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FOX 11 Fantasy Home 2008 by Living Spaces LLC

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Police: Girl plotted deadly ambush on family for a month

12:25 PM MST on Wednesday, March 5, 2008

By WFAA-TV Staff Repots and the Associated Press

AP
(From left to right) Charles Allen Waid, 20, Bobbi Gale Johnson, 18, and Charlie James Wilkinson, 19.

Video
Brad Hawkins reports
3/3/2008

EMORY - A high school couple forced to break up spent weeks plotting what became a bloody spree of gunfire and stabbings in the girl's home, leaving her mother and two brothers dead and her father wounded, according to police reports released Monday.

The graphic narrative of the ambush - which includes the 16-year-old daughter allegedly having sex with her boyfriend after he helped kill her family - brought fresh anguish to this remote East Texas town still reeling from the Saturday massacre.

Charlie James Wilkinson, who had been dating Penny and Terry Caffey's 16-year-old daughter, told police the Caffeys had forced the couple to breakup and that his girlfriend wanted her parents dead, according to Rains County Sheriff Department investigators.

"Wilkinson stated that he and (the girl) were in love and the only way they could be together is to kill the parents," the arrest affidavit read.

From there, the detailed reports allege a friend was offered $2,000 to join the plot, say Penny and Terry Caffey were shot repeatedly in their beds and 13-year-old Mathew Caffey received a fatal bullet near his head. His brother, 8-year-old Tyler, was killed after allegedly being stabbed with a sword, according to the complaints.

The lone survivor was Terry Caffey, the father. He was shot five times and remains hospitalized at East Texas Medical Center in nearby Tyler. Caffey saved his own life by crawling 300 yards to a neighbors home to get help.

Tommy Gaston, the family's neighbor and close friend, said Monday that Caffey was improving.

Authorities also released the nearly 31/2-minute 911 call Gaston made after Caffey crawled to his home. Gaston tells a dispatcher that Caffey is bleeding and awake but that he doesn't know where he was shot.

"Where's he bleeding from?" the dispatcher asks.

"He's bloody all over."

"He's bloody all over?"

"Yes."

The family's daughter, whose name is being withheld because of her age, is charged with three counts of capital murder and is being held on $1.5 million bond. According to police reports, she waited in a car with schoolmate Bobbi Gale Johnson, 18, down the road while the killings took place.

Johnson, Wilkinson and Charles Allen Waid, 20, are also charged with three counts of capital murder. They are being held on $1.5 million bond at Rains County jail; the Caffeys' daughter is at a juvenile detention facility in neighboring Hunt County.

"In this neighborhood, you just think the worst crime you have is somebody hitting your mailbox," said Harold Read, a neighbor.

Read said that image of the area changed Saturday morning when he heard the gunshots.

"I thought I heard thunder, like boom, boom, boom," he said.

The accused teens allegedly tried to burn the home down after the fatal shooting.

The daughter, Wilkinson and two others are charged with three counts of capital murder in the pre-dawn Saturday massacre at the Caffeys' wooded home.

People who know the teens said they are in shock.

"He was a great kid, good kid," said Jim McCormack, who knew suspect Charles Allen Wade. "The whole family was real good. They were active in their church ... We just can't believe that that would happen. We just can't believe the boy would do this."

At Rains High School, students returned to campus Monday with three of their schoolmates - the Caffeys' daughter, Wilkinson and Johnson - notably absent.

"These were students who had not been in trouble a great deal," Rains school Superintendent David Seago said. "Maybe some tardies and absences, but that's it."

According to the complaint, the four suspects met Friday night to hatch a plan. Wilkinson allegedly told investigators that he and his girlfriend talked about killing her parents for about a month. He said the Caffeys decided they could no longer see each other and took away their daughter's cell phone.

"Waid stated that (they) met last night ... and it was decided to just walk in there and take care of business," the report reads.

The fire was started to cover the crimes, the complaint states. Waid and Wilkinson allegedly took cash and jewelry before calling the girls to drive back toward the house and pick them up.

Afterward, "Wilkinson stated that he and (the girl) had sex and slept," investigators wrote.

Seago, the school superintendent, said the Caffeys' daughter had enrolled in the school just six weeks earlier. Classmates and Emory residents have said she previously had been homeschooled.

The Caffeys lived in Alba, a neighboring town even smaller than Emory and about 60 miles northeast of Dallas. The family's house was one of only three on a pine-canopied, gravel road a few miles off the main two-lane highway running through the county.

The area is so secluded that surrounding neighbors only reported faintly hearing what sound liked thunder early Saturday, and few saw the blaze.

WFAA-TV's Bob Greene contributed to this report

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