UNITED STATES
chrisicisms
June 4, 2017 by Chris Williams
Few shows have provoked as much rage in me as Netflix’s “The Keepers.”
I started watching Netflix’s seven-part docuseries on Labor Day and finished it this past weekend. As a fan of true-crime podcasts and television shows, I found myself riveted by each part of this murder mystery, but also chilled and enraged at its depiction of Christianity perverted by lust and power. It’s essential viewing, but it’s not for the weak at heart.
Righting the wrongs of “Making a Murderer”
“The Keepers” is an attempt to solve the 1969 murder of a Baltimore nun. Sister Cathy Cesnik was a 26-year-old teacher who disappeared one night while out getting an engagement gift for her sister. Her body was found in the woods two months later. More than 40 years on, no one has been arrested or charged, and Sister Cathy’s story is one of the city’s most notorious cold cases.
In the 1990s, the case was reopened when a woman came forward with allegations of horrendous sexual abuse at the hands of the priest who oversaw the school. Even more shocking, the woman — who had repressed the memories for much of her life — claimed that the priest had taken her to the woods to view the nun’s body as a warning. Baltimore police re-opened the case and the woman sued the Baltimore archdiocese, but still, no arrests were made. “The Keepers” follows two women who have organized their own amateur investigation, aided by freelance journalists and a Facebook crowd that’s eager to provide whatever assistance they can. Over the course of seven episodes, “The Keepers” takes us through every nook and cranny of this case. And if it doesn’t give us enough information to have closure or certainty, it unfolds with enough theories and evidence to help us formulate our own idea of what might have happened that night.
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