UNITED STATES
Washington Post
By Tom Jackman May 17
The unsolved slaying of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik in Baltimore in 1969 hit another dead end Wednesday when police learned that DNA from a long-deceased priest did not match crime scene evidence that Baltimore County cops have preserved for almost five decades.
In February, police exhumed the body of the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell, the former chaplain at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, where Cesnik had taught. Years after Cesnik disappeared in November 1969, and was discovered in the Lansdowne area of Baltimore County in January 1970, a number of women came forward and accused Maskell of sexually abusing them while he was at Keough. Two of the women sued Maskell, the high school and the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1994, but the suit was dismissed due to an expired statute of limitations. Maskell became a suspect in Cesnik’s death but denied any involvement to police. He died in 2001.
The death of the popular “Sister Cathy” is the subject of an upcoming documentary series, “The Keepers,” to be released Friday on Netflix.
Baltimore County police said Maskell’s DNA was sent to Bode Cellmark Forensics in Lorton, Va., to develop a DNA profile. The profile was compared with crime scene evidence and did not match, police said.
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