Lawrence Andrew Rainey Sr. was an American police officer and white supremacist who served as Sheriff of Neshoba County, Mississippi, from 1963 to 1968. He gained notoriety for his alleged involvement in the June 1964 murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. He was accused of aiding and abetting members of the Ku Klux Klan in the murders by having his officers keep watch over the men's position in town. Rainey was a member of Mississippi's White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and had previously gone to court for the shooting of an unarmed black motorist in 1959.

Olen Lavelle Burrage was a Mississippi farmer and businessman. He was alleged to have been linked to the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in June 1964. The bodies of the Civil Rights workers were found buried in an earthen dam that was under construction on a farm owned by Burrage.