By Tim Ghianni and Emily Le Coz

NASHVILLE, Tenn./GUNTOWN, Mississippi (Reuters) - Four neighbors of a man who authorities say abducted a Tennessee family and killed the mother and one daughter were arrested in connection with the case, authorities said on Friday, one day after the man committed suicide as police closed in.

Adam Mayes, briefly the most-wanted fugitive in America, shot himself in the head on Thursday as police approached a spot in thick Mississippi woods where he was hiding with the remaining two daughters from the abducted Bain family of Tennessee.

Police found 12-year-old Alexandria Bain and 8-year-old Kyliyah Bain alive and unharmed on the ground nearby.

The girls were "hungry, thirsty and dehydrated" and suffering from exposure and poison ivy, said Aaron T. Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI's Memphis division.

"They look like they've been in the woods for three days," Ford said.

The girls were released to unidentified family members early on Friday after spending the night at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, hospital spokeswoman Anne Glankler said.

The discovery of the girls unharmed ended a week-long, multi-agency manhunt across two states that thrust the rural border area into the national spotlight.

The saga began in the rural western Tennessee town of Whiteville on April 27 when the husband of Jo Ann Bain, 31, reported his wife and three girls missing.

FAMILY FRIEND?

Authorities described Mayes as a friend of the Bain family, but said the relationship went wrong when the Bains announced a plan to move to Arizona.

According to criminal affidavits filed in Hardeman County, Tennessee, Mayes and his wife, Teresa, allegedly drove to Whiteville on April 27 to kidnap the girls, and killed their mother and older sister in the process.

Teresa Mayes then drove the girls and the corpses to Alpine, Mississippi, some 75 miles away, where Adam Mayes buried the corpses before disappearing into the woods with his captives.

Teresa Mayes has been charged with two counts of first degree murder and two counts of especially aggravated kidnapping. Adam Mayes' mother, Mary, has been charged with four counts of intent to commit especially aggravated kidnapping. Continued...