Major Crimes Recap Rusty Faces a Dilemma: Season 3 Episode 16 Leap of Faith

Tonight on TNT Major Crimes continues with an all new Monday December 29, season 3 episode 16 and we have your weekly recap below. On tonight’s episode called “Leap of Faith,” Flynn [Tony Denison] tries to negotiate with a man holding on to the ledge of a bridge, only to discover horrifying information about the jumper. Meanwhile, old wounds surface when Rusty [Graham Patrick Martin] prepares an impact statement.

On the last episode Santa found himself on the naughty list after robbing a bank, but a Santa flash mob complicated his apprehension and the Major Crimes unit scrambled to figure out how things went so wrong. Sharon’s kids (guest stars Zarah Mahler & Ryan Kennedy) came to town for the holidays while Buzz started training as a back-up police officer. Lilli Birdsell, Annie Abrams, Carter Hastings and Dawnn Lewis guest star. Did you watch the last episode? If you missed it we have a full and detailed recap, right here for you.

On tonight’s episode as per the TNT synopsis, “Tensions are high when Flynn has to talk down a man precariously holding on to the ledge of a bridge, only to find out that the jumper is a sex offender with a dead body in his car. Old wounds are opened as Rusty prepares an Impact Statement to hopefully end his involvement with the Stroh case. Kathe Mazur, Ransford Doherty, Chad Lindberg, Paula Marshall, Erik Jensen, Sarah Lafleur, Bill Brochtrup and Brandon Barash guest star.”

Tonight’s episode is going to be filled with action and you won’t want to miss it, so be sure to tune in for our live coverage of the show tonight at 9 PM EST! While you wait for our recap hit the comments and let us know how excited you are about the third season.

Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!

On a busy LA freeway, Flynn is stuck in traffic talking to Provenza on the phone. Flynn won’t discuss his relationship with Sharon. Sirens whiz by. He insists he’s not dating Sharon and therefore can’t disappoint her in the relationship department. Provenza hears more sirens, Flynn hangs up and goes to check it out. Provenza is being very relationship-negative asking – why go on? Flynn gets out at the crime scene down the road.

A guy is ready to jump off the overpass. He lets go of the rail and looks down onto the speeding traffic. Flynn approaches and calls out to him asking if they can talk. He introduces himself and asks the guy’s name. He says his name is Bill but to leave him alone. Flynn tells him if he jumps he’s going to hurt innocent people. Bill says – it wasn’t my fault. Flynn says he can help him and has been where he is – ready to call it quits. He says it’s not the answer. He says life is temporary but dead is forever.

He asks Bill to take his hand. He does and he drags him back over the rails. He tells Bill – good job. Officers rush over but Flynn gestures them back. He asks Bill his last name and he says George. He says he left his wallet in his truck and points down the street. Flynn leaves the guy with officers and goes to the truck. He sees a lump under a tarp in the back. He pulls back the tarp and sees a dead young woman in the bed.

Tao says the Bill is a registered sex offender. He, Provenza and Sykes are all at the scene as well. Flynn says Bill told him he doesn’t know who the victim is and the ME says the girl has been dead a few hours. They found some marks on one wrist but no obvious cause of death. They also found a bag with a bunch of lube and porn in it. At the PD, Flynn shows Sharon a parking pass they found in the truck. He has no current registered address.

Buzz says maybe the girl was random but Provenza says he thinks Bill knew the girl. Flynn has the guy in interrogation but Bill is insistent that he doesn’t know her. Sharon says they don’t even know how she died and asks if he knows. He says he was going to jump because he knew they’d never believe him. He gets upset and Sharon asks to tell them how she got into his truck. He says he delivers a local sex newspaper to different places and got home and found her dead in his bed.

Flynn asks why he didn’t call 911 and he says it’s tough living where he does – he says people throw eggs and rocks at him in his neighborhood because they know he’s a prior sex offender. Sharon asks where he was taking the girl’s body and he says he didn’t know yet. Flynn asks why he would kill himself over a girl he never met. Bill says again that he didn’t know her. Sharon asks for Bill to go with Flynn to his house and walk him through what happened.

A large retinue of cop cars pull up to the house and they see people on his porch. Flynn tells Bill to stay in the car. Oderno is there and he has two people with him. He says they are the parents of a young autistic girl who went missing. They have a tracker on her and it shows she’s in the house. The parents show the cops a photo of her and it’s the dead girl. Tao hands over the house keys to some uniforms to clear the house and asks Buzz to film it.

