The events with which we will be concerned occurred in the early morning hours of April 12th or possibly the last hours of April 11ith in 1981. The location was Cabin 28 of the Keddie Campground in Keddie, California. Before I talk about the murders themselves I want to discuss the community in which they took place. Keddie was a small town originally built as a resort, which had since dwindled in size and affluence. The campground consisted of a hotel, restaurant, store, post office, and boarding house in addition to the rental cabins. One source I read described it as “increasingly itinerant” and this is an aspect that could have some bearing on the murders. There was a high turnover rate among residents, as well as non-residents who entered and left the community at frequent intervals.
The murder victims were Glenna Susan “Sue” Sharp, age 36, her 15-year old son John Sharp, Dana Wingate, 17, a (male) friend of John’s, and Sue’s 12 year-old daughter Tina Sharp. The bodies of Sue, John, and Dana were found in the cabin living room on the morning of April 12th, but Tina’s remains would not be found for another three years at a remote location almost 100 miles south of Keddie (this too is something that stands out enough we should keep it in mind). Also present in the home that night were Sue’s two younger sons Rick and Greg, ages 10 and 5, and a 12 year old friend named Justin Eason. The three boys had evidently been sleeping in one of the bedrooms during the attack, and we will discuss them in more detail later. Sue had a 14 year-old daughter, Sheila, who was spending the night at a neighbor’s and who would be the one to discover the scene and raise the alarm at approximately 8:00 am. The Sharps had lived in Cabin 28 since November of the previous year. Sue had left her husband, James Sharp, on the east coast in 1979 following alleged abuse, and taken her children to California where she had family. They lived in a neighboring town for a brief period of time before settling in Keddie.
I will talk some about the general situation at the Sharp home as well as about the known sequence of events on April 11. While the family was generally well-liked, Sue Sharp was struggling to raise and provide for her large family. She appears to have been unemployed or minimally employed during the period she and her family lived at Keddie, although some sources state that she was enrolled in some form of training program. She may have had a few romantic relationships–one neighbor remarked that he frequently heard and saw her fighting with an apparent boyfriend–but none of these relationships seems to have been especially serious or long lasting. Other residents of the campground observed that the kids were often unsupervised and mostly allowed to do what they wanted. At some point after their move to California, John Sharp became close friends with Dana Wingate, another teenager from the nearby town of Quincy. At different points in the past, both John and Dana had low-level run-ins with the law. John had stolen marijuana from a home, and Dana is described in at least one source as being “on probation”, although the exact nature of his crimes is unspecified. In the wake of the murder, rumors would arise about Dana having stolen a large amount of drugs, but there is no documentation that anything like this happened and there were no drugs or drug paraphernalia at the murder scene. On the afternoon and evening of the 11th, they were observed trying to get a ride back to Keddie, where Dana planned to spend the night with John. It appears that multiple people saw them, with the latest time being 10:15 pm. Tina was known as a nice child, but she struggled with school and was enrolled in a special education program. That evening, she had spent some time at the neighbors’ house with Sheila before returning to Cabin 28 around 9:30 pm, presumably to go to bed.
Here is a hand-drawn map of Cabin 28. Based on pictures the cabin was built on a hillside, so that the back part of the house was at a higher elevation relative to the ground than the front part. There were two entrances, one in front opening into the living room and another opening off a porch in the back, with stairs leading down to the ground. There were two bedrooms in the cabin proper, the one in the front being shared by the younger boys and the one in the back by Sue and her daughters. There was also a downstairs room accessible only by another door on the ground level in the back, that John used as his room. All of the bodies save Tina’s were found bound in the living room, with John being closest to the door and Sue furthest into the home. Sue had been gagged with a bandanna and a pair of underwear as well as having her wrists and ankles bound with medical tape. The mouth gags, too, were secured with tape. She had been stabbed in the chest and neck, and there was blood on the soles of her bare feet. There was an imprint on the side of her head later determined to belong to the barrel of a BB gun. John, along with Dana, had been bound with electrical cords that were believed to have come from the room shared by Sue and her daughters. Both of the teenage boys had blunt force trauma to the head, and John had a slash wound to his throat. Dana, however, had been beaten, but his ultimate cause of death was manual strangulation. There was a sofa cushion beneath his head. Sue was in her nightgown and partially covered with a blanket, but both John and Dana were fully clothed and wearing their shoes and jackets. None of the victims had been sexually assaulted and none would have any drugs or alcohol in their systems.
