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Thread: Keddie Resort Murders (1981, victims Glenna "Sue" Sharp, John Sharp, Tina Sharp, and Dana Wingate)

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    Keddie Resort Murders (1981, victims Glenna "Sue" Sharp, John Sharp, Tina Sharp, and Dana Wingate)

    I have been absolutely fascinated by this case for a couple of years now. It's long grown cold and may never be solved but I thought a lot of the mystery-loving members here might really enjoy learning about this one. It's absolutely haunting.

    The victims were a mother, her teenage son, her teenage son's friend, and the 12-year-old daughter, who was taken from the scene and her remains found years later.

    Tons of information (articles, forums, etc.) is available online but I'll just link the highlights here for easy reference:

    Here's where it happened (though the murder cabin was demolished a few years ago): https://www.facebook.com/pages/Keddi...513?fref=photo

    Here's a FB page which promotes a low-budget 2-part documentary made about the murders: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cabin...19081004798651

    Here's the Wiki page on the murders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keddie_Murders

    (And a snippet from the Wiki page:

    The Keddie Murders is an unsolved 1981 American quadruple murder that took place in Keddie, a former resort town in the foothills of Northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The murders took place in cabin 28, during the late evening of April 11, 1981 and/or early morning of the 12th. The victims were Glenna Sharp, known as Sue (age 36), her daughter Tina (age 12), her son John (age 15), and his friend, Dana Wingate (age 17).[1][2] Tina was determined to be missing after the crime was first discovered. Her skull and several other bones were recovered in 1984 near Camp Eighteen, California, in Butte County.[3] Sue's oldest daughter, Sheila, had stayed with next-door neighbors in cabin 27 that night and discovered the murders the morning of April 12.[4] Sue's two youngest sons and their friend, who were having a sleep-over at cabin 28 that night, were found, uninjured, in the boys' bedroom that morning.

    No arrests have been made in connection with the Keddie murders. The cabin in which the murders took place was demolished in 2004.
    And here are a few links to various forums still actively researching the case:

    http://www.keddie28.com/bb/index.php

    http://keddiecoldcase.freeforums.org/

    http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sho...85#post7362885

    Happy reading!

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    What do you care? Boston Babe 73's Avatar
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    I haven't read any of the links yet, but at first blush it's insane that the two boys in the bedroom were left okay. And the older daughter was right next door!

    It may have no sense behind it, but the first thing that popped in to my head was that it had something to do with the 17 year old friend. Someone related to him maybe? Weird.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boston Babe 73 View Post
    I haven't read any of the links yet, but at first blush it's insane that the two boys in the bedroom were left okay. And the older daughter was right next door!

    It may have no sense behind it, but the first thing that popped in to my head was that it had something to do with the 17 year old friend. Someone related to him maybe? Weird.
    There are all kinds of theories and speculation out there about this one, from prostitution to jealous spouses to drug deals gone wrong to wrong identity. Apparently a few of the suspects are still alive and living in the area.

    This whole case is just mind-boggling, and reading some of those forums is like falling down a rabbit hole with all of the crazies in them.

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    What do you care? Boston Babe 73's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MorbidlyLovely View Post
    There are all kinds of theories and speculation out there about this one, from prostitution to jealous spouses to drug deals gone wrong to wrong identity. Apparently a few of the suspects are still alive and living in the area.

    This whole case is just mind-boggling, and reading some of those forums is like falling down a rabbit hole with all of the crazies in them.
    I do look forward to reading them and I've subscribed to the thread. I love a good mystery. I really wish I could today, but I'm learning tunes for a rehearsal lol. I'll definitely love chilling out with it soon though
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    Senior Member Seren's Avatar
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    I think Justin, the boy spending the night with the 2 surviving Sharp boys, knows exactly who killed Sue, Dana, Johnny, and Tina. His stepfather is actually one of the main suspects.

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    Cousin Greg Angiebla's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seren View Post
    I think Justin, the boy spending the night with the 2 surviving Sharp boys, knows exactly who killed Sue, Dana, Johnny, and Tina. His stepfather is actually one of the main suspects.
    I'm sure they interviewed all 3 boys.

    Were the boys found in their room in their home? How did they get from the cabin to their house? I'm confused.

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    Senior Member Seren's Avatar
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    The three boys were in one of the bedrooms in the cabin where the murders took place. IIRC, Sheila Sharp came home from the next door neighbor's home, where she'd spent the night, at about 8-8:30 a.m. and found the bodies. She and the neighbors took the boys out of the house through the bedroom window so they wouldn't see the bodies.

