The Nun’s Skeleton PT 2

there has been a horrible abuse, sexual abuse of students at this high school, Kiyo High School in Baltimore for years. We have students coming forward twenty five years later to say that this is what happened. And the key student here is a woman named Jean who in the show The Keepers comes forward and says that there was a priest who was abusing girls at the school, who, as a way to shut her up about his abuse against her, takes her to Sister Kathy's body and says, this is

what will happen to you. So I think we have many tasks here. One does not need to be to prove the rampant sexual abuse that's happening at this high school, which The Keepers does very well. I am convinced, you are convinced, we are all convinced. What I'm trying to figure out, what we need to know is making that connection between what will end up being a little bit of a list of suspects on who murdered Kathy Seysnick, you know, versus how much did she know about the

sexual abuse that was happening. And that's what we're really going to be digging into in this second episode, is you know what she knew? What witnesses say she knew and didn't know that sort of thing. So is that what your memory is of this story?

on sister Kathy's body. So this linds up being used to discredit her at some point because people had said it was too cold outside for maggots, but doctor Spitz confirmed there was maggot activity on her body. But again, you know, what the police eventually say is that she knows too much information about the body where the body was located to have not actually been there. It is my understanding that he is not saying I did it. He is saying here it is you need to keep

your mouth shut. There's no confession as far as I know.

he is utilizing this so Gene is basically made to fear for her life if she ever divulges the on going sexual abuse that she's experiencing from Mascal. The other competing theory is you have a close knit group of offenders that either one or multiple members of this group were involved in Kathy's abduction and homicide and they've shared information amongst themselves, and so now it's a matter of

teasing out which theory is correct. And that's where if it's multiple people, if you have a conspiracy, investigators at least have a greater likelihood of getting one of the members of that conspiracy group to provide information. You can put that person in jeopardy in a variety of ways, whether it's that person's freedom that they're going to be charged unless they are able to conclusively say who is responsible for Kathy's homicide and get them to turn on

the other group. If it's just Maskal, who by himself abducted and killed Kathy, then that's a little bit tougher, especially a quarter century later. But there is potential forensic evidence, you know, that they could potentially use to prove Mascal's involvement with Kathy's homicide.

over the summer. Yes, Sister Kathy hugs her and tells her to go home and have a one erful summer and that she will fix it. And another student in the keepers in the documentary specifically remembers telling Kathy that

Father Maskal would get physical in his office. This student says that she suspects that Kathy already knew about this because then a third student says she was with sister Kathy when Father Maskeal called her the student to his office, and Kathy turned to Mascal and said she's not coming, She's not available. And she says that they made eye contact, Kathy and this student, and it was clear that she

knew what was going on. But when Jeane gets back to school in the fall, you know, and Kathy had said I'll take care of it, Kathy was gone and Father Maskal was still there, so Kathy was at another school. She had not been murdered at that point, he says. Father Maskal says to Jane early in that year, someone accused him of hurting the students, and so this is the build up to after the murder, but before her

body is discovered. Within that two month period, Father Maskel is using the body as Kathy's body as a way to threaten Gene to keep her mouth shut because obviously people are coming forward and Kathy knew too much.

what happened to Kathy, no question about it. If let's say Maskal is responsible for Kathy's homicide and he is abusing Gene and probably other female students, he is a predator that is working within this church environment or this religious school environment. Now the question, of course is is

who else is aware of these activities. I can't imagine that Kathy is the only nun that is aware, and by focusing all efforts to eliminate Kathy as a witness, that that's going to solve the problem of Oh, people are talking and we're going to be found out, you know.