One source said that there was a tool box taken from the home, and a lockbox belonging to Sheila Sharp was forced open. A decorated box from the kitchen, which Tina Sharp had made for school, was also reportedly missing. The house phone was off the hook with the cord cut, and there were nicks and gauge marks on the walls of the living room where it seemed that most or all of the assault had taken place. There was a bloodstain on the outer part of the door to the room where the younger boys were sleeping, as well as on its inner edge, indicating one of the assailants had opened it and looked inside at some point. There were also bloodstains on the stair railing outside the backdoor, and shoeprints belonging to at least one man in the dirt behind the cabin. A small amount of blood was found in Sue’s room at the back of the house.
A clawhammer and a knife, all with traces of blood, were left on a table inside the cabin. Another knife, blade bent, was lying on the floor next to the victims, evidently having been damaged during the assault. There was no sign of the BB gun, and it appeared that an additional hammer had been used besides the one left on the table. Interestingly, some of these weapons appeared to have come from the Keddie Cabin itself. Law enforcement learned that the clawhammer had come from the back porch of the cabin, indicating that the killer(s) had not only exited through the back door but entered that way as well. One source included a statement from police stating that there was “reason to believe that a suspect had been cut”–implying, as far as I can tell, that there was some blood at the scene not from any of the victims.
After the discovery on the morning of April 12th, neighbors helped Rick, Greg, and Justin exit out their bedroom window so that they would not have to walk through the grisly scene in the living room. Although police were called almost immediately, it would be several hours before enough people put the pieces together to realize that 12 year-old Tina Sharp was unaccounted for. The three boys said that they had slept through the attack, and as far as I know Rick and Greg would never claim otherwise. Justin Eason, however, would later make some claims that complicated this already-messy narrative. Before I come to them, I want to move ahead to the April 1984 discovery of Tina Sharp’s remains.
Almost exactly three years after the Cabin 28 murders, a bottle collector at a remote deer hunting camp near Feather Falls found part of a human skull. A search of the area immediately surrounding the skull would reveal more bones, an empty medical tape dispenser, pieces of a pair of Levi’s jeans, a blue nylon coat, part of a boot, a piece of cord, and a “pink belt-like material knotted in a loop.” Shortly after the discovery but before the remains were formally identified as those of Tina Sharp, an anonymous man phoned the police and suggested they might be hers. To this day, this mysterious call intrigues investigators. When the bones were examined, they were consistent with Tina having been killed at the same time or shortly after her mother and brother. They were too decomposed to specify a definitive cause of death, although her skull appeared undamaged.
The investigation had produced few solid leads. While he had initially said he had slept through the event along with the younger Sharp boys, Justin Eason eventually said that he had a strange dream the night the murders took place. In it, he was watching the show Loveboat, but that Sue was also in the dream and she was bleeding. John and Dana were also present, and fighting with an unknown man (the kids had in fact been watching Loveboat before going to bed that night). Justin was hypnotized to see if he could recall more details, and during this process he said that two men had attacked Sue and that the teenage boys had arrived and joined the fight. At some point, Tina arrived on the scene, and one of the men took her out through the back door.
As you might expect, there is some controversy over how to interpret Justin’s testimony. Speaking personally, I have suspicions. Obviously, I have not witnessed the questioning or the hypnosis, but I think that a 12 year-old who had previously denied witnessing anything at all who be extremely vulnerable to leading questions and coaching, even if the investigators themselves were not consciously aware of doing so. There is evidence that points to more than one attacker and there is evidence that these attackers left through the back door, and some people see this as proof that Justin really did witness the attack. However, I think it is just as likely that the police questioned him in such a way that his answers supported the evidence they already had. Either way, two composite sketches of the attackers were drawn based on the men Justin said he had glimpsed.
