Mysterious Nun's Death in Baltimore Inspires Netflix Series 'The Keepers'
Almost 50 years after the mysterious death of Sister Catherine "Cathy" Cesnik, her case still remains unsolved.
Cesnik, 26, was a pretty and popular nun who was mysteriously murdered after going on a shopping trip to buy her sister's engagement gift, according to the Daily Mail. After she failed to return to her room on the evening of Friday, Nov. 7, 1969, her roommate, another nun, alerted the authorities.
Several dozen police officers and half a dozen dogs were immediately dispatched to Baltimore's southwest neighborhood to look for Cesnik, but they had no luck.
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Her body was first found after a female student from Cesnik's school, Archbishop Keough High School, was threatened by the school's spiritual counselor. The high school junior was taken to a garbage dump by Father Joseph Maskell to see Cesnik's body, whose face was already covered with maggots. "You see what happens when you say bad things about people?" the 30-year-old priest told her.
The 16-year-old girl was reportedly threatened to keep quiet about what she saw and the abuse allegedly being committed against her by the priest.
On Jan. 3, 1970, two months after Cesnik's disappearance, hunters finally discovered her frozen and mutilated body. During the autopsy, police authorities discovered that Cesnik was struck on the back of the head with either a hammer or brick. There were also strangulation marks on her neck.
Even though many accusing fingers have been pointed towards Father Maskell, police are still unable to tie him to her death since his DNA did not match the evidence found from the murder scene.
Former students of the Catholic school are insisting that Father Maskell was somehow involved in Cesnik's murder, since she reportedly planned to tell all about his sexual abuse. Maskell died in 2001.
Homicide detective Nick Giangrasso, who spent almost his entire career trying to crack the case, suspected that the Catholic Church had some connection in the cover-up of the case.
"The Catholic Church had a lot of input into the police department," he told The Huffington Post. "A lot of power. It looked too clean. It had to be somebody who knew her."
The car Cesnik used during the trip — a recently-purchased Ford Maverick — was found illegally parked and unlocked just a block from her apartment. The only evidence found inside the car were the buns she bought at the bakery.
Another suspect was a Jesuit priest who was allegedly romantically involved with Cesnik. He asked for her hand in marriage, but she turned him down to become a nun. A few days before her disappearance, the priest reportedly tried to ask her to marry him again.
However, the police were forced to rule him out because he had an iron-clad alibi during the night of her disappearance.
Netflix tried to get to the bottom of the murder in its seven-part documentary called "The Keepers," which features interviews with the victims of Father Maskell's alleged sexual abuse. However, they are as flummoxed as the authorities.
Documentary-maker Ryan White shared, "What we discovered during the filmmaking process is that everything wasn't as it appeared to be. There were a lot of layers that if you peeled them back went a lot deeper."