So this is where I'm not sure what the motive is, you know, with Kathy being killed from that perspective, but there is a sexual component to Kathy's homicide and it is being done by an individual that doesn't have any qualms about committing the sexually motivated homicide.

all she remembers. She doesn't have a lot of details about the body, and what they're claiming are recovered memories again, are things that happened a long time ago, but that she seems to remember specifically. And like I said that the newspaper reports were that there was a lot of information that she knew about the scene that there's no way she should have known. Let me tell you a

weird story. So, according to the doc series, an anonymous student in her boyfriend had gone to Sister Kathy's home the afternoon of the day she disappeared, so not that night before she went out shopping, she was alive. The student and the boyfriend say that Father Maskell and Father Magnus burst into the apartment without knocking, and that sister Kathy sent the student and her boyfriend away. So that

was a story that came up in the keepers. But the research note says, you know, we don't know where

Sister Russell was. Jerry Kob says that he doubts that this happened because Sister Russell never said anything to anyone about that, but the student is insistent that this is what happened. The student also says that Sister Russell was there, so I don't know why they would be making it up. I'm sure I could figure many reasons out why they were making it up. But essentially, Sister Russell never said this happen, but the student was very clear that this

is what happened. These two men accused of sexual abuse at Sister Kathy's school. First in and Sister Cathy said, okay, you two, you student and boyfriend.

authority figure. There was no reason to interview these guys. There there were no suspects, with the exception of father Jerry,

and that was just because they had a personal relationship.

law enforcement at one thirty am. There's something not adding up here. Sister Russell to me, is critical in terms of, you know, what is going on. There's there's some goofiness in terms of the timeline with her calling up Jerry and Pete and them driving over the relationship between Jerry

and Kathy. It seems like if there had been these men, even though they are you know, men of the cloth, but bursting into the apartment earlier that day, that there would be a statement to that effect by Sister Russell, right.

as I've thought about this case is Kathy's car is a critical piece of evidence, not just because of what it could potentially have from a physical evidence standpoint, but also how it was left. And Kathy scenes sitting in her car in the proper parking space for apartment complex by a neighbor. I have great confidence that that neighbor is telling accurate information. And then the car is obviously gone to a secondary location where it gets the mud

the vegetation on it. Inside of it, there's items from Kathy that are missing out of this car. And then the car is deposited back across the street from Kathy's apartment in a half hazard manner.

to get into their vehicle and drive off. So, you know, the scenario that I'm seeing is the offender is seeing Kathy either sitting alone in the vehicle or contacts Kathy when she's trying to get into her apartment, and then ultimately takes control of Kathy and her own vehicle, drives off, kills Kathy, dumps Kathy at the dump site that looks like it's what half hour away from where she was abducted from, and then drives back to get his own vehicle and drive off. This isn't Jerry and Pete. This

is somebody else. Now is his father Maskell?

have confidence that this recovered memory. And I'm not even sure it classifies as a recovered memory. She just didn't come forward. She was a kid when this happened to her, right, Yeah, you know, so I'm just going to trust that the authorities vetted her statement and say, yes, she is accurate to the details, that we believe that Gene is telling the truth about what happened. Well, now this becomes important.

I think it's a very small circle of suspects that are responsible for Kathy's homicide and they just need to be vetted one by one and figure out, well, who is it and if they still have Kathy's clothing, you know, whatever is covered from her body, if they still have stuff out of the vehicle, Leyton Prince, whatever they did, you know, there's potentially physical evidence that can help sort this out.

forward and nearly all their stories are about him. This information is given to the state's attorney, but Mascal is never charged, never charged. Okay, so let me just tell you one other thing and then we need to get to other suspects too. In ninety four, Jean and another former student, who's a woman named Teresa Lancaster, sue father Maskal. And this is a suit that's ultimately dismissedly because the

statue of limitations had lapsed. The case went to trial in the first place because because it questioned if the statute applies to memories that only recently surfaced at that time, this is considered a question of recovered memories. Though you know, there are a lot of new laws that have passed allowing child victims to come forward and sue as adults. This is interesting. The Baltimore Archdiocese has recently declared bankruptcy

to avoid paying more of these settlements. So the recovered memory I had not really even I haven't crossed paths

with that yet, and controversy around it, and I know we talked about it, and the questions about whether what Gene and any of these other students were experiencing were not It doesn't sound like recovered memories. It sounded like we're you know, we're pressed or you know, not coming forward, scared, forgotten, hidden for a while, something that hadn't been processed by the person, but not drawn out by somebody. And that's right to you.

could potentially be charged. I may be way off base on that, but that's kind of what's ringing a bell. I had one case, and it had nothing to do with sexual abuse. It was a woman who came forward with a repressed memory saying she remembered her dad burying a body in the backyard, you know, and of course ended up never finding anything.