    The boys were interviewed. The two Sharp boys were very young and couldn't provide much information. Justin claimed to be unable to remember what happened, but claimed that he and the boys went to sleep after watching Love Boat with Sue. He said that he had a 'dream' that Sue fell off the boat and that she was hurt and that he had laid a cloth on her. Evidence at the scene suggests that Justin did cover her wounds and that he was in the room where the murders took place at some point, though he claims amnesia as related to the actual murders.

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    Senior Member Seren's Avatar
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    Sheila Sharp used to comment on some of the forums under the name Tinkerbell, I believe.

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    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
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    I am interested in reading about this, but the forums aren't helping and are only confusing me more. Is there a site that has the story in full, with the story of what happened that night, the following day, and things that have happened since (like, who were the persons of interest, who was questioned and why, etc.)?


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
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    What do you care? Boston Babe 73's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nic B View Post
    I am interested in reading about this, but the forums aren't helping and are only confusing me more. Is there a site that has the story in full, with the story of what happened that night, the following day, and things that have happened since (like, who were the persons of interest, who was questioned and why, etc.)?
    I ran in to the same problem and then found this. I'm not done reading it yet, but it seems to give a good foundation of what happened to start working from:

    http://www.crimemagazine.com/cold-case-keddie-murders
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    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boston Babe 73 View Post
    I ran in to the same problem and then found this. I'm not done reading it yet, but it seems to give a good foundation of what happened to start working from:

    http://www.crimemagazine.com/cold-case-keddie-murders
    Thank you! Will try reading that now


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
    Quote Originally Posted by curiouscat View Post
    Happy Birthday! I hid a dead body in your backyard to celebrate. Good luck finding it under the cement. You can only use a stick to look for it.

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    Scoopski Potatoes Nic B's Avatar
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    The more I read about this, the more I am intrigued. I never even heard of Keddie and it's only about 2 and a half hours from where I live. The craziest part was when I was reading about it, I pictured their cabin in my head based off of...I have no idea what. And when I just looked up pictures of it, it looked EXACTLY how I pictured it in my head and I had no idea how I imagined it so similar to what it was. I was thinking maybe I had been there before when I was super young and couldn't remember. I hope not! This happened 2 years before I was born, and almost exactly 1 month after my husband was born.


    Quote Originally Posted by marakisses View Post
    yes i said i will leave it under you storage he said cuddle with me i said shut up it over??? what am i doing wrong??
    Quote Originally Posted by curiouscat View Post
    Happy Birthday! I hid a dead body in your backyard to celebrate. Good luck finding it under the cement. You can only use a stick to look for it.

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    I spent a couple years posting on the forum belonging to the guy who made the docos, then the forum got taken over by an element I don't care much for, and I left. Yes, the forums are all massive rabbit holes. Just posting this to bookmark, in case I can help answer stuff. Though admittedly, I'm probably a bit out of the loop re the most recent developments.

    I did a lot of research re possible mob connections of one of the main suspects -- turned out, was 100% right, guy is connected for sure (was a real close friend/associate of Jim Rini, suspect in the famous Molly Zelko case..), his relatives have confirmed. Very interesting stories, there -- I'm hoping his family does a book of some sort one day.

    If there's one case guaranteed to fo your head on, this would be it.

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    Jeez, "do your head in" I meant. NYE hangover ftw.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Boston Babe 73 View Post
    I ran in to the same problem and then found this. I'm not done reading it yet, but it seems to give a good foundation of what happened to start working from:

    http://www.crimemagazine.com/cold-case-keddie-murders

    Not a bad article , got a few details wrong tho:
    The autopsy reports showed all three victims were tied at the hands and feet, with Sue’s bindings being especially tight. Sue and Johnny were bludgeoned with a hammer and stabbed repeatedly. Dana was strangled to death and also stabbed.
    The boys were tied together at their feet with tape and electrical cord.
    for clarity:
    Sue was hogtied from wrists through her legs to her ankles. Wrists bound with tape and cord, other cords used for hogtying.
    Johnny was bound at the hands, real tight, with tape and cord.
    Dana was not bound the same way, not really bound at all ---however:

    * John and Dana had their legs tied together by a white cable obviously tied after they were dead and their bodies were moved. No purpose I can see, other than to confuse the scene. Lotsa staging in this crime...

    * There was tape residue on Dana's ankle region/footwear. Bits of tape remained on either John or Dana's legs, can't recall off top of head. But they weren't taped together.

    They weren't trussed up like Sue. She was bound many times over, it seems. Hands and then hogtie, also multiple gags -- underwear, tape, head band all used as gags. Had her mouth smashed with a blunt object, probably a hammer. Teeth were broken. Massive facial injury, stab wounds.

    Dana had no stab wounds, just massive head injury. He was posed face down on a couch cushion. Dana's only binding was that staged one at his ankles, which also was tied to John, so they were kind of tied together at the feet with a bit of cord between.

