Three hearses stand outside the funeral home by White Rose Cemetery on the outskirts of the historic town of Wills Point, Texas. A low black fence circles the lawns and has little eulogies welded into the metalwork: to Amy Louise Harris, town sweetheart; to all the business and professional women interred here. The headstones in White Rose are not imposing — just small, simple slabs dedicated to mothers, fathers and, sometimes, children.

Terry Caffey drives through in his white Chevy truck. He turns down a path, takes a left and pulls up in the shade of a small tree. Since March last year he has made this journey many times. He gets out and walks up to three inconspicuous stones. One reads: Penny Lynn Caffey, and has an engraving of a keyboard and musical notes. Another reads: “Bubba” Matthew Ryan Caffey, son of Terry and Penny. It has an engraving of a guitar. The last reads: Tyler Paul Caffey, son of Terry and Penny. This one has an engraving of a toy cart. All have the same date of death: March 1, 2008.

That was a Saturday and the sun had not yet come up. Terry and Penny were asleep in their two-storey wooden cabin, nestled in 20 acres of woodland near the small town of Emory. Thirteen-year-old Bubba and 8-year-old Tyler were also asleep, upstairs, as was the Caffeys’ 16-year-old daughter, Erin — or so they thought.

Shortly after 3am, two men armed with guns and a samurai sword let themselves in. By the time the sun rose, Bubba and Tyler were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, Penny had been decapitated and the house had been burnt to the ground. Terry, bleeding profusely, had managed to escape from the burning cabin and crawled for an hour through the woods to his neighbours’ house. A few days later, while recovering in his hospital bed, he was told the unthinkable — that his daughter had masterminded the entire thing.

Emory, Texas. An hour and 20 minutes east of Dallas, the suburbs turn to pine woods and fields. This is the America of sprawling farmland; of ranches and taxidermists; of shops selling live bait; of annual pumpkin festivals and homecoming queens. It’s not an affluent area — modest houses share streets with trailer homes. But it’s pretty, and communities congregate around the front porch or the church.

The town has a large discount store, a few motels and a Dairy Queen fast-food joint, where all the kids from Rains High School hang out after class. There are 17 churches listed in the phone book. This is small-town Texas, home to a moral code and old-time religion.

Tommy and Helen Gaston lived next door to the Caffeys. Tommy, an elderly man with sparkling eyes and a cowboy hat, has lived here on and off since 1951. Terry and Penny called the Gastons Ma and Pa, so close were the two families. Penny played piano in Tommy’s gospel group, the Gaston Singers, and at the Miracle Faith Baptist Church, which her family attended. Their youngest son, Tyler, loved the outdoors. “He’d get out there in the dirt, and the dirtier he got, the more fun he had,” Tommy recalls. “All he wanted for Christmas that year was his little red wagon.” Bubba was more studious and had a strong faith in God. Erin loved to sing in church, accompanied by her mother. Sometimes she’d get so emotional singing that tears would stream down her face.

Erin had been dating an older boy from school, Charlie Wilkinson, but her parents thought Wilkinson was arrogant and a bit of a thug and told Erin they didn’t want her seeing him.

The week before the murders, Terry buried his father, who’d been sick for some time. That week had been tough, but the following Friday night, February 29, was much like any other. Tommy and Helen walked to the Caffeys’ house for dinner. Erin was teasing her mum, drawing on her with a marker pen. She made a move for Tommy. “Don’t do that, gal, or I’ll get you,” he joked. That was about seven in the evening.

Around one or two in the morning, Erin called Wilkinson. It was time. A month earlier, she had asked her boyfriend to kill her family. It was the only way, she said, they could ever be together.

Wilkinson pulled up outside the Caffey house in a silver Dodge Neon with his schoolfriend Charles Waid and Waid’s girlfriend, Bobbi Johnson. Erin came out in her pyjamas and got in the car while Wilkinson and Waid entered the house. According to Johnson, Erin was saying she “couldn’t believe it is actually going to happen” and that she was “so excited”. Johnson says she didn’t know what to do. So she did nothing, except drive to a nearby layby and wait.

Terry remembers the door to his and Penny’s ground-floor bedroom flying open. “The laundry room was adjacent to our room and I remember the door knob hitting the washing machine and making a loud sound,” he says. “Then I heard the gunshots going off. They were so loud. I was hit and remember throwing my arm up. There was a little bit of light from the kitchen and I saw a face but didn’t realise it was Charlie at the time.”

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