Daughter and friends killed family over forbidden love
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.
The lone survivor was Terry Caffey, the father. He was shot five times — including twice in the back — before he dragged himself through woods in search of help.
Penny Caffey, 37, and sons Tyler, eight, and Mathew, 13, were killed.
“We feel confident the motive was the fact the juvenile daughter and one of the individuals in custody were dating and the parents were attempting to break the relationship up ... which led to the crime,” a police spokesman said.
The girl, who was not identified because of her age, was arraigned on Sunday evening on three counts of capital murder and is being held on a $1.5 million (€1m) bond. Charlie James Wilkinson, the girl’s 19-year-old boyfriend, and two others were arraigned on the same charges.
Charles Allen Waid, 20, and Bobbi Gale Johnson, 18, were the others charged with three counts each of capital murder.
The killings gripped everyone in Emory, a town with a population of just 1,500.
Classmates of the Caffeys’ daughter and Wilkinson described the couple as inseparable and with few other friends on campus. Locals were taken aback at the arrest of Johnson, who was widely described as a good student active in theatre at Rains High School.
Jennifer McClanahan, a senior at Rains, said Wilkinson was 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 them good Christians and said he often told the daughter he wanted her soft singing voice to perform 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 attack occurred on about 20 acres of pine-canopied, remote land in Alba on a narrow gravel road with just two other homes. The area is so secluded even the closest neighbours reported only faintly hearing what sounded liked thunder early on Saturday, and few saw the blaze.
Terry Caffey was shot in the head, twice in the back and twice near his shoulder. One gun and one knife were used in the attack.
Police found the daughter hiding in the home of one of the suspects.
The family members were asleep in their bedrooms when the ambush began, police said. Penny Caffey and Mathew suffered gunshots and stab wounds; the youngest, Tyler, had only stab wounds.
On the Caffeys’ 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.
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