CANADA Canada - Billionaire Couple Barry & Honey Sherman Murdered at Home, Toronto, 15 Dec 2017 #24

[ldlager]

A tale of two sets of murders.
Here is a scenario: A married couple is brutally murdered in their house at night.. Their bodies discovered by visitors to the house. The husband was financially successful, with no known criminal record. Both victims had seemingly no known enemies, certainly no one who hated them enough to murder them. Police undertake a forensic examination of the murder scene. Police obtain video of an unknown man walking near the victims home around the time of the murders. The unknown man in the video seems to make an effort to avoid looking towards security cameras. He is dressed in a dark coat and a hoodie or hat, presumably to avoid recognition.

Sound familiar? No, I am not referring to the Shermans. I am referring to Spencer Tempe the murdered dentist and his wife who lived in Ohio and were murdered in their home less than 2 weeks ago. Within a couple of days after the murder, Ohio police announced that the case was a double homicide and not a murder suicide. Police almost immediately released the video of the man walking near the murder scene to the public and asked for the public’s help in identifying the individual. Within a few days the police, with the anssistance of the public, identified and arrested a suspect and he has been charged with murder.

The TPS waited four years to release their Sherman “walking man” video to the public. It’s been 8 years since the Sherman’s were murdered. No suspects, no arrests, no convictions, no justice.

Amazing how two similar sets of circumstances can result in completely different outcomes….

 

[planet]

Hello everyone. My theory. A hitman or hitmen were hired and landed in Toronto a couple of weeks before the murders. somewhere end november or early december. They need to know the daily schedules of HS and BS. So preparing is key. So they followed the Shermens for some weeks. I would have checked as I was TPS for a month before the murders people from abroad visiting the country for 3 weeks. Also they have to stay somewhere in a hotel or motel. So check all the hotels and motels in the neighboorhood. Also check the direct family, the incoming phonecalls and texts from a month before the murders. The master minder has to contact the murderers several times for the execution date and the time schedule of the shermens and of course the agreed sum. Probably an amount before the murders and after. What also is interesting that there is no mentioning of contact to the Shermens regarding 14th of december. Has nobody contacted or trying to contact them on that date ? Also there was no overkill. No stab wounds or mutilating the bodies during or after the crime. So no absurd hathred from the murderers. The stages of the bodies must ment something to the killers. They succeeded in winning time to let it look like a murder homicide. Als the TPS has to check al foreigners who left the country on the 14th and 15th december 2017. The NW is definateley a male to my opinion who walked fast and it look like on the video that he was aware of the camera by turning his

(Sorry all for the duplicates. The quote function and I didn't have good time. -Planet)

I don't think there's any reason to assume the killer or killers live abroad and flew into Canada. It's so much effort. Many things can go wrong. Passenger manifests can be reviewed.

My assumption has been that the killer (I assume one) lives in Oshawa. Or Burlington, Mississauga, or Guelph. He's familiar with North York and Bayview/401 traffic patterns. The WM, if involved, is a retired fellow who drove the 40 minutes back home to his suburban house and family after he finished the job.

I grew up about ten minutes from the Sherman house. There's a kind of intimacy that comes from knowing the neighborhoods, yards, and shortcuts--"the lay of the land"--that a local or regional hire would bring that would more likely ensure a seamless and undetectable operation. The route of the WM released by TPS is that of someone who knows the topography and design of the neighbourhoods, IMO. This seems quite unlike a hit in a house on (say) Sullivan Street near Dundas and Spadina.

TLDR: I can't imagine an international hire doing this job.

 

[Functionalist]

The Shermans’ neighbourhood is a fairly typical affluent North American suburban neighbourhood. There isn’t much to navigating it. All the killer would have had to do was to park somewhere without cameras, for instance, by a small neighbourhood park, and then discretely walk to the Sherman house. Their home was located quite close to Highway 401, which connects with every freeway in the region and passes by the city’s international airport too. It would have been easy for the assailant to get away using the 401.

