In the spring of 1981, Keddie, California, was the kind of place people moved to when they were trying to start over. A defunct railroad resort in the Sierra Nevada, it had been repurposed into low-cost cabins, the kind of housing you took when you had more kids than options and needed something fast, cheap, and quiet. Cabin 28 was one of those places. It was supposed to be a temporary home, a way station. Instead, it became the site of one of the most brutal and baffling unsolved family murders in American history.
More than forty years later, the Keddie cabin murders remain officially unsolved. The physical cabin is gone, demolished in 2004, but the unanswered questions have only sharpened with time. The basic facts are horrifying. The deeper you go, the more you run into something worse: a sense that the truth may have been within reach from the very beginning—and allowed to slip away.
Glenna “Sue” Sharp was 36 years old in April 1981, raising five children mostly on her own. Born in 1945, she had recently left an abusive marriage, taking her kids and moving first to Quincy, California, before relocating five months before the murders to Keddie, just a few miles away.
Her children were:
John “Johnny” Sharp, 15
Sheila Sharp, 14
Tina Sharp, 12
Ricky Sharp, 10
Greg Sharp, 5
Keddie offered cheap rent and a sense of isolation that, on paper, could be protective: small community, everyone knows everyone, thick woods, and mountain air. The family moved into Cabin 28, a worn but functional unit in the center of the resort area.
Sue was described as quiet, protective, and trying to rebuild something stable out of chaos. She received social assistance, took courses, and tried to maintain the kids’ routines—school, friends, TV, and sleepovers. That last piece would turn out to be a brutal hinge in the story: who slept where, and with whom, on the night of April 11, 1981.
The last day: April 11, 1981
Evening movements and who was where
On April 11, 1981, the family’s activities looked unremarkable from the outside.
Afternoon/early evening:
John (15) and his friend Dana Wingate (17) spent time in Quincy. They were reportedly seen hitchhiking and visiting friends before planning to return to Keddie that night.
Sue remained at the cabin with some of the younger kids.
Sleepover arrangements:
Sue allowed her sons, Ricky (10) and Greg (5), to have their friend Justin (often cited as Justin Eason or Justin Smartt, depending on accounts) over for a sleepover at Cabin 28.
Sheila, Sue’s 14-year-old daughter, arranged to spend the night at a neighboring cabin with a female friend. That decision kept her out of the house—and likely saved her life.
By nightfall, the occupants of Cabin 28 were:
Sue
John
Tina
Ricky
Greg
Justin (the boys’ friend staying over)
John and Dana were out in Quincy but due back.
At some point during the late evening, John and Dana returned to Cabin 28. Exactly how they got there is a point of contention—some reports say they hitchhiked, others that they were dropped off. What’s clear is that by late that night, they were inside Cabin 28 alive. By morning, they would be found bound and murdered in the living room.
The morning of April 12, 1981
On the morning of April 12, 1981, Sheila walked back to Cabin 28 from the neighboring cabin where she’d spent the night. When she opened the front door, she stepped into one of the most gruesome crime scenes in California history.
Inside the living room, three bodies lay on the floor:
Sue Sharp (36)
John Sharp (15)
Dana Wingate (17)
All had been subjected to extreme violence. They had been bound with tape and electrical cords, beaten, and stabbed. Reports describe multiple weapons: a hammer, a knife, and possibly others. Blood spatter and drag marks suggested a prolonged, chaotic attack rather than a quick, targeted killing.
In a small back bedroom, in stark contrast, three young boys were found alive and apparently unharmed:
Ricky (10)
Greg (5)
Justin (around 12)
They had slept through the night—or claimed to. They were discovered later, after Sheila went to a neighbor for help.
One child missing
When authorities began to account for everyone, they realized that 12-year-old Tina was not in the cabin. She was not among the dead, nor found elsewhere in the house or grounds. At first, this was treated as a missing-person situation that might intersect with the homicide. It eventually became clear that Tina was not just a missing witness—she was an abducted fourth victim.
For hours and days, the search focused on nearby woods and roads, based on the assumption that a child might have fled or been taken somewhere in the vicinity. Those searches turned up nothing.
