The body of a woman, who was mentioned in Netflix’s 2017 true-crime series The Keepers, will be exhumed by the FBI.
Law enforcement officers are reportedly investigating a possible connection between Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun whose unsolved murder was depicted in the series, and Joyce Malecki, a 20-year-old woman who disappeared around the same time.
Malecki vanished on 11 November 1969; she was found strangled, stabbed and submerged two days later in a river near Fort Meade. Four days earlier, on 7 November 1969, Cesnik disappeared.
Malecki was buried at Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore. It’s unclear when the FBI will exhume the body.
“The FBI gave us no indication other than to say the purpose of the exhumation is to collect evidence. Our best speculation is that they may be looking for DNA evidence to match it up with a potential suspect they may already have,” Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of theMaryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, told WBAL-TV.
“It doesn’t matter that it was 50-some years ago, justice is justice, and I know the Malecki family still yearns for it,” Mr Wolfgang continued.
“The family has been through an awful lot. This is not a pleasant experience for anybody, but they are looking forward to what the FBI finds and hopefully shares with them,” Gemma Hoskins, a writer whose investigation into the mysterious murder inspired the Netflix series, told the outlet.
“Closure for me would be to find out who hurt both women and bring them justice,” Ms Hoskins added.
Hoskins told WBAL-TV that she believes Father Joseph Maskell was behind both murders. He died in 2001, but before that he was accused of sexual abuse by a host of survivors.
In April, the Maryland Attorney General’s office released a report on child sexual abuse in the archdiocese in Baltimore – Maskell was listed. “The Archdiocese was aware of concerns about Maskell’s conduct towards children as early as 1966,” the report said, which includes accounts from 39 people who said they were sexually abused by him or know of those who claimed they were.
The report says that reports of Maskell’s “sexual abuse stem largely, though not exclusively, from his time at Archbishop Keough High School,” where Cesnik taught.
Maskell was never criminally charged and denied allegations but, the report states, “his priestly faculties had been removed since 1994.” The report also said that “documents show that the Archdiocese reached settlements with 15 of Maskell’s victims, ranging from $25,000 to $50,000.”