Mr O’Hara goes nuts when he sees Bill in the back of the car. Her mom throws a rock through the window and threatens to kill him. Bill just looks wounded and stares back at Flynn. Rusty is in Sharon’s office waiting for her. She asks why he’s there and he says he locked his keys in his car. She asks about the Stroh case and he says the guy fired his attorney and is going pro per. He says he’s trying to get Emma to take the death penalty off the table.

Rusty says if he gives Emma info that she wants, he’s done. Sharon says she’s glad about the deal but wonders why Emma didn’t talk to her. He says Emma is likely irritated he’s still living with Sharon. He then says he has to write an impact statement for the court. His therapist, Joe, comes in but not to see him – she shows him red paper hearts they found in Bill’s house. They wonder if the girl, Annie, thought she was in love with Bill.

Joe says autism is wide spectrum and asks to see her tracking bracelet. It has medical info. Joe says Annie wouldn’t have made them alone. He says that if the girl came into his house, she could have been upset and he didn’t know how to calm her. They found no signs of struggle and the house is clean. They are still considering that her body may have been planted. Sykes and Sanchez talk to the parents about Annie. She says she checked on her daughter about nine and she was asleep.

Sanchez asks if she was ever outside their supervision during the day. The dad says they are around her 24/7. Jenn, the wife, had a first husband called Ray who was not as understanding about Annie. He hubby says Ray wanted perfect kids. Sykes asks if she’s run off before and the hubby says sometimes she does since she’s hit her teen years. Jenn says earlier that week she snuck out and was five blocks away before they found her.

Sykes asks if she can read and write and the hubby says on a second grade level. They show the parents the cards and ask if she could have made them. They ask where the hearts are from and they tell her they were from Bill’s fridge. The parents rant and ask if he hurt or took Annie. Sanchez tells her they found their daughter. Sharon goes down to see Morales who tells them her COD is positional asphyxiation meaning someone was sitting or lying on her so that she can’t breathe.

He says she was a virgin so there was no sexual assault. Flynn tells Sharon that Bill could have been grooming the girl and thinks Bill is hiding something. Morales says they found multi-color fibers in her mouth. Flynn wants to find out where Bill’s parking pass lets him access. At home, Rusty is working on his impact statement and says he wants to say that he’s still willing to testify but also wants the judge to know he’s not the same kid from the park.

Sharon tells him that he was never the person in the park and says circumstances put him there. He says it’s mostly true but doesn’t feel entirely true. She says what happened to him was criminal since he was under the age of consent. Sharon is still angry about Emma not talking to her about Stroh. Sharon says Stroh represented sex offenders and may have information on them that he can trade. Rusty doesn’t quite get it and looks concerned.

Sanchez says Bill had an accident a couple of months ago outside an apartment complex who has parking passes that match his. Sanchez says they have security footage of him going into one of the apartment towers and they are shocked by who he’s visiting. They bring in Kayla, the daughter of Bill’s girlfriend. He mother is on her way in as well. They’re also bringing Joe in to talk to them. The mom, Ms Kemp, says Kayla makes them for Bill all the time and says Bill treats Kayla like a princess.

She says she met him at his job at a car wash and she says she was impressed because he wasn’t turned off by her being a single mom. Sykes tells her that Bill is a registered sex offender who served two years for unlawful sex with a minor. She’s appalled and asks if they think he did something to Kayla. They ask to talk to Kayla and search their apartment before they jump to any conclusions. Kayla says Bill is awesome and she hides the hearts in his truck every day.

She talks about all the places Bill takes her and says her mom is with them sometimes. Joe asks if Bill has ever asked her to keep secrets from her mom. She says her mom can’t know and makes him promise not to tell. She says Bill wants to ask her mom to marry him and wanted her permission first. She says her mom deserves a decent guy like Bill. She says no one gets Bill but them and won’t let anyone take him away from them.

Flynn says it looks like Bill had plans for them and that’s why he didn’t mention Ms Kemp and her daughter to them. Flynn comes in and says Tori Kemp wants to know why he hasn’t called her later. Flynn says he’s keeping a lot of secrets. Bill says Tori and Kayla are the reason he was on the bridge to start with. Provenza says he knows about depravity and sexual predators getting close to single moms to groom victims.

