'The Keepers' TV Series Chronicles Priest's Abuse of High School Girls and Murder of Nun
"The Keepers," one of Netflix's highly successful shows, chronicles the ongoing investigation into the unsolved murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a nun teaching at a high school in Baltimore, Maryland. The 26-year-old English went missing on Nov. 7, 1969, and her body was found two months later in a garbage dump outside the city.
But the original true crime documentary isn't about Sister Cathy's mysterious death but the cover-up of her story. The nun was apparently threatening to expose a widespread child sex abuse case going on at the all-girls Archbishop Keough High School where she taught.
"There's the on-the-record public story of what happened to Sister Cathy and then there's the world beneath," a community member said on the series' trailer. The nun was bludgeoned to death with a hammer while her neck bore strangulation marks. Making things more sinister was the disappearance or murder of four other girls that time.
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Everything disturbing and criminal about the series led to one figure: Father A. Joseph Maskell, the school chaplain. The priest was highly influential in the Baltimore area, having served as chaplain for the Baltimore County Police, the Maryland State Police and the Maryland National Guard.
When evidence was mounting in 1994, Maskell fled to Ireland where he continued to say Mass for four years at St. Margaret's in Castlebridge village, Curracloe, County Wexford. Two of his Irish victims came forward recently, but the diocese there refused to release his files.
More than 30 women came forward and accused Maskell of molesting them. But the judge dropped the case the following year as it was filed beyond the three-year prescription period. The priest returned to the U.S. in 1998 when the Irish Church authorities discovered the allegations against him.
Maskell seemed untouchable at the time as he was said to be part of a sex abuse ring participated by several Baltimore police officers. "He was prostituting us," a victim, now aged 63, said. The priest died from a major stroke in Towson, Maryland on May 7, 2001 at the age of 62 without being brought to justice.
