Thursday, August 3, 2023

The billionaire’s murder, part II

Plus, Gary Gensler takes on AI

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Must-Reads

The call came in to the Toronto police homicide squad on a chilly December afternoon. A man and woman had been found dead at a home in an upmarket suburban neighborhood, posed in a horrifying tableau. They were side by side at the edge of an indoor pool, held up by leather belts looped around their necks and tied to a metal railing. By the time the first officers arrived, in response to a 911 call from a real estate agent who was showing the house, rigor mortis had set in, indicating they'd been dead for hours.

Brandon Price, a young homicide detective with sharp features and close-cropped brown hair, drove to the scene. The house was thick with people: uniformed constables to establish a perimeter, forensic specialists to comb for evidence, a coroner to prepare the remains for transport to an autopsy. An officer took photos, documenting the location and condition of the bodies as well as the state of the many other rooms.

The Shermans' house at 50 Old Colony Rd. in Toronto.  Photographer: Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail

Outside was a growing number of journalists, dispatched as word filtered out about the identities of the deceased. They were Barry and Honey Sherman, one of Canada's wealthiest and best-known couples and the residents of the house. Barry, 75, was the founder and chairman of Apotex Inc., a large generic pharmaceutical producer. His net worth was estimated at $3.6 billion at the time of his death in 2017. He and Honey, 70, used that money to become major philanthropists, donating generously to charities, cultural institutions and Jewish causes. They weren't the richest people in Canada, but they were as prominent as anyone, appearing at seemingly every charity gala in Toronto and known to have strong connections to the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Autopsies would determine that both of the Shermans had died from "ligature neck compression"—strangulation. They were among the wealthiest murder victims in history.

Price and his colleagues have been investigating the Shermans' deaths for more than five years, alongside private detectives hired by the couple's adult children: Lauren, who's now 47; Jonathon, 40; Alexandra, 37; and Kaelen, 32. In that time no one has been arrested, let alone charged. A representative for the Toronto Police Service declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation but said that it remains active and that it would be inaccurate to describe the murders as a cold case. They're nonetheless an enduring mystery. Who had a motive to kill both Sherman and his wife? Why would that person choose such a gruesome method? And how did they cover their tracks so effectively?

Photo Illustration: Mike McQuade; photos: George Pimentel (Shermans); YouTube (surveillance)

Even though the police and the private team haven't identified suspects, they have turned up a great deal about the Shermans and their world. Most of their findings were unknown when Bloomberg Businessweek last covered the case, in 2018. They've been revealed for this story through legal filings, private documents, interviews with people familiar with the relevant events—who declined to speak on the record about private matters—and a cache of police materials released following petitions from the Toronto Star. As investigators dug into the Shermans' past, they uncovered a family drama rife with vendettas and grudges, accusations and rumors, centered on a dominant patriarch and a next generation vying for his favor.

With Barry Sherman gone, that drama entered a new, bare-knuckle phase. Suddenly inheriting his empire, his children made it clear that their priorities differed from their father's. They broke with his and Honey's closest confidants and began making plans to sell off Apotex, the company Sherman had devoted his life to building. Then, some of them turned on each other.

For the full, fascinating story from Matthew Campbell and Ari Altstedter, go here. And to read Businessweek's first cover story on this mysterious case, go here.

A Beautiful Weed?

Have you ever seen a piece of seaweed and thought, wow that's pretty? Well, you probably aren't a chef who's seen some gamtae. As Kate Krader writes for Pursuits, it's turning heads:

The captivating appearance of gamtae is only part of why you'll increasingly find it at sushi counters and in the restaurants of ambitious chefs. Its flavor is distinctive, with funkier, earthier notes than other seaweeds. "It has a deeper fragrance reminiscent of the sea," says Junghyun Park, chef-owner of the New York restaurant Atomix, which was ranked No. 8 on this year's World's 50 Best Restaurants list. "An excellent, almost truffley flavor profile," is how Ian Purkayastha, founder of Regalis Foods, describes it. He sells it, unflavored or seasoned with salt and sesame oil, for a little less than $1 per gram.

Koreans have been eating it for centuries—but it seems that the recipe for a gamtae, tomato and mayo sandwich might be newer!

Finance, by Humans, for Humans

Gary Gensler, head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, has some thoughts on AI. But also, per Austin Weinstein in Businessweek's Remarks, he's just happy to not have to talk about crypto. What artificial intelligence has going for it, as a conversation topic, is Gensler's long history with the technology:

He says he first started thinking about AI when Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov lost to IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. As a former member of his high school chess team, Gensler says, he was impressed. …

After Washington, Gensler taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—and again turned to AI. Gensler recalls walking into the office of Aleksander Madry, an MIT professor and one of the world's top experts on machine learning, in 2019 to ask how to best learn about the technology. Madry handed him an 800-page textbook, Deep Learning, on the mathematics behind AI. "I didn't make it back to his office for months," Gensler says. "I knew this was a test." He read what he could, and an academic friendship began.

Read on to learn where Gensler versus AI stands today, and what he sees happening in the future. He is, after all, one of the first regulators to propose AI rules.

Emergency Expenses

$400
Fewer Americans say they can afford a $400 emergency expense without incurring debt compared with last quarter, according to a new survey. Almost 1 in 5 people say they wouldn't be able to pay at all.

Plea Deal

 "A spring and summer of nonstop debauchery"
Hunter Biden
The son of President Joe Biden earned more than $4 million from a Ukrainian energy company, a Chinese private equity firm and other sources during two years in which he descended deeper into substance abuse, according to a proposed plea agreement to federal tax charges.

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