Bill tells Flynn he’s been lying to him and his public defender says he’s pushing his buttons and has nothing on him or else he’d already be arrested. Provenza says Bill can get a deal if he tells them how he killed Annie and get life in prison. Bill asks Flynn for a pen and Bill revokes his right to counsel and tells the lawyer to shut up. Bill takes the pen and paper and then stops. He turns the pen toward himself. Sanchez starts to run in but Bill has stabbed himself in the neck with the pen a couple of times already.

He screams out – why did you tell them? Flynn gets his pen back and looks very upset. Joe sits in the break room writing and Provenza asks about Kayla. Joe says he doesn’t think that Kayla was molested. Provenza says it was impressive that Bill turned his life around enough to have an age appropriate relationship. Joe says tastes can change. Provenza says he’s seeing someone very different from anyone he’s ever dated. Joe asks how different and in what way.

Provenza sits and says she’s close to his own age and says he never usually dates women over 40. Joe asks why doesn’t he just dump her if she’s not what he wants. Provenza asks who said she’s not what he wants and Joe says that’s what it sounds like. Provenza says that’s not what he’s saying and it’s not always about what you want, but what the other person wants. Flynn comes back with the others and they think that Annie was killed in her own house – even the blanket that suffocated her.

Buzz says someone at her house was running a bunch of searches on Megan’s law and looking into Bill George. They wonder if someone has keys to Bill’s house or the O’Hara’s. They bring Bill back in and ask who else could have had access to his house. The lawyer says to ask the neighbors since they watch his house like guard dogs. She says someone could have set him up. Sharon asks about the broken windows. Sharon asks who fixed his windows. He says he used a repair guy and says he saved the receipt.

He says a guy he met in prison told him to save everything. He says he even kept the rocks thrown in. He says the repairman used the spare key he left over the door. Buzz says Annie’s parents searched Bill a hundred times. They bring the O’Hara’s into another room to talk. Sharon tells them that Annie was killed in her own room and that a neighbor saw someone carrying her body into Bill’s house. Sanchez says the witness saw them use the spare key.

Jenn says her hubby Chris was with her even though Chris met the witness’ description. Sharon asks Chris to participate in a line up. He asks if it has to be right now and Sanchez opens the door and says everyone is waiting. Jenn asks why he’s hesitating. He hangs his head. She starts crying and asks what he did. She freaks out and starts slapping him and asks what he did and says Annie loved him. She’s hauled out and Tao reads Chris his rights.

Sanchez slams him into a chair when he tries to get up and tells him he’s not a helpless little girl he can push around. Chris tells Sharon it was an accident. He says Annie was having a bad fit and he was using the restraint hold they recommend but then she stopped moving. He says he didn’t know what to do. Sharon says he set Bill up and he says he improvised it. Sanchez screams at him that he threw rocks into Bill’s house to see how to access it. Sharon says they have the rocks and are fingerprinting them.

She says a jury can hear about how he crushed the ribs of a special needs child and stuffed a blanket in her mouth. He snaps and rants that she wasn’t special needs, she was all needs and stole their life. He says he was already in prison so he’s not worried about them jailing him. He says they have no idea how tired he is. Flynn says maybe now Bill will stop trying to kill himself now. Andrea is there and says it takes a special person to take care of a complicated kid.

She looks at Rusty in the other room as she says this then leaves to go talk to him. Andrea and Sharon talk to Rusty about his impact statement. He says he’s not a victim but Sharon recounts all the terrible violent things Stroh did to him. Andrea says it was attempted murder. He says Emma wants him to write about Stroh to block the deal. Andrea says Emma wants Stroh to go to trial. Andrea asks if Emma told him otherwise and he says no. He says he feels like an idiot and rants about lawyers.

Andrea says Emma should have been clear about her intentions. Andrea says one way or the other, the Stroh business will come to a head soon. Sharon and Rusty thank Andrea and she leaves. Rusty says he’s glad he knows the truth. He asks Sharon what she thinks about him submitting the impact statement. She says it’s a choice between putting someone to death or in an institution for life. She says it’s an awful thing to consider and says he’s been given a voice. She asks him in his mind, what should happen to someone like Philip Stroh. He stops to think about it.

The END!

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmdoaKpxq2t1Kebq7FemLyue5FpaG1nnZa3sL6MnKmipZWoerOxwpqnZmliZ4ZygIysnJqrn6N6dHnEqaCsp5SaenKCjKWcmqhdpLNussCiq6Fn