MS - Sr. Margaret Held & Sr. Paula Merrill, murdered, Durant, 25 Aug 2016 *Arrest*

[glf]

It sounds like the state is in CHG of the autopsies. I know life goes on, but it sure appears they are really dragging their heels on this one.

 

[0101ABA]

Service to remember: Sister found murdered

The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth are marking a somber anniversary. It's been one year since losing a fellow sister who was found murdered in Mississippi.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Mississippi man to plead guilty in nuns' deaths, prosecutor said

District Attorney Akillie Malone-Oliver told The Associated Press she spoke with the victims' families before agreeing that Robert Earl Sanders of Kosciusko, Mississippi, could plead guilty to capital murder. She said the agreement calls for him to be sentenced to life without parole.

Malone-Oliver said the decision takes into consideration that the two women who were killed, Sisters Margaret Held and Paula Merrill, opposed the death penalty.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Mississippi man sentenced to life in prison in rape and killing of two nuns, including one from Wisconsin

Rodney Earl Sanders made the pleas Thursday in state court in Lexington, blocks away from where Sisters Margaret Held, who was from Milwaukee, and Paula Merrill had worked as nurse practitioners in a medical clinic.

The judge accepted a recommendation from District Attorney Akillie Malone-Oliver that the 48-year-old Sanders be sentenced to life without parole.

Kentucky nun confronts peers' killer in courtroom - and forgives him

"Your hope is that he was hearing what you were saying, both about the pain and about the forgiveness," Gatz, president of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, told the Courier Journal on Thursday as she drove home from Mississippi, where the sentencing took place.

"... The hope is that he can choose now to accept forgiveness, to ask forgiveness and to turn his life around into something better than it has been," she said.

Sister Diane Curtis, also of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, said Thursday she was grateful that the sisters' reverence for life and opposition to the death penalty were taken into account.

"We hope that today was a beginning for Mr. Sanders, not an end," she said. "We hope that in telling him we forgive him, that he will be able to eventually accept that forgiveness. We pray that on his journey, he will experience and express remorse, and that he will turn his life around."

Mississippi man pleads guilty in killing of Catholic nuns

Sister Margaret's brother held her photo as her family gave their impact statement, and he turned it toward Sanders, who could be seen stifling tears and occasionally a sob as he listened to the testimony. All of that testimony spoke not to the brutality of the crime, but of the forgiveness of the two victims and the love of the God they served.

Even longer than the impact statement line, but made up of many of the same people, was the group of people who waited to hug and comfort Rodney Sanders' wife Marie in the courtroom after the sentencing was over.