The Keddie Murders: A Deep Dive into Cabin 28

Imagine a place so quiet you can hear the pine needles hit the forest floor. That was Keddie, California, in 1981. A faded postcard of a town. Nestled deep in the Sierra Nevada foothills, it was a former railroad boomtown trying to reinvent itself as a resort. But the paint was peeling. The mood was off. And in April of that year, something walked into Cabin 28 and tore a family apart.

The Keddie Murders aren’t just an unsolved case. They are a nightmare that defies logic. We are talking about a quadruple homicide that happened within earshot of neighbors, involving multiple weapons, extreme rage, and a botched investigation that smells worse than week-old garbage. This is the story of the Sharp family, a missing girl, and a small town holding onto a dark, bloody secret.

The Night Silence Died

It was the late evening of April 11, 1981. Or maybe the very early hours of April 12. The timeline is a blur, much like the alibis of the prime suspects. Glenna “Sue” Sharp, a 36-year-old mother of five, was staying in Cabin 28. She had fled a bad marriage, looking for peace. She didn’t find it.

Inside that cabin were Sue, her fifteen-year-old son John, and John’s friend, seventeen-year-old Dana Wingate. They were just hanging out. Being teenagers. Being a family. But someone else was there, too. Or maybe a group of “someones.”

The violence that ensued was apocalyptic. This wasn’t a robbery gone wrong. This was personal. Vicious. The kind of rage that wants to erase a person from existence.

The Morning After: Sheila’s Discovery

April 12. A Sunday morning. The sun was coming up over the mountains, burning off the mist. Sheila Sharp, Sue’s fourteen-year-old daughter, was walking back from a neighbor’s cabin. She had spent the night at a sleepover next door. She had no idea that her life ended the moment she opened her own front door.

She expected to see her mom making breakfast. Maybe her brothers watching cartoons. Instead, she walked into a slaughterhouse.

In the living room, three bodies lay on the floor. Sue. John. Dana. They were bound. Tied up with electrical wire and medical tape. The scene was so chaotic, so bloody, that Sheila initially thought it was a prank. But the smell hits you first. Copper. Iron. Death. She ran screaming from the cabin.

Overkill: The Weapons and the Wounds

When police arrived, the details became even more disturbing. The killer didn’t just use a gun and leave. No. They got close.

Examination of the bodies revealed a level of brutality that shocked seasoned detectives. All three victims had been bludgeoned with a claw hammer. But that wasn’t enough. Sue and John had been stabbed repeatedly. John’s throat had been cut. It was frenzied.

Dana Wingate had been strangled manually and then beaten with a second weapon. This implies multiple attackers. One person holding him down? Another swinging the hammer? It’s terrifying to think about.

And then there was the knife. Investigators found a steak knife at the scene. It had been used with such savage force that the blade was bent back approximately twenty-five degrees. Think about the strength required to bend steel against bone. That is pure adrenaline. That is hatred.

The Vanishing of Tina Sharp

As police secured the scene, they did a head count. Sue? Dead. John? Dead. Dana? Dead. But wait.

Where was Tina?

Tina Sharp was twelve years old. She should have been in the cabin. Her shoes were there. Her clothes were there. But Tina was gone. She wasn’t among the bodies in the living room. She wasn’t hiding in a closet.

She had been abducted. Taken from a room filled with the corpses of her family. Why? Was she the target all along? Or was she a witness who saw too much and had to be removed? This question would haunt the case for three long years.

The Miracle in the Bedroom

Here is the part that makes no sense. The part that keeps internet sleuths awake at night.

While a massacre was happening in the living room—screaming, hammering, struggles—three young children were in an adjacent bedroom. Alive. Unharmed.

Greg and Rick Sharp (aged ten and five) and their friend Justin Smartt (aged twelve) were found in the morning, apparently having slept through the entire ordeal. How? The walls in Cabin 28 were paper-thin. You could hear a cough from two rooms away. How did they sleep through a triple homicide happening fifteen feet away?

Justin Smartt. Remember that name. He was the sole eyewitness, though he didn’t know it yet. Or maybe he was too scared to speak.

The Shifting Stories of Justin Smartt

Justin’s memory was a mess. A fog. First, he claimed he dreamed of a boat. Then, under hypnosis (which was rushed and handled poorly by the County Sheriff), he started talking about hearing noises. Seeing figures.

He described two men. One with a mustache, one clean-shaven. He recalled arguments. A fight. But his story kept changing. He failed a polygraph. Then he passed one. Years later, as an adult, he underwent professional hypnosis again and claimed to have seen the murders in vivid detail. Was it repressed memory? Or was it the confusion of a traumatized child trying to please adults who wanted specific answers?

The case earned the moniker “Cabin 28” or “The Keddie Murders.” It even inspired the horror film The Strangers. But unlike the movies, the credits never rolled. The bad guys didn’t get caught.

Twenty-nine years later? Still unsolved. But the internet never forgets. Websites like keddie28.com became digital war rooms, archiving police reports and photos, refusing to let the Sharps be forgotten.

Suspects, Lies, and a Town Full of Secrets

Let’s get real. Nothing about Keddie makes sense. If you look at the demographics of this tiny resort town in 1981, it looks less like a vacation spot and more like a hideout for the worst people you can imagine.

It was a magnet for transients. Drifters. The Sharp family was living in a fishbowl surrounded by sharks. We’re talking about known child molesters, drug runners, and criminals living door-to-door. You could throw a rock and hit a felon.

Enter the Neighbors: Cabin 26

Right next door, in Cabin 26, lived Martin “Marty” Smartt and his friend John “Bo” Boubede. If you were writing a script for a villain, you’d write these two.

