The Nun’s Skeleton PT 2
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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm well, Paul. How about you? I'm hanging in there. I've been reviewing my notes about this case out there in Baltimore, and I'm interested to see where you go from here with the details.

Yeah, there are a lot of details. Just to try to summarize this case, this is November 7th, 1969. There is a Catholic nun who is a teacher at a high school. Her name is Kathy Sesnick. She goes missing, and then ultimately she is found dead with a huge gaping wound to her skull. There is another woman who goes missing around the same time. Her name is Joyce Malecki.

We don't know if there's a connection between the two of them. We will eventually find out that there has been horrible abuse, sexual abuse,

of students at this high school, Keough High School in Baltimore, for years. We have students coming forward 25 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 that

What I'm trying to figure out and 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 Sesnick, 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 next.

And the 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? Yeah, that's what I'm recalling. And I guess I kind of want to start by just...

clarifying, Jean is saying this Joseph Maskell told her when he went out and had her see Kathy's body. Does he make any statements that he is the one that killed Kathy to Jean at that time? So this is what

Jean says in The Keepers. She says that one day after Sister Kathy disappeared, but before the body is discovered, so there's a two-month gap there, that Father Maskell drove her to Sister Kathy's body at the dump. So this would have been sometime in November or December. She says that he told her the same thing would happen to her if she told anyone about the abuse. She says that she remembers there being maggots on Sister Kathy's body.

So this winds up being used to discredit her at some point because people had said it was too cold outside for maggots. But Dr. 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. Yeah. So, you know, what I'm drawing from this is Maskell minimally has knowledge of where Kathy's body has been placed and

Now, there's maybe two competing scenarios. It's either he's the one who by himself killed Kathy, put her body there, and he is utilizing this. So Jean is basically made to fear for her life if she ever divulges the ongoing sexual abuse that she's experiencing from Maskell.

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

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 was responsible for Kathy's homicide.

and get them to turn on the other group. If it's just Maskell who by himself abducted and killed Kathy, then it's a little bit tougher, especially, you know, a quarter century later. But there is potential forensic evidence, you know, that they could potentially use to prove Maskell's involvement with Kathy's homicide. Carla only has the best tech. Can't connect to network. But she didn't have the best internet.

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Let me tell you what ended up leading to, it sounds like, Maskell threatening Jean by taking her to see Kathy's body. Let's talk about the lead up to that. Jean says that in June, so the summer of 1969, this was Kathy's last year at Keough before she took the sabbatical and worked at a public school.

Sister Kathy asks her, Jean, if any of the priests are making her do things that she doesn't want to do. So Kathy is suspicious.

Jean says to her in confidence over the summer, yes. Sister Kathy hugs her and tells her to go home and have a wonderful summer and that she will fix it. And another student in the Keepers, in the documentary, specifically remembers telling Kathy that Father Maskell 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 and

when Father Maskell called her, the student, to his office. And Kathy turned to Maskell 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 Gene gets back to school in the fall, you know, and Kathy had said, I'll take care of it, Kathy was gone. And...

Father Maskell was still there. So Kathy was at another school. She had not been murdered at that point. He says, Father Maskell says to Jean...

Early in that year, someone accused him of hurting the students. And so this is the buildup to after the murder, but before her body is discovered within that two-month period, Father Maskell is using the body as, Kathy's body, as a way to threaten Jean to keep her mouth shut. Because obviously people are coming forward, and Kathy knew too much.

Sure. You know, but the circumstances of how Kathy's body was found in terms of the state of her clothing, her shirt is open, this in many ways doesn't equate to what I would consider a sheer elimination homicide, the elimination of a witness. There is a sexual component to what happened to Kathy, no question about it. If, let's say, Maskell is responsible for Kathy's homicide,

And he is abusing Jean 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 whoever.

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, uh-oh, people are...

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 it.

committing the sexually motivated homicide. Well, let me tell you some more. So, Jean later remembers another detail. Now, remember, this is coming out, Paul, decades after all of this happened. She says one of her abusers was just referred to as Brother Bob. She believes that he alluded to knowing about her murder, Sister Kathy's murder, and about being present for it.

But that's 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, 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 and 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 Koob 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 happened, but the student...

was very clear that this is what happened. These two men, accused of sexual abuse at Sister Kathy's school, burst in and Sister Kathy said, "Okay, you two, you student and boyfriend, need to leave." Yeah, and this student, this is also a statement that's being made 25 years later? Longer, even longer, yes.

