The Keddie Murders

On the morning of April 11th, 1981, 14-year-old Sheila Sharp was returning from a neighbor's house following a sleepover. That was when she discovered the gruesome crime scene that had been left behind... and the vile mystery that would haunt her (and the rest of Keddie, California) for the next four decades...

Listen to "The Keddie Murders" on Spreaker.

Keddie, California is an incredibly small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains, located roughly halfway between Redding, California and Reno, Nevada. Since it is essentially in the middle of nowhere, Keddie has a reputation for being a very small town... and by small, I mean incredibly small, as it can only be accessed by a single road that runs through town and has a population that has lingered under 100 for decades (and has actually been decreasing steadily for the last few).

Originally established as a railroad town in northern California, Keddie was named after its founder: railroad surveyor Arthur W. Keddie. For a while, it became a scenic little town where rail workers and their families would live, but a recession in the early 1970's would change that. When the railroad terminal in Keddie was shut down, the city's growth came to a complete halt, and it would never be the same again.

This caused Keddie to go into a small period of turnover, as it transitioned from a one-industry town to just another small town in the mountains. In 1978, Keddie would attempt to rebrand itself as a resort town known for hiking and other outdoor activities, but even that would be halted just about three years later... when one of the darkest chapters in California history began to unfold within it.

This is the story of the Keddie cabin murders.

Glenna Susan Davis was born on March 24th, 1945, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Despite Glenna being her first name, she would be known primarily by an abbreviated version of her middle name: Sue.

Sue would eventually meet and marry a young man named James Sharp, with whom she would have five children: three sons (John, Rick, and Greg) and two daughters (Sheila and Tina). Since James was in the military, their family would move around somewhat regularly, and Sue would spend her days as a stay-at-home mother for the five kids.

Shortly after relocating from Connecticut to the Carolinas, Sue came to the realization that her marriage to James just wasn't going to last. It has been reported that James was not only abusive towards Sue, but was starting to become sexually abusive towards their two daughters, and she finally bit the bullet and decided to leave James along with their five children. She eventually moved away from their home in North Carolina out to the other side of the country, ultimately ending up in northern California, where she would have some kind of support.

Don Davis, Sue's brother, lived out in the area of Quincy, California, and could help support the family while they attempted to build a new life for themselves out in the area: roughly 90 miles northwest of Reno, and about 140 miles north of Sacramento. Sue originally rented a mobile home in Quincy, but decided in the Fall of 1981 to move a few miles north to the small town of Keddie, up in the mountains.

As you heard in the episode introduction, Keddie is and was an incredibly small town, which had once been known as a rural resort town. Here, Sue rented a cabin at the aptly-named Keddie Resort (or, rather, what had once been known as the "Keddie Resort").

You see, Keddie had experienced some recent economic downturn, and was a shell of what it had been a decade prior. Gary Mollath, the owner of the Keddie Resort, had been having trouble finding people to rent the cabins out to, so he decided to turn the roughly three-dozen cabins into low-income housing, so that - at the very least - he could try to foster some kind of community in the region.

So, Sue began renting out one of these cabins, which was right in the middle of the lodging neighborhood. The cabin only had two bedrooms, which were split into a boy's room (for the youngsters Rick and Greg) and a girl's room (which was shared by Sue and her two daughters, Sheila and Tina). The oldest child, John, got a room of his own in the basement, which was accessible only through an exterior door; which meant that the Sharp family almost always kept the back door unlocked, so that he could enter the home itself.

While these accommodations weren't extravagant, they were comfortable enough, and the Sharp family would begin to consider Cabin 28 "home" for the foreseeable future, heading into 1981.

By this point, Sue and her five kids had begun to assimilate into the area. Sue worked part-time at a lodge in nearby Quincy, and supplemented her income with social programs and a stipend from the military (due to her separation from her husband). She was also enrolled in an education program at the nearby Feather River College, which also provided a stipend of its own. After all, she wasn't receiving any kind of support from her ex-husband, James (who had come out to visit the family just once, and never paid any kind of child support or alimony), so every little bit helped.

While Sue was known as a friendly presence in the community, she often kept to herself. More often than not - when she wasn't at work or at a function with her children - she could be found at home, and was later described as a pretty private person.

Meanwhile, the children were enrolled in local schools down in Quincy, just a few miles south of Keddie. There, they had made friends of their own, and had become well-known among the teachers and school staff.

All-in-all, the move to Keddie had turned into a positive experience for the entire Sharp family, and they were pleasantly surprised at the community they had around them.

On April 11th, 1981 - a Saturday at the onset of Spring - things seemed to be well in the Sharp household.

The morning was relatively benign and quiet, and at around 1:30 PM, Sue and her 14-year-old daughter, Sheila, drove out from Keddie to the neighboring town of Quincy (about five miles away). While most civilization in the area ran through Quincy, the two women were there this afternoon to pick up 15-year-old John, who had been hanging out in Quincy with a friend of his: 17-year-old Dana Wingate, a Quincy High School junior, who was known for being a bit of a troublemaker in the area.

At around 3:30 PM, John and Dana left again; presumably headed out to Quincy to visit some friends for the afternoon. They were planning to come home later that evening (as Dana would be staying the night), but were directed not to hitchhike by Sue, who didn't want them accepting rides from strangers. They were planning to openly ignore that wish, but agreed with Sue's demands for the time-being and went on their merry way.

John and Dana would be seen in downtown Quincy throughout that afternoon, as it was a much larger town than Keddie, but was still relatively small by most standards (as such, everyone virtually knew everyone else and their kids).

