Body of Joyce Malecki, featured in ‘The Keepers,’ is exhumed

The FBI’s Baltimore Field office said Thursday that the agency had exhumed the body of Joyce Malecki, a 20-yearold found dead in Anne Arundel County over 50 years ago, from Loudon Park Cemetery in Southwest Baltimore.

It’s still unclear what exactly the FBI was seeking by digging the remains from the grave, though forensics experts said the disinterment would likely be focused on obtaining genetic material.

“We remain committed to bringing justice for Joyce and her family,” the agency said in a statement on social media, noting they could not provide additional information on the investigation that has spanned half a century.

Malecki, of Lansdowne, went missing in November 1969 after going to a shop in Glen Burnie. She later was found dead by strangulation in a section of Fort Meade called Soldiers Park. The area is federal property, so the FBI took over the investigation.

Malecki went missing four days after Sister Catherine Cesnik, a 26-year-old nun who was later found dead under similar circumstances. The 2017 Netflix documentary series “The

Keepers” sought to draw a link between both homicides and A. Joseph Maskell, a chaplain and guidance counselor at the now-closed Catholic school, and was accused of sexually abusing multiple students at Archbishop Keough High School. Cesnik was a nun at the now-closed school, and Malecki had also encountered Maskell.

Maskell, who died in 2001, had his body exhumed in 2017. Baltimore County Police said that DNA testing performed on his remains did not draw a link between him and Cesnik’s death, but did not rule him out, either.