No Amateur Sleuth Documentary Has Ever Topped The Keepers

If we mark the modern resurgence of the true-crime genre as the release of the Serial podcast in 2014, we are a decade into this era with no signs of slowing down. On all platforms and in all formats — podcasts, dramatic TV series, documentaries — real-life stories of crime and intrigue are as hot as ever. And any case that’s even slightly open ended presents a prime opportunity for at-home detectives to try to solve it themselves.

Most recently, the Paramount+ series Cybersleuths: The Idaho Murders shined a light on the way that real-life murder cases are being co-opted by amateur crime-solvers who turn their "investigations" into constantly unfolding entertainment on social media. This particular trend is wildly problematic, both morally and practically. It's ugly to watch people play the "like and subscribe" game while poring over the grisly detritus of a quadruple murder, as was the case in Idaho. But these investigations, often happening in real time and concurrently with police investigations, can gum up the works and put innocent people under a cloud of suspicion for no reason.

Shows like The Idaho Murders and the prevalence of "cybersleuths" in general bring to mind Netflix's 2017 documentary series The Keepers, which stands tall in the true-crime genre even seven years later. The seven-part series, directed by Ryan White, digs into the 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a Catholic nun and schoolteacher who was found murdered in the Baltimore suburbs. More specifically, the series focuses on the efforts of women like Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Fitzgerald Schaub, former students of Cesnik's who have pursued an investigation into the nun's murder for years, through which they have connected the killing to the sexual abuse of students by the priests at Cesnik's school.

The Keepers is an engrossing, rigorous, and often difficult series to watch (the descriptions of sexual abuse by the victims, in particular Jean Hargadon Wehner, is deeply unsettling). But it's also a welcome contrast to flashier, more shallow true-crime investigations like the ones presented in series like The Idaho Murders or even Netflix productions like Don't F*ck With Cats.

Sleuth-at-home investigations have their obvious charms. It's a powerful fantasy, that you, in your position as an audience member, could step into a real-life murder mystery and solve it from the comfort of your own living room. The Keepers presents the unglamorous side of this kind of citizen investigation through Gemma and Abbie, who have spent years digging through every minute detail of the case, looking for answers. This has included reading over police reports, FBI files, making Freedom of Information Act requests, and speaking to whomever they can find with information about the murder. "This is not Abby and Gemma sitting at a table being detectives or playing Clue," Gemma says at one point. Their investigation stems from a decades-old frustration that the murder of their schoolteacher has gone unsolved.

Ryan White works wonders over the course of seven episodes, telling a multi-layered story. The murder of Cathy Cesnik is connected to the sexual abuse at Archbishop Keough High School, and once that's established, the series follows one path with ​​Jean Wehner, who was abused by Joseph Maskell, who became known as Jane Doe in the case against Maskell and the diocese. White then follows another path towards the murder itself, retracing the steps of how it could have been done and speaking to multiple people with stories about relatives who may have been connected to the killing.

Neither element of the case gets short-shrift, but as fascinating as the investigation into Cesnik's murder gets, White makes sure we're always aware that this was a murder that happened within the context of a more far-reaching crime. The sexual abuse that Wehner and other victims suffered — the show also features Teresa Lancaster, who came forward as "Jane Roe" in the failed court case — is never treated as window dressing to a murder mystery. While the identity of Cesnik's murderer (or murderers) is quite pertinent, the systemic nature of the crimes surrounding Archbishop Keough and the way the Catholic Church worked to keep those crimes silent, is at the center of the series. The "keepers" of the shows title refers both to Gemma and Abbie, who are keeping the flame of this investigation alive when the authorities would have let it die out; and the systems like the Church and the justice system, which have worked to keep the truth about cases of sexual abuse and violence by priests silent.

Perhaps the most underrated element about The Keepers, and what keeps it from becoming fodder for armchair detectives at home, is just how parochial the story is. White lays down the particulars of the Baltimore setting — what a Catholic town it was back then, how prevalent the church was in all facets of life, how the Archbishop Keough students have kept in touch with each other, and most importantly how everybody has talked to one another over the years. Gemma and Abbie's investment in the case wouldn't exist if they hadn't felt close to Sister Cathy. And as White follows their investigation, we see how they (with the help of their Facebook group) are able to piece together the story from a kind of shared telling of community history. The fact that they're able to find two separate women who have stories about their uncles making cryptic statements about having murdered a woman back in 1969 is the kind of detail that only exists in communities where open secrets exist.

You can't get into these kinds of close-knit conversations without the deep connections these women have to their community. There's also something about them running this investigation via a Facebook group that feels very 10-years-ago, but in a way that keeps the investigation from becoming a circus. It's not a performative platform the way that Instagram and TikTok are, which encourage fandoms and followers.

The Keepers discourages the cybersleuth treatment if for no other reason than it's hard to solve the problem of institutional sexual abuse within the Catholic Church with an Instagram story. Cathy Cesnik's murder is about so much more than whose apartment is visible in a crime scene photo and whose alibi on the night of the crime seems sketchy. As intriguing as the many tendrils of the Cesnik murder are, there is rot beneath the ground that the solving of one murder will not remedy. That requires a lifelong determination to hold people to account. It's hard, oftentimes unrewarding work, as any real justice requires.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.