Morbid - The Keddie Cabin Murders Mini Morbid

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

April 11, 1981 would mark a grim day in Keddie, California. That evening, mystery assailants came into cabin 28 and brutally massacred mother of 5, Sue Sharp, her eldest son, his friend and her youngest daughter. 31 years later, the case remains unsolved, but with new investigators on the trail, things could take a turn. Check out the three part investigative report I mention in the episode https://www.plumasnews.com/keddie-murders-revisited/ Visit our sponsors! Perfect Bar Right now, Perfect Bar is offering 15% off your online order. Just go to Perfectbar.com/morbid15. Shop their refrigerated snacks at Perfectbar.com/morbid15 today to get 15% off your order. Upstart See why Upstart is ranked #1 in their category with over 300 businesses on Trustpilot and hurry to Upstart.com/morbid to find out HOW LOW your Upstart rate is. Checking your rate only takes a few minutes! That’s Upstart.com/morbid! Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Elena. And this is a mini morbid. It's so tiny small. Little tiny small morbid. Mini, mini, mini, mini, mini, mini, mini, mini morbid. Mini morbid, mini morbid, mini morbid, mini morbid. Tiny small like me, apparently, next to Gary Galman. Yeah, I guess I'm just fucking huge.

No, everybody who say we both were like... I'm totally kidding. Trust me, we're both not like non-existent human beings. Gary Goldman's just six foot six. He is a large man and also the nicest man. He's so nice, guys. He complimented my coat and I shot myself. It's so nice when people you like really like comedians and all that stuff.

When you meet them, they genuinely are like what you want them to be in your brain. John couldn't come to that with us and Gary Goldman made him a fucking video. And it was his idea. Yeah, he was like, oh, he's not here. Like, let's make him a video. And we did and it was awesome. And now we have, maybe I'll post it because it was awesome. Do it.

But that's not what this mini morbid is about. No, it's not. But you know what? Go listen to Gary Gelman because he's really funny. We love Gary Goldman. We like comedy. Gary Gilman's it. So yeah.

So that was fun last night. And this is a mini morbid. And it's Elena's mini morbid, which means it's not mini. Great, which means we should jump right in. Okay, ready, set? Go. So in my mini morbid, I'm going to cover the Kettie Cabin murders. Sounds familiar, but I'm not sure if I know it or not.

It's real intense. I thought you were just going to say, it's real. And I was like, well, this is a true crime podcast, so that's fitting. It happened. No, it's real intense. One might say, like a circus fire. That took me a whole last minute. Sure did, but I loved it.

That's one of my favorite jokes. I like that one. So I love dad jokes. So November 1980, 36-year-old Glennah Sue Sharp moved herself and her five children from Connecticut to a tiny little area called Kettie, California. Okay. She had divorced her husband James and was looking to have a fresh start. All right. And you go, I mean, Connecticut to California, that's a fresh-ass start.

Yeah, that's a whole kind of different. Yeah, that's a whole start. So her children were 15-year-old John, 14-year-old Sheila, 12-year-old Tina, 10-year-old Rick, and 5-year-old Greg. They all, oh, old Greg. Old Greg. I just think of old Greg whenever I hear, Greg. They all just now I can't stop thinking of old Greg. I'm a scale of man.

I'm going to need a minute. All right, so let me get my shit together because old Greg is so funny. My downstairs mix up. So they all moved into a very small cabin in kind of like a dilapidated resort. Oh, fun. Which was close to Sue's brother Don's place. Okay. This was so, so this.

Wow. What the fuck? Can you leave that in? Because I'm so scared. That was a glitch in the Matrix. They had a nerve. You know what? Quick side note, speaking of glitches in the Matrix,

everybody keeps sending me that they think I mean Kazam with Shaq when I said Shazam with Sinbad happened but no I know Kazam with Shaq happened yeah but also Shazam with Simbad happened that's the one that nobody can find

which is scary but trust me I everybody was saying like no this is the one I yes I agree that did happen but Sinbad was in Shazam just putting that out there so the little family settled into their new cabin in cabin 28 Okay. And what I did before I broke a second ago was saying it was supposed to be a temporary home.

Okay. The kids made friends in nearby cabins. Things seemed pretty chill. Everything was happy. About five months after moving on April 11th, 1981, things changed drastically. Okay. So that evening, on April 11th, Sheila was at a friend's home nearby sleeping over for the evening. Okay. Sue, the mother, was at home with her two young. youngest children, Rick and Greg. They had a friend over, 12-year-old Justin Smart. At around 10 p.m., Tina came home.

