More than 300 people came to a small church to say farewell to two nuns killed in their MS home.
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This is a smartphone photograph taken and released by the Mississippi Department of Public Safety in Durant, Miss., Friday, A.
Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, has been charged with two counts of capital murder in connection with the killings, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety said early Saturday. Both women were 68.
Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said it is still unknown if the suspect targeted the nuns.
March says Sanders confessed in the interrogation to the killings and that he gave no reason for the crimes.
Durant police could not be reached for comment Saturday or Sunday. Strain, whose department includes the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, would neither confirm nor deny the confession.
A spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections says Sanders was out on probation after being convicted a year ago of felony DUI.
He was later released from prison and is now on probation.
The authorities said they believed Sanders stole the victims’ auto, a blue Toyota Corolla, before abandoning it about a mile away in Holmes County, about 65 miles north of Jackson, the state capital.
Friends and colleagues who knew two nuns killed in their MS home are gathering to remember them.
Elias Abboud, the physician who oversees the clinic in Lexington where the nuns worked, said Saturday that Sanders was not a patient at the clinic.
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.
An officer went the women’s home around 10 a.m. Thursday for a wellness check after they did not report for work at the Lexington Medical Clinic near Durant.
“This is a poor area, and they dignified those who are poor with outreach and respect for them”, Plata said.
“Sanders was developed as a person of interest early on in the investigation”, Lt. Colonel Jimmy Jordan said in the statement.
Sanders was in custody, awaiting his initial court appearance, the safety department said. And as authorities sought the killer, many residents wondered how they will fill the hole the women’s deaths have left.
The decision to charge Sanders was made after an exhaustive interview on Saturday.
“Nobody else is threatened by this individual, so there’s some relief there”, he said.
But the family still has to deal with the loss.
He said Sister Merrill would want him to forgive whoever killed the women, but he hopes the perpetrator is arrested, convicted and executed. But he says he’s “not as strong” as his aunt, and he’s not sure if he’s “capable of completely forgiving”. Asked about people’s struggles to forgive, the priest said: “Forgiveness is at the heart of being a Christian”.
Sister Susan Gatz, president of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, says Sister Margaret Held had baked bread for a prayer service that had been scheduled Thursday, the day her body and that of Sister Paula Merrill were found.
The killings did more than shock people and plunge the county into mourning.
A former nun who knew Held said she had always been interested in working with the “poorest of the poor”. She says it will be eaten as part of a celebration of the two women’s lives and work.
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“It’s just going to be a disaster”, she said.
