On April 12, 1981, Sheila Sharp returned to Cabin 28 in Keddie and discovered her mother Sue, brother John and his friend Dana Wingate dead. Twelve-year-old Tina Sharp was missing; her remains were found in 1984. The surviving family’s experience should not be replaced with an imagined crime scene.
What happened at Keddie Cabin 28?
The Keddie Cabin 28 murders remain one of California’s most haunting unsolved murder cases, centered on the deaths of Sue Sharp, her son John, his friend Dana Wingate, and the disappearance of Tina Sharp. It still matters because the physical scene inside the cabin — who was found there, who was missing, and what evidence appeared to point in several directions at once — created a true crime puzzle that has never fully settled.
That feeling of a case trapped inside its own walls is part of why stories like the Amy Mihaljevic case keep holding readers: once a place becomes the last known setting of a crime, every doorway, object, and silence starts to feel important.
Sue Sharp moved to Northern California with her children after separating from her husband. The family settled in Cabin 28. Descriptions of what she must have felt there are speculation, rather than documented testimony.
John Sharp was fifteen, Dana Wingate seventeen, Sheila fourteen and Tina twelve. Sheila spent the night next door. Three younger boys were in Cabin 28 and survived unharmed. The full sequence of movements and violence has not been established.
Nothing about that setup looks unusual at first. That is part of what gives the case its staying power. The house was full enough that it should not have become a perfect stage for mystery. People were nearby. Children were sleeping in the next room. Another cabin sat only steps away. Yet sometime during the night, the ordinary shape of that home collapsed.
Sheila found Sue, John and Dana dead in the living room. The victims had been bound and violently attacked. The scene does not, by itself, establish a personal motive, duration or order of attacks.
And then there was the detail that made the whole house feel even stranger: Tina Sharp was gone.
That absence changed the emotional center of the case immediately. This was no longer only a triple homicide. It was also a house with a missing child inside its story, and that meant every detail in Cabin 28 became loaded with a second kind of tension. Investigators were not just asking who had killed three people. They were also asking what had happened between the violence in the living room and the disappearance of Tina.
Timeline of Events
- April 11–12, 1981: The killings take place overnight at Cabin 28.
- Evening: Sheila leaves to spend the night next door in Cabin 27. Tina later returns to Cabin 28 after spending time with neighbors.
- Night of April 11 to early April 12: Sue, John, Dana, Tina, and the younger boys are inside or connected to Cabin 28 during the hours when the attack is believed to have occurred.
- During the night: The exact timing and sequence of the attacks remain uncertain.
- Morning of April 12: Sheila returns and discovers Sue, John, and Dana dead in the living room. Tina is missing.
- 1984: Tina Sharp’s remains are found miles away in Butte County, turning the case into a confirmed quadruple homicide.
- 2013 onward: Renewed attention brings old evidence, old suspects, and possible overlooked leads back into public view.
Three boys survived unharmed in a bedroom, while three victims were discovered in the living room and Tina was missing. Those facts raise questions, but do not establish what the boys heard or a complete sequence of the crime.
Keddie is not just a case about suspects. It is a case about a room.
Bindings, injuries and weapons were part of the evidence. They should not be converted into a confident account of a confrontation escalating through stages. Whether particular victims arrived after an attack began remains a theory.
That is one reason the case stayed alive far beyond the usual news cycle. People do not just remember the names. They remember the image of a cabin where the physical evidence seemed loud, but the final answer stayed silent.
What Doesn’t Add Up
- The house was not isolated enough for this to feel invisible. Cabin 28 was in a lived-in area, with neighbors close by.
- Three younger boys survived in the home. Their presence raises constant questions about timing, movement, and motive.
- Tina Sharp was missing from the original scene. Her absence made the crime immediately more complicated than a single burst of violence.
- Some witness accounts and later statements conflicted. That kept investigators and the public from settling on one clean version of events.
- The case carried suspicion early, but no final resolution. Strong suspicion without charges is one of the main reasons the story still feels unfinished.
Martin Smartt and John “Bo” Boubede were named as suspects in reporting, but neither was charged and both later died. A letter attributed to Smartt attracted investigators’ attention; it was not a court-established confession. Investigative suspicion does not establish guilt.
In 2016 and 2018 interviews, investigator Mike Gamberg and Sheriff Greg Hagwood criticized missed leads and evidence handling. Those criticisms are attributed accounts of the investigation, not proof of a particular cover-up or suspect’s guilt.
Then came the discovery that widened the story again. In 1984, Tina Sharp’s remains were found far from Keddie. That discovery confirmed what many already feared, but it did not bring closure. Instead, it made Cabin 28 feel even more like the first chapter of a larger story that investigators had never fully reconstructed.
And that is why the case remains perennially searched. The Keddie murders sit in a powerful true crime lane: a family setting, a highly visual scene, possible known suspects, a missing child, and an investigation that still seems to invite the question of what was missed. Readers who spend time with cases like the True Crime Archive are often pulled back to Keddie because it has everything that keeps a case alive in public memory — horror, layout, contradiction, and the feeling that the walls themselves should have told investigators more.
Key Evidence and Clues
- The living room evidence: The bodies and physical evidence document the violence, but not an established duration or order of attacks.
- Bindings and weapons: Investigators examined these physical clues; descriptions of controlled or frenzied phases are interpretations.
- Tina’s disappearance: Her absence from the cabin and later recovery elsewhere expanded the case beyond the house while making the cabin even more central.
- Later statements and reported confessions: Allegations tied to key suspects have kept suspicion alive even without a prosecution.
- Evidence questions years later: Renewed investigation brought new scrutiny to old materials, including whether some of the most important clues were mishandled or underused.
But for all the names, evidence lists, and later theories, the part of the story that refuses to fade is still the house itself. Cabin 28 feels like one of those rare crime scenes that became bigger than its address. It has the same eerie power as certain abandoned motels, empty trails, or parked cars in other famous cases. The building turned into evidence, symbol, and nightmare all at once.
The ordinary family life interrupted by these crimes can be acknowledged without inventing thoughts, dialogue or a television scene from the final night. The documented loss is already immense.
In the years since, Cabin 28 was demolished. The structure is gone. But in one sense, it never disappeared. The room still exists in photographs, in witness memory, in case files, and in the imagination of anyone who has ever looked at the timeline and thought the same thing investigators must have thought from the beginning: this should have been solvable.
Maybe that is the reason the case never fully lets go. Not because it is the bloodiest, or the oldest, or the most famous, but because it feels so close to explanation. There are cases that are mysterious because they leave almost nothing behind. Keddie is the opposite. It left too much behind — a room full of damage, a missing child, a chain of suspicion, and just enough possible answers to keep certainty out of reach.
That is the real legacy of Keddie Cabin 28. A house in the Sierra became a frozen crime scene, and the closer people looked at it, the less the story behaved like something finished. More than forty years later, the case still reads like a door left half open in the dark.
Research Sources
The following resources were consulted to verify and update this article.
- KOLO — The Keddie Murders: A cold case suddenly getting warm
April 2016 interviews with the sheriff and investigator describe the 1981 victims, 1984 recovery and reopened inquiry. - KOLO — The Keddie Murders: Potential evidence continues to surface
June 2016 reporting describes recovered items and the distinction between potential evidence and forensic confirmation. - Plumas News — Keddie murders revisited part 1: New evidence discovered links living suspect to grisly scene
April 2018 reporting from investigator interviews describes scene evidence, criticism of the original inquiry and a reported DNA lead. - Plumas News — Keddie murders revisited part 2: Following the clues
The companion report explains the suspect letter and investigative theories, which are not convictions or an established reconstruction.
