Police: Kidnap-slaying suspect slain; 2 girls OK

A Mississippi man believed to be on the run from a double-slaying and kidnapping was thought to possibly be on his way to northwest Georgia Wednesday night apparently shot himself and died. The girls he fled with were found safe, police said.

Adam Mayes, 35, was killed Thursday evening after a SWAT team acted on a tip and found him and the girls near New Albany, Miss. When they went to arrest him, he shot himself in the head, said Guntown Police Chief Michael Hall.

The girls, Alexandra Bain, 12, and Kyliyah Bain, 8, were taken to a hospital for observation, Hall said.

Area law enforcement was alerted because Mayes has family here.

Catoosa County 911 contacted Whitfield County 911 at 10:39 p.m. with a “be on the lookout” for Adam Mayes, who thinks he might be the father of the two girls he was accused of kidnapping, his mother-in-law in Chatsworth said. On Wednesday evening 911 dispatchers were relaying information that Mayes was “thought to be in Tunnel Hill area with two juvenile females.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation advised that Mayes was “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Mayes and his wife, Teresa, were charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jo Ann Bain, 31, and her daughter, Adrienne, 14. Their bodies were found buried outside the Mayes’ home near Guntown, Miss., a week after they were reported missing by Jo Ann Bain’s husband, Gary. Authorities resumed their search of the home on Thursday.

“Thank God it’s over and the babies are safe,” said Teresa Mayes’ sister, Bobbi Booth. “That’s all that mattered. I’m just glad it turned out the way it did.”

Maj. John Gibson of the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office said Mayes has family in the Dalton-Whitfield area.

“We’ve been made aware that he has relatives or ex-relatives living in this area,” Gibson said before news of Mayes’ death was announced late Thursday eveing. “We don’t have any confirmed knowledge that he’s been seen in this area. We have put all our personnel on lookout for his general description and we don’t have any information on a vehicle or anything like that ... (so) it’s a general lookout to make (our officers) aware that he’s got connections here. Other than that, that’s all the information we’ve got.”

Chief Deputy Ray Sitton of the Murray County Sheriff’s Office said on Thursday the FBI was interviewing Mayes’ mother-in-law, Josie Tate, who lives in Chatsworth, that afternoon “to try and confirm some things.” A phone number for Tate could not be found.

The hunt for Adam Mayes and the two young sisters encompassed parts of at least three counties in northern Mississippi. Federal agents, state troopers and SWAT teams wearing protective gear and armed with high-powered rifles made multiple forays into the woods in search of Mayes or a hideout he may have used.

In a Wednesday interview with The Associated Press, Tate said Mayes thought the missing sisters might actually have been his daughters and it caused problems in his marriage to her daughter, Teresa Mayes, who is in jail.

“She was tired of him doting on those two little girls that he claimed were his,” Tate said.

Authorities have put Mayes on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List and urged him to surrender.

“Turn the girls in, and then peaceably and safely turn yourself in to law enforcement,” FBI Special Agent Aaron Ford said at a Wednesday news conference. “We believe Mayes could be anywhere in the United States, and we are extremely concerned for the safety of the girls.”

Residents in northern Mississippi say the murders and kidnapping have shattered the feeling of safety in small towns where everyone knows their neighbors.

“That’s disappeared because it’s the same everywhere,” said Abe Whitfield, owner of Abe’s Grill in Corinth on the Mississippi-Tennessee line. “We’ve had enough bad things happen around here.”

He thinks that Mayes is still in the woods nearby because he probably has little money and no car.

“Everybody says he looks familiar, but it may be that we’ve seen him on TV a lot,” Whitfield said.

Vicki Vanderford, 52, said she has lived her entire life in Corinth, about 35 miles north of Guntown. She said townsfolk were concerned because he was yet to be found.

“With them not knowing what direction he went, you don’t know either,” Vanderford said. “It’s pretty scary.”

Vanderford said she is more vigilant about the people around her.

“I look at the picture of him and am more conscious of people you are looking at,” Vanderford said.

Nick Barghouthi, 40, a clerk at the County Line gas station and convenience store, said Mayes had been a regular customer for nine months. On his most recent visit April 30, he had changed his appearance.

“He used to have a pony tail, but the day I saw him, his pony tail was gone,” Barghouthi said.

Barghouthi said he turned over the surveillance video when law enforcement agents came to talk to him about Mayes.

The reward for information leading to Mayes’ arrest was more than $171,000.

Mayes’ wife told investigators he killed Jo Ann and Adrienne Bain at their Whiteville, Tenn., home on April 27 so he could abduct the two young sisters, according to court documents.

Authorities refused to comment on the motive for the April 27 slayings and abductions.

Teresa Mayes told investigators that after she saw her husband kill the two in the garage at the Bain home, she drove him, the younger girls and the bodies to Mississippi, according to affidavits filed in court.

Since the manhunt began for Mayes, people who knew him and the Bains have described him as unusually close to the family and the girls. He was described as a friend of Gary Bain, and the children considered him an uncle.

In an earlier interview, Tate’s daughter, Bobbi Booth, said Teresa Mayes suspected her husband was having an affair with Jo Ann Bain.

Mayes was often at the Bain home. Authorities said he was spending the night there before the mother and daughters were reported missing so he could help the family pack for a planned move to Tucson, Ariz., and then drive their belongings west.

A Facebook page Adam Mayes was using under an alias that was confirmed by law enforcement showed several photos of him and the Bain girls. One picture depicts Mayes and two of the girls smiling, all leaning next to one another cheek to cheek. The page has since been taken down.

Josie Tate said she’s known him for 25 years but didn’t approve of him because his family never seemed to stay in one place and he couldn’t hold down a job.

“Teresa’s father and I begged her: ‘Do not marry him, do not go off with him, do not live with him,”’ she said.

Tate described her daughter as a slow learner who spent her school life in special education. Teresa Mayes was also incapable of having her own children, she said.

The mother said she believed Mayes had threatened her daughter and perhaps his own mother, Mary Frances Mayes, who has also been charged with conspiracy to commit especially aggravated kidnapping.

Mary Mayes’ attorney, Somerville, Tenn., attorney Terry Dycus, said his client maintains she is not guilty. Dycus said it was too early to discuss what the mother’s defense would be.

“She agrees with the authorities that he’s possibly dangerous, but her main concern is that the children be returned immediately and safely,” Dycus said.

Teresa Mayes faces six felony counts in the case: two first-degree murder charges and four especially aggravated kidnapping charges.

“The feelings I have for Adam are as close to hate as I’ll ever come because he’s destroyed not only the Bain family but he’s destroyed my family, too,” Tate said.

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Police: Kidnap-slaying suspect slain; 2 girls OK

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