Motive Still Mystery In Stabbing

In the two months since a student monk stabbed a woman to death at Holy Cross Academy, no one has yet unraveled the mystery behind the killer’s motive – despite dozens of interviews and travels to the mountain villages of the Ukraine.

Some close to the case remain convinced that 18-year-old Mykhaylo Kofel stabbed Michelle Lewis to death because of rage from being sexually molested at the West Kendall school since he came from the Ukraine for monastic training four years ago. He confessed to the killing and told investigators he had been molested by the academy’s two leading priests.

The priests deny the charges.

Others speculate murkier reasons may have prompted Kofel to murder the school’s bookkeeper, who was also a nun in training. A janitor spotted someone who looked like a student monk inside Lewis’ house a few months before she died, and Kofel paged Lewis from his cellphone at some point before the killing, according to school officials.

But few connected to the case are commenting publicly.

”This murder was a particularly ugly and vicious crime that has affected many, many people in this community,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fern