Ellington

BARDSTOWN, Ky. (AP) — Two nuns who devoted their lives to helping the needy are being remembered in funerals, a week after they were stabbed to death in their home in a poverty-stricken Mississippi county.

The funeral for Sister Paula Merrill will be Friday near Bardstown, Kentucky. Sister Margaret Held's funeral is also Friday in Milwaukee. Held was a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee. Merrill was with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky. Both were 68.

They were found stabbed to death in their home in Durant, Mississippi, after they failed to show up to work last week at a medical clinic, where they were nurse practitioners.

Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko, Mississippi, is charged with two counts of capital murder in their deaths.