Erin Caffey, 17, gets 2 life terms in family deaths

EMORY, Texas — A teenage girl charged with capital murder for her role in the deaths of her mother and two young brothers agreed to a plea deal that could make her eligible for parole when she's 59, her attorney said.

Erin Caffey, 17, accepted the agreement Friday, said defense attorney William McDowell. She had been scheduled to be tried as an adult next month in Hopkins County.

"I think it was a just sentence," McDowell said. "Everyone is pleased with it."

Authorities said Caffey, her boyfriend and two other co-defendants plotted to kill Caffey's parents because they didn't approve of her boyfriend. Caffey was 16 at the time of the crime.

Police reports said she and Bobbi Gale Johnson waited in a car down the road from Caffey's home in Alba while boyfriend Charlie James Wilkinson, 19, and Charles Allen Waid, 20, went on a shooting and stabbing rampage before setting fire to the house.

Penny Caffey, 37, and her sons Mathew, 13, and Tyler, 8, died in the attack in March. Terry Caffey, 41, was shot five times but escaped from the burning house, saying he recognized Wilkinson shooting him and his wife in their bed, sheriff's officials said.

Caffey has since recovered from his gunshot wounds.

All four defendants were initially charged with three counts of capital murder. Prosecutors had said they didn't plan to seek the death penalty against Erin Caffey.

Wilkinson and Waid also avoided the death penalty in November by pleading guilty for their involvement in the killings. McDowell said both would likely receive life sentences with parole.

Johnson, named as an accomplice who did not use a weapon, was sentenced to 40 years in prison and may be eligible for parole in 20 years, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported Saturday.

Alba is about 60 miles northeast of Dallas.

Comments

[Big0725]

Bobbi Gale?

What's with rednecks and names? Bobbi (with an I) and Gale are girls names!

[MsLiz]

Four people were charged, two males and two females. Bobbi Gale was one of the females who waited in the car. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[tasukibeth1]

Gale is a boy name. Gail and Gayle are girls' names.

[Banji81]

Really? That's your only observation in this whole sad story?

[Z2a]

Bobbie Gale reminded me of the Will Farrel movie and the character RICKY BOBBY

[Fremon]

Another Texas tragedy: this young lady and Bush.

[SCurry713]

Bush is NOT from Texas! He is from Connetticutt, he was born in New Haven. But I will have to take this group.

[motoGpifupleez]

Obviously the parents were onto something in their disapproval of her boyfriend. Every teenager thinks they know better than their parents. Erin Caffey is going to spend the rest of her life with the knowledge that her immaturity cost her two brothers their lives. The boyfriend was a loser and so is she for choosing him over the lives of her family. Eff her.

[sloreader]

Well said. Immaturity and defiance are a lethal mix.

[Arthur954]

We should have compassion with this girl. She is not a hardened career criminal that has to be kept off the streets to prevent her from doing it again. We can be shure she is not going to do something like this again , after all that she is going through. There must be some way of rehabilitating people like her, instead of just locking them up for decades.
The U.S. prison population is more than 2 million people. This is a cruel, shocking figure, and evidence of the failure of a way of thinking that divides people into winners or losers depending on how materially succesful we are.
We should be ashamed of ourselves for criticising and judging this girl.

[liberalrebuttal]

And if she were Black ?

Where would your compassion be ? You don't have to respond. Just think about it.

[Fremon]

Amen!!!! Good comment.

[Sparty1]

Arthur would be yelling for the death penalty. You know, I know it and Arthur knows it.

[jerseywolf]

Indeed.

[Ariadne]

Ashamed for criticizing a girl so selfish and self-absorbed that she condemned her entire family to death for thwarting her desires? I don't think so.

[landoffools]

So Authur !

Are you offering to take her in with your family and "reform" her ?

Authur ?

Thouht so !

[miastella]

I'm pretty liberal and I work with teenagers. This girl and her companions are old enough to know better and be held to moral standards. You don't know if she would do this again or not. You aren't in her head. But, at 17 years of age, it will be hard to teach her a new moral code. I don't believe that morals are based on "how materially sucessful we are". You can be dirt poor and have a solid code of moral behavior. She does not have one. Being a bleeding liberal, as you sound like in this post, and not holding people respondsible for their own behavior is not going to rehabilitate anyone.

[TruthAndTheory]

I think she needs to be both jailed, and rehabilitated. The problem we have is that jails don't bother to rehabilitate prisoners, then when they get out, they may be just as, if not more, angry than when they went in. And the prison experience doesn't help either.

People need to pay for their crimes with giving up their time, and going to jail. But if we rehabilitated people, jail terms could be shorter, and we'd have safer streets because x-cons don't think everyone is out to get them.

[Jazzcomedian]

At least she won't have to worry about the economic downturn. All of her living expenses are covered for the next 42 years. Clothing, food, rent. It's like she won a lottery.. By the time she gets out all of our, and the world's economic problems will be resolved, and there'll be lots of jobs at Wal-Mart available.

[katedog]

What is Walmart's policy on hiring ex-felons?

[TruthAndTheory]

what do you think? Wal-mart itself is a crime.

