The nuns’ stolen auto was found abandoned a mile from their home in Durant, and police said there were signs of a break-in.
Advertisement
Authorities said Sanders was being held in an undisclosed detention center pending a court appearance.
“She doesn’t deserve to die like this, doing God’s work”, Mr Morgan said, shaking his head. MBI spokesman Warren Strain said the organization would neither confirm nor deny that Sanders confessed.
Merrill said his mother, Rosemarie, and uncle, John Vincent Merrill Jr., plan to travel to Mississippi Saturday evening to attend a wake and funeral Mass for his aunt.
The two women were stabbed, coroner Dexter Howard said, but a cause of death won’t be determined until the autopsies are complete.
Merrill’s sister Rosemarie, speaking by telephone from her Stoneham, Massachusetts, home, said her sister had been in MS helping the poor since 1981.
Nicgorski said Held was “always interested in working with the marginalized, the underserved, the poorest of the poor”.
Nicgorski said the sisters’ deaths just don’t make sense.
“There is still much we do not know about the suspect and the circumstances that led to this brutal and senseless crime”, the School Sisters of St. Francis said in a statement posted on Facebook. “They were both very driven”, David Merrill said.
“Right now there’s really still a long way to go”, Strain said. Sister Paula Merrill and Held, two nuns who worked as nurses and helped the poor in rural MS, . She said the nuns were “the most precious two people” and were known for helping provide medicine for those who couldn’t afford it.
“With the cooperation of the Durant and Kosciusko police departments, Holmes County Sheriff’s Department and the (state) Attorney General’s Office, this heinous crime has been resolved”, Jordan said in a statement.
The nephew of a nun who was killed in MS says he’s thankful a suspect has been arrested so that no one else is at risk but that it does not bring closure to the grieving family.
Merrill’s nephew, David Merrill, speaking by telephone from Stoneham, Mass., said Saturday that the family was “thankful” for the arrest.
But the family still has to deal with the loss.
Merrill said he agrees with the idea of forgiveness and that it is something his aunt would want for the person who killed her, but it’s not easy. The capital murder charge leaves open the possibility Sanders would face the death penalty but that determination would be made by prosecutors later.
They have not given any details on why they think Sanders killed the women or whether he knew them but they do say they believe he acted alone.
In the poverty-stricken MS county where the two nuns were slain, many people were still mourning their loss.
Advertisement
The bodies of Held and Merrill were discovered Thursday in their home in Durant, Mississippi, after they failed to show up for work at a clinic in nearby Lexington, where they were nurse practitioners. The Motherhouse at Nazareth was her home, Curtis said, adding that she did mission work in MS but came back to Kentucky frequently for prayer, celebrations and meetings.