Okay. You know, and we know memory is elastic. It's kind of tough, you know, for this type of witness statement, from my perspective, to put a lot of weight on that. And I think, you know, there's aspects to this investigation. You know, was Magnus interviewed back in the day? Do you know? Not that I know of. I think it was completely squashed. The sexual abuse stuff never came out.

even though there was one person, the Archdiocese of Baltimore said that Gene was the first one to come forward about Maskell in 1992. But there was a guy who said he did come forward in 67 right before Maskell was transferred to Keough to the high school.

So people had said stuff, but nothing had come out about the sexual abuse to the police or to any kind of authority figure. There was no reason to interview these guys. They were no suspects, with the exception of Father Jerry. And that was just because they had a personal relationship. Yeah, you know, and this is where, you know, I think Sister Russell is critical because before the archdiocese is kind of squashing the investigation, Sister Russell is reporting Kathy missing. Mm-hmm.

She is being contacted by law enforcement at 1.30 a.m. in the morning. So if Magnus and this other guy, what was his name? Maskell. Maskell and this other guy burst into their apartment complex the day that Kathy went missing, how come Sister Russell isn't telling that to law enforcement at 1.30 a.m.? There's something not adding up here. Sister Russell, to me, is critical in terms of

you know, what is going on? 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're, 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. I think

I think that's why it's confusing. For Jerry's part, Father Jerry, he says that Kathy wanted to talk to him about something serious. They had planned to get together the day after she disappeared, but he insists that she never told him about the abuse. So he says, I didn't know. I can't imagine that, but who knows? He says, I didn't know, and she didn't talk to me about it, but she sounded like she wanted to talk about something very serious.

you know, on November 8th. You know, I think one of the things I want to point out 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 seeing sitting in her car in the proper parking space for apartment complex by a neighbor and

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 haphazard manner. It was done in haste. Why?

is that car brought back. It's because the offender's vehicle was at Kathy's location, somewhere in that area. So the offender took Kathy, killed Kathy, and had to get back using Kathy's vehicle in order 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 in 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 this Father Maskell? You know, is he going to Kathy's apartment, sees her isolated, and takes advantage of that? He, at least per gene...

is expressing knowledge of where Kathy's body is, I have to assume that authorities sufficiently vetted the gene statement so that they 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 Jean is telling the truth about what happened. Well, now this becomes important. I think it's a very small circle of suspects that...

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, latent prints, whatever they did, you know, there's potentially physical evidence that can help sort this out.

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Let me wrap up this part of the story. None of this information about abuse at Keough comes to light until about 1994, and that's when Jean hires an attorney because she was being stonewalled by the church. This lawyer puts an advertisement in the Baltimore Sun

asking for any information about are there survivors of abuse that went to Archbishop Keough school. The ad doesn't say anything about Father Maskell in particular, but about 40 women come forward and nearly all their stories are about him. This information is given to the state's attorney, but Maskell 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 94, Jean and another former student, who's a woman named Teresa Lancaster, sue Father Maskell. And this is a suit that's ultimately dismissed because the statute of limitations had lapsed. The case went to trial in the first place 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, I know we talked about it, and the questions about whether what Jean and any of these other students were experiencing were not, it doesn't sound like recovered memories. It sounded like, you know, repressed or, you know, not coming forward, scared, upset.

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? Yeah, you know, and I'm trying to remember the exact details. California has...

In statute, you know, and I think California uses the term repressed memories, but I'm not entirely sure about that. But there's something to the effect that if a person comes forward with a repressed memory and at the time of, let's say, their sexual abuse, they were 15 years or younger...

They have like 30 years after the crime occurred to come forward, and then the case 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 her.

a body in the backyard, you know, and of course ended up never finding anything. But I do know that these types of memories you do have from a psychological standpoint, you know, there is the possibility of somebody just burying this memory and then having it come forward at some point. But you have to kind of, you know, tease out the people that

are being honest and truthful, people that are misremembering things, and then people who are just making stuff up. Yeah. I mean, just like in a normal witness, repressed memory or not, you're just having to figure out who's truthful and who's not, what their motives are, right? Absolutely. Yep, for sure.

Well, I wish this had a better ending that, you know, Father Maskell got punished in some way. He doesn't. He dies of a stroke in 2001, which is too bad. At that point in time, the archdiocese says that the allegations against Maskell were credible, quote unquote.

and confirmed that he did have guns in his residence. I don't think we're surprised by that. Sister Russell died not long after. She was not a nun any longer. She had been married and had a family, and she died just a couple of months after. And a friend called her when he died, when Maskell died, before she died, and Sister Russell said, well, he took his secret to the grave.

