Three men indicted in 12-year-old Coweta County killings

NEWNAN - Three men have been charged with murder in the execution-style killings 12 years ago of a Coweta County man and his son after a new database of prison inmate DNA led police to one of the suspects. <br> <br> Local and state authorities announced Thursday that 46-year-old Michael D. Denny, his 45-year-old brother, Ricky Lee Denny, and 47-year-old Russell Gregory Brown were indicted on charges of murder and burglary in the 1990 deaths. <br> <br> The Denny brothers, whose last name is sometimes spelled Denney, are already serving time in Georgia prisons for unrelated crimes. Police did not say where or on what charge they were imprisoned. <br> <br> Fifty-nine-year-old Joe Rainwater, a dairy farmer and community leader, and his 27-year-old son, George Rainwater were found shot to death outside the home of Joe&#39;s younger son, Kevin, which had been robbed. <br> <br> Authorities said DNA evidence found on an object taken from the house matched DNA samples gathered from Michael Denny for a database containing the DNA of all convicted felons in the state. <br> <br> The DNA database, created in 2000, allows law enforcement officials to cross-check DNA evidence from crime scenes against samples in the database. <br> <br> Once they identified Michael Denny, police continued investigating with more traditional methods and eventually linked Ricky Lee Denny and Russell to the killings, according to Buddy Nix, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.