DURANT, MS (WHDH) — A killer is on the run after two nuns were found murdered in Mississippi.

One of the victims is originally from Massachusetts.

The pair of Catholic nuns were found stabbed to death in the Jackson Hole home they shared. Police identified the sisters as Sister Paula Merrill and Sister Margaret Held. Sister Paula grew up in Stoneham and moved to Mississippi in the 80s.

“She was a wonderful, wonderful human being. She worked very hard for the people that needed the help most,” said Sister Paula’s sister, Rosemary Merrill.

Both nuns were also nurse practitioners who helped the poor. Rosemary said her sister and Sister Margaret were dedicated to the community and would make back-to-school backpacks for children each year.

An officer found them Thursday morning when they did not report to work as usual at a nearby hospital.

Neighbors of the women are stunned and frightened.

“At first I was safe here because this is a neighborhood watch but right now, I don’t think I feel too safe if something happened this close to home,” neighbor Patricia Wyatt-Weatherly said.

The local archdiocese in Mississippi said there were signs of a break in. The nuns were stabbed and their car was recovered nearby. It is unclear whether their religious work had anything to do with the killings.

Police Chief John Haynes said officers are checking video from surveillance cameras in town to see if they spot anything unusual.

Merrill had worked in Mississippi for more than 30 years, according to the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky. Two years later, she moved to the South and found her calling in the Mississippi Delta community, according to a 2010 article in The Journey, a publication by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

When asked about her ministry, Merrill was humble.

“We simply do what we can wherever God places us,” Merrill said.

A video on the order’s website detailed her work, interviewing her and her patients talking about the care they had received.

“What really appalls me is over 60 percent of the children live in poverty,” Merrill said.

Earlier in her career, she helped bring a tuberculosis outbreak under control in the region, said Lisa Dew, who managed the Lexington Medical Clinic where the sisters worked.

“They’ll help anybody they can help. They’ll give you the shirt off their back,” she said.

Merrill saw children and adults, and helped in other ways.

“We do more social work than medicine sometimes,” Merrill told The Journey. “Sometimes patients are looking for a counselor.”

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 left much of the town was without power for weeks, the sisters allowed people over to their house to cook because they had a gas stove.

They were skilled in stretching resources, and routinely produced amazing dishes out of what seemed like a very small home garden, said Sam Sample, lay leader of St. Thomas Catholic Church in Lexington, where the sisters were members.

“These ladies didn’t require any fanfare, any bells and whistles. They would just keep their nose to the grindstone, doing what had to be done,” he said.

The small congregation at St. Thomas typically gathered on Thursday nights for Bible study and a meal.

Held was a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis based in Milwaukee, and its U.S. Province Leadership team issued a statement that members were “deeply shocked and grieved” by the killings. They noted Held had 49 years with the order and devoted herself to “living her ministry caring for and healing the poor.”

Dr. Elias Abboud worked with the sisters for years and agreed to help build the Lexington clinic because “you could feel their passion about serving the people, helping the poor. They loved it.”

Abboud estimated that the clinic provided about 25 percent of all the medical care in the county, which has a population of about 18,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates for July 2015.

The Catholic community in Mississippi is relatively small. Of nearly 3 million people, the diocese said there are about 108,000 Catholics.

The two nuns provided almost all the care at the clinic, and many in the community wondered what would happen to it now — and the people it served.

“I think their absence is going to be felt for a long, long time. Holmes County, it’s one of the poorest in the state,” Dew said. “There’s a lot of people here who depended on them for their care and their medicines. It’s going to be rough.”

(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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