Now there's been renewed interest starting in 2005. 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 1968-69 Keough yearbook. So this is the high school where Maskell was. And it shows that a gift was made that year by the Malecki family on their patrons page.

And the interviews with the remaining family members revealed that when they lived in Lansdowne, which is less than a mile from where Kathy Sesnick's body was,

They attended a church, St. Clement Church. The Malecki siblings, including Joyce, went to week-long retreats as high school students, during which they spent entire days engaged in religious instruction with priests. So that might not seem like a big deal, except the Baltimore Archdiocesan records confirm that Maskell served at St. Clement in Lansdowne from 66 to 68.

And this is essentially saying that they would have likely crossed paths. Joyce Malecki, 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 Maskell worked. And it sounds like she attended week-long retreats where Maskell would have been for sure. Yeah, you know, I don't know. I'm not putting much weight on this gift of money to the high school. If

they could confirm that Maskell and Joyce were at the same location at the same time. You know, that's where now Maskell at least could see a victim, has, you know, maybe established a relationship, you know, with this victim, just as this authority figure within this location. But it's, I mean, it's weak, you know, it could just be coincidental.

Yeah. So let me tell you a couple more things. It looks like the records show that Father Maskell was Joyce Malecki's parish priest during a two-year period shortly before she was killed.

I don't know if that means that they were, just because he was, you know, her priest, doesn't mean that they had really personal interactions. I don't know if she took confession. I don't know any of that. We just know that they would have been certainly in the same vicinity. And Father Maskell sent her family a condolence card after she was found murdered.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. I mean, so he knew her. He knew her for sure. Yeah. If we're going to talk about Joyce Malucky briefly, she was 20. And again, she goes missing four days after Kathy Sesnick 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. 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 the 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 Malecki'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 that

using DNA and genealogy. Yeah, you know, I think, you know, what I wanted to hear was sort of the crossover in details between Kathy and Joyce's case. Basically, you have abduction homicides of two young females. So, you know, I think, you know, first, it's the victimology. You have, you know, two young women that are victims of abduction homicide. And

Even though we don't know the circumstances of what exactly happened with Joyce outside of strangulation. She was beat and she put up a fight. But, I mean, a 20-year-old female being abducted and killed, in all likelihood, it's a sexually motivated crime. I think there's at least enough parallel from the circumstances, you know, that it could be the same offender.

Now, if we throw Jean's statement out about Maskell showing this is where Kathy's body is, you know, it is entirely possible that you have a single predator that abducted and killed Kathy and abducted and killed Joyce and maybe did other things.

That's where Jean'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 by an individual or a group of individuals themselves.

that had an association with her. And if it's Maskell, who it's shown that he has an association with Joyce, this becomes critical because there's no question. He is a child predator working. He has access to all these young girls at the school. Predators go to where the prey's at.

And so envisioning Maskell taking a crime further past sexual abuse and actually committing homicide, that is well within the realm of this type of offender. So I right now don't have an issue, assuming Jean is completely accurate about her statement, that

that Maskell is by himself is responsible for these two homicides, but they need to get the evidence to prove it. Right. I found a few more details. I doubt they make any kind of a difference about Joyce Malecki. So, you know, she had been found with her...

hands tied behind her back with scratches and bruises on her body. That's the part of the struggle I told you about. And they said that there was a single knife wound found in her throat, but it was not sufficient to cause death. But she had 15 superficial cuts on the neck and abrasions on her forehead, nose, and chin.

And the FBI took over the case because they were found, obviously, on federal property because it was a 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 Maskell. 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. Yeah.

Yeah, hopefully, you know, because there is a chance with both cases that there is

you know, physical evidence that can solve these cases. You know, the fact that the FBI went through the process to exhume 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 1969, 1970, 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 semen presence, so yes, this is a sexually motivated crime. And 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 her clothing? Right.

Just like Kathy's clothing, you know, is there a possibility that there's a Thunder DNA off of those items? 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 until they get that objective identifying evidence on these cases, it's going to be hard to say, you know, Father Maskell is their killer. They need to do more than just show, you know, the connections that each one of the victims had to Father Maskell. Gene's statement, I think, is really sort of the big thing in the case, at least with Kathy's case. Because, again, if that has 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 Maskell or somebody closely affiliated with Father Maskell is responsible for Kathy's homicide. Well, for due diligence, let's go through two other suspects that are not related to Father Maskell or the high school in particular, just because these are people that have floated around

This guy is named Ed Davidson. He's alive, at least when The Keepers was made, he was. He gives an interview. He's very frail. He says, I have nothing to do with the murder, but his name gets brought up, and here's why. In 2013, former students of Sister Kathy's named Abby Stow and Gemma 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, Gemma gets a text from a woman named Debbie Yons, 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 1969. This is when, you know, Sister Kathy goes missing. One of the twins was in the NICU, and just before 9.30 on November 7th, 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 and the time and everything.

