Betrayed By Blood: The Daughter Who Orchestrated Her Family's Slaughter

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"You're listening to 10-minute murder."

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What would you do if the person you loved the most in this whole world was the same one who planned your murder?

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Terry Caffee survived five gunshots, a burning house and the loss of his entire family,

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but nothing prepared him for what came next.

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Learning his own daughter, Mite, have orchestrated it all.

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[Music]

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Terry Caffee woke up to the bedroom door being violently slammed.

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Before he could process what was happening, gunfire erupted.

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The loudest sound he'd ever heard. His wife Penny was shot first, right there in bed next to him.

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Then came the stabbing, a samurai sword, over and over.

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Penny's injuries were so catastrophic she was nearly decapitated.

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Terry himself was shot five times. From down the hall he heard his 13-year-old son Matthew screaming words that would haunt him forever.

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Charlie, Charlie, why are you doing this? No, Charlie, no, please, why are you doing this?

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Matthew recognized his killer.

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Eight-year-old Tyler was stabbed multiple times. The attackers left Terry for dead and set the house on fire.

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This was March 1, 2008, in Alba, Texas, population under 500 people. A place where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows your business.

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And Terry Caffee knew exactly who Charlie was.

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Terry was 41, a youth pastor at Miracle Faith Baptist Church. His wife Penny played piano there and sang in the local gospel group.

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They lived in a two-story wooden cabin on 20 acres outside the neighboring town of Emory.

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Deep Faith defined everything about their family. They'd homeschooled their three kids for years using a Bible-based curriculum.

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Matthew was studious, faithful. Tyler loved being outdoors. And Aaron, their 16-year-old daughter, had been homeschooled partly because of an intention deficit disorder diagnosis.

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The Caffees built a protective bubble around their children, strict boundaries, especially around dating and outside influences.

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They genuinely believed they were keeping their kids safe, giving them strong moral guidance.

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They had no idea that structure was about to detonate.

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Aaron started dating an 18-year-old named Charlie James Wilkinson.

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For a while, her parents didn't see any red flags. Then Penny discovered Charlie's Myspace page.

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What she found there violated everything they were trying to teach their daughter.

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References to sex, profanity, the kind of content that made it clear this relationship wasn't going anywhere good.

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Terry and Penny sat Aaron down. The relationship was over. No more Charlie.

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Most teenagers would have cried. Slam some doors, maybe snuck around behind their parents' backs.

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Aaron Caffee decided her parents needed to die.

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When investigators started digging into Aaron's history, they uncovered something that changed the entire narrative.

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Aaron had dated someone before Charlie. When her parents disapproved of that relationship, she'd asked that boyfriend to kill her family.

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He said no, he broke up with her. This means the Caffee family murders weren't about Charlie Wilkinson specifically.

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They weren't about young love gone wrong or a teenage girl manipulated by an older boyfriend.

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Aaron's solution to parental boundaries was murder. That was her pattern. That was her answer.

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She just needed to find someone who would say yes.

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Aaron and Charlie spent about a month planning. They brought in two more people.

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20-year-old Charles Allen Wade and his 18-year-old girlfriend Bobby Gail Johnson.

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The plan was simple. Charlie and Wade would go inside and handle the violence.

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Aaron and Bobby would wait down the road and the getaway car.

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During his police interrogation, Charlie said something that perfectly captured how warped this whole thing became.

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"I intended to kill them because I thought I was in love. The only way we could beat together is to kill the parents."

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He genuinely believed this. Aaron had convinced him, convinced all of them.

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At three in the morning on March 1st, they made their move.

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The violence that night went beyond execution.

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Someone's shooting is one thing, but the way they killed Penny Caffee tells you something about the rage behind this.

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After shooting her, they stabbed her repeatedly with a samurai sword.

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The brutality was personal. It was excessive. This wasn't just about removing an obstacle.

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It was about punishment.

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Matthew's final moments were almost unbearable to think about.