died just a couple of months after. And a friend called her when he died, when mass died before she died, and Sister Russell said, well, he took his secret to

the grave. Now there's been renewed interests starting in two thousand and five, and there's a reporter named Tom Nugent, who writes a story for the Baltimore City Paper that rehashes everything that has happened, and for the first time, he starts looking at the connections between father Maskell and the other victim, Joyce Malecki, who we weren't sure is connected or not. So she's the other young woman who was killed right after sister Kathy disappeared. So tell me

what you think about these connections. I'll go through half of them and stop, and then you can tell me if you think these are strong connections. Okay, So this is what Tom Nugent comes up with. He looks at the nineteen sixty eight sixty nine Kio year book. So this is the high school where Maskal was and it shows that a gift was made that year by the

Malechi family on their patron's page. And the interviews with the remaining family members revealed that when they lived in Lansdowne, which is less than a mile from where Cathy Saysnick's

body was, they attended a church, Saint Clement Church. The Maluche siblings, including Joyce, went to week long retreats as high school students, during which they spend entire days engaged in religious instruction with priests, So that might not seem like a big deal, except the Baltimore archdis and records confirm that Maskel served at Saint Clement in Lansdowne from sixty six to sixty eight, And this is essentially saying that they would have likely crossed paths. Joyce Maluche the

dead Girl and Joseph Maskell. So what do you think so far? So they would have crossed paths. And I don't know. The family apparently gave money. I don't think the current family or the family that's around now knows why. But they gave money to the high school where Mascal worked, and it sounds like she attended week long retreats where Mascal would have been for sure.

condolence card after she was found murdered. Oh interesting, Yeah,

I mean, so he knew her for sure. If we're going to talk about Joyce Malucky briefly, she was twenty and again she goes missing four days after Kathy Sesnant goes missing. Her brother was at a fast food restaurant outside of Baltimore, and she stopped by. Joyce stopped by to switch cars before heading to the mall, and she never came home. She was found at a nearby military base with signs of severe trauma, and an autopsy determined

that she had been strangled. Okay, One police officer said that there was evidence she had put up a fight. It doesn't say anything about sexual assault. The night of her disappearance, she had plans to meet up with her boyfriend who was stationed at that military base, but he was ruled out as a suspect pretty early on in an investigation. I'm assuming he had some kind of great

alibi or something. So this was an article written last year, about nine months ago, and it looks like Paul the FBI exhumed Joyce Maluche's body to try to figure out who her killer was. There were a couple of other people who went missing around that time period, and they solved one case using DNA in genealogy.

put up a fight. But I mean a twenty year old female being abducted and killed in all likelihood it's a sexually motivated crime.

killed Joyce and maybe did other things. That's where Gene's statement is so critical because what it does is it narrows down instead of it being a random or stranger type crime, it's a crime that Kathy's crime is a crime that is being committed, you know, by an individual or a group of individuals that had an association with her. And if it's maskl who it's shown that he has an association with Joyce, you know, this becomes critical because

there's no question he is a child predator working. You know, he has access to all these young girls at the school. Predators go to where the praise at and so envisioning Mascal taking a crime further past sexual abuse and actually committing homicide that is well within the realm of this

type of offender. You know, So I right now don't have I don't have an issue assuming Gene is completely accurate about her statement that Mascal Is by himself is responsible for these two homicides, but they need to get the evidence.

her fore head, nose, and chin. And the FBI took over the case because they were found obviously on federal property because it was the base Fort Meade. I don't know. I mean, essentially, what they were saying was they had similar builds, these two women. Here's the only connection, real connection until you look at mascl They had similar builds. They were shopping in close proximity, but they were abducted days apart and that was it. So it sounds like people are still working on the case though.

FBI went through the process to exume Joyce's body that tells me that they felt that the initial collection of evidence from Joyce's body was inadequate, which you know from nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. Of course, they're not focusing in on the possibility of DNA evidence. You know, they would process women's bodies for sexual assault evidence, but all they could do is you know, identify, Okay, there's there's seman presence, so yes, this is a sexually motivated crime.

