During a memorial Mass on Monday in Jackson, the Rev. Greg Plata, who ministers at the Lexington church where Held and Merrill worshipped, noted a joint statement against the death penalty released Sunday by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and the School Sisters of St. Francis of Milwaukee.
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Family of the nun from Southeast Wisconsin, who was stabbed-to-death inside her MS home, says Sister Margaret Held’s body will soon be brought home to Wisconsin.
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.
Warren Strain, spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said police discovered a vehicle missing from the sisters’ home Thursday evening on a secluded street late about a mile from where the women were found dead.
Police officers discovered the women’s bodies after co-workers called asking to check on them after they failed to report for work at the clinic.
Sanders was on probation after a prison term for a felony drunken-driving conviction in Mississippi previous year, said Grace Simmons Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
But the family still has to deal with the loss.
Authorities said Sanders was being held in an undisclosed detention center pending a court appearance. The capital murder charge leaves open the possibility Sanders would face the death penalty but that determination would be made by prosecutors later.
Authorities have said Sanders was developed as a person of interest early in the investigation. “Every time you get some people that have done good and try to help, somebody takes it away”, said Helen White, who attended the wake.
The sheriff said they had been stabbed.
“That man needed to put off the streets as fast as possible”, said Durant Store manager Johnny Estep.
More than 300 people came to a small church to say farewell to two nuns killed in their MS home. They were nuns in the Catholic Church and nurse practitioners at the Lexington Medical Clinic.
The nuns’ bodies were found Thursday in their MS home. “They came here to MS to outreach to the poor using their medical services”, said Father Gregory Plata, who knew the women well and was a friend to the victims.
At just 13-years-old she felt her calling to dedicate her life to God.
The clinic and the nuns’ home in Durant are in Holmes County, population 18,000.
Merrill and Held lived and worked together for years and were close friends, said David Merrill. With 44 percent of its residents living in poverty, Holmes is the seventh-poorest county in America, according to the Census Bureau.
Speaking from his home in Stonham, Mass., Merrill said he’s “not as strong” as his aunt.
They leave a gaping hole in what was already a strapped health care system.
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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”.
