Skin Deep (Season 3, Episode 1)
Premise: Graff and Bateman trace a model’s murder during Toronto’s Fashion Week to a string of killings and a fashion mogul whose DNA does not seem to match.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 1
- Starring
- DS Henry Graff (Aden Young), DS Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe), DCA Theo Forrester (K.C. Collins), Dr. Lucy Da Silva (Nicola Correia-Damude)
- Guest stars
- Gabriel Hogan as Dorian Sharpe, Grace Lynn Kung as Sonoya Lee, Ella Jonas Farlinger as Ainsley Scott, Woody Jeffreys as Dr. Frank Maddox, Edie Inksetter as Doris George
- Director
- Sudz Sutherland
- Writers
- Stephen Cochrane & Adriana Maggs
Summary
The Case
“Skin Deep” follows 18-year-old Ainsley Scott, an aspiring model working backstage at designer Dorian Sharpe’s Fashion Week show, who clashes with photographer Riley Chan at the after-party and is later heard screaming for help. Her body turns up in a Toronto landfill. She was strangled and sexually assaulted by a man who wore a condom, and her nails were clipped and cleaned. Blue dye stains and fabric scraps lead Graff and Bateman to a dumpster at Walsh’s Textile Mill holding blood from three women; a search dog then finds Freya Klein, killed a month earlier, and an unidentified woman dead for about a year.
Riley shot Ainsley’s headshots in exchange for intimate photos he then posted online without her consent, and his party pictures show cosmetic surgeon Frank Maddox walking her out. Maddox, who treats Sharpe, flinches when testosterone injections come up. His wife, Wendy, a former model, has heard that Sharpe’s sex could turn rough and says his career began in a textile mill. A bead matching Ainsley’s missing necklace turns up in Sharpe’s office. The detectives tie Sharpe’s hasty 2021 return from New York to the unsolved killing there of Laura Johnson, whose case yields male DNA from NYPD Detective Sergeant James Michaels. The unknown victim proves to be Lucy George, a client of agent Sonoya Lee; her mother, Doris, says Lucy accused Sharpe of pressuring pregnant women into abortions to harvest stem cells.
The Interrogation
Forrester will not seek a DNA warrant, so Graff confronts Sharpe in front of a young model, and Sharpe volunteers a cheek swab. It does not match the New York blood. The detectives deduce, with Da Silva’s backing, that Sharpe is a chimera: a stem cell transplant at an anti-aging lab he funded in Honduras gave his blood a donor’s DNA while his saliva and skin kept his own, which is why the killer cleaned the victims’ nails. The lab burned down nine years ago, but a 2012 assault complaint against Sharpe collapsed after Lee testified for him.
Graff questions Lee, whom Sharpe hired when she was homeless, and accuses her of luring young women to him. She admits driving Ainsley to Sharpe’s office late that night. She says Sharpe made her end a pregnancy and used the stem cells to treat himself, so the donor was her own fetus. Graff tells her that her blood can stand as her testimony.
The ending
Spoiler: Police halt a cleaning crew at Sharpe’s headquarters and stop him from leaving for a flight, and the detectives say they will now take his blood, which should be a half match to Lee. Uniformed officers put Sharpe into a police car as Michaels in New York is updated, and the detectives reflect that four victims finally have a voice.
Suspects’ fates: Dorian Sharpe, arrested; Sonoya Lee, other or unclear.
Why it stands out
- The season 3 premiere, opening Aden Young’s last season as Henry Graff; Luke Kirby joins as DS John Darcy in season 4.
- The solution rests on human chimerism, in which a stem cell transplant leaves a person’s blood carrying a donor’s DNA while the rest of the body keeps its own.