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, Caffey is the most dangerous woman I have met in my life.
She organised the killing of her family at the age of 16.
Her 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.
Her 13-year-old brother, Matthew, was shot in the head.
Her eight-year-old brother Tyler was repeatedly stabbed with a samurai sword.
Her 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, she 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,” she 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 Caffey 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.”
“I was very angry,” Caffey told Nightline. “Not only was I angry at God, but I was angry at my daughter. I was angry at these two young men, the other lady that drove the getaway car. I was just angry. I wanted them to die. I wanted them to pay, especially those two boys. I wanted them to pay for what they did.”
“I have met people that have gone through a lot less than what I have and they’ve grown into bitter, angry people, and that’s not who I am, and I saw myself coming that,” he said. “I knew that’s not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to grow into a bitter angry old man. I’m here. I’m still here. And that’s when I decided to ... move on. It’s time to forgive. It’s time to enjoy life again. Life does go on.”
This article originally appeared in The Sun
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