Most of us think we know what kind of people our neighbors are but every town, no matter
how small, has dark and violent secrets.
It doesn't get much smaller than Keddie, a Northern California resort community surrounded
by dense forests with a population of less than a hundred people.
In 1981, it became the setting for a gruesome quadruple homicide that is still officially
classified as unsolved.
But a closer look at the evidence reveals that the murderers may have gotten away with
the crime due to a botched police investigation and possible cover up.
This is the true story of the massacre in Cabin 28.
It's April 11, 1981 and 36 year old Glenna Sue Sharp is spending the evening at home
with her 12 year old daughter Tina, her 10 year old son Greg and 5 year old son Rick
as well as their 12 year old friend Justin Smartt.
They're watching an episode of The Loveboat and generally having a quiet evening.
They live in Cabin 28 in the small community of Keddie.
Located 7 miles north of Quincy, California in Plumas County, it was formerly a bustling
resort, but by the early 1980s the resort had been largely abandoned and the cabins
were being rented out by low income families.
The three bedroom cabin is a welcome break for Sue, who had been thrown out of her former
house by her abusive husband a year earlier and had been living in a trailer before moving
to Keddie.
Her oldest daughter Sheila is spending the night at her neighbor's cabin, like she typically
does on Saturday nights.
Sue's oldest son, 15 year old John, and his 17 year old friend Dana Wingate are trying
to hitchhike their way back to Keddie after spending the day in nearby Quincy.
They are last spotted on the road between 9 and 10:15 PM.
Back in Cabin 28, the young kids go to bed and Sue stays up watching TV.
Sometime during the night, two intruders enter the home.
They do so without force, either because Sue lets them in or because the door to the cabin
is unlocked.
The intruders bind Sue's hands and feet with appliance wire and gag her with a pair of
her own panties.
She is then stabbed repeatedly and also bludgeoned with a Daisy Powerline 880 rifle.
It's unclear whether Johnny and Dana are home at this time or whether they walk in later
but either way, they are both bound with medical tape and wire.
Dana is strangled to death by hand and bludgeoned.
John is stabbed and also bludgeoned.
The victims suffer blows from at least two hammers, a steak knife and a butcher knife.
The steak knife had been used with such force that the blade was bent at a 25 degree angle.
For an unknown reason, the intruders leave the three small boys sleeping in the bedroom
unharmed.
Even more mysteriously, Tina is taken from the cabin.
The next morning, Shelia Sharp returns to the cabin in order to fetch clothes for church
when she walks in on the crime scene.
Horrified, she runs back to her neighbor's cabin and alerts them.
Sheila and the cabin's matriarch, Zonita Seabolt, rush across the street to Cabin 25, where
the resort owner lives.
Together they contact the Plumas County Sheriff's Office.
Sheila, Zonita, and Zonita's eldest son Jamie return to Cabin 28.
They go around back and knock on the boys' bedroom window.
To their surprise, the boys are completely unharmed.
Jamie helps Greg, Rick and Justin out of the window and then goes up the back stairs.
He finds the back door open, but the cabin is silent and empty apart from the dead bodies.
The police arrive and find bloody fingerprints on a bottom post of the stairwell leading
to the backdoor, blood on the door handle of Sue's car, stab marks on the walls of the
living room, and a large amount of blood splatter.
The intruders had cut the phone cord in the girls' bedroom but they hadn't taken anything
from the cabin, ruling out the possibility that it was a robbery.
Curiously, Sue's body is the only one covered with a blanket.
In the garbage can of a nearby general store, police find bloody tissue, a red-handled pocket
knife, a cardboard box with blood on it and bloody toilet tissue twisted at the end.
Three years after the murder, fragments of Tina's skull and bones are discovered by a
bottle collector searching for antiques in a remote area called Camp 18 near Feather
Falls, CA.
Suspicion quickly fell on two men: Martin Smartt, who was a neighbor of Sue's living
in Cabin 26 with his wife Marilyn and “Bo” Boubede, whom Marty had met at a VA hospital
where he was being treated for PTSD.
Martin, Bo and Marilyn were questioned after the murders and according to their statements,
they had stopped by Cabin 28 on the day of the murders in order to invite Sue out for
drinks.
She declined their invitation, so they went to the bar without her.
At the bar, Marty became angry over the music that was playing and all three of them went
back to their cabin.
Marilyn claimed she went to bed shortly after, Marty said he made a phone call to the bar
to complain about the music once again and then headed back there with Bo.
Marty was reportedly a friend of Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas and was rumored to have
lived with him for a short time, although Thomas has denied both claims.
There's rumors that the Sheriff also told the two men to get out of town.
Bo had lied to the police about being a former officer, which may have been part of the reason
the police were so lenient when questioning him.
In a bizarre twist, he attempted to shift the blame to Justin but police never seriously
believed that a 12 year old could have committed the murders.
Marty also made a strange unprompted claim that he was missing a hammer with a blue handle.
Years later, in 2016, a hammer matching that description was found by a man metal detecting
near the site of the murders.
The Department of Justice eventually gave the men polygraph tests that they seemingly
passed, however the nature of the tests and the reliability of the agents has also been
called into question.
The DOJ was also contacted years after the murders by Marty's therapist, who said that
Marty had confessed to killing Sue and Tina because Sue had been encouraging Marilyn to
leave him, but this was another thread that was left unexplored by the agents.
After Tina's remains were discovered, but before they had been identified with dental
records, the sheriff's dispatcher received an anonymous call.
The tape was never admitted into evidence and was only rediscovered recently at the
bottom of a box in a unopened envelope in the investigation's files.
Justin's recollection of the event has wavered throughout the years.
It's believed that he had possibly witnessed the murders, but had either blocked out the
memory of the attackers identity due to emotional trauma or was being purposefully misleading
in fear that his stepfather would harm him.
He gave descriptions of the suspects while under hypnosis and even gave a detailed account
of the murders which he claimed to have seen in a dream.
The final damning piece of evidence that was recently discovered was a letter written by
Marty to Marilyn shortly after the crimes.
It read:
Marilyn claims not to remember reading the letter but has confirmed that the handwriting
belongs to her husband, who passed away in 2006.
Bo Boubede died in 1988.
It seems as though the Keddie murders are closer than ever to being solved and maybe
one day soon there'll be justice for Sue Sharp and her family.
If you're interested in learning more about this case, I highly suggest visiting keddie28.com,
where you'll find a lot more details and in-depth discussion of the case.
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