GUNTOWN – (AP) The fallout continues even after suspected murderer and kidnapper Adam Mayes took his own life on Thursday, May 10.

Officials said days of searching for the two young girls and the man who killed their mother and sister led to the kind of terrain that favors the hunted – high hardwoods and deep ravines near a red-brick church perched on a hill.

Specially trained officers had come up empty-handed for days but were following another lead that Thursday evening after Adam Mayes was put on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List.

The latest led officers to the woods near Zion Hill Baptist Church, miles from Mayes’ rented mobile home in Guntown, in northern Mississippi. There, the bodies of a 31-year-old Tennessee woman, Jo Ann Bain, and her 14-year-old daughter, Adrienne, had been buried in a shallow grave.

The officers had searched the church and later split up and set out down two old logging roads. Just 60 yards down, Mississippi Highway Patrol Master Sgt. Steve Crawford saw a little girl’s head in the dirt. Within inches, another child. A few more inches, the man who had proved so elusive.

A search that had dragged on for days ended in seconds.

“Let’s see your hands,” the officers shouted.

Mayes, 35, pushed himself up to his knees, pulled out a 9 mm pistol and shot himself in the head. He didn’t utter a word, and died hours later at a hospital.

Twelve-year-old Alexandria Bain and 8-year-old Kyliyah sat up, subdued. Crawford said they didn’t cry, instead looking almost relieved.

“Now we can go home,” the older girl told her sister, according to Lt. Lee Ellington, part of a team from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

Home – in Whiteville, Tenn., about 70 miles west of Memphis – was a place the girls hadn’t seen since April 27, when they were reported missing along with their mother and sister.

Described as a family friend who was like an uncle to the girls, Mayes supposedly had gone to the house the night before to help the family pack for a move to Arizona. Instead, police say, he killed the mother and her oldest daughter in the garage of their home, packed their corpses into a car, grabbed the younger girls and headed south with his wife to the mobile home in Guntown. Authorities have not said how they were killed or when.

Authorities say Mayes knew Jo Ann Bain’s husband, Gary, and that they at one time had been married to sisters.

Gary Bain told police that his wife and daughters were asleep when he went to bed at midnight and were gone when he awoke the next day. He figured the girls went to school and Jo Ann had gone somewhere, too. But she didn’t answer her cell phone that day, April 27, and the girls never got off the school bus that afternoon.

At 8 p.m., he called the Hardeman County Sherriff’s Office to report them missing.

Police interviewed Mayes, who acknowledged to investigators on April 29 that he was the last one to see Jo Ann Bain and the girls, but police said they had no evidence of a crime. And it first, it wasn’t known if Jo Ann had willingly left and taken the children with her.

On April 30, Jo Ann Bain’s SUV was found abandoned on a country road in Tennessee.

About 80 miles away in Mississippi, Adam Mayes was seen that same day at a market in Mississippi with his long hair chopped off. He told another customer that it would be cooler in the hot Southern summer; investigators would later warn he might have cut the girls’ hair to disguise them, too.

Hardeman County Sheriff John Doolen said two days later that Mayes was a person of interest in the case but that there were no signs of foul play.

On May 4, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued an endangered child alert, pleading for the public’s help in finding the family. Investigators still said they had no evidence of a crime.

But police documents show that around the same time, Mayes’ wife, Teresa, admitted her involvement. Documents show Teresa Mayes told investigators she saw Adam Mayes kill the mother and daughter in the garage of their home so he could abduct the younger children, Alexandria and Kyliyah.

Teresa Mayes also said she drove with Mayes, the girls and the bodies to Mississippi, and saw her husband dig a hole in his backyard.

Mayes’ mother-in-law, Josie Tate, later told The Associated Press that Mayes thought the missing sisters might actually be his daughters.

On May 5, the Mississippi Highway Patrol issued an amber alert for the children, warning that Mayes was armed and dangerous. He had been charged in Tennessee with kidnapping. That same day, police announced they had found two bodies buried in the Mayes’ backyard. But they were badly decomposed and not initially identified. Authorities later said the bodies were those of Jo Ann and Adrienne Bain.

By May 8, Adam Mayes’ wife had been charged with murder and kidnapping in the case and his mother, Mary Mayes, had been charged with conspiracy to commit especially aggravated kidnapping. But there was still no trace of the two sisters. Mary Mayes’ attorney said his client maintains she is not guilty.

Adam Mayes had been investigated in 2010 on allegations of child abuse and possessing child pornography, according to records from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office in Jackson, Tenn. Mayes denied the allegations, and following an investigation that cleared him, he was never charged. The AP isn’t identifying the child in the case because of the nature of the abuse allegation.