 

[musicaljoke]

A tale of two sets of murders.
Here is a scenario: A married couple is brutally murdered in their house at night.. Their bodies discovered by visitors to the house. The husband was financially successful, with no known criminal record. Both victims had seemingly no known enemies, certainly no one who hated them enough to murder them. Police undertake a forensic examination of the murder scene. Police obtain video of an unknown man walking near the victims home around the time of the murders. The unknown man in the video seems to make an effort to avoid looking towards security cameras. He is dressed in a dark coat and a hoodie or hat, presumably to avoid recognition.

Sound familiar? No, I am not referring to the Shermans. I am referring to Spencer Tempe the murdered dentist and his wife who lived in Ohio and were murdered in their home less than 2 weeks ago. Within a couple of days after the murder, Ohio police announced that the case was a double homicide and not a murder suicide. Police almost immediately released the video of the man walking near the murder scene to the public and asked for the public’s help in identifying the individual. Within a few days the police, with the anssistance of the public, identified and arrested a suspect and he has been charged with murder.

The TPS waited four years to release their Sherman “walking man” video to the public. It’s been 8 years since the Sherman’s were murdered. No suspects, no arrests, no convictions, no justice.

Amazing how two similar sets of circumstances can result in completely different outcomes….

It might not be quite a fair comparison. The ex-husband is the accused in the Spencer Tempe case and was likely the first place LE went on the first day of their investigation. Folks saw him loitering around in the days leading up to the murders. It was an easy case which likely would have been solved without ever posting the video.

The Sherman case seems more complicated. It's possible that the Toronto police know who the suspect is. If he is hiding out in a place with no extradition agreement with Canada, then they just have to wait until he shows up again. Tipping their hand about what they know may result in never having an arrest.

 

[Sor Juana]

I was skeptical, but curious if AI could tell me something that I had not already learned from endless days and nights perusing documents. Here’s what I found. [paywalled]

The article describes how a journalist fed thousands of pages from the Barry and Honey Sherman murder investigation into an AI system to see whether it could surface patterns or gaps that human readers tend to miss. What came back wasn’t new evidence, but a reframing of the existing material. AI highlighted how the timeline of the Shermans’ final day contains small but persistent contradictions: calls that don’t align perfectly, sightings that overlap oddly, and gaps that no one had explained. It also pulled forward witness statements that had been buried in the volume of documents: neighbours who heard unusual sounds, people who noticed unfamiliar vehicles, and accounts that were never given much weight because they didn’t fit the dominant narrative.
Another thing the AI emphasised was the clustering of redactions. Certain names, business disputes, and corporate conflicts appeared repeatedly across different document sets, even when the context varied. The journalist realised that these recurring threads suggested a tighter circle of relevance than they had assumed.
The AI also reframed the staging of the bodies as a central feature rather than a detail. It pointed out how deliberate and symbolic the positioning was, and how unlikely it would be for a random intruder to take the time to arrange the scene that way. Combined with the lack of forced entry and the killer’s apparent familiarity with the house, the AI’s synthesis pushed the journalist toward the conclusion that the offender was almost certainly someone with access, knowledge, and a personal connection.

 

[fadedglitter]

I was skeptical, but curious if AI could tell me something that I had not already learned from endless days and nights perusing documents. Here’s what I found. [paywalled]

The article describes how (SNIP)

Did you REALLY just use AI to create a summary of an article showing how the journalist doesn’t understand what the AI tool is doing?

This summary is not accurate.

 

[ldlager]

It might not be quite a fair comparison. The ex-husband is the accused in the Spencer Tempe case and was likely the first place LE went on the first day of their investigation. Folks saw him loitering around in the days leading up to the murders. It was an easy case which likely would have been solved without ever posting the video.

The Sherman case seems more complicated. It's possible that the Toronto police know who the suspect is. If he is hiding out in a place with no extradition agreement with Canada, then they just have to wait until he shows up again. Tipping their hand about what they know may result in never having an arrest.

