The Keepers (2017) s01e07 Episode Script
The Conclusion
Some of these places I haven't been in 20 years.
Just see it in my memory.
But I don't know how it is.
I'm a little curious myself.
Let's start off Would you like to see the dental office? Dentistry is a very tough job.
A very tough job.
Well, I got the corner office here, guys.
That is my office.
Made a nice living out of it, wound up with three dental offices.
Uh, never bought a practice, I started from scratch.
Wound up with 12,000 patients.
Uh Yeah, it almost killed me.
I was a practicing dentist with a drug problem.
Great dentist with a drug problem.
Getting sober took about nine years.
And do I blame, uh, Maskell? Yes, I do.
Do I blame myself? Yes, I do.
I went to St.
Clement's.
I believe I started in 1958 uh, in first grade.
The summer between my seventh and eighth grade I was an altar boy.
Masses back in those days, in the summer, went six o'clock, seven o'clock, and eight o'clock, Monday through Friday.
They had a lot of Masses because the parish was a thriving parish.
So, I would sit, say, a six o'clock Mass or a seven o'clock Mass, and I'd have to I'd ride my bicycle down.
That's where I met Father Maskell for the first time.
Really got to Started to know the fellow.
By November of my eighth grade, he was driving me home.
He'd say, "Put the bike in the trunk.
I'm gonna drive you home.
" And we'd stop for a snowball.
I was the golden boy, I could do no wrong.
This is St.
Clement's Church over here.
Father Maskell was associate pastor.
Look, this was the classroom.
Here was a classroom for the seventh and eighth grade.
Father Maskell would come into my classroom and ask to talk to me, and he'd want to see me up at the rectory.
We're running up here.
This is the The old rectory.
And at first, it might have been once a week then it got to be where it was like two, three, uh, times a week.
And a lot of times I From lunch until the day ended, which I think was like 2:30, I wouldn't be back in class.
I'd be up at the rectory with Father Maskell.
Uh-uh.
Is that it right there? Unbelievable.
It's hard to recognize it.
It's changed.
Didn't change much.
If I had to bet the farm on it, I'd say that was his office right there, because I dashed up.
Is that where the abuse happened? Yes, yes, yes.
Father Maskell taught me how to drink and forget problems.
Father Maskell taught me how to, uh, take a drug if, uh, I wanted to forget about what was happening around me.
The first wine I drank was out of a chalice.
Okay.
And he said, "I have wine that's left over from Mass, can you take care of it for me?" Because, you know, I was altar boy.
That's where it That's how it all started.
I knew the young Maskell.
And as he got older, he got meaner, dirtier, and more evil.
So, if we get anything out of this conversation today, okay if the Catholic Church would have dealt with this properly back in '67, and they knew about it there would have been no murder.
We We wouldn't be here.
There you are.
- There's a Cesnik if I ever met one.
- Gerry.
Nice to see you.
- How are you? - Fine.
- I know.
- I am now.
Thank you for coming.
It just makes me wanna cry, the two of you getting together.
This just makes me wanna cry.
We've been talking about the ring.
I'm wondering if Do you have it with? I do.
Yeah.
The ring that I gave Cathy.
And I told them I could identify it.
That's it.
I have to tell you that that ring was on Cathy the day she died.
The inside is engraved in Greek.
Agape is the unconditional love, the characteristic supposedly of Christians.
That's what the ring says.
Learning all this about Cathy, I didn't know any of this.
I started going through my mother's things and I found all this.
Somebody murdered her.
They need to investigate this.
My visit to the police was not Did not bring me any closure.
It opened up more questions to me.
It was August 1969, she came home to Pittsburgh.
She wanted to explain why she was leaving Keough to those that she cared about and those who cared about her.
When Cathy came home, it was always so happy, and we would stay up all night laughing and talking, but she wasn't her happy-go-lucky self.
She definitely was sad.
And at the time, I I attributed some of this to the changes that were going on in her life.
Turns out, in the September before she died, she came to see me.
Because by then she found out that they were declining the experiment, and that the order put her in Well, you either go back into the convent, or you leave.
And I did know that she had to give an answer by By December 31st.
So, at the time she died, she had about six or seven more weeks in which to answer the ultimatum that she was given.
She said there's so much going on in my mind now.
I think the experiment was here.
- Mm-hm.
- I think Gerry was here.
And I think the abuse was here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She had been in the convent for so long that my parents were concerned, my dad especially, that she was gonna struggle with living out in the world, you know.
My dad said, "You don't pay bills.
You don't get a paycheck in the convent.
The world is a dangerous place and you don't understand that.
" And she said, "How do you know my world's not a dangerous place? How do you know there's not danger in what I'm doing now?" I questioned it for a time frame, and I kept thinking if she told me about the experiment, she would've told me about the abuse, but, um, the more I think about it now, she would have never told me.
She was very protective of me, being her younger sister, still being in college.
And I can imagine that heavy burden on her, 'cause Cathy never said she was gonna do something she didn't do.
If she told them she was gonna make it stop, she If that portion of all of this is accurate all of these girls can't all be telling a lie.
Cathy would have been working to make it stop, no doubt in my mind.
Still It's still a great puzzle to me.
Yes.
I mean, neither of us knew anything about this abuse stuff.
- This is the puzzle.
- As part of the context.
- And Russell - Until 1994.
- And what did Russell know? - Russell.
After Cathy died, Russ just wanted to be separated from anything related to convent life, related to Cathy.
She wanted a new life.
So, Russ left the convent, got married, and had two children.
I sold her a house, actually.
She moved out here to Carroll County, and we did a lot together.
I had many conversations with her, but it would never go in that direction, she wouldn't allow it.
And I would say, "What happened? Do you know more than you're saying? Why can't you talk about it?" And she'd say, "My life is in a different place.
That was my life before.
" That's what she'd say.
It was like, one day, she's gonna talk.
One day, it's gonna come out.
1997, I heard that she had cancer.
We stayed in touch.
I went to visit her in the hospital when she had surgeries and things like that.
A couple years pass, and it's 2001.
You know, the stories are out in papers and all that, and Maskell's name was being mentioned.
So, this friend of mine was working as a nurse at Stella Maris hospice, and she calls me up and said, "Pat, I want you to know that Father Maskell died this afternoon.
But don't tell anybody, I could lose my job.
" So, that evening, not listening to my friend, I called Russ.
That's the only person I called.
And I said, "Russ, I just want you to know that Father Maskell died this afternoon.
" And Russ's one remark was, "Well, he went to his grave with his secret.
" Somehow, Russ did feel that he was involved with Cathy's death.
And there was more to the story than I knew.
And then I get a phone call two days later from her husband saying that Russ died.
Then we get some, um, Saturday afternoon ice cream.
- Yeah.
- Mm-hm.
I don't tell her I put peanut butter right in it because this is more of the protein that I want her to get, instead of just ice cream.
I do the best I can.
I was feeling feelings about my mom.
This feeling of that 16-year-old behind that wall of lies, just saying, "Where were you?" You know, "Where were you?" How she has been there for me in so many ways, but how to let that be enough when she wasn't there for me when this was going on.
So, what I did what I asked Abbie if, um, I wrote something, would she post it.
"Hi, this is my first posting on this wonderful grassroots healing site.
As I care for my 88-year-old mother, I'm painfully aware of one of the many things robbed from me by Joseph Maskell.
He took, deliberately and methodically, my God-given right to a deep, trusting relationship with my mom, and her right to be there for me.
" The more that I am connecting to the part of me that survived after Cathy um the more I'm beginning to To touch the anger.
The anger pushes you forward and you start talking to people, and being in front of a camera, and you know You start to do things that put your feelings and thoughts out there for others to critique, you know.
When I look back now at all the different personalities that we've met, Jean stands out as someone who has consistently told the same story, and has, sort of, a sense of personal integrity.
She's taking her own insights and the implications of all this, and trying to put the pieces together.
But she's probably not willing to be definite about it until she's absolutely sure.
Brother Bob is still, to this day, faceless to me.
But my memory is beginning to flesh out more and more.
Brother Bob said to me that he knew Cathy Cesnik and that, um, she was confiding in him that she was going to the police about the abuse.
And he hit her, he didn't mean to kill her.
On top of repressing the memories, the experience was so traumatizing that it's pushed a lot of the identity of this person Any facial identity, that has not surfaced.