Alexandria and Kyliyah’s ordeal then ended abruptly, miles from where their mother and sister had been buried. They were given water, whisked away in an ambulance, shielded by giant white sheets at the hospital so they could walk into the emergency room without the glare of news cameras.

Police have many questions about what they saw and what happened to them between April 27 and last Thursday. Authorities have refused to comment on the motive for the slayings and abductions.

But because Adam Mayes put a bullet in his head, people may never really know why he did all of this?

“That was too good for him. He should have suffered just a little bit more,” said Beverly Goodman, Jo Ann Bain’s aunt. “I was hoping (they would take him alive because) I wanted some answers to some questions that probably will never get answered now.”

Ocean Springs High School sophomore Daegan Stallworth (pictured) was killed when his car ran off the road Sunday night.

By Monica Land

OCEAN SPRINGS – Grief counselors were on hand Monday morning at Ocean Springs High School (OSH) after a 17-year-old student was killed and two of his friends injured in an accident late Sunday night.

Detective Lt. John Flowers said Daegan L. Stallworth, a sophomore and football player at OSH, was pronounced dead at the scene after his car ran off the road, went airborne and hit a culvert and a power pole.

Two other passengers, 17-year-old Mindy Dean, a junior at Ocean Springs High, and 19-year-old Chase Braddock were severely injured.

Flowers said they received a call about 9:15 p.m., May 13, advising of a single-vehicle accident on Old CCC Camp Road about a half mile west of Riley Road.

Flowers said when officers arrived, the vehicle, a 2004 Infinity G35, driven by Stallworth was resting on the driver’s side.

“Preliminary results from the investigation indicate that speed was a contributing factor,” Flowers said. “The vehicle was traveling westbound on Old CCC Camp Road, which is a paved two-lane road that runs east and west, when at some point, it left the roadway and struck a culvert which caused the vehicle to go airborne.”

Flowers said the vehicle hit the culvert and a power pole before it rolled over several times.

He said one of the victims, Dean, was thrown from the vehicle.

“Stallworth was wearing a seatbelt,” Flowers said, “but his passengers were not.”

Jackson County Coroner Vicki Broadus said Stallworth died of head trauma at the scene.

The Sun Herald reported that Dean broke her pelvis and sustained a puncture wound to the lung, while Braddock reportedly broke his neck, arm and nose.

Dean and Braddock were reportedly dating.

Toxicology results from the result are pending while students at Ocean Springs High mourn the loss of a popular running back who was also a talented musician.

“He was well-liked and respected by kids and staff,” Ocean Springs High School Principal David Baggett told the Sun Herald. “We notified the 10th grade class first thing Monday morning so they could grieve with one another. That‘s the best that you can do.”

“It is a tragic event to lose a young man at such a young age,” Lt. Flowers said. “Our sympathies are with his family and friends. No parent should have to see their child laid to rest.”

Funeral services for Stallworth are incomplete.

By Monica Land

BLUE SPRINGS – One day after being added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list, Union County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards said Adam Christopher Mayes shot himself in the head. He died later at a local hospital.

Authorities also confirmed that the two girls he allegedly kidnapped, Alexandria Bain, 12, and her 8-year-old sister, Kyliyah, were found alive at a separate location. The girls appeared unharmed but were transported to a local hospital where they were examined.

Mayes’ mother-in-law, Josie Tate, told ABC News affiliate WTVC that her daughter, Teresa, and Adam constantly argued about the younger Bain girls and the motive behind the kidnapping may have been that Mayes believed he was their father, and their mother was planning on moving them to Arizona.

“He was absolutely obsessed with [those little girls],” Tate told WTVC. “He was claiming those two children were his.”

ABC reported that neighbors told a similar story, that Mayes was a close family friend of the Bain family and told people that he was Alexandria and Kyliyah’s father.

“He made us all think that was his kids,” Andrea Miller, a neighbor and friend of Adam Mayes, told WTVC.

“He thought the world of those girls,” another neighbor, Melvin Herron, told WTVA.

FBI officials said they believe Jo Ann Bain was preparing to move her family to Arizona at the end of the school year. The family had ties to Arizona, where the two older daughters were enrolled in school off and on between the years 2004 and 2009, according to the Tucson Citizen.

This tragedy began April 27, when Jo Ann’s husband, Gary Bain, called the sheriff’s department and told them his wife and three daughters were missing.

Earlier this week, Mayes’ wife, Teresa, and his mother, Mary Frances Bain, were both arrested in Tennessee and charged with aggravated kidnapping and conspiracy, respectively.

