Beware the Quiet Ones

9/30/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Sister Marie Lurz, 83, woke up early on the morning of March 25, 2001. Her first stop was Sister Michelle's room. The door was locked, and she became alarmed because the 39-year-old woman suffered from asthma. Despite repeated knocking, no sound came from inside the room. The grisly truth found on the other side of the door was far beyond what her imagination could conjure as to why the younger nun did not answer her calls.

Holy Cross Academy

Sister Michelle Lewis was one of two nuns that lived at Holy Cross Academy in Miami, Florida. On the night of March 24, 2001 she watched television and worked on an embroidery until 9:30 p.m. and then went to sleep. Her room was situated on the north side of the living quarters, which was two-bedroom, two-bath convent house.

Later Sister Marie recalled that after the television was turned off at 9:30 p.m., all was quiet except for the humming of the air conditioner, and she soon fell asleep. She had no reason to think that something had happened to the young nun.

Unfortunately with both bedroom doors closed, she did not hear her housemate's screams for help.

The first police on the scene found Michelle Lewis' body flat on her back with legs spread-eagled. The pullover she had worn to bed was shredded and pushed up exposing her breasts. Blood covered the walls and armoire. The carpet was soaked in blood as well.

The day after the murder, Mykhaylo Kofel, 18, a Ukraine native and monastic trainee confessed to the murder. He told detectives about "frustrations and concerns that he had living at Holy Cross Academy". He said he intended only to hurt Sister Michelle when he entered her room after drinking half a bottle of wine, and brooding about his life. He had a stolen master key, which he didn't end up using since the door to the nun's room was unlocked. He said he hit her with the poker, and stabbed her in order to make her stop screaming.

Despite his insistence the death was accidental, there appeared to be some type of pre-meditation, since it was found that Kofel had tossed a pair of latex gloves and a roll of duct tape into a next-door-neighbor's yard afterward. He was dressed in a black sweater, black pants and black socks and claimed he went into the nun's room without shoes to "make it quiet". He carried a foot-long iron fire poker he stole from the academy, and a 5-inch steak knife he took from a Miami Shores house owned by Holy Cross near Barry University.

The autopsy report showed that Lewis's death was extremely violent. She had been stabbed 92 times with the knife, and severely beaten. Her body had signs of "six bloody, shoe-imprint-like marks". The 5'5" woman had tried to stop the attack with her hands, but her her lungs, liver and heart where pierced. Kofel even caused her brain to hemorrhage. Lewis' left hand and arm had 13 cuts and her right hand and forearm had seven cuts. In addition to the knife wounds she had 36 blows with a hard object.

The monk denied taking her clothes off, since she was found nude. The autopsy show she didn't have intercourse but she was sexually mutilated with the poker.

At the time of burial, morticians told Sister Michelle's mother Beverly they did not recommend an open casket for her funeral.

Sister Michelle "Shelly" Lewis (1961-2001)

As the investigation progressed, police found that Kofel had over $1,000 in unexplained cash under his bedroom rug. It was unclear how he came by the money. Beside the cash, which was in a plastic bag, were copies of emergency contact cards for the juniors and seniors who attended the school. The school could not explain how Kofel gained access to the confidential information that were kept secure in the front office.

The police presumed the money was stolen, and thought perhaps Kofel was going to use the money to run. A review of the monk's cellular phone revealed that prior to the murder, he called National Car Rental and Rahway, a New Jersey-based travel agency which specialized in trips to Ukraine.

Kofel said that the same night he killed Lewis he had broken into her office and ransacked it. Police found files thrown on the floor. Originally he told police he went into her office looking for the key to her convent quarters on campus.

In his confession, Kofel said that he was sexually molested over four years by Abbot Father Gregory F.G. Wendt, and the Rev. Damian J.A. Gibault, the two senior clerics at Holy Cross, and verbally abused by Sister Michelle who had belittled him.

Illya Gretsak a Ukrainian teenager who lived in the same house with Mykhaylo for 9 months at Holy Cross Academy, said he rarely showed his emotions or talked about his problems.

In August, 2001 the Department of Children and Families closed their investigation, and cleared the two priests of sexual abuse allegations.

The State Attorney's office interviewed the four other monastic candidates who repeatedly said they were not abused, and had no knowledge of any wrongdoing.

By October, immigration officials and state social workers had closed their investigations of misconduct by anyone at Holy Cross.

The FBI would also go on to close their case for lack of evidence.

Mykhaylo Kofel's parents

Holy Cross Academy was run by the brotherhood of Holy Protection Monastery and established in 1985 as a Byzantine Rite Catholic institution. The monastery was received into the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) in October of 2003 and identified itself in accreditation records as "an independent, self-governing school in the educational tradition of the Catholic faith though not under the control of any church hierarchy".

Michelle "Shelly" Lewis, married in 1981, and she moved with her husband to South Florida. She studied at FIU, and became an actuary. However by 1985 the marriage had soured and Michelle petitioned the archdiocese for an annulment, which she was granted, and she divorced legally. In 1990, she worked as an accountant. It was then she told her friends she felt unfulfilled, and approached the leaders at Holy Cross saying she wanted to start a religious life at the school. She worked as an accountant at the school, while she trained to become a nun.

Within months after the murder representatives from Holy Cross Academy's insurance company came to interview Kofel's parents with a translator. Kofel had also claimed his father had sexually molested him when he was about 12 or 13 years old.

Yuri and Maria Kofel both denied their son's story he had been sexually abused. They told of a difficult home life. Their son grew up witnessing his father get drunk, and hit his mother. The family lived in a village in the Carpathian Mountains with fewer than 1,000 residents, and his father worked as a locomotive driver. Yuri Kofel said the worse he had done was yell and curse at the boy when he was drunk, or spanked him to discipline him. His mother said she couldn't understand why "Misha" their son's nickname would say those things. They insisted that after their son went to America in 1996, they had limited contact with him. Yuri Kofel said he stopped drinking when his son left for the United States. He also told the investigator he felt he had lost his son when he learned that Rev. Gibault had attempted to adopt Misha a few years before. Gibault explained the adoption was necessary so that Kofel could have a passport and be able to travel freely.

There were some who believed Kofel's allegations of abuse, and others thought his stories of sexual molestation were to gain leniency for his crime.

In late 2002, Petro Terenta a monk-in-training testified he was never molested by either priest at Holy Cross. He said he shared a bed with Rev. Wendt when they traveled and there was never any sexual contact. Terenta was the one who discovered Michelle Lewis' body after Sister Marie could not enter her room.

In August 2004, Holy Cross Academy closed and it became the new home of Archimedean Academy, a charter school billed as "a conservatory of mathematics and the Greek language."

In 2005, in exchange for a guilty plea Kofel was found guilty of second-degree murder, and sentenced to 30 years. The plea was accepted as the prosecuting attorney believed his claim of being sexually abused. Initially they were seeking the death penalty.

As of 2024, Mykhaylo Kofel is still serving his sentence.

Sister Michelle's murder by clergy is not the first. In 1980, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's body was discovered in the St. Joseph Hospital Chapel in Ohio. There were ritualistic overtones to the setting of the nun's body.

In 2004, Father Robinson who worked at the sacristy, and like Kofel was described as "quiet and aloof", was arrested for the crime. Sister Margaret, like Sister Michelle had been stabbed repeatedly, and the act was described as being done by someone "very angry". Robinson died in 2014, after been sentenced to 15 years in prison.