MARYLAND
Fox 43
The exhumation of a Catholic priest’s body by Baltimore County Police could hold the key to solving the 47-year-old cold case of a murdered nun.
On February 28, police opened the grave of Rev. A. Joseph Maskell after securing an order from the state’s attorney, according to Elise Armacost, director of public affairs for Baltimore County Police.
Police took DNA samples from the corpse to check against a DNA profile developed from evidence taken in 1970 from the scene in Maryland where the badly decomposed body of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik had been found by a father and son out hunting. The 26-year-old nun had been missing for nearly two months.
In the decades since the nun’s killing and as DNA testing has become a vital investigative tool, Baltimore County police have compared the DNA of several other people as part of their investigation into the never-closed case, according to Armacost, but those tests did not match the DNA profile from 1970.
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