Darryl Malecki’s final reminiscence of his older sister is a routine interplay between siblings: A youngster on the time, he was working at a quick meals restaurant exterior Baltimore when she stopped by to modify vehicles earlier than heading to the mall.
Joyce Malecki, 20, by no means returned dwelling. Her physique was discovered on a close-by navy base with indicators of extreme trauma. An post-mortem decided she had been strangled to dying.
Greater than a half-century later, the case stays unsolved. However the Malecki household obtained a spark of hope this week when FBI investigators exhumed Joyce Malecki’s body as they proceed working to establish her killer.
The case has been a topic of widespread hypothesis, particularly since Netflix’s documentary sequence “The Keepers” examined the slaying of a Baltimore nun that unfolded days earlier under eerily similar circumstances.
“We’re hoping and praying that the FBI does have something,” Darryl Malecki stated at a information convention Friday morning close to his dwelling on Maryland’s Japanese Shore. “Lord knows, time just keeps clicking on.”
He attended the exhumation Thursday together with different relations, together with his oldest brother who recognized their sister’s physique in 1969. When investigators gave the household a couple of minutes with the casket, Darryl Malecki informed Joyce he hoped she was spending time with their mother and father in heaven.
“Your mind starts really spinning,” he stated. “When you think about it — what she could have done, where she would be … it’s very emotional.”
Kurt Wolfgang, government director of the Maryland Crime Victims Useful resource Middle, stated it seems investigators have been seeking to extract DNA from Joyce Malecki’s physique, though it’s unclear what they’re in search of to find out.
Wolfgang, whose group is working with the Malecki household, credit an investigator on their employees for reviving regulation enforcement’s curiosity within the case, which is being dealt with by the FBI as a result of the sufferer was discovered on navy property.
He stated the exhumation suggests investigators are pursuing probably promising leads.
“They’re simply not going to exhume someone after 54 years unless they have some dots they think they need to connect,” he stated. “And that is our sincere hope and desire.”
Darryl Malecki stated his sister was a wonderful one that handled even her youngest brother with kindness and respect. He stated she was sturdy, so he wasn’t shocked when regulation enforcement informed the household that proof indicated she put up a combat. He recalled household dinners and winter snowstorms once they would go sledding collectively.
He stated the entire household went to Fort Meade to establish his sister’s physique, which was recovered from a coaching space on the navy base. The night time of her disappearance, Joyce Malecki had plans to fulfill up together with her boyfriend who was stationed there. He was apparently dominated out as a suspect early on within the investigation, Darryl Malecki stated.
Joyce Malecki’s dying obtained widespread consideration after “The Keepers” was launched in 2017, elevating questions on whether or not her disappearance was linked to that of Sister Cathy Cesnik, who was discovered useless from blunt drive trauma after she additionally went procuring in Baltimore and by no means returned.
Additionally in 2017, investigators exhumed the physique of a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Maskell, to see if his DNA matched proof from the scene of Cesnik’s dying. The documentary questioned whether or not Cesnik was killed as a result of she knew Maskell was sexually abusing college students on the Catholic highschool the place they each labored. DNA testing didn’t reveal a match and the case stays unsolved.
The newest hypothesis got here earlier this yr, when federal and native authorities introduced that they had solved the case of one other younger girl’s murder: 16-year-old Pamela Conyers, who went lacking in 1970 from the identical shopping center as Joyce Malecki and equally died from strangulation.
Investigators used comparatively new DNA expertise and family tree analysis to establish a suspect in Conyers’ dying: Forrest Clyde Williams III, who died in 2018 of pure causes after spending most of his grownup life in Virginia. Officers stated then that they didn’t have proof connecting him to both of the opposite unsolved homicides.
Darryl Malecki stated he doesn’t have a clue who killed his sister.
“We’d just like to have some answers,” he stated. “The big answer: What happened? Who did this?”
