Suspect Called Model Student

Mykhaylo Kofel, 18, was a model monk-in-training at Holy Cross Academy and a model college student – before he was charged with the murder of Sister Michelle Lewis on Monday.

Kofel had seniority over all the other monks-in-training and carried the staff in ceremonial processions as he marched in front of the abbot.

Parents say other monks-in-training had been sent back to Ukraine after a year in the program – because they were not devout enough or because they were too sociable, too materialistic or too light-hearted.

But not Kofel, a senior trainee who, like the abbot, wore black robes in processions. Kofel lasted the longest because he was so polite, devout and reliable – so able to live up to what was expected.

”We can’t figure it out, the murder. We think he just snapped because he was the model monk-in-training. He did everything right,” said Marta Pappas, a Holy Cross parent and a community college professor of Kofel’s.

Kofel’s education in the United States began almost five years ago when he arrived in Miami from Ukraine. James Clem, executive director of Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute, who grew up in Kendall, says that most parents in Ukraine would ”jump at the chance to get their sons a Western education.”

”They’d consider it a golden opportunity,” he said.

Joseph Blonsky, attorney and Holy Cross board member, says that the Holy Cross monastery, 12425 SW 72nd St. in Kendall, is affiliated with a monastery in Uzhgorod, population 125,000, in the Transcarpathian region of southwest Ukraine. The Uzhgorod site’s Catholic cathedral was built as part of a Jesuit monastery in 1646. The monastery school attracts children from the area, and the luckiest of these get chosen by Holy Cross Abbot Gregory F.W. Wendt.

”It’s a one-way street [from Ukraine to here],” Blonsky said.

Prospective students at the Ukrainian school undergo ”an arduous task” to convince Wendt that they are serious monastic candidates, he says.

”The abbot goes go to Ukraine to visit, and he makes the final selection. . . . I have every reason to believe that the parents of these young men are religious and are thrilled over the possibility that one of their sons felt so much about giving himself to God’s work.”

When Kofel arrived from Ukraine at age 14, he obtained an F1 student visa to study in the United States. The requirements: A signed affidavit from Holy Cross saying the church would be responsible for his room and board and had at least $10,500 in the bank for him, if he needed it. In return, Kofel had to be a full-time student in good standing – which he was until charged with first-degree murder on Monday.

Holy Cross parents say that Ukrainian students come to the school with little or no knowledge of English. As a result, the teenagers are put in classes with first-graders to learn basic English and are moved through the grades as they progress.

”It was not unusual to see a young man like Kofel sitting in a class with little-bitty kids for an hour of the day,” Pappas said.

Holy Cross parent Idamis Gonzalez says that she remembers seeing Kofel in her daughter’s fifth-grade class with 10-year-olds.

But he progressed quickly.

In August 2000, when he enrolled at the Miami-Dade Community College Kendall Campus, a college academic advisor, who asked not to be named, says Kofel was ”frequently accompanied by an older man who identified himself as a priest.”

”The priest [Damian Gibault] did all of the talking, and the young man stood silently,” the advisor said. ”The priest assured us Mykhaylo would be an excellent student.”

For his first semester, Kofel took chemistry, microbiology, anatomy, pharmaceutical math and two labs. He got three A’s and three B’s.

”He was an excellent student – polite, punctual, quiet,” said chemistry lab Professor Servando Munoz. ”I can tell you all of his teachers are puzzled over what happened. No one had any indication.”

Pappas says she was pleasantly surprised to see the apprentice monk from her children’s school in a chemistry class she taught at the college because she knew how well respected he was at Holy Cross. His manners and work were impeccable, she says.

”With the murder of Sister Michelle, two lives were ruined. She’s dead, and he’s had it.”