    John had blunt force and stab wounds, his throat was cut/stabbed.

    All bodies were moved after death. Sue was lying on her side in front of the couch, her legs were parted in rigor so didn't die in that position. She was wearing no undies but had a bra on, and her nightie/housecoat thing was pushed up to expose her lower body, up to her breasts. Over this was a sheet and a blanket from her bedroom (which she shared with the daughters).

    John's pants were tugged down and twisted a bit, like he'd been dragged. The blood patterns don't match the bodies... bodies deffo moved, scene staged IMO to simply confuse things. Mission accomplished, really.

    The manner in which she died is unknown.
    There was evidence of blunt force injury to Tina's head, broken facial bones and, iirc, a couple ribs.

    Martin Smartt confessed to killing Sue and Tina, but says he didn't kill the boys. Doesn't say who did, though. Severin John "Bo" Boubede IMO was likely behind the staging, confusing things to lead police down the wrong path maybe. I reckon one had the hammer, one had the knife/s.

    Marty and Bo were both carnies and scammers. Boubede was a real professional at it, even scammed the cops out a couple hundred thousand bucks. After the murders, they both went a-scamming, and joined up with some kind of carny company for a bit before going their separate ways.

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    As an interesting aside, the sister of the then-owner of the Keddie Resort was also brutally murdered at home, some years before Keddie. Gary Mollath was the last to see her alive and the first to find her body. He'd apparently gone out to lunch with his lawyer uncle, who'd later be investigated for laundering Russian money, then came home to find his sister murdered, stabbed, nude and wrapped in a shower curtain, IIRC.

    This case is also unsolved, and hardly got any press at all - like, almost nothing - which is weird, as the family are quite well off and involved in industry, etc.

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    New update!
    Last updated 03/17/2016 at 9:28am


    Photo courtesy Plumas County Sheriff
    Cabin 28 in Keddie sits vacant in this photo taken shortly after the bodies of three people were found stabbed with a knife and beaten with a hammer on April 11, 1981. The cabin was demolished in 2004.
    The Keddie murders remain the most infamous cold case in Plumas County history.
    But the case might not be cold much longer.
    Thanks to new technology and recent efforts by a sheriff's special investigator, the mystery of who killed four people at a Keddie cabin 35 years ago could soon be solved.
    "We're arriving at points where we are going to be taking some next steps," Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood said.
    Hagwood said there are people - some still living in the county - who know what happened and were possibly involved "whether directly or after the fact."
    The sheriff declined to name the persons of interest. He said some have already been contacted.
    "We want to make it clear to those individuals who are monitoring what's going on with this case that we are making progress," Hagwood said. "And we are going to continue."
    Hagwood was a 15-year-old Quincy High School student on April 11, 1981, when the bloody bodies of Keddie residents Glenna "Sue" Sharp, 36, John Sharp, 15, and Dana Wingate, 17, were found in cabin No. 28 at the resort near Quincy. All three were bound and had been stabbed repeatedly with a knife and beaten with a hammer.
    Sue Sharp's 12-year-old daughter, Tina Sharp, wasn't found until three years later. Her decomposed remains were scattered near Feather Falls in Butte County.
    Remarkably, three young boys - two of Sue Sharp's sons and a neighborhood friend - were discovered unharmed in the cabin's small back bedroom. They somehow slept through the massacre that took place just feet away.
    The horrific crime traumatized the community. Most consider the Keddie murders the worst act of violence ever committed in Plumas County.
    No one has ever been charged in connection with the murders.
    Two men who lived in Keddie (cabin No. 26) - Martin Smartt and John Boubede - were considered suspects at the time. Both men had criminal records.
    They were questioned, but never arrested. Although there was circumstantial evidence, there was never enough to charge either man with the murders.
    Both men have since died of natural causes. Boubede, who was 50 years old when the murders happened, died in Illinois in 1988 and Smartt, who was 32, died in Oregon in 2006.
    When Smartt and Boubede died, many of the victims' family members assumed the chances of solving the case died along with them. But Hagwood said the investigation never stopped.
    Two years ago, the sheriff decided to step up the effort. He brought in retired detective Mike Gamberg as a special investigator to work the case exclusively.
    Gamberg, who was a deputy sheriff in 1981, said he was fired by then sheriff Doug Thomas two weeks before the Keddie murders happened.
    "I called him a liar on public radio," Gamberg said. "I probably would have fired myself if I would have done the same thing."
    Although Gamberg was later reinstated, he said he was never allowed to investigate the Keddie murders. "I was told if I came anywhere close to this case I would be fired again," he said. "I was never given a reason."
    Gamberg said the Keddie case has always haunted him. So when Sheriff Hagwood asked him to take over the case in June, 2013, he jumped at the chance.
    Gamberg moved into the room at the sheriff's office that has long been dedicated to the Keddie murder case. He said the first thing he did was sift through all the files and re-examine every piece of evidence. He wanted to start fresh.
    "When I came back, the case was just a mess," Gamberg said. "It was a huge volume of material and very fragmented."
    Gamberg has been assisted by the California Department of Justice, the FBI and a Butte County cold case investigator who was also a detective when the murders happened.
    "He's just a bulldog. I mean a great investigator," Gamberg said of his Butte County colleague. "He was an investigator when they found Tina's remains down in Butte County (in 1984). This case has always bothered him. I called him and he just jumped at the chance to work (the Keddie case)."
    Help from the Internet