I do remember that he had markings on his abdomen.
It was a birthmark or it was a mole of some sort, right over on this side.
And he had a small incision on the right side of his abdomen.
I understand that people are going to wanna see if this one person, me, who remembers what I remember, can't remember a little more to get a little clearer, to get more of an identity to who that Brother Bob is.
But I can't force myself to remember anything else, and in all honesty, I don't know when and if that is surfacing.
Well, let me, um Just a little, Bob.
That's good for me.
I'll bet I can get it on my phone.
Yeah, I got it on my phone.
When Cathy went missing, Russell told me She said, "Cathy went shopping to get you something for your engagement.
" I thought, oh, my gosh, if we hadn't gotten engaged, you know You know how you think that? If I hadn't gotten engaged, she wouldn't have gone shopping, and she wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You know, which The wrong-place-wrong-time story again.
She left to go shopping.
Other than that, I knew nothing.
So, I didn't know if she'd died before she got to the store, or after the store, or anything.
The entire mall was checked by investigators from the city at the time in an attempt to locate a store that she may have gone into.
There was no indication they were able to find that she made this purchase.
Now, she could've made a cash purchase and, uh they just weren't able to locate it, but they never were able to make that determination whether she actually, um, made that purchase.
I saw the necklace yesterday for the first time.
And, um, in looking at it, the bell would symbolize a wedding, which makes sense, 'cause we had just gotten engaged the week before.
- Did you see this, Bob? - Yeah.
Let's see it.
Yeah, it does look like bell, doesn't it? It does look like a bell.
- It looks like it'd be appropriate.
- Yeah.
And And your birthstone.
So, I understand this birthstone is a peridot and that would be an August birthstone.
My husband's birthday is in August so, it could've symbolized his birthday.
You have to understand, Cathy was very, very happy for me that I chose Bob.
She really thought Bob would take care of me forever, and as a matter of fact, um, Bob had gone to Vietnam for a year and my sister wrote to him, because she was trying to establish a relationship with him.
If this is true, this would be so typical Cathy, because everything she did had a meaning and everything was deep.
So, that would've been Cathy.
Totally.
Um, Edgar, I wanted to show you these pictures.
You can flip through them.
Does that look familiar to you at all? No.
That's jewelry or something.
Mm-hm.
It's a necklace that you gave to your first wife for Christmas.
Do you remember giving that to her? Her birthstone was red.
So, why would you have gotten her a green birthstone, which is August? I don't have the slightest idea.
We know Sister Cathy was out buying a present for her sister.
And that, a month later, you gave this necklace to your wife.
Did you show it to Cathy's sister? Yeah, and Cathy's sister is wondering whether that might be her necklace, uh, because she knows her sister was out buying her an engagement present that night, and as you see in that necklace, it has a wedding bell it has a birthstone that is the same birthstone as the man that Sister Cathy's sister was marrying.
So, she thinks there might be some significance to that necklace, and she's wondering whether you might have gotten it from Sister Cathy that night.
Means nothing to me.
Did you encounter Sister Cathy that night? No.
Now, if people think that that was the necklace that Sister Cathy bought the night she disappeared, and you gave it to your first wife, do you understand why people are suspicious because of that? Mm-hm.
There is a police report indicating that when, uh, Sister Cesnik went missing, we have an eyewitness that saw a male driver driving Sister Cesnik's vehicle from the scene.
It appeared as though Sister Cesnik was trying to exit the vehicle on the passenger side, but she never got out of the vehicle.
At the time the vehicle was recovered, there was mud on the tires there was a branch inside the vehicle.
It was a twig, a small branch, and it would be consistent with the area where the body was found.
So, the driver would've been the one to drive from the area where the body was located back where the Carriage House was located, because he would've been the last person to operate the vehicle.
This might be urban legend, and I don't know if it's in the reports, but we've heard that, uh, there was indication that perhaps someone who drove with both of their feet might have driven the car at some point that night.
Does that ring any bells with you? After they located the vehicle, there was mud located, um, on the brake pedal but no mud recovered from the gas pedal, which may have led investigators to believe that the person that drove the vehicle, um, used two feet to, uh, operate the vehicle.
I'm just curious if by any chance you drive with both of your feet? What's that got to do with anything? I was just curious because whoever drove Cathy's car that night, based on the mud on the pedal, drove with two different feet.
I don't drive at all.
But back in the day? - Did you drive with two feet? - Yeah.
I had nothing to do with her disappearance, her murder or anything.
What about other suspects? We have talked to Edgar Davidson quite a few times, and he admitted that he is the person who called The Jerry Turner Show in the '70s to talk about evidence about the murder of Sister Cathy.
Are you able to verify or confirm whether he's ever been looked at? No.
I can't comment on anything we're looking at currently or any part of that investigation.
Some of the things I've commented on is because you knew about them already, and I can comment.
Then the other one is a neighbor of Sister Cathy's named Billy Schmidt, whose family we're working with, and they are, for various reasons, convinced that their family member, Billy, who lived across the hall from her, was involved.
As far as viable suspects, current suspects, I can't say anything regarding what we're doing or what we know about that.
I told detectives about it that came to see me in the '90s.
They were reopening the case.
And I've told them everything that I know about it just like I'm telling you.
I did ask them "I know you didn't have DNA back then, but I know you have DNA today.
Did you find any cigarette butts back there where her body was found? Maybe Salem?" I told them Bill smoked Salem, and they looked at each other, and the one said, "Yeah, we did find some cigarette butts.
" But I never heard how it turned out.
Well We I can't tell you what, but we have a piece of evidence that was recovered that we did develop DNA from.
And is that piece of evidence? Is that the cigarette that I've heard about? - Yeah.
- Yes.
Okay.
And would that cigarette most likely be linked to the crime? It could be.
The reason we didn't really wanna mention that is because we're still It's still open investigation, we still got a couple people we wanna look at.
Okay? Um Let's just say this, all the things you've commented on are all very interesting to me.
And all of those things will be re-looked at.
Any person in the past that was looked at, polygraphed, brought in for interviews, Koob, McKeon, Maskell, several other civilians We are gonna revisit a lot of these things.
And I do have hope that one day, we solve this case.
Uh So, this is Yeah, these are the Malecki papers, the old newspaper articles.
Four days after Sister Cathy was abducted, a young woman named Joyce Malecki was abducted and murdered.
"Understandably, police investigators and newspaper reporters were intensely interested in the possibility that there might be some connection between the two killings, but no such link between the murders has ever been established, according to FBI and Baltimore Police officials today.
" Growing up at a young age, we went to St.
Clement's Catholic Church and we went to Sunday school.
We would walk down to St.
Clement's, we'd go past 1st Avenue and that was the rectory where Father Maskell lived.
She was his parishioner.
The Maleckis lived two blocks from the rectory and church where Maskell was.
We knew that the rectory was there.
We knew Father Maskell was living there, and you would actually feel honored being of the Catholic religion to be that close to a priest.
The priest that they were investigating for Sister Catherine Cesnik's death, Priest Maskell, sent my mother a sympathy card when Joyce had her funeral.
No one, said the wise men of the FBI, has ever made a connection between Maskell and Malecki.
Here's the card signed by Father Maskell after Joyce Malecki is killed.
She was two blocks from the rectory, she was going to Mass and confession, and all the rest with Maskell, and, uh, if the FBI and its 4000 pages of stuff doesn't have this, I'd I'd feel even more disappointed in them than I already am.
FBI had jurisdictions over Joyce's death because her body was found in a wooded area at Fort Meade Military Base.
Tom Nugent had looked into it years ago, and he was told by the FBI that they determined it didn't have anything to do with the, you know, military or the government and so they didn't do an investigation.
They had handed the case over to Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel County Police said, "FBI never handed anything to us.
We have no records, no case.
We never investigated anything.
" Which left us saying, did anybody investigate her murder? I've been pursuing this for the last 15 years.
Once a year, cold cases are reviewed, but nothing's been done.
And my question is why? I mean, I go to bed at night or I wake up in the morning, and it's on my mind.
You know, who did this? It doesn't go away.
I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI, who confirmed they had about 4,000 pages of documents on Joyce.
It's been awaiting assignment to someone to review.
Okay.
So, in This was September 5th of 2014 I sent it in.
