Most of you are probably familiar with the horrible events that took place earlier this year in Tennessee, when a man named Adam Mayes killed Jo Ann Bain and her fourteen-year-old daughter and then abducted Bain’s two younger girls. He was discovered, with the girls, two weeks later in Mississippi. Rather than face arrest for his many crimes, Mayes shot himself in the head when cornered by authorities. The girls, ages eight and twelve, while certainly bearing terrible psychological wounds, were rescued seemingly unharmed. Family and members and neighbors shared that Mayes was close friends with Jo Ann Bain and particularly obsessed with the two younger girls, believing that they were his own children.
It seems that, a month later, Mayes’ family has no interest in claiming his corpse. It has been laying in a Mississippi morgue with the two people perhaps most likely to bury him, his ex-wife and his mother, both charged as accessories in the crimes. A solution has been found, though . . . his body will be used for the good of science.
The University of Tennessee now will have ownership over the body of Adam Mayes and students will use it for research. Will a trigger for these events be found in his brain? Will some detail of his body composition lend itself to some answers concerning why this man would harm a woman and girls for whom he supposedly cared greatly? As someone who studies the criminal mind and is fascinated by what drives a person to commit violence against a fellow human being, especially a child, I am interested in learning what the college students discover.
This donation to education comes as an alternative to the $900 cremation fee that the taxpayers would have taken on if Mayes body has remained in the morgue much longer.
What do you think of this possibility of at least learning something from a tragic situation?
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Author Jennifer Chase 
At least some good will come from his miserable life.
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So The Body Farm for him, then? I think it’s a great alternative to the taxpayers having to deal with the costs. And he’ll serve a purpose after his horrid crimes.
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Bravo! Al serial killers bodies should be donated as part of their retribution to society.
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He should totally serve science and the community – even in this small way. He can never repay what he’s done but if we can learn something from his body that helps someone else – with a new procedure or other it’s positive. I had my mother donated to science (her wishes) and it was lovely that they sent a note telling me the actual procedures (in a non-gruesome manner) that her body was used for to help to improve and learn – ways to help reduce pain from certain surgeries and to shorten recovery times.
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