The two would later seen heading to a party in Quincy, but the details of this party have only been hinted at in the years since. It is not known who all was at this party, but rumors have hinted at there being some kind of underage drug and alcohol consumption, which likely scared off any potential witnesses from coming forward. The two teenage boys would later be spotted at a street corner in Quincy, attempting to hitchhike home sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 PM, but it is not known who gave them a lift that evening.

Meanwhile, back at the Sharp cabin in Keddie, things were unfolding pretty normally for a Saturday night. Sheila spent the rest of the afternoon with her two daughters, 14-year-old Sheila, 12-year-old Tina, while her two youngest sons hung out with a friend from their neighborhood. Justin Eason, a kid from the neighborhood, would spend the afternoon with 10-year-old Rick and 5-year-old Greg, and was planning to have a sleepover in their back bedroom that night.

While Sue hung out at home that evening, her two daughters would spend a couple of hours at the residence next door, Cabin 27, where the Seabolt family lived. The Sharps and Seabolts had become incredibly close over the past few months, and the Seabolts' two daughters had become fast friends with both Sheila and Tina. The two girls would head next door for a few hours that night to watch TV, with Tina returning home to go to bed at around 9:30 PM.

Sheila, on the other hand, would stay there at the Seabolts' Cabin 27 for the night, having a sleepover with her friend, Alysa. She was not planning to return until the morning... a decision that ultimately might have saved her life.

The next several hours passed by quietly for the residents of the Keddie Resort. A resident would wake up at some time between 1:00 and 2:00 AM to what sounded like some heavy groaning - or maybe some muffled screaming - but other than that, nothing seemed amiss.

Sheila Sharp woke up at around 7:00 AM on the morning of Sunday, April 12th, 1981, and began heading home from the cabin next door, which was quite literally just feet away from her home. She began opening the front door (which was regularly kept unlocked) and was greeted by an incredibly gruesome scene just inside her front door, which entered straight into the Sharp family's living room.

Sheila wasn't sure who all was there at the time, but her older brother John's body was the closest to the door, and his bound and bloodied body was hard to miss. She wouldn't even register the fact that there were two other bodies lying on the floor with him; the entire room was covered in blood and gore... the sight of which would be forever burned into her memory.

Without entering the cabin, 14-year-old Sheila screamed out and began rushing back to the Seabolt residence next-door, hoping to get help. James and Zonita Seabolt attempted to calm her down, but they had a hard go of it; the gruesome scene that Sheila was describing was a nightmarish scenario for any family member, and they immediately set out to alert emergency personnel.

Meanwhile, Jamie - the Seabolt's teenaged son - was sent next door to check and see if anyone was still alive. He briefly entered the cabin to see if there was possibly anyone still breathing, and - to his surprise - discovered that the three young boys in the back bedroom were not just alive, but completely and totally unharmed.

Rick and Greg Sharp, along with Justin (their neighbor friend), were still sleeping and totally oblivious to the carnage on the other side of their bedroom door. However, hoping to ensure that they didn't see the crime scene in the living room, Jamie decided to help them exit the cabin through the bedroom window. Not only would this spare them the sight of murdered family members, but it would help from contaminating the crime scene any further - which Jamie had already done by entering through the cabin's back door to check for any survivors.

Police were called to the scene at around 8:05 that morning, having been alerted by the Seabolt family - who didn't have a telephone of their own, but ran down to the nearby lodge where they made the call from. Within minutes, officers with the Plumas County Sheriff's Office started responding, having been dispatched from their local office in Quincy. The first officers arrived at around the same time as Sue's brother, Don Davis, who entered the cabin on multiple occasions to try and identify the bodies. However, due to the gore and the arrangement of the crime scene, he would have a hard time stomaching the tragic loss long enough to be of any help.

Over the next several hours, more and more officials with the Plumas County Sheriff's Office would arrive at the scene, and begin documenting the massive amount of evidence left behind. Numerous photos of the crime scene would be taken early on, and detectives would document the crime scene as they found it that morning... which, all things considered, was among the most gruesome and violent crime scenes that any of these officers had ever come across.

Not only was there blood all over the victims' bodies, the carpet, the furniture, and the walls... it was even found on the ceiling of the cabin, which indicated that the killers had acted with no regard to their surroundings. This observation was made even more evident by the bloody stab wounds in the cabin's wallpaper, where the killer (or killers) had sunk their bloody weapons with a callous disregard to the sanctity of the Sharp home.

Among all of the blood, the carnage, the evidence, and the mayhem of an unfolding crime scene, police would discover the beaten and brutalized remains of three people: rebellious 15-year-old John Sharp, his trouble-making 17-year-old friend Dana Wingate, and 36-year-old family matriarch Sue Sharp.

Missing entirely from the scene was 12-year-old Tina Sharp, who had been seen less than 12 hours prior next door at the Seabolt residence, watching TV. But it would take some time before police even became aware of her absence, with the crime scene itself unfolding like a complicated puzzle... one piece at a time.

As officers with the Plumas County Sheriff's Office began their investigation, the three bodies were photographed and then sent off for an autopsy. By the time that Tina Sharp was noted as missing, roughly half-a-day had passed.

Autopsies of the three murder victims would reveal that Sue Sharp, John Sharp, and Dana Wingate had each been savagely murdered, and their bodies had callously been left behind for poor Sheila to discover just hours later.

All three victims had been bound at their wrists and ankles with electrical cord and medical tape; of which the former could have come from anywhere, but the medical tape used in binding the victims varied in size. It was believed that the killer (or killers) had used at least two separate rolls of medical tape, which might have been found inside the Sharp home.