She's the 12-year-old. She had been at Cabin 27 with friends hanging out. John had been out with a friend Dana Wingate that evening, and the two of them also returned home late. Okay. So no one knows for sure what exactly happened next. I know this case. But if we skip to the next morning, a horrific picture emerges.

So Sheila came home early in the morning on April 12th. When she opened the front door, she immediately saw the bodies of her mother Sue, her brother John, and his friend Dana on the floor in the living room. Oh, that's horrific. The scene was fucking brutal. I believe it. Blood was everywhere. And the three bodies had been brutalized. And we're all bound.

So Sheila immediately runs into the back room because she knows her little brothers are in there. Right. And saw that Rick, Greg and their just. their friend Justin Smart had been unharmed and were fast asleep. That's so strange. Justin lived in cabin 26. He lived there with his mother and stepfather, Marilyn and Martin Smart and his brother. So she ran back to her friend's cabin, got her friend's father, James Seabult Sr.

And he came back with her. And upon seeing the scene, he got the three surviving children out of the house through a window. So they wouldn't see the nightmare in the... the fucking living room. Right. He then informed the owners of the Keddy Resort and the co-owner Jan Albin called the sheriff's department at 8.05 a.m. Now, Deputy Hank Clement was the first to arrive on the scene.

He said it was a fucking blood bath. He said that he was shocked that Sheila had actually seen that. He was like, I don't know how she's going to get past that. That's not okay. He said it was, I mean, it was everywhere. He said there was blood on the walls, the ceiling. It was everywhere. That's so horrific.

So all Victorians. had been bound with electrical tape and wires. John and Dana were bound separately, but also bound together to each other. John was right in front of the door on his back, so he was the first thing you saw when you walked in the door. His hands were bound with electrical tape, and he was covered in blood from a giant wound on his throat, which had been slit. Oh, Jesus. Next to him was Dana.

Dana was face down, and his head, which had been absolutely mutilated by a blunt object. was partially on a pillow. Okay. Although his skull was crushed, he had been manually strangled to death. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Sue was gagged with a blue bandana in her own underwear. Medical tape had been looped around her head to keep them in her mouth.

She had a clear mark of the butt of a Daisy Powerline 880 rifle on the side of her head. Her throat had also been slit, and she was found nude from the waist down. Oh. Her killer had partially covered her with a blanket, but it wasn't in a way, it didn't seem to be in a way that, like, somebody cared. You know, like how sometimes they'll do that. Her hands and ankles were also bound together with medical tape and wires. Okay. And I believe it was so that, like, her knees were, like, up against her chest, almost in, like, a fetal position.

Blood was on the floor. It was on the sofa. It seemed like they said the way that the blood was, it seemed like they had been moved. Okay. And, like, placed in these positions. blood was also found on some bedding in the bedroom. The bedroom that was Sheila's and he, Sheila also shared it with Tina and her mother.

So there was blood in there as well. Right. So it was on the, again, on the ceiling in the living room what the bodies were. And it was also on the bottoms of shoes feet and the souls of John and Dana's shoes, which indicates that they were moving around. Right. When they were in stepping in their own blood at one point. Right.

So besides the various injuries described, all the victims had been violently stabbed repeatedly. Investigators also deduced that the head traumas inflicted had been from hammers. Hey, uh. Yeah. They found a bloody steak knife on the floor that was literally bent. Oh, my God. Yeah. In the kitchen, they found a butcher knife covered in blood and a bloody claw hammer.

Oh, a claw hammer? Like, what the fuck? The word claw hammer in and of itself is so triggering. It stresses me out. Yeah, it's not okay. Later, they found another bloody knife in a trash can behind the Kettie General's store. Yikes. Now, there were no signs of forced entry.

All the lights were shut off. The phone was placed off the hook and the shades were all drowned. That's spooky. There was one fingerprint lifted from a handrail on the back stairs of the cabin, but it was unidentified. Other than that, they were like, they had to wear gloves. Now that the scene was taken over, Sheila's like, wait a second. Where's Tina? Like, we're missing Tina.

Uh-oh. So now they realize 12-year-old Tina is nowhere to be found. So this is when the FBI came in. Right. And she was, she was supposed to have been playing at cabin 26. Well, she was playing at cabin 26, but she had come home. Okay. Yeah.

