I spoke to Erin and to Penny’s parents and received their blessings. Erin cried, but she said she knew I had to move on with my life. So almost eight months after I lost my first family, God blessed me with a new one.
On Saturday, October 25, my relatives, friends, and church family gathered at Miracle Faith Baptist Church for a much happier service than the one that had taken place there eight months earlier. On that painful day I was saying good-bye to my wife and sons. My life had been shattered, and I saw no prospects for hope or happiness in my future. Now I felt as if God had restored me completely—indeed, as if He’d doubly blessed me as He did Job.
There were still many challenges ahead, but Sonja and I would face them together. The legal process was picking up steam, and in a little less than two weeks I would have to appear before Lisa Tanner and Robert Vititow to explain why I believed that Charlie Wilkinson’s and Charles Waid’s lives should be spared.
Chapter 23
Forgiveness
I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those
who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who
mistreat you. —LUKE 6:27-28
LISA TANNER and the Texas State Attorney General’s office wanted to ask for the death penalty from the very beginning. In fact, they told me that if I had died that night, they would have asked for the death penalty for Charlie and Charles and for life without parole for Erin. They would have asked for the death penalty for Erin, too, if they could have, but because she was a juvenile, that was not an option.
At first, I was all for the death penalty, at least for Charlie and Charles.
They had taken Penny’s, Bubba’s, and Tyler’s lives; they should have to pay with their own. Early on, I dreamed of helping the state carry out the death sentences. That was one of the reasons I avoided most of the court hearings related to Charlie and Charles. I didn’t think I could trust myself to be in the same room with them. I could almost see myself with my hands around their throats.
But as time passed, I wasn’t so sure about the death penalty.
I had always supported capital punishment. I believed that it was biblical, that God had given governments the right to take human life as punishment for crimes. I still believed that in theory. The problem was, it was no longer a theoretical issue for me. Now I literally had two lives in my hands. And although I didn’t have the final word in the matter, I knew that my opinion would carry a great deal of weight.
So the death-penalty option was before me. Would I exact revenge and demand Charlie’s and Charles’s lives in payment for my family’s?
When it came right down to it, I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. And the more I thought about the matter, the less certain I became. My mind kept going back to the message bracelet so many people used to wear: WWJD? What would Jesus do?
Would Jesus ask for the death penalty?
As time went by and I talked with the prosecutors, I began to express some of my doubts. I hadn’t decided against asking for the death penalty—yet—but I was definitely wavering.
Soon I would have to make a decision on the matter very quickly.
SNAP DECISION
I was in Princeton, Texas, making a delivery when my cell phone rang. The Rains County District Attorney’s Office was calling with an urgent message. The judge had called a hearing and wanted a decision that day about whether or not to ask for the death penalty. We had to decide one way or the other, and we had to give the judge our recommendation at one o’clock.
I looked at my watch. It was 11:00 a.m. I could just barely make it to Emory in time for the hearing, but I’d have to leave right away. I called my boss at Praxair and told him I had to drive to Emory immediately for an emergency hearing. As always, he accommodated me and told me to go.
I had to push it, but I made it to the courthouse just before the hearing was to start.
Lisa Tanner and Robert Vititow met me and explained that we had to make our decision now.
I had already been wavering on the death penalty, and I didn’t like having to make a snap decision.
“I’m not sure,” I told them. “I’ve been having doubts about whether or not that’s the right way to go. Why did this come up all of a sudden? Why didn’t you give me some advance notice?”
They told me that the hearing had caught them by surprise, too, but they certainly had more time than they gave me. The people from the attorney general’s office had come all the way from Austin. Surely they could have given me more notice. Later I wondered if they had waited until the last minute to call me because they knew I was struggling with the issue. Better to spring it on me quickly rather than give me time to think about it. I didn’t know that for sure, but I certainly was suspicious.
“Look,” someone said. “If we ask for the death penalty, we can always go back and change our minds. But if we refuse it now, then we’re locked in. We can’t change our minds. So let’s ask for it now, and if you change your mind later we can go back to the judge.”
That seemed reasonable to me. As long as I was able to keep my options open, I could accept their asking for death, at least for right now. I could always go back later and say I changed my mind.
It was something I would think long and hard about in the coming months.
DECIDING TO FORGIVE
The decision to forgive Charlie, Charles, and Bobbi was not easy. I had so much anger toward them stored up in my heart. I was angry not only because they took my family but because they had robbed me of everything else as well. They weren’t content to stop with murder. They had to burn down my house and leave me with nothing. I resented that, and I didn’t want to forgive them.
But ultimately, I forgave them because of Erin.
