Wednesday May 9,
2012
50 cents
Daily Corinthian Vol. 116, No. 112
Some sun Today
Tonight
77
49
• Corinth, Mississippi • 20 pages • 2 sections
Wife, mom of slaying suspect arrested BY ADRIAN SAINZ Associated Press
GUNTOWN — Police have filed kidnapping charges against the wife of a man suspected of killing a Tennessee woman and her oldest daughter and kidnapping the woman’s two youngest daughters. As an intense manhunt for Adam Mayes and the two young girls continued, his wife, Teresa Mayes, and mother, Mary Mayes, were arraigned in a Hardeman County, Tenn., courtroom on Tuesday. Mary Mayes, 65, was charged with
conspiracy to commit kidnapping. An affidavit states that Teresa Mayes, 30, told investigators she drove Jo Ann Bain and her daughters from Hardeman County in western Tennessee, where they lived, to Union County, Miss., where Adam and Teresa Mayes lived with his parents. Calls to the attorneys assigned to represent the two women were not immediately returned. The bodies of Jo Ann Bain and 14-year-old Adrienne Bain
were found last week behind the home where the Mayes family lived. Twelve-year-old Alexandria Bain and 8-year-old Kyliyah Bain were still missing. Authorities have said that 35-year-old Adam Mayes was a family friend who was staying with the Bains on April 27, the night that Jo Ann Bain and the children disappeared. In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Teresa Mayes’ sister, Bobbi Booth, said her sister told her last week that she knew about the
killings, but Booth thinks Teresa Mayes may have been too scared to call the police. “Teresa started to call, text and Facebook constantly on Thursday,” Booth said. Booth told Teresa Mayes 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 Adam Mayes
Please see MAYES | 3A
Alleged sightings continue; agencies remain on full alert BY STEVE BEAVERS sbeavers@dailycorinthian.com
Staff photo by Steve Beavers
Magnolia Regional Health Center RN Amy Carmichiel adjusts one of the “stand talls” placed on each floor to commemorate the honoring of nurses at the hospital.
Hospital honors dedicated nurses BY STEVE BEAVERS sbeavers@dailycorinthian.com
They were dressed in white as a tribute to the early days. The Florence Nightingale’s of Magnolia Regional Health Center were honored for countless hours of devotion to the welfare of patients during the hospital’s nursing celebration on Tuesday. Nurses carried banners as they made their way around the hospital grounds just before noon en route to the celebration luncheon in the cafeteria. “This is a very rewarding
job,” said 39-year registered nurse Sherry Choate. “I have always wanted to be a nurse since I was a child.” Choate, a Recovery Room RN, is one of the longest tenured nurses at the hospital. She was one of the many dressed in the signature white dress and nursing cap on Tuesday. “It was important to wear white today ... it takes us back to the days of nursing school,” said Choate. “Things have changed over the years, but it has been great working as a nurse.” Choate’s loyalty to the job she loves hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“She has trained a lot of nurses here,” said fellow RN Sheila Calvary. “Sherry is an excellent teacher who wants things exactly right.” During the day, retiring nurses were recognized and Nightingale Nominees were presented. The hospital, which has 4,116 combined years of nursing experience, also honored deceased nurses and acknowledged new nursing graduates. National Nurses Week begins each year on May 6 and Please see NURSES | 2A
CHS alumni honor longtime educators BY BOBBY J. SMITH bjsmith@dailycorinthian.com
Two longtime local educators have been selected by the Corinth High School Alumni Association as the 2012 Faculty/Staff of the Year. Harold Smith and the late Eugene Doran are this year’s recipients of the CHS Alumni Association’s annual awards. A ceremony to honor these two pillars of the Corinth School District will be held Thursday from 6 until 8 p.m. at KC’s Espresso in downtown Corinth.
