Investigators plan to exhume the body of ‘The Keepers’ subject Joyce Malecki. What could the FBI find out?

BALTIMORE — The FBI tentatively plans to exhume Joyce Malecki’s body from a grave in Southwest Baltimore next week, more than 50 years after the Baltimore County woman’s unsolved homicide, which was documented in Netflix’s “The Keepers.”

An advocate for Malecki’s family, who noted that the plans were tentative depending on the weather, asked those interested in the high-profile cold case to stay away from the exhumation. A spokesperson for the federal authorities, who took charge of the case soon after Malecki was found dead on military property, said it “does not have anything to publicly share” and would not comment “out of respect for the ongoing investigation.”

Malecki, a 20-year-old from Lansdowne who worked in the credit department of a liquor company, went missing in November 1969 after going to shop in Glen Burnie. She later was found dead in a section of Fort Meade called Soldiers Park. An autopsy determined she had died of strangulation.

Since the beginning, her case has been intertwined with that of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a 26-year-old nun working at Archbishop Keough High School who died under similar circumstances after being reported missing four days before Malecki. The 2017 documentary series aimed to link both homicides to A. Joseph Maskell, who knew both girls and was a chaplain and guidance counselor at the now-closed Catholic school, and was accused of sexually abusing multiple students.

Here’s what to know about the exhumation process.

—Can I attend?

No.

Malecki’s family will be able to view the exhumation alongside law enforcement, but the general public — including the media and any “amateur sleuths” — won’t be permitted to enter Loudon Park Cemetery, said Kurt Wolfgang, who heads the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, a nonprofit that has been working with Malecki’s family.

He said the family asks the public to respect their privacy during the exhumation.

—What could investigators be looking for?

Forensic science has changed completely since 1969, when the original evidence in Malecki’s case was collected. For starters, DNA did not play a role in criminal investigations until decades later.

In a case like Malecki’s, the exhumation would be “driven by genetics,” said Dana Kollmann, a clinical associate professor of anthropology at Towson University.

Some trace evidence — fibers, hair, gunshot residue, botanical material or bodily fluids — could help investigators make a link, Kelly Elkins, co-director of the institution’s Human Remains DNA Identification Laboratory, said in July.

But exhuming a body can be unpredictable.

It’s “a little unsure of what you’re going to find” each time, said Jack Mitchell, the president of Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home and Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Baltimore County.

Mitchell, who is the immediate past president of the National Funeral Directors’ Association, said he’s been involved in roughly 20 exhumations during his time as a funeral director — though mostly for reasons requested by the family.

It all depends on the time frame, what the person was buried in and how they were embalmed. Sometimes the casket and the body are preserved. Sometimes it’s just bones.

The FBI has previously exhumed human remains in high-profile cases to apply other tests using modern technology. In 2005, the agency disinterred the body of Emmett Till, the Black teen whose brutal murder in 1955 helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement, in part to run high-tech scans that could help them determine his cause of death. Till didn’t get an initial autopsy after he was killed, and since an all-white jury acquitted the men who later confessed to his killing, nobody has been convicted of his murder.

Earlier this year, Anne Arundel County Police identified a suspect in another cold case with similarities to Malecki’s — the 1970 homicide of Pamela Lynn Conyers, a teen who investigators say was also strangled after disappearing from another Glen Burnie shopping center. Police said in March that the FBI had isolated Forrest Clyde Williams III as a suspect using genetic genealogy, where DNA evidence is compiled to create matches and generate a family tree.

That police department would not say this week whether Conyers’ or Williams’ bodies were exhumed as part of that investigation, or if the homicide was believed to be related to Malecki’s.

—Disinterment laws vary from state to state. In Maryland, elected prosecutors call the shots.

The laws for disinterring human remains from a gravesite are different in each state, but all follow the standard that the dead have a right “to remain in the place they’re buried,” said Tanya Marsh, a lawyer and faculty member at Wake Forest University who specializes in funeral and cemetery law.

Maryland law gives the authority to approve disinterment, under most circumstances, to the elected state’s attorney of the county where the body is buried, also usually requiring a health department official’s signoff.

State’s attorneys delegate duties from their main role — prosecuting crime in their jurisdiction — to assistants. But along with wiretaps and no-knock warrants, exhumations are one of three authorizations where Maryland law says only the county’s chief prosecutor can approve.

It’s a duty Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said he cites as something most people don’t know about his job.

“We never really talk that much about it,” he said.

A public notice in a newspaper is usually required at some point in the process, too, though it may not have been necessary to publish one in advance for Malecki’s case. The advance notice is intended to allow anyone with a vested interest to voice their opposition to the disinterment.

Mitchell said he’s never heard of such a challenge.

There are some exemptions to the 19th-century laws — a family member likely wouldn’t have to get the chief prosecutor’s approval if the remains are going to be reburied in the same cemetery, but would have to run a public notice in a newspaper afterward. A court order also would skip over the approval process.

It’s unclear what approvals the FBI obtained for Malecki’s exhumation. Spokespeople for the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office declined to say this week whether Ivan Bates granted authorization in Malecki’s case. In July, they said Bates had not received a request but would cooperate with the investigation.

—Exhuming a body isn’t common, even in cold cases

Shellenberger said he’s authorized eight exhumations this year and 10 last year. Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess said she signed off on three in 2022 and the same amount so far in 2023. They’re routine for the prosecutors, and when related to an investigation, can be helpful.

In 2021, county police said they solved a decades-old homicide of a 13-year-old girl, Heather Porter, by exhuming the body of a suspect. Police said they determined John Anthony Petrecca Jr., who died in 2000, was the suspect after forwarding DNA from his exhumed body to the FBI.

Maskell’s body was exhumed in 2017, just before the release of “The Keepers.” Baltimore County Police disinterred his remains from Holy Family Cemetery in Randallstown to compare his DNA with evidence from Cesnik’s case. The testing ultimately could not connect him or rule him out of Cesnik’s case, police said.

But the prosecutors, as well as Mitchell, said law enforcement cases are a rarity. Most, if not all, of the exhumations they were involved in have been because families want to move their loved ones closer to them. Sometimes, it’s a request from a cemetery because of land-related reasons, such as flooding.

It’s a “very meticulous” process, in part because of the uncertainty of what’s under the ground, Mitchell said. Grounds crews go to great lengths to ensure no remains are left behind, because as with any funeral arrangement, there’s “always that underlying dignity and respect,” he said.