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 for his 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 at a 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 green stone that looks like peridot, 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 birthstone of her sister's fiancé in it. What do you think so far? Covered in blood? I mean, good Lord. This is a dime-a-dozen type of suspect that we see in these whodunit homicides all the time.

I can't say if this Davison is responsible or not, but so far, this type of circumstantial evidence is weak. You know, there's something there, but it all could just be coincidence, you know, and covered in blood. Yeah.

We will get these types of suspects. And there are things like this that happens. You know, I don't know if Davidson's boss would still 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. So I don't know.

So, you know, right now I'm not blown away with the evidence that you've presented right now on Davidson. You know, the filmmakers interview him and he said, listen, like I was kind of pulling my wife's leg on this. I did not kill this woman. I actually, you know, I hurt my hand. That's why there was blood all over my shirt.

Yeah, I kind of led her to believe I did something, but I didn't do anything, and that was that. I made it up, you know, in general. So it doesn't really go anywhere. There is another person, though, who's interesting, unless you want to—do you have a comment on that? I was just going to—you know, because this is what happens. Sometimes, you know, we get the street chatter where you do have guys. Believe it or not, guys will pretend that they were—

you know, involved in some homicide because it gives them street credibility or some level of credibility with whoever they're wanting to impress by being capable of committing these horrific crimes. It's just, that's part of the reason why law enforcement has holdbacks.

Right? Details that don't get made public because you get these nutjobs that are willing to, whether they come into law enforcement and confess, or they just start, they're at a bar and they're trying to impress their bar buddies that, hey, I killed her, you know. And believe it or not, they feel that they're impressing somebody by saying,

you know, making that type of statement. They have nothing to do with the crime. Well, I have another suspect. This actually seems a little more credible to me. So there is a woman named Barbara Schmidt. So Barbara Schmidt is telling this story about her husband,

He has a drinking problem that comes out of nowhere in the 70s. And one day, her husband says to her, it's because he and his brother, Billy, killed a woman behind the shop, meaning behind the family's business. So we're talking about this guy, Billy Schmidt, and it sounds like this woman is saying that her husband helped his brother dispose of Sister Kathy's body. But she also says that one night, she's not saying specifically November 7th, 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 it's 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 hall from her. In the apartment complex. In the apartment complex. And here's something else that was really weird. The small dump where her body had been found is behind the Schmidt family business and very close to Billy's

house where he and his brother grew up. Okay, so Billy has two anchor points. I'm kind of throwing out a geographic profile term. An anchor point is, you know, a location within a person's normal living pattern, such as a residence, such as a place of work, a hangout spot like the bar, a

you know, that they go to. Billy has two anchor points that are significant in the case. The last location where Kathy was seen alive, sitting in the parking lot of the apartment complex that Billy and Kathy share,

as well as the body dump location of Kathy's body, which is behind the Schmidt shop. So this is where now Billy has the local familiarity that authorities are saying somebody must have had in order to have dumped Kathy's body there.

So that checks a couple of boxes for me. 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

There was vegetation in terms of it looked like almost a little swaths of forest 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 she's killed and her body's dumped back to Kathy.

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 of

uh, than with that Davidson. You know, that's, 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, than Davidson. Yeah. You know, and, and this, this is just, well, how, if, if let's say Billy's the one responsible for Kathy's homicide, uh,

then how is Jean's statement with Father Maskell, you know, how does that fit in? Right. 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 Jean's statement. Yep. And if she's still alive, re-interviewing her. Yeah. I need to be confident that what she is remembering is,

is spot on with what somebody would have observed of Kathy's body out at that location. Well, let me wrap up Billy real quick. So Barbara, the woman who called this in, says that Billy's mental health deteriorated after Kathy's murder. He talked about the case all the time. He was obsessed with nuns. She says he kept a nun's habit in his attic and sometimes talked about it like it was a real person, like it was haunting him.

And he died by suicide a few years later after this happened. So he's been dead for a long time. He's been dead for a long time. There were cigarette butts found near Kathy's body, and they were Salem's, which is Billy's brand. But, you know, I'm sure you could throw a rock in Maryland and hit somebody who smoked Salem's.

