Officials said Rodney Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko, Miss., was charged by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation after “an exhaustive interview” Friday evening. On Friday morning, a dispatcher at the Durant police station said all of the department’s officers were working the scene of the crime.
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Margaret Held and Paula Merrill, both nurse practitioners, failed to show up for work Thursday at a clinic in Lexington, where they served one of the state’s poorest counties.
A reward is being offered to anyone who can provide police with information that could lead to an arrest in the murder investigation of Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill. Sanders is being held in an undisclosed detention center while he awaits an initial court appearance. Sister Margaret Held and Merrill, two nuns who worked as nurses and helped the poor in rural MS, were found slai.
Sister Audrey Peterson, who worked with Held and Merrill in MS, said the nurse practitioners rented the little house in Durant.
Sister Paula Merrill and Sister Margaret Held were found dead Thursday in their homes in Durant.
Authorities didn’t release a motive and it wasn’t clear if the nuns’ religious work had anything to do with the slayings.
Diocesan chancellor Mary Woodward said the memorial service would be “an opportunity for the diocesan community and friends to celebrate the lives of these two remarkable women”. Strain says the vehicle is being towed to a state crime lab near Jackson for analysis. The clinic tends to thousands of patients, many poor and uninsured. Sister Paula was from Boston and Sister Margaret from Milwaukee.
Crime tape wrapped the home of the two Catholic nuns.
“Sr. Paula has spent the last 30 years ministering in Christ’s name to the poor and vulnerable as a nurse, and she and Sr”.
“They were our family”, said Jamie Sample, who attended church with Held and Merrill. “These were great women of faith and I’m sure that if they saw it coming they would have done what they could but they would have known that this was their time and their God was going to call them home”, said Peterson.
If people needed help, “they would go above and beyond, whether you needed medicine or to keep your lights on”, she said.
“It’s just going to be a disaster”, she said.
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Dr. Elias Abboud, who worked with the sisters for years and helped build the clinic, said it provided about 25 percent of all medical care in the county.