Police found it intriguing that there was no blood found underneath the bindings of John or Dana, as well as there being no defensive wounds on either. This indicated that they had been bound before being attacked/murdered, or were otherwise unable to do so. Meanwhile, the body of 36-year-old Sue Sharp showed the exact opposite: multiple defensive wounds, and multiple instances of blood found underneath the medical tape that bound her. This indicated that she had fought back, and - as a result - might have been brutalized more extensively.

Not only were Sue's bindings far tighter than the other two, but she had also been gagged with a blue bandana and then her own underwear; both of which had been shoved deep into her mouth, and then covered up with tape. In addition, her pants had been removed, despite there being no sign of sexual assault.

When Sue's body was found, it was found lying on its side near the living room sofa, nude from the waist down. She had a yellow blanket laying over her body (which had become soaked with blood), which some believe indicated an attempt to cover up the shame of the crime. In addition to numerous stab wounds (not only to her chest, but to her throat), she had been beaten in the head with the butt of a gun, although impressions on her skin would later match up with a BB gun; in particular, a Daisy 880 BB gun, which police later found proof of in the form of a small piece that had broken off of the plastic pellet gun.

15-year-old John Sharp, whose body was found lying closest to the door, had suffered a somewhat-similar fate. He had been stabbed repeatedly with a knife, and had even had his throat slit by this unknown offender. In addition, his head showed signs of blunt force trauma, and examinations would later reveal that the weapon used had been a hammer.

John's friend, 17-year-old Dana Wingate, had been found somewhat-between the two bodies, lying facedown on a blood-soaked couch pillow. Like John, he had been beaten in the head with a hammer, but his body also showed signs of manual strangulation; as in, the offender had attempted to strangle Dana by hand.

Whatever happened inside Cabin 28 that fateful night had not happened quickly. Police theorized that whoever had killed these three had done so slowly and deliberately, staying inside the cabin for quite some time to accomplish their goals. Surprisingly, though, they seem to have made as little noise as possible in the process, since there were no known witnesses to the assault - nor any witnesses that could distinguish anything untoward that night.

It's also intriguing to note that at the crime scene, police discovered that Sue's feet were covered in blood, as were one of the teenage boy's shoes... indicating that both had walked in blood at some point, but it was unknown just how any such scenario had unfolded.

At the crime scene, police were able to discover multiple weapons that had been used in the attack. This included a hammer and knife found near the bodies, as well as a steak knife from the Sharp family's kitchen, which had been used so violently that the blade had been bent backwards. All were covered in blood, and - as such - were believed to have been used in the crime.

Because of the amount of blood found in the living room - as well as the multiple stab wounds in the walls - it was believed that the murders had taken place entirely in it. However, there was also a small amount of blood found on 12-year-old Tina's bed sheets, which indicated that she might have been sleeping at the time of the murders and had been forcefully abducted just afterwards by the unknown attacker. If so, this indicated that the killer (or killers) were familiar with the family, and might have committed this crime for the sake of kidnapping Tina.

There was no sign of forced entry, but that wasn't a huge surprise to investigators. Keddie at the time was such a small, close-knit community that no one locked their doors. Additionally, the Sharp family usually kept the back door unlocked because of John's basement bedroom, and it wasn't unusual for one - or both - doors to be unlocked... so forced entry likely wasn't necessary.

After the murders, the cabin had been left very nondescript by the attackers, who had turned off all of the lights, closed the blinds, and then left the phone off the hook (so that no calls could be received).

A canvas of the surrounding area was much less informative than the search of the crime scene, as police were unable to learn much of anything from those that lived around Cabin 28 (or throughout the Keddie Resort, for that matter). Not only was there an overwhelming lack of physical evidence, but the scant amount of witness sightings provided few leads.

The Seabolt family, who lived next door in Cabin 27, had been hosting 14-year-old Sheila on the night of the murders. They had also had missing 12-year-old Tina over for a bit earlier that evening to watch TV, but - that night - they heard and saw nothing suspicious that night. And this is despite the cabin being located just feet away from the crime scene (maybe 15 feet away at most). Throughout the night, they would not recall hearing any kind of violent screaming, no shouts of terror... nothing.

A family nearby did report waking up at around 1:30 AM to what sounded like muffled screaming - or as described by a police officer later on, a loud "groan." But they had no idea where the noise had come from, or even what it was, so they originally wrote it off.

A couple of residents would report seeing suspicious vehicles parked at or near the Sharp's cabin that night, including an unknown green van (which was seen at around 9:00 PM), as well as a brown Datsun (which was seen some time later, and seemed to have a flat - or flattening - tire). It is not believed that either of these vehicles provided police with a productive line of inquiry, but they remained interesting nonetheless.

As police continued to document everything that they could find relating to the investigation, they continued their dogged pursuit of Tina Sharp: the missing 12-year-old, who had lost three family members in a single night, and was believed to have been kidnapped. Following the discovery of this crime scene, Tina was nowhere to be found, and multiple searches of the area failed to come up with any leads on her whereabouts.

However, in the early hours of the case, the inexperienced Plumas County Sheriff's Office had dropped the ball (so-to-speak). They likely weren't prepared or equipped for a crime of this magnitude, and for several hours after the crime scene was discovered, they were unaware that Tina was missing - or that she even existed at all. It took several hours for police to learn that there should have been another child in the Sharp household that was - by all accounts - missing entirely. At that point, precious time had been wasted, and the trail to find the abducted 12-year-old had gone cold.

