Excavation of unsolved murders from 1969 raises hope for answers

More than 50 years after his sister was murdered, Darryl Malecki on Thursday watched her body be lowered into her grave for the second time at a Baltimore cemetery.

No one has ever been charged with the murder of Joyce Malecki, who disappeared in November 1969, when she was 20, and was found dead days later at the Fort Meade military base south of Baltimore. But the exhumation of her remains for DNA samples has raised her family’s hopes that the case will finally be solved.

“It’s a stepping stone,” Mr. Malecki, 71, said in an interview after his sister’s body was returned to her grave. “They took away everything they needed from her.”

Thursday the FBI confirmed in a statement that it had exhumed Ms. Malecki’s body from Loudon Park Cemetery in southwest Baltimore as part of an investigation into her murder. It provided no further details, but the announcement revived questions about the case, which was featured in a 2017 Netflix documentary series about the death of a nun and sexual abuse allegations against a local priest.

Two days after Ms. Malecki was reported missing, her body was found in a pond at Fort Meade, a sprawling military base about 20 miles south of Baltimore. She was on her way to meet her boyfriend, a soldier stationed at the base, when she disappeared, her brother said. An autopsy revealed that she had been strangled.

The Netflix series “The Keepers” explored Ms. Malecki’s death in connection with the nun’s murder, Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik, a 26-year-old English teacher at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore. The women went missing within days of each other and their bodies were found just a few miles apart. People familiar with the case said in the series that Sister Cathy was about to reveal allegations of sexual abuse by the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell, a guidance counselor at the school, when she was killed.

Days before the documentary was released, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore said in a statement that The first suggestion that Father Maskell may have been involved in Sister Cathy’s death was made to the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1994. But Archbishop Lori said there was no record of Sister Cathy contacting the archdiocese about Father Maskell and no criminal charges had been filed in connection with it. with her death.

In 1992, Jean Wehner, a former student of Sister Cathy, accused Father Maskell of sexually assaulting her when she was in high school. She said she confided in Sister Cathy, and that Father Maskell took her to see the nun’s body as a warning not to speak out.

“The Keepers” focused primarily on Sister Cathy’s murder, but it resurrected allegations of a broader cover-up by the archdiocese, which some of her former students, as well as some who have accused Father Maskell of abuse, are investigating. have confused Mrs. Malecki’s murder.

Father Maskell died in 2001. In 2017, Baltimore County police announced that a DNA sample had been taken from his remains. did not match the evidence at the crime scene of Sister Cathy’s murder.

In April, the Maryland Attorney General’s office released a 463-page report that found:staggeringThe number of child sexual abuse cases by clergy members in the Archdiocese of Baltimore over the course of six decades, as well as cover-ups by members of the church hierarchy.

The Malecki family lived about a block from St. Clement Catholic Church, where Father Maskell was pastor before transferring to Archbishop Keough High School.

Advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy have helped investigators solve more cold cases in the United States, giving the Malecki family new, if tentative, hope that authorities might find her killer.

“One of our strongest suspicions about all of this is that they are not digging up this young lady after 54 years in a random attempt to obtain evidence,” said Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, which works with police. Malecki family. “We think they have a strong theory, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing this.”

“If the person who did this is still alive, they want him prosecuted,” he said.

Mr. Malecki said the FBI has told his family that the file on the investigation has grown to 4,000 pages. The agency has not provided specific information about what or who it is looking for, he said.

On Thursday, law enforcement officials closed the cemetery while the exhumation took place. After it was over, Mr. Malecki, his older brother Pat and two nieces were escorted to a chapel where Ms. Malecki’s casket waited.

“We went into the chapel so we could see the casket and say goodbye,” he said.

The coffin was placed in a hearse and taken to the same plot where she was buried 54 years ago. It was lowered into the cement cellar and an excavator refilled it with earth.

Mr Malecki said he was the last member of his family to see his sister alive. He worked a late shift at a fast food chain called Gino’s in Baltimore. It was November 11, 1969, and Mrs. Malecki stopped by to trade her Pontiac for their parents’ 1967 Chevrolet Impala, which Mr. Malecki had taken to work. She was on her way to meet her boyfriend and run errands.

“I think she felt more comfortable in a new car,” Mr. Malecki said.

She never came home. Two days later, two hunters found her face down in a creek, he said.

“My sister was only 20 years old, in her prime,” he said. Looking back on the life ahead of her, he said, “She was robbed of all that.”