    According to Hagwood and Gamberg, one of the most helpful investigative tools didn't exist in 1981. ... The Internet.
    At least four Internet chat rooms are dedicated to the Keddie murders, which have "developed almost a cult following," according to Hagwood.
    Much of the content on the websites is produced by arm-chair sleuths who are quick to speculate and offer conspiracy theories. But Gamberg said some of the contributors have credible information. And a few seem to have first-hand knowledge of the crime.
    "People on the Internet have been really helpful," Gamberg said. "I've been working closely with some of them."
    Hagwood called some of the newly discovered information "amazing."
    "There are a handful of individuals who have done very credible and in-depth research that has proven very beneficial in putting together timelines of not just persons of interest, but individuals assigned to the investigation those many years ago," Hagwood said. "And there's been some startling discoveries and revelations related to - not just persons of interest in this case - but individuals who were a part of the law enforcement community and had involvement in this investigation from the beginning."
    Hagwood and Gamberg said they don't fault everyone at the sheriff's office for the way the investigation was handled in 1981. But Gamberg said some of the sheriff's "more accomplished investigators could have been better utilized."
    "It's not so much what they did, it's what they didn't do," Gamberg said. "They didn't follow up on a lot of information they had. It was kind of a shotgun approach."
    Hagwood and Gamberg both said they were surprised to discover the Department of Justice assigned an organized crime unit to the case.
    "Why would investigators from the state, who specialized in organized crime, be sent to remote rural northern California for what ended up being a quadruple homicide?" Hagwood said. "There has been speculation and accusations on some of these Internet sites that, in the past, I took a lot of exception to. But as information is coming in, I'm of a mind to certainly take a look at that now more than I was in the past."
    Gamberg said he is questioning the DOJ to try to find out why it suspected the murders had something to do with organized crime.
    Hagwood said if the Keddie murders happened in 2016, someone likely would be in custody by now.
    "It's really not a reflection of the individuals at the sheriff's department back then, it's just the measure of (technological) progress that has been made over the last 35 years," Hagwood said. "When it comes to processing a crime scene, developing finger prints, the ability to utilize finger prints. ... The ability to bring DNA comparisons into the arena didn't exist then."
    Why haven't witnesses come forward?

    Gamberg said "in 1981 there was a big question in the public about how trustworthy the cops were."
    He said people in the community who had information were also shocked and scared. The Keddie murders changed the way people live to this day.
    "People didn't lock their doors at night," Gamberg said. "My kids would have 15 or 20 friends sleeping on our front lawn during the summer. You know, just a big sleepover. ... After the murders happened, (the sleepovers) never happened again. The kids would not do it. They were afraid.
    "So, if they were afraid, you can imagine somebody who has information regarding this case. They were possibly afraid to say anything for fear that they could end up like the people in cabin 28."
    Gamberg said he wants people who have information about the murders to know they can trust him. "I've always been able to deal with people. They trusted me as a cop," he said. "I'm hoping that when they find out I'm working this case - and that I was trustworthy with them - they will come forward and talk to me."
    Gamberg said he has also worked to gain the trust of people who have been offering information on the Internet.

    Dan McDonald
    Special investigator Mike Gamberg, right, and Sheriff Greg Hagwood refer to the Keddie murders timeline during a March 1 interview at the sheriff's office in Quincy.
    Persons of interest

    Gamberg said, thanks to information from the Internet chat rooms, he has identified the location of at least six "persons of interest" connected to the case.
    "I believe there are other people who assisted in disposing of Tina (Sharp's body)," Gamberg said. "And I believe I have them identified.
    "I have contacted some of them," he added. "I'm at the point where I've got enough information, I can go out and rattle their cage to see what I can get from them."
    Information wanted

    Gamberg and Hagwood encouraged people who might have information about the Keddie murders to call a hotline number (530-283-6360) at the sheriff's office.
    "People who have information - no matter how slight it might be - we will look into it," Gamberg said.
    http://www.plumasnews.com/story/2016...ation/926.html
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    Moderator Bewitchingstorm's Avatar
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    I have always been fascinated by this case.

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