At the crime scene, police were able to find at least one working lead, which came in the form of a bloody fingerprint. This fingerprint - which belongs to an unknown individual - was found on a post connected to the handrail leading up to the cabin's back door, and seemed to indicate that the killer(s) had left in that direction. It remains unknown if this fingerprint has matched up with anyone of the years, but it is presumed not.

Despite this fingerprint consuming many man-hours in the early days of this case, investigators would have no shortage of theories in their immediate future.

One of the main theories revolved around teenaged victims John Sharp and Dana Wingate, who had returned to the cabin at some point the evening that the murders unfolded. They had last been seen at around 10:00 PM over in the town of Quincy, apparently attempting to hitchhike home (which they weren't supposed to do, but had gone through with anyways). Since police were not aware of who had given them a ride home, it was believed that their driver might have been the killer - or had been privy to sensitive information. Maybe the killer was someone that had followed their home, or had some kind of grudge against either of them (for whatever reason).

Because John and Dana had been at a party on the night of the murders, it was believed that the partygoers they had encountered might know something about the murders. Don Stoy, then-lieutenant and later-sheriff for Plumas County, would tell the Feather River Bulletin years later:

"The party in question was drug related and probably for fear of being arrested for illegal use, (potential witnesses) chose not to come forward to confirm the speculation."

These rumors - that the murders were somehow tied into this party, or drug dealing in general - would become popular in the area in the months after the murders... despite there being no evidence to support it. For example: Carla McMullen, a resident of the region, told police that murder victim Dana Wingate had recently stolen some LSD from local drug dealers, but - again - she had no evidence to back up this claim. It was all just based on rumor and innuendo. Police found no evidence of drugs or drug paraphernalia inside the Sharp's cabin, and no proof that any of the victims had been involved in the drug trade.

Same goes for rumors of some kind of Satanic sacrifice - which became prevalent in the following years. From the get-go, police insisted that there were no signs of this being a cult-based or belief-inspired crime... this was likely personal in-nature, and that had expressed itself in the overwhelming violence that had unfolded that night.

Because of this belief - that the crime had been personal in nature - it was believed that John and Dana might have interrupted the attack as they came home that night. If so, that would have made 36-year-old Sue Sharp the primary target of the attack, and that would make everyone in her orbit a suspect: including her ex-husband, James, who lived on the other side of the country. This is when police learned about his abusive nature in the past (not only towards Sue, but towards his daughters; including Tina, whom he considered his "favorite"), but they also discovered that he had an airtight alibi in this case. He might have been an objectively bad person at the time, but he wasn't a murderer.

While police struggled to come up with a solid motive for the crime - and perhaps a suspect or two - they ended up centering their sights on a family that was linked to the case in multiple ways.

Justin Eason lived just across the street from the Sharp's home; across Spanish Oaks Lane, along with his mother, brother, and stepfather.

At the time of the Cabin 28 murders, Justin had actually been inside the house, having a sleepover with Rick and Greg Sharp. He was one of the three boys that had been left unharmed in the back bedroom, and who had been taken out through the bedroom window after the bodies were discovered in the living room.

Originally, all three boys told the police that they had not seen or heard anything that night. They all claimed to have slept through the murders, and allegedly did not know a thing. Eventually, though, that would start to change when Justin told a clinical psychologist he was seeing that he had started to have dreams in which he visualized the murders; dreams that he could recall distinct details from. These details included him covering up Sue Sharp with a blanket, and attempting to stop her from bleeding by putting towels on her chest wounds.

As you can imagine, this piqued the interest of investigators; especially since they had discovered dried blood on the doorknob leading into the back boy's bedroom. It was possible that Justin has discovered the crime scene, and had somehow compartmentalized it away. It was believed that this might have been his childish way of coping after witnessing extreme violence, and that he might have information to share with law enforcement.

So, under the supervision of Sheriff Doug Thomas and Dr. Jerry Dash, Justin was put under hypnosis, and would lay out a much more troubling series-of-events.

According to Justin, he had been watching the TV show "The Love Boat" shortly before he fell asleep that night, and his memory (if you can call it that) seemed to have blended into a dream-like version of that show. He claimed to have been on a boat with the two teenaged victims - John Sharp and Dana Wingate - and he witnessed them in a physical altercation with an unknown man... which would later be amended to two men.

The transcript of this session is a bit hard to read through - since it is a witness statement from a child undergoing hypnosis therapy - but police would find certain aspects of it credible, especially since it fit in with many of the details found at the crime scene. Justin claimed to have attempted to cover up a stab wound on Sue's chest, and he detailed the struggle she had undergone with the two attackers. Justin also explained that 15-year-old John and 17-year-old Dana had stumbled upon the attack in-progress, and that was what had ensnared them in it. He also said that Tina had come out in similar circumstances, and that ultimately led to her abduction from the scene through the back door.

Like I said: this hypnosis session was nearly impossible to prove as fact. Even though Justin gave up several details about the crime, if you read the transcript you see that much of it is hard-pressed by the presiding Dr. Dash and Sheriff Thomas. For most of the session, Justin is just agreeing to whatever they say, as - again - he was just a child.

Also, the hypnosis session took place about one month after the crime had taken place (in May of 1981), and it was impossible to know what he had learned from news reports and local gossip. It was possible that the information he provided to police was simply information he had heard secondhand.

However, this hypnosis session (and Justin's follow-up interviews with police) would provide investigators with something that they would deem helpful: a detailed description of two men that may or may not have perpetrated this crime.