I began writing them a letter every four to six weeks saying, "Could you please update me in terms of an anticipated delivery of the documents?" I naively thought, "Well, in six weeks, we'll have this.
" "The FBI's FOIA program has identified potential response of information for your request and awaits assignment to a government information specialist for further processing.
" This one's from January 2015, so, five months or so after we sent it.
"Currently, your request is in the perfected backlog where your request is awaiting assignment to an analyst.
" There's a requirement on the federal law, how long an agency has to reply to your request, but there is no law about how long they have to actually send you the documents.
When it first happened, the FBI told us that they did find fingerprints in the car, but they said they didn't have a name to attach it to.
They also said they had forensic evidence from her nails, where she apparently put up a fight, but they didn't have anything to go on.
And that was one of the questions I asked about 15 years ago, "If you've got fingerprints, have you run them through the National Data Bank?" And they said no.
I said, "Well, if you got forensic evidence, have you done any DNA on it?" They said, "No.
" I asked, why? They said, "Two reasons, budget and manpower.
" And that's the excuse I was given, and led out the door.
"Dear FOIA Officer, this is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
" This one is dated February 2016.
"Thank you for your inquiry regarding the status of your FOIA request.
The current estimated date of completion for your request is April 2016.
" Weeks went by.
April came and went and I never heard anything.
I filed the original request in August of 2014.
- Coming in two and a half years.
- Seems like a hundred years ago.
And two and a half years and we have nothing.
- The Maleckis feel like - They've been abandoned.
Yeah.
Our sister Joyce was 20 years old, in the prime of her life, and her life being snatched away from her, it's a crime and it needs to be dealt with accordingly.
My parents have passed away, everybody is going to pass away at some point in time.
And when we pass away, then, they won't have to hear from anybody ever again.
They can put it in their cold case file and forget about it.
Somebody should talk to us.
If there's nothing, tell us that.
Just don't put us in a closet and hope we go away one day.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair, Madam Vice-Chair, members of the committee.
This bill was, uh Been back and forth in front of this body since about 2003.
For some reason, this bill has been interpreted to be an attack on religious organizations and it's died repeatedly.
People would ask, you know, 25 years, you know, they're grown people, right? I was in combat, I was out of military by the time I was 25, I'd served eight years.
Well, the problem with this is suppression.
People don't wanna acknowledge that it happened.
You've learned to live with the lie as a child, so you can live as an adult.
Growing up, I was in foster homes and I was adopted at some point by Tom and Millie Wilson.
He was a, uh He was a school teacher, you know, a Sunday school teacher, a Cub Scout leader, and he was a pedophile.
And so from, like, the ages of eight or nine until about 16, I endured a lot.
Why do we wait so long to come forward? I was 40 years old when I came forward.
It took me that amount of time to focus my life and make something of myself.
I'm 80 years old.
Anyway, I could have been a much better father and a much better husband, but anyway, it affected me a great deal.
I want you all to think about something.
Everybody has a secret that they don't want to admit.
Come up here and stand up here, and admit it to everybody, because that's what you're asking me to do and that's what you're asking a 25-year-old to do.
You're asking them to take the deepest, darkest secret they have and stand up in front of a jury, and tell them.
I can testify that there are many victims that were abused by Maskell who have not even begun to live.
They live in quiet solitude.
I ask you to please pass this bill.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you.
All right.
Uh Now we're turning to the opposition, Mr.
Murphy? My name is Kevin Murphy.
I'm an attorney.
I was asked by the Maryland Catholic Conference to testify because I've been involved in many, many cases, uh, involving I was surprised that the Catholic Church was coming out against this.
This wasn't me against the Church, it's what it's turned into.
Statute of limitations, they spare the courts from litigation of stale claims and they spare the citizen from being put to his defense after memories have faded, witnesses have died or disappeared, and the evidence has been lost.
When I sat there and watched Kevin Murphy talk, he did bring back memories in the Doe-Roe-Maskell case, interrogating me back in '94.
And today, he stands up there speaking as though he really cares about people that are abused.
Are there any other values that you think the statute of limitations serves other than for the weakness of human memory? Seven years is not a short statute of limitations.
It's a pretty long statute of limitations, but it protects from the alleged abuser continuing to abuse for the next 13 years.
If you change the statute, 13 years can go by before the person comes forward.
I stepped out at that point because I knew I was gonna be angry.
How dare them say something so arrogant, so transparently self-serving as, "Well, the victims, they We need to pressure them to come forward.
" Do you really? I am opposed to Senate Bill 68 because I believe our focus must be on providing outreach to survivors of child sexual abuse and preventing child sexual abuse from occurring.
I understand that there may be reasons that a survivor is not inclined to come forward earlier, but the reality is that the perpetrator often remains in a position of close access to children until an allegation is reported to the civil authorities and the employer.
They make it seem like it's the victim's fault, that if the victim doesn't step up by the age of 25, then they're the ones They're the ones to blame.
Now, that's every abuser's line, isn't it? "This is your fault.
" I don't need anybody to remind me that me not speaking up may have caused a lot of other victims.
Yeah.
That's utterly disgusting.
We have also reached settlement agreements with many survivors, even though their claims are time-barred and we have no legal obligation to do so.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
That concludes the hearing on Senate Bill 668.
That concludes the hearings for today.
Good morning.
I'm here to file some bills.
A bill can die without ever being voted on because the chairman says so.
This is gonna end up costing me my political career.
This interview might be the end of me being a delegate, pretty sure.
I'll tell you that Senator Mike Miller, who runs the Senate, and Delegate Vallario, do not let this bill come to a vote, because they know if it came to a vote, it would pass.
I mean, I know because I've been told, specifically.
Joe has told me the Church has contacted him and said this bill can't pass.
They don't want that bill out, so it doesn't get a vote.
Beyond the old separation of church and state doctrine, there should be something about this that has you go, "Wait a minute.
" Stories of abuse coming from people who attended a Baltimore Catholic high school.
The archdiocese now paying those victims.
This all centers on a priest who died in 2001, Father Joseph Maskell.
Now, at least a dozen victims have just received settlements from the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Our desire would be that it never happened to begin with but short of being able to undo that, uh, the best we can do is try to bring them some healing.
When you're trying to make your life and your suffering mean something, but it's after the age of the statute of limitations has been passed, sometimes the only the thing you see that you have left is mediation because you have been told you can't go through the court, you can stand on the street corner and wave out a sign, you're not gonna change anything, so at least come in and talk to us.
"We'll offer you something.
" I still have a hard time to, um, come here and be anywhere near the archdiocese.
I hope that you really don't think that the survivors of Joseph Maskell, at the ages we are, are really coming here for the little bit of compensation that you're giving.
But having the opportunity to say these things, it's more important to me than, um, anything else that pertains to the archdiocese.
How this impacted on me? I live small.
I can't go out beyond my boundaries.
The archdiocese had an opportunity back in 1992, '93, '94, to do the right thing and to help not just me, but, I am sure, many other Catholics, to know that they were not alone.
And instead I still feel very alone.
The fact the Catholic Church has taken on the role as not only being the abuser but also the savior, it's a dichotomy.
They can't explain it.
You can't You cannot lay those side-by-side.
It can't be them to solve this problem, it must be the government that intercedes.
Whether you believe in little government or bigger, you must understand that we do have a role.
We're the ones that make sure that the citizens at large are taken care of.
It is only the government that can step up and hold them accountable.
Come here, you little razzmatazz.
Over here.
You little rascal, come on, you got company.
We got company.
Get Come on, you rascal.
Man, if I'm gonna show you that That's me, that's my brother.
We were both going to St.
Clement's at the time.
Again, I was the golden boy.
You know, that meant my shit didn't stink, uh, is what it meant.
Now, where I made the mistake was I told some of my friends, "You gotta watch Father Maskell.
" I didn't want the same thing to happen to them.
And he just walked into the classroom.
Came over to me and he grabbed me by my hair and I'm telling you, I thought he was gonna pull my hair out my head.
He lifted me right out of that chair and said, "I wanna see your ass in the rectory now.
" And he says, "Listen, you little motherfucker.
If I hear one more thing about you talking about me, I'm gonna make sure you don't graduate.
" He started making my life miserable.
Tossed me off the basketball team, tossed me off the baseball team.
So, I was kicked out of CYO.
I was I wasn't a golden boy anymore.