So what's weird is that none of the other three boys woke up during the murders. Yeah, you would think that that would have been a loud murder. Yeah. Like, this was not just like Bing, Bang, Boom. You're all dead. Meanwhile, another couple in the area said they woke up somewhere around 130 a.m. and heard like muffled screams. Okay. And they thought it was just a television or something. So they just went back to sleep. Can you imagine finding out later? Stop ignoring things everybody. Well, can you imagine finding out later? That's what

that was. And you fucking went back to sleep. Can you imagine? That's so horrifying. So later, Justin came forward, Justin, the 12 year old that was in the room with Rick and Greg. Sure. He said he did see something. Oh, okay. So under hypnosis, what you've seen. Justin claimed that he had seen Sue with two men, one with a mustache and long hair and one that was clean-shaven with short hair. Both of them had glasses. One of them had a hammer in his hand and he said John and Dana came in the house, began, you know, arguing with the men. The argument got violent. Tina suddenly came into the room. They said she was holding a blanket. And one of the men took her out the back door before coming back in to kill Sue. And then the other one killed Joe.

John and Dana. He didn't know where that man put Tina. Put Tina. And like, did he say if they saw him? They said, no, they said, like, no one saw him. Like, nothing. They were like, they were like, they didn't see us. So that's why we were spared. Yeah, I guess. That's scary as well. Now, investigators made composite sketches of what he was saying. DNA was collected from the scene and stored, but nothing could be done about it at that point. Like, it's in the 80s. The sheriff, Doug Thomas worked the case and instead of calling in homicide, he called in the organized crime unit from Sacramento Department of Justice. It's kind of random. Which is weird. Yeah. And at that point, apparently that department was like known to be corrupt. Oh, goody. Yeah. So Tina was missing

and there was absolutely no sign of her. In April of 1984, this doesn't sound very organized. No. Three years after this, a man found part of a skull in Butte County. which was 29 miles away from Keddy. Next to the skull, there was a child's blanket, a blue nylon jacket, a pair of jeans, and an empty surgical tape dispenser. When they looked further, they found a jawbone and a bunch of bone fragrance. I just said fragrance. Fragments.

I didn't even hear fragrance. I thought I said fragrance. I don't think you did. I felt like I did, but I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe I'm judging myself. They were Tina's remains, but they couldn't tell you. yet. Okay. So the Butes County Sheriff's Department got a random anonymous call because they had put

out this information that they had found this. Um, they got an anonymous call saying, quote, I was wondering if they thought of the murder up in Keddy, up in Plumis County of a couple years ago where a 12 year old girl was never found. Oh. Now the tip was recorded. Mm-hmm. But nothing was ever fucking done about it. Oh, perfect. It was just sealed up and put in evidence. Great. That's what we like to do with that. It was actually in a sealed envelope. What? So this person calls in is like, yeah, pretty sure that person, that child has to do with that Ketty murder. Yeah. Which it seems like it's the person who did it. It's like,

yo, that's her. So there didn't appear to be any motive, and there was not a lot of evidence to go on at this point. There seemed to be multiple killers based on the plethora of weapons involved. Right. And what that kid had said. Yeah. And so many people in the house, it's like, that's a lot to subdue. Yeah. After a while, Justin Smart's stepfather, Martin Smart, was starting to be fingered as a suspect. Why?

So he had a man living in their home who was an ex-convict named John Boob. I feel like that's a bad idea. We're just going to call him Bo. Both men had ties to organized crime and drug trafficking. Oh, no, boy, no. Now, why would these guys immediately be thought of as? suspects. Well, it was believed that Martin and Sue were having an affair. Oh, fuck. Besides this, it said that Sue was basically convincing Marilyn to leave Martin. Okay. Marilyn, who's Justin's

mother, Martin's wife, left her husband Martin the day of the murders. Oh, yeah. So why would he kill Sue then? Because he believes that Sue convinced Marilyn to leave him. I'd be like, well, but you want to be with me. But he doesn't. Oh, they're just having an affair. Got it. Yeah. I love how logically you're like, what?

Love prevails. So now Martin is pissed because he had an affair, and that affair ended up convincing his wife to leave him. Right, right, right, right. I'm up to speed. Yeah. So when this all happened, he got his convict friend, Bo, and with theirs highs to the mob, they got the job done.

That's the theory. At one point, Martin also told investigators that a hammer of his went missing, which is pretty convenient to explain why your shit would be one of the murder weapons. Right. And when they found, when they showed had the hammers, it matched with the hammer he had missing. And he's like, oh, shit. He's like, weird. He's like, weird.