[cherrycola]

Does anyone else find that children who kill their parents tend to serve much longer sentences and are judged much more harshly than parents who kill or cause grievous harm to their children? I'm thinking specifically of Andrea Yates and how for months and months the public pondered whether or not she was insane when she drowned all of her children. A couple in Washington state are about to be tried for keeping their fourteen year old daughter padlocked in her room for three years and forcing her to live on something like six ounces of water a day. The maximum they will serve is four years.

[Frank-y-Ava]

I really do think Yates suffered from PTSD. Her doctor urged her to not have anymore children but she did anyway and look what happened.

[Proudparent90]

I have a further comment. I think also that she was poorly prepared for social aspects because she was homeschooled. People are not meant to be kept in isolation. They should be free to have their education among other people, because once they are adults they are supposed to work with other people.

I can just see how this naive girl used to singing in church with her family was thrown into our somewhat corrupted high school system with hidden underage drinking and drug use often given by the adult who should protect the kids because they want the schools teams to succeed in sports. She was an easy target and was in fact found in fetal position after the murders. Whether she planned it or had to take the plea deal because the others were ready to testify against her, we would never know. That is the dangers with plea deals. We will never learn the truth.

Don't keep your children out of the school system. Put them in there and advocate use of peer courts, so the youth are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions so they get community service instead of jail if they confess to misdemeanors.

[Principaldad]

I know very little about this girl's situation. I have read that she attended public school and the parents tried homeschooling when she started having serious problems. When that didn't work out, they sent her back to public school. It would be tempting to blame her problems on her public school experience, but it would be wrong to assume this based on limited knowledge.

It always amuses me when people who have no clue about homeschooling try to comment and make statements that are so far from reality. Countless studies have confirmed that homeschoolers are far more successful socially than public or private school kids. They also grow up to be far more socially successful than those other groups. That is because decent homeschoolers don't isolate their kids. Their kids interact with all age groups in far more complex social situations than public schoolers can imagine.

A far greater number (and a higher percentage) of kids in public school situations commit violent crimes than homeschoolers. In fact, this is the first case I have ever heard of where an ex-homeschooler commited such a heinous crime.

[cplKlyde]

Let me get this straight. Two adult men walk into a house and slaughter a sleeping woman and two young children while two other conspirators watch from a car. But all of them will eventually be eligible for parole. How is this possible? I'd like to see pics of all the killers.

[LeeVing]

You want vengeance, not justice.

[Mainer36]

There is more punishment if you kill a cop than a baby. Dont missunderstand I believe both should be punished with extreme predjudice, but there should be mandatory life w/o parole for the murder of anyone under 18.

[robXdion]

Isn't that what blacks have always been saying. But only NOW you get it?

[josefo]

They are white.

[Proudparent90]

Well, having a daughter reaching the same age within a few years, this case has learned me that I should not judge the choice of boyfriend, she may drag home.

It is simply not worth it. He may drag her down into a wasted life, but I have to believe that I have raised her well enough, so that she can make good choices. If she doesn't, it is her consequences based on her actions - not mine.

Now I years back did chosen to accept a position in Denmark and my kids is raised in the Danish School system. That means alcohol legally when they are 16 and want to show that they are not potential suicide bombers supporting the Muslim terrorists, that means that she properly would have a boyfriend for real when she is 16 and because the age of consent is 15 I cannot do anything about it.

I have made my choices and I would never return to the states before my kids is 21 because they wouldn't fit. This case has learned us parents so much. We just have to let them go even when they make choices we don't agree upon.

[concernvoter]

I just made a statement. It really doesn't bother me about when people respond back to a blog with nonsense. I only charge it to their heads not their hearts.. This is a cruel world and someone needs to think more about what's going on with the children today. If they are all lock up, then who will be the future politicians? Think.... because they are the ones who need to be working also, so benefits like Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance, money in the budget, in order to receive Social Security. We play and think of dumb things to say on the blog, but we better get our life together and think about our future. I work in Corrections and this is not a fun thing to see young people been lock up everyday throwing their lives away for nonsense.

[Brillig]

Do you call killing parents and siblings 'nonsense"?

[NeverRepublican]

Everyone doesn't get locked up.

That's a pretty lame idea to suggest everyne gets locked up...and to go on futher and then say...who will be the politicians???

I'll tell you who...the individuals who are educated and DON"T commit crimes.

[deeppeace]

What?

Go home, sleep for 8 hours, then come back when you make sense.

[RevMetheus]

I dont want the ones that should be in prison being free to be our "future politician­s." We have enough criminals in government already.

[Nacio]

How ever, they all will have time to reflect on what they have done.

[Mainer36]

not enough.

[ForRichardorPoorer]

should have been 1year in a microwave set at 10%.

[steamboat]

I know all you PC folks don't want to hear this but "she should have gotten the death sentence".

[Topfeeder]

I find it funny that you view this forum as PC. People say the most absurd things here. Race is drawn into virtually every story and I can't remember the last time anyone thanked another poster for an alternate view or for helping change an existing viewpoint.

[katedog]

Constitution which prohibits the death penalty for juvenile offenders.

[Mikeeee]

This is a tragedy!
I wish it had never happened.
What bothers me the most about the responses is that you'd think this was happening weekly or every few days. It's a freak event, but everyone is going off on a paranoid tangent, like nobody is safe in their homes anymore. That saddens me that so many people in society can be made to live their lives in fear so easily.

[Chaimirija]

Bermanator made a great point

too bad it's nested


basically, pointed out Blacks here used peaceful protests to fight the power