Episode 30: Silence in the Halls, Part II: What Was Buried

In Part II, Justice Seekers continues its investigation into the murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik and the broader allegations surrounding Archbishop Keough High School.

With the courtroom no longer an option, survivors are pushed into private arbitration, where cases unfold behind closed doors—raising critical questions about transparency, accountability, and power.

This episode examines the limitations of the legal system, the weight of survivor testimony, and the disturbing possibility that key truths may have been buried not just by time, but by institutions themselves.

Mixed & Edited by Next Day Podcast

info@nextdaypodcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome back to Justice Seekers. I'm Natalie. And I'm Katrina. We're two attorneys on a mission to go beyond the headlines and even shine a light on the cases that never make the news, to find the truths that get overlooked, and ask the questions the justice system doesn't always want to answer.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Each episode, we take you beyond the surface of high-profile cases and also cases that never garner the attention they deserve. The ones that haunt communities, shake families, and test the limits of the law. To examine what justice really looks like. When it works, when it fails, and when the truth is far more complicated than anyone expected. Previously, on Justice Seekers. In 1969, Sister Kathy Sesnick disappeared and was later found murdered on the outskirts of Baltimore. What began as a cold case unfolded into something far more complex. Former students of Archbishop Keogh High School came forward with allegations of systemic sexual abuse centered around Father Joseph Maskell, a priest who held both spiritual authority and psychological control over young women. What they described were not just isolated acts, but a clear pattern, a system where trust was weaponized, silence was enforced, and fear was used as control. Some believe Sister Kathy knew about the abuse, that she was preparing to expose it, and that her murder may not have been random. When survivors finally came forward years later, they turned to the legal system for accountability. But the courts never reached the substance of their claims. Instead, the case was dismissed on a technicality, the statute of limitations.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

And just like that, the door to justice, at least in a courtroom, was closed. But when the public system fails to answer questions like these, the story doesn't end. It sometimes changes form. Because what happened next didn't play out in open court. It unfolded behind closed doors, through private proceedings, buried evidence, and a decades-long search for truth that still hasn't fully surfaced. This is Silence in the Halls, Part 2: What was buried.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

With the courtroom doors effectively closed to them, the survivors were pushed into a different legal arena, one that operates far from public scrutiny, arbitration. At first glance, arbitration can sound like a practical alternative. It's faster, it's more efficient, it's less adversarial. But in cases like this that involve systemic abuse and institutional power coupled with decades of silence, that shift from a public courtroom to a private proceeding carries profound consequences.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Because arbitration is not just a different forum. It is a different kind of justice entirely. Unlike a trial, arbitration happens behind closed doors. There is no jury, no public record, no press. The rules of evidence are often more flexible as well. And perhaps most importantly, the outcome in many cases remains confidential.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

And for survivors who have already spent years being silenced, this was a bitter irony. The only path forward required them to once again tell their stories in a setting where the broader public now would still just never hear them.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

In some cases, arbitration raises immediate concerns about power imbalance. On one side, survivors, many of whom had carried trauma for decades, now being asked to recount deeply personal experiences in a structured legal setting.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

And on the other, institutions with significant resources, legal teams, insurance carriers, and decades of experiencing and decades of experience managing liability.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Arbitration is often framed as neutral, but neutrality assumes equal footing. And in cases like this, equal footing just does not exist.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

There are no juries to weigh credibility through collective judgment, no public accountability to pressure transparency. Instead, a single arbitrator or small panel becomes the sole decision maker.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

And while arbitrators are meant to be impartial, they are also part of a system that depends on repeat use, often by the very institutions appearing before them. That dynamic, critics argue, can subtly influence outcomes, not through overt bias, but through structural reality, because in arbitration, reputation and relationships can matter in ways that they just do not in open court.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

And for the women, the process itself was again grueling. Arbitration did not spare them from scrutiny and it didn't shield them from difficult questions again. In many ways, it mirrored the most painful aspects of litigation without offering the validation that comes from being publicly heard.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

They were still required to testify, still required to recount the abuse, still required to defend their credibility. But this time their stories would not contribute to a public record. They would not shape legal precedent. They would not inform broader societal understanding. They would exist only within the confines of that room. From a legal ethics standpoint, this raises a difficult question. What is the purpose of justice if it cannot be seen?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Because part of the function of the legal system, especially in cases involving systemic harm, is not just a resolution. It is exposure, it is acknowledgement, it is the creation of a record that ensures what happened cannot be easily denied or forgotten. But arbitration by design limits that very function.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

And then there's the question of outcome. In many arbitration proceedings, especially those involving institutions, resolutions come in the form of settlements, financial compensation in exchange for closure. But closure is a complicated concept here.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Because compensation does not equal accountability. There are often no admissions of wrongdoing, no findings of fact made public, no institutional reforms required as part of the process.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

From a legal standpoint, arbitration can resolve claims, but it does not necessarily answer questions. It doesn't tell the public what happened. It does not assign responsibility in a way that shapes future conduct. And it does not create the kind of precedent that changes how similar cases are handled moving forward. So while the women may have received some measure of resolution, the larger system remained in many ways untouched.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

And that may be the most important takeaway because what happened here is not unique to this case, unfortunately. Across the country, arbitration has become an increasingly common mechanism for resolving claims involving powerful institutions, from corporations to religious organizations, because honestly, it's efficient, controlled, and private. But in system, but in cases involving allegations of abuse, those same qualities can become liabilities.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Because when justice is handled in private, patterns are harder to see. When outcomes are confidential, accountability is harder to enforce. And when survivors are separated, case by case, room by room, the collective power of their voices can be diminished.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

By the end of the arbitration process, the women had done everything the legal system had asked of them. They had come forward, they had told their stories, they had endured scrutiny again and again. But still, so many questions remain unanswered about Maskell, about the institutions around him, about the death of Kathy Cesnick, and about whether the system designed to deliver justice had once again fallen short.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

For years, the murder of Sister Kathy Cesnick had existed in a space between fact and unanswered questions. An unsolved case, a cold file, a tragedy without resolution. But for one survivor, the crime scene was never abstract. It was something she claims to have seen with her own eyes. Jean described walking into a deserted field, turning a corner, and seeing a body lying on the ground. Sister Kathy.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

In a June 19th, 1994 article by the Baltimore Sun, investigators took a closer look at Jean's account and what they found was deeply significant.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

According to the report, Wener provided detailed descriptions of the scene, the layout of the area, the positioning of the body, and specific physical details that at the time had not been made public. Details that were known only to investigators.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

The article concluded that in interviews with both police and the paper, Jean's account contained information that detectives could not easily explain away. And critically, they did not dismiss her claims.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

From a legal standpoint, this matters because corroboration does not always come in the form of another witness. Sometimes it comes from knowledge, knowledge that a person should not have unless they were there, or were told by someone who was.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

And in this case, the implication is unavoidable. If Jean's account is accurate, then she was either present at the scene or in contact with someone who was directly involved.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

In later interviews, Jean described the moment in even more haunting detail. She said she ran toward Kathy's body, dropped to her knees, and began wiping maggots from her face. A detail that tragically aligns with the medical examiner's findings, that insect activity was present on the body. And then as she stared down at her hands in shock, she says Maskell leaned in and whispered, You see what happens when you say bad things about people?

SPEAKER_00 11:03

And if true, that statement is not just horrifying, it is profound, because it transforms this moment from a passive observation into an act of intimidation, a threat that speaks directly to coercion and witness silencing. And it provides a potential explanation for years of detailed reporting, fragmented memory, and the overwhelming fear described by survivors. It suggests that the abuse was not confined to private spaces, but was reinforced through calculated psychological control. Control designed to ensure silence.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

But here's where the case becomes even more complicated. Despite the disturbing nature of Jean's account, despite the details that appeared to align with known facts, it was never enough to bring criminal charges, and that raises a difficult legal reality. Credible is not the same as provable.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

And in criminal law, the standard is extraordinarily high, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And cases built on decades-old memories, without physical evidence directly tying a suspect to a crime face significant hurdles. Even when a witness provides compelling, consistent, and partially corroborated testimony, it may still fall short of what is required to prosecute. But that does not mean that it lacks value.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Because accounts like Jean's do something else. They shape the narrative, they inform investigators, and create context. And perhaps most importantly, they challenge the idea that Kathy's death was random. Instead, they suggest something far more intentional.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

If Jean's account is taken seriously and investigators have never fully dismissed it, then the murder of Sister Kathy cannot be viewed in isolation. It must be viewed as part of a larger story, one involving allegations of abuse, a story involving power, silence, and control.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

And a story where one woman may have known too much and paid the ultimate price. Because if Kathy was preparing to expose what was happening inside Archbishop Keogh High School, then her death may not have been an unrelated act of violence. It may have been a message.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