Both of these suspects were described as being relatively young (in their late 20's or early 30's), and both were wearing gold-framed sunglasses at the time. One was described as being relatively tall (standing between 5'11" and 6'2") and had long, dark-blonde hair with a mustache. The other was somewhat shorter (standing between 5'6" and 5'10") with shorter, greasy black hair (who maybe had a mustache, but Justin recalled being clean-shaven).

Police would turn these two descriptions into a police sketch, which they would publicize in the weeks and months after the murders. Multiple residents would come forward, claiming to have known who the two men were, but it was not believed that anyone came forward with a valid suspect.

However, many in the area would note that one of the descriptions bore a striking resemblance to someone in Justin's life: his stepfather, Marty.

Martin Smartt, Justin's stepfather, was known in the Keddie area as just "Marty."

Marty was a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, who was known to have some deep-seated anger issues. In particular, he had a hatred for John Sharp, the 15-year-old murder victim that had a reputation in the area for being a bit of a troublemaker and smart alec.

On the day after the bodies were found in Cabin 28 - April 13th, 1981 - Marty was brought in for an interview with law enforcement, and from that moment, he would begin to express behavior now deemed troubling by law enforcement. You see, Marty would become overly involved in the investigation, and Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas would later that Marty offered up information on multiple occasions, which would - as Sheriff Thomas put it:

"... throw the suspicion away from him."

In his first (and only) interview with law enforcement, Marty claimed that he had been at the local bar, named Keddie's Back Door, with his wife (Marilyn Smartt) and his friend (John Boubede). There, he had seen two suspicious-looking men... who, ironically, bore a striking resemblance to him and his friend, John, who had been living with him for a couple of weeks.

In that same interview (which, again, took place the day after the murders) Marty told police that he had heard about the victims being killed with a hammer. Well, coincidentally, he had lost a hammer a short time prior, having been unable to find it in the days and weeks before the murders.

Despite also admitting in the same interview that he was prone to stress and anger outbursts - and was undergoing a separation from his wife, which would have been a major stressor - Marty was allowed to leave and was not believed to have been involved.

Marty's estranged wife, Marilyn, was much more forthright in her discussions with police, and laid out a much more troubling timeline of the night that the murders had happened (April 11th). According to her, she had gone to the local bar, Keddie's Back Door, along with her husband and his friend, John Boubede (who almost everyone called "Bo"). Marilyn says that the three returned home at around 11:00 PM that night (and she subsequently went to bed), but Marty and Bo decided to return to the bar a short time later.

John Boubede - Marty's friend - was a convicted felon that had been in and out of prison for multiple crimes (including burglary and a number of drug-related crimes). However, he was also believed to have had ties to organized crime in Chicago, and was alleged to have been an enforced for mobsters in Las Vegas prior to meeting Marty at a nearby VA hospital (who had been admitted for a mental health evaluation following a violent outburst of his own). In the weeks prior to the murders, Bo had been sleeping on the Smartt family's couch, and had become inseparable from Marty.

While Marilyn fell asleep that night, Marty and Bo apparently returned to the bar to continue drinking. However, when they showed up later that night, they were wearing three-piece suits and sunglasses - which stood out to their fellow patrons, because not only was it late at night, but this was a small town dive bar. This would later seem like a possible attempt to establish an alibi of some kind, as the sight of the two men in suits would undoubtedly stick in people's memories.

By Marty and Bo's recollection, they had stayed out drinking until the bar closed (around 1:30 AM), and they returned home to go to bed. But Marilyn stated that she woke up at around 2:00 AM, and she saw the two men burning an unknown item in their wood stove. She would never learn what this item was, although Marty later told police that it was just another log.

In the days after the bodies were discovered in Cabin 28, Marilyn Smartt would tell police that she believed her estranged husband had had something to do with it; based not only on his bizarre actions that night and his prior hatred of teenager John Sharp, but his aggressive and violent nature, which really expressed itself when he started drinking.

Additionally, Marilyn revealed to police that Bo - Marty's friend and temporary houseguest - had developed a crush on Sue, and had allegedly made advanced on her the night of the murders (which she had flat-out rejected). This led to the belief that Marty and Bo might have committed the crime in a drunken rage, and that's why the Sharp family (in particular, Sue and John) had received the majority of the abuse.

Years later, Marilyn would tell police that she had discovered a bloody jacket in the basement of her cabin - which she believed belonged to the missing 12-year-old Tina Sharp - and had actually handed it over to local detectives. However, police would have no record of this in their casefile, and it is not known whether this incident was fabricated, or the investigation - which was already critiqued as being flawed by many - had been mishandled entirely.

As I've already briefly touched on, the police handling of this case was shaky at best. There were several things investigators overlooked in the early days of the investigation, such as the early bungling of the search for Tina Sharp; with Plumas County Sheriff's Officials not even knowing that the 12-year-old was missing for the first several hours, allowing her abductors to get away scot-free.

But that wasn't all.

Following the revelations learned through Marilyn Smartt, police brought her estranged husband Marty in for questioning, along with his friend, John Boubede. However, for some strange reason, police decided to question both men at the same time, which - if you're familiar with police interrogation tactics - is the exact opposite of what investigators SHOULD do. They normally separate their suspects, grill them individually, make them believe that the other guy might cooperate before they do, and then make them sweat... that's not just what happens in police procedurals, but happens regularly in real life.

In this case, Marty and Bo were interviewed at the same time, quite literally side-by-side. And throughout this interview, they were allowed to speak untruths without any kind of pushback. For example, John Boubede ("Bo") told police that he had previously worked as a peace officer; a fact that was easily disputed by just looking at his already-established criminal record. Yet he was never called out for lying, and police allowed his lies to remain on-the-record.

