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The FBI will exhume the body of a woman whose mysterious death was described in Netflix’s true-crime series “The Keepers,” while law enforcement investigates a possible connection to the cold-case murder of a Baltimore nun.
“The Keepers” investigated the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun and a Baltimore high school teacher, and allegations of sexual abuse by an influential Baltimore priest named Father Joseph Maskell in the 1960s.
In November 1969, before Cesnik seemingly disappeared, Joyce Malecki was found strangled, stabbed, and submerged in a body of water near Fort Meade.
Malecki’s body will be exhumed from Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore with her family’s permission as the FBI investigates an unspecified lead that may link the two cases, confirmed Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center , to news broadcasts.
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Netflix Documentary “The Keepers” (Courtesy of Netflix)
“The FBI gave us no indication other than to say that the purpose of the excavation is to collect evidence,” Wolfgang told WBAL-TV. “Our best speculation is that they may be looking for DNA evidence to match it with a potential suspect they may already have.”
Gemma Hoskins, who has devoted her life to investigating Sister Cesnik’s murder, told WBAL that she always felt the two cold cases were connected and believes they will somehow lead back to Fr. Maskell.
“The family has been through an awful lot. This is not a pleasant experience for anyone, but they look forward to what the FBI finds and hopefully shares with them,” Hoskins told the local news outlet.
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No specific date has been set for the excavation.
WHO WERE JOYCE MALECKI AND SISTER CATHERINE CESNIK?
Malecki was on Christmas shopping before she disappeared. She had plans to meet her boyfriend in Fort Meade the day she went missing, but she didn’t show up.
Her body was found in a body of water at the military training base with clear signs of trauma and a struggle.
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Cesnik, 26, was teaching at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore when she was killed, and many believe the two cases can be traced back to Father Maskell, who was the high school’s chaplain.
During the Netflix series, survivors have detailed allegations of sexual abuse against Father Maskell and allegations of an institutional cover-up.
Maskell, who died in 2001, was never prosecuted and denied all charges, although he was released from the priesthood in Baltimore in 1994.
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Before that, the archdiocese pulled him from two parishes in the 1960s for “disturbing behavior with children,” according to a 2023 report from the Maryland attorney general’s office.
Maskell was said to have had “a fascination with the sexual fantasies and behavior of boy scouts and having young girls in the parsonage under suspicious circumstances,” the report said.
A view of Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, where Father Maskell and Sister Cisnik crossed paths in the 1960s before her death. (Google Street View)
EXPLOSIVE 2023 REPORT FROM MARYLAND’S ADVOCATE GENERAL
More than 50 years later, the disturbing case is an intertwined web that continues to be explored and unravelled.
“The irrefutable history revealed by this investigation is one of pervasive and persistent abuse by priests and other personnel of the archdiocese,” the report said. “It is also a history of repeated firing or covering up of that abuse by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.”
In April, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office released an investigative report “on child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” beginning in 2018, which specifically detailed allegations against Maskell and 155 other abusers.
Kurt Rupprecht speaks out about the abuse he suffered following the release of a redacted report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on April 6, 2023 in Baltimore. (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun via AP)
Maskell was described as “intimidating”, had a “love of firearms” and had a “severe aversion” to archiepiscopal authority, the report said.
A total of 146 clergymen were named, plus 10 more alleged abusers whose names were redacted “because they were not known to be deceased at the time of the report and had not been previously listed as credibly charged by the Archdiocese of Baltimore.”
The alleged abusers, according to the AG’s report, targeted “vulnerable” or “isolated” children who were shy, had low self-esteem or struggled with problems at home, and the abusers portrayed themselves as their “protectors”.
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“They told their victims that the abuse was ‘God’s will’ and that no one would question a priest’s word,” the report said. “Some threatened that the victim or the victim’s family would go to hell if they told anyone.”
According to the Attorney General’s report, Maskell sexually assaulted at least 39 victims between 1992 and 1994 and allegedly confided in a friend that the allegations against him were true.