I I now was in over my head.
I had to go home and tell my mother.
I had to go home and tell my mother.
And my mother, she wasn't one to be fooled with, especially with the kids.
You know, "Don't go messing with my kids.
" And this is for a fact, I know, in May of '67, the Archdiocese of Baltimore became aware they had a sickie on their hands because my mother went down to the archdiocese, straight to the top.
"Father Maskell is abusing my eighth grade son.
" A day or two later I get a phone call from the pastor of St.
Clement's, Father Collopy.
And I can remember this conversation.
He got on the phone and said, "Charlie, listen.
I'm just calling.
You're back in the CYO.
You're back on the baseball team.
Father Maskell is no longer here at St.
Clements, he's been transferred.
" So, they transferred Maskell to Keough.
So, I wanted to tell you a little bit about Charles Franz.
- You know who that is? - Mm, say.
Tell me.
He was a boy at St.
Clement's, Maskell was abusing him.
- Okay.
- So, he went home and he told his mom and says, "I know in May of 1967, my mom went down to the archdiocese and" - 1967? - Yeah.
That it led to disciplinary action on Maskell, and Maskell being sent from St.
Clement's to Archbishop Keough.
- Wow.
- And then particularly relevant to you is something Charles told us happened in the 1990s.
I'll tell you the story in the '90s.
I was a practicing dentist.
One day, a lady comes in as a patient.
She says, "The archdiocese is trying to get a hold of you.
" I said, "What?" Evidently, there was a couple ladies from Keough who were suing the Catholic Church.
And so we arranged a meeting and we met at my office.
And it was myself and my wife two canon lawyers, plus a priest, Monsignor Malooly.
He started off with this, he said, "I appreciate you meeting with us.
Let me tell you how important this is.
If Archbishop Keeler was not in Rome he'd be here.
He'd be here tonight.
" And we had I bet you it was a two, two-and-a-half-hour conversation about Father Maskell.
I hate to say Father 'cause he really wasn't a father.
You know, I And they were very interested in the story and I told them about Maskell being transferred, and they knew it all.
They knew it all.
And then at the end Monsignor Malooly says to me "Well, what do you want, Charlie?" I said, "Excuse me, Father?" He said, "What do you want? You want a boat?" "Do I want a boat? No, I don't want a boat.
In fact, I got three boats.
" 'Cause I had three boats.
Heh.
And then I said, "Father, I didn't ask you to come here.
You asked me to come here.
You know, I I I didn't know anything about this.
I don't want a boat.
I'll tell you what.
What I would Would like to see, just do what's right.
Just do what's right.
" We left, with you know, "Perhaps we'll get together again," and And I never heard from him again.
Un-freaking-believable.
This Monsignor Malooly back in '93, when the family and the friends sent out letters to everybody anonymously, um, put an ad in a paper.
Well, one of the letters that came through was a letter from the archdiocese.
"To the extent you obtain any information, it is my sincere hope that you will advise me so that appropriate action may be taken by the archdiocese to protect individuals from potential harm.
" From Monsignor Francis Malooly.
That was the guy who wrote that letter? Wow.
Those fuckers! My God! See, see how do you? I I don't know Charles but he is a legitimate corroboration for me.
I had the letters from Richard Way saying, you know, "We can't corroborate any of this.
It's all about corroboration.
" Corroboration, corroboration, corroboration.
"Have somebody come forward who says that they know that this really happened.
" And they had somebody right there.
Amazing.
We've asked for the archdiocese to participate, to go on camera and give us their version of the story of Maskell.
Every time, they denied something on camera and, uh And so what they did agree to was to give us written responses to written Questions.
So, we finally got the responses from them.
Well, before we Let me preface this.
Am I gonna be pissed off here? I don't know.
Okay, okay.
- So, we asked them questions.
- Okay.
So, I'll read them to you as the numbers, and then I'll read you the answers.
- Okay.
- So, question number one.
"Was Jane Doe, Jean Wehner, the first person to come forward with allegations of abuse against Father Maskell?" The archdiocese's answer: "Yes.
Archdiocesan files do not reflect any kind of abuse allegation against Maskell before Jane Doe came forward in 1992.
" That's a shame.
That's a shame.
Question number two.
"How and when did the Archdiocese first hear allegations of abuse against Father Maskell?" The archdiocese's answer: "See answer to number one.
" Hmm.
They're lying.
They're lying.
Of course there was allegations.
Question number three.
"Were any disciplinary interventions made against Father Maskell prior to 1992?" The archdiocese's answer: "No.
" That's it, just "no"? This is disgusting.
This is disgusting.
He's saying nothing happened before me, so And Charles is saying, "Oh, no, definitely, it did.
" If you start saying things like, "That never happened.
" What you're calling me is a liar.
How about the meeting with Malooly? What did that concern? I'd love to hear the answer.
They knew my mother contacted the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
They knew why Maskell was asked to leave St.
Clement's in May of '67 and put at Keough.
They knew that.
I guess that, you know, buddy, there are lies and there are lies, okay? You wanna deal with that bullshit, you might be able to get away with it, okay? And that's a lie.
Man.
I'm telling you and especially right after I finished up this damn mediation and they pick and pull with every little tiny penny And they act like what you went through, they care about, and they could give two shits, really.
And some part of this is really squelching people's anger, and people's righteous anger, and people's need for you to make things public and stop acting like it's That That we're invisible.
We're not invisible.
Okay, here's the letter.
"Dear Seton Keough Alumnae and Friends, it is with a heavy heart that I sit and write this November message.
As I am sure you have heard, Seton Keough will be closing its doors in June.
" Many Keough graduates are glad to see the circle closed, the doors shut.
This piece of history destroyed.
I wasn't particularly a conspiracy theorist, as I think of it, at first.
I was just interested in who hurt Cathy.
But the abuse angle of this just took off running and grew and grew and grew.
I share the pain of my classmates, who lived through some horrendous years.
At night when I can't sleep and I I say, "If I think about this a little harder, I can figure this out," um, at 3 a.
m.
It seems like even when I try to look at her murder as the work of a random lone wolf, the abuse issues always come back in.
How are you? I'm so happy to see you.
Jane Doe was led to believe that she was the only one.
If Maskell had been nailed the first time the abuse was reported, then how do we even know how many people could have been saved? I personally know of 35 names of abuse victims of Joseph Maskell.
Some aren't even living anymore.
There were suicides, alcoholism, drug addiction.
And what happened to them set their fate.
If somebody had listened how many other lives could've been saved? Cathy would be here.
She would still be here.
"Some people meet death With open arms And thank God their time has come Others beg to be spared For just one more day Saying there's much to be done But if we, before performing an act Would stop and think of death Of death, of judgment And of all such things I'm sure we would do our best So that when our time comes, we may say: 'Take me, Lord, without delay'" She was 16 when she wrote that poem.
Cathy's life, Cathy's death and this abuse this is all connected.
These girls have lived with this all of their life.
I've lived with the loss of Of My best friend, my sister, all my life and I will carry that.
But they also have pain they are carrying.
And there needs to be a world, there needs to be a place that we live in, where people wanna see something done about that.
Whoever murdered her has gotten away with it, and she's never gotten a bit of justice.
It has been almost 50 years, since Cathy's murder, but I do think it'll be solved.
I won't rest.
Mm-mm.
Can we find justice? Can justice just be acknowledged from the community instead of waiting for the stamp of approval from the systems that we usually get it from? That's what the state is supposed to be doing.
We can't have you be un-robbed or un-raped or un-shot.
We can't un-ring those bells.
What we can do is hold people accountable.
For many, many, many years, I didn't remember anything, and one of the first things that I started remembering was Cathy Cesnik.
This woman, she died to help stop what was going on over there.
And because of the Justice for Cathy group, because of Cathy's sister, um, having the courage to come into this to ask questions and to kind of find her own peace, I'm finding another layer of that closure where I can say, "Okay.
" You can't bury the truth so deep it doesn't come up.
I'm ready.
If I could speak for myself and maybe others, this is the opportunity.
It's like a little crack and I personally feel that what I'm doing, facing my fear, is coming up to the crack and saying, "Hello, do you know we're here? Is anyone out there?" And it's still silent.
But we're hearing each other because we're all coming up to the crack.
And what's happening is, is we're bumping into each other, coming to the crack.
