Police probing Sherman murders learned of mysterious suspect with odd walk almost four years ago
The mysterious murder suspect with the odd walking style has been on the radar of Toronto police since shortly after the bodies of Honey and Barry Sherman were discovered four years ago, recently unsealed search warrant documents reveal.
Multiple images of the unknown person trudging in heavy boots and a bulky winter coat along snowy sidewalks near the Sherman house at the time of the murders were discovered on numerous home security videos early in the investigation. By the summer of 2018, police had prepared a highly detailed analysis tracking the movements of the person, by then a possible suspect in the case.
Yet police sat on all this information, unable to identify the person, until last week when they asked for public assistance, officially labelling this person as a suspect" and acknowledging they had been unable to determine the person's identity. A Toronto police spokesperson said Saturday that dozens" of tips are rolling in from people who say they may know who the mystery person is.
Meanwhile, the newly released documents also show that in the early days of their probe, police conducted a test to see if the Sherman home phone number was capable of calling 911. Police refuse to say whether, as some have suggested, there was a 911 call from the Sherman home the night of the murder or on another occasion that was somehow missed.
These two pieces of information have all been released to the Star in ITO #7" - the seventh information to obtain" search warrant and production order in the case. This one is dated September 2018. On Sunday, the Star published information related to ITO #5 and #ITO #6, which revealed that Sherman family members were, in the first few months of the investigation, pointing fingers at several people they believed were culpable in the murders.
Barry, founder of generic drug company Apotex, and his wife, Honey, had been found dead beside the basement swimming pool in their home on Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. Each was held in a sitting position by a man's leather belt looped around their neck, tied to a low railing above. The cause of death was ligature neck compression.
Five weeks later, on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2018, the officer leading the Sherman investigation ordered an investigative canvass" of the Sherman neighbourhood, though some video had already been collected. Det. Sgt. Susan Gomes asked officers to go door to door, gathering video, the new documents reveal. The day before, the Star published a front-page story describing how a top pathologist hired by the Sherman family had concluded it was a case of double murder - not murder-suicide as the police appeared to believe. It was that story that prompted police to interview the Sherman pathologist and determine that it was a double murder.
That Saturday morning, Gomes directed officers pounding the pavement to inquire if homeowners had video cameras that might have picked up images. Once they gathered images of people walking in the area" they started a new canvass, this time showing neighbours the stills to determine if anyone could identify the unidentified individual pictured in the video stills."
One person caught police attention almost immediately, the search warrant documents reveal.
There was one individual whose actions and behaviour as seen on video surveillance have caused this person to be elevated to a Person of Interest," a detective states in the documents, part of an application for a production order (similar to a search warrant) eight months later, in September 2018, to track the whereabouts of dozens of cellular phones on the chance that the owner of one of them was either the mystery person or someone who had communicated with the mystery person.
Investigators are trying to determine if this person is a potential witness or suspect to the murders," the detective wrote.
Police found it suspicious that this person, caught on multiple video cameras, was walking in the neighbourhood between 9 p.m. and midnight, the time when police say the Shermans were killed. The person, the videos show, moves from east to west, walking at least two kilometres, until the person comes to a point tight" to the Sherman home. The person, as police have revealed, spends a suspicious" amount of time in an area near the Sherman home that is not covered by any of the neighbourhood home security cameras. Then the person leaves the same way the person arrived, heading east. The lone video police revealed to the public shows the person walking 1.3 kilometres east of the Sherman home, possibly heading to Leslie Street. The Sherman home is in a neighbourhood bounded by Bayview Avenue on the west and Leslie on the east.
By obtaining transmission and tracking data from the phone numbers subject to his application, investigators hope to identify the unknown person," the detective told Judge Leslie Pringle of the Ontario Court of Justice (she was being asked to authorize the application, which she did). Police had gathered dozens of cellular telephone numbers and hoped to see if one of them matched the suspect's movements.
The detective presented Pringle with four timelines back in 2018, the first two detailing the known movements of Barry and Honey Sherman on the day they died. By this time, through interviews, police had a rough idea that Barry drove home from his Apotex office at 8:30 p.m., and Honey was home a bit earlier, after stopping off at the Bayview Village mall, a six-minute drive north of the Sherman home on Old Colony Road.
Police provided a third timeline, this one for the mystery person. According to the newly released documents, police have at least 20 video stills or videos from neighbourhood cameras showing this person. Police were particularly interested in what they describe as an odd gait" - the person kicks up the back of the right heel with each step. Some doctors contacted the Star to say this is drop foot," caused by a neurological condition.
The fourth timeline prepared by police back in 2018 describes the consolidated timeline for the known movements of Honey Sherman, Bernard Sherman and the unknown person" on Dec. 13, 2017. Police have maintained the seal on all of this information and the Star will argue in court for its release.
When one video of the mystery person was made public last week, Det. Sgt. Brandon Price of the homicide squad said they chose to release that video because it provided the clearest images. Police said they do not even know if it is a man or a woman, but have determined the person's height is between five-foot-six-and-three-quarters and five-foot-nine-and-a-half.
The newly released documents also included a heavily redacted section dealing with a test they conducted of the ability of the Sherman's home telephone to dial 911.
On Dec. 20, 2017, five days after the bodies were discovered, a Toronto detective was sent to the crime scene at the Sherman home and given a To-Do List" by a senior detective. The order was to conduct a 911 test call from the residence." The detective made a test call that lasted for 1 minute and 44 seconds" using the landline phone the Shermans had, an old Panasonic phone.
At the same time, detectives examined the Panasonic phone, which keeps the last 10 numbers dialed. What those numbers were is covered by a court seal. Using this information, police obtained a production order from Pringle to check incoming and outgoing calls from the Panasonic phone.
The Star was particularly interested in this 911 test because several years ago, at the urging of one of the Sherman children, the Star looked into a report that a 911 call may have been made from the Sherman home at the time of the murders, perhaps by Barry or Honey summoning help. Here is what we found: At 9:30 a.m. on the Thursday - the morning after the Shermans were murdered but while their bodies had not been discovered - a neighbour a few doors away had a knock on her door from a Toronto police officer who said he was checking out a report of a 911 call on the street. The woman had not made a call. At close to the same time, the camera of a home across from the Shermans caught the fuzzy image of a man in a sedan pulling up to the Sherman home, parking on the street, and going back and forth to the Sherman front door over a period of about 30 minutes.
No explanation has ever been provided by Toronto police of either of these activities. Then chief Mark Saunders said police know" who the man at the Sherman door was, but said nothing further. The Star has asked if that person was a plainclothes police officer checking on a 911 call. Police said they could not respond because it was all part of the investigation."
Saturday, after the Star asked Toronto police why they would conduct a test call" of the home phone and the 911 system from, of all places, the Sherman home, this is what a spokesperson told us:
The test was done to verify the 911 system was functioning properly. This was included in the ITO because it was a simple way to verify that the number related to production order was the landline at 50 Old Colony Rd. It had nothing to do with whether there was a call to 911 from the household or not on those days beyond ensuring that if a call had been made that it would have gone through normally," the spokesperson said in a written statement.
Kevin Donovan can be reached at kdonovan@thestar.ca or 416-312-3503