Netflix show asks if US priest killed nun then fled to Wexford

By Pavel Barter
Sunday Times (UK)
May 14, 2017

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/netflix-show-asks-if-us-priest-killed-nun-then-fled-to-wexford-8wjdzq92m

Sr Catherine Cesnik was killed after challenging Maskell over the abuse of schoolgirls in Baltimore

A priest who fled the United States to live in Co Wexford during the 1990s following child abuse and murder allegations is the subject of a new Netflix documentary.

Fr Joseph Maskell is the subject of The Keepers, a documentary series released this week, in which it is alleged he killed a nun in Baltimore in the 1960s.

Baltimore county police recently exhumed the priest’s body in the US as part of an investigation into the killing of Sr Catherine Ann Cesnik.

It is understood Maskell, whose father was from Limerick, travelled to Wexford in 1994 after two women — Jean Wehner and Teresa Lancaster, known at the time as Jane Doe and Jane Roe — filed a $40m (€36.5m) civil lawsuit against him, ­alleging child abuse at Keough High School in Baltimore, where he had served as chaplain from 1967 to 1975.

“There was an attempted arrest,” said Tom Nugent, a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

“A policeman in the sex crimes unit went in the front door. Maskell went out the back door, got in a car, raced to the airport, and went to Ireland.”