Sherman Murders: Walking Man and 911
Press from the fall of 2017 hints at systemic issues with Toronto's emergency response system. Did problems with the 911 system aid the walking man who murdered the billionaire couple?
Five and a half years on, and the murders of Toronto billionaires Honey and Barry Sherman remain unsolved. In a case as complex and beleaguered as this one, murky facts have a habit of resurfacing again and again. Among the most haunting have been release of the mysterious walking man video in late 2021 and revelations related to a suspicious 911 call on Old Colony Road near the time of the murders.
I should note that this is not my first dance with the Sherman case. I’ve been following it quite literally since day one and have written on the probe once before, focusing in that article on investigative reporter Kevin Donovan’s work to unseal the coveted Sherman estate files.
Unsurprisingly, other big names well-versed in the Canadian crime beat scene are now engaging with the case along with Donovan. Private investigator, writer, and crime reporter Ann Brocklehurst has recently released an interesting multi-part series here on Substack, focused on various conundrums in the Sherman probe. She’s even released some of the warrant applications, allowing casual readers to assume part of the vantage point Donovan has held for some time. Her work is well worth the read and the latest installment focuses on the immense confusion surrounding Honey Sherman’s will.
By way of warning, I won’t be recapping everything here. Readers unfamiliar with the case are directed to Donovan’s fantastic work in the Toronto Star. His reporting on the Sherman story justifies a Star subscription itself (I have no conflicts of interest to declare with regard to the paper either, beyond an earnest respect for Donovan’s work and relative restraint in reporting on what is - it is easy to forget - a horrible and still unsolved grisly double-homicide).
In addition to having written nearly 100 articles on the Sherman case, Donovan is out with a podcast and new documentary. Both pair well with his in depth and heavily-researched 2019 book focusing on the couple and their untimely and unfair demise. And, as it relates to the many deeper and important nuances of the investigation itself, and there are many, I will have more to say about them at a later time. For now lets focus on the topics raised above as I believe that both merit close inspection.
First, the warrant documents suggest that the video of the walking man that was released is the last they have of him on tape. Off into the night he goes after casually crossing paths with that camera on Bannatyne Drive. I think this specific fact is amongst the most overlooked in the coverage of the case thus far. It is possible that the wide net police apparently cast to snag video tape in the area on the night of the killings didn’t extend quite far enough to catch where exactly he went after Bannatyne. Given how unusual this true crime case is, though, it is unsurprising that other plausible theories exist that do not involve travel on foot out of the area.
But still, where does walking man go?
To start, it is worth appreciating how much thought likely went into this crime. The walking man video is difficult to decipher, but it does seem that he averts his gaze away from the Bannatyne camera when directly in front of it. It is admittedly very hard to tell for sure, but it would be a sensible move if he knew the camera (it is a conspicuous camera) was there in advance.
Searching the streets around Old Colony Road on Google Maps, one becomes comfortable with asserting the likelihood that this crime was meticulously planned. Vyner Road is important here as it is largely brush and without houses or cameras a lot of the way. A cursory bird’s eye view of the map of the area makes this pathway seem even more logical.
Since Donovan has revealed the walking man travelled in and out of the area around the Sherman estate via that route (at least crossing the Bannatyne camera coming and going), we can have some confidence that the path of travel to the home was not haphazard. The only conflicting information here rests inside the warrant files, wherein police make repeated reference to the person walking on Old Colony Road, not merely in the area. Donovan, to my knowledge, has not commented on this peculiar warrant document detail.
As alluded to above, there are many options when it comes to the exit strategy itself. Picked up by an accomplice? Or perhaps he walked to a car parked off Leslie Street, a main vein east of Old Colony Road? Moving south on Leslie, there are a number of weird but suitable parking lots for a low-key ~10 pm exit from the area. There are also a number of low-key tributaries in and around the home and leading to Leslie to be taken on foot - the kinds of paths that kids in the area could probably author encyclopedias on.
The bus stop at the corner of Bannatyne and Swansdown is a somewhat perplexing find as well, given the walking man’s proximity to the stop and his subsequent vanishing act. I stumbled upon this detail on Websleuths, an online true crime forum. The community of anonymous sleuths is mentioned in the CBC podcast on the murders, released earlier this year, and so I had heard about it, but Brocklehurst’s article and my interesting email exchange with her made me dig a little deeper.
She quotes one keen and attentive poster on the site in her second piece, highlighting the story’s reach and accessibility. Still, much of the commentary online seems fixated on furthering what are, in earnest, sometimes seemingly logic-defying claims and suggestions in relation to various suspected persons of interest. Despite a number of interesting theories, publicly anyway, there remains little in the way of substantiative evidence in favor of any of them.
Nonetheless, the lead on the bus stop (discussed by user Lexiintoronto) seemed interesting and up to that point, relatively unexplored. As it turns out, the last bus of the night is scheduled to stop at that street corner on Bannatyne at 10:30 pm. Guess what else? It meets up with various stations in the GTA and probably was a quiet ride home that late at night in Toronto’s December cold. For locational context, the bus stop is quite close to that oh-so important yellow fire hydrant, as we will see.
The TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), the service that oversees the bus and subway systems in the city, scrap their videos after 72 hours due to privacy concerns.