And before you know it, the pressure of that voice seeping through the crack is going to shatter it.
Just see it in my memory.
But I don't know how it is.
I'm a little curious myself.
Let's start off Would you like to see the dental office? Dentistry is a very tough job.
A very tough job.
Well, I got the corner office here, guys.
That is my office.
Made a nice living out of it, wound up with three dental offices.
Uh, never bought a practice, I started from scratch.
Wound up with 12,000 patients.
Uh Yeah, it almost killed me.
I was a practicing dentist with a drug problem.
Great dentist with a drug problem.
Getting sober took about nine years.
And do I blame, uh, Maskell? Yes, I do.
Do I blame myself? Yes, I do.
I went to St.
Clement's.
I believe I started in 1958 uh, in first grade.
The summer between my seventh and eighth grade I was an altar boy.
Masses back in those days, in the summer, went six o'clock, seven o'clock, and eight o'clock, Monday through Friday.
They had a lot of Masses because the parish was a thriving parish.
So, I would sit, say, a six o'clock Mass or a seven o'clock Mass, and I'd have to I'd ride my bicycle down.
That's where I met Father Maskell for the first time.
Really got to Started to know the fellow.
By November of my eighth grade, he was driving me home.
He'd say, "Put the bike in the trunk.
I'm gonna drive you home.
" And we'd stop for a snowball.
I was the golden boy, I could do no wrong.
This is St.
Clement's Church over here.
Father Maskell was associate pastor.
Look, this was the classroom.
Here was a classroom for the seventh and eighth grade.
Father Maskell would come into my classroom and ask to talk to me, and he'd want to see me up at the rectory.
We're running up here.
This is the The old rectory.
And at first, it might have been once a week then it got to be where it was like two, three, uh, times a week.
And a lot of times I From lunch until the day ended, which I think was like 2:30, I wouldn't be back in class.
I'd be up at the rectory with Father Maskell.
Uh-uh.
Is that it right there? Unbelievable.
It's hard to recognize it.
It's changed.
Didn't change much.
If I had to bet the farm on it, I'd say that was his office right there, because I dashed up.
Is that where the abuse happened? Yes, yes, yes.
Father Maskell taught me how to drink and forget problems.
Father Maskell taught me how to, uh, take a drug if, uh, I wanted to forget about what was happening around me.
The first wine I drank was out of a chalice.
Okay.
And he said, "I have wine that's left over from Mass, can you take care of it for me?" Because, you know, I was altar boy.
That's where it That's how it all started.
I knew the young Maskell.
And as he got older, he got meaner, dirtier, and more evil.
So, if we get anything out of this conversation today, okay if the Catholic Church would have dealt with this properly back in '67, and they knew about it there would have been no murder.
We We wouldn't be here.
There you are.
- There's a Cesnik if I ever met one.
- Gerry.
Nice to see you.
- How are you? - Fine.
- I know.
- I am now.
Thank you for coming.
It just makes me wanna cry, the two of you getting together.
This just makes me wanna cry.
We've been talking about the ring.
I'm wondering if Do you have it with? I do.
Yeah.
The ring that I gave Cathy.
And I told them I could identify it.
That's it.
I have to tell you that that ring was on Cathy the day she died.
The inside is engraved in Greek.
Agape is the unconditional love, the characteristic supposedly of Christians.
That's what the ring says.
Learning all this about Cathy, I didn't know any of this.
I started going through my mother's things and I found all this.
Somebody murdered her.
They need to investigate this.
My visit to the police was not Did not bring me any closure.
It opened up more questions to me.
It was August 1969, she came home to Pittsburgh.
She wanted to explain why she was leaving Keough to those that she cared about and those who cared about her.
When Cathy came home, it was always so happy, and we would stay up all night laughing and talking, but she wasn't her happy-go-lucky self.
She definitely was sad.
And at the time, I I attributed some of this to the changes that were going on in her life.
Turns out, in the September before she died, she came to see me.
Because by then she found out that they were declining the experiment, and that the order put her in Well, you either go back into the convent, or you leave.
And I did know that she had to give an answer by By December 31st.
So, at the time she died, she had about six or seven more weeks in which to answer the ultimatum that she was given.
She said there's so much going on in my mind now.
I think the experiment was here.
- Mm-hm.
- I think Gerry was here.
And I think the abuse was here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She had been in the convent for so long that my parents were concerned, my dad especially, that she was gonna struggle with living out in the world, you know.
My dad said, "You don't pay bills.
You don't get a paycheck in the convent.
The world is a dangerous place and you don't understand that.
" And she said, "How do you know my world's not a dangerous place? How do you know there's not danger in what I'm doing now?" I questioned it for a time frame, and I kept thinking if she told me about the experiment, she would've told me about the abuse, but, um, the more I think about it now, she would have never told me.
She was very protective of me, being her younger sister, still being in college.
And I can imagine that heavy burden on her, 'cause Cathy never said she was gonna do something she didn't do.
If she told them she was gonna make it stop, she If that portion of all of this is accurate all of these girls can't all be telling a lie.
Cathy would have been working to make it stop, no doubt in my mind.
Still It's still a great puzzle to me.
Yes.
I mean, neither of us knew anything about this abuse stuff.
- This is the puzzle.
- As part of the context.
- And Russell - Until 1994.
- And what did Russell know? - Russell.
After Cathy died, Russ just wanted to be separated from anything related to convent life, related to Cathy.
She wanted a new life.
So, Russ left the convent, got married, and had two children.
I sold her a house, actually.
She moved out here to Carroll County, and we did a lot together.
I had many conversations with her, but it would never go in that direction, she wouldn't allow it.
And I would say, "What happened? Do you know more than you're saying? Why can't you talk about it?" And she'd say, "My life is in a different place.
That was my life before.
" That's what she'd say.
It was like, one day, she's gonna talk.
One day, it's gonna come out.
1997, I heard that she had cancer.
We stayed in touch.
I went to visit her in the hospital when she had surgeries and things like that.
A couple years pass, and it's 2001.
You know, the stories are out in papers and all that, and Maskell's name was being mentioned.
So, this friend of mine was working as a nurse at Stella Maris hospice, and she calls me up and said, "Pat, I want you to know that Father Maskell died this afternoon.
But don't tell anybody, I could lose my job.
" So, that evening, not listening to my friend, I called Russ.
That's the only person I called.
And I said, "Russ, I just want you to know that Father Maskell died this afternoon.
" And Russ's one remark was, "Well, he went to his grave with his secret.
" Somehow, Russ did feel that he was involved with Cathy's death.
And there was more to the story than I knew.
And then I get a phone call two days later from her husband saying that Russ died.
Then we get some, um, Saturday afternoon ice cream.
- Yeah.
- Mm-hm.
I don't tell her I put peanut butter right in it because this is more of the protein that I want her to get, instead of just ice cream.
I do the best I can.
I was feeling feelings about my mom.
This feeling of that 16-year-old behind that wall of lies, just saying, "Where were you?" You know, "Where were you?" How she has been there for me in so many ways, but how to let that be enough when she wasn't there for me when this was going on.
So, what I did what I asked Abbie if, um, I wrote something, would she post it.
"Hi, this is my first posting on this wonderful grassroots healing site.
As I care for my 88-year-old mother, I'm painfully aware of one of the many things robbed from me by Joseph Maskell.
He took, deliberately and methodically, my God-given right to a deep, trusting relationship with my mom, and her right to be there for me.
" The more that I am connecting to the part of me that survived after Cathy um the more I'm beginning to To touch the anger.
The anger pushes you forward and you start talking to people, and being in front of a camera, and you know You start to do things that put your feelings and thoughts out there for others to critique, you know.
When I look back now at all the different personalities that we've met, Jean stands out as someone who has consistently told the same story, and has, sort of, a sense of personal integrity.
She's taking her own insights and the implications of all this, and trying to put the pieces together.
But she's probably not willing to be definite about it until she's absolutely sure.
Brother Bob is still, to this day, faceless to me.
But my memory is beginning to flesh out more and more.
Brother Bob said to me that he knew Cathy Cesnik and that, um, she was confiding in him that she was going to the police about the abuse.
And he hit her, he didn't mean to kill her.
On top of repressing the memories, the experience was so traumatizing that it's pushed a lot of the identity of this person Any facial identity, that has not surfaced.
I do remember that he had markings on his abdomen.
