‘The sweetest, most gentle women’: two nuns found slain in Mississippi home, their vehicle gone
Two nuns who worked as nurses and helped the poor in rural Mississippi were found slain in their home, and there were signs of a break-in and their vehicle was missing, officials said Thursday.
It was too early to say how the nuns were killed, but it doesn’t appear that they were shot, Durant Assistant Police Chief James Lee said.
The nuns were identified as Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill, Holmes County Coroner Dexter Howard said. Their bodies were taken to a state crime lab for autopsies.
The women, both nurse practitioners, were found Thursday morning when they didn’t report to work at a nearby hospital.
Maureen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, said there were signs of a break-in at the home and the nuns’ vehicle is missing. She said the sisters worked at the Lexington Medical Clinic, about 16km away from their home in Durant, one of the poorest areas in the state.
Authorities didn’t release a motive and it wasn’t clear if the nuns’ religious work had anything to do with the slayings.
“I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach,” said Lee, the assistant police chief, who is Catholic.
When asked about her ministry, Merrill was humble.
“We simply do what we can wherever God places us,” she said.
According to the article, Merrill and Held rotated one week at a time at the Lexington Medical Clinic and the Durant Primary Care Clinic.
At the clinic, Merrill saw children and adults, and helped in other ways.
“We do more social work than medicine sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes patients are looking for a counsellor.”
Held was a member of the School Sisters of St Francis in Milwaukee. Merrill was a member of the Sisters of Charity in Nazareth, Kentucky.