Now, a lot of stretching of the imagination to get to this point, but I would not throw the bus theory away too quickly. Not yet. One must understand the various vulnerabilities associated with making and, importantly, leaving behind a trail of travel in such a high-stakes situation. Still, we really don’t know where he goes, so speculation is all we have here.
On this topic, Donovan is persistent in his belief, at least to some degree, that Wednesday night was important. The 72 hours it takes for TTC to wipe the security footage seems like a long time, but it isn’t in this case, given the plagued nature of the early part of the investigation. Without the bus video tape being recovered, a few coins for the fare all but ensures invisibility from Bannatyne onward. And onward the mysterious walking man marched.
Yes, this theory imposes a timeline on the killer (who wants to miss a bus of this importance?), but keep in mind Donovan’s latest guess is that Barry Sherman arrived home in his convertible mustang by 9 pm. We know that Barry received a call from lawyer Doug Hendler at 9:01 pm, with no evidence he actually answered the call. This could put his arrival home somewhere between 8 pm and 9 pm. It’s a roughly 24 minute drive from 150 Signet Drive (Apotex offices) to the estate, and that’s during mid morning hour traffic, according to Google Maps.
The distance between the Sherman estate and the walking man’s video location is about 1.2-1.3 km. It’s an additional 200 meters to the bus stop at the corner of Bannatyne and Swansdown. Google maps estimates that it would be a 16 minute walk from 50 Old Colony Road to TTC bus stop #115, located at that curious North York street corner. Oh, and our walking man, he was casual, but not slow.
Too far of a stretch? Maybe, but who knows? I do know that this case has surprised me before.
Finally, and on another note, here is a potentially important finding related to one of Donovan’s theories and to the 911 call.
While stumbling across content online, an interesting article popped out at me. Take note of the date – September 2017. The article, in essence, raises grave concerns associated with Toronto’s 911 operating system and emergency response time.
The article can be found here.
I suggest readers also listen to the short video clip accompanying the article, which perfectly encapsulates the extent of the problem in the fall of 2017. The video clip is disturbing because it substantiates the fact that waiting on hold for relatively long periods of time after calling 911 was a daily occurrence in Toronto in 2017. In one real life example the author of the article provides, she waited for three minutes on hold before an operator picked up. Recent coverage of the issue confirms Toronto police have not prioritized these concerns at all.
In the search for supporting evidence to aid Donovan’s theory that says the 911 call may have come from Honey’s cell phone after the ambush was underway, both the emergency response system issues and the unknown car loitering outside the Sherman residence on the morning after the murders seem relevant. For what it is worth, Donovan floats the idea that the person outside the home was in fact a plain clothes police officer perhaps following up on a dropped 911 call.
As to the merit of the theory of Honey palming her cumbersome iPhone long enough to get a call off, well, it seems awfully plausible given the crime scene evidence. Her phone, after all, was found on the floor of a powder room at the front of the home. The powder room, Donovan reports, is one Honey rarely if ever used. In addition to this, she was found wearing casual slip on footwear (it was December) and she suffered facial injuries that serve as strong evidence of a physical struggle between her and her assailant.
Recall that police were certainly interested in her phone’s movements and connectivity with cellular networks. As for the test calls police would later complete in and around the Sherman area, TPS downplayed their relevance.
Donovan says he doesn’t buy that. I don’t either.
Luck, it is said, is a fickle mistress. Despite any merit that notion may have, here, with the 911 call, if Donovan is correct and Honey did have the time and freedom of movement to call for help, we find yet more evidence of the luck the killer or killers fell into. This is a flavor of luck beyond even their wildest dreams, in all likelihood, and that is a chilling thought to sit with given the nightmare that unfolded at the Sherman estate that night.
Donovan’s petitions to the court center in large part around the police having to prove that the case is 1) active and 2) that further disclosure would harm the integrity of the probe. The 911 system detail would likely only aid in his efforts to scrutinize the police work and have more documents unsealed.
In navigating this labyrinth of confusion and uncertainty, the details make all the difference.
A lot more to come.
NEXT TIME: Sherman Murders: A Tale of Two Cities
Post Script
Honey’s Lexus shows snow cover. Given the weather, police may have been able to determine whether access to the estate was achieved from the backyard, if indeed they even checked. This of course depends on snowfall patterns that week, but based on other photos from the Friday (when the bodies were discovered) and the walking man video (its lightly snowing at that time), it seems footprints would have been reasonable to expect to find in the backyard, again, if police actually looked.
In addition to the above, police took some interest in Honey’s travel plans and scheduler (a lot of the material around this part of the warrant file is redacted).
Police also seem to have taken a keen interest in Honey’s travel prior to coming home that night as well as her use of electronics prior to the killings. No surprises there.
And last but not least, on the topic of the estate itself. Donovan recently reported on 48 Old Colony Road. Add to that, 46 Old Colony Road, where construction behind that black tarp is well underway…
Update: See comments section for more on 46 and 48 Old Colony Road. 46 appears to be unrelated to the Sherman Estate, despite the number on the tarp out front.
Interesting post.
I hope you don’t mind a correction: 46 is not the former Sherman property. Their property was #50, and was changed to #48. It is still listed for sale.