Persons of the Interest
Given the prior abuse allegations, one of the first people detectives wanted to talk to was Sue Sharp’s ex-husband, James Sharp. James Sharp was serving in the Navy and living in Connecticut, and as it turned out his alibi was as solid as it is possible for an alibi to be. No only was he on the other side the continent, but his duties would not have permitted him to make the trip to California and back.
Two names that come up again over and over in connection with the Keddie case are Marty Smartt and John “Bo” Boubede. As both men are now deceased, many people believe their involvement in the crime is all but confirmed. Marty Smartt was a neighbor of the Sharps, and his wife, Marilyn, was a friend of Sue’s. At the time of the murders, his friend Bo was staying with him and his family at their cabin. Marty was reportedly an abusive husband, and Sue was urging Marilyn to leave him, giving him a possible reason to resent her. In the days following the murder, he made a point of telling investigators that his work hammer had recently been stolen.
On the night of April 11th, Marty, Marilyn, and Bo went to the local bar attached to the campground. They returned briefly to their cabin around 11:00 pm, at which point Marilyn went to bed while the two men went back out. They stayed at the bar until near closing time at 1:30 am. Marilyn Smartt claimed to have awoken around 2:00 am and seen them burning something in their woodstove. She would make other statements over the years casting suspicion on her husband and Bo, although none could ever be confirmed. When it comes to the possible involvement of the two men, there are a lot of rumors that get tossed around that don’t seem especially well supported, such as Boubede being a valued drug informant for police or Smartt being good buddies with the then-sheriff. However, there are some pieces of evidence that demand a bit more scrutiny.
There was, for instance, the matter of a letter Marty sent to Marilyn shortly after the murders, while the two were separated and he was living in Reno. To many, this letter is a smoking gun. In it, he pleads to reconcile with her, and says that he paid for their relationship at the cost of “four lives.” It is especially curious that he specifies four lives, when Tina was not yet confirmed to have been murdered. However, this apparent confession may be misleading and out of context. I have seen a copy of this letter in the archives linked below, and when combined with previous comments in the same letter, it seems more likely that the four lives are those of Marty Smartt’s children from a previous relationship that he left when he became involved with Marilyn. Then again, there is testimony from a VA counselor that Marty saw stating that he had spoken of committing an actual murder, and that he was explicitly referring to the ones at Keddie in 1981. During this confession, Marty allegedly denied killing John or Dana, but said he had used a hammer to kill Sue and Tina. This is contradicted by Tina’s skull, which showed no evidence of having been struck by a hammer. As to who did kill John and Dana, Smartt evidently did not say.
There is another big issue relating to Smartt and Boubede: Justin Eason was Marty Smartt’s stepson. If Smartt was involved in the murders, he would have committed them with his own 12 year-old stepson sleeping in the next room. Now, I have been fairly overt in my skepticism regarding Justin Eason’s testimony, so I don’t think his failing to identify his stepfather as one of the attackers necessarily means much. What I do find doubtful is that Smartt would have chosen the night that Justin was staying over at Cabin 28 to commit three homicides and an abduction there. If he was involved at all, he almost certainly did not know Justin was present, at least until he or his companion opened the door to check on the boys’ bedroom. I actually do wonder if some of the strange things about the scene can be attributed to the killer(s) not realizing how many people were actually in the cabin, but I will explore this in more depth when I reach my own conclusions.
Before I move onto other suspects, there is one last thing that bothers me about Marty Smartt: During a police interview, when asked about Justin being in the cabin, Smartt said that the boy might have been “awake” and that he was quiet enough that “I wouldn’t have heard him.” I as in he, Marty, not a hypothetical attacker. It could mean nothing, but it’s a very strange and unfortunate slip of the tongue.
There is another pair of men who came under scrutiny from law enforcement, named Henry Thompson and Charles Walke. How exactly they came to the attention of police is a little hazy, with some sources saying an unknown person called to say that a man they knew, a railroad worker named Henry Thompson, had been telling his coworkers he and a friend had committed the murders. Apparently, the coworkers had already been calling him the “Keddie machete” and he told the story to address the taunts, an account he later claimed was entirely fabricated. Other sources say that Thompson himself came forward to tell police about a truck he and his friend Charles Walke saw parked at a gas station outside Keddie, into which some men were loading something, and that subsequent investigations revealed the “Keddie machete” rumors.