The archdiocese listed Maskell as “credibly accused” in 2002, a year after his death, and settled a class action lawsuit involving 15 of his victims.
Teresa Lancaster speaks on the release of a redacted report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on April 6, 2023 in Baltimore. (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun via AP)
The archdiocese knew about allegations against Maskell as early as 1966, but leaders brushed the concerns under the carpet and avoided the issue by moving the priest from parish to parish, the report concluded.
It was a common practice of the Catholic Church for decades, advocates for clerical victims of sexual abuse say.
The report details the graphic allegations against Maskell from pages 257 to 267.
WHEN DID MASKELL AND CESNIK CROSS THE WAY?
One of Maskell’s victims, who was a teenager when she was raped in 1992, said Maskell allegedly displayed her sister Cesnik’s body in “a remote area” after she went missing, according to the AG report.
The victim also said that before Sister Cesnik went missing, she asked the victim if anyone was hurting her or making her do something she didn’t want to do.
Father Joseph Maskell’s Career Outlined in the April 2023 Maryland Attorney General’s Report (Maryland Attorney General)
Most of the detailed allegations of sexual abuse against Maskell occurred at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore. Many of the victims said he threatened them with a gun, the report said.
“Some stories of abuse are intertwined with the murder of Cathy Cesnik,” said the report, which suggested she may have been killed because his victims confided in her about the abuse.
Many victims reported that Maskell took them to Cesnick’s body, the report said.
ARE THE STARS OF CESNIK AND MALECKI CONNECTED?
Malecki and Cesnick disappeared in the same area four days apart, but there’s nothing definitive connecting the two cold cases, other than speculation.
Law enforcement reached a dead end in the 2017 Cesnik murder case after Maskell’s body was exhumed by the Baltimore County Police Department, who found no evidence tying him to her crime scene.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore bragged about the find in a 2017 tweet that read, “SPOILER ALERT. The DNA of the unearthed priest does not match the evidence found at the crime scene of Sister Cathy’s death #TheKeepersTruth @the_keepers. “
The social media post was greeted rudely by Twitter users following the case.
This is a screenshot of a 2017 tweet by the Archdiocese of Baltimore after police exhumed Joseph Maskell’s body and the DNA didn’t match a murder scene. (Twitter)
Malecki attended Mass with Maskell and lived close to the church rectory at the time of her death.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s been 50 years. Justice is justice. And I know the Malecki family still craves it,” Wolfgang told WBAL.
Archdiocese RESPONDS TO AG REPORT
“The archdiocese deeply apologizes for the suffering of the victims of child sexual abuse by all church employees,” the archdiocese said in response to the AG’s report.
Consecrated the Archdiocese an entire website get started with the report.
“We appreciate the Attorney General’s acknowledgment of some of the Church’s efforts, but the report does not recognize the full scope of the Archdiocese’s efforts to protect children over the decades,” the Archdiocese said on its website.
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“The Attorney General’s report also contains certain inaccuracies and does not give a clear impression that incidents of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese have fallen dramatically since peaking in the late 1970s.”
The response includes an empathetic “No” under the segment “Is the Church Still Covering Up Abuse?”
“For decades, the Archdiocese has been firmly committed to holding alleged abusers accountable,” the statement said. “Then Attorney General Brian Frosh confirmed in a November 2022 interview with WYPR that since at least 2002 the Archdiocese has reported child abuse when reported to them and there is no evidence of an ongoing cover-up”
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The archdiocese said it was cooperating with the AG’s four-year investigation by providing “hundreds of thousands of pages” of requested documents.
“We now know that some of our early efforts were insufficient, but they were important starting points. We believe that for more than three decades, Baltimore Archdiocese leaders have worked consistently and in good faith to address the problem of child sexual abuse .” abuse and respond appropriately to victim survivors and establish a culture that protects the most vulnerable.”
The statement does not specifically mention Maskell or speculation that he may be connected to the unsolved murders of Cesnik and/or Malecki.
Chris Eberhart is a crime and American news reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to chris.eberhart@fox.com or on twitter @ChrisEberhart48
