Margaret Held and Paula Merrill were stabbed to death in their home last Thursday. They were nurse practitioners who faithfully served the poorest of the poor in Mississippi.
The killer took their car — a blue Corolla. He was later arrested.
Authorities identified the suspect as Rodney Earl Sanders. His age is 46. He’s been charged with two counts of capital murder in connection with the killings.
Did I mention that Margaret and Paula were Nuns? They were Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, as well as School Sisters of St. Francis.
According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, Sanders did time from the mid-1980s to early-1990s for armed robbery. Apparently he was released from prison last December after serving nine months for a felony conviction for driving under the influence.
You can read the whole story here.
There are lots of reasons people kill other people, but Nuns?
Not that Nuns are a protected species, but they have a tendency to help others — particularly those in need.
“They were sweet, very loving … easy to get along with,” Patricia Wyatt Weatherly, a neighbor, told CNN affiliate WLBT-TV. “They didn’t bother anybody.”
Yup. That’s about what I’d expected.
Rev. Greg Plata of St. Thomas Catholic Church described them as “just good women, women of prayer.”
Why did I choose to share this particular story at this particular time? Maybe it’s because of the Nuns of St. Benedict’s, where I went to parochial school. (They scared me but taught me well.) Maybe it’s because I thought I was getting numb to people murdering people for any number of reasons. (Guess I’m not.) Maybe it’s because the victims, each age 68, look so innocent. So ordinary. So much like somebody I might meet at church, the mall, or a bingo parlor.
But it really came down to this simple question: “Why kill Margaret and Paula?”
“Why?”
I don’t know — and neither do the police.