The crime scene and early evidence
From the beginning, the crime scene in Cabin 28 should have screamed familiarity. There were no signs of forced entry, suggesting the killer or killers either:
were let in voluntarily,
knew how to gain entry without damage, or
Entered earlier and waited.
The violence was close-range and sustained. The victims were bound, which implies control and time. Blood patterns suggested that at least some of the attacks took place while the victims were still alive and conscious. The combination of bindings and multiple weapons indicates at least one determined assailant; many investigators believe more than one attacker was likely.
Multiple pieces of physical evidence were recovered, including:
A hammer (one of the likely murder weapons) was at the scene.
A bent kitchen knife
Blood patterns suggesting movement of the an victims
Tape and an electrical cord were used to bind them.
But even at this early point, the investigation suffered. Reports and later reviews suggest:
Poor scene security, with multiple people entering the cabin.
Potential evidence contamination and loss.
Incomplete documentation of what was collected and from where.
The surviving boys and conflicting accounts
The three boys in the back bedroom—Ricky, Greg, and Justin—were initially described as having slept through the entire event. Over time, that story changed, at least for Justin.
Later, Justin would reportedly tell varying versions of dreams, visions, or partial memories of the attack, including:
Seeing men in the house
One or more attackers wearing distinctive glasses
Possibly witnessing parts of the assault.
His accounts have been debated for decades, complicated by his age, the trauma, and potential outside influence. But the idea that three young boys slept through a brutal triple homicide—featuring screaming, binding, bludgeoning, and stabbing—in a small cabin is one of the case’s enduring points of unease.
Tina’s remains: A second crime scene, years later
For three years, Tina Sharp remained officially missing. Then, in 1984, human remains were discovered near Feather Falls in Butte County, approximately 50 miles away from Keddie.
Initially, the remains were unidentified. They included:
A human skull
Additional bone fragments
Some personal items
Through later forensic work, reports indicate that her identity was confirmed by comparison to dental records. Investigators determined that the remains were Tina’s.
This revelation reframed everything:
Tina had not simply vanished during a chaotic crime; she had been abducted and murdered, then dumped far from Keddie.
Whoever killed the family had the time, means, and geographic knowledge to transport her to another county.
The crime was now clearly both a quadruple homicide and a kidnapping.
The discovery site, remote and detached from Keddie, also raised questions: Was this chosen to hide the body carefully, or hastily selected by someone passing through? Had there been a connection between Keddie and Feather Falls—through logging routes, work, or travel patterns—that could point back to a suspect?
Martin “Marty” Smartt
One of the earliest and most persistent names tied to the case is Martin “Marty” Smartt, a neighbor who lived in another Keddie cabin at the time of the murders. He had a direct personal connection to the Sharp family: his stepson was Justin, the boy sleeping in the back room at Cabin 28 that night.
Key points about Smartt include:
He was reportedly volatile and had a history of domestic issues.
He and his wife were known to Sue and the kids.
He allegedly owned a hammer similar to one missing from his tools after the murders.
According to later reports and investigative work, Smartt allegedly confessed to a counselor, stating that he had “killed Sue and Tina,” or words to that effect. The counselor said they communicated this to law enforcement—yet there is no evidence that the confession was meaningfully pursued at the time. Smartt was interviewed but never charged. He later left the area and eventually died in 2000.
John “Bo” Boubede
Smartt’s close associate at the time was John “Bo” Boubede (often spelled “Boute” or “Boubede”), a man with reported ties to organized crime. He was staying with Smartt in Keddie around the time of the murders.
Boubede’s profile raises several red flags:
He was older, with a criminal history and connections outside the region.
He may have had access to money or networks far beyond small-town California.
He, like Smartt, was interviewed in the original investigation and released.
Both men left the area after the murders. Boubede died in 1988, taking whatever he knew with him.
Why weren’t they arrested?
This is the question that has haunted the case for decades.
Reports and later commentary suggest:
Early investigative focus was narrow and inconsistent. Despite multiple indicators pointing toward Smartt and Boubede, law enforcement did not aggressively follow up on key leads.
The alleged confession by Smartt to a counselor appears not to have been fully documented or acted upon at the time.
