Police Arrest and Charge Man Accused of Killing 2 Nuns in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. -- Police have arrested and charged the man they believe fatally stabbed two nuns in rural Mississippi.

That man, Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, have not released the details of his arrest, but told media late Friday that he was developed as a suspect after "an exhaustive interview Friday evening."

Two Catholic nuns were found stabbed to death at their home in Holmes County, Miss. and police believe the two - including one Sister with roots in Milwaukee - were the victims of a homicide.

Sanders has been charged in the deaths of Sister Margaret Held, a nurse practitioner with the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee, and Paula Merrill, a nurse practitioner with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky.

According to a report by the Journal Sentinel, 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 the homicide scene "one of the worst I've seen."

Held grew up in Slinger, where she attended St. Peter's Catholic School, and was a teacher at St. Joseph’s High School in Kenosha in the 1970s before heading south, the Journal Sentinel has reported.

A statement by the Catholic Diocese of Jackson says the two nuns, Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill, were found dead at the home in Durant after they failed to show up for work as nurse practitioners at a medical clinic in nearby Lexington where they help the rural poor, according to a report out of the Herald-Whig.

Church officials have said Sister Margaret Held was a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis based in Milwaukee while Merrill was a member of the Sisters of Charity based in Nazareth, Kentucky.

Maureen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, said the sisters worked at the Lexington Medical Clinic, about 10 miles away from their home in Durant, which is in one of the poorest counties in the state, according to a WISN report today.

Photo credit: Mississippi department of corrections