And if that possibility feels difficult to confront, it should, because it forces us to ask not just what happened to Kathy, but what systems were in place that allow the truth, whatever it may be, to remain buried for so long. And whether, even now, we are any closer to uncovering it.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

For decades, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, often referred to as the AOB, has maintained a consistent position. They deny any knowledge of Father Maskell's involvement in the murder of Sister Kathy Sesnick. And from a strictly legal standpoint, that denial matters because knowledge is the foundation of liability. Without it, the ability to prove institutional responsibility, especially in a criminal context, becomes significantly more difficult.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

But as with so much in this case, the denial does not exist in isolation, because alongside those denials are a series of facts and allegations that complicate the picture, raising questions not just about what was known, but about what may have been ignored. The archdiocese itself confirmed that guns were found in the rectory where Maskell last lived before he was ultimately defrocked, following what the church just described as credible reports of sexual abuse.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Now, of course, possession of firearms on its own is not evidence of murder. It's not even inherently suspicious. But in the context of this case, where survivors have alleged intimidation threats and even the use of a weapon to enforce silence, it becomes part of a larger pattern that's difficult to dismiss outright.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

And then there are the statements, not rumors or anonymous tips, but direct accounts from individuals connected to the investigation itself, that, if taken at face value, point towards something far more serious. A retired nun, Sister Mary Florida, stated that she had been told by former students that multiple girls had gone to Sister Kathy for help regarding abuse by Maskell.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

That alone aligns with what many survivors have claimed, that Kathy may have known. But what comes next is where the legal tension escalates. According to Sister Mary, two Baltimore County detectives told her in the mid-1990s, we know the priest was involved in Sister Kathy's murder, and we know it happened because she was about to report the sex abuse.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

If true, that statement is extraordinary. But legally, it's also deeply problematic because statements like this, absent documentation or testimony under oath or supporting evidence, remain that, just statements. They are not admissible proofs of guilt. They cannot on their own support an indictment. And they exist in a space that is incredibly difficult to translate into prosecutable action.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

That same tension appears again in another account, this time from Maryland attorney and Keograduate Teresa Lancaster. Lancaster, who later received a financial settlement related to abuse, stated that a high-ranking law enforcement official told her in 1994, quote, we know the priest was involved, and there is nothing we can do about it.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

So take a moment with that, because if accurate, it reflects something even more troubling than lack of evidence. It suggests perceived inability. Not we don't have enough power, but not we don't have enough to prove it, but we know and we still cannot act.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

From a legal standpoint, that could point to several possibilities, a lack of admissible evidence, or statute sublimination that had already expired, or perhaps concerns about witness credibility or cooperation, or more troublingly, structural barriers, conflicts, relationships, or institutional hesitations that made prosecution unlikely from the start. But without documentation, without a record, without that statement being tested in court, it remains outside the system. And anything outside the system cannot be acted on by it.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

And then there are the most disturbing allegations of all. Multiple survivors have claimed that police officers themselves participated in the abuse with Maskell's knowledge or approval, that he, as a priest and police chaplain, facilitated or at a minimum failed to intervene. If true, that would not just represent individual criminal acts. It suggests a breakdown, if not total corruption, of the very systems tasked with protecting victims and enforcing the law. So we return to the central question. Was there a cover-up? Publicly, the archdiocese says no. Legally, proving one would require more than patterns or suspicions. It would require clear evidence that individuals knowingly acted to conceal a crime through coordinated efforts, deliberate interference, or intentional suppression of evidence.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

For decades, the murder of Sister Kathy Sesnick sat in a category the legal system knows all too well. Unsolved, but not closed. And then in 2017, nearly half a century after her death, investigators took a step that, in many ways, says everything about this case. They went back to the grave.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

That's right. The Baltimore County police actually exhumed the body of Father Joseph Maskell, not as a symbolic act, but as a last tangible effort to answer a question that had lingered for 47 years. Was there physical evidence, real scientific evidence, that could finally connect him to the crime?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

By that point, the case had entered a new era of investigation, one shaped not by witness memory alone, but by forensic science. Back in 1970, when Sister Kathy's body was discovered, investigators collected evidence that would later be used to develop a DNA profile.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

And at the time, that technology didn't exist, but decades later it did. And over the years, police quietly compared that profile against multiple individuals connected to the case.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

None of them matched. So when a new cold case unit took over the investigation, they identified something critical. There was one name that had never been definitively tested, Joseph Maskell. According to investigators, confirming whether his DNA matched the evidence from the scene was a quote box that had to be checked, unquote. Not a theory or speculation, a measurable scientific question.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

