Monday, Aug. 9, 1999 | 11:25 a.m.
The love of a father for his child drove Kenneth Rainey across deserts, over mountains and down every street and byway in Southern Nevada searching for his son.
Rainey's three-year quest did not end Thursday when he learned his 14-year-old son Michael had been shot and killed soon after he ran away in August 1996.
Instead Kenneth Rainey, who had driven more than 200,000 miles looking for his son, had to make one more drive Sunday morning to see his son get home.
"I only slept about two hours, and when I got up Sunday I was so full of rage that I almost couldn't control myself," Rainey said. "I went out to the desert east of Las Vegas and saw where my son's killers buried him. I was looking at the ground cursing our bad luck.
"Then I looked up and saw the mountains, and a peace settled on me that I hadn't had. I realized that a very short time after he left our house on that August afternoon God had taken Michael home."
A memorial service for Michael Rainey will be held at 5 p.m. today in Henderson at Highland Hills Baptist Church, 615 College Drive.
Michael Rainey ran away from home on Aug. 20, 1996, after he was grounded by his parents for coming home late the night before.
"He hugged his mom and went for a walk to cool down, and that was the last time anyone saw him," Kenneth Rainey said.
On Nov. 2, 1996, the skeletal remains of a homicide victim who was shot to death were found in the desert off Lake Mead Boulevard between Sunrise Mountain and Lake Mead. The remains were found buried next to an electrical power pole by a man walking his dog.
For almost two years it was believed that the remains were of a young girl, but investigators from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children used a computer process to develop a sketch that showed the remains could have been from a teenage boy.
The process involved taking photographs of the skull found among the remains and programming those visuals into a computer that extrapolated a sketch of what the victim may have looked like.
In June this year the computerized sketch was shown on the syndicated television show America's Most Wanted. A Henderson resident called the show saying that the sketch looked like a picture of Michael Rainey she had seen on one of the missing person fliers that Kenneth Rainey had spread across the valley.
Dental records were checked and on Thursday night Metro Police confirmed that Michael Rainey and the shooting victim were one and the same. Metro homicide detectives have now begun what will likely be a long investigation into Michael Rainey's death.
"The hardest thing for me to do was to go outside and peel the magnetized missing person notices off my car doors," Kenneth Rainey said through tears Sunday night. "It was the hardest thing because I know I can't find him now."
When his son disappeared in 1996, Rainey had 87,000 miles on his 1977 Toyota Celica. Now his odometer is just over 304,000 miles.
"I'd get off work and go out looking all night, grabbing a couple of hours' sleep and then going back to work," Rainey said. "I drove that car across the desert and up old bear trails. I beat it up."
Sunday morning Rainey again got in the dented primer-black car one more time to see for himself the shallow desert grave where his son had rested.
"Michael loved to be alive, and free, and he loved to be outside in the desert," Rainey said. "He loved to see the animals and the birds, and go lizard hunting.
"As I was out there I couldn't help think that as cruel as this was, Michael's killers buried him in a place he would have loved."
Inside his Henderson home Kenneth Rainey and his wife Susan have a battered black briefcase filled with the photos and fliers they distributed in hopes of finding their son.
Thousands of fliers were given out, and a race car driver even lent his help to the search.
Darrell LaMoure of Phoenix put Michael Rainey's picture on his Chevrolet Monte Carlo in a NASCAR race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in April.
"When the detectives told us that it was definitely Michael I called my father, brother and sister, and then I called Darrell LaMoure's wife," Rainey said. "I hope they can get another kid's picture on that car quickly, so that someone else's hopes can ride with them."
Today when he eulogizes his son, Kenneth Rainey says he hopes that parents will understand what they have in their children and how dangerous the world can be.
"If anything good can come of this, I hope it's that parents remember to take a step back when they let frustration and irritation start to get in the way of their responsibility to love their kids," Rainey said.
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