None of this would stand out as much more than gossip and perhaps a man looking for attention but for something interesting that Pat Brown points out in her video about the case linked below. The story went that the two men had been visiting a friend in Livermore on April 11th. They drove back to Keddie together and arrived in the early morning hours of April 12th, planning to visit either Walke’s girlfriend or Thompson’s brother-in-law, who lived at the campground. This drive would have taken them through Feather Falls, close to the hunting camp where Tina Sharp’s remains would be found. It was upon entering town that they saw the mysterious truck. The brother-in-law not being home, Thompson dropped off Walke and went to his own home, where his mother said he arrived around 3:30 or 4:00 am.
In the version of the story that Thompson allegedly told to coworkers, he and Walke attended a party at or near the campground and took LSD. The two of them then went to the Keddie cabin where they “played a game” with the victims. Thompson said he left the cabin after Walke went “berserk” with his murderous assault. Neither man claimed to know the Sharps, but they did know Dana Wingate from school. In another oddity, Thompson had a 13 year-old sister who was friends with Sheila Sharp. The sister claimed Sheila had invited her to spend the night on the 11th but she was babysitting and was unable to do so. The sister also said that Thompson did know John and Sheila Sharp, albeit only slightly.
There are things about this story that are compelling and there are things that are less so. Regardless as to exactly how or why it may have happened, it is interesting that Thompson was talking about killing people that he apparently knew. The story about his sister being invited to spend the night with Sheila seems a bit sketch since Sheila was spending the night with a different friend, but then again Sheila could have changed her plans when Thompson’s sister wasn’t able to come over. The Feather Falls connection is intriguing, as the dump site of Tina’s body is one of the case’s more jarring elements. That being said, there are some problems with the story beyond simple vagueness. For instance, there is the timing. The friend that Thompson and Walke had visited in Livermore said they left around 10:00 pm on the night of the 11th. According to Google Maps, Livermore to Keddie is a seven hour drive. That puts them as getting to Keddie around 5:00 am, later than the likely timeframe of the murders. It even makes it unlikely that Thompson got home at 4:00 am when his mother said he did. It would have been harder yet for them to get to Keddie, go to a party, get high on LSD, and commit the murders during this time frame. I’m not ruling out anything, mind you, but at least one of these times has to be wrong if the men were involved.*
While Thompson and Walke did in fact drive past the area where Tina’s body would later be found, there is nothing to indicate that that they were especially familiar with that area. It’s also not clear that they would have driven back through that area at any point. It’s never stated where either man actually lived, but given that Walke’s girlfriend and Thompson’s family lived in Keddie, it seems as though that was where they had their closest ties. Had there been confirmation that one or both of them drove back through Feather Falls in the following days, I would have been intrigued, as this would have been an opportunity to dispose of the body. But I have not seen anything that indicates this. As a final note, I would also be quite curious as to what made Thompson’s colleague’s start calling him the “Keddie Machete” to begin with.
Another person of interest who is not often brought up is a man named Joel Lipsey. Lipsey was Tina Sharp’s teacher, and he was alleged to have an inappropriate interest in her. He was investigated, and some sources will say that he had a solid alibi. His original alibi, as it appears in the documents linked below, is that he was one a date until 11:30 at night, at which point he dropped his date off and went home. Depending on where he lived relative to the campground, and whether or not he lived alone, this may actually be a less-then-solid alibi. While the actual time of the attacks has never been confirmed, but it has been estimated as being between 12:00 and 3:00 am, with one neighbor reporting “moaning” around 1:00 am. However, I still think he is one of the less likely suspects. If he regularly saw Tina at school, surely he could have found a way to abduct her without having to deal with an entire cabin full of people?
My Thoughts
In case it is unclear, there are things that interest me about each of the main suspects, but I don’t think the cases against any of them are particularly strong. This case is an odd one, with multiple victims found in two locations, and it has aspects that point in different directions. There were items stolen from the cabin, but with no evidence of searching or ransacking the other rooms it seems unlikely that robbery was the prime motive. It is quite possible (although impossible to determine) that Tina Sharp was sexually assaulted before her murder, but there’s no way of telling if this was the main motive or simply a matter of opportunity. I think there was more than one attacker, probably two. Most investigators seems to think this, and the use of multiple weapons seems to support this idea. Going forward, I will refer to the killers in the plural.