Granted. My point was simply to illustrate how TPS might have better handled the early stage Sherman investigation. And in fact, every stage. To this day they still remain silent. I can’t help but wonder what they know they missed or messed up in the first weeks and months of this investigation, and whether that’s the reason they don’t bring in another police body to review the case or provide the public with some information that may jog memories or help in some way. Let’s face it, one detective spending half his time on this case isn’t going to get it solved. MOO

 

[wibbleflea]

If you have Apple News+ but not a separate Star subscription, you can read the article here:

I asked AI to scan thousands of Barry and Honey Sherman murder case documents. Here's what it told me I missed — Toronto Star

I was skeptical, but curious if AI could tell me something that I had not already learned from endless days and nights perusing documents. Here's what I found.

apple.news

I was skeptical, but curious if AI could tell me something that I had not already learned from endless days and nights perusing documents. Here’s what I found. [paywalled]

The article describes how a journalist fed thousands of pages from the Barry and Honey Sherman murder investigation into an AI system to see whether it could surface patterns or gaps that human readers tend to miss. What came back wasn’t new evidence, but a reframing of the existing material. AI highlighted how the timeline of the Shermans’ final day contains small but persistent contradictions: calls that don’t align perfectly, sightings that overlap oddly, and gaps that no one had explained. It also pulled forward witness statements that had been buried in the volume of documents: neighbours who heard unusual sounds, people who noticed unfamiliar vehicles, and accounts that were never given much weight because they didn’t fit the dominant narrative.
Another thing the AI emphasised was the clustering of redactions. Certain names, business disputes, and corporate conflicts appeared repeatedly across different document sets, even when the context varied. The journalist realised that these recurring threads suggested a tighter circle of relevance than they had assumed.
The AI also reframed the staging of the bodies as a central feature rather than a detail. It pointed out how deliberate and symbolic the positioning was, and how unlikely it would be for a random intruder to take the time to arrange the scene that way. Combined with the lack of forced entry and the killer’s apparent familiarity with the house, the AI’s synthesis pushed the journalist toward the conclusion that the offender was almost certainly someone with access, knowledge, and a personal connection.

 

[fadedglitter]

There is no new information in the story linked above, and it contains almost none of the hallucinated details in the fake “summary” posted earlier today.

 

[WINDSOR]

I don't think there's any reason to assume the killer or killers live abroad and flew into Canada. It's so much effort. Many things can go wrong. Passenger manifests can be reviewed.

My assumption has been that the killer (I assume one) lives in Oshawa. Or Burlington, Mississauga, or Guelph. He's familiar with North York and Bayview/401 traffic patterns. The WM, if involved, is a retired fellow who drove the 40 minutes back home to his suburban house and family after he finished the job.

I grew up about ten minutes from the Sherman house. There's a kind of intimacy that comes from knowing the neighborhoods, yards, and shortcuts--"the lay of the land"--that a local or regional hire would bring that would more likely ensure a seamless and undetectable operation. The route of the WM released by TPS is that of someone who knows the topography and design of the neighbourhoods, IMO. This seems quite unlike a hit in a house on (say) Sullivan Street near Dundas and Spadina.

TLDR: I can't imagine an international hire doing this job.

Why can't you imagine this was an international hire?

Locals involved in this sort of 'wet work' tend to be known to law enforcement, and others in the community. It is the 'usual suspects' routine for the cops. Remember there is a $35 million reward outstanding. I think if it was locals, somebody would have talked, an ex-spouse, ex-lover, ex-partner and so on.

Just my opinion.

 

[planet]

Why can't you imagine this was an international hire?

For the reasons I identified in my post.

