Two slain nuns remembered for helping needy

DURANT, Miss. — Hundreds of people filled a cathedral in Mississippi’s capital city on Monday to remember two nuns who spent decades helping the needy and were found stabbed to death last week in their home in one of the poorest counties of the state.

An initial court appearance was scheduled to take place hours later for the man charged with two counts of capital murder in the slayings of Sisters Margaret Held and Paula Merrill, both 68. It was not immediately clear whether Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko, Mississippi, would be represented by an attorney during his appearance Monday afternoon in Durant city court.

Capital murder is be punishable by execution or life in prison; the sisters’ religious orders have issued a joint statement against the death penalty.

Sanders confessed to the killings but gave no reason, said Holmes County Sheriff Willie March, who was briefed by Durant police and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation officials who took part in Sanders’ interrogation. Sanders had been living about 15 miles east of the sisters’ Durant home. He has been held at an undisclosed jail since his arrest late Friday.

Merrill and Held worked as nurse practitioners at Lexington Medical Clinic, about 10 miles west of Durant, where they often treated poor and uninsured patients with diabetes and other chronic conditions. Their bodies were found in their home after they failed to show up at work Thursday.