It was a birthmark or it was a mole of some sort, right over on this side.
And he had a small incision on the right side of his abdomen.
I understand that people are going to wanna see if this one person, me, who remembers what I remember, can't remember a little more to get a little clearer, to get more of an identity to who that Brother Bob is.
But I can't force myself to remember anything else, and in all honesty, I don't know when and if that is surfacing.
Well, let me, um Just a little, Bob.
That's good for me.
I'll bet I can get it on my phone.
Yeah, I got it on my phone.
When Cathy went missing, Russell told me She said, "Cathy went shopping to get you something for your engagement.
" I thought, oh, my gosh, if we hadn't gotten engaged, you know You know how you think that? If I hadn't gotten engaged, she wouldn't have gone shopping, and she wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You know, which The wrong-place-wrong-time story again.
She left to go shopping.
Other than that, I knew nothing.
So, I didn't know if she'd died before she got to the store, or after the store, or anything.
The entire mall was checked by investigators from the city at the time in an attempt to locate a store that she may have gone into.
There was no indication they were able to find that she made this purchase.
Now, she could've made a cash purchase and, uh they just weren't able to locate it, but they never were able to make that determination whether she actually, um, made that purchase.
I saw the necklace yesterday for the first time.
And, um, in looking at it, the bell would symbolize a wedding, which makes sense, 'cause we had just gotten engaged the week before.
- Did you see this, Bob? - Yeah.
Let's see it.
Yeah, it does look like bell, doesn't it? It does look like a bell.
- It looks like it'd be appropriate.
- Yeah.
And And your birthstone.
So, I understand this birthstone is a peridot and that would be an August birthstone.
My husband's birthday is in August so, it could've symbolized his birthday.
You have to understand, Cathy was very, very happy for me that I chose Bob.
She really thought Bob would take care of me forever, and as a matter of fact, um, Bob had gone to Vietnam for a year and my sister wrote to him, because she was trying to establish a relationship with him.
If this is true, this would be so typical Cathy, because everything she did had a meaning and everything was deep.
So, that would've been Cathy.
Totally.
Um, Edgar, I wanted to show you these pictures.
You can flip through them.
Does that look familiar to you at all? No.
That's jewelry or something.
Mm-hm.
It's a necklace that you gave to your first wife for Christmas.
Do you remember giving that to her? Her birthstone was red.
So, why would you have gotten her a green birthstone, which is August? I don't have the slightest idea.
We know Sister Cathy was out buying a present for her sister.
And that, a month later, you gave this necklace to your wife.
Did you show it to Cathy's sister? Yeah, and Cathy's sister is wondering whether that might be her necklace, uh, because she knows her sister was out buying her an engagement present that night, and as you see in that necklace, it has a wedding bell it has a birthstone that is the same birthstone as the man that Sister Cathy's sister was marrying.
So, she thinks there might be some significance to that necklace, and she's wondering whether you might have gotten it from Sister Cathy that night.
Means nothing to me.
Did you encounter Sister Cathy that night? No.
Now, if people think that that was the necklace that Sister Cathy bought the night she disappeared, and you gave it to your first wife, do you understand why people are suspicious because of that? Mm-hm.
There is a police report indicating that when, uh, Sister Cesnik went missing, we have an eyewitness that saw a male driver driving Sister Cesnik's vehicle from the scene.
It appeared as though Sister Cesnik was trying to exit the vehicle on the passenger side, but she never got out of the vehicle.
At the time the vehicle was recovered, there was mud on the tires there was a branch inside the vehicle.
It was a twig, a small branch, and it would be consistent with the area where the body was found.
So, the driver would've been the one to drive from the area where the body was located back where the Carriage House was located, because he would've been the last person to operate the vehicle.
This might be urban legend, and I don't know if it's in the reports, but we've heard that, uh, there was indication that perhaps someone who drove with both of their feet might have driven the car at some point that night.
Does that ring any bells with you? After they located the vehicle, there was mud located, um, on the brake pedal but no mud recovered from the gas pedal, which may have led investigators to believe that the person that drove the vehicle, um, used two feet to, uh, operate the vehicle.
I'm just curious if by any chance you drive with both of your feet? What's that got to do with anything? I was just curious because whoever drove Cathy's car that night, based on the mud on the pedal, drove with two different feet.
I don't drive at all.
But back in the day? - Did you drive with two feet? - Yeah.
I had nothing to do with her disappearance, her murder or anything.
What about other suspects? We have talked to Edgar Davidson quite a few times, and he admitted that he is the person who called The Jerry Turner Show in the '70s to talk about evidence about the murder of Sister Cathy.
Are you able to verify or confirm whether he's ever been looked at? No.
I can't comment on anything we're looking at currently or any part of that investigation.
Some of the things I've commented on is because you knew about them already, and I can comment.
Then the other one is a neighbor of Sister Cathy's named Billy Schmidt, whose family we're working with, and they are, for various reasons, convinced that their family member, Billy, who lived across the hall from her, was involved.
As far as viable suspects, current suspects, I can't say anything regarding what we're doing or what we know about that.
I told detectives about it that came to see me in the '90s.
They were reopening the case.
And I've told them everything that I know about it just like I'm telling you.
I did ask them "I know you didn't have DNA back then, but I know you have DNA today.
Did you find any cigarette butts back there where her body was found? Maybe Salem?" I told them Bill smoked Salem, and they looked at each other, and the one said, "Yeah, we did find some cigarette butts.
" But I never heard how it turned out.
Well We I can't tell you what, but we have a piece of evidence that was recovered that we did develop DNA from.
And is that piece of evidence? Is that the cigarette that I've heard about? - Yeah.
- Yes.
Okay.
And would that cigarette most likely be linked to the crime? It could be.
The reason we didn't really wanna mention that is because we're still It's still open investigation, we still got a couple people we wanna look at.
Okay? Um Let's just say this, all the things you've commented on are all very interesting to me.
And all of those things will be re-looked at.
Any person in the past that was looked at, polygraphed, brought in for interviews, Koob, McKeon, Maskell, several other civilians We are gonna revisit a lot of these things.
And I do have hope that one day, we solve this case.
Uh So, this is Yeah, these are the Malecki papers, the old newspaper articles.
Four days after Sister Cathy was abducted, a young woman named Joyce Malecki was abducted and murdered.
"Understandably, police investigators and newspaper reporters were intensely interested in the possibility that there might be some connection between the two killings, but no such link between the murders has ever been established, according to FBI and Baltimore Police officials today.
" Growing up at a young age, we went to St.
Clement's Catholic Church and we went to Sunday school.
We would walk down to St.
Clement's, we'd go past 1st Avenue and that was the rectory where Father Maskell lived.
She was his parishioner.
The Maleckis lived two blocks from the rectory and church where Maskell was.
We knew that the rectory was there.
We knew Father Maskell was living there, and you would actually feel honored being of the Catholic religion to be that close to a priest.
The priest that they were investigating for Sister Catherine Cesnik's death, Priest Maskell, sent my mother a sympathy card when Joyce had her funeral.
No one, said the wise men of the FBI, has ever made a connection between Maskell and Malecki.
Here's the card signed by Father Maskell after Joyce Malecki is killed.
She was two blocks from the rectory, she was going to Mass and confession, and all the rest with Maskell, and, uh, if the FBI and its 4000 pages of stuff doesn't have this, I'd I'd feel even more disappointed in them than I already am.
FBI had jurisdictions over Joyce's death because her body was found in a wooded area at Fort Meade Military Base.
Tom Nugent had looked into it years ago, and he was told by the FBI that they determined it didn't have anything to do with the, you know, military or the government and so they didn't do an investigation.
They had handed the case over to Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel County Police said, "FBI never handed anything to us.
We have no records, no case.
We never investigated anything.
" Which left us saying, did anybody investigate her murder? I've been pursuing this for the last 15 years.
Once a year, cold cases are reviewed, but nothing's been done.
And my question is why? I mean, I go to bed at night or I wake up in the morning, and it's on my mind.
You know, who did this? It doesn't go away.
I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI, who confirmed they had about 4,000 pages of documents on Joyce.
It's been awaiting assignment to someone to review.
Okay.
So, in This was September 5th of 2014 I sent it in.
I began writing them a letter every four to six weeks saying, "Could you please update me in terms of an anticipated delivery of the documents?" I naively thought, "Well, in six weeks, we'll have this.
