DURANT, Miss. -- A man arrested and charged in the attacks on two nuns found dead in their Mississippi home has confessed to the killings, authorities said Saturday.
Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko, Miss., was charged Friday with capital murder in the deaths Thursday of Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill, Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain said late Friday. Both women were 68.
Sheriff Willie March of Holmes County, where the killings occurred, said Saturday that he had been briefed by police from the town where the women were found slain and by Mississippi Bureau of Investigation officials who took part in Sanders' interrogation.
Sanders confessed to the killings during the interrogation and gave no reason for the attacks, March said.
Durant police could not be reached for comment. Strain, whose department includes the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, would neither confirm nor deny the confession.
Sanders was convicted last year on a felony charge of driving under the influence and was sent to prison, said Grace Simmons Fisher, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
He had since been released from incarceration and was on probation until his arrest Friday.
In 1986, Sanders was sentenced to prison on a conviction for armed robbery in Holmes County and served six years, Fisher said.
People acquainted with the nuns, known for their generosity and commitment to improving health care for the poor, have been grappling with why anyone would want to kill them.
Elias Abboud, the physician who oversees the clinic in Lexington where the nuns worked, said Saturday that Sanders was not a patient at the clinic.
Sanders also was not known to the small congregation at the church where Held and Merrill had led Bible study for years.
The Rev. Greg Plata, sacramental minister at St. Thomas Catholic Church in Lexington, said Saturday that he does not think people at the church knew Sanders.
The nuns' bodies were found Thursday after the women failed to show up for work in Lexington, about 10 miles from where they lived.
The sheriff said they had been stabbed.
"Sanders was developed as a person of interest early on in the investigation," Lt. Colonel Jimmy Jordan said in a police statement.
Authorities said Sanders was being held in an undisclosed lockup, pending a court appearance. They did not provide any details about why Sanders is a suspect in the slayings or whether Sanders knew the women.
Strain said Saturday that he does not know whether Sanders has an attorney. Strain said "investigators believe Sanders acted alone."
Merrill's nephew, David Merrill, speaking by telephone from Stoneham, Mass., said Saturday that the family was "thankful" for the arrest.
"Nobody else is threatened by this individual, so there's some relief there," he said.
Still, the family has to deal with the loss.
Merrill said he agrees with the idea of forgiveness and that it is something his aunt would want for the person who killed her, but it's not easy.
"I'm not as strong as my aunt. I don't know if I'm capable of completely forgiving," he said.
Merrill and Held lived and worked together for years and were close friends, said David Merrill.
"The word 'sister' has many meanings, and they fulfilled all of them," he said.
A Section on 08/28/2016