A billionaire found with his wife hanging from the railings around their swimming pool confided, just before their deaths, that he was thinking of pledging to give away the bulk of his fortune, DailyMail.com can disclose.

Barry Sherman, 75, was found beside his wife Honey, 69, at their $5.25million (CAD$6.9million) home in Toronto two years ago in a baffling discovery which was initially treated as murder-suicide, before police – under pressure from his family – said they believed it was a 'targeted' double murder.

But they have yet to make any arrest despite questioning a string of relatives and associates about the death of a couple whose net worth was believed to be as high as$3.8billion (CAD $5billion).

Barry Sherman, 75, was found dead beside his wife Honey, 69, at their $5.25million (CAD$6.9million) home in Toronto two years ago

The case was initially treated as murder-suicide, before police – under pressure from his family – said they believed it was a 'targeted' double murder at their home (pictured)

DailyMail.com has learned that shortly before his death, he spoke of signing up to The Giving Pledge, a campaign backed by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates (pictured)

Sherman ran a generic drugs manufacturing firm, Apotex Inc, which made him a billionaire by producing versions of drugs such as anti-depressant Paxil, cardio-vascular medication, Crestor, and a generic version of the cholesterol lowering Lipitor which saved provincial health programs in Canada $608million (CAD$800million) a year.

Most recently he had plans to expand into the controversial and highly lucrative opioids market.

He and his wife Honey gave generously to causes throughout their lives, including $7.6million (CAD$10million) to Mount Sinai Hospitals, as much as $189,000 (CAD$249,000) to the Sick Kids Foundation and $44.8million (CAD$50million) to the United Jewish Appeal.

But DailyMail.com has learned that shortly before his death, he spoke of signing up to The Giving Pledge.

The campaign, spearheaded by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, sees the world's richest people promise to give away 'the majority of their wealth to philanthropy,' massively cutting the amount their families would inherit in the process.

Intriguingly it has been reported that Honey also confided that she planned to change her will just three weeks before the couple died. No will has been found for Honey and the couple were dead before they could do anything about the idea of signing up to The Giving Pledge.

Instead their complicated and fractured family are now locked in litigation over a fortune one called 'cursed.'

The four children who inherited the Shermans' billions have sold huge portions of the company, including getting out of a plan to expand opioid production in Florida, and removing Sherman's long-time right-hand man Jack Kane, from his position as CEO of Apotex Inc.

At the same time, they are being sued by one of their father's cousins, who says he was bilked out of being part of the company and that, along with his two surviving brothers and the widow of a third, he is due 20 per cent of it.

That cousin, Kerry Winter, 58, has himself been questioned about the murders, as has a Toronto businessman, Frank D'Angelo, 60 – both of whom told DailyMail.com that they were innocent.

They were only two on a list of people police spoke to in a sprawling but so far unproductive inquiry which is paralleled by the family's bitter legal dispute.

The dispute stems from a betrayal that, according to Winter, was perpetrated by Sherman a lifetime ago following the deaths of the younger man's parents, Louis and Beverly Winter. The couple passed within days of each other in 1965 leaving behind four orphan sons ages four to seven.

Louis Winter was himself a pioneer of generic drugs and the founder of a drugs company, Empire.

Kerry Winter, 58,(left) is the estranged cousin of Barry still fighting for his share' of the Apotex fortune. Frank D'Angelo, 60, (right) is a business man in whom Barry invested faith and money and who regarded the late multi billionaire as his best friend

The Shermans had listed their luxury home situated in an affluent Toronto neighborhood for sale for nearly $5.4million before they were found dead inside

Honey also confided that she planned to change her will just three weeks before the couple died, but no will has been found for Honey and the couple were dead before they could do anything about the idea of signing up to The Giving Pledge

Winter took nine-year-old nephew, Barry, under his wing when his father died in 1951 and went onto bring him into the company and, according to Kerry, teach him the ropes of the generic drugs industry.

