MURDERS: Keddie Cabin Murders

 An astonishingly vicious and frenzied attack that took four lives but people inside the cabin didn’t hear a thing.

On the 12th of April 1981, fourteen-year-old Sheila Sharp went back home to resort cabin 28 after sleeping over next door. She found three members of her family brutally murdered in the living room as soon as she opened the door.

The second that what had happened sunk in, Shelia ran back to cabin 27 screaming for help. A member of the family ran to the co-owner Jan Albin’s cabin for help. Jan called the police.

Sheila remembered that there were still four people meant to be inside the cabin that weren’t in the living room. Tina Sharp (12), Greg Sharp (5), Rick Sharp (10) and Justin Smartt (12). Without letting the children go through the living room, the family from cabin 27 helped three boys climb out of the bedroom window. Tina wasn’t with them.

Someone from cabin 27 went inside the home through the backdoor, checking if anyone was somehow still living and trying to see if Tina was hiding.

When police entered the cabin, they found three of potentially four murder weapons used; a hammer and two knives. One of the knives, a steak knife, had been bent to roughly 30° angle during the attack.

The three victims found were Susan Sharp (36), John Sharp (15) and Dana Wingate (17).
Susan was on her side, nude from the waist down with her mouth gagged by a blue bandana and her underwear, it was all held in place by medical tape. She was stabbed in the chest with her throat slashed going through her larynx and nicking her spine. There was also the imprint of the butt of a Daisy 880 Powerline BB/Pellet rifle on her temple. Her cause of death was from her stab wounds.
John had his throat slashed and blunt force trauma to his head from a claw hammer. He died from his stab wounds.
Dana had multiple head wounds and was manually strangled. He died from asphyxiation.

Under further investigation, it was determined that the main attack was located in the living room but blood was found in one of the bedrooms, on both bedroom doors and the outside handrail of the backsteps. Susan and one of the boys also had blood on the bottom of their feet/shoes meaning they were trying to escape during the attack and went through their blood.

Plumas County Search and Rescue team began searching for the missing Tina almost instantly. They looked around the Keddie area and found nothing at all. An all-points-bulletin (APB) was sent out to Lassen, Butte and Sierra counties and into Reno. It described Tina as having long blonde hair and a slight build, she was last seen wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt. But the outfit description was most likely outdated as it was from the night before the attack. The APB also asked the same areas to check local hospitals for anybody entering with knife wounds, they believed that the attackers would have most likely injured themselves during the attack.

In search for any leads, police tried piecing the victims’ last known movements together. Multiple witnesses said they had seen John and Dana trying to thumb a ride near the corner of Cresent Street and Lawrence Street in Quincy around 9 to 10 pm. Afterwards, it’s unknown exactly what the boys did. Somehow the boys got back to the cabin in the following ten hours.

Investigators quickly ruled out robbery as a motive for the attack since, from what they could tell nothing was missing from the cabin. It was theorised the attack was loosely planned and 2 or more assailants were involved, one bringing a hammer to the attack.

It was initially reported that everyone slept through the attack but Justin Smartt changed his statement, revealing he had witnessed the attack from the bedroom doorway. This changed again Justin stated he had dreamt about the attack, and a psychologist evaluated all of Justin’s statements and came to the conclusion that Justin had witnessed the murders but as a defence mechanism turned what he saw into a dream.

Justin described his dream in multiple sessions of hypnosis. In one session, he described seeing two men, one with a moustache and long hair and the other with shorter hair and a clean-shaven face. One was holding a hammer in one hand and a pocket knife in the other, he used the knife to slash Susan’s chest.
In a different session, Justin said that Tina woke up during the attack and went to check out what was happening. One of the men snatched Tina and carried her through the kitchen and out the back door, this potentially explains the blood on the handrail outside. The man returned to the living room alone shortly after.

In the first few weeks, eight investigators worked around the clock to try and find anything that would lead to the killers. They started a Secret Witness program and followed every tip until the very end. There were even a couple of sketches released of men that police were looking to speak with. “They’re still not necessarily suspects but they were around the area and vanished shortly after the crimes. They were seen by more than one witness,”. These men were never identified.

There was speculation that the attackers had taken Tina for sexual purposes and that she was somewhere still alive, being held captive. That belief was still in place for three years when Tina’s body was found.

In April 1984 a bottle hunter was near Feather Falls, around 100 miles away southeast of Keddie, when they found human remains. Those remains were sent to a lab for analysis and identification, it was officially confirmed that it was Tina Sharp. An M.E. put her time of death sometime after November 1st 1981 which meant she was potentially alive for six months after the initial murders. Her cause of death is unknown.

As the case remains unsolved to this day there are only rumours and theories of who and why the brutal attack was committed.

One of the main theories out there is that the murderers were Martin Ray Smartt and John Boubede.
Smartt was neighbours with the Sharp family and Justin Smartt’s stepfather. His wife, Marilyn, was believed to have been taking counselling from Susan, working to divorce Smartt who it is suspected was abusive and having an affair. There was also speculation that Smartt was a key player in Keddie’s drug problem at the time. His best friend, Boubede, reportedly had ties to organized crime in Chicago. Both of them had criminal records.

On the night of the murders, Smartt and Boubede were seen in a local Keddie bar dressed in three-piece suits and sunglasses. According to other patrons, they were “acting weird” and seemingly trying to attract attention.

If this theory stands, investigators believe that Susan was the main target and the children were killed as they had witnessed the crime.

The police questioned Smartt about the murders, in the questioning Smartt revealed that one of his hammers had gone missing in recent weeks. Shortly after this questioning, Smartt and Boubede moved from Keddie, California to Klamath Falls, Oregon. After the move, Smartt wrote a letter home to Marilyn, it’s unclear exactly how this is public knowledge but it is known that the letter ended with.
“I’ve paid the price for your love and now I’ve bought it with four people’s lives.”.

The Keddie Cabin murders remain unsolved to this day.