There was nothing he could do for his family at that point. According to Charlie, Johnson did not know what the boys plans were but had insisted on coming with them. Her 13-year-old brother, Matthew, was shot in the head. Furious with her parents, Erin told her aunt that she planned on running away to be with Charlie when she turned seventeen. A former special-ed student with a heavy-lidded gaze, Waid showed no remorse, and he casually recounted how he had killed the two boys. I want people to draw goodness from all this. How Florence ButtNot Her SonLaunched the H-E-B Empire. Somehow I pulled myself up and climbed over the mattress. Finally, they turned back toward the Caffey home and parked down the road. This is a picture of Terry & SONJA - his 2nd wife. When I saw the phone records, I realized that it didnt matter if a single one of the other defendants testified against her. ", "When you hold on to that un-forgiveness or that bitterness, it's like that person still has a part of you," he continued. Terry and Bubba played harmonica, with Penny on piano. I didn't want to grow into a bitter, angry old man. Details about the Caffey family . I dont think anyone worried about him and Erin at first. The Caffey family were very devout Christians. You can read more about Terrys experience in his book. "They own you. Terry Caffey, who survived the murder attempt, visits the graves of his wife and two young sons. ERIN Caffey is 24, and has been in a high-security prison in Gatesville, Texas, for eight years. They werent beating me, they werent starving me to death. I was going to lay down and shoot myself right there on the spot where I lost my family. Here, the Caffey family is shown in an undated photo. That same month, Erin Caffey started talking about killing her parents in front of friends. But Caffey said God showed him another way to deal with his grief. Erin Caffey's. She had him around her finger, pretty much, said a girl who was a senior at the time. Wilkinson and Waid are serving life without parole but were spared the death penalty because Terry Caffey asked for it to be taken off the table. He feels that God has restored what the enemy had stolen. I couldnt have got up if Id wanted to. It was when he spoke about Erin that his voice softened and grew sentimental. When the gun jammed, Waid broke out a samurai-style sword and finished Penny off with it, nearly severing her head, according to Texas Monthly. As Wilkinson and Waid did the killing the girls waited in a car. But the kicker was from 1:22 a.m. to 1:58 a.m., when she called him seven more times. I would have done anything for her, he said. Penny was withdrawn for most of February, and she declined to go on a womens church retreat, saying that she needed to spend more time with her family. Did you have any part in this? she demanded. He had been shot five times: once in the head, twice near his right shoulder, and two more times in the back. The Caffey family had been attacked and killed earlier that morning, Fischer informed him. They also had two sons: Matthew, known as Bubba, who was in the seventh grade, and Tyler, a fourth-grader. Terry fell into deep depression and planned to kill himself, but God intervened. He could see Charlie lying on a mattress, awake, wearing only blue jeans. Now, one year later, Terry is remarried, the adoptive father of two young sons, and working to rebuild his relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, who is currently serving two life sentences in a Texas state penitentiary for her involvement in the crimes. I was just angry. He had no ill words for the people he had so viciously attacked. With the scars still visible on his face, Terry Caffey talks Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, at his home in Gilmer. Erin was not sentenced to life without parole; she will be eligible after 25 years of her life sentence, according to Killer Couples.. At school, where she enrolled as a freshman, she and Charlie were inseparable; they ate lunch together and walked down the hall hand in hand, and sometimes they slipped away to Erins pickup to fool around. But that morning, the two officers felt only pity for the soft-spoken girl who had just lost her mother and two brothers. Charlie was playing basketball outside the fellowship hall that afternoon, and Terry pulled him aside. He said authorities later told him it took him about an hour to crawl the length of four football fields that night, but he had seen a killer's face and it was someone he knew. Wilkinsons Myspace page was littered with sexual references and talk of drinking alcohol. Charlie Wilkinson and Erin Caffey's Dangerous Relationship Massacre of the Caffey Family The Trial And Sentencing Of Erin Caffey. During the many hours in which they made polite conversation, he ventured only once to ask her a question of substance. When the police asked the neighbor where Terry was bleeding from, he replied, where isnt he bleeding from?. I want them to wake up every day and think about what they took and hopefully one day they will find remorse in their hearts. His gut was right. Fischer picked up a black-and-white Western shirt, and a used condom slipped onto the floor. Who is she dating? Terry and his daughter Erin were the only members of the family to survive, but in the days after the tragedy Erin was arrested and charged with being the mastermind behind the murders. Terry Caffey, his wife Penny, and their children, Tyler, Matthew 'Bubba' and Erin (Family Handout/ABC ) A Texas man who is the only survivor of a cold-blooded home invasion that left his wife. If he cant show me any respect, how does he treat our daughter?. The answer was as simple and as complex as first love. It took him an hour to crawl to his nearest neighbors house where the authorities were called. Mr Caffey was recovering in hospital from multiple gunshot wounds having just watched his 13-year-old son Matthew get shot to death and his wife Penny almost decapitated, when police paid him a visit. Along the way, he had fallen into a creek, where he had almost drowned, but he had kept moving, staggering toward