This was the same interview where Marty had offered up concerning details such as his marriage woes, his PTSD, and his missing hammer, but - likewise - he was not really pushed on any of it. Alongside Bo, he was not deemed a credible suspect, and the both were interviewed just that once before being cleared.

According to Mike Gamberg (who, at the time, was just a low-ranking deputy, but would go on to become a special investigator for Plumas County) the then-sheriff Doug Thomas had allowed the Department of Justice (based out of Sacramento) to oversee the case. However, the DOJ had not sent out homicide detectives to handle the case, but rather, two detectives from their organized crime unit (who typically handled gang and mob-related crimes).

Because of this, it is believed that John Boubede (Marty's friend "Bo", who had been staying with him for a couple of weeks) was a police informant, whose ties to organized crime were being utilized by law enforcement in some capacity. This has led to the popular theory that the DOJ did their best to cover up this crime, in an effort to protect their asset, who might have been embedded in a larger investigation; which would make the Keddie victims collateral damage, in a way. This theory has only been expanded upon in recent years with speculation that Marty was involved in the local drug trade.

It would also come to light that the then-Sheriff Doug Thomas was a close personal friend of Marty Smartt. Their friendship might have afforded Marty some leeway with law enforcement, thus allowing him and Bo to walk free after just one interview with DOJ investigators.

In the following weeks, both men were allowed to leave the area entirely, and would move out of state: with Bo moving back to Illinois, and Marty moving away to Oregon, where they would pass away in the ensuing decades (with Bo passing away in 1988, and Marty dying in 2000)... thus allowing their involvement in this case to go unexplored.

Inside Cabin 28, police had found the bodies of three people: Sue Sharp, John Sharp, and Dana Wingate. Missing from the scene, however, was Sue's 12-year-old daughter, Tina - who would remain missing for the foreseeable future.

Because Tina was a child that had likely been abducted, her disappearance was overseen by the FBI, who investigate all kidnapping or abduction cases of children 12 years of age or under. However, their involvement would be relatively short-lived, as the trail to find Tina had gone ice-cold within days.

Roughly one week after the murders - on April 22nd, 1981 - Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas told reporters with the local newspaper Feather River Bulletin that he doubted Tina was even still alive:

"We don't know if she is of course, but it's been a long time now since the murders and our searchers haven't turned up a single trace of her. We're not real optimistic and we don't visualize her hiding out this long if she fled from the scene."

By the end of the month, the FBI had "backed off" from the investigation entirely, allowing the Department of Justice to continue conducting searches in the area. Working with local police, the DOJ launched a thorough grid-pattern search in the surrounding area, scoping out more than a 5-mile radius around the crime scene. Unfortunately, though, no trace of Tina could be found.

On April 29th, 1981, Sheriff Doug Thomas told the press:

"It looks more and more with every day passing that she's probably not going to be found alive."

Weeks would continue to pass. And then months. And then years. All with no sign of Tina surfacing or making contact with any of her loved ones. By all indications, Tina had likely perished on the same day that her mother and brother had, but her family would receive no confirmation of that for more than three years.

On April 22nd, 1984 - more than three years after the original murders - a man named Ronald Pedrini was out in the woods near Feather Falls, in neighboring Butte County (about 60 miles away from Keddie, near Camp 18). While he was out collecting bottles and cans to recycle, he stepped on an odd object, which - upon review - looked somewhat like a bone.

In actuality, it was a partial human skull, which was in the last stages of decomposition. Police would later be called to the scene, and were able to recover the cranium portion of a skull and a part of a mandible, which were found nearby a children's blanket, a blue nylon jacket, Levi jeans (with a missing back pocket), and an empty surgical tape dispenser.

This find was documented, but the remains were not originally tied to the missing Tina Sharp (or the Keddie murders in general). In fact, experts actually thought that the skull might belong to an indigenous person from decades prior, and - were it not for what happened next - they still might believe that today.

The news of the skull's discovery led to an anonymous phone call being received by the Butte County Sheriff's Office. The mysterious individual on the other end of the line seemed to think that the skull might belong to the preteen girl that had gone missing a few years prior, from up in Keddie, California. This phone call was not documented in the Keddie casefile, but a recording would be found years later (in 2013), and this seems to have inspired officials to take a second look.

Investigators would return to the scene weeks later, and in the area around where the skull had been discovered, found a decomposed set of remains (which were nothing more than bones, at this point). While they weren't identified right away, a forensic pathologist would eventually confirm in June of 1984 that the remains did belong to Tina Sharp; having compared dental records to the piece of skull and jawbone that investigators had originally recovered.

Due to the status of the remains, it was believed that 12-year-old Tina Sharp had died on the same night as her family, or shortly thereafter. Her body had been brought to this quiet, rural area several miles away for whatever reason, and her remains had been exposed to the elements for at least a couple of years at this point.

The recovery of Tina's remains brought an end to the mystery that had been plaguing her loved ones since her disappearance that fateful night, but they finally knew what had happened to her. Her remains were put to rest and buried alongside her mother and brother at a cemetery in Quincy, where they remain today.

Despite knowing what Tina's eventual fate was, the overarching mystery about her death remains.

The man who discovered her body, Ronald Pedrini, remains an enigmatic figure in this case, because - as far as anyone knows - he was an innocent bystander who was just collecting recyclables when he stumbled upon the remains. However, he happened to recover the remains within days of the three-year anniversary, and was collecting cans and bottles in an area that is rarely ever frequented by anybody. His involvement just seems odd to many, and has inspired many rumors in the decades since.

