Mississippi nun slayings suspect confessed, sheriff says
JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi man has been charged with two counts of capital murder in the deaths of two nuns in Holmes County.
Authorities said late Friday night that Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko was developed as a suspect after "an exhaustive interview Friday evening."
Sanders is charged in the slayings of Sister Paula Merrill, a nurse practitioner with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky, and Sister Margaret Held, a nurse practitioner with the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee. Both were 68. They were found dead Thursday in their home in Durant, a town of roughly 2,600 north of Jackson.
Authorities have not released information on how Sanders was implicated or what his connection to Merrill and Held might have been. Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said Saturday he had been briefed by Durant police and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation officials on the interrogation. Sanders confessed in the interrogation to the killings and gave no reason for the crimes, March said.
Durant police could not be reached for comment. MBI spokesman Warren Strain said the organization would neither confirm nor deny that Sanders confessed.
The two women were stabbed, coroner Dexter Howard said, but a cause of death won't be determined until the autopsies are complete.
Howard called the crime scene "one of the worst" he's ever seen.
Sanders was convicted last year of a felony DUI, said Grace Simmons Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He was later released from prison and is currently on probation.
Sanders was also convicted of armed robbery in Holmes County, sentenced in 1986 and served six years, Fisher said.
MBI director Lt. Col. Jimmy Jordan said Sanders was a person of interest early in the investigation.
“With the cooperation of the Durant and Kosciusko police departments, Holmes County Sheriff’s Department and the (state) Attorney General’s Office, this heinous crime has been resolved,” Jordan said in a statement.
Sanders is being held in an undisclosed detention center awaiting his initial court appearance.
Strain said further details aren’t being released because there is still evidence being processed.
"Right now there's really still a long way to go," Strain said. "We're holding off on saying anything else tonight. We just wanted everyone to know that he's off the street."
Diane Curtis, spokeswoman for the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, said in a statement: "We continue to pray for everyone involved in this tragedy."
Curtis said Merrill had been in Kentucky last weekend and left Monday. The Motherhouse at Nazareth was her home, Curtis said, adding that she did mission work in Mississippi but came back to Kentucky frequently for prayer, celebrations and meetings.
Contributing: The Associated Press; Laura Ungar, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal