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.
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