Mississippi town mourns murdered nuns

UPDATE (8/27/16, 9:20 a.m.): Mississippi authorities have arrested and charged Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko, Miss., with two counts of capital murder in the deaths of Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill. “Sanders was developed as a person of interest early on in the investigation,” Lt. Col. Jimmy Jordan said in a statement released Friday night by the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. Authorities are holding Sanders in an undisclosed detention center pending a court appearance.

OUR EARLIER REPORT: Police in Durant, Miss., have few leads and no motive for the murder of two nuns found dead in their home yesterday.

Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill ran a rural clinic in Durant, one of the poorest counties in the state. When they didn’t show up to work Thursday morning, a police officer drove to their quiet street and found signs of a break-in. Their vehicle was gone, and the two nuns were dead.

The nuns’ patients, neighbors, and fellow church members, say they can’t understand why somebody would kill them. As news of the murder spread, shocked community members said they would miss the women’s kindness and their passion for serving the community’s poor.

“I think their absence is going to be felt for a long, long time,” said Lisa Dew, the manager of the nuns’ clinic. “There are a lot of people here who depended on them for their care, their medicines. It’s going to be rough.”

Investigators found the nuns’ car, a blue Toyota Corolla, Thursday evening. It had been abandoned, undamaged, on a lonely street about a mile from their home. Officials have not confirmed reports that the two were stabbed, possibly for religious reasons.

“I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach,” said the Durant Assistant Police Chief James Lee, who is Catholic.

The women were both 68 years old and worked as nurses. They served for decades in Durant County, where more than 60 percent of children live in poverty.

Sam Sample, a lay leader in their church, remembered how good the sisters were at making a little go a long way. Their church met Thursday nights for Bible study and a meal, and the sisters routinely supplied delicious dishes from their home garden. One neighbor said Held could make desserts that “would melt in your mouth.” When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, most of the town suffered without power for weeks. The sisters invited people over to cook on their gas stove.

Years ago, Merrill and Held helped convince Dr. Elias Abboud to build the county’s rural clinic. He said he considered leaving the country after his first clinic closed, but the women changed his mind. He could “feel their passion about serving the people, helping the poor. They loved it…. I can’t imagine anybody they had a problem with,” he said.

Abboud estimated the sisters’ clinic provided about 25 percent of all medical care in a county of about 18,000 residents. The nuns made a point of establishing relationships with representatives from drug companies so they could get medicine samples for their patients. Before her death, Merrill helped control a tuberculosis outbreak in the region.

In a 2010 interview published by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Merrill said much of their work went beyond medical care as patients came in, longing for counseling.

“We simply do what we can wherever God places us,” she said.

Abboud said he is afraid the community will be different after the murder: “You need somebody with that passion to love the people and work in the under-served area.”