It's one of those terrible truths of the world that bad things happen to good people,
and the case of Sister Catherine Cesnik is one of those examples. Cesnik was a teacher in Baltimore,
attempting to help students who were allegedly being abused. Her murder remains unsolved.
For all the press and notoriety that this case would get in the long run, it started
out exceedingly normal. According to the Baltimore Sun, as evening fell on November 7, 1969, Sister
Catherine Cesnik left her unassuming apartment, heading to the Edmondson Village Shopping Center
around 7:30 p.m. As far as her roommate, Sister Helen Russell Phillips, could tell,
she was headed out to buy an engagement gift for her sister, as well as run a few errands.
Another article put out by the Baltimore Sun tried to paint a clearer image of the evening.
At some point, probably the first thing on her trip, Cesnik stopped by a Catonsville bank and
cashed a check for $255, part of a pretty regular routine. Either she or Phillips
would always make the stop on every second Friday to cash their paychecks. After that,
it seemed like she paid a visit to a bakery inside the Hecht Company store in Edmondson Village.
But that's where things get hazy. No one really knows exactly what happened to Cesnik.
Phillips never saw her roommate again after she left that evening,
and even a store clerk couldn't confirm Cesnik's presence there that night.
As the next morning rolled around, Catherine Cesnik still hadn't returned to the apartment,
and her roommate became very concerned. Something was clearly wrong, and so, according to the
Baltimore Sun, Helen Russell Phillips called on the help of friends, Catholic priests Peter McKeon
and Gerry Koob. They got in touch with the local police, reporting that Cesnik had gone missing.
The news shook a lot of people, to put it lightly. Stories shared by Capital
Gazette showed that Cesnik was thought of fondly by all the people she'd worked with,
despite being a teacher at Western High School for only a couple months. Her co-workers had
kind words to say about her. Western's principal noted that she was an especially "fine teacher,"
while others pointed out that she was known for her compassion.
And it was the students who really benefited from her kind demeanor. She was reportedly warm
and energetic, always ready to engage with her students, writing musicals for them to perform
on stage, or inventing games to encourage them to teach each other new vocabulary.
Beyond just being a good teacher, she even let her students drop by her apartment on
weekends for a chat or a bit of music. It was no wonder that in the wake of the news,
the students were all quietly shocked, and worried that the police might stop looking for her.
The first clue in the disappearance was found pretty early on,
and her car ended up giving some insight into what happened but mostly brought more confusion.
The Baltimore Sun explained that Peter McKeon,
possibly with Sister Helen Phillips and Gerard Koob, found Sister Cathy's car unlocked around
4:40 a.m. on the day after her disappearance. The green 1970 Maverick had been parked illegally
near her apartment. A little more digging brought with it the fact that neighbors
had reportedly seen the car parked there since 10:30 p.m., though it had been in
her assigned parking spot behind the building just two hours earlier, per the Baltimore Sun.
Inside the car, a bakery box filled with buns sat on the front seat, probably from Edmondson
Village, along with some leaves and twigs. A few more branches were caught on the radio antenna,
while another twig was found stuck to the turn signal lever on the steering wheel,
with a piece of yellow thread caught onto it.
Really, the whole thing raises a lot of questions.
The car was parked illegally but only a block away from the apartment, and there were no
signs of struggle. So it probably wasn't the result of some random act of violence.
Instead, it made more sense if someone Cathy Cesnik already knew took her from the car.
With twigs and branches found in the car, police thought that they might have a pretty good lead,
according to the Baltimore Sun. It made sense that Sister Cathy Cesnik might have gone into some kind
of wooded area, and with Leakin Park nearby, the search started there. However, a search
of the park turned up nothing, and there was no lead on her whereabouts for almost two months.
According to Crime Museum, on January 3, 1970,
a hunter and his son found Catherine Cesnik's body at an informal garbage dump just outside
Baltimore, covered in snow and partially hidden by a nearby embankment.
The exact area couldn't actually be reached by car, meaning that she would've been forced
to walk there, or possibly carried. It's impossible to know what really happened.
Potential suspects should shed some light on a case,
but that wasn't the case in Cathy Cesnik's murder.
Gerry Koob was an initial person of interest, as he had been secretly romantically linked
to Cesnik at the time of her death. He later became a Methodist minister, but before that,
and before Cesnik had taken her final vows as a nun, he'd asked her to marry him.
She'd said no, but they still kept writing love letters and spending time together.
Shortly before her disappearance, he'd called her again, telling her that he was still in love with
her. He even offered to leave his position as a priest and marry her, if only she would agree.
"We were soulmates."
However, Koob had an alibi for the night of Cesnik's disappearance, as he'd been out at
a movie with another priest, and claimed not to know anything. Investigators weren't convinced and
thought that he knew more than he'd revealed, but the church forced them to stop searching.
Father A. Joseph Maskell also became a person of interest in Sister Cathy Cesnik's murder.
Outwardly, it seemed like there was little wrong with him. In his late 20s at the time
and described as pretty charismatic, he was reportedly easy to like, and worked as a
counselor with a psychology degree from Johns Hopkins. Many of the parents in the area would
regularly attend his masses and let him baptize their children. And when those kids got older,
Maskell would give them rides home or to appointments.