 

[musicaljoke]

Granted. My point was simply to illustrate how TPS might have better handled the early stage Sherman investigation. And in fact, every stage. To this day they still remain silent. I can’t help but wonder what they know they missed or messed up in the first weeks and months of this investigation, and whether that’s the reason they don’t bring in another police body to review the case or provide the public with some information that may jog memories or help in some way. Let’s face it, one detective spending half his time on this case isn’t going to get it solved. MOO

But we really don't know how much of this case is solved. I felt the same despair over the murder of the Indian restaurant owner in Owen Sound. It seemed to us nothing was being done, and yet while we were strumming our fingers, the suspects were already arrested in Scotland and awaiting extradition.

 

[ldlager]

But we really don't know how much of this case is solved. I felt the same despair over the murder of the Indian restaurant owner in Owen Sound. It seemed to us nothing was being done, and yet while we were strumming our fingers, the suspects were already arrested in Scotland and awaiting extradition.

Do any of our posters here think this case is solved and the TPS is waiting to make an arrest, or waiting for another law enforcement body to make an arrest?

 

[Aquabot13]

Do any of our posters here think this case is solved and the TPS is waiting to make an arrest, or waiting for another law enforcement body to make an arrest?

I think (or at least hope) that they know who did it but they don't have a rock solid case. Assuming that whoever did it (or at least ordered it) is wealthy and powerful, I'm sure they want to be absolutely certain that they'll get a conviction.

They'll also want to build that case as much as they can before they reveal their cards. Once things are in motion, the perp will be deploying all of their (again, presumed) resources. They'll have the best lawyers and probably access to flee to anywhere in the world. They may even be hiding out somewhere "unreachable" by the RCMP at the moment.

It's also likely, IMO, that there are a lot of different jurisdictions involved here, especially if the perp isn't in Canada/isn't Canadian.

MOO

 

[Kaley Smith]

Why can't you imagine this was an international hire?

Locals involved in this sort of 'wet work' tend to be known to law enforcement, and others in the community. It is the 'usual suspects' routine for the cops. Remember there is a $35 million reward outstanding. I think if it was locals, somebody would have talked, an ex-spouse, ex-lover, ex-partner and so on.

Just my opinion.

I think it was a foreign hitman, probably from Germany. One of Barry Sherman's many enemies from his business dealings wanted him gone. The hitman got local intel, probably from the one who wanted him dead, but hiring a local hitman was too risky. The one thing that seems not to support this is the way the bodies were posed. Would a professional bother with that? As soon as I heard about the Sherman murders, I thought to myself, 'This murderer will never be caught' because I was quite sure it was done by a professional killer. I think Barry was killed because of his ruthless business dealings and the one who ordered the assassination also hated Jews.

 

[AndrewM71]

Am I the only one who thinks it was one person acting alone, and not a murder for hire?

 

[fadedglitter]

Am I the only one who thinks it was one person acting alone, and not a murder for hire?

I think it was one person acting alone, not a murder for hire.

I think the cops’ references to seeking information in other jurisdictions are about Barry’s complex finances, overseas investments, and offshore accounts. Not surveillance reports (etc) from a country harbouring a suspected killer. But that’s just a guess based on context clues.

 

[Aquabot13]

Am I the only one who thinks it was one person acting alone, and not a murder for hire?

I also think it was one person rather than a murder for hire, although I acknowledge that a murder for hire is probably more likely.

Either way, I agree with fadedglitter that Barry alone has enough international investments and connections to make this process an administrative nightmare. Personally, I think the killer (or person who hired the killer) has the same resources and network, which complicates things further.

MOO

 

[WINDSOR]

Anything is possible. It could have been one person acting alone. It could have been a local individual or group. They could have been hired, or they could have been acting for their own reasons.

The fact the TPS undertook investigations of international activities, points to the likelihood the killers were not local.
The complexity and the creativity of the murders implies a high level of expertise.

From early on, the TPS stated they had a theory of what occurred. We do not know if their theory is still valid, but for sure they do not have enough evidence to win in a court of law.

 

[dotr]

If the Shermans had been shot to death, would the culprit have been more easily identified?