One thing that struck me about the scene was the strong emphasis on keeping Sue Sharp quiet during the attack. She was gagged with two items of clothing, and the gags were kept in her mouth with tape. All of the victims in the cabin were bound, but only she was gagged. This could mean a few different things. Maybe the initial plan was to remove her alive from the cabin, and they did not want her to alert the neighbors. Maybe she was one of the first victims to be attacked, but then the scene was unexpectedly interrupted by John and Dana. At that point one of the attackers held Sue and possibly Tina as a hostage while the other bound the boys. Some people have pointed to the blood on Sue’s feet as evidence that the attack was already in progress when she entered the living room, while others have pointed out there is no mention of bloody footprints and that her feet could have been that way because the whole seen was splattered with blood. It could simply mean that she was stabbed at least once before being forced to the ground and having her ankles bound.
Why was Tina’s body deposited so far from the primary crime scene? There is some speculation that she was the target, and although this seems like a highly inefficient way to kidnap a 12 year-old, that’s not a possibility I can entirely discount. Maybe the simplest explanation is that she was removed from the scene because that is what the perpetuators came to do. There is another possibility that occurred to me–what if the attackers arrived at the cabin looking for Sheila Sharp, who was not present? Maybe they ended up taking Tina when they couldn’t find Sheila. The secondary scene does interest me, because of the items found with Tina’s remains. It’s never been proven that they were all linked with her, but the empty medical tape dispenser could be linked to the medical tape used at the Keddie scene. It was reported that her shoes and jacket were missing from the cabin, and pieces of a boot and jacket were found with the bones in the woods, as well as blue jean material. Maybe Tina had never changed out of her day clothes for unknown reasons, or maybe her kidnappers forced her to get dressed (again, unknown reasons). Of most interest to me is the piece of cord and the material “knotted into a loop.” Could this be an indication that she too was bound during her abduction?
John Sharp and Dana Wingate were believed to have hitchhiked to the cabin, but who gave them the ride? One source–and only one–said that this person had been identified and cleared, but no other details were available. This is entirely possible, and it could be that whoever gave them a ride dropped them off at the entrance to the campground itself and did not even go near the cabin. I actually find this more likely, as the fact that they were still wearing jackets and shoes is more indicative of them interrupting an attack in progress than with inviting their soon-to-be murderer inside with them.
It’s well worth noting that some of the weapons and most of the binding materials came from the home. The kerchief used in Sue’s gag reportedly belonged to John, and the underwear was Sue’s own. Only the BB gun, one of the hammers, the knife, and the medical tape was brought to the scene. The clawhammer was likely picked up from the back porch as the attackers entered, simply as an extra weapon. Based on this, it seems likely that they did plan to control, bind, and possibly kill victims at the scene, but they may not have expected to deal with as many people as ended up being present. This could be because they did not know the inhabitants of the cabin, at least not well, or because the attack was somewhat spur-of-the moment. Maybe they only had plans of kidnapping one person, and thought they could do so quickly.
Whether her abduction been planned or was more opportunistic in nature, I wonder if maybe the attackers drove Tina the hour south immediately after the murders, perhaps killing her there. It’s also possible she was murdered closer to Keddie and hidden, perhaps for days, before the body was discarded. Either way, I’m curious as to if any of the suspects had connections with that place. Had any of them hunted there, owned property in the area, or had family who did? There had to have been closer places to dispose of a body. Why travel to such a remote and distant place unless it was one you already knew about? None of the people we have talked about had any known connection to the place, but what about anyone else living in or connected to the Keddie Campground at the time, or about Sue’s ex-boyfriends?
There have been brief spurts of activity in this case, but nothing definitive. In 2016, a hammer was recovered from a dry pond near the campground entrance, although there was no obvious connection between it and the murders. Former Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood, who reopened the case in 2013, has claimed that there were “at least six living suspects”, and that DNA recovered from a piece of medical tape was matched to a living suspect. In the Unsolved No More video about this case, the host, Ken Mains, stated that some of the DNA from the scene was matched to Justin Eason, the 12 year-old neighbor who had been spending the night. If true, it is possible that this is the result of contamination, as Justin was present in the home and had likely spent time there in the past. However, this could link the tape to the home Justin shared with his stepfather, Marty Smartt, who has long been considered a person of interest.
