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.

He has investigated organized crime groups and international narcotics syndicates, as well been involved in more than 70 murder investigations, “bringing a successful conclusion to as many or more than any homicide investigator in Canada,” his online biography says.

Klatt’s clients have included high-profile groups like Innocence Canada, which works to exonerate innocent people, as well as “many of Canada’s wealthiest families who were in the process of dealing with life-altering family issues.”

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When dealing with these cases, “confidentiality, discretion and definitive final conclusions were always expected and provided,” his bio says.

One year after his retirement from policing, Klatt was hired by Toronto’s police union to conduct parallel private investigations into cases of police misconduct that were at the time being investigated by the province’s Special Investigations Unit.

Thousands of mourners paid tribute to a billionaire philanthropist couple who died under suspicious circumstances. The memorial was held at a convention centre in Mississauga, Ont.

Lawyer Brian Greenspan, who was hired by the Sherman family to help pursue its own investigation into the tragedy, confirmed to the Star Wednesday that he hired the private firm on the family’s behalf.

“I’ve retained Klatt investigations and other experts, and also authorized (Klatt) to retain other experts and investigators with whom he works and with whom I’ve worked over the years to assist in making proper inquiries on behalf of the family and ensuring a comprehensive investigation is conducted,” said Greenspan, who declined to say what other experts have been hired.

As has been previously reported, the family conducted their own forensic autopsy on the bodies of the Shermans before their burial last week.

Barry Sherman, the 75-year-old founder of drug giant Apotex, and his wife, Honey, 70, were found hanged near the pool in the basement of their North York home on Dec. 15. Police have characterized the deaths as suspicious. Both died of “ligature neck compression.”

Sources told the Star and other media outlets that homicide detectives were pursuing a theory that it was a murder-suicide. The family, however, has strongly rejected that scenario.

Mayor John Tory, who is an ex officio member of the Toronto Police Services Board, has conveyed some of the family’s concerns to police, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.

Don Peat, Tory’s director of communications, wrote in an email Wednesday that the family of Barry and Honey Sherman told the mayor they were concerned about seeing information about the investigation into the couple’s deaths in the media before hearing it from the police.

The mayor conveyed those concerns to Toronto police, Peat said.

“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,” Peat said.

He said the mayor spoke with the Sherman family by phone and at the memorial service, and noted that it’s “not unusual” for the mayor to speak with relatives of those who have been killed in the city. Such conversations are rarely made public out of concern for the privacy of the families involved, he said.

Greenspan said Wednesday that the experts hired will provide support to the family as well as offer a “second lens” into the couple’s deaths. He noted that Toronto police still have control of the scene at the Sherman’s home, but that the private experts will conduct a second investigation of the home when the police are finished.

Klatt did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday but Greenspan, who asked that all media inquiries go through him, called the retired detective “one of the most distinguished homicide investigators that Toronto Police Service had.”

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One of Klatt’s most high-profile cases is the 1994 deaths of Toronto honeymooners Geoff Barnes, 23, and Sherelle Ann Imperio-Barnes, 22, in Trinidad. The couple were found, bruised and bloated, washed up on a beach on the Caribbean island. Imperio-Barnes was pregnant at the time.

The cause of death was initially classified by Trinidadian police as the result of a misadventure.

Eleven months after their deaths, however, Klatt, a Toronto police homicide investigator at the time, received a call from an insurance investigator in Canada, who told him a man was trying to collect $200,000 from a life insurance policy on Imperio-Barnes, according to a transcript from a CTV W5 story on the murders.

Klatt found that the man trying to obtain the insurance payout was Imperio-Barnes’ ex-boyfriend and, with the help of additional tips and witness testimony, put forward the theory that this ex-boyfriend hired a former Trinidadian police officer to murder the couple. He passed this information on to Trinidadian police and the former officer was eventually charged in with murder. Despite testimony from the accused’s wife — who said her husband admitted to her that he drowned the couple while the ex-boyfriend watched — the case ended in a mistrial.

The ex-boyfriend, the son of a wealthy Trinidadian family who was reported to be in Canada at the time of the trial, was never questioned or charged by Trinidadian police as the mastermind of the plot.

Before boarding a plane to testify at the 2003 trial, Klatt told the Globe and Mail: “I had given my word to the family that I would follow this through to the end.”

After his retirement from the Toronto Police Service in 1998, Klatt and two other former Toronto police detectives cofounded MKD International Inc., a private investigative agency made up of dozens of private investigators, all former officers.

One year later, Klatt and MKD were hired by Toronto’s police union to carry out parallel investigations of incidents like police shootings to keep an eye on Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which probes serious police misconduct.

At the time, the move was part of the union’s strategy to aggressively challenge police critics, government agencies and politicians it felt were treating police unfairly, according to a Star article at the time.

“We are certainly not going to interfere with any proper process that’s taking place,” Klatt said at the time. “That’s not an issue.”

He added that a lot of his work would be done behind the scenes, after the SIU or Toronto police had completed its interviews with witnesses, for example.

In his over three-decade-long career, Klatt has also assisted in a number of missing children cases, and in at least one documented instance his firm taught a Toronto father and his family how to do their own surveillance because they couldn’t afford to pay him for a full investigation into the abduction of his son by his ex. As a result, the boy was eventually reunited with his dad.

Klatt was frequently hired by the producers of the American television series Last Seen Alive, to look into cases of missing people, according to various media reports.

One episode shows Klatt involved in the investigation of a 15-year-old girl who went missing in Sudbury four years ago. On the show he looked into the theory that her disappearance was linked to human trafficking.

The case remains unsolved.

Jayme Poisson can be reached at (416) 814-2725 or jpoisson@thestar.caFatima Syed can be reached at (416) 869-4348 fsyed@thestar.ca

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