AUGUSTA, Wis. - A woman who calls herself a prophet and opposes embalming the dead is a suspect in the slayings of two funeral home workers found shot to death last week, police say. But the woman - a grandmother of 10 who leads a small ministry with a handful of followers from her rural home – has denied the charges, saying she is "not an assassin for the devil."
In an interview Thursday, Kathryn Padilla paced back and forth in her living room, softly talking to herself - and to God, she said - in an unfamiliar language. Padilla said she and her tiny religious group, The Rest of Jesus Ministry, had nothing to do with the killings.
"I am a mailman for God and I am not an assassin for the devil," she said. "I don't have guns. I hate them."
No one has been charged in the Feb. 5 shooting deaths of funeral director Daniel O'Connell and intern James Ellison in Hudson, Wis., about 90 miles from Augusta. The men's bodies were found in an office at O'Connell Family Funeral Home by the coroner when he arrived to get a death certificate signed.
Police call Padilla a suspect, citing her group's opposition to embalming and a threatening one-paragraph letter she wrote to other funeral homes.
Investigators questioned Padilla and some of her followers last week, Hudson, Wis., police Sgt. Marty Jensen said. The FBI also is helping with the investigation.
Eau Claire County prosecutors charged Padilla on Tuesday with disorderly conduct and stalking, both misdemeanors, in connection with letters sent to funeral homes shortly after the killings. According to a criminal complaint, the letters said, "Thus saith the Lord, Because you have heard not the words of the Lord, I take from you your sons and daughters into early graves. Prepare for burial yourself."
Padilla told the AP her group had sent about a dozen letters to funeral homes last week and another 400 last year. Police said the O'Connell funeral home received one of the letters last year.
Padilla believes embalming desecrates the body and that the dead should only be wrapped in a simple white sheet. Only blood should be in a human body, she said.
"Putting something else in there is bad," she said.
Padilla said her ministry has about 20 members, and opposing embalming is only a small part of what they believe.
"This is so silly. We are all about the word of the Lord," she said.
Padilla said that during a search of her home last week, a police officer pointed a gun at her 18-month-old granddaughter.
A message the AP left with the Eau Claire County Sheriff's Department was not immediately returned.
Tom Bilski, Padilla's attorney, said she and her family were wrongly brought into the murder investigation because of their religious beliefs. He said the family's constitutional rights were violated and the "trumped up" charges were "ridiculous."
"She is not a criminal. She is just a Christian," Bilski said.
The Rev. Dale Hazard, pastor at Assembly of God Church in Augusta, said Padilla joined his church in 1993 and was asked to leave in 1999. Although she was never violent, Hazard said, her beliefs about being a prophet became disruptive.
"She didn't think the church should have a Christmas tree because it was an idol," the reverend said. "It was right during a service that she started cursing the tree, saying it would lose its needles and was an idol."
Padilla remembered her ouster differently.
"They didn't like to be corrected by the Lord," she said.