THE GIVING PLEDGE : PHILANTHROPY FOR THE ULTRA RICH The Giving Pledge was established in August 2010 when 40 of America's wealthiest people joined together in a commitment to give the majority of their fortunes to charity. The fund was the brainchild of Warren Buffet, net worth $88.8billion, and Bill and Melinda Gates, net worth $107.9billion, and is 'an open invitation to billionaires, or those who would be if not for their giving, to publicly commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.' The plan originally focused on the United States but has since gone global and now includes more than 200 of the wealthiest individuals and their families, ranging in ages from their 30s to their 90s and representing 23 countries from all over the world. Buffet is 89, Bill and Melinda Gates are 64 and 55 respectively. The fund itself does not actually make any donations nor oversee those made by its members. Instead signatories 'pursue their philanthropy independently and give to a wide range of causes.' It is intended, as much as anything, as a way of holding individuals accountable and encouraging other, equally wealthy people and their families, to be inspired to make similar pledges and pursue similarly philanthropic lives. Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan committed more than half their fortune to the pledge Filmmaker George Lucas, 74, and his wife Mellody Hobson, 50, were among the first to sign up to the fund. His net worth is $6.4billion. He made $4billion in 2012 when Disney bought Lucasfilm. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 35, and wife Priscilla Chan, 34, committed more than half of their staggering fortune of $72billion when they signed to the pledge in 2015. Mackenzie Bezos,49, ex-wife of Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, 55, is one of the richest women in the world and among the most recent to sign up to the Pledge. She did so in May 2019 following a divorce settlement of $37billion. In a letter to the fund she wrote, 'In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share.' She vowed to do so 'until the safe is empty.' Her ex, who remains the richest individual in the world even after that settlement, has not signed up. His wealth is estimated at $121billion – a fully $13billion more than the world's next richest person, Bill Gates. Virgin founder, Sir Richard Branson, 69, and wife Joan, 71, who sit on a fortune estimated at $4.2billion, are members who list among their causes a desire to wage war on drugs and protect the oceans. Advertisement

When the Winters died, Sherman tried at first unsuccessfully to buy the company. On his second attempt he included a 'sweetener' in his offer to the trustees. He wrote in an option promising that when Louis children were 21 they would each have the opportunity to work for Empire and buy a five percent share of the business.

But within two years of signing that contract Sherman sold Empire and before doing so he merged with a drug-store chain and relinquished 51 percent of his stock in the process. He no longer had a controlling stake in the company – a factor on which the 'sweetener' option was contingent.

As far as Sherman was concerned he no longer had any fiduciary duty to Louis Winter's boys.

Sherman took the proceeds of that sale and parlayed them into Apotex Inc. Winter's sons were out in the cold.

Kerry Winter has waged a war for more than a decade to get a share of the Apotex fortune that, he argues, was built on the inheritance Sherman stole from him.

His bid has fallen at every legal hurdle.

Now in a last-ditch attempt to get the justice he says he deserves, he told DailyMail.com, he is taking his fight to the Supreme Court of Canada.

He said, 'That money is cursed and sometimes the sins of the father are visited on the children.

'If my father had lived Barry would have been a brother to me. When he died Barry should have looked over me and my brothers, but he didn't. He took what was ours and he lied to us for years.

'Everything was built on a lie and I can never, never forgive him for that. I hated him for that and now it's his children who have to pay.

'They thought it was over but I'm taking my case to the Supreme Court of Canada. They want to sell the company, but they can't because I've got a 20 per cent lien on it.'

According to a recently published book, The Billionaire Murders, by Toronto Star journalist Kevin Donovan, the Sherman siblings, Lauren, 44, Jonathon, 36, Alexandra, 33 and Kaelen, 30, gave the instruction to sell the business just two months after their parents' deaths.

A property in Florida that Sherman had just bought with the intention of expanding his opioid production was sold earlier this year and his European operations were all sold off within six months of the murders.

Last year, on Jonathon Sherman's orders, former CEO Jack Kay, was unceremoniously escorted from the building just days before the first anniversary of Barry and Honey's deaths.

According to one source close to Sherman, who asked not to be named, 'Barry's son Jonathon has been impatient to get the money for years. While Barry was around it was all tied up in the business. But Jonathon wanted it all and he wanted it now.'

Jonathon is an executor of Sherman's estate. He bought property and started a storage company with his father's backing during his twenties but in 2015 he asked Sherman to bankroll an ambitious plan to buy and develop properties at Chandos Lake, about 130miles northeast of Toronto.

The source said, 'He wanted $100 to $150million (US$76-$114million) to buy this whole lake and convert cottages and make it a playground for the rich.

'But the place has got no infrastructure, there's nowhere to get a coffee, there's nowhere for the rich wives to shop. It was a huge project and it would have taken a lot of work, and a lot more money.'

