In the wake of Serial, Making a Murderer, and S-Town, true crime has never been more culturally relevant, even if the entertainment-ification of the deaths of real people comes with some significant moral questions.
But the enthralling mystery surrounding an unsolved case can, in the right hands, make for powerfully gripping media, and Netflix has just released the trailer for its latest stab at the genre.
With The Keepers, director Ryan White offers a documentary series about the mysterious murder of a young nun in Baltimore. Across the seven parts, the show will expose, to quote Netflix, “horrific secrets and pain that linger nearly five decades after her death.”
The show opens with the story of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a nun and high school teacher who went missing in November 1969. Two months later, her remains were found, but the culprit was never brought to justice.
[Netflix]
With the case gone cold, Sister Cathy returned to the public’s imagination in the 1990s, when a former student anonymously alerted authorities to a history of appalling sexual abuse carried out by the school chaplain. The same woman, known only as Jane Doe, claimed to have been taken to the nun’s body and told, “See what happens when you say bad things about people.”
Despite her statement, added to those made by other abuse survivors, the Sister Cathy story went largely unheard of outside of Maryland.
With interviews with dozens of friends, relatives, journalists and government officials, The Keepers will attempt to piece together the truth of what happened to Sister Cathy. All episodes are released on May 19th and you can watch the trailer in full below:
