Police have arrested a suspect in connection with the slaying of two Catholic nuns whose deaths sent shock waves through their rural MS community last week. He was released from prison and is on probation.
Advertisement
Fisher says Sanders was also convicted of armed robbery in Holmes County and served six years. He was convicted for that crime back in 1986.
Sanders has been charged with two counts of capital murder, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says the crime has been resolved. Strain said “investigators believe Sanders acted alone”.
Merrill was a nurse practitioner in MS for more than 30 years and had been at the Lexington Medical Clinic since 2010.
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 suspect has been charged with two counts of capital murder.
The clinic provided about 25 percent of all medical care in the county, Abboud said. Both were 68. They were found dead Thursday in their home in Durant, a town of roughly 2,600 north of Jackson. “We just wanted everyone to know that he’s off the street”.
Genette Pierce, who works at a home health and hospice business a few doors down from the clinic, said: “Their patients – all of them – they’re going to be lost without them right now”.
“Sanders was developed as a person of interest early on in the investigation”, said Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Jordan.
“He probably knew they were good decent people and would help people and that what lead them there or he was passing by and saw opportunity”, said March.
The order Held belonged to – School Sisters of St. Francis – thanked law enforcement officers working on the case.
Sanders was being held in an undisclosed detention center awaiting his initial court appearance.
We wish to offer our deepest appreciation to the MS state and local law enforcement teams and to the many other public servants who have worked tirelessly the past two days, under extremely hard circumstances, to investigate the sisters’ deaths and gather evidence.
David Merrill said he is comforted to know that his aunt and Held were together in their final moments.
Merrill’s sister Rosemarie, speaking by telephone from her Stoneham, Massachusetts, home, said her sister had been in MS helping the poor since 1981. “I came here because of a dream and a cause but I stayed here because of the people”, she said.
“She doesn’t deserve to die like this, doing God’s work”, Mr Morgan said.
Authorities have not released information on how he was implicated or what his connection to Merrill and Held might have been, but Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said Saturday he had been brief on the interrogation.
“The community will be dealing with this loss for years”, Merrill’s nephew, David, said in a phone interview Saturday.
Advertisement
“That man needed to put off the streets as fast as possible”, said Durant Store manager Johnny Estep.
