A Daughter's Betrayal: How 16-year-old Erin Caffey Planned the Murders of Her Entire Family
In March 2008, a home invasion and brutal triple murder destroyed an entire family. For Terry Caffey, the tragedy was magnified when he learned that his daughter Erin had planned the crime
Background
On March 1, 2008, a family in the small Texas town of Alba was brutally torn apart when four people were savagely attacked by two teenage killers. Three of them died, while the fourth managed to survive and identify one of the killers to the police. After an investigation, the evidence would point in a shocking and disturbing direction.
An Ordinary Family
Just an ordinary family. That’s how most people might have described the Caffey family of Alba, Texas. Dad, Terry, Mom, Penny, and their three children, sixteen-year-old Erin, and her two younger brothers, Matthew, nicknamed Bubba, thirteen, and eight-year-old Tyler.
The family were devout Christians and attended the Miracle Faith Baptist Church. They lived in the small town of Alba, with a population of just 492, where everyone knew everyone else.
Terry was a youth pastor. Erin was active in youth events and sang in the church choir. Penny played the church piano, while brothers Matthew and Tyler played guitar and harmonica. By all appearances, they were a loving family, with the Caffey’s doing their best to give their children a good life.
Because Erin had been diagnosed with ADD – attention-deficient disorder, the children had been homeschooled for the past three years. However, when Matthew admitted he missed his friends, the children were allowed to return to public school. Erin enrolled at Rains High School, where she quickly made new friends.
Teenage Romance
In 2007, Erin began work at the local Sonic drive-in. Customers adored the bright, cheerful teen, one of the few workers who delivered their orders on roller skates. She also caught the eye of one of the town’s local “bad” boys, eighteen-year-old Charlie Wilkinson. Charlie lived with his father and stepmother, and although many considered him a clean-cut high school senior, his life was often troubled.
Although Terry would later state he felt something “wrong” about Charlie from the start, he did not originally forbid Erin from seeing him. The two quickly formed a romantic relationship behind her parents’ backs. At one point, Charlie gave Erin a promise ring, his grandmother’s engagement ring. When her mother, Penny, saw the ring at a church event, she demanded Erin return it.
Concerned about Erin’s slipping grades and her changing attitude, Terry and Penny Caffey went online to investigate Charlie. They found his MySpace page filled with references to profanity and sex. Not exactly the clean-cut boyfriend they hoped for their daughter. In February 2008, after Erin broke a phone curfew, her parents demanded that she end her relationship with Charlie for good.
Friends would later recall it was then that Erin began to talk about having her parents murdered. She saw it as the only way she and Charlie could be together. At first, no one took her seriously.
March 1, 2008
In the early morning hours of March 1, 2008, Charlie Wilkinson and his friend, Charles Waid, entered the Caffey residence. Erin Caffey and Bobbi Johnson, Waid’s girlfriend, sat outside in the getaway car with full knowledge of what would happen inside. Erin had promised Charlie’s friend, Waid, money if he would help with the killings.
At 3:00 a.m., Terry and Penny woke up to the sound of their bedroom door hitting the dryer in the laundry room. Terry at first thought their son, Tyler, had a nightmare and was running to them for comfort. Suddenly, the quiet night was shattered by gunfire.
Terry was the first to be shot – five times with a .22 pistol. Once in the head, twice in the back, and twice near his right shoulder. His wife, Penny, was then also shot, as Terry lay helpless to save her. When she didn’t die right away, she was stabbed multiple times with a samurai-type sword until she was almost decapitated.
The two gunmen then moved upstairs, where the younger boys were hiding in Erin’s room. Although Charlie had at first protested killing the two younger boys, he later realized that the boys could be witnesses. Erin reportedly said, “Do what you gotta do.”
In the bedroom downstairs, Terry heard his son screaming, “Charlie? Why are you doing this?” Matthew was then shot in the head. Although he couldn’t save his son, Terry made a determined effort to make sure the police knew who had killed his family. Even if he didn’t survive, he vowed to somehow let them know Charlie was the murderer.
Tyler, like his mother, was stabbed repeatedly with the samurai sword by both Wilkson and Waid. Wilkson would later deny he had killed the younger boy, putting all the blame on Waid. The two then set the house on fire to hide any evidence against them, and took the getaway car to Waid’s trailer – just a few miles down the road.
Terry Caffey, who was severely injured, managed to climb out a window of the burning house. He later told police his motivation was to live long enough to identify Wilkinson to make him pay for the murders. It took him over an hour to crawl to a neighbor’s house, bleeding profusely.
Investigation
Charles Dickerson was the only officer on duty that fateful night when the call came into the sheriff’s office. The time was 4:30 a.m. as Dickerson headed toward the Caffey home, where he found the house engulfed in flames. He then went toward the neighbor, Tommy Gaston’s house, where the 911 call had come from.
