US:A WEEKEND killing spree in rural Texas has left a mother and her two sons dead and the father wounded, in a shooting and stabbing attack police say was carried out by the family's teenage daughter and the boyfriend her parents disliked.
"We feel confident that the motive was the fact that the juvenile daughter and one of the individuals in custody were dating and that the parents were attempting to break the relationship up, which led to the crime that was committed," Rains County sheriff David Traylor said on Sunday.
Police said the girl (16) joined her boyfriend and two others in killing members of the Caffey family in their bedrooms before setting the house on fire in a pre-dawn attack on Saturday.
The father, Terry Caffey, was the lone survivor. He was shot five times - including twice in the back - before he dragged himself through the woods in search of help. He is undergoing surgery to remove the bullets.
Penny Caffey (37) and sons Tyler (8) and Mathew (13) were killed in the attack.
The girl, who was not identified because of her age, was arraigned on Sunday on three counts of capital murder and was being held on a $1.5 million (€987,000) bond.
Charlie James Wilkinson (19), the girl's boyfriend, and two others, Charles Allen Waid (20) and Bobbi Gale Johnson (18), were arraigned on the same charges.
The killings have stunned Emory, a town of just 1,500. Classmates of the Caffeys' daughter and Mr Wilkinson described the couple as inseparable and with few other friends on campus.
Jennifer McClanahan, a senior at Rains, said Wilkinson had been reprimanded during her English class last week for using the computer. Wilkinson, she said, in turn told the teacher that his girlfriend's father had hacked into his MySpace webpage.
Ms McClanahan and others said Wilkinson was not really a troublemaker, other than constantly being told to remove the cowboy hat he always wore to school.
"That's Charlie," said Ms McClanahan (17). "He would start an argument over something like a hat."
Carl Johnson, a friend of the family, said the Caffeys moved about two years ago to just outside Emory. He said they were good Christians and he often told the daughter he wanted her soft singing voice to perform at his funeral. "[ The parents] didn't like the boy and were trying to break them up," Mr Johnson said. "They told me at church they didn't have any use for him."
The attack occurred on about 20 acres of pine-canopied, remote land in Alba on a narrow gravel road with just two other homes. The area is so secluded that even the closest neighbours reported only faintly hearing what sounded like thunder early on Saturday, and few saw the blaze.
Police found the daughter hiding in the home of one of the suspects, Mr Traylor said.
The family members were asleep in their bedrooms when the killings began, he said.
Penny Caffey and Mathew suffered gunshots and stab wounds; the youngest, Tyler, had only stab wounds.