Gastons house as the fire behind him grew more intense. Why did he have to die? Yet Charlie said he thought he had also stabbed Tyler at least once. When I look back on it now, this was all just stupid. He now travels the country preaching what he has become good at, forgiveness. City Employees Are Heading for the Exits. When she spoke to Lewis, Erin insisted that Charlie had a volatile temper; he had killed her family after she had broken up with him and then framed her. Terry cried a lot and kept asking, Why? He said, I dont understand. The ambulance was about to pull away from Tommy Gastons house when sheriffs investigator Richard Almon, who had hurried to the scene, climbed inside. Erin's story fell apart while she was on her way to see her dad in a hospital in nearby Tyler, along with her grandparents and sheriff's deputies. Terry Caffey's daughter Erin made international headlines when she murdered her mother and two young brothers back in 2008. They entered through the front door, which Erin had left open. In fact, Caffey is the most dangerous woman I have met in my life. Terry Caffey was shot five times, escaped a house fire, but his family didn't. If at any time she would have said, Well, were not going to do it after all, it never would have happened.. Armed with a .22-caliber pistol and two samurai swords, they moved through the house with brutal efficiency. Her brothers had already reenrolled that fall after Bubba, who was thirteen, told them that he missed his friends, and the Caffeyswho were eager to free up time for Penny to earn some extra incomeagreed to let Erin go back before Christmas. Just a few days after the murders, Terry Caffey would make the eight-hour round trip to a prison to see the person who planned the family murder and had wanted him dead too. The Caffey Family. When we pulled away from the house, she was happier than a kid on Christmas morning., One afternoon this spring, I visited Charlie at the Polunsky Unit, in Livingston, the imposing, maximum-security prison that is best known for housing death row. Wilkinson gave her a promise ring that belonged to his grandmother and told his friends they would marry, according to Killer Couples. Terry and Penny were fine with the relationship until Erin's grades started to slip and they took a closer look at Wilkinson, not liking what they found on his Myspace page. Terry and Penny had met at a revival meeting in Garland when she was 21 and he was 24, and their strong Baptist faith had always bound them together. Let me see your hands.. As late as two days before the murders, he gloomily admitted to the same friend that he wished he could just get her pregnant so the Caffeys would have no choice but to accept him. The twenty-year-old needed money, and Charlie had promised him $2,000 if he would help him kill the Caffeyscash that Erin had told Charlie he would find in a lockbox inside the house. I know my daughter. The family labrador guards the property of Terry and Penny Caffey. They stayed with her for five hours until she was released from the hospital, then offered to accompany her and her grandparents to the intensive care unit at the East Texas Medical Center in Tyler to see Erins father. And you relive it over and over. West Texans Are Learning What It Means to Live in Bear Country, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition, Jimmy Carters Peanut-and-Egg Taco Made Quite the Impression on San Antonians. In December Erin asked her parents if she could return to public school. The Caffey childrenwho had been homeschooled for three yearswere shy and well mannered, though sixteen-year-old Erin was the least reserved. Erin Caffey is a young American citizen who was convicted of murder in 2008. ", "I am sound asleep in my bed and just immediately the gunshots went off," he said. She carried out her plans on March 1, 2008. Bubba tried to put up a fight by kicking Charlie, and when he did, Waid, who was still downstairs, raised the .22, aimed at the balcony where the brothers stood, and shot Bubba in the face. His face and upper body were caked with blood. Further, Penny Caffey is the mother of Erin who plays the Piano in church. The Caffeys Terry and his wife, Penny, their two young sons, Tyler and Matthew, and 16-year-old Erin lived to serve in their church. At that point, the church-going teen began to slip up in school. Its not something you can turn a switch on and everythings okay. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages. With Erin and Bobbi nearby, the two Charlies break into the house in the middle of the night, March 1, 2008. Terry Caffey Story. "The house is exploding, it's totally engulfed, and I'm forced back in the bedroom," Caffey said. Nationwide News Pty Ltd 2023. Wilkinson and an accomplice shot Caffey's wife Penny to death and set the family's home on fire. She and Terry hoped that the individual instruction might benefit Erin, who had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and lagged behind her classmates. Erin Caffey was convicted of three counts of capital murder and will not be eligible for parole until she is 59 years old. As time went on I began to realise that my grief and anger would destroy me. They shared 3 children together, Erin Caffey, 16 years old, Matthew Caffey, who was 13 years old and Tyler Caffey, who was only 8 years old. Terrance Michael Caffery (April 1, 1949 - August 3, 2022) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. This is an excerpt from Texas Monthly:Flesh & Blood http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/flesh-and-blood She couldnt sing a lick.. Terry and his wife, Penny, had three children together, 16-year-old Erin, 13-year-old Matthew, and 8-year-old Tyler. Terry and Penny worked as ministers at a conservative Baptist Church in Celeste, Texas. Above their driveway hung a polished cedar plank with the inscription: The CaffeysJoshua 24:15. The verse, which Terry had committed to memory, was a reminder that they had chosen a righteous path: If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve . 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