Evidence handling was weak. Some materials went missing, were mislabeled, or were never properly analyzed.
Sheriff’s officials in later years have acknowledged that the case was mishandled. That admission doesn’t change the outcome—just the bitterness with which observers view the decades that followed.
Re-examining the files
Decades after the murders, new investigators began to revisit the Keddie case as a cold case, bringing in modern forensic methods and a fresh willingness to scrutinize the original investigative work.
Among the steps taken:
Re-examining physical evidence with newer forensic techniques.
Reviewing old witness statements, including those from Justin and other Keddie residents.
Reconstructing a timeline of the night using surviving documentation, interviews, and secondary reports.
Some of this work was fueled not only by official law enforcement but also by journalists, podcasters, and independent researchers who refused to let the case be forgotten.
The recovered hammer
One of the most chilling physical developments came decades after the murders, when a hammer was discovered in a nearby pond in Keddie—believed by some investigators to be consistent with a missing hammer known to be one of the murder weapons.
The significance:
It may support the theory that the killer(s) were familiar with local terrain and disposal spots.
It ties back to reports that a hammer belonging to Smartt had gone missing after the murders.
It strengthens the impression that the original suspects were likely close and known.
The hammer is not, on its own, a smoking gun. But in a case this fraught, even a single object recovered from the landscape feels like a ghost surfacing.
DNA and other forensic pushes
Later efforts reportedly included DNA testing on items preserved from the crime scene. Publicly released information about those results has been limited, but the implication has been that at least some forensic evidence supports the theory of multiple assailants and reaffirms previously named suspects as central figures of interest.
To date, however, no one has been charged.
The Keddie cabin murders remain officially unsolved, but for many investigators and researchers, the narrative has shifted from who did it to why nothing was done when there was still time.
The dominant theory today can be distilled:
The killers were known to the victims and the town.
They likely included Martin Smartt and John “Bo” Boubede, acting together or with at least one additional participant.
A combination of small-town politics, poor investigative practice, and negligence allowed the case to stall.
Key opportunities—like aggressively pursuing Smartt’s allegedly incriminating statements and fully vetting Boubede’s background—were missed.
Many close to the case believe that had the investigation been more rigorous in 1981–1984, at least one arrest could have been made. Instead, witnesses aged, suspects died, and evidence degraded.
In 2004, Cabin 28 was demolished, along with several neighboring cabins, as part of efforts to redevelop or simply clear decaying structures from the Keddie area. On one level, it made sense: the building had long ceased to be a home. It had become a morbid destination for curious visitors and true crime pilgrims.
But destroying the cabin did something else: it removed the physical anchor of the case. No more walls to study, no more floors to walk, no more sense of scale to the horror. What remained was paperwork, memories, and the difficult weight of absence.
For the Sharp family and the community, the case has never really gone away. Every retelling reopens the same wounds:
A mother who left violence to protect her children, only to be murdered in what should have been her sanctuary.
A teenage boy and his friend, caught in the crosshairs of something bigger than them.
A 12-year-old girl was taken from the scene, killed, and discarded miles away, her remains found in the woods like an afterthought.
Younger brothers who slept in a back room, surrounded by horror they could not fully see or articulate.
The Keddie cabin murders continue to fascinate and disturb because they sit at a troubling intersection of themes:
Domestic violence and small-town secrecy: Sue’s effort to escape an abusive marriage and start over is a familiar story. The brutal end to that story, in a place that should have offered safety, raises unsettling questions about how well communities really protect vulnerable families.
Institutional failure: This isn’t just a story about a monstrous act. It’s a story about what happens when an investigation fails—through incompetence, indifference, or worse. The sense that the truth was within reach and then mishandled is harder to live with than a clean mystery.
Erasure and memory: The cabin is gone. The suspects are dead. Key witnesses are older, and some memories are contested. What remains is an archive of partial facts and a growing body of narrative reconstructions—articles, podcasts, documentaries—that try to make meaning from what’s left.
A child taken and discarded: Tina’s abduction and the later discovery of her remains miles away elevate this crime from horrifying to mythic. In true crime and folklore, the image of a child taken from the home and hidden in the woods is one of the darkest archetypes. Here, that archetype is painfully real.
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