(CBS News) ALPINE, Miss. - The manhunt for murder and kidnapping suspect Adam Mayes is over. The two missing girls who were with him are now safe.
Police say Mayes killed himself Thursday night in Alpine, Miss. after they caught up with him.
For two weeks, search teams here in Mississippi had two priorities: find Mayes, and bring the girls home alive. It did both.
Just a day after adding Mayes to the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list and offering a $175,000 reward, officials caught their break.
"We are very relieved at this event here tonight," Aaron Ford, the special agent who heads the FBI's Memphis office, told reporters. "We have two little girls we can return Tennessee, to their families."
The hunt for Mayes came to its dramatic end two weeks after he disappeared with 12-year-old Alexandria Bain and her 8-year-old sister, Kiliyah.
Acting on a tip, authorities closed in on the three in a heavily wooded area behind a small Mississippi church. Alexandria was spotted first, then Mayes.
"Officers immediately issued commands to Adam Mayes to show his hands," Ford says. "Mayes pulled a semi-automatic pistol from his waistband and shot himself in the head."
Officers say they ordered Mayes repeatedly to surrender. Instead, he shot himself. The two girls were lying on the ground nearby.
Emergency responders brought the fugitive back to life twice before he died at a local hospital.
The girls were suffering from exposure, dehydration and poison ivy, and were taken to a hospital for treatment as a precaution. They were later released.
Their ordeal ended just three miles from Mayes' home, where the bodies of their mother, Jo Ann Bain, and sister, Adrienne, were found last Saturday.
Police say Mayes' wife, Teresa, told them he killed Jo Ann and Adrienne so he could take the girls. It's believed Mayes, who was considered a close family friend of the Bains, thought he was their father.
The FBI has crossed Mayes off its Most Wanted List - the poster with him on it now says deceased -- and his wife and mother are behind bars, charged in connection with the case. But officials warn the investigation is far from over.
"If we determine that there was any person or persons that assisted Adam Mayes while he was on the run with these girls," says Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn, "we plan on arresting and prosecuting them."
To see Mark Strassmann's report, click on the video in the player above.