Then there is the mystery of the anonymous caller, who was able to positively identify the remains as Tina's, after supposedly only learning about the piece of skull that had been discovered. This seems like an incredible coincidence to many, especially since almost no details about the skull had been released to the press, and the odds of it turning out to be Tina - among so many other missing men, women, and children in northern California - remains microscopic (at best).

Who was this person? We'll never know, because investigators at that time either didn't fully investigate this lead, or simply forgot to write about it in their notes. Either remain likely possibilities, and do nothing but lead to more speculation about the original investigation being either inept or corrupt.

Despite police having very little in the way of any serious leads, there were a couple of established criminals who were looked into as possible suspects - including some of America's most notorious killers.

In the early 1980's, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole were examined by Plumas County Sheriff's investigators, following their arrest and conviction in 1983. The two would infamous throughout the southeast when they stood trial for over a dozen combined murders, which were particularly savage in-nature. Lucas would eventually be convicted for 11 murders - and Toole for 6 - but together, both men would confess to dozens of murders spanning the continental United States (which, if true, would have made them among the most proficient serial killers in history).

Because of this interest in them, as well as their willingness to confess, they were each explored as potential suspects in the Keddie murders; especially when it came to light that the two had traveled through Northern California in 1980 (just months before the murders happened). However, it would later be revealed that both had been indicted in a murder that took place on April 14th, 1981 out in Jacksonville, Florida (the other side of the country). That was just two days after the Keddie murders, and it was deemed impossible for them to have been in two places at once.

It would later be learned that both had not returned to California until May of 1981 - the month after the Keddie murders - and they were each eliminated as suspects.

Another killer that intrigued investigators in this case was none other than Robert Joseph Silveria Jr., who would later become known as the "Boxcar Killer": a homeless man that traveled around the nation via railcars, and was responsible for murdering numerous individuals - primarily at homeless camps or near railways, with his primary motivation being robbery.

Following Silveria's arrest in 1996, he began confessing to dozens of crimes (including several murders), and was subsequently probed as a suspect in the Keddie murders. He had actually lived in the region at the time, having lived down in Quincy (just a few miles south) and having encountered the Plumas County Sheriff's Office on numerous occasions between 1979 and 1986. Silveria would even confess to the murders, but had to recant his confession when it came to light that he had been in state custody at the time (serving time for grand theft auto). He was also later cleared as a suspect, and was not believed to have been involved.

Following the murders of Sue Sharp and two of her kids, her other three children - 14-year-old Sheila, 10-year-old Rick, and 5-year-old Greg - were sent back to the east coast to live with their father... whom their mother had divorced and decided to move away from nearly two years prior. They would then have to grow up in a world without half of their family, but they were all able to adapt to this new reality, and came out on the other side of this trauma even stronger than before.

In addition to the Sharp family, though, another family was directly impacted by this tragedy: the Wingates, who had lost 17-year-old Dana on the same night. Gary Wingate, Dana's father, would speak to reporters with the San Francisco Gate two decades after the murders (in 2001). He was still living near Keddie at the time (Quincy), but had no idea who had committed the crime - only knowing that the initial investigation had been botched by investigators.

"Nobody has the faintest idea who killed my son, so I long ago had to let this thing go or it would eat me alive. I don't think about it, I don't go to that ghost town and I have no idea if [even] ghosts exist there.

"But I do know this. There is evil in this world, and evil was in that house that night."

Keddie itself would be forever changed by this gruesome quadruple murder, which has become synonymous with the town itself. The murders of Sue, John, Tina, and Dana really marked the turning point for Keddie's dozens of residents - as well as those that lived in the surrounding area - who all became acutely aware of the vicious crime in the following days, weeks, months, and years. Residents began to lock their doors regularly - which was out of the norm - and the area's sense of peace and justice would be forever shattered.

Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg, who was just a young officer at the time, recalls that things in and around Keddie changed overnight. Speaking to the Plumas News, he stated:

"Life changed dramatically in 1981 for this whole community.

"Everybody was suspicious of everybody and afraid of everybody else."

Cabin 28, which had been the Sharp's family home for about six months prior to the murders, would become a dark tourist attraction for years afterwards - with true crime addicts and thrill-seeking teenagers making pilgrimages to the location where the four victims had spent their final moments. Eventually, the cabin was condemned along with dozens of others in the mid-1990's, after years of disrepair... they had all simply become too dangerous to be lived in by anyone.

Finally, in 2004, Cabin 28 was torn down by the Keddie Resort owners, who wanted to bury this infamous piece of town lore in the past. Yet, it was already too little and too late...

Today, Keddie is a shell of what it once was. The small community that the Sharp family once lived in is no more, with many of the residents having moved on to other areas in the years since. Some still remain, but not many live in Keddie today... only ghosts.

For years, the case of the Keddie cabin murders would remain trapped in a vacuum of inactivity - with the story not being pushed anywhere outside of the local area. In fact, other than a few newspaper articles, the story didn't really find any traction outside of Plumas County.

An independent documentary was put together in the mid-2000's, which helped highlight the case to a slightly-larger audience. Then in 2008 the film "The Strangers" was released, which wasn't necessarily based on the Keddie murders; but many in online discussion groups would point out that the film shared many similarities with the crime. This led to a bit of a resurgence in the case's popularity, with articles about it finally being shared online.

Over the next few years, the case would be discussed in niche internet circles - such as Reddit and Websleuths - but it wasn't until 2016 that this story finally got the attention it deserved.