If I had to reconstruct what I think happened, it would go something like this: the attackers entered through the back door, bringing a hammer, BB gun, and tape. One of them picked up the clawhammer found on the back porch, and they entered into the kitchen/dining area, disconnecting the telephone. Sue Sharp may have come out to see what was going on, perhaps wrapping the blanket around herself as she did so, or the attackers might have gone directly to the bedroom she shared with Sheila and Tina. If the latter is the case, it could indicate that they knew who slept in the room and that they had come specifically seeking Sue, Sheila, or Tina. They then forced Sue and Tina out of bed and to leave the room and began tying them up. They may have grabbed the electrical cords at this point, or they may have returned to get them when the teenage boys entered the scene. Sue could have been stabbed during her removal from the room, leaving the blood evidence, or the droplets might have come from the attackers returning to the bedroom later on. At some point, John and Dana came home, and the attackers were forced to change their plans to control two more people. They then began to stab and bludgeon the bound victims. According to Ken Mains’ video about this case, there is evidence that Dana Wingate got free of his restraints. Perhaps one of the attackers saw this, and, having set their weapon aside, manually strangled him instead, using the sofa cushion to silence him. At some point after the assault, one of attackers looked in the other room and glimpsed the sleeping boys. Not knowing how many people were in the room, or simply not wanting the scene to spiral more out of control than it already had, they grabbed a bound Tina and fled the scene out the backdoor to a car parked somewhere nearby. They did this either because they planned to, they decided to on the spur of the moment, or simply because they were fleeing the scene in a hurry.
This is of course entirely speculation on my part and should not be read as anything else. I also toyed with an alternate scenario in which John and Dana were picked up by the attackers, who then followed them inside. Yet I think the layout of the scene more closely matches the former scenario. The boys still had their jackets and shoes on and were lying near the front door, even though there is evidence that the killers entered through the back door. Also, some things, namely the severing of the telephone cord and the careful binding and gagging of Sue Sharp, make me think that the killers started out fairly methodical and it in control of a scene that became more chaotic as more people entered it.
This is a very extensive case, with a lot of details, theories, and somewhat contradictory pieces of evidence. I have not really been able to discuss the victims themselves in depth or give them the attention they deserve. Therefore, I want to conclude with a quote from Sheila Sharp, in reference to her mother. “She was a kind of and loving mother who was doing her very best to raise five children alone. She was dutiful in her attention to each of us, and while we lived in relative poverty, we also lived in a home of love.”
Resources
The Keddie Murders Methodical Breakdown: A Real Cold Case Detective’s Opinion (Ken Mains)
The Keddie Murders: Which Theory is Best? (Profiling With Pat Brown) (This is the video that details the case against Thompson and Walke).
Keddie Murders: Cabin 28-The Keddie Murders, Pt. I
Keddie Murders: Cabin 28–The Keddie Murders Pt. II (both parts one and two were posted on Youtube by keddie28 (which does not support the positions taken in the documentary, and in fact appears to have posted the videos as examples of what they do not want to viewer to believe).
Keddie Cabin Murders: The Unsolved Mystery that Haunts California (the Midnight Crows Chronicles)
The Keddie Murders by Unresolved
Keddie murders revisited part 1: New evidence links living suspect to grisly scene
Keddie murders revisited part 2: following the clues
Keddie Murders Revisited–Part III
Plumas County Sheriff Seeks Pair of Men in Keddie Tripple [sic] Slaying
Fourth Victim Found in Slaying
Mother, 2 Teenagers Slain in Plumas Hamlet
Search for Keddie Killers Continues Six Years Later
Tapatalk-Keddie Cold Case (includes original police reports, home layout, autopsy diagrams, the original report on the discovery of Tina Sharp’s remains and the other items found, interviews with Chucke Walker, Henry Thompson, Joel Lipsey, and other original documents).
*Did people in California in 1981 not sleep or pay for gas? Different time and place I guess.
L.R. Gordan's Crime Writing 
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