Police arrest wife and mother of man ‘who killed mom and 14-year-old daughter’ – as search continues for her two youngest daughters
The mother and wife of a man suspected of abducting a Tennessee mother and her three daughters have been also been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, officials said on Tuesday.
The arrests come after the bodies of two members of the kidnapped family – mother Jo Ann Bain and her 14-year-old daughter Adrienne – were found behind the alleged kidnapper’s home in Mississippi.
It is believed the other two daughters are still being held by Adam Mayes, who was a family friend of the victims – and who the FBI believes is on the run and armed and dangerous.
His wife, Teresa Mayes, and mother, Mary Mayes, were jailed at Hardeman County Jail in Tennessee after their suspected part in the kidnappings.
Teresa Mayes, 31, was charged with four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping and held on a $500,000 bond, while Mary Mayes, 65, was charged with four counts of conspiracy to commit especially aggravated kidnapping and held on $300,000 bond.
An affidavit states that Teresa told investigators she drove Jo Ann Bain and her daughters from their home in western Tennessee to the Mississippi home she shared with her husband and his parents.
The two bodies found last weekend behind Mayes’ Mississippi residence were identified as Jo Ann Bain, 31, and Adrienne Bain, 14, one of her three daughters, the FBI said on Monday.
The FBI has not said how the woman and her daughter died.
The other girls, Alexandria, 12, and Kyliyah, eight, were taken from their home in rural Hardeman County in Tennessee at the same time, but are still believed to be with the suspected kidnapper.
FBI spokesman Joel Siskovic told The Associated Press on Tuesday: ‘We’re still working on the belief that the youngest two daughters are alive. We’re still hopeful.’
Also speaking to AP, Teresa Mayes’ sister, Bobbi Booth, said her sister told her last week that she knew about the killings, but Booth thinks she was too scared to call the police.
Booth told her sister to call the police and was assured that she had, but by Saturday Booth had become suspicious about that claim and called police herself.
‘I told them exactly what she had told me: Who the bodies were, where they could be dug from,’ Booth said – although investigators had begun digging the garden the previous day.
She said that Teresa Mayes had expressed fears that her husband was having an affair with Jo Ann.
But Booth added that she finds it hard to believe Adam Mayes could kill a child, especially as he seemed ‘like a big happy family’ with the Bains parents and their children.
‘I have cried until I’m sick,’ she said. ‘I was totally shocked. I’ve known him since I was little. We played together when we were kids. I always thought he was odd, but I never dreamed he’d do this.’
Booth said she has not had much contact with her sister for the past 11 years as Adam Mayes stood in the way. ’He was very aggressive with her, abusive,’ she said.
FBI agents wearing green camouflage and carrying high-powered rifles swarmed the woods and back roads of north Mississippi near Mayes’ home, joined by K-9 units and SWAT teams.
Troopers stopped vehicles and looked in trunks on Monday, while FBI agents continued to search the garden of the house where Adam Mayes lived with his wife and his parents.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said it believes Mayes has changed his appearance and that he may have altered the appearances of his victims by cutting or dying their hair.
Bain’s husband reported the four missing from their rural Tennessee home April 27.
Mayes, a longtime friend of Bain’s husband, had stayed over at the family’s house to help them pack and load up a U-Haul to drive across the country to Arizona, authorities said.
Gary Bain, who was at the house that night, awoke to find his wife, daughters and Mayes gone.
He couldn’t reach his wife on her cell phone that day, and reported them missing when the girls didn’t get off the school bus.
Mayes was last seen a week ago in Guntown, about 80 miles south of the Bain family’s home.
Both Gary Bain and Mayes were once married to sisters, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Kristin Helm said.
Jo Ann Bain’s aunt said she was waiting for authorities to tell her that her niece and the girls are safe.
‘I pray for Jo Ann and the girls to be OK and for them to come home,’ said Beverly Goodman, who works at Whiteville City Hall.
She said that her niece was not the type of woman to run off with someone.
Linda Kirkland, a family friend and cook at the Country Cafe in Whiteville, said the woman and her daughters were moving to Arizona because two of the girls had asthma.
‘Jo Ann and the kids, everyone loves them. We’re just hoping to hear that they’re safe,’ she said.
Siskovic, the FBI spokesman, said authorities talked to Mayes early on in the investigation, but he fled when they tried to contact him again.
Mayes also has ties to Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. He may be using the aliases of Christopher Zachery Wylde or Paco Rodrigass.
While authorities say Mayes is likely to be armed and extremely dangerous, acquaintances describe him as friendly, helpful and like an uncle to the girls.
Gerald Long, 60, of Jackson, Tennessee, said he last saw Mayes about two years ago. He said Mayes lived across the street from him for about a year with his wife, Teresa. He described Mayes as a ‘sociable person.’ He was helpful, Long said. ‘He didn’t seem violent or anything.’
As for his relationship with his wife, Long said ‘they were always up and down about things.’ Long would not elaborate but he said he thought Mayes and his wife are no longer together.
Authorities said Alexandria has brown hair and hazel eyes and is 5 feet tall and 105 pounds. Kyliyah has blond hair and brown eyes and is 4 feet tall and 57 pounds.
Authorities said Mayes may have cut his hair, as well as cut and dyed the girls’ hair to disguise their identities.
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