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He was 13 years old, shot in the head, and in his last breaths, he's crying out to someone he knew, someone he probably trusted.

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Charlie, why are you doing this? There was no answer. Just more violence.

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After killing Penny, Matthew, and Tyler, and shooting Terry multiple times, leaving him in a pool of blood, Charlie and Wade lit the house on fire.

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They thought everyone inside was dead. They were wrong.

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Terry Caffee should not have survived, but he had one thought burning brighter than the flames around him.

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He needed to live long enough in order to identify who did this. He'd seen Charlie Wilkinson shoot him and Penny in their bed. He knew.

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So he started crawling out of the burning house through the yard across the property toward his neighbor's Tommy and Helen's place.

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The distance was roughly four football fields and length.

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Shot five times, bleeding in shock. It took him over an hour.

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He said there was a point where he physically could not go any further, where he just wanted to die, but he kept his eyes on the light in his neighbor's window.

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That light became everything. When he finally collapsed on their porch, they called 911.

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Because Terry survived and could name Charlie, police arrested all four suspects within 24 hours.

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They found them together in a mobile home owned by Wade.

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Terry was in the hospital when a rain's county sheriff walked into his room. The sheriff told him Aaron was alive and safe.

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Relief. Finally relief. Then the sheriff kept talking.

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Aaron was in custody. She'd been involved. She'd planned it.

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Terry said there was no way. Absolutely no way his daughter had anything to do with this.

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The entire community felt the same way, but the evidence kept piling up. Charlie and Wade both told investigators Aaron was the mastermind.

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She was the one who wanted her parents dead. The prosecutor Lisa Tanner called Aaron a murderer, pure and simple.

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Detective Alman used a different word. Evil. When Terry heard that, he struggled. His daughter, evil?

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That didn't match the girl he thought he knew. But then they told him about the ex-boyfriend. About how this was the second time Aaron had tried to orchestrate her own family's murder.

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The evidence was overwhelming. In the years since her conviction, Aaron Caffe is told a different story.

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In interviews from prison, including one with Dr. Phil when she was 21, she consistently maintained she is the victim.

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She was manipulated by older people. That it was puppy love gone wrong. But the facts didn't support that narrative.

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She tried this before with a different boyfriend. This was premeditated, planned over the course of a month. It wasn't impulsive teenage emotion. It was calculated.

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Experts say Aaron's insistence on being manipulated is strategic. She's building a narrative for parole.

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Trying to reframe herself as a naive kid led astray rather than the architect of her own family's murder.

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The prosecution and law enforcement were clear. Aaron was the manipulator. But Terry and his grief and his faith wanted to believe that there was some explanation.

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Some way his little girl wasn't responsible for this horror. That tension between what the evidence showed and what a father's heart wanted to believe became part of the story.

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All four were charged with three counts of capital murder. Prosecutors said they wouldn't seek the death penalty for Aaron because she was only 16.

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But they planned to pursue it for Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Wade. Then Terry did something that's done to everyone.

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He protested. He wrote letters. He visited the Attorney General's office. He argued that executing them wouldn't bring his family back.

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He said Jesus would have spared their lives. He wanted them to wake up every day and think about what they had done. Think about whose lives they had taken. And eventually maybe find some remorse.

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The man who crawled through fire to identify his family's killers was now fighting to save their lives. All four took plea deals.

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Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Wade both got life without parole. Bobby Johnson who stayed in the car and didn't use a weapon got 40 years. Aaron got two life sentences plus 25 years.

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But there's a critical legal difference because Aaron was 16 when the murders happened. Texas law guarantees her the possibility of parole.

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Her first eligibility date is March 1, 2038 when she'll be 59 years old. The men who physically stabbed and shot her family will die in prison. Aaron won't.

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After the trials Terry fell apart. Deep depression. Consuming grief. He was filled with hatred, bitterness, rage. He thought about suicide.

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He fantasized about finding the killers and strangling them with his bare hands. But his faith wouldn't let him stay there. He realized that letting the anger destroy him meant they'd won twice.

