Murder of Catherine Cesnik

Catherine Anne Cesnik was born on November 17, 1942, in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was the eldest child of Joseph and Anna Omulac Cesnik.[3] Her paternal grandparents, John (Jan) and Johanna Tomec Česnik, were Slovenians who emigrated from Yugoslavia,[4] while her maternal grandfather, Joseph Omulac, came from Yugoslavia and maternal grandmother, Martha Hudok, came from Austria.[5] Cesnik had three siblings.

Cesnik attended St. Mary's School on 57th Street and St. Augustine High School, both in Lawrenceville. She was valedictorian of her Catholic high school class in 1960, where she had also been the May Queen and the president of the senior class and student council.

At the time she disappeared, Cesnik taught at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, Maryland, as a beloved drama and English teacher.[6] On November 7, 1969, she left the apartment she shared with Sister Helen Russell Phillips at the Carriage House Apartments, at 131 North Bend Road in Catonsville, en route to the Edmondson Village Shopping Center to purchase a gift at a jewellery store "Hecht's" for her sister's engagement.[7] Records indicate Cesnik cashed a paycheck at First National Bank in Catonsville that night and possibly made a purchase at Muhly's Bakery in Edmondson Village, since a box of bakery buns was found in the front seat of her car.[6] Cesnik's car, in muddy condition, was found by Russell's friends, priests Peter McKeon and Gerard J. Koob, illegally parked across from her apartment complex at 4:40 the next morning.[6] Residents at the apartment complex spotted Cesnik in her car at approximately 8:30 that night, and others spotted her car at the illegally parked location across the street around two hours later.[6]

Police searched the area immediately following Cesnik's disappearance, but did not find her. On January 3, 1970, her body was found by a hunter and his son in an informal landfill located on the 2100 block of Monumental Road, in a remote area of Lansdowne.[7] An autopsy performed by Deputy Medical Examiner Werner Spitz revealed that Cesnik died from an intracerebral hemorrhage following a fracture to her skull from a blow to her left temple by a blunt instrument. The case remains unsolved.

During Cesnik's tenure at Archbishop Keough High School, it is alleged that two of the priests, Fathers Joseph Maskell and E. Neil Magnus, were sexually abusing the girls at the school in addition to trafficking them to others.[8]

In 1995, Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner (née Hargadon), former students at Keough who claim to have been sexually abused by Maskell, filed a lawsuit against him, the school, gynecologist Christian Richter, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and Archbishop William H. Keeler. The trial court dismissed the action as time-barred by the statute of limitations. Plaintiffs appealed. A writ of certiorari was granted by the Maryland Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower court decision, ruling in part, "...that the mental process of repression of memories of past sexual abuse does not activate the discovery rule. The plaintiffs suits are thus barred by the statute of limitation."[9]

Wehner said that Cesnik once came to her and said gently, "Are the priests hurting you?" Both women have said that she was the only member of the school's staff who helped them and other girls abused by Maskell, et al., and have said that she was murdered prior to discussing the matter with the Archdiocese of Baltimore. However, there is currently no physical evidence linking Maskell to the murder. It was revealed in late 2016 that since 2011 the Archdiocese has paid off numerous settlements to Maskell's alleged victims.[10]

Wehner alleges that, two months before Cesnik's body was discovered, and only a day or two after Cesnik disappeared on November 1969, Maskell drove her to a wooded site near Fort Meade and showed her the body. Wehner claims to remember trying repeatedly to brush off the maggots crawling on Cesnik's face while frantically repeating the words, "Help me, help me." Her account was brought into question by scientific evidence showing that it would have been impossible for maggots to be alive at the relevant time of year. However, Spitz, who worked on the case, later confirmed that there had been maggots in both the victim's mouth and trachea when found. Meteorological records also reveal that temperatures during the week in question were warm enough for maggots to hatch. It is alleged that Maskell reportedly told Wehner, "You see what happens when you say bad things about people?"[1]

Several days later, on November 13, 1969, the body of Joyce Malecki, a 20-year-old woman who looked like Wehner, was discovered by "two hunters" in the same wooded location where Maskell had driven Wehner.[11] Cesnik's body was not found until January 3, 1970, and its discovery by "two hunters" was not in the wooded location near Fort Meade, but on the open hill trash dump of a small business property in Lansdowne.

In 2016, the Baltimore County Police Department (BCPD) reassigned the case due to retiring officers, prompting new interviews and further investigation into the alleged sexual abuse at Keough.[12] After attaining permission from the state's attorney's office, the BCPD exhumed the body of Maskell, who died of a major stroke in 2001, but did not find a DNA match to evidence from the crime scene.[13][14] Police spokeswoman Elise Armacost announced that this discovery does not exclude Maskell from being a suspect in the case.[13]

Netflix produced a seven-part documentary series about the case called The Keepers, which debuted on May 19, 2017.[15] The series features interviews with women who were Cesnik's students, with some who claim to have been sexually abused by Maskell and others.[16]

• Crime in Baltimore
• Deaths in 1970
• List of solved missing persons cases
• List of unsolved murders