Content warning: Some of the themes and scenes discussed are confronting.
Readers, I have just finished the final episode of The Keepers, Netflix’s investigative documentary series into the 1969 Baltimore murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik.
And man oh man do I have a lot of unresolved feelings about it.
While the work of ex-Archbishop Keogh High School students Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Fitzgerald Schaub was nothing short of admirable, I have found myself roaming the world listlessly since the credits on episode seven rolled on my lazy Tuesday afternoon.
I JUST HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS AND I NEED ANSWERS AND I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT SPOOKY FREAKIN’ NUN IN THE ATTIC AND WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WATCH.
Ahem. Excuse me.
Listen: Why you need to watch The Keepers. Post continues after audio…
Almost 50 years later, and with the murder of both Sister Cesnik and local 20-year-old woman Joyce Malecki still unresolved, here are the things that have made me blurt out ‘Wah?!’ more times than I’d like to admit within the last 24 hours.
What did police detectives hand Gerry Koob?
Okay, I’m sorry but we need to get this out of the way before anything else. This was quite possibly the most traumatic claim I’ve ever heard.
For those who missed it (you could not have missed it), let me recap.
According to Koob – one of the former suspects in his 26-year-old friend’s murder – in the days following Sister Cathy’s disappearance, he was the victim of a cruel and deeply unethical stunt carried out by Baltimore police.
Koob claims that while being interrogated about Cesnik’s murder, a detective left the interviewing room only to reappear with a mass wrapped in newspaper, and flung it to him across the table. Inside the paper, he says, was part of Sister Cathy’s reproductive anatomy.