Man confesses he killed 2 beloved nuns, sheriff says
DURANT, Miss. — A man suspected in the slayings of two nuns found dead in their Mississippi home confessed to the killings, a sheriff said Saturday, after a crime that horrified people in the small communities where the women served.
Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko was charged in the deaths of Sisters Margaret Held and Paula Merrill, Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain said late Friday. Both women were 68.
Willie March, the sheriff of Holmes County where the killings occurred, said Saturday he had been briefed by police from the town where the killings occurred and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation officials who took part in Sanders’ interrogation. Sanders confessed in the interrogation to the killings and gave no reason for the crimes, March said.
Sanders was convicted last year of a felony DUI, said Grace Simmons Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
The women’s bodies were discovered Thursday after they failed to show up for work at a clinic in Lexington, about 10 miles from where they lived.
People who knew the nuns, long-standing pillars of the community known for their generosity and commitment to improving health care for the poor, have been grappling with why anyone would want to kill them.
Dr. Elias Abboud, the physician who oversees the clinic, said Saturday he called the office manager after he saw there was an arrest made to check if Sanders had been a patient at the clinic but he was not.
Sanders was also not known to the small congregation where Held and Merrill had led Bible study for years. The Rev. Greg Plata, sacramental minister at St. Thomas Catholic Church in Lexington, said Saturday that he does not think people at the church knew Sanders.
Both women worked at the clinic, where they gave flu shots, dispensed insulin and provided other medical care for children and adults who couldn’t afford it.
Their stolen car was found abandoned a mile from their home in Durant, and there were signs of a break-in, but police haven’t disclosed a motive.
Authorities have not said how the women were killed, but the Rev. Plata said police told him they were stabbed.
The clinic and the nuns’ home are in Holmes County, population 18,000. With 44 percent of its residents living in poverty, Holmes is the seventhpoorest county in America.
“This is a poor area, and they dignified those who are poor with outreach and respect for them,” Plata said.