On March 24th, 2016, a rusty old hammer was discovered in a pond near Keddie; a hammer that matched the description of the one described by Marty Smartt, which he alleged had gone missing just days before the murders.

Police had always described the attackers using two different types of hammers in their attack, and - with only one recovered at the scene - police would spend a great deal of time looking for such a murder weapon. Now, over 30 years after the murders, such a hammer was found at the bottom of a nearby pond, where it had been sitting for an untold period of time.

Since this was deemed as evidence, the hammer was taken into custody by Plumas County Sheriff's officials. Unfortunately, Marty Smartt - the stepfather of Justin Eason, who had once been considered a suspect - had died in 2000 due to complications arising from cancer, so he was unable to answer any questions. However, it was believed that this find could be significant for the stagnant investigation.

Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood, who was just 16 years old at the time of the murders (and a friend of both John Sharp and Dana Wingate), believed that this hammer was indeed the missing murder weapon. Speaking to local reporters, he stated:

"The location it was found... It would have been intentionally put there. It would not have been accidentally misplaced."

This find seemed to put the onus of suspicion back on Marty Smartt as one of the major suspects, and that was validated shortly afterwards by an article published in the Sacramento Bee. This article - which included information not released to the public up to this point - alleged that new evidence implicated Marty in the murders. Specifically, it pointed out that just days after the murders, Marty had left Keddie behind, and had written an incriminating letter to his estranged wife, Marilyn.

For some backstory: apparently, both Marty and Marilyn had been unfaithful to one another, but it is believed that Marilyn had confided in her neighbor, Sue, who - the night of the murders - had convinced her to leave town; but, more specifically, to leave Marty (just like she had done with her abusive husband a couple of years prior). So it is believed that Marty had held a grudge against Sue Sharp... the woman he believed had ruined his marriage.

With that in mind, you should hear how Marty concluded this letter to Marilyn:

"I've paid the price of your live & now I've bought it with four peoples lives, you tell me we are through. Great! What else do you want?"

This letter - which had been known to law enforcement - had apparently been "overlooked" by the original detectives, according to now-Sheriff Hagwood. He believes that the detectives in charge of this case had done a terrible job of overseeing the investigation, and this letter was just proof of that. In fact, when this article was published, Sheriff Hagwood said about the original investigators:

"You could take someone just coming out of the academy and they'd have done a better job."

In addition to this very incriminating letter - which had been ignored or set aside by the original detectives - it was also discovered that shortly after the murders, Marty Smartt had allegedly confessed to the crime during a therapy session.

You see, Marty regularly visited a local VA hospital, where he had been treated for a number of mental health issues in the past (including PTSD, stress, anger management, etc.). One of the counselors that he saw alleged that Marty had confessed to killing Sue and Tina Sharp, but denied having anything to do with the killing of either John or Dana. Because this was a therapy session, Marty might have mistakenly believed that this info would remain confidential, but he didn't realize that those statutes don't apply to confessions of murder (or other violent acts).

This counselor would come forward with this information in 2016, but they would allege that they had already said all of this to police decades prior.... but it was not acted upon at the time, and was dismissed by the original investigators for being "hearsay"...

At the time that the mysterious hammer was discovered in 2016, Sheriff Greg Hagwood revealed that police were still exploring at least six potential suspects. It was unknown if they were suspects that had been previously-named by media reports or not, but all six were alive, according to Special Investigator Mike Gamberg, who also revealed in an interview with the Sacramento Bee:

"... and we know exactly where they are."

In April of 2018, Sheriff Hagwood revealed that DNA had been recovered from a piece of tape at the crime scene, which - according to local publication the Plumas News - had been found next to the body of Sue Sharp. This DNA was allegedly matched up to a suspect that was still alive (as of a year-and-a-half ago), and it is believed that this lead is still being worked on... which gives credence to the notion that this case is far from finished.

Over the past couple of years, it has also been learned that police were able to find an envelope in their evidence room which had been sealed for decades. Inside was a cassette tape containing the 1984 phone call, from when an anonymous individual had contacted police to let them know that the partial skull found in Butte County might belong to Tina Sharp. Since this individual was always believed to have some kind of insider knowledge - yet had never been identified - this person remained a highly-sought-after person-of-interest in this case.

This 911 call was sent off to experts with the FBI and DOJ (among others), in the hope that details about this individual could be gleaned from the recording.

A $5,000 reward exists for information leading to the arrest of the killers, and - if you have any information - you are encouraged to call in your tips to 530-283-6360 (where your identity can remain anonymous).

It is not known where the case stands today, but it is believed that officials are still working on it, and hope to bring some kind of resolution to this case in the near-future. Despite us approaching the 40-year mark since this tragedy first unfolded, it remains one of the most high-profile cases in the region, and the infamous cabin murders continues to loom large over Keddie.

For that reason, the stories of Sue, John, and Tina Sharp - as well as Dana Wingate - remain unresolved.

Episode Information

Written, hosted, and produced by Micheal Whelan

Producers: Maggyjames, Ben Krokum, Robert Janson, Matthew Brock, Quil Carter, Peggy Belarde, Evan White, Laura Hannan, Katherine Vatalaro, Damion Moore, Astrid Kneier, Amy Hampton Miller, Scott Meesey, Steven Wilson, Scott Patzold, Marie Vanglund, Emily McMehen, Lori Rodriguez, Jessica Yount, Aimee McGregor, Danny Williams, Brian Rollins, Sue Kirk, Sara Moscaritolo, Lauren Harris, and Thomas Ahearn

Published on October 27th, 2019