Fool's Gold (Season 2, Episode 3)
Premise: Toronto detectives prove an airport ramp agent’s hanging was murder and trace it through a gold heist that was rigged from the start.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 3
- Starring
- DS Henry Graff (Aden Young), DS Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe), Insp. Vivienne Holness (Karen Robinson), DCA Theo Forrester (K.C. Collins), Mark Yohannes (Araya Mengesha)
- Guest stars
- Ted Dykstra as Jay Diaz, Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz as Diego Rojas, Katelyn McCulloch as Karina, Christine Horne as Lina Henkel, Joe Pingue as Felix
- Director
- Winnifred Jong
- Writers
- Sam Godfrey
Summary
The Case
“Fool’s Gold” starts with Jay Diaz, an ex-convict now loading planes at Pearson airport, promising his daughter, Karina, that he will find the money for her to study cello at the Boston College of Music. He borrows $10,000 from a lender named Felix and picks up an overtime shift. Karina is horrified when he says he can pay her tuition, and that night a drunk Jay turns up at the diner where his friend Diego Rojas works. The next morning Karina and Diego find Jay hanging in his apartment.
Officer Winnifred Jong suspects the suicide was staged, and the detectives agree: Jay’s toes could not have reached the stool, the rope wore the paint as he was hauled up, and crushed Lorazepam was slipped into his rum. Jay had bought a used cube van and a crate of marble shipped from Frankfurt on the same flight as 20 bars of gold bullion worth about $24 million. Alone in the plane’s hold, he switched the crates’ waybills, so armed guards locked away the marble while a limo driver, Joseph, unknowingly collected the gold. By the time police reach the storage locker, it is empty.
Customs agent Stella Borden admits mentioning the shipment to Jay, and Cash-For-Gold owner Chuck says he agreed to melt the bars down and steered Jay to Felix, a loan shark tied to the Alto crime family. Felix says one of his men saw Jay come home with a tall, curly-haired man who never left. Diego hopes to bring his mother, who has cancer, from Venezuela for treatment, and signed a lease on a larger bungalow a week before the theft. Refinery owner Lina Henkel, it emerges, planted Stella, her former au pair, to make sure the gold would be stolen so she could collect under her transport contract, and the team has enough to charge her with fraud.
The Interrogation
The detectives conclude that Jay, after Karina’s ultimatum, meant to give the gold back, leaving Diego with nothing. Karina remembers Diego stopping her from entering the apartment. Telling Diego another suspect is about to be arrested, the detectives search his bungalow and find the bars hidden inside a fireplace that has no chimney. Diego says Jay must have put them there.
The detectives reveal that the bars are fakes, tungsten with a gold-coloured coating, which explains Henkel’s scheme. Diego breaks down, saying he begged Jay to let him keep a single bar for his mother, and admits he waited until his drugged friend passed out before hanging him.
The ending
Spoiler: Diego is left asking what will become of his mother, and the detectives reflect that a crime meant to have no victims has wrecked two families.
Suspects’ fates: Diego Rojas, other or unclear; Lina Henkel, other or unclear.
Why it stands out
- The uniformed officer who first doubts the suicide shares her name with the episode’s director, Winnifred Jong.
- In the story, the theft is billed as the largest heist in the country’s history.