Murder: True Crime Stories - MYSTERIOUS DEATH: The Keddie Cabin Murders

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

On the night of April 11, 1981, three people were brutally killed inside Cabin 28 at the Keddie Resort in northern California, and a 12-year-old girl was taken into the night, never to be seen alive again. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy examines the botched investigation, the suspects who may have confessed and walked free, and the conspiracy theories that suggest someone powerful wanted this case to stay cold. Content warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence. Head over to our Murder True Crime Stories YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@MurderTrueCrimeStories If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @murdertruecrimestories To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, listeners, it's Carter Roy. Before we get into today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bot. Every Monday, Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files.

Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Hidden history drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. So you never miss a mystery. This is Crime House. When something terrible happens in a small town, people talk, and they gossip, they point fingers. But in Caddy, California, something different happened. people went quiet.

On the night of April 11th, 1981, someone entered cabin 28 at a remote mountain resort and murdered three people. A 36-year-old single mother, her 15-year-old son, and his 17-year-old friend. Then, when it was all over, the killers took a 12-year-old girl and disappeared into the night. Three children were asleep in the next room. All of them survived. None of them could explain how. In the wake of the attacks, there were confessions. there was physical evidence.

There were whispers about cover-ups reaching all the way to the federal government. And yet, more than 40 years later, no one has ever been charged. Sometimes a case goes cold because there aren't enough answers. This one went cold because there were too many people who didn't want them to be found.

This is the story of the Keddy Cabin murders. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios.

New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate review and follow the show, and for ad-free access to every episode, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays, where I'm covering cases with questions that I can't get out of my head, the ones where the evidence points in multiple directions,

and every theory feels like a possibility. Remember, these episodes are also on YouTube with full video, just search for murder, true crime stories, and be sure to like and subscribe. Today I'm talking about a case that has haunted me ever since I first heard the details. On the night of April 11, 1981, someone entered Cabin 28 at the Keddy Resort in Northern California and murdered a mother and two teenagers. They also kidnapped her 12-year-old daughter, whose remains wouldn't be found for another three years. The investigation was botched from the start.

The crime scene was contaminated before police even arrived. The local sheriff's department had almost no experience with homicide cases, and the most likely suspects, they all had connections to people in power. 40 years later, we're still wondering, was this a random attack by strangers passing through? A targeted killing by someone the family knew, or something even darker. Period under layers of small town politics and possible government corruption. All that and more coming up. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025.

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If you drove through Kettie Resort in early 1981, you might not have thought much of it. A handful of cabins tucked into the mountains of Northern California. Tall, evergreen trees, a river running nearby. One narrow road in and out, the kind of place that used to draw vacationers looking for a quiet weekend in the woods, but by the early 80s, the resort wasn't really a resort anymore. The cabins were worn down, paint peeling, roofs patched up. The tourists had stopped coming a long time ago. Instead, the place had become a small community of full-time renters,

low-income families, students from nearby schools, people just trying to get by. Everyone pretty much knew everyone. The kids bounced between cabins like they were all one big house. Neighbors watched out for each other's children. Doors weren't always locked. If you needed to borrow some sugar or someone's phone, you just walked over and knocked. Even though the resort was really just a cluster of cabins in the middle of the woods, there was something almost small town about it.

The nearest real town, Quincy was a short drive away, but out at Keddy, you could go hours without seeing anyone who didn't live there. It was isolated. but that isolation felt more like privacy than danger. There's the kind of place where you felt safe, and for 36-year-old Sue Sharp, that feeling of safety meant everything. Sue was born Glenna Susan Davis in Massachusetts

on March 29, 1945. She grew up on the East Coast where she eventually met a man named James Sharp from Connecticut. They got married, started a family, and had five kids together. John, Sheila, Tina, and Greg. From the outside, it probably looked like a typical military family. James was in the Navy and traveled a lot for work, but behind closed doors, things were far from okay. Sue's oldest daughter, Sheila, later accused James of sexually assaulting her. She called him a monster. That accusation

was never investigated by law enforcement, and it's not clear if Sue knew the full extent of what was happening. Either way, in 1979, Sue made a decision that took real courage. She packed up her life, took her kids, and moved all the way across the country to be near her brother in Quincy, California. It's a small, quiet town in the mountains of the northern part of the state, a place where she could make a fresh start. And she threw herself into that fresh start.

Sue took typing classes, hoping to land a secretarial job. In the meantime, she worked part-time and relied on government assistance to get by. It wasn't easy, but Sue was going to do whatever it took to provide for her five kids on her own. But life kept throwing curveballs. Around this time, her 13-year-old daughter, Sheila, got pregnant in a small conservative town like Quincy. That was the kind of thing that could follow a girl around for years. Sue worried about the bullying Sheila would face. So together they decided to send Sheila to stay with an aunt in Oregon until the baby was born.

After the birth, Sheila placed the baby up for adoption and came back to her family. While Sheila was away, Sue found a new place for the rest of the family. She moved them from their mobile home in Quincy to a cabin at the Keddy Resort, cabin 28. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and an unfinished basement. It wasn't fancy, but it was way better. than the trailer they'd been sharing. Sue and 12-year-old Tina shared one bedroom,

10-year-old Rick and 5-year-old Greg got the other. 15-year-old John claimed the basement as his own space. When 14-year-old Sheila came back from Oregon, she joined Sue and Tina in their room. The family even hung a little wooden sign out front that read Sharps, and they quickly became part of the Keddy community. Next door in Cabin 27 were the Seabult's, mom Zanita, dad James, daughters Alyssa and Paula and their son James Jr. Tina became fast friends

with the Seabult girls and Sheila loved going to church with a family on Sunday mornings. Two doors down in Cabin 26. Sue befriended a couple she'd met through her typing