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It would dishonor Penny Matthew and Tyler's memory. One day Terry went back to the burn property alone. He stood in the ashes of his former life and stretched out his arms toward the sky. He demanded God tell him why. Why did he survive? Why did his family die?

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That's when he said he saw it. A scorched piece of paper clinging to a tree trunk. It was a page from one of Penny's books. The words said, "You're sovereign. You're in control."

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Terry took that as his answer. A direct message. It gave him a framework to process everything, to channel his rage into something else.

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The illness didn't come immediately. It took months of continuous prayer and he said forgiving Aaron was actually easier than forgiving Charlie and Wade. But he did it. He said he forgave all of them.

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Terry physically recovered from his gunshot wounds. He remarried a woman named Karen. They have one biological child and three adopted sons. He's built a new life, a new family. He travels full time now, sharing his story at schools and churches.

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He's turned his worst nightmare into a ministry, into a source of hope for people dealing with their own trauma. And every single month, Terry drives to the hobby units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and visits Aaron. Every month.

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His daughter orchestrated the murder of his wife and sons and he shows up for her anyway. 17 years later, this case still sparks debate. Aaron Caffey, now 34, maintains she was manipulated.

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The evidence says otherwise. Bobby Johnson will be eligible for parole around 2028, which means Terry will have to engage with the parole board, provide victim impact statements, relive everything again. In 2038, Aaron will have her first parole hearing. I'm sure Terry will be there.

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The Caffey family murders reshaped Alba and Emory, Texas. It's a case study on how teenage rebellion and calculation can turn into Familicide. But it's also about what happens after. About the choice one man made not to let the worst moment of his life consume every moment that followed.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories. My name is Joe. I'm the host. And this email comes from Ricky in Nashville, subjects, DIY detective training. Hey Joe, after binging your show, I started watching people in public like I'm profiling them.

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My wife told me to stop narrating our grocery store trips like I'm describing evidence. Do you think true crime fans secretly wish they could be investigators? Or are we just too curious for our own good?

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Ricky, I'm no expert here, but I would say it's more of the latter. I don't want to be an investigator. That's a job I don't think I have the stomach for. I'm a visual person. So I can read about these cases and they bother me. But I wouldn't be able to see them in person.

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In an investigator, you'd have to at minimum see photos of crime scenes and things like that day in and day out. I couldn't do that personally. Just reading about it is enough. And then when I'm doing research on the cases, sometimes I come across crime scene photos. Well, most of the time I come across crime scene photos.

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And I quickly avert my eyes away from anything that looks like it could be gross because I consume so much true crime stuff. I can't let that get into my brain if that makes any sense. It would just be too much for me. Overwhelming.

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Occasionally, I could probably handle it, but not day in and day out. Now there are people and I'm not knocking you for it. But there are people that like to look at the crime scene photos because they're genuinely curious about that kind of stuff. And I get it. That's fine. It's just not for me.

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Which is why I can never be an investigator. So my answer is I think we're just too curious. I'm very interested in the psychological aspect, the mental health, the background of the person who later commits these horrific acts. The childhood. How did they grow up? Was that a precursor to what they later did in life?

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That is the interesting part of each of these stories to me. And I'm pretty sure it comes across in my storytelling that that part is very important. Hey, if you're a brand new listener to 10 Minute Murder, make sure you hit subscribe right now.

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You can go to 10 Minute Murder.com, see the blog. You can sign up for the newsletter that's officially up and going. We've got that thing humming along.

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So if you're not on the newsletter train, you need to go to 10 Minute Murder.com and find on this. I think it's on the side. If you're on a computer or at the very, very bottom. If you're on a phone, you'll see it. Just sign up for Joe's list.

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And every week I send out a newsletter letting you know what stories are coming up on the podcast plus anything else that I think you need to know about.

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Tell them about 10 Minute Murder. And that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thank you again for listening. I'll see you next time.

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You're listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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