man well into his 70’s, strung up the wife then killed himself.

It was only later after the family objected, has additional info come out- like the fact they had ligature marks, had been immobilized with their coats, etc. Anyone who has stayed at a Holiday Inn Express and watched a Law and Order episode would have marked those deaths as suspicious immediately. I really can’t fathom why the Toronto PD tried to brush it away. It makes no sense. If I were that family, I wouldn’t have faith in the investigation at this point either

a reply to: rimjaja

I don't think the murder/suicide hypothesis was ever given out officially as the way the Toronto Police Service saw this situation. It was a rumor said to be from sources within the police department but it never got the official seal of approval from investigators.

I agree that hiring your own investigators in a case like this is a prudent thing to do if you can afford it, but there are potential problems for law enforcement as well, as illustrated by the Kathie Durst case, where the private investigators were getting restricted information from cronies in the police department and also withholding evidence from the police.

It will be interesting to see what the police find when they look at the Winter brothers. It will be interesting to see what the private investigators do along this line as well. There is a strong potential for muddying the waters, I think, with two teams of detectives investigating the same people.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Did you read my comment on the first page about a certain edit on Barry Sherman’s wikipedia entry in 2010?

Here’s a screenshot:


I wonder, more than ever, if there's a possible organized crime element at play, here?

Anyway, I googled the person who made that edit -- Johnathan Vrozos. -- and noticed this article:

Mayor Rob Ford defends meeting with impresario involved in ‘fraud’ at SARS event - Entertainment impresario Johnathan Vrozos was successfully sued for “reprehensible” actions during the 2003 post-SARS benefit concert.

Eh, these murders just give off a whiff of an organized crime hit, to me.