Sherman was unconvinced. The source said, 'Jonathon was frustrated. He wrote an email to his sisters questioning Barry's state of mind. He said he was losing it and that he was making decisions that were risking their inheritance. He wanted to get him out of his own company.'

According to one source, Jonathon's sense of thwarted pride was only made worse by the fact that while his father turned him down, he continued to invest both his money and his faith in Toronto entrepreneur, Frank D'Angelo, 60 – a man whom he met some twenty years earlier.

Winter is filled with rage and loathing for Sherman; he openly admits he dreamt of killing his cousin by lying in wait and decapitating him in Apotex Inc's parking lot.

D'Angelo's feelings and memories could not be more different.

He is as vocal and fervent in his love for Sherman as Winter is in his hatred.

According to one source close to Sherman, who asked not to be named, 'Barry's son Jonathon has been impatient to get the money for years. Jonathan is pictured speaking at his parents' memorial service

Sherman ran a generic drugs manufacturing firm, Apotex Inc, which made him a billionaire by producing versions of drugs

D'Angelo dismissed the notion that Barry and Honey's deaths were a professional job. He said, 'Barry worked in a not great area of town, right by the airport. He walked out to that car in the dark every night, by himself

Speaking to DailyMail.com, D'Angelo described Sherman as his 'best friend.' They spoke almost every day.

The two men met, 'by accident' when he visited the Apotex headquarters to make a business proposition to Mike Florence, Sherman's brother-in-law and one of Apotex's money managers.

D'Angelo is a self-made man with a restaurant and entertainment industry empire who produced several movies with Sherman. Back then he was pitching an audacious idea.

He ran a company packaging apple juice but couldn't get a reliable supply to make the business viable. He said, 'A friend told me about this state-of-the-art plant which was in receivership and it was owned by this company Apotex. I'd never heard of it.'

Sherman invested in a myriad of projects and made and lost hundreds of millions in the process.

D'Angelo went to Apotex, offered to buy the plant for $3.8million (CAD$5million) and to pay for it by selling off its high-end equipment.

He said, 'We're friends now but Mike couldn't believe it. He said, ''Let me get this straight you're going to pay us with our own money?'' But then in comes this guy in a lab coat, a real nerd, bunch of pens [in his top pocket], but a beautiful man with a very warm smile.'

Sherman asked D'Angelo, 'a thousand questions,' he recalled before saying, 'Okay if you can do it, do it.'

'No documents, no lawyer. He shook my hand like he knew me since the day I was born.'

According to D'Angelo that is the Sherman he knew and loved. He said, 'If you hit Barry with a fly-swat, he'd come back at you with a sledge-hammer, but he was the most honest, trustworthy and trusting guy I've ever known.'

He added, 'That's why he got killed. When I think of Barry and what happened to him I don't think he was scared when his time came. They say he didn't put up a fight, there wasn't a mark on him.

'I think that when he looked in the eyes of his killer he was just overwhelmed with a sense of betrayal.'

When those deaths were first discovered on Friday December 15, 2017 police seemed confident that this was a murder-suicide. With no signs of forced entry, or any struggle in Barry's case, they announced that they were not looking for any other suspects.

Outraged, the Sherman family launched their own investigation, commissioned a second autopsy and soon concluded that their parents' deaths were a double homicide.

Six weeks after the shocking events, the then lead detective, Susan Gomes, gave a press conference stating that police also believed that the Shermans were victims of a 'targeted double homicide.' She said they had a list of suspects.

Both Winter and D'Angelo were on that list.

Today D'Angelo is circumspect on the subject. He said, 'I was very impressed by the police actually. I have every confidence in them.' It was reported that the Sherman family suggested that a bad business deal between D'Angelo and Sherman had led to their naïve father becoming the target of a Russian or Italian mob hit.

D'Angelo dismissed the notion that Barry and Honey's deaths were a professional job. He said, 'Barry worked in a not great area of town, right by the airport. He walked out to that car in the dark every night, by himself.

'It would have been the easiest thing in the world to shoot him and for the shooter to be on a plane out of Canada before the body hit the ground.

'To kill them in their home makes no sense at all. It makes it personal.'

For his part, Winter admitted, that the only thing that surprised him when he was brought in for questioning in February 2018 was that it hadn't happened sooner.