Harold Padgett Smith Smith was born in the Prentiss County community of Hills Chapel on Feb. 7, 1938, the son of Harold Lee and Ivy Mae Padgett Smith. He has one sister, Betty Jane Smith Seay, born on Jan. 25, 1932. He attended three Prentiss County schools growing up, Pisgah School (1943-47); Wheeler School (1947-50); and Marietta High School (1950-55). After graduating from Marietta High School in 1955,
Smith att e n d e d Northeast Mississippi Junior College in Booneville from 195557. In the summer of 1957 he Educator worked for Harold P. the MissisSmith served sippi Highas principal of way Deseveral local partment on Interschools. state 55. After Northeast, Smith continued his education at Mississippi State College from 1957 through graduation in 1959. Joining up with the Mississippi National Guard in June of 1959, Smith completed basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and advanced training in the Signal Corp at Fort Gordon, Ga. He completed his training by Christmas of 1959. His first job in education came in January of 1960, when Smith was hired by the Corinth School District. He taught mathematics and sci-
ence until the end of the school year. He was hired again to teach geometry and algebra for 1960-61, Eugene Doran and continued to teach was a longmathemattime Corinth Band and Cho- ics through ral Director as the end of well as Super- the school year in intendent. 1962. S m i t h married Vonceil Brewster on Sept. 9, 1962. Shortly later he enrolled at the University of Mississippi on a National Science Foundation scholarship to complete a graduate degree in combined sciences. He completed the degree in the fall of 1963 and returned to Corinth High School, where he taught mathematics until the fall of 1967. Elected as principal of East Corinth Elementary in the fall Please see EDUCATORS | 3A
Index Stocks...... 7A Classified......5B Comics......3B Wisdom......2B
Weather......5A Obituaries......3A Opinion......4A Sports......8A
The manhunt for a Guntown man has some Alcorn County residents on edge. As the search for Adam Mayes intensified on Tuesday, rumors started to circulate that Mayes had been seen at first in the Farmington area, the alleged sightings continued to grow. “Our department hasn’t received any confirmation from any official agency,” said Corinth Police Chief David Lancaster. A spokesman for the Alcorn County Sheriff’s Department also said “we have no confirmation on anything” Tuesday
afternoon. The bodies of 31-year-old Jo Ann Bain and 14-year-old Adrienne Bain were found last week behind the mobile home in northern Mississippi where Mayes lives with his parents and wife. Jo Ann Bain and her three daughters were reported missing from their Whiteville, Tn. home on April 27. Two of the daughters, Alexandria Bain, 12, and Kyliyah Bain, 8, are still missing and believed to be with Mayes. “This is a terrible thing that has hit close to home,” said Please see AGENCIES | 3A
Cable company pulls the plug; residents upset BY JEBB JOHNSTON jjohnston@dailycorinthian.com
A number of rural Alcorn County residents have been scrambling to get new television service after a cable company pulled the plug on its system without warning. Ollie Ruth Maricle and her husband were watching “The Price Is Right” three weeks ago when something happened and the next item up for bids never came. “All of a sudden the screen went to snow and said, ‘no signal,’” she said. “That’s all it has done since.” She is among the customers of Zoom Media LLC, a cable system that served some parts of the county not reached by Comcast. It was formerly operated by Time Warner Cable and changed hands a number of times through the years. “They didn’t give us any kind of notice whatsoever about it,” said Maricle, a resident of the Kossuth area. “I think we should have been notified that it was happening.” She had noticed that a bill never arrived from the company in April. Zoom’s website has a message stating the company “has permanently closed and is filing for bankruptcy protection.” A phone call to the number listed on the website was answered by a fax machine after ringing for a couple of minutes. Kossuth Mayor Don Pace said the town in the past received regular communications from the cable company about changes affecting the area, but the town government received no notice about the system going dark. He said the cable com-
pany had lost many customers in the Kossuth area because of poor service. “The last few years, the reception wasn’t any good at all,” he said. Maricle has gone without television service since Zoom pulled the plug in April. “It will soon be a month,” she said. “I’m thinking about putting in a satellite, but I hate to put in a satellite and then in a few days maybe the cable will come back on.” She and her husband enjoyed the Christian programming on Unity Broadcasting Network from Booneville as well as local church service broadcasts that she knows are not available through the satellite services. Tommy Allen of the Biggersville area is among those who have signed up with a satellite service. Like many people, he said he learned by word of mouth that the cable company had apparently gone bankrupt. “We still haven’t heard anything” from the company, he said. The quality of the cable service had been problematic. “Sometimes we could see a picture and no sound and sometimes vice versa,” said Allen. “It seemed like it was deteriorating, plus we lost some stations that we started out with.” Since the local stations on satellite are from the Memphis market, he is also using an antenna in order to get the Booneville religious station and news and weather from stations closer than Memphis. According to its website, Zoom Media had cable systems in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
On this day in history 150 years ago Four Confederate divisions attack an exposed Union brigade near Farmington. Outnumbered 5 to 1, the Federals hold out for five hours before falling back beyond Seven Mile Creek and the safety of the main Union line.