While Barry and Honey Sherman lay dead in the basement of their Toronto home, a lone man went in and out of their house three times, according to an account of security camera footage seized by Toronto police.

Between 9:11 a.m. and 10:16 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2017, the man walked from a four-door sedan parked in front of the Sherman house on Old Colony Rd., appeared to enter the house through the front door, then came back outside. He did this three times, for a total of 29 minutes inside the Sherman home, before driving off.

Who was he? What was he doing? Have police spoken to him?

The police say they cannot answer any questions related to the now 15-month-old double homicide case, including why, as the Star has found, they did not look at the security footage in question for at least six weeks. The Star previously reported police did not look at Apotex security footage for a similar amount of time.

A statement to the Star by homicide Insp. Hank Idsinga on Friday reveals that the police are now “reviewing video surveillance to determine any relevance to the investigation.” Police will not say which video surveillance they are reviewing. Idsinga also said in the statement that police have recently obtained more search warrants — he did not say how many — and that “DNA samples” are also being reviewed. The Star has previously reported that as of last October, 37 warrants had been obtained by police in their probe of the murders.

Brian Greenspan, a lawyer for the Sherman family, said his private investigators have a copy of the video footage from the house and it is “inconclusive” — they cannot determine who the man is, what kind of car it is or the man’s exact movements.

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“We have always been interested in (the video footage),” Greenspan said. “All I can tell you is what we see. When you try to improve on the very grainy security camera footage it pixelates. We are sort of stuck with the grainy footage.”

Billionaire philanthropists Barry and Honey Sherman — Barry founded and ran generic drug giant Apotex — were found strangled to death in their home on the morning of Friday, Dec. 15, 2017. They were last seen alive on Wednesday, Dec. 13. Forensic investigators believe they were killed late that Wednesday evening.

According to images in the security video, a man visited the Sherman house on Thursday morning, Dec. 14. The Star has not seen the video but has been provided with a detailed account, backed up by handwritten notes taken by a person who reviewed the tape. The person is the homeowner who provided copies of the video to police and to private investigator Mike Davis of Greenspan’s team before the original video (on a seven-day loop) was wiped clean.

The Star has agreed not to identify the homeowner or their house, except to say it is on the Shermans’ street. Two CCTV cameras at the homeowner’s house were focused on their own property, but because of their positioning they also picked up activity around the Sherman home.

The Sherman house — which is set to be demolished, after the family received city approval last week — is on the north side of Old Colony Rd., which runs east off Bayview Ave., south of Hwy. 401.

Here is what is in the security video footage, according to the account provided to the Star:

At 9:11 a.m. a dark-coloured four-door sedan driving west on Old Colony Rd. stops and parks immediately in front of the Sherman house. It does not drive into the circular driveway. Three minutes after the car is parked, a man gets out and at 9:14 a.m. he walks to the Sherman house and enters through the front door. He remains in the house for 12 minutes.

At 9:26 a.m., the man emerges from the house, walks back to his car and gets in. He remains in the car for just under 11 minutes, then gets out of his car, walks back to the house and enters through the front door at 9:37 a.m. This time he remains in the house for eight minutes.

At 9:45 a.m., the man walks back to his car. This time he stays in his car for about 21 minutes, before walking back to the house and entering through the front door at 10:06 a.m. He remains in the house for nine minutes, then emerges, gets into his car and drives slowly west towards Bayview Ave. at 10:16 a.m.

The positioning of the two CCTV cameras that caught this activity do not show the licence plate and the images are blurry — you cannot make out the face of the man.

If you are reading this story, you are probably wondering, were the police on this immediately after the bodies were discovered? The Sherman case was and is one of the more high-profile murder cases in recent Canadian memory. Two billionaires found in their basement pool, dead of ligature strangulation, with leather belts around their necks holding them in a seated position, backs to the railing that surrounds the pool.

To answer the question of how soon the police obtained the video in question, we have to go back to Friday, Dec. 15, when the bodies were discovered, almost two days after they are believed to have been killed. Police were at the Sherman home by 11:46 a.m. on the Friday. The house was for sale, and a real estate agent had discovered the bodies around 10 a.m. There has been no explanation to the Star for the delay in calling police.

Toronto police set up yellow caution tape around the house. Forensic investigators arrived. At the time, that Friday, the local police division was in charge of the scene. Homicide arrived later in the day.

Despite a rash of break-ins in the area (160 over the previous year), not many neighbours have cameras, and the Sherman house had none. One house did. At that house, which has a view of the Sherman home, the CCTV camera has a one-week loop, at which time it overwrites the previous week’s footage. On the Friday afternoon, one of the homeowners approached the police and mentioned the videotape.

“We will send someone over,” the uniformed officer said.

Nobody came, according to the homeowners.

Saturday, the homeowners tried again. Someone will be over, police said. Again the homeowners tried. This time, a card with an officer’s name was provided. The homeowners phoned and Sunday morning, an officer came to take a copy of the video footage.

To put this in perspective, at this time of the investigation, police believed that Barry Sherman had killed his wife, then killed himself. Police have told the Star this was just one of their theories, but search warrant documents the Star has obtained confirm this. It may be that since police believed it was a murder-suicide, footage outside the home was believed to be irrelevant.