Terry Caffey lay on the neighbor’s floor, bleeding from his head and upper body. He told the police deputy, “Charlie Wilkinson killed my family.” Soon, two other detectives, sheriff’s investigator Richard Almon and chief deputy Kurt Fisher, arrived. Fisher had just passed Charlie Waid’s trailer on the way to the scene and noticed Wilkinson’s truck parked outside.
It seemed unbelievable to the officers that a boy they knew, Wilkinson, who often fished or went four-wheeling with Fisher’s teenage sons, could be guilty of such a crime.
The detectives went to Waid’s mobile home, and Waid let them inside and gave them permission to search for Charlie. They found him lying on a mattress along with a semiautomatic gun in one of the bedrooms. When they asked him about the murders, he denied it, saying he’d gotten drunk the night before and passed out. Another deputy entered the trailer to gather Charlie's clothes to wear to the jail for questioning. His shirt and boots were spattered with blood.
Fisher obtained a search warrant and went back to the mobile home to collect evidence. In the bedroom, he found Erin Caffey, disoriented and confused, hiding under a bundle of clothes. At first, investigators believed the girl’s story about being kidnapped and taken out of her family’s burning home.
Erin even lied to her maternal grandmother that she had nothing to do with her family’s deaths. When she first saw her father, still alive, she told him the same story. Until it all began to unravel.
When Charlie Wilkinson learned there was a witness who could identify him as the killer, he realized he was caught and had no qualms about telling the police everything. Although he originally wanted Erin to just run away with him, she refused and wanted her family killed. Charlie admitted he loved her so much, he’d do anything she asked.
Erin Caffey stuck to her story, but all three of the others involved in the murders pointed the finger at her for planning the murders. During the investigation, it also came out that a former boyfriend of Erin’s, Michael Washburn, claimed Erin had told him she wanted her family dead a year earlier. She had even hoped he would do it for her.
Convictions and Sentences
All four suspects were charged with three counts of capital murder each. Because Erin was a minor at the time of the killing, the court did not seek the death penalty. However, she was tried as an adult on January 2, 2009, and received two life sentences. She accepted a plea deal, which would make her eligible for parole at 59 years old.
Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid accepted plea deals of life sentences with no possibility of parole. Despite facing a possible death sentence, their salvation came from the man who’d lost the most, Terry Caffey. In a letter to the Rains County District Attorney, Robert Vititow, Terry stated, “I want them, in this lifetime, to have a chance for remorse and to come to a place of repentance for what they have done. Killing them will not bring my family back.”
Bobbi Johnson, the driver of the getaway car, was named as an accomplice. She was sentenced to 40 years in prison, with eligibility for parole after serving 20 years.
Aftermath
As of 2025, only Charles Waid has expressed remorse for his part in the crime.
Terry Caffey, who spent years in a suicidal state, was finally able to return to where his home had once been. On that visit, he cried out to God for answers. When he looked up, he saw a piece of paper stuck to a tree. It read, “You’re sovereign. You’re in control.” At that moment, Terry was able to forgive and move forward in life.
Terry was also able to forgive Erin for her part in the crimes, and he visits her in prison every few months. Terry later wrote a book, Terror by Night: The True Story of the Brutal Texas Murder That Destroyed a Family, Restored One Man's Faith, and Shocked a Nation. He has since remarried and now has a blended family. Terry ministers full-time and visits schools and churches.
Erin Caffey granted an interview with Piers Morgan, in which she blamed the events of March 1, 2008, on her “poor choices.”
Sources:
Tinning, Danielle. “The Story Of Erin Caffey, The Texas Teenager Who Convinced Her Boyfriend To Murder Her Entire Family.” ati, 13 November 2023 (updated 6 December 2023), https://allthatsinteresting.com/erin-caffey
“Erin Caffey Family Murder: Inside Piers Morgan’s Shocking True Crime Interview.” Factual America, https://www.factualamerica.com/crime-scene-stories/erin-caffey-family-murder-inside-piers-morgans-shocking-true-crime-interview
“Caffey Family Murders (Erin Caffey).” Killer Queens, 16 May 2023, https://www.killerqueenspodcast.com/caffey-family-murders-erin-caffey/
O’Neill, Marnie. “Chilling moment police tell Terry Caffey his daughter had their family killed.” The New Zealand Herald, 12 May 2016, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/chilling-moment-police-tell-terry-caffey-hidaughter-had-their-family-killed/
Colloff, Pamela. “Flesh and Blood: Why did a small-town girl have her family brutally murdered?” Texas Monthly, June 2008, https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/flesh-and-blood/
Too much church and homeschooling will always make some kids snap..most don't..but the madness and hypocrisy of ultra religious society has gotten worse since homeschooling antivaxx Bible thumper met the internet
That's chilling. For nearly a decade, I worked with criminals who terrorized their families. It was never the kids harming the parents, though. Always the other way around. Great write-up. Now, I want to read Terry's book. I can't even begin to imagine.