But that charming facade was shattered in 1992. Two women came forward anonymously at the time
with allegations of abuse. They were later named as Jean Wehner and Teresa Lancaster,
and said that Maskell and some of his associates had assaulted them while they were students
at Archbishop Keough High School, per the Baltimore Sun. It didn't take long
for Maskell to lose his position as a pastor, spending some time in a psychiatric hospital,
though he was released shortly after, apparently perfectly fit to work at another church.
By 1994, over a dozen allegations had been filed against Maskell by different women,
some of whom had been abused, and others who had managed to fend off his advances.
In general, Maskell allegedly targeted students who were struggling,
either academically or at home, calling them in for therapy sessions,
which led to manipulation and harrowing abuse. According to some accounts, Maskell also involved
his friends in the abuse, some of whom were reportedly fellow priests or even police officers.
In a school where a number of the teachers seemed to know that something wasn't right, but continued
to send students to Joseph Maskell at his request, Catherine Cesnik offered a light in a very dark,
twisted place. As reported by Huffpost, the nun became a savior figure to Maskell's victims,
and the publication compiled a number of stories from her former students.
While she was still working at Keough, she apparently had some idea of what Maskell was
doing, and when he called one of the students in for therapy, she would spin stories and make
excuses to protect them. Jean Wehner also added that, one day, Cesnik took her aside, just to ask
if the priests were hurting her. When Wehner could only nod in reply, Cesnik promised that she would
take care of it, though it's reported that Maskell did continue to abuse students after that, too.
Even after Cesnik left her job at Keough and took a position at Western, she still gave the girls a
safe space to talk. They were always invited to come to her apartment, where she checked
in on the situation regarding Maskell. One of the students was actually there to talk about Maskell
the night before Cesnik disappeared, only for Maskell himself to barge into the apartment. The
student let herself out right away but could tell that Maskell knew what was happening.
Joseph Maskell seemed to realize that the victims of his abuse would want to talk,
and that they were already talking to Catherine Cesnik, so he reportedly began making violent
threats. In fact, there are a lot of different stories about how Maskell threatened the girls
into silence, many involving violence and the implication that no-one would believe them.
"And Maskell, I could hear Maskell in the distance."
The most terrifying threat of all, though, took place when Maskell invited Wehner into his car,
only to take her to see Cesnik's dead body,
long before it was discovered. Per Wehner, with that came the ominous warning from Maskell,
"You see what happens when you say bad things about people?"
The words scared Wehner into silence for decades.
Given that Catherine Cesnik actively fought against Joseph Maskell's abuse by standing
up for the girls, as well as Maskell's propensity for making terrible threats,
it's easiest to assume that the motive for her murder was related. According to People,
Jean Wehner suspected that Cesnik had planned to go to the police, finally exposing Maskell
for what he was. In that case, Cesnik might've been killed to stop her revealing the truth.
It's just a theory, and even though it makes sense, the police can't prove it to be true.
But it's not the only theory. Inside Baltimore sheds some light on the idea that Cesnik's murder
wasn't a lone incident. There were actually six different deaths that might all be connected with
each other, which included three teenage girls, a teenage boy, Cesnik, and Joyce Malecki . All of
them took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s generally around the Baltimore area,
with many of the crime scenes and bodies sharing physical characteristics. But beyond that, all
of them had ties of some kind to Maskell, either working with him or attending churches where he
was a priest. Malecki's body was even found near Fort Meade, where Maskell was a military chaplain.
All six crimes are still unsolved, so technically, the similarities could just be coincidence,
but despite the lack of evidence, experience tells investigators that there might be
some connection. Ultimately, Maskell died in 2001, having never been charged with anything.
CNN reported in 2017 that police had the okay to exhume his body for DNA testing,
but even then, the DNA wasn't a match with what was found at the crime scene.
"The DNA of Father Joseph Maskell does not match evidence found at the scene."
There might have been more going on in this case than just bad luck.
Investigating a Catholic priest presented challenges, especially in Baltimore,
a predominantly Catholic city where priests regularly got away with crimes scot-free.
The Catholic Church seems to know how to clean up its messes in general,
even though a much wider scandal was revealed in Boston, which led to worldwide concerns. The
Boston Archdiocese had been regularly making private settlements, paying for silence when
it came to reports of abuse by priests. The scandals were always covered up by reassigning
the offending priests to new parishes or just saying they were "on sick leave."
"Some were simply moved from parish to parish."
Rather conveniently, they also couldn't find any other corroborating statements regarding Joseph
Maskell's abuse, even though Jean Wehner's lawyers had no trouble doing so. But Maskell's case was
complicated further by his ties to the police force through his work as a military chaplain,
and the suggestion that he invited officers to take part in his abuse.
Maybe that was why a homicide detective was told to drop the case in the 1970s,
and blocked from investigating because higher-ups were reportedly "protecting someone." He ignored
the order, only to be forced into an early retirement, according to Inside Baltimore.
Unfortunately, Catherine Cesnik's murder remains unsolved.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.