GUNTOWN, Miss. — A Mississippi man killed a Tennessee mother and her teenage daughter so he could abduct two young sisters who are still missing, according to court documents filed Wednesday, and a relative says the suspect thought the two younger girls might be his daughters.
The developments gave the first hint of a motive in the case that began in Tennessee, stretched into Mississippi and led the FBI to put 35-year-old Adam Christopher Mayes on its 10 Most Wanted list. Authorities said they think the missing girls, 12-year-old Alexandria and 8-year-old Kyliyah Bain, are still with Mayes nearly two weeks after he took them.
Mayes’ mother-in-law said Mayes thought he might be the girls’ father and it caused trouble in the marriage to her daughter, who’s jailed in the case.
“She was tired of him doting on those two little girls that he claimed were his,” Josie Tate said in an exclusive phone interview Wednesday. In an earlier interview, Tate’s daughter Bobbi Booth said Teresa Mayes suspected her husband was having an affair with Jo Ann Bain.
Authorities refused to comment Wednesday on the motive for the April 27 slayings and abductions.
Mayes and his wife were charged in Bolivar, Tenn., on Wednesday with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jo Ann Bain and 14-year-old Adrienne Bain. Their bodies were found buried outside the Mayeses’ home near Guntown, Miss.
Teresa Mayes told investigators she saw her husband kill the two in the garage at the Bain home near Whiteville, Tenn., and then she drove him, the younger girls and the bodies to Mississippi, affidavits say.
Federal authorities pleaded for the public’s help in finding the sisters and urged Mayes to surrender.
