Joyce Malecki’s death saw renewed interest with the 2017 Netflix docuseries The Keepers (Picture: Netflix)
The body of a young woman whose unsolved killing had eerie parallels to a nun’s slaying featured in a Netflix true crime series is set to be exhumed.
FBI investigators on Thursday plan to unearth the body of Joyce Malecki, who went Christmas shopping at a suburban mall near Baltimore in November 1969 and never returned home. Days later, she was found strangled to death at a military base close by.
Interest around Malecki’s case grew when the Netflix 2017 docuseries The Keepers highlighted similarities in the killing of Sister Cathy Cesnik. Like Malecki, Cesnik went shopping and did not return, only to be found later with fatal blunt force trauma.
Investigators in 2017 exhumed the body of Catholic Father Joseph Maskell to see if his DNA was in evidence collected from Cesnik’s slaying. Cesnik knew Maskell sexually abused students at the Catholic high school where they worked, according to the documentary. But Maskell’s DNA did not match the evidence.
Sister Cathy Cesnik’s death was featured in the Netflix true crime series The Keepers (Picture: Netflix)
Malecki’s family attended a church outside of Baltimore where Maskell was a priest as she was growing up, and they lived near the St Clement Catholic Church rectory where he resided.
Maskell then served at Archbishop Keough High School, where he allegedly abused girls.
Malecki told relatives that ‘she did not like him one bit and told people to stay away from him’, according to Kurt Wolfgang, the executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center and an advocate for her family.
Maskell targeted at least 39 victims within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, according to a report released by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office in April. He denied allegations against him and was not criminally charged before he died in 2001.
The Netflix docuseries The Keepers was released in 2017 (Picture: Netflix)
Malecki’s family does not have evidence that Maskell abused her and are not jumping to conclusions, Wolfgang said.
Wolfgang suspects that investigators seek to take DNA from Malecki’s body, but the reason is unknown. He said the timing points to a possible link to Forrest Clyde Williams III, who earlier this year was identified as a suspect in the strangulation death of Pamela Conyers, 16, who disappeared in 1970 in the same shopping mall as Malecki.
Investigators used new DNA technology and genealogy research to solve Conyers’ case. At the time, though, authorities said they did not have evidence to connect him to other unsolved killings.
A spokesperson with the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office declined to comment citing the ongoing investigation.
The Keepers explored the unsolved murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik (Picture: Netflix)
Wolfgang said Malecki’s family will be allowed to attend her exhumation, which will not be open the public.
‘They want justice out of this thing,’ said Wolfgang. ‘Even though it was 54 years ago, it would certainly help them to know what happened.’
Malecki’s exhumation is set to happen more than six months after nuns dug up Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s body in the rural Missouri town of Gower and were stunned to find that her corpse showed no signs of decay.
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Joyce Maleck was found dead after going shopping similar to Sister Cathy Cesnik who was the subject of the Netflix docuseries The Keepers.