BOONVILLE — Lauren Camm was just 4 years old when her young cousins were brutally murdered in their rural Georgetown home.

By the time she was 8, her uncle David had been in jail for the murders for nearly five years, and she had learned a hard lesson.

“No mommy! Please don’t write my last name!” Lauren pleaded one day as her mother filled out her Bible School name tag.

Nobody had to tell Lauren that there were few things less popular in Floyd County than sharing the Camm name.

“We’re the most hated family in Floyd County,” Sam Lockhart said previously. Lockhart, David’s uncle and the family spokesman said, “We’ve been called a cult, evil, just about everything you can imagine. Nobody seems to understand, or care, that those were our babies too. Those babies were like my grandbabies.”

The day David Camm was arrested for the murders of his wife Kim and children, Brad, 7, and Jill, 5, his large extended family noticed an immediate shift in the attitudes of some friends, and certainly the public at large.

“People think if you get arrested, you must have done it,” his 74-year-old father Don said Wednesday, as he was waiting for the jury in his son’s trial to announce a verdict. He’s afraid another guilty verdict would doom his bedridden wife, who suffers from Lupus and other issues.

David’s sister, Julia Hogue, says it’s not just Floyd County people though that have such hatred for her family — a hatred that’s been frequently expressed by courtroom observers, in online forums and right to their faces.

“The average citizen is invested in Dave being guilty. If he’s not guilty that means a stranger did it. If you can say ‘oh, the dad did it’ it provides a sense of ‘this can’t happen

in my family,’” said Hogue

The Camm’s certainly didn’t think it would happen in their family, she said.

One day, Kim was telling family and friends at church that she and David were considering having another baby and before the week was through she had been killed, said Debbie TerVree, David’s maternal aunt.

The TerVree’s and their 14-year-old daughter Hannah lived directly behind David and Kim, sharing a common driveway.

Hannah, Brad and Jill were inseparable — attending school together in the day and playing in the small neighborhood afterward, often racing their Big Wheels up and down

the shared driveway, or drawing chalk games on the pavement.

The driveway that provided the kids with hours of endless fun became a twisted tourist

attraction after the family’s murders, TerVree said.

“People would pull up and eat lunch in their car just to stare at the house,” she said. “Hannah was scared to death to go outside.”

She was scared, period. It was three or four days after the murders before Hannah could be convinced to leave the house, the family recalls. She began having night terrors so severe her parents had to take her to the emergency room on three occasions.

Over at the homes of Donnie Camm and his former wife Brenda, things weren’t much

better with their children Cara and Lauren, who were the same ages as Brad and Jill.

“(Lauren) felt safer at Donnie’s house than my house she said because he had a bigger hammer,” Brenda Camm recalled. Whichever house the girl was at though, her parents had to take her window to window showing her they were all locked and they still have to drive slowly into the garage and check things before she gets out of the car. The Camm family murders took place in the garage as they arrived home one evening.

The fears linger with the young children in the Camm family, and seeing the “nasty notes” people leave at the family cemetery just upsets them all over again, TerVree said.

Several of the children have been in therapy; some friends have been lost.

Cara Camm remembers some friends no longer being able spend the night with her, while her father recalled the Halloween night trick-or-treaters skipped their house because they were related to David Camm.

While some of the children attend private school, where the staff has made it clear the case is not to be discussed, Emily Hogue’s public school had no such concern.

Instead, David Camm’s now 18-year-old niece, sat in her desk listening to classmates blast her uncle and her family during current events time. Finally, she spoke up and the teacher honored her request to not talk about the case in class any longer.

While the children were learning how to cope in their world, the adults in the family were struggling to survive.

“We’re not a wealthy family. I don’t know where people get that. Dad owes five times more on his house now than when he bought it,” Julia Hogue said of her parents Sue and Don Camm.

Don Camm and other family members have put second mortgages on their homes, taken out loans and chipped in whatever they could for David’s defense. Lockhart said he’s sold off part of his business to fund the defense.

If after all the years and money, David Camm isn’t acquitted, what will the family do?

“We’ll just have to work harder,” his father said without hesitation.