And that they literally would throw that kind of evidence out back then you know that possibly is what happened. And now the FBI is going, oh god, we need to hope that there's still that foreign DNA material on this body that has been buried for decades, and it is entirely possible they could get something. But then it's also, well, what about our clothing, just like Kathy's clothing, you know, is there a possibility that there's a thunder DNA off

of those items, and so, you know, it's interesting. I've just experienced enough that I think there is a possibility that Kathy and Joyce's killer is one and the same person. But I would also say it's entirely possible that these are two completely unrelated crimes and you just have two different predators operating in the same area at the same time, doing kind of the same thing. I've seen it, I've

personally experienced that. So it's until they get that objective identifying evidence on these cases, it's going to be hard to se a Father Maskal is their killer. They need to do more than just show you the connections that

each one of the victims had to Father Maskal. Gene statement, I think is really sort of the big thing in the case, at least with Kathy's case, because again, if that is been proven that she had details that only somebody who observed Kathy's body out there at the dump, then I'm like, yeah, either Father Maskal or somebody closely affiliated with Father Maskal is responsible for Kathy's homicide.

brought up, and here's why. In twenty thirteen, former students of Sister Kathy's named Abby's Stow and Jimma Hoskins create a Facebook page to share their resources. It becomes a centralized resource on the case, but also for survivors from the abuse, and the documentary centers on these two women and their dogged research into the case. They're great characters. After this Facebook group is taken off, Jimma gets a text from a woman named Debbie Yawns who says that

her uncle killed Sister Kathy. It is this guy, Ed Davidson, and his first wife tells the same story firsthand. The woman who doesn't want to be named in the documentary. The wife had recently given birth to twins in November of nineteen sixty nine. This is when you know Sister Kathy goes missing. One of the twins was in the nick you and just before nine point thirty on November seventh, that night that she disappeared, a nurse called and said the baby is going to be discharged tomorrow. This is

why the wife remembers that day in the time. Just

after hanging up the phone, Ed walks in the door and his shirt is covered in blood. He tells his wife that he got into a fight with his boss. But then a few days later, when sister Kathy's disappearance is reported on the news, Ed's wife looks at him and sees that he's smirking. He says her body is going to be covered with snow soon and will take months to find. Shortly after that, he buys all new tires first car, even though he doesn't really need them

and the family doesn't have any money. A few weeks later, Ed is arrested in a stolen car which Paul. He has been trying to lure girls into Adam Middle School, very close to sister Kathy's apartment, and that Christmas, Ed gives his wife a necklace. It has a wedding bell pendant with a greenstone that looks like paradot, which would have been an August birthstone. I think the idea is that this might have been the gift that Kathy bought her sister. So perhaps Kathy bought her sister a necklace

with the burthstone of her sister's fiance in it. What do you think so far? Covered in blood?

be alive, you know, to be able to verify. Oh yeah, we got into a fight and I was bleeding like crazy. Seems like, you know, law enforcement may have been called to something like that.

capable of committing these horrific crimes. Just that's part of the reason why law enforcement has holdbacks, right, details that don't get made public because you get these nut jobs that are willing to whether they come into law enforcement confess or they just start. They're at a bar and they're trying to impress their their bar buddies. That hey, I killed her, you know, and believe it or not, they feel that they're impressing somebody by, you know, making

that type of statement. They have nothing to do with the crime.

So we're talking about this guy, Billy Schmidt, and it sounds like this woman is saying that her husband helped his brother dispose sister Kathy's body. But she also says that one night, she's not saying specifically November seventh, he came home covered in blood and said he had been in a bar fight. But he doesn't look like he's gotten hurt at all, like at somebody else's blood. Now here's the weird stuff. Billy, the guy that we're talking about,

was sister Kathy's neighbor. He lived right across the.