Someone stole my hammer. After I killed someone. Now, on top of this, Marilyn gave the Plumis County Sheriff's Department a handwritten letter sent to her. This is Marilyn. Justin's mom, Martin's wife. It was sent to her and signed by Martin. It read, quote, I've paid the price of your love

and now that I've bought it with four people's lives you tell me we are through great what else do you want oh no one did anything with this letter Martin sweetie you're sick no one did anything with the letter they were just like oh yeah whatever what

this was a corrupt ass police department but like was he paying them or something well you'll see so in 2004 the cabin was finally torn down between then and now or between then in 2004 that's case was like cold there's just no information about it meanwhile in 2008 maryland admitted in a documentary about this that she 100% thought her husband and his friend beau was responsible shit so this lady's being like yeah they did it so what did what did sheriff Doug thomas say to all this overwhelming evidence that martin did it i'm busy that

well he was like no he took a polygraph test oh yeah we all know that those are allowed. He was like he passed it. It's fine. Yeah, totally. So that's it. For sure. Now, Thomas was, so Sheriff Doug Thomas was asked about his relationship with Martin back in the day because of like, did you know him? And according to a report in Plumis news about the case, he said he and Martin were, quote, great pals. Oh. And he said that he had even allowed, quote, Marty to come with him on a patrol a lot. He even asked, Marty even asked him for marriage advice. Uh-huh. They were close as fuck.

Yeah, they were BFFs. So it wasn't until 2013 that new investigators took on this case. I don't know if I would like, well, I do know. I definitely wouldn't cover up a murder for my best friend. Yeah, that this dude was like fully willing to do it. In 2013, new investigators took on the case and found that, they found the recording of that anonymous tip about Tina. Mm-hmm. These investigators were Plumish Sheriff Greg Hagwood and special investigator Mike Gamburg.

In 2016, three years after they were put on the case, Gamberg found a hammer in a dried up pond in the area, and they believe it's one of the murder weapons. That same year, Gamberg also met with an anonymous counselor at the Reno Veterans Administration. This counselor told him that in May 1981, he had taken on Martin Smart as a patient, and that Martin Smart actually confessed

that he murdered Sue the mother and the 12-year-old girl Tina. What? He said, quote, I killed the woman and her daughter, but I didn't have anything to do with the boys. What a peach. Like, I think that might be like, what? What a peach. He's like, well, I killed the mother and the daughter. I didn't kill the boys, though. Jesus Christ. Don't pin that. I killed the 12-year-old in my mistress. Yeah. So when the DOJ was conformed of this bombshell in 1981, they just said, oh, that's just hearsay. What the fuck? Yep. This is fucked up.

So much corruption. So the resounding theory here is that Martin Smart killed them with the aid of at least that felon bow he lived with. It seems they did this because of the affair probably and needed her out of the situation. This makes sense for all the evidence already present, as well as the fact that Justin Smart, his son, was unharmed. And the other two boys were with him too. Oh, shit. Yeah. That's why Justin wasn't killed. I didn't even think of that.

That's his son. Or at least that's a fun. It also makes sense why Justin was a little wishy-washy about what he heard what he heard, I thought, or saw. He was probably threatened. Shit. Because he kind of was like, yeah, I saw this. I saw that. I don't know.

I don't know. Why didn't they kill you? Oh, I don't think they saw me. Because it's my dad. You're not my dad. Gamburg, who was on the case, who was one of the new investigators put on the case in 2013, thinks there was a deep cover up in the sheriff's department. because of like mob shit and all that.

Where does the mob come into play? Well, because those two, because remember I said earlier, they had like... Oh, right, they had maltonized. Sure, sure, sure. Sorry. So as of now, Martin and Bo are dead. Oh, fuck. Yeah. But they were able to get new DNA evidence and it seems to place other living people there.

They haven't announced who they are yet, but they had... This case is ongoing. Shoot. Yeah. So what's crazy is that Gamberg and Hagwood were teens during the murder. and we're friends with John and Dana, the two teen boys who were murdered. What? Yeah.

In fact, Gamberg said to CBS Sacramento that Dana was at his house the day before the murders. Stop. Yeah. And now he's working on the case. One other crazy note linking them to the crime is from a crazy awesome three-part investigative look into this case. It's so good. Like, I'm going to put the links to this in our show notes.