And then the answer came back. The DNA taken from Maskell's exhumes did not match the DNA profile developed from the 1970 crime scene evidence. After decades of suspicion, allegations, and renewed investigation, the one piece of evidence that could have definitively placed him at the scene didn't. Legally that matters, a DNA exclusion doesn't just weaken a case. It can close the door on a specific theory of prosecution.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Because if the biological evidence recovered from the scene does not belong to the suspect, you cannot place them there through that evidence. And in a case already burdened by time, fading memories, and the absence of physical proof, that kind of result is devastating.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

But here's where the law and reality begin to diverge again. A non-match does not answer every question. It doesn't tell us whose DNA was found. It doesn't rule out the possibility of multiple individuals. It doesn't resolve the witness statements. And it doesn't explain the decades of allegations surrounding abuse, intimidation, and silence. What it does do is it removes one of the only remaining paths to a clean prosecutable case. Against a single named suspect.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Investigators have made it clear the case is still open. The theory that Sister Kathy may have been killed because of what she knew about abuse within the Catholic Church remains just one of several theories. In the end, the exhumation of Joseph Maskell was supposed to bring clarity, a yes or a no, a definitive link or a final elimination. What it delivered instead was something far more unsettling.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Because when the science rules someone out, but the questions remain, you're left confronting a possibility the legal system struggles to resolve, that the truth may still be out there, but the evidence needed to prove it may never be found.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

By the end of this story, it's no longer possible to look at it as a single failure, not one bad actor or one missed lead, not one case that slipped through the cracks. Because when the same names, the same institutions, and the same unanswered questions keep appearing again and again, you start to see something, not just failure, but the possibility of something deeper.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

The Catholic Church, through the Archdiocese of Baltimore, has denied any knowledge of Maskell's involvement in Sister Kathy's murder. Law enforcement never brought charges, prosecutors never secured an indictment, and on paper, that's where the story kind of ends. But as we step outside of the paperwork, the picture becomes harder to reconcile because layered over those denials are allegations, which are consistent, overlapping, and deeply unsettling of abuse, intimidation, and silence. And allegations that touch not just one institution, but several.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

There are claims of police officers participating in the abuse, claims of warnings delivered with a weapon, claims of evidence buried, literally, claims that investigators knew more than they could or would act on. And perhaps most troubling of all, statements attributed to those within the system suggesting awareness without action. We know, and there's nothing we can do. If that statement is even partially true, it reframes everything because that's not just a failure to prove a case. That's a suggestion of a system constrained, influenced, or compromised.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Now, to be clear, legally speaking, allegations are not proof. Suspicion is not evidence, and the standard required to charge, to prosecute, to convict is intentionally high. That standard protects all of us, but it also creates a space, one that cases like this can fall into, where something can feel profoundly wrong and still remain legally unresolved.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

So the question becomes, what do we call it when multiple systems appear to falter in the same direction? When the church reassigns instead of removes, when law enforcement fails to bring charges, when prosecutors decline to move forward, when key testimony is never secured, and when survivors speak, and the system at every level stops just short of action. Is that coincidence? Is it limitation? Or is it something closer to institutional protection?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Because corruption, in the legal sense, can be difficult to prove. It requires intent, coordination, evidence of deliberate wrongdoing. And in this case, that proof has never been established in a court of law. But corruption in a broader sense doesn't always announce itself so clearly. Sometimes it looks like silence. Sometimes it looks like delay. Sometimes it looks like decisions that individually can be explained, but collectively begin to form a pattern that's harder to ignore.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

And that's where this case lives, not in certainty, not in resolution, but in that uneasy space where too many questions point in the same direction, toward power and influence, toward systems that may have been more focused on protecting themselves than confronting what was happening within them.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Sister Kathy Cesnick is still gone. No one has been held accountable for her murder. And the women who came forward who carried these stories for decades were never given a full reckoning in a court of law. Not because their voices didn't matter, but because at every level something, whether it was evidence, timing, or the system itself, just stood in the way.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

So this is where we're left with a case that doesn't just ask what happened, but who had the power to stop it and didn't. This has been justice seekers. And sometimes the most important question isn't whether justice failed. It's whether it was ever fully allowed to work in the first place. Thank you for joining us. If you found today's episode meaningful, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who cares about justice.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Got a burning question, a wild theory, or a case you want us to tackle next? Slide into our inbox or tag us on social media. We love a good legal cliffhanger.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Remember, justice seekers, the truth is out there, and so is our next episode.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Until next time.