Netflix’s new true-crime docuseries “The Keepers” asks the question “Who killed Sister Cathy?” — as in Cathy Cesnik, a 26-year-old nun who disappeared in Baltimore in 1969. (Her body was found tw♈o months later.)
That chilling tale took on real-woꦰrld stakes in February, when of a priest to take a DNA sample as part of ꦕtheir ongoing investigation into the unsolved homicide.
“I don’t think we ever set out to solve a murder,” says director Ryan White, who started working on the documentary in 2014. “I knew from the very beginning that the case was very cold — it was 45 years old. The institutions at the time — the archdiocese, the police departmen🧔t — had deliberately made sure that all of the information wasn’t out there. So I knew we had a huge challenge in that way.
“Now, three years later at the finish line, I would sa♛y I think it is completely reasonable and possible that 🧔this murder is solved.”
The seven-part “Keepers,” , looks into the mysterious death of Cesnik, who taught English at Archbishop Keough High School in southwest Baltimore.♎ Young and pretty, she was a favorite of students 𓆏at the all-girls Catholic school. But her murder remained out of the headlines until 1994, when a woman known as “Jane Doe” filed a $40 million lawsuit alleging rampant sexual abuse by the school’s chaplain, the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell — in which she made the explosive claim that she was shown Sister Cathy’s body as a warning not to blow the whistle.
Filed after the statute of limitations had expired, the case never went to trial (Jane Doe was only recently awarded a $50,000 settlement) and fell out of the spotlight. Then in November 2014, the victim revealed her real name, Jean Hargadon Wehner, on journalist Tom Nugent’s “” blog — which brought White into the stoꦰry via a family connection.
“It turned out that my mom and my aunt both knew Jane Doe from growing up [in Baltimore],” he says. “My aunt wa🧔s in her class at Keough. My mom had gone to prom with Jean’s older brother.”
White, who grew up Catholic in Atlanta, had his relatives connect him with Jean. From there he met two novice detectives — Keough alumni Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub, both retired grandmothers in their 60s — who to share information about their favorite teacher. The pair spent the past three years knocking on doors, taking oral histories at bars, c꧅old-calling people and digging up research at the Maryland State Archives, all of which White calls “invaluable” to the series.
“They hadn’t even talked since high school,” he says. “I don’t think they ever knew this was going to become this real grassroots movement. It was just two women who were compelled to fiඣnd answers before it was too late.”
In addition to Hoskins and Schaub, White talks to ot📖her abuse survivors, friends, relatives, journalists, government officials and community members. The Baltimore County Police Department — for whom Maskell also served as chaplain — participated in the series, though White was repeatedly stonewalled by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which only agreed to respond to writte🃏n requests.
So after years of the✨ abuse victims being silenced, White is heartened to finally see developments in the case, like exhuming Maskell (who died 💙in 2001) from his grave.
“I feel quite good that … they’re finally taking him seriously as a suspect,” he says.