It's by Victoria Metcalfe in Plumis News. The night of the murders, Martin and Bo went to the backdoor bar around 10 p.m. in the area. They were wearing three-piece suits and sunglasses. This is a small, dive-ish-type bar. So everyone interviewed was baffled someone who wore that in there. The author and many other sources I saw think they did this to draw attention to their presence at the bar to establish an alibi for themselves. What an alibi. Because two dudes walking into a dive bar with three-piece suits on in sunglasses,

everyone's going to see you. Right. And they're all going to be like, oh, yeah, I saw that fucker. He's wearing a three-piece suit. I saw him at the bar. Right. So he thinks that was them being really, like, thinking ahead. You know, cunning and doing this to establish their alibis.

I want to know, like, what the next question would be if they were like, so why were you wearing a three-piece suit? They were just like, I felt fancy tonight. Like, deal with it. I wear my sunglasses in night. Well, and what they did that night was after a couple of hours, they left the bar because they got mad that the music was switched. from country to rock music.

I would be mad at the switch of that. But switching from rock to country. I was like, wait, no you wouldn't. Then later, Martin called the bar from his cabin to piss and moan about it some more. Are you shitting me? And then they went back later

that night for another drink and left a bit before 2 a.m. Now, they think he called from his cabin to further establish. I'm at home. I'm in my cabin. In the same article, she mentioned that the counselor who Martin allegedly confessed to also said that Martin indicated the motive being that Sue was the reason Marilyn

wanted to divorce him. He also said he killed Tina just because she saw it. He was like, I couldn't leave her. She saw what happened. Oh my God. So that's the other thing. It's like Tina watched her mother be murdered. Right. In the same article, the theory is that the perpetrators were already in the cabin when John and Dana arrived and that they were dispatched in front of John's mother Sue so that she had to watch. Oh. And that like basically they were just like a problem like an obstacle. Um, they also said, you know, she had to watch what happened to Tina as well likely. Oh my God. Um, they think she was tortured for a long time. They said her death was not like a quick like slice

the throat. They said they think they were in that cabin for a long time. That's horrific. Um, and as of now, well, this is a short one. I just looked at the time. I know. I was shocked that we were done. It's because there's not, it's a totally cold case. Well, it's not cold. I shouldn't say that. It was a cold case for a long time. And now it's reopened. And they're starting to get more evidence in this.

So it's like an ongoing investigation right now. So any updates on this case? I'm definitely going to give you guys updates as it comes because it's fascinating. Because I mean, it's Bowen Martin, obviously. Yeah, clearly. But it's like other people are involved here and I need to know. I must know. need to know because also there was um uh Sheila the one of the um the one that came home and

discovered everything. She said that like they basically let and like Martin and Bo they like let them skip town once they were named suspects. They were never told they couldn't leave. That's weird. Like they were allowed to do whatever they wanted and Sheila was like to me the whole thing is a cover up. Like she believes that too. She's like it's very obvious it's a cover up. Yeah. Sounds like it. And that's what I think it is. I agree with it. But. so far the murders in cabin 28 the kettie cabin murders are unsolved at this point it's spooky as fuck i've definitely heard that case before but at first i was like i don't know this and then i was

like the more you're telling it i know it's such a good one because it's a good mini morbid because it's like there's a good amount of information but not a ton of information right right right right it's perfect for a mini yeah so that is that is the kettie cabin murders and hopefully we'll learn more about it because I want to see those two detectives solve the case. Because they were friends with John and Dana. That'd be beautiful. And their mission is to do this for them. Yeah, of course it is. That's your fucking

friend. Yeah. I want them to succeed. Well, we'll alert you on Instagram if there's any updates. We will. If you don't know our Instagram, it is. At Morbid Podcast. You can hit us up on Twitter because you'll probably see it there too. At a Morbid podcast. And also on Facebook. Morbid colon. A true crime podcast group.

Yes. And then send us an email so we can talk to you about it. Morbid Podcast at gmail.com. And then donate to the Patreon if you're feeling so inclined. Do it. Patreon.com slash morbid podcast. And if you're already a Patronus, Patronus, Patronus, Patronus, Patronus, are you there? Petronus is a big giant.

A mountain-sized announcement is coming this week. Yay-yo. So stay tuned. And we hope you keep listening. We hope you. Keep it. Weird. I don't have it in me.

No? No, this one's graphic. Okay, not so weird that you fucking show up to a dive bar and then call later and complain about the music because who really needs to fucking complain about the music at a fucking dive bar? Like, don't be doing that. If you're going to change it from rock and roll to country, like, really, you're going to fucking call them and complain about that. And then you're going to, like, torture a lady because she was your mistress and she's not actually your wife. And Elaine is bump into the grind right now.

I knew you had it in you. I had it in you. I believe, didn't you? Bye. Bye.