Erin Caffey was fifteen years old when orchestrated the murders of her mother and brothers
According to court documents Erin Caffey was dating an older man and her family wanted her to end the relationship. Instead Erin would plan their murders
Erin Caffey along with Charlie Wilkinson, 18, his pal Charles Waid, 20, and Waid’s girlfriend Bobbi Johnson, 18, would plan the brutal attack
Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid would go into the home and shoot her father five times, her mother was shot and nearly decapitated with a sword, her thirteen year old brother was shot in the head and her eight year old brother was fatally stabbed.
After the savage attack Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid would set the house on fire. Only Erin Caffey father survived the attack.
Erin Caffey would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison
Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid were eligible for the death penalty however Erin Caffey father asked for it to be taken off of the table. The two men were sentenced to life in prison without parole
Erin Caffey Photos
Erin Caffey Now
SID Number: 04889597
TDCJ Number: 01548417
Name: CAFFEY,ERIN MICHELLE
Race: W
Gender: F
Age: 32
Maximum Sentence Date: LIFE SENTENCE CUMULATIVE OFFENSES
Current Facility: HOBBY
Projected Release Date: NOT AVAILABLE
Parole Eligibility Date: 2038-03-01
Erin Caffey Interview
ERIN Caffey is 24, and has been in a high-security prison in Gatesville, Texas, for eight years.
My first impression of her was that she seemed gentle and unthreatening, as befits someone who came from a loving, stable home, had never been in trouble and sang in the church choir every Sunday with her mum, dad and two younger brothers.
But to say she’s not what she seems is the understatement of the century. In fact, Erin Caffey is the most dangerous woman I have met in my life.
She organised the killing of her family at the age of 16.
Erin accomplices were her boyfriend Charlie Wilkinson, 18, his pal Charles Waid, 20, and Waid’s girlfriend Bobbi Johnson, 18.
The two men did the killing. Caffey’s mother Penny was shot, then stabbed with a samurai sword and almost decapitated.
Erin 13-year-old brother, Matthew, was shot in the head.
Her eight-year-old brother Tyler was repeatedly stabbed with a samurai sword.
Caffey father Terry was shot five times and left for dead as the house was torched to the ground. But he miraculously survived.
Why did she do it?
The only motive appears to be that a few days before the murder spree, Penny and Terry told their daughter she could no longer see Wilkinson.
Filled with lovesick rage, Erin ordered her boyfriend and his buddy to carry out her revenge.
“I was shocked, angry and hurt, this was the guy I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with and he loved me,” she told The Sun. “We were going to get married.”
When the police arrested them all, she claimed to have been drugged and kidnapped. But the other three all immediately said she was the ringleader.
“I’ve never come across anyone as dangerous as Erin,” said criminal therapist Israel Lewis, who worked with her after her capture.
Caffey was interviewed for a new series called Killer Women With Piers Morgan.
“In Erin Caffey’s case you know you are looking at evil. She is the most evil woman I have ever met,” Morgan said.
The most unsettling aspect of Caffey’s crime is that it is so utterly inexplicable. There were no warning signs, no history of trouble.
“You know, I was voted when we went to youth camp ‘Most Fun Loving Person’,” she said.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“I guess what it all boils down to is choices,” Erin Caffey said, almost matter-of-factly.
“When I look back on it now, this was all just stupid. I mean, for what? They weren’t beating me, they weren’t starving me to death. I had it made.”
None of the four involved were drunk or had taken drugs on the night of the murders.
As Wilkinson and Waid did the killing the girls waited in a car.
Records of calls between Erin and Wilkinson nailed her lie that she had been the victim of a kidnap.
Perhaps the most surreal moment of our interview came when she sang Amazing Grace, pitch-perfect.
Her father, the man who she tried to have killed, is the only person who still visits her.
Caffey is serving a minimum of 42 years and won’t be eligible for parole until she’s 59.
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. “I wanted them to have the chance to find remorse,” he explained.
Terry Caffey previously told Nightline what happened that night.
“It was so loud and it’s even hard to describe,” he said. “I mean, can you imagine someone standing over you and shooting when you’re sound asleep and now you’re being attacked in your bed?”
“I found out that Tyler, eight-year-old little Tyler, was hiding upstairs in a closet and the two killers, Charlie and Charles [Waid], took turns stabbing him to death,” Caffey said. “The hardest thing [was] to hear that. I remember when I heard that, I just couldn’t believe that’s how they did [it], and it goes back to that guilt and I felt I should have been able to save them and I couldn’t.
He crawled the length of four football fields to find help after being shot five times. He says he wanted to die until he found out that his daughter was alive.
“Then I had something to live for, I had some hope, so I began to fight,” he said. “But that hope would be short-lived because just within half an hour of finding out she was alive, my sister came to me and told me [Erin] had been arrested and had been charged with murder.”
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.
He does it every month.
“Do you believe her version of events?” I asked Terry.
“I feel like for the most part I believe her,” he replied.
“I honestly believe she was not the mastermind. This was a vulnerable 16-year-old girl with a controlling, psychopathic guy.”
This might just hold water if it were not for a previous boyfriend, Michael Washburn, revealing that Erin had said to him too that she wanted her family dead.
Back to Terry Caffey.
“Do you forgive her?” I asked.
“I do forgive her,” he said. “I have to forgive her.”