Charges against Teresa were upgraded to two counts of murder after she reportedly told authorities that she witnessed her husband kill Jo Ann Bain in the garage of the Bain’s Tennessee home, and then kill her 14-year-old daughter, Adrienne in the house itself.

Teresa admitted in a police report that she drove Alexandria and Kyliyah, along with the bodies of their mother and sister to Union County, Miss. from Hardeman County, Tenn.

Jo Ann and Adrienne were found in a shallow grave at a house Bain shared with his parents in Guntown, Miss.

As the manhunt for Adam Mayes intensified, a reward of more than $100,000 was being offered for his capture.

An FBI command center was set up in Union County as many believed Mayes was still in the state of Mississippi.

Sheriff Edwards said Mayes was found in the vicinity of the Zion Hill Baptist Church on County Road 183 in Blue Springs when he reportedly shot himself in the head Thursday evening.

Mayes was in critical conditional when authorities reached him and medics worked on him in the ambulance as they transported him to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Union County.

Union County Coroner Mark Golding said, however, that Mayes died of his injuries about 8:20 pm.

His body will be transferred to Jackson for an autopsy.

Union County authorities are planning to hold a conference about the incident on Friday.

WASHINGTON – (AP) President Barack Obama reversed his position on gay marriage on Wednesday, becoming the first president to endorse the politically explosive idea and injecting a polarizing issue into the 2012 race for the White House.

Obama’s announcement – coming after initially supporting gay marriage in 1996, only to reverse himself by 2004 and more recently refusing to take a clear stand – cheered gay rights groups who have long urged him to support gay marriage. It also opened up a distinct area of disagreement with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who opposes gay marriage.

Polling suggests the nation is evenly divided on the issue.

“I have hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient,” Obama said in an interview with ABC at the White House. He added that, “I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people the word ‘marriage’ was something that invokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth.”

Now, he said, “it is important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

The president’s decision to address the issue came on the heels of a pair of events that underscored the sensitivity of the issue.

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview on Sunday that he is completely comfortable with gays marrying, a pronouncement that instantly raised the profile of the issue. And on Tuesday, voters in North Carolina – a potential battleground in the fall election – approved an amendment to the state constitution affirming that marriage may only be a union of a man and a woman.

Obama voice similar sentiments in the past.

“I’m a Christian, and so although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman,” Obama said during a 2004 Chicago radio taping. More recently, the president has supported a number of initiatives backed by gays, including an end to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and a decision not to defend in court a federal law that was designed as an alternative to gay marriage.

He had stopped short of supporting gay marriage, though, saying his position was “evolving.”

Obama spoke about his support for gay marriage in deeply personal terms, saying his young daughters, Malia and Sasha, have friends whose parents are same-sex couples.

“Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated different,” Obama said. “It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

Obama said first lady Michelle Obama also was involved in his decision and joins him in supporting gay marriage.

“In the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people,” he said.

Acknowledging that his support for same-sex marriage may rankle religious conservatives, Obama said he thinks about his faith in part through the prism of the Golden Rule – treating others the way you would want to be treated.

“That’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president,” Obama said.

The political cross-currents are tricky.

Some top aides argued that gay marriage is toxic at the ballot box in battleground states such as North Carolina and Virginia because, as Tuesday’s vote proved, the issue remains a reliable way to fire up rank-and-file Republicans. It also could open Obama up to Republican criticism that he was taking his eye off the economy, voters’ No. 1 issue.

Other Democratic supporters claim Obama could energize huge swaths of the party, including young people, by voicing his support for gay marriage before November. He also could appeal to independent voters, many of whom back gay marriage, and he could create an area of clear contrast between himself and his Republican rival as he argues that he’s delivered on the change he promised four years ago.

On Tuesday, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, told Obama to “man up” and take a position on gay marriage.

Romney has not generally raised the issue in his campaign.

On Wednesday, he told KDVR-TV in Denver that “I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name. My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.”

The Romney campaign did not respond to questions about which benefits the Republican candidate would oppose.

The former Massachusetts governor told an Ohio television station Monday that he believes “marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s a position I’ve had for some time and I don’t intend to make any adjustments at this point – or ever, by the way.”

Public opinion on gay marriage has shifted in recent years, with most polls now finding the public evenly split, rather than opposed.

A Gallup poll released this week found 50 percent of all adults in favor of legal recognition of same-sex marriages, marking the second time that poll has found support for legal gay marriage at 50 percent or higher. Majorities of Democrats (65 percent) and independents (57 percent) supported such recognition, while most Republicans (74 percent) said same sex marriages should not be legal.

Six states – all in the Northeast except Iowa – and the District of Columbia allow same sex marriages. In addition, two other states have laws that are not yet in effect and may be subject to referendums.