He was interrogated for four hours, from 9pm until 1am. But he said he was never once worried he would be charged because he is so certain that the first finding of murder-suicide was the right one.

Speaking shortly after the deaths, Winter revealed to DailyMail.com that Barry had approached him in the late nineties to put a hit on Honey.

He said, 'He couldn't stomach to be around her. He used to say to me, ''There's love and hate in every marriage. But there's just so much hate in mine.''

'And all these people who sit back and say, ''Barry would NEVER have harmed her…he adored her. Barry wasn't capable.'''

Winter claimed that Sherman made his request more than once. He said, 'The first time I remember he had gone on a trip with her and he hated it. He said, ''You know sometimes I want to kill that b***…You probably know some people don't you?'''

Winter who is a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, with nearly eight years clean and sober, made no secret of the fact that he was 'messed up' at the time and running with a dark crowd.

Even so, he said, 'I said, ''Barry you're talking about killing the mother of your children.'' He said, ''I know what I'm talking about. I want you to find somebody to kill my wife.'''

He claimed that at the last minute Sherman got cold feet and called it off.

In a letter to the council obtained by DailyMail.com the family stated, 'Along with the bad memories and the stigma attached due to the incident. No one will purchase the home as it presently stands'

The family's wishes were granted and the home was razed, along with everything in it, in May. The pool was filled in and the entire lot leveled and put up for sale

In the past two years more details have emerged of the macabre scene that met the realtor who discovered Barry and Honey's bodies that December day.

The couple had put the 12,000square foot home up for sale having bought a large plot of land in Forest Hill, an exclusive Toronto neighborhood.

Honey was the driving force behind a building project likely to cost $40million or more. The last time either she or her husband were seen alive was when they each headed home from a meeting with their architects at the Apotex head office on Wednesday December 13.

Honey arrived home several hours before her husband and, according to the timeline set down in 'The Billionaire Murders,' was likely killed upstairs, where her cell phone was found discarded on the powder room floor, then dragged by her ankles down to the pool area.

The couple's house on Old Colony Road had underground parking at the rear but, according to D'Angelo, 'Barry never used it. He was lazy. He'd just park right in front of the front door.'

But on December 13, whether beckoned or forced, he drove down to the back of the house and parked out of sight. From there, just one doorway stood between him, the pool area and his death.

Surveillance cameras in that part of the house were unplugged – though it is not clear if they had been disabled deliberately or simply never deployed.

The Shermans were sitting side by side, their legs were stretched out in front of them and they were held upright by belts, tied around their necks and tethered to the low poolside railings.

Barry's legs were crossed, and his spectacles perched low on his nose. Both he and Honey wore jackets that were pulled down on their shoulders, seemingly holding their arms behind their backs.

Today there is only an empty and boarded up lot where the Sherman home once stood. Despite the open investigation in the deaths the family were granted permission to demolish the crime scene.

Today there is only an empty and boarded up lot where the Sherman home once stood. Despite the open investigation in the deaths the family were granted permission to demolish the crime scene.

The couple had put the 12,000square foot home up for sale having bought a large plot of land in Forest Hill, an exclusive Toronto neighborhood (pictured)

In a letter to the council obtained by DailyMail.com the family stated, 'Along with the bad memories and the stigma attached due to the incident. No one will purchase the home as it presently stands.'

It was razed, along with everything in it, in May. The pool was filled in and the entire lot levelled and put up for sale.

Both D'Angelo and Winter recall Sherman as physically unfit and a man who couldn't tie his own tie, do up his shoelaces or buckle his own belt and who had to be pretty much dressed by his wife.

Yet Winter remains convinced that Sherman was not only capable of killing Honey, he was culpable. He believes that Sherman 'finally snapped,' then tampered with the security camera before elaborately staging his wife's death and his own.

The family has offered a $7.6million (CAD $10million) reward but, Winter said, 'You mark my words they'll never arrest anyone because he did it. He whacked her and then he killed himself.

'I'm not sorry they're dead. I'm only sorry I'm not the one who did it.'

But D'Angelo described a very different man and a very different marriage. He admitted, 'I had a few run-ins with Honey. She wore the pantalones in the relationship. But Barry loved her.'

And in stark contrast to Winter not only is D'Angelo confident that police will make an arrest, he is confident that they will do so soon and that they have a single suspect - a person who Sherman knew and trusted to the very end - squarely in their sights.