" "The FBI's FOIA program has identified potential response of information for your request and awaits assignment to a government information specialist for further processing.
" This one's from January 2015, so, five months or so after we sent it.
"Currently, your request is in the perfected backlog where your request is awaiting assignment to an analyst.
" There's a requirement on the federal law, how long an agency has to reply to your request, but there is no law about how long they have to actually send you the documents.
When it first happened, the FBI told us that they did find fingerprints in the car, but they said they didn't have a name to attach it to.
They also said they had forensic evidence from her nails, where she apparently put up a fight, but they didn't have anything to go on.
And that was one of the questions I asked about 15 years ago, "If you've got fingerprints, have you run them through the National Data Bank?" And they said no.
I said, "Well, if you got forensic evidence, have you done any DNA on it?" They said, "No.
" I asked, why? They said, "Two reasons, budget and manpower.
" And that's the excuse I was given, and led out the door.
"Dear FOIA Officer, this is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
" This one is dated February 2016.
"Thank you for your inquiry regarding the status of your FOIA request.
The current estimated date of completion for your request is April 2016.
" Weeks went by.
April came and went and I never heard anything.
I filed the original request in August of 2014.
- Coming in two and a half years.
- Seems like a hundred years ago.
And two and a half years and we have nothing.
- The Maleckis feel like - They've been abandoned.
Yeah.
Our sister Joyce was 20 years old, in the prime of her life, and her life being snatched away from her, it's a crime and it needs to be dealt with accordingly.
My parents have passed away, everybody is going to pass away at some point in time.
And when we pass away, then, they won't have to hear from anybody ever again.
They can put it in their cold case file and forget about it.
Somebody should talk to us.
If there's nothing, tell us that.
Just don't put us in a closet and hope we go away one day.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair, Madam Vice-Chair, members of the committee.
This bill was, uh Been back and forth in front of this body since about 2003.
For some reason, this bill has been interpreted to be an attack on religious organizations and it's died repeatedly.
People would ask, you know, 25 years, you know, they're grown people, right? I was in combat, I was out of military by the time I was 25, I'd served eight years.
Well, the problem with this is suppression.
People don't wanna acknowledge that it happened.
You've learned to live with the lie as a child, so you can live as an adult.
Growing up, I was in foster homes and I was adopted at some point by Tom and Millie Wilson.
He was a, uh He was a school teacher, you know, a Sunday school teacher, a Cub Scout leader, and he was a pedophile.
And so from, like, the ages of eight or nine until about 16, I endured a lot.
Why do we wait so long to come forward? I was 40 years old when I came forward.
It took me that amount of time to focus my life and make something of myself.
I'm 80 years old.
Anyway, I could have been a much better father and a much better husband, but anyway, it affected me a great deal.
I want you all to think about something.
Everybody has a secret that they don't want to admit.
Come up here and stand up here, and admit it to everybody, because that's what you're asking me to do and that's what you're asking a 25-year-old to do.
You're asking them to take the deepest, darkest secret they have and stand up in front of a jury, and tell them.
I can testify that there are many victims that were abused by Maskell who have not even begun to live.
They live in quiet solitude.
I ask you to please pass this bill.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you.
All right.
Uh Now we're turning to the opposition, Mr.
Murphy? My name is Kevin Murphy.
I'm an attorney.
I was asked by the Maryland Catholic Conference to testify because I've been involved in many, many cases, uh, involving I was surprised that the Catholic Church was coming out against this.
This wasn't me against the Church, it's what it's turned into.
Statute of limitations, they spare the courts from litigation of stale claims and they spare the citizen from being put to his defense after memories have faded, witnesses have died or disappeared, and the evidence has been lost.
When I sat there and watched Kevin Murphy talk, he did bring back memories in the Doe-Roe-Maskell case, interrogating me back in '94.
And today, he stands up there speaking as though he really cares about people that are abused.
Are there any other values that you think the statute of limitations serves other than for the weakness of human memory? Seven years is not a short statute of limitations.
It's a pretty long statute of limitations, but it protects from the alleged abuser continuing to abuse for the next 13 years.
If you change the statute, 13 years can go by before the person comes forward.
I stepped out at that point because I knew I was gonna be angry.
How dare them say something so arrogant, so transparently self-serving as, "Well, the victims, they We need to pressure them to come forward.
" Do you really? I am opposed to Senate Bill 68 because I believe our focus must be on providing outreach to survivors of child sexual abuse and preventing child sexual abuse from occurring.
I understand that there may be reasons that a survivor is not inclined to come forward earlier, but the reality is that the perpetrator often remains in a position of close access to children until an allegation is reported to the civil authorities and the employer.
They make it seem like it's the victim's fault, that if the victim doesn't step up by the age of 25, then they're the ones They're the ones to blame.
Now, that's every abuser's line, isn't it? "This is your fault.
" I don't need anybody to remind me that me not speaking up may have caused a lot of other victims.
Yeah.
That's utterly disgusting.
We have also reached settlement agreements with many survivors, even though their claims are time-barred and we have no legal obligation to do so.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
That concludes the hearing on Senate Bill 668.
That concludes the hearings for today.
Good morning.
I'm here to file some bills.
A bill can die without ever being voted on because the chairman says so.
This is gonna end up costing me my political career.
This interview might be the end of me being a delegate, pretty sure.
I'll tell you that Senator Mike Miller, who runs the Senate, and Delegate Vallario, do not let this bill come to a vote, because they know if it came to a vote, it would pass.
I mean, I know because I've been told, specifically.
Joe has told me the Church has contacted him and said this bill can't pass.
They don't want that bill out, so it doesn't get a vote.
Beyond the old separation of church and state doctrine, there should be something about this that has you go, "Wait a minute.
" Stories of abuse coming from people who attended a Baltimore Catholic high school.
The archdiocese now paying those victims.
This all centers on a priest who died in 2001, Father Joseph Maskell.
Now, at least a dozen victims have just received settlements from the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Our desire would be that it never happened to begin with but short of being able to undo that, uh, the best we can do is try to bring them some healing.
When you're trying to make your life and your suffering mean something, but it's after the age of the statute of limitations has been passed, sometimes the only the thing you see that you have left is mediation because you have been told you can't go through the court, you can stand on the street corner and wave out a sign, you're not gonna change anything, so at least come in and talk to us.
"We'll offer you something.
" I still have a hard time to, um, come here and be anywhere near the archdiocese.
I hope that you really don't think that the survivors of Joseph Maskell, at the ages we are, are really coming here for the little bit of compensation that you're giving.
But having the opportunity to say these things, it's more important to me than, um, anything else that pertains to the archdiocese.
How this impacted on me? I live small.
I can't go out beyond my boundaries.
The archdiocese had an opportunity back in 1992, '93, '94, to do the right thing and to help not just me, but, I am sure, many other Catholics, to know that they were not alone.
And instead I still feel very alone.
The fact the Catholic Church has taken on the role as not only being the abuser but also the savior, it's a dichotomy.
They can't explain it.
You can't You cannot lay those side-by-side.
It can't be them to solve this problem, it must be the government that intercedes.
Whether you believe in little government or bigger, you must understand that we do have a role.
We're the ones that make sure that the citizens at large are taken care of.
It is only the government that can step up and hold them accountable.
Come here, you little razzmatazz.
Over here.
You little rascal, come on, you got company.
We got company.
Get Come on, you rascal.
Man, if I'm gonna show you that That's me, that's my brother.
We were both going to St.
Clement's at the time.
Again, I was the golden boy.
You know, that meant my shit didn't stink, uh, is what it meant.
Now, where I made the mistake was I told some of my friends, "You gotta watch Father Maskell.
" I didn't want the same thing to happen to them.
And he just walked into the classroom.
Came over to me and he grabbed me by my hair and I'm telling you, I thought he was gonna pull my hair out my head.
He lifted me right out of that chair and said, "I wanna see your ass in the rectory now.
" And he says, "Listen, you little motherfucker.
If I hear one more thing about you talking about me, I'm gonna make sure you don't graduate.
" He started making my life miserable.
Tossed me off the basketball team, tossed me off the baseball team.
So, I was kicked out of CYO.
I was I wasn't a golden boy anymore.
I I now was in over my head.
I had to go home and tell my mother.