The officer who showed up at the homeowners’ house on Sunday took a copy of the video from Wednesday to Friday, and returned later to get the Monday and Tuesday portions of the video. The Star does not know what is on the Wednesday video because the homeowners never thought to view it. In their minds, the day before the bodies were discovered was the relevant time period. But Wednesday is a key time because that is the night the Shermans came home separately from a meeting — Honey is believed to have arrived home around 7:30 p.m. and Barry around 9 p.m. His last email was from his desk computer at Apotex at 8:13 p.m. that night.

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Six weeks after police obtained a copy of the homeowners’ video, a detective from the homicide squad made an appointment to speak to the homeowners and came to their house on Jan. 25, 2018. The detective brought with her two photos, one showing a couple walking a dog and the other a lone woman. These photos were shown to the homeowners with no explanation, except that they were taken from other security cameras in the area.

The homeowners did not recognize the individual in either photo, but they did remark that on Monday, Dec. 11, in the early evening hours, they had noticed a man and a woman they did not recognize walking on the street. The homeowners’ videotape from the Monday, which was turned over to police and private detectives, apparently does show a man and a woman (the woman is wearing a long coat and the man is tall) entering the Sherman home at 8:20 p.m. that day. The homeowners could not say if this was a different couple than the people in the photo shown by the detective.

There is no suggestion that the people in the two photos were involved in the slaying — only that police were showing them around the neighbourhood, possibly in a search for witnesses to the crime.

After looking at the two blurry photos, the homeowners asked the detective whatever became of the information they had provided six weeks earlier about the man who was parked in front of the house Thursday morning.

The homicide officer, the homeowners said, told them she was not aware of the Dec. 14 events captured on video, and she explained she relied on other officers to go through the video they had obtained and provide her with a summary. This had apparently not been done by Jan. 25, 2018, the day she arrived to show the homeowners the photos. The timing of that visit is interesting as it came several days after a Star story that stated the Shermans were murdered. The Star story prompted police to interview the Sherman family’s hired pathologist, who had done the second autopsies.

On Jan. 26, 2018, police announced that after a six-week investigation they had determined it was a case of targeted double murder.

This is not the only delay in viewing security footage in the Sherman case.

As the Star has previously reported, police seized security footage on Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017, from Apotex cameras for the days leading up to the murders, but they did not view it for about six weeks, again shortly after the probe turned from murder-suicide to double homicide.

Another apparent shortcoming of police is tardiness in obtaining DNA samples from people who were known to be in the Sherman house for routine reasons or because they are family. Typically, police take DNA and fingerprints from people like this to rule them out as suspects. This process did not begin until nine months into the investigation.

Police also told the Star on Friday that the Sherman case now has a new lead investigator — Det. Sgt. Brandon Price.

Initially, Det. Sgt. Susan Gomes was assigned to lead the case, with Price as second in command and Det. Dennis Yim handling search warrant applications. Gomes was promoted at the end of last year to inspector in charge of the police department’s operations centre. Price was promoted to detective sergeant and remained in homicide. Price was the officer who drew criticism from the Sherman family and friends for saying, soon after the bodies were discovered, that there was no sign of forced entry to the Sherman home and no suspects were being sought. That led to speculation, followed by source confirmation to various media outlets, including the Star, that it was a case of murder-suicide. Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders said months later that by making the comments, police were trying to calm fears in the neighbourhood which was concerned that it was a break-in turned violent.

In the homicide unit, Price now reports to the new officer in charge, Insp. Hank Idsinga, the officer who led the Bruce McArthur serial killer probe. For the past month the Star has been attempting to interview Idsinga. The Star was told initially that it was a possibility and that Idsinga and Saunders were in discussions over whether such an interview would take place. On Friday, the police said there would be no interview and a statement was provided:

“The investigation into the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman has actively continued over the last 15 months. Given the complexities of the case, the service has dedicated full-time officers who have spent hours conducting a thorough and diligent investigation. They also involve other areas of the organization when certain expertise is required. Even recently, this work has included additional judicial authorizations, examination of DNA samples, and consideration of tips and video surveillance to determine any relevance to the investigation. Our work will continue, guided by the evidence and our commitment to bringing a successful conclusion to this case.”

None of the Star’s specific questions about the case have been answered.

Greenspan, the Sherman family’s lawyer, when asked about the homeowners’ CCTV footage, said his team of private investigators are working with experts to try to enhance the video.

“The quality of the footage is such that we are not able to confirm it,” said Greenspan, who has spoken to one of the homeowners and said he does not doubt the “veracity” of what the homeowner says. Greenspan said it is possible that the original — which no longer exists — was a better version than the copy. “I don’t know what (Toronto police) have done with it,” he said.

During the Star’s interviews on Old Colony Rd. over the past two weeks, one other neighbour gave an additional piece of information: that six weeks following the discovery of the Shermans’ bodies, a Toronto Police Service detective showed up at his door to ask questions. “His business card said he was from the ‘cold case squad,’” the man told the Star.

Toronto police maintain the investigation is “ongoing” and active.

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