Marty Smartt was a Vietnam vet with a temper. He was Justin’s stepfather. He was reportedly abusive and angry that Sue Sharp had been counseling his wife, Marilyn, to leave him. He hated Sue. He blamed her for his failing marriage.

And then there was Bo. John Boubede. He wasn’t just some guy. He was a man with a past that read like a rap sheet from a noir novel. Bank robber. One of Chicago’s “Candy Bandits.” He had ties to organized crime. He was reportedly an enforcer. And strangely, he was friends with Marty.

Marty Smartt managed the resort’s kitchen. A few weeks before the murders, he wrote a letter to his wife. A letter that wasn’t found until decades later. It said: “I’ve paid the price of your love & now that I’ve bought it with four peoples lives, you tell me we are through.”

Read that again. “Bought it with four peoples lives.”

The “Investigation” That Wasn’t

So, you have a neighbor who hates the victim. He lives next door. He has a violent friend staying with him. He lacks a solid alibi. Case closed, right?

Wrong.

Marty Smartt was the local Sheriff’s buddy. Sheriff Doug Thomas and Marty were reportedly close. Too close. Instead of grilling Smartt, the police seemed to handle him with kid gloves.

Smartt and Boubede claimed they were at a bar called the Back Door Lounge. They said they left, went home, and slept. But witnesses placed them there acting strange. Boubede, a tough guy mob enforcer, was telling people he was a former cop. He was flashing fake ID. He complained about suffering from impotence—a weird thing to shout about in a bar, unless you’re trying to build an alibi for why you couldn’t possibly rape or murder anyone later that night.

Police interviewed them. It was a joke. A “softball” interview. Then, they let them go. Smartt left town that same day. Boubede vanished back into the shadows.

The Mob Connection: Why the DOJ Stepped In

Here is where the conspiracy theory gains weight. Why were Department of Justice (DOJ) Organized Crime agents sent to this rural backwater immediately? You don’t send the DOJ for a domestic homicide in the woods.

Unless one of the suspects matters. Unless Bo Boubede was an informant or had high-level connections. Jim Rini, a former mob enforcer linked to the 1957 disappearance of reporter Amelia Zelko, was an associate of Boubede. Did the Feds step in to protect Bo, and in doing so, let a quadruple murder slide?

It smells like a cover-up. A big one.

The Discovery of Tina

For three years, the mystery of Tina Sharp remained. Was she alive? Was she sold?

In 1984, a bottle collector was walking through the woods near Feather Falls, about ninety-five miles away from Keddie. He found a skull. A mandible. It was Tina. The rest of her was never found.

This blew the “random drifter” theory out of the water. Why take a body ninety-five miles away? That takes time. Planning. A vehicle. It takes a desire to hide the evidence far, far away from the crime scene.

Even stranger? A mysterious phone call. On the anniversary of the murders, police received a call identifying the location of the remains. Who made the call? We still don’t know.

The Cold Case Warms Up

Why was Marty Smartt, the main suspect, shielded? Why did his wife, Marilyn, who likely knew everything, never face charges? Why was the hammer missing for thirty-five years?

Wait. The hammer.

In 2016, something incredible happened. A metal detectorist found a rusty hammer in a pond near Keddie. It matched the description of the hammer Marty Smartt claimed he had “lost” shortly before the murders. The location was exactly where someone fleeing Cabin 28 might toss a weapon.

Also, an old recording surfaced. A therapist’s tape. On it, Marty Smartt allegedly confesses to killing Sue and Tina, but claims he didn’t mean to kill the boys. He says, “I killed the woman and her daughter.”

Yet, he died in 2000. Boubede died in 1988. They took their secrets to the grave.

What We Know Now

Law enforcement today agrees: the original investigation was a disaster. It was compromised. Corrupt. Sheriff Doug Thomas and the DOJ agents involved seem to have actively looked the other way.

Was it a conspiracy to protect a mob snitch? Was it just a “good ol’ boy” sheriff protecting his drinking buddy? Or was it fear? Were the killers involved in drug trafficking so deep that the local cops were terrified to touch them?

The Legacy of Cabin 28

The cabin itself stood for years, a rotting monument to failure. It became a dark tourist attraction. People broke in to hold séances or take pieces of the wall as souvenirs. Finally, in 2004, it was demolished. The ground is empty now.

But the story isn’t over.

In 2016, new Sheriff Greg Hagwood—who was in high school with the victims—reopened the case. He found the hammer. He found the letter. He stated publicly that there are people still alive who know what happened. People who helped clean up. People who drove the cars. People who stayed silent.

The Unanswered Questions

• Why protect them? What did Boubede and Smartt have on the authorities?
• The Second Knife: Investigators know two distinct knives were used. This confirms two killers.
• Marilyn’s Role: Why was Marilyn Smartt treated as a victim rather than a co-conspirator?
• The DNA: Is there any usable DNA left on the tape found binding the victims?

Mike Gamberg, a former deputy who was fired by the old corrupt sheriff, was brought back to work the case in recent years. “They never told me why I was fired,” Gamberg said. But he knows. He was asking the wrong questions.

This wasn’t just a murder. It was a town-wide betrayal.

The Keddie Murders remain one of America’s most frustrating cold cases. It’s a story of a family slaughtered and a system that shrugged. But as long as the internet digs, as long as new technology emerges, there is hope. Someone knows. And one day, the silence will break.

Originally posted 2016-11-09. Updated with modern findings.

Originally posted 2016-11-09 18:42:29. Republished by Blog Post Promoter