I had to go home and tell my mother.
And my mother, she wasn't one to be fooled with, especially with the kids.
You know, "Don't go messing with my kids.
" And this is for a fact, I know, in May of '67, the Archdiocese of Baltimore became aware they had a sickie on their hands because my mother went down to the archdiocese, straight to the top.
"Father Maskell is abusing my eighth grade son.
" A day or two later I get a phone call from the pastor of St.
Clement's, Father Collopy.
And I can remember this conversation.
He got on the phone and said, "Charlie, listen.
I'm just calling.
You're back in the CYO.
You're back on the baseball team.
Father Maskell is no longer here at St.
Clements, he's been transferred.
" So, they transferred Maskell to Keough.
So, I wanted to tell you a little bit about Charles Franz.
- You know who that is? - Mm, say.
Tell me.
He was a boy at St.
Clement's, Maskell was abusing him.
- Okay.
- So, he went home and he told his mom and says, "I know in May of 1967, my mom went down to the archdiocese and" - 1967? - Yeah.
That it led to disciplinary action on Maskell, and Maskell being sent from St.
Clement's to Archbishop Keough.
- Wow.
- And then particularly relevant to you is something Charles told us happened in the 1990s.
I'll tell you the story in the '90s.
I was a practicing dentist.
One day, a lady comes in as a patient.
She says, "The archdiocese is trying to get a hold of you.
" I said, "What?" Evidently, there was a couple ladies from Keough who were suing the Catholic Church.
And so we arranged a meeting and we met at my office.
And it was myself and my wife two canon lawyers, plus a priest, Monsignor Malooly.
He started off with this, he said, "I appreciate you meeting with us.
Let me tell you how important this is.
If Archbishop Keeler was not in Rome he'd be here.
He'd be here tonight.
" And we had I bet you it was a two, two-and-a-half-hour conversation about Father Maskell.
I hate to say Father 'cause he really wasn't a father.
You know, I And they were very interested in the story and I told them about Maskell being transferred, and they knew it all.
They knew it all.
And then at the end Monsignor Malooly says to me "Well, what do you want, Charlie?" I said, "Excuse me, Father?" He said, "What do you want? You want a boat?" "Do I want a boat? No, I don't want a boat.
In fact, I got three boats.
" 'Cause I had three boats.
Heh.
And then I said, "Father, I didn't ask you to come here.
You asked me to come here.
You know, I I I didn't know anything about this.
I don't want a boat.
I'll tell you what.
What I would Would like to see, just do what's right.
Just do what's right.
" We left, with you know, "Perhaps we'll get together again," and And I never heard from him again.
Un-freaking-believable.
This Monsignor Malooly back in '93, when the family and the friends sent out letters to everybody anonymously, um, put an ad in a paper.
Well, one of the letters that came through was a letter from the archdiocese.
"To the extent you obtain any information, it is my sincere hope that you will advise me so that appropriate action may be taken by the archdiocese to protect individuals from potential harm.
" From Monsignor Francis Malooly.
That was the guy who wrote that letter? Wow.
Those fuckers! My God! See, see how do you? I I don't know Charles but he is a legitimate corroboration for me.
I had the letters from Richard Way saying, you know, "We can't corroborate any of this.
It's all about corroboration.
" Corroboration, corroboration, corroboration.
"Have somebody come forward who says that they know that this really happened.
" And they had somebody right there.
Amazing.
We've asked for the archdiocese to participate, to go on camera and give us their version of the story of Maskell.
Every time, they denied something on camera and, uh And so what they did agree to was to give us written responses to written Questions.
So, we finally got the responses from them.
Well, before we Let me preface this.
Am I gonna be pissed off here? I don't know.
Okay, okay.
- So, we asked them questions.
- Okay.
So, I'll read them to you as the numbers, and then I'll read you the answers.
- Okay.
- So, question number one.
"Was Jane Doe, Jean Wehner, the first person to come forward with allegations of abuse against Father Maskell?" The archdiocese's answer: "Yes.
Archdiocesan files do not reflect any kind of abuse allegation against Maskell before Jane Doe came forward in 1992.
" That's a shame.
That's a shame.
Question number two.
"How and when did the Archdiocese first hear allegations of abuse against Father Maskell?" The archdiocese's answer: "See answer to number one.
" Hmm.
They're lying.
They're lying.
Of course there was allegations.
Question number three.
"Were any disciplinary interventions made against Father Maskell prior to 1992?" The archdiocese's answer: "No.
" That's it, just "no"? This is disgusting.
This is disgusting.
He's saying nothing happened before me, so And Charles is saying, "Oh, no, definitely, it did.
" If you start saying things like, "That never happened.
" What you're calling me is a liar.
How about the meeting with Malooly? What did that concern? I'd love to hear the answer.
They knew my mother contacted the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
They knew why Maskell was asked to leave St.
Clement's in May of '67 and put at Keough.
They knew that.
I guess that, you know, buddy, there are lies and there are lies, okay? You wanna deal with that bullshit, you might be able to get away with it, okay? And that's a lie.
Man.
I'm telling you and especially right after I finished up this damn mediation and they pick and pull with every little tiny penny And they act like what you went through, they care about, and they could give two shits, really.
And some part of this is really squelching people's anger, and people's righteous anger, and people's need for you to make things public and stop acting like it's That That we're invisible.
We're not invisible.
Okay, here's the letter.
"Dear Seton Keough Alumnae and Friends, it is with a heavy heart that I sit and write this November message.
As I am sure you have heard, Seton Keough will be closing its doors in June.
" Many Keough graduates are glad to see the circle closed, the doors shut.
This piece of history destroyed.
I wasn't particularly a conspiracy theorist, as I think of it, at first.
I was just interested in who hurt Cathy.
But the abuse angle of this just took off running and grew and grew and grew.
I share the pain of my classmates, who lived through some horrendous years.
At night when I can't sleep and I I say, "If I think about this a little harder, I can figure this out," um, at 3 a.
m.
It seems like even when I try to look at her murder as the work of a random lone wolf, the abuse issues always come back in.
How are you? I'm so happy to see you.
Jane Doe was led to believe that she was the only one.
If Maskell had been nailed the first time the abuse was reported, then how do we even know how many people could have been saved? I personally know of 35 names of abuse victims of Joseph Maskell.
Some aren't even living anymore.
There were suicides, alcoholism, drug addiction.
And what happened to them set their fate.
If somebody had listened how many other lives could've been saved? Cathy would be here.
She would still be here.
"Some people meet death With open arms And thank God their time has come Others beg to be spared For just one more day Saying there's much to be done But if we, before performing an act Would stop and think of death Of death, of judgment And of all such things I'm sure we would do our best So that when our time comes, we may say: 'Take me, Lord, without delay'" She was 16 when she wrote that poem.
Cathy's life, Cathy's death and this abuse this is all connected.
These girls have lived with this all of their life.
I've lived with the loss of Of My best friend, my sister, all my life and I will carry that.
But they also have pain they are carrying.
And there needs to be a world, there needs to be a place that we live in, where people wanna see something done about that.
Whoever murdered her has gotten away with it, and she's never gotten a bit of justice.
It has been almost 50 years, since Cathy's murder, but I do think it'll be solved.
I won't rest.
Mm-mm.
Can we find justice? Can justice just be acknowledged from the community instead of waiting for the stamp of approval from the systems that we usually get it from? That's what the state is supposed to be doing.
We can't have you be un-robbed or un-raped or un-shot.
We can't un-ring those bells.
What we can do is hold people accountable.
For many, many, many years, I didn't remember anything, and one of the first things that I started remembering was Cathy Cesnik.
This woman, she died to help stop what was going on over there.
And because of the Justice for Cathy group, because of Cathy's sister, um, having the courage to come into this to ask questions and to kind of find her own peace, I'm finding another layer of that closure where I can say, "Okay.
" You can't bury the truth so deep it doesn't come up.
I'm ready.
If I could speak for myself and maybe others, this is the opportunity.
It's like a little crack and I personally feel that what I'm doing, facing my fear, is coming up to the crack and saying, "Hello, do you know we're here? Is anyone out there?" And it's still silent.
But we're hearing each other because we're all coming up to the crack.
And what's happening is, is we're bumping into each other, coming to the crack.
And before you know it, the pressure of that voice seeping through the crack is going to shatter it.