Edneyville 'Easter massacre' murderer Michael Rainey dies in custody in Raleigh

HENDERSONVILLE - It will be forever known as the Edneyville Easter Massacre — a day most everyone in Henderson County wanted to forget.

Thirty-five years later, the man who committed those unspeakable acts on that Easter Sunday in 1988 by shooting and killing three relatives of his ex-wife's while they attended a funeral at Mountain Home Baptist Church's parking lot, has died.

According to the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, Asheville native Michael Leslie Rainey died on May 15. He was 76.

"He died of natural causes at an outside medical center on May 15. He had been assigned to Central Prison in Raleigh," John Bull, a communications officer for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, told the Times-News Sept. 7.

Rainey was serving three life sentences in prison for the killing of Wilford Owensby, 61, his wife, Ponelle Owensby, 60, both of Edneyville, and the Owensbys' nephew, Charles Scott Bowles, 24, of Fletcher. Rainey shot and killed all three, who were all related to his ex-wife, Andrea Rainey, with a shotgun and handgun. The couple had divorced three years earlier.

More: Beyond the Banks: Remembering the Easter Massacre in Edneyville

According to past Times-News reporting, Michael Rainey came to the funeral of Andrea Rianey's grandmother, Effie Justice, on April 3, 1988, at Mountain Home Baptist Church. He went inside, viewed the body, and then waited outside near the parking lot as his ex-wife, Andrea Rainey, arrived with her sister, Sarah Johnston, and Johnston's daughter, Wendy, who was 11 years old at the time.

The late Tom Hatchett, who died in 2021, was one of the deputies on the scene for the Henderson County Sheriff's Office. Hatchett, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2001, told the Times-News in a 1988 article that the shootings happened because of a dispute over land that had been going on for quite some time. The story ended up making national headlines, appearing in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Below is an excerpt from a "Beyond the Banks" Times-News article published in March 2020 and written by the Terry Ruscin, who described earlier in the article about a land dispute between Michael Rainey and Andrea Rainey's grandparents. It was Andrea Rainey's grandmother's funeral the family was attending that day.

On Aug. 31, 1988, Michael Rainey was sentenced by Henderson County Superior Court Judge James Beaty Jr., who ordered three first-degree murder sentences to be served consecutively for 60 years and sentenced Rainey, who was 41 at the time, to an additional 18 years in prison on three counts of felony assault.

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The court later granted a civil judgment of more than $1 million to Owensby family members and the estates of the three killed in the massacre.

Dean Hensley is the news editor for the Hendersonville Times-News. Email him with tips, questions and comments at DHensley@gannett.com. Please help support this kind of local journalism with a subscription to the Hendersonville Times-News.

This article originally appeared on Hendersonville Times-News: Michael Leslie Rainey dies after1988 triple murder in WNC