Published Monday, March 03, 2008 5:51 AM
Police: E. Texas teen helped kill family
EMORY -- Angry because her parents had demanded that she break up with her boyfriend, a teenage girl helped kill her mother and two brothers during a grisly weekend ambush on the family's rural wooded ranch, authorities said Sunday.
The 16-year-old girl joined her boyfriend and two others in shooting and stabbing members of the Caffey family in their bedrooms before setting the house on fire, authorities said, confirming what most in this small farming town had known since the pre-dawn attack Saturday.
The lone survivor was Terry Caffey, the father. He was shot four times -- including twice in the back -- before he was able to drag his bloodied body through the woods in search of help. He was awaiting surgery Sunday to remove the bullets, Rains County Sheriff David Traylor said.
Killed were Penny Caffey, 37, and sons Tyler, 8, and Matthew, 13.
"We feel confident that the motive was the fact that the juvenile daughter and one of the individuals in custody were dating and that the parents were attempting to break the relationship up," Traylor said, "which led to the crime that was committed."
The girl, who was not identified because of her age, was arraigned Sunday on three counts of capital murder and being held on $1.5 million bail. Charlie James Wilkinson, the girl's 19-year-old boyfriend, and two others were arraigned on the same charges.
The killings gripped everything in Emory, from the Sunday morning church services to lunch conversations at the small cafes along the two-lane road running through this town of 1,500.
Pastor Todd McGahee of Miracle Faith Baptist Church, where the Caffeys worshipped and were the house musicians, wept and struggled to stay composed during his Sunday sermon.
On the Caffeys' vast wooded plot, the family's black Labrador waited in vain by the ashes of the incinerated house and a burned van for his owners to return.
"There's been a change in this church and a change in this community," McGahee told about 80 worshippers. "And we can't just wish it away. ... It will be the same loss, the same hurt tomorrow. There's been that change in our lives."
Charles Allen Waid, 20, and Bobbi Gale Johnson, 18, were the others charged with three counts each of capital murder. Each was being held in Rains County jail on $1.5 million bail. Traylor said he didn't know whether they had attorneys yet.
The scene of the attack was on about 20 acres of pine-canopied, remote woodland in Alba on a narrow gravel road with just two other homes. The area is so secluded that even the closest neighbors reported only faintly hearing what sounded liked thunder early Saturday, and few saw the blaze.
Authorities said that Terry Caffey crawled 300 yards to his closest neighbor to get help, leaving a bloody trail. He was shot in the head, twice in the back and twice near his shoulder, Traylor said.
"When I first heard, I was like, I don't even think I would have crawled out of the house," McGahee told his congregation. "But God has a purpose for Terry's life. God has a reason. God gave him the strength to get out."
Traylor said one gun and one knife were used in the attack. He would not say who allegedly did what at the house, only that all four were there at the time.
Police found the daughter hiding in the mobile home of one of the suspects, Traylor said.
The family members were asleep in their bedrooms when the ambush began, Traylor said. He said Penny Caffey and Matthew suffered gunshots and stab wounds; the youngest, Tyler, had only stab wounds.
Classmates of the Caffeys' daughter and Wilkinson described the couple as inseparable and with few other friends on campus. Stunning most here was the arrest of Johnson, who was widely described as a good student active in theater at Rains High School.
Jennifer McClanahan, a senior at Rains, said that Wilkinson was scolded during English class last week for being on the computer. Wilkinson, she said, in turn told the teacher that his girlfriend's father had hacked into his MySpace page.
McClanahan and others described Wilkinson as not really a troublemaker, other than constantly being told to remove the cowboy hat he always wore to school.
"That's Charlie," said McClanahan, 17. "He would start an argument over something like a hat."
Carl Johnson, a friend of the family, said the Caffeys moved about two years ago to just outside Emory. He called the family good Christians and said he often told the daughter he wanted her soft singing voice at his funeral.
"[The parents] didn't like the boy and were trying to break them up," Johnson said. "They told me at church they didn't have any use for him."
The family's home sat about three miles off the main two-lane highway near Emory. Hay bales, horses and cattle dot the landscape down the county road leading to their secluded house, where a picnic table sits near the pile of black ash that is all that remains of the home.
A wood sign tacked to a tree in the family's dirt driveway reads "Joshua 24:15," a verse from the Old Testament that reads, in part, "But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
Cassie Schuder, a waitress in Emory, stayed behind the yellow police tape as she tried coaxing the Caffey's Labrador to dog food and water that onlookers had left.
The dog perked its ears briefly, then rolled over to sniff the ashes and singed aluminum scattered throughout the property.
"It's kind of like one big family," Schuder, 24, said decribing life in Emory. "There's outcasts and people that don't want part of family ... I mean, we don't ever lock our cars when we go to work."
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