EMORY, Texas —  Penny Caffey played piano in a gospel band and her husband studied to be an ordained minister. They were asleep when police say their teenage daughter's boyfriend crept into their bedroom around 4 a.m. and started shooting.

An ambush of bullets, stabbings and fire ensued, leaving Penny and her two sons dead and Terry Caffey, the lone survivor, dragging his bloody body through the woods in search of help.

At church the next day, the Rev. Todd McGahee sobbed through his Sunday sermon, even before police announced they charged the Caffeys' 16-year-old daughter with capital murder.

"They were really the All-American family," said Chad Darby, 29, who attended Miracle Faith Baptist Church with the family. "They were like the Brady Bunch."

Penny Caffey did volunteer work, delivering meals to the elderly and indigent. Terry Caffey paid the bills by working in home health care.

Emory is a town of about 1,500 approximately 60 miles northeast of Dallas. There is one supermarket and the chamber of commerce lists 17 churches, far outnumbering the places to sit and eat.

People here are not unfamiliar with crime; the meth epidemic that invaded eastern Texas in the early part of the decade gripped Rains County especially hard, and most residents can recall hearing about a fatal shooting.

Darby remembers the Caffeys' daughter _ who was charged along with three other people, including her boyfriend _ singing a solo at church just three weeks before members of her family were killed and their house was set on fire.

"I took (the Caffeys' daughter) shopping a couple of times and had a great time with her," said Diana Wolfe, a family friend. "She wouldn't look at the high-dollar items on the rack; she would look at the lower-cost items. She was just a good kid."

The girl was being held at a juvenile detention center in neighboring Hunt County. Rains County prosecutors have not yet decided if they will seek to charge her as an adult.

According to arrest affidavits, the girl and her 19-year-old boyfriend, Charlie James Wilkinson, plotted to kill Penny and Terry Caffey after they forbade her from dating him.

"Wilkinson stated that he and (the girl) were in love and the only way they could be together is to kill the parents," the complaints stated.

Wilkinson, Bobbi Gale Johnson, 18, and Charles Allen Waid, 20, were also arraigned on three counts of capital murder and being held on $1.5 million bond.

Family members of the suspects have declined comment or could not be reached. A Rains County jailer said Thursday the suspects' still did not appear to have attorneys.

Besides 37-year-old Penny Caffey, also killed in the March 1 rampage were sons Tyler, 8, and Mathew, 13. Terry Caffey was shot five times but managed to leave the burning house and drag himself 300 yards for help. He fell in a pond before neighbor Tommy Gaston said Caffey finally made it to his front door.

Penny Caffey played in Gaston's band, The Gaston Singers, performing at area churches and recording albums. The title of their last one was "If We Never Meet Again."

"My best memories of her and Terry are them standing behind the pulpit, preaching God's word," Gaston said. "They were like family to me. The best people you could imagine."

The Caffeys' daughter enrolled at Rains High School just six weeks before her arrest, school district superintendent David Seago said. He described Wilkinson, Johnson and the Caffeys' daughter _ all Rains students _ as not really troublemakers aside from occasional tardies and absences.

Classmates said Wilkinson and the Caffeys' daughter were inseparable at school, seldom socializing with others.

Darby said Wilkinson began showing up at church services last year. He said the couple would hold hands, stick together, "little puppy love stuff."

Churchgoers knew there was some friction between the daughter and her parents, but Darby just chalked it up to "the usual teenage stuff."

Before enrolling at Rains High School, the Caffeys' daughter had been home-schooled.

"She was just starting to interact with people her age," Darby said. "She was kind of sheltered, to tell you the truth."

A day after the killings, Cassie Schuder, a 24-year-old waitress in Emory, just stood and looked at the rubble that had been the Caffey home. The town has had its problems with drugs, she said, but there has never been anything like this.

"Some people do leave Emory and don't come back," Schuder said. "But most people who try end up back here. Right where their family is."

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