KEDDIE MURDERS

Opening

On the morning of 12 April 1981, at the Keddie Resort, a small cluster of cabins in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Plumas County, California, fourteen-year-old Sheila Sharp came home to cabin 28 after a night at a neighbour's house to change for church. In the living room she found her mother, Glenna Sue Sharp, 36, her brother John, 15, and his friend Dana Wingate, 17. All three had been killed. Her sister Tina, 12, was missing.

In a back bedroom, her two younger brothers and a friend had slept through the night and were unharmed. Three years later part of Tina's skull was found in another county. No one has ever been charged with the murders, and the investigator who reopened the case says the first investigation was as badly handled as any he has seen.

Timeline

Evening of 11 April 1981Sue Sharp, a single mother of five, is at home in cabin 28. John and Dana go to Quincy, the county seat, and get a ride back to Keddie sometime between 10 pm and 1 am. The driver was later identified and interviewed. Sheila is staying the night with a neighbour.

Night of 11 to 12 AprilSue, John and Dana are bound with medical tape and killed in the living room with hammers and knives, some brought to the cabin and some taken from it. Tina is taken.

8:05 am, 12 AprilAfter Sheila raises the alarm, the resort's co-owner, Jan Albin, calls for help. Deputy Hank Klement is the first officer on the scene. Sheila's brothers Rick, 10, and Greg, 5, and their friend Justin Smartt, 12, are found alive in the next bedroom.

April 1981 onwardSheriff Doug Thomas asks the California Department of Justice to help. It sends agents from its organised crime unit, not homicide specialists. The FBI joins because Tina is believed to have been abducted. Two men are interviewed and soon leave the county. No one is charged.

11 April 1984Three years to the day after the murders, a skull fragment and part of a jawbone are found at Camp 18, near Feather Falls in Butte County. In June a forensic pathologist confirms they are Tina's. Soon afterwards an anonymous caller tells Butte County dispatchers that the bones belong to the twelve-year-old girl from Keddie who "was never found". The call is recorded.

2004Cabin 28, long empty, is condemned and torn down.

2013Sheriff Greg Hagwood reopens the case and hands it to Mike Gamberg, a retired county deputy working as a special investigator.

24 March 2016A hammer is found in a pond near the resort. It matches the description of one that a neighbour, Martin Smartt, had told investigators went missing before the murders. Hagwood says its location suggests it was put there deliberately. The same year, Gamberg finds the tape of the 1984 anonymous call in an envelope that had never been opened.

April 2018Gamberg says DNA from a strip of medical tape found on the floor near Sue Sharp's body matches a known living suspect. The suspect is not named.

Key figures

The victims were Glenna Susan "Sue" Sharp, born 29 March 1945; John Steven Sharp, born 16 November 1965; Dana Hall Wingate, born 8 February 1964; and Tina Louise Sharp, born 22 July 1968. Sheila Sharp, who found them, has spent much of her life pressing for answers. In 2016 she told a Sacramento TV station that she had been told the suspects were simply told to get out of town.

Two men have long been named as the main suspects: Martin Smartt, a neighbour and the stepfather of the boy who survived in the back room, and his friend John Boubede, who died in 1988. Smartt has also died. Neither was ever charged. Mike Gamberg and Greg Hagwood are the investigators who brought the case back to life.

Physical and documentary trail

The record: the crime scene evidence of 1981, Tina's remains, the recorded 1984 call, the 2016 hammer, the 2018 DNA, and a letter Martin Smartt wrote to his wife in which he said he had "bought it with four people's lives". That letter was reportedly overlooked and never used as evidence.

What is missing is just as telling. According to Gamberg, the original case log recording who did what and when has disappeared, some evidence was ruined when a freezer storing it was switched off, and the tape of the anonymous call sat unopened for over thirty years. He and Hagwood have both said the 1981 investigation "blew it". DNA was not collected at crime scenes in 1981, which is why the tape only became useful decades later.

Things you might not know

• The children slept through it. Three boys in the next room were found unharmed and could not explain what had happened.
• Tina was found on the anniversary. Her remains were discovered three years to the day after the murders.
• The call sat in an envelope. The recording of the 1984 tip was found unopened in 2016. Gamberg shared it with People magazine and had experts compare the voice with those of suspects.
• A rifle is still missing. Evidence suggests a BB or pellet rifle was in the cabin that night. It was never recovered.
• The cabin is gone. It was torn down in 2004.
• The hammer took 35 years. It was found in a pond close to the resort in March 2016.

There is not an expiration date on homicides.

Competing explanations

The two main suspects. Smartt's letter, his connection to the cabin and the hammer have led most investigators to focus on him and Boubede, who left Plumas County soon after being interviewed in 1981. Both are dead, and no court has tested the evidence against them.

More than two people. The 2018 DNA match is to a living suspect, which points to at least one other person who was there. One account of the reopened investigation says detectives believe as many as six people may have been involved in the killings or in covering them up.

A failed investigation as much as a mystery. Much of what keeps the case open is not missing evidence but evidence that was gathered and not used: the letter, the call, the tape. On that reading the case was solvable in 1981.

Later life of the case

The Keddie murders sit with other unsolved family killings such as Villisca and Hinterkaifeck, though unlike those, this one has living witnesses and DNA, and could still be solved. The sheriff's office keeps a tip line open.

Finding

Four people were killed at cabin 28, one of them a twelve-year-old girl taken from her home, and the evidence that might have closed the case was gathered and then left to sit. Investigators have had suspects for decades. No one has been charged.

What still will not resolve: who the 2018 DNA belongs to, and why it has not led to an arrest. Rest in peace, Sue, John, Dana and Tina. 🕯️