When the family of Barry and Honey Sherman decided to conduct their own investigation into the couple’s deaths, they joined a list of other families who have made the same decision after a loved one died in unexplained circumstances.

The pharmaceuticals mogul and his wife were found dead in their North York home last Friday. Toronto police later confirmed that the Shermans died of “ligature neck compression,” and classified the deaths as suspicious.

Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash told the Star Thursday that the service would not be commenting on the Sherman family’s plan to conduct a separate investigation.

“They’ve done the only thing they could have done,” said Joanne MacIsaac, the sister of Michael MacIsaac, a 47-year-old man who was shot dead in Ajax by a Durham police officer in December 2013. The MacIsaac family believes he was in crisis after suffering an epileptic seizure.

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MacIsaac hired a private investigator four days after her brother was shot by police. They made the decision the day of the shooting, as they sat in the waiting room of the hospital where Michael was being treated, watching an SIU media scrum that said he had assaulted two women and ran down the street naked.

“We knew then how the narrative was going to play out,” said MacIsaac, recalling how her mom had to call her aunts and uncles in Newfoundland to clarify the details of the case. “You know where people’s minds go when you hear something like that.

“The same with (the Sherman) family,” she said. “For a family to deal with a loss and also with the thought of this being a murder-suicide, what a horrible thing for them to read at this time.”

It’s a gruelling process, said MacIsaac. “(The Shermans) are going to hear things that they’re not ready to hear at this point,” recalling how she watched a video of her brother crying in the street the day of the shooting. Michael hadn’t yet been buried at the time.

The private investigator hired by MacIsaac went over every detail of the shooting — all the police reports, the 911 calls, the police dispatch calls. Two weeks ago, they hired a 3D forensic expert who is recreating the scene.

Mark Valois, a former Toronto police homicide officer who now serves as director of academic training at the Canadian Tactical Officers Association, told the Star that private investigators function the same way police officers do. Most, he said, are former police officers.

“Everyone has a right to hire a private investigator,” said Valois, who now serves as director of academic training at the Canadian Tactical Officers Association. “They may believe there are other issues they’ve suspected, other than what is found to be the investigative motive for the incident.

“They hire a third party to find differently.”

Sometimes they’re successful. In 2008, a private investigator was hired in the case of a 23-year-old Tony Armstrong, of Dunnville, Ont., who died in a hit-and-run case. Armstrong’s family insisted that Hamilton police had made a mistake, that it was homicide. The private investigator was able to find new evidence that suggested it wasn’t a hit-and-run.

Other times the cases take a longer time. In 1990, a private investigator was part of an 18-year-long investigation into the disappearance of Elizabeth Bain. A jury found her boyfriend, Robert Baltovich, guilty of murdering her. The efforts of a private investigator helped exonerate him in 2008.

On the other hand, a 2006 case of the murder of a Woodbridge couple vacationing in Mexico is unsolved. A private investigator was hired by Anthony Ianiero, who insists that Mexican authorities have failed in the investigation of the deaths of his parents, Domenico and Annunziata, whose throats were slashed during their stay at a Mexican resort.

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“These past few days have been a shocking adjustment to our reality,” the Sherman’s only son, Jonathon, tearfully told a large group of mourners at his parent’s memorial.

He and his sisters had “congregated for two days waiting to hear any facts other than through Twitter and the unreliable news media,” he said.

With files from Wendy Gillis