Keddie Cabin Murders
Four people were brutally murdered in a mountain cabin while three children slept in the next room, undisturbed. The killers used a hammer and knives, then vanished. One victim's skull wasn't found for three years. The case remains unsolved.
The Keddie Cabin Murders stand as one of California’s most disturbing and baffling unsolved crimes, a case that combines brutal violence, impossible circumstances, and four decades of investigative failure. On a spring night in 1981, in a remote mountain community where residents felt safe enough to leave their doors unlocked, something monstrous occurred, something that shattered the illusion of security and left questions that have never been answered.
The Night
The evening of April 11, 1981, seemed ordinary enough in Keddie, a small resort community tucked into the Sierra Nevada mountains of Plumas County, California. The community consisted largely of seasonal cabins and year-round residents who had chosen mountain living for its peace and isolation. Crime was virtually unknown in Keddie. Violent crime was unthinkable.
Cabin 28 sat among the other modest structures at the Keddie Resort, home to Sue Sharp and her children. The single-story cabin was compact, with bedrooms separated by thin walls through which sound traveled easily. On that Saturday night, the cabin was full of life, Sue Sharp, her children, and visiting friends settling in for an ordinary evening in the mountains. By morning, that ordinary cabin would become a crime scene of almost incomprehensible horror.
What makes the Keddie murders particularly chilling is not merely the violence of the crime, but its inexplicability. Four people were murdered in a small cabin while three children slept in an adjacent room, apparently undisturbed. The killers arrived, committed their atrocities, and vanished without waking children sleeping mere feet away. How this was accomplished remains one of the case’s enduring mysteries.
The Victims
The brutality that visited Cabin 28 that night claimed four lives, people whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sue Sharp was 36 years old, a mother struggling to build a new life in the mountains after a difficult divorce. She had moved to Keddie seeking affordable housing and a fresh start for her family. Her hopes ended in violence on the floor of her living room.
John Sharp, 15, was Sue’s eldest son. Described as quiet and thoughtful, John had his whole life ahead of him. Instead, he died alongside his mother, bound and beaten in circumstances that suggest he witnessed horrors no child should see.
Dana Wingate, 17, was John’s friend who had come to the cabin that evening to spend the night. Dana’s presence at Cabin 28 was a matter of chance, a teenager visiting a friend, unaware that his simple social call would cost him his life.
Tina Sharp, 12, was Sue’s daughter. Unlike the other victims, Tina’s body was not found at the crime scene. She had simply vanished from the cabin, taken by the killers into the night. Her fate remained unknown for three agonizing years.
The Survivors
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Keddie murders is that three children survived the night, sleeping through the slaughter in an adjacent bedroom. Their survival defies easy explanation and has fueled decades of speculation about how the crime was committed.
Rick Sharp, 12, was Sue’s son. Greg Sharp, 5, was the youngest of Sue’s children. Justin, a friend of the family who was staying overnight, was also present. All three slept in a back bedroom of Cabin 28 while four people were murdered in the living room and master bedroom just feet away.
In the morning, it was Sheila Sharp, 14, Sue’s oldest daughter, who discovered the crime scene. Sheila had spent the night at a neighbor’s cabin and returned home on Sunday morning to find a scene of unimaginable horror. Her screams brought neighbors running and launched an investigation that would span decades without resolution.
The surviving children have lived with the trauma of that night ever since, haunted by questions that have no answers. Why were they spared? How did they sleep through such violence? And who murdered their family members while they lay dreaming in the next room?
The Missing
Tina Sharp’s disappearance added another layer of horror to an already nightmarish crime. Unlike her mother and brother, Tina was not found at the cabin. She had been taken, carried off into the night by killers whose motives remain unclear.
For three years, Tina Sharp was a missing person, her fate unknown. Investigators and family members clung to desperate hope that she might somehow be found alive, even as logic suggested otherwise. That hope was extinguished in 1984.
In April 1984, a bottle collector discovered a human skull in Feather Falls, a community approximately fifty miles from Keddie. The skull was eventually identified as belonging to Tina Sharp. Other bone fragments were found in the same area, but Tina’s complete remains have never been recovered. What happened to the 12-year-old girl between her abduction from Cabin 28 and her death remains unknown. The disposal of her remains in such a remote location suggests killers with knowledge of the area and the ability to travel and conceal evidence.
The Suspects
Despite decades of investigation, no one has ever been charged with the Keddie murders. The case has never gone to trial, never achieved justice for the victims. However, suspicion has long focused on specific individuals with connections to the Sharp family.
Martin Smartt was a neighbor who lived at the Keddie Resort with his wife Marilyn. Smartt had a troubled past and a volatile personality. Circumstantial evidence connected him to the crime, including alleged confessions to friends and a hammer found in his possession that some believe was the murder weapon.
John “Bo” Boubede was Smartt’s friend, a drifter who was staying at Keddie at the time of the murders. Like Smartt, Boubede had a history of violence and instability. Witnesses reported seeing the two men together on the night of the murders.
Both Smartt and Boubede died before they could be brought to justice, Smartt in 2000 and Boubede in 1988. Their deaths effectively closed any possibility of prosecution, leaving the case forever unresolved. In 2016, investigators officially named both men as suspects, but this designation came decades too late for criminal proceedings.
The Mystery
The Keddie case is notorious not only for its brutality but for the catastrophic failures of the original investigation. Evidence was mishandled, leads were not pursued, and opportunities for justice were squandered.
The murder weapon, believed to be a claw hammer, was reportedly stolen from the evidence room and never recovered. Critical forensic evidence was lost or contaminated. Witnesses who might have provided crucial information were not adequately interviewed. The small-town sheriff’s department, unprepared for a crime of this magnitude, made errors that would haunt the case for decades.
Recent efforts have attempted to salvage what remains of the investigation. Modern DNA testing has been applied to surviving evidence. Cold case investigators have reexamined witness statements and physical evidence. But the passage of time has claimed witnesses, degraded evidence, and allowed the perpetrators to escape earthly justice.
The Keddie Cabin itself was demolished in 2004, erased from the landscape as if its destruction could somehow erase the horrors that occurred within its walls. But the questions remain, questions that may never be answered about who entered that mountain cabin on an April night in 1981 and committed acts of violence so extreme, so carefully planned, that they left three sleeping children undisturbed while butchering four people in the next room.