circumstances of the crime itself is Kathy never makes it back into her apartment, so she's contacted either in her car, getting out of her car or en route from her car into the apartment and her car was taken to a secondary location, which I'm going to assume is the dump site that night, and that the vegetation and the

mud is probably from that dump site. I saw, you know, there was vegetation in terms of it looked like almost you know, little swaths of force that surrounded the vacant lot, if you will, where Kathy's body was, and it looked like her body was on the edge. And then Kathy's car is brought back after her body, after she's killed,

and her body's dumped back to the apartment complex. So Billy living in that apartment complex, that checks a box there because he needs to get back home, and if he's taken off in Kathy's car, he's got to use Kathy's car to come back. So there's at least more of a nexus with Billy from the circumstances then with

that Davidson. You know, that's where I'm evaluating these two individuals going, Yes, Billy is a stronger suspect from that perspective, but there needs to be more, of course, But he's he's more interesting to me than Davidson, you know, And this is just well, how if let's say Billy's the one responsible for Kathy's homicide, then how is Gene's statement with father Maskell? You know, how does that fit in?

From my perspective? If I were to be starting to dig into this case, you know, one of the earliest things I would be doing would be truly assessing gene statement. And if she's still alive, reinterviewing her, I need to be confident that what she is remembering is spot on with what somebody would have observed of Kathy's body out at that location.

cigarette butts found near sister Kathy's body. We have no idea, I know, that's what you are grimacing. We have no idea who's those are. And of course this DNA doesn't match the cigarette butts, and I'm sure they didn't decades later. They didn't compare DNA to this guy, to Billy Schmidt. But the DNA butts are kind of the thing that they have. It sounds like, yeah, this is where you.

family business. Yeah, if it is his DNA on those cigarette butts, the evidence against him is is weaker because he has an association with that location, so that you always have to interpret, you know, that the DNA evidence or any physical evidence within the context of the case and within the context of the suspects and the victims,

et cetera. So you know, my hope would be is that they like exhooming Joyce's body or going after maybe Kathy's clothing, that they find foreign DNA from the victims themselves or the victims personal items that are found at the homicide location or the crime scene, and that becomes more compelling because now you're getting into that intimate contact between the offender and the victim, and it's harder to come up with with either of these suspects, you know,

innocent explanation for their DNA being on you know, the particularly.

me at all. So hopefully, you know, fingers crossed is that they did have success and maybe Joyce's case will have probative DNA evidence and with Kathy's case, I hope that they're able to go after whatever physical evidence still remains, you know there.

you know they're trying for sure. While the allegations of abuse at Keel by Magnus and Mascal were credible, some people thought that the idea of sister Kathy being murdered because of them is more of a stretch than the idea that she was abducted and killed by a random person. I don't believe that. I think it's much more. I think it's much more likely that these two men people have killed for far less fears than being turned over

for sexually abusing girls for years. I mean, I don't understand why anybody wouldn't think that that's not a motive to murder somebody to keep them quiet about that.

a case out of Iowa. I believe Jody wesen Throutt news anchor that you know, she looks like she was contacted by an offender out in the parking lot and has just disappeared. Those types of crimes do occur. You could have an active predator that's responsible for Kathy and Choices cases, or you have multiple predators, or because of Gene's statement, I put you know, I'm putting Mascal in play, and maybe associates of Mascal in play.

I can't think of anything more upsetting. The family doesn't talk much about the murderer, certainly in the media over the years, but her sister Marilyn said that when their mom died, cleaning out the house and she found boxes and boxes of newspaper articles about the case on every single development, And I read that as sort of the last thing for us to talk about, because that really

is what this comes down to. This was a woman who was very likely the closest confidante to many people, many of these girls, who seemed like she wanted to try to do something to help them, who was trying to protect them, and she ends up dead. And not only does she end up dead, but the real killer, the person who murdered her, gets away with it. And what a miscarriage of justice? Geez.

would have had, et cetera. You know, so it is that's a hard thing to live with. Families don't get the answer, and justice isn't served and the killer gets away with it, and it just, I know, it eats at me.

watching some case you have no involvement with. But I think that there are certainly podcasts, definitely shows out there that we should all support that are victim forward, that are not glamorizing in any way the Killer, and I think Keepers is one of them. Is It is a phenomenal show that has brought a lot of this to

light that I had not heard of. You know, I really applaud them for that. So my goal between now and when I see you next week is to convince I've got to find something that's going to draw you in into kind of like the true crime world, where you're not having to solve something that you can just look at it and we can have a discussion about it. I guess Bury Bones.