I had forgiven Erin only a few days after I went to Buck Files’s office in Tyler and met with Lisa Tanner. As she went over all the evidence against Erin, I saw hard things, things I didn’t want to believe. I was puzzled, confused, hurt. Even though I didn’t want to believe Erin had been involved, it was obvious that she had been, at least to some degree. But all I knew was that she was my daughter and I loved her. On June 19, three days after that meeting, I wrote in my journal:
No matter what happens with Erin, no matter what her involvement was, no matter what the prosecutors say, I’ll always love my daughter. I’ll love and support her the best way I can. . . . I thought I knew what unconditional love was, but I didn’t really know till now. With unconditional love I know that forgiveness for the other three has to come. I’m not there yet, but I’m working towards that. I don’t forgive the act they committed; I forgive for my own peace of mind.
My first thoughts of forgiveness were motivated by my own need. I knew that if I continued to harbor anger and resentment toward Charlie, Charles, and Bobbi, it would destroy me. I would become a bitter old man, angry at the world and unhappy with life. I didn’t want to end up that way. And so I knew that even from a psychological standpoint, I needed to forgive.
But something else was at work too. I knew that I needed to forgive them because that’s what God did with me. When I deserved no mercy, He showed me mercy by sending His Son to die in my place and to bear the penalty of my sins.
Could I do any less with Charlie, Charles, and Bobbi?
Forgiving them wouldn’t mean excusing what they did. God never excused my sins. If He had, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die. God gave His Son that I might have life. Forgiving Charlie, Charles, and Bobbi meant that I had to commit them into God’s hands in the hope that they might come to know Him.
My forgiveness had to be complete and, as with Erin, unconditional.
If any vengeance was to be exacted on these three, it had to come from God, not from me. And that brought me back to the death penalty.
The more I thought about it, the more my mind kept going back to the phrase What would Jesus do? Although I didn’t want to admit it at first, I knew the answer.
What did Jesus do with me?
I had lived for many years believing that I was a Christian, believing that I was going to heaven because I’d stepped into a baptistry that day as a young man. And yet all that time I was living in rebellion against God. After high school, when I was out on my own, I quit going to church. I started drinking and hanging out with the wrong crowd, and that went on until I married Penny. After we were married, I got back into church and even became a youth leader, but I still didn’t know the Lord. I’d cleaned up on the outside, but on the inside I was still lost.
At any time during those years, God could have taken my life, and I would have gone straight to hell. I’d have been separated from Him forever because I had never trusted in Jesus Christ for my salvation.
But God, in His grace, gave me time to turn around. Time to feel the Holy Spirit making me aware of my sin. Time to feel remorse and turn to Jesus for forgiveness.
I needed to give Charlie and Charles that same time.
If they received life without parole rather than the death penalty, there was a chance that they might come to a place where they not only felt remorse for what they did but also might turn to God. Maybe, just maybe, they would place their trust in Jesus Christ, too, and be forgiven. As the hymn writer said, God’s grace is “greater than all our sin,” and that includes murder.
What would Jesus do? Jesus would give them time. And that’s what I would do also.
I decided I would ask the district attorney and the attorney general’s office to back off on requesting the death penalty for Charlie and Charles. Now all I had to do was convince them to agree with me.
MAKING MY CASE
When I spoke with Penny’s parents, they agreed that we should ask the attorney general’s office not to go for the death penalty. So my first step in trying to convert the prosecutors to my position was to send the attorney general’s office a written request for a lighter sentence on Charlie and Charles. In a letter dated October 20, 2008, I wrote,
To Whom It May Concern:
I would like first off to express my sincere gratitude to the District Attorney and Attorney General’s office for your prayers and concerns during my tragic loss.
Over the last eight months, I have had a lot of time to think and pray about the direction I would like to see all this move forward. As I reflect over the loss of my family and the pain that this has brought to my family and me, my heart tells me that there have been enough deaths. That is why I am against the death penalty and would like to see life without parole.
I want to see them get life without parole and give them time to think about what they have done. I want them, in this lifetime, to have a chance for remorse and to come to a place of repentance for what they have done.
I have lost everything, my wife and two boys, and in a sense I feel I have lost my daughter as well. I have lost my home and all the years of memories from all our pictures and all the special little gifts that have been handed down over the years. Yes I have lost so much. I or my family didn’t have a choice in the matter. So all I ask is for you to listen to me and my family, and grant our request.
We are the victims here, and we are hurting. We just want our voices to be heard and to be able to move on the best we can. So all I ask of you is that you listen with your heart and give a grieving family their request and a chance to move on.
Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to a grieving husband and father.
Sincerely,
Terry Caffey
Writing the letter was easy, but a letter by itself would not be enough to sway Lisa Tanner and the attorney general’s office. I knew I would have to make my case to them face-to-face. We set up a meeting in Emory about a week later. The day before the meeting, I spoke with Robert Vititow.
“Is this what you really want?” he asked.
“I’ve had months to think about this,” I replied. “This is what I want.”
“Okay. You’ll be meeting with the attorney general’s office tomorrow. This is going to be your day to shine. You’re going to have to make your case. Tomorrow is your chance. You’ll have to convince them. You’re asking the attorney general’s office to give up the death penalty in this case, something they are dead set on having. It’s not going to be an easy task. So don’t hold anything back, because this will be your first and last chance to make your case.”
I know Mr. Vititow was only trying to prepare me for what I would face the next day, but when I went home, I felt overwhelmed by the task ahead of me. I was going to have to face several highly trained attorneys and somehow sway them to my way of thinking. A sense of my total inadequacy for this task swept over me. I knew that if I was going to have any chance of success, it would be only through God’s power.
The next day, before I went to meet with Lisa Tanner, I got on my face before God. “God, I’m going before a district attorney and two people from the attorney general’s office, people who are skilled and very good at what they do. I’m just an old country boy from Alba. Will You give me the wisdom I need, the words to come out of this simple body to convince them? You say that You take the simple to confound the wise. I pray that whatever I say will just confound them. I want You to speak through me this morning. Let it be as if I’m not even there. As if it’s You Yourself in there speaking.”
When I got into the office with the others, I was like a different person.
We sat down at the table, and one of the first questions the prosecutors asked me was whether I was asking for a lighter sentence for the men so that they would also go lighter on Erin.
“No,” I said.
“How can we be certain of that?”
“I’ll tell you. I’m so sure about this that if Erin had to be sentenced to life without parole, too, in order for Charlie and Charles to be spared the death penalty, I would be willing to agree to that. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want Erin to get life without parole. But I feel so strongly about not giving the guys the death penalty, that’s how far I’d be willing to go if I had to.
“They have my family’s blood on their hands, but I don’t want their blood on mine. I want to be able to honestly say that I gave them every opportunity to find remorse and turn to God.
“I’ve been praying about this for months. You can’t say that this is a rash decision on my part. Y’all approached me back in March about the death penalty. Now it’s October. I’ve woken up many nights with this on my mind. I’ve gotten up at two, three, four o’clock in the morning, praying for these guys who killed my family.
“One thing that has kept popping into my mind is the slogan that was popular a few years back. For some reason, every time I ask God what He would have me to do, all I can think about is WWJD? What would Jesus do?
“I believe that Jesus would give them life sentences, because He came to give life and give it more abundantly.
“When it comes time for them to die, I want that to be in God’s hands, not mine. I believe if Jesus were in my place, He would spare them, even though they took my family’s lives.”
When the meeting was over, Lisa Tanner and the others agreed to ask for life without parole for Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid. Sometime later Lisa said to me, “In the meeting that morning, you had me speechless. Nobody’s ever been able to do that to me. You were very convincing.”
I smiled, because I hadn’t been the one doing the speaking that day. It was all God.
Chapter 24
Face-to-Face
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
—ROMANS I2:2I
I WAS FULL of mixed emotions on the day Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid were to be sentenced. 2 Although I had made the conscious decision to forgive them and had been influential in having the death penalty eliminated as a possible sentence, I still knew that I would be walking a very thin line when I sat across the table from them for a victim-offender meeting. This would be the first time I had sat face-to-face with Charlie since before the murders. I wasn’t
sure how I’d react when I saw him. The one thing I didn’t think I could handle would be if either of those young men took what we were doing lightly, or mocked Penny and the boys. I was afraid I’d lose it.
Sonja and I arrived at the Rains County Courthouse a little early, and as we were getting out of the car, I gave her my keys, my wallet, my cell phone, and other personal belongings.
She gave me a strange look. “What are these for?”
“That’s in case I don’t come back out,” I said.
“What?”
“I think I’ve got myself under control,” I said. “But if either one of them comes in with a cocky attitude, if they so much as smirk, I’m afraid I’ll jump right over that table and try to strangle them. So,” I told Sonja, “I’m giving you all my things in case I get arrested while I’m in there.”
We entered the courthouse, and Detective Almon met us. Sonja stayed behind while I followed the detective down a hallway to the room where I would meet with the men who had murdered my family.
Charlie and Charles, in shackles and wearing orange jumpsuits, were standing right outside the door. But they faced the wall and stood at attention, with their noses right up against the paneling.
Detective Almon led me past them and into the meeting room, which held only a table with a chair on each side.
“Mr. Caffey,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I have to pat you down and make sure you’re not carrying any weapons.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I’d have been surprised if you didn’t.”
I stretched my arms out and spread my legs so he could frisk me. After he patted me down, I sat in the chair on the far side of the table. I had prepared a list of ten questions I wanted to ask Charlie and Charles. I unfolded it and laid it on the table before me.
Terror by Night Page 17
