Piers Morgan names 'most dangerous person' he interviewed in 35-year career

Piers Morgan once revealed the worst individual he'd ever interviewed throughout his 35-year career. Recognised for his forthright manner and readiness to spark controversy, the broadcaster, who celebrates his 61st birthday today (March 30), has spoken with numerous famous personalities from Kanye West to Andrew Tate during his extensive career.

During the mid to late 2010s, Piers focused his attention on crime, hosting programmes such as Killer Women, Confessions of a Serial Killer and Psychopath with Piers Morgan, in which he goes behind bars to meet convicted murderers.

It was on the first of these programmes that he encountered "probably the most dangerous person" he had met up to that point - a former church pianist, whose actions in 2008 led to the deaths of her mother and brothers, as well as the attempted murder of her father.

Erin Caffey was merely 16 when she persuaded her boyfriend, Charlie Wilkinson, and his friend, Charles Waid, to murder her entire family, seemingly because she was informed she wasn't permitted to see her boyfriend.

In discussion with Lorraine Kelly on her eponymous chat show back in 2016, Lorraine suggested she appeared "innocent" and like "butter wouldn't melt", before Piers described the chilling crime.

He said: "She basically masterminds the annihilation of her family. You know, she sends in the boyfriend with his mate while she waits outside with the mate's girlfriend and they go in with machetes and guns.

"They kill the mother, they riddle the father with bullets, they go and kill the two younger brothers, and there was no warning, no suggestion of anything coming.

"And, you know, as I sat there, looking at her, I just thought, 'My God, you're probably the most dangerous person I've ever been this close to in my life'. And I have no explanation after an hour of interviewing her for why you did this."

On the evening of the killings, Wilkinson and Waid entered the Caffey residence in Emory, Texas, where they opened fire and stabbed her mother, Penny, and brothers, Matthew, 13, and Tyler, 8, with a samurai sword.

Despite being shot multiple times, her father, Terry, succeeded in dragging himself from the property before it was set ablaze. When officers arrested Wilkinson, Waid, Johnson, and another associate, Bobbi Johnson, they alleged that the scheme had been Caffey's idea.

Speaking to Piers, she stated: "I was shocked, angry and hurt, this was the guy [Wilkinson] I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with and he loved me. We were going to get married.

"When I look back on it now, this was all just stupid. I mean, for what? They weren't beating me, they weren't starving me to death. I had it made."

She and Johnson were both eventually sentenced to a minimum term of 40 years, escaping capital punishment owing to her father's request, who wished them to "find remorse" and characterised his daughter as "vulnerable".

He stated: "I honestly believe she was not the mastermind. This was a vulnerable 16-year-old girl with a controlling, psychopathic guy. I do forgive her. I have to forgive her."

Additionally, Piers named Robert Blake as one of the worst interviews he's ever done. Speaking to GQ Magazine in 2020, he shared: "I think Robert Blake, who was an actor who’d been accused of killing his wife many years ago, a kind of comeback interview, and he completely lost it with me, ripped off his jacket, ripped off his earpiece and began hurling abuse at me and began calling me Charlie Potatoes for some unfathomable reason.

"It was so bad, the security guys who weren’t sure if he was armed – it was CNN in Los Angeles – came onto the studio floor and were all standing there with guns and I was like, 'We’re going to have a scene out here', so that was pretty crazy."