MOMO CHRISTOPHER SHERIFFE AND REPORTER KEVIN DONOVAN IN COLLINS BAY PENITENTIARY October, 2023 interview by Kevin Donovan with Christopher Sheriffe in Collins Bay Penitentiary for pc28Star series Uploaded by: Donovan, Kevin
INV-MOMOJAN15 BRAMPTON, ON - January 15 Chris’ mother Marjorie have been fighting for a long time for her son’s release. She is seen in their Brampton home. Also seen are a series of photographs of Christopher as a boy. Investigative series that delves into the case of 19-year-old Christopher Sheriffe, who contends (and I believe him) he was wrongfully convicted of first degree murder in 2012. It was the shooting death of a man named Bishen Golaub in 2009. January 15 2025 Richard Lautens/pc28Star
Murder on Mount Olive: One man’s fight to prove his innocence, told in a new podcast from the Star’s Kevin Donovan
Reporters get a lot of letters. For Kevin Donovan, it was the specific details of Christopher Sheriffe’s message from Collins Bay penitentiary that caught his eye. The result is “Murder on Mount Olive.”
Three gunshots ripped the air on Mount Olive Drive in pc28in August 2009. Bishen (Kim) Golaub, a furniture maker, father and husband died that day. A trial was held and a young soccer star was sent to prison for life.
The story of the brutal attack at a neighbourhood barbecue received little media coverage, and soon faded from public memory.
Fast forward more than a decade. I received a letter.
“Hi my name is Christopher Sheriffe,” it began. The correspondence came from a lifer at Collins Bay, a penitentiary in Kingston. “I was convicted of first-degree murder. I am messaging you because there was a lot of wrongdoing in my trial and I would like to shed a light on it.”
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Reporters get a lot of calls, emails and letters asking us to check something out. This system is broken. That public official is on the take. This agency is not protecting the public. It’s where many stories come from.
Sheriffe, 34, reached out to me because he and his family had read my ongoing investigation of the Barry and Honey Sherman murders, and a previous case, Death in a Small Town. I was tough on the cops in both, and he said there were problems with how his case was investigated and prosecuted.
This was not the first correspondence I had received from someone in prison, but it was the specific details Sheriffe provided in his letter that caught my eye, and my interest.
“In my case, they brought forth false DNA, which wasn’t known at the time,” Sheriffe wrote, providing other issues that he hoped I would explore, including how evidence from two mysterious confidential informants was used at his trial.
Sheriffe has maintained his innocence since the night he was arrested. In one of our first conversations I asked him if he was a killer. “Never was, never will be,” he said.
The justice system disagrees. “He was a feared person,” said the young pc28police officer who at the eleventh hour brought out the evidence from confidential informants that helped convict.
I decided to investigate. What I found led to Murder on Mount Olive, the fourth season of the pc28Star’s Suspicion series. The 10-episode podcast launches today.
It’s a murder story. A police procedural story. A legal story. Above all it’s a story about our justice system and one man’s fight, with the help of his mother Marjorie, to be heard.
Kevin Donovan is the Star’s chief investigative reporter based
in Toronto. He can be reached at 416-312-3503 or via email:
kdonovan@thestar.ca.