But just to transition into DNA stuff, they did take a DNA sample right before The Keepers aired on Netflix. They exhumed Joseph Maskell's body. They took a DNA sample to compare it against DNA that was recovered from those cigarette butts found near Sister Kathy's body. We have no idea. I know. You're grimacing. We have no idea whose 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 assessing the evidence that the DNA is coming off of, it's not just an all or nothing. So most certainly, let's say Maskell's DNA is found on those cigarette butts.

That is compelling because what is his association with that location? You know, so that's significant. Even though it might be very tough to say, yeah, the killer is the one that's responsible for smoking those cigarette butts. Now with Billy Schmidt...

It's right behind his family business. Yeah. If it is his DNA on those cigarette butts, the evidence against him is weaker because he has an association with that location. So you always have to interpret the DNA evidence or any physical evidence within the context of the case and within the context of the suspects and the victims, etc. Yeah.

You know, my hope would be is that they, like exhuming 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 either of these suspects, you know, innocent explanation for their DNA being on, you know, particularly if it turns out it's, let's say, semen. Right.

Well, you know, everything I read was from December of last year, and it doesn't, I don't see results back. So they exhumed her body in December of 2023. Is that a reasonable amount of time? Is that bad news if we haven't heard anything, you know, in 10 months or however long?

No, not at all. You know, with a case this old, if let's say they're submitting that to, and this is the FBI that exhumed the body from Joyce with Joyce. So if they're submitting that to FBI lab, it's going to take a while. I mean, this is a federal level lab with agencies from across the nation sending them evidence. Backlog is extraordinary.

So this case isn't going to have priority relative to maybe other cases that are more active. So no, that doesn't surprise 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 they're able to go after whatever physical evidence still remains, you know, there.

To wrap up this section, you know, they're hopeful. There were, in 70 and 71, two different 16-year-old girls in Maryland disappeared after last seen at shopping centers.

One of those was solved. I mentioned it earlier. So, you know, they're trying for sure. While the allegations of abuse at Kiel by Magnus and Maskell 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 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.

Well, that's not a stretch at all. You know, I made the observation earlier that Kathy's homicide, you know, and the state of her clothing, you know, it's not merely an elimination homicide. I mean, there is a sexual component to her homicide. Absent Jean's recovered memory or her memory of being taken out by Maskell to Kathy's body,

If that statement didn't exist, then I would say, hey, you know what? All possibilities are on the table. There's plenty of cases just like Kathy's across the nation. There's a case out of

Iowa, I believe. Jodi Huizen-Truitt. Yeah. News anchor that, you know, she looks like she was contacted by an offender out in the parking lot and has just disappeared. Yeah. Those types of crimes do occur. You could have an active predator that's responsible for Kathy and Joyce's cases, or you have multiple predators, or because of Jean's statement, I put, you know, I'm putting Maskell in play and maybe associates of Maskell in play. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, bringing this right back to the original victim, Kathy, you know, her mom died in 2010, not knowing what happened to her daughter, which I can't think of anything more upsetting. The family doesn't talk much about the murder, certainly in the media over the years, but her sister Marilyn said that when their mom died, Marilyn was 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 confidant 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. Jeez. You know, it's the ultimate frustration as an investigator, you know, when I've worked cases and have

have failed to close cases, which is many, many of these unsolved cases. And, you know, what my biggest frustration is thinking that the killer is out there and they're living their life and it's a life they don't deserve because they stole somebody else's life and all the life experiences that that person, the victim would have had or what their family members would have had, etc.,

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. I teach a class at UT that's sort of an ethics in true crime podcasting class. Essentially what to look for when you're listening or watching true crime. What's ethical, what's not ethical.

I will say I think The Keepers is one of the best. And I know you don't like watching true crime stuff. You don't have enough room in your pretty little head for the current cases and barely enough room for what I'm telling you, let alone 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. 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 you, 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, but you can just look at it and we can have a discussion about it. I guess buried bones should be enough for you though, right? Just like here with buried bones, it's, you know, I'm wanting to solve. You know, that's what I, you know, that's why I got into the work I got into. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, I can get frustrated watching some of the true crime stuff because I'm not given the information that I need to move forward with the case, you know, and that's part of it. Yeah.

I know. Sorry, Paul. I want to help. I want us to solve everything. But next week, we'll have some fabulous case that you'll learn something about. It could be like how they made a cart and a horse and cart in the 1600s. It could be some wacky new way that they tested ballistics in the 1910s. Who knows what it'll be? Something weird, I'm sure. Yeah. Nope. I'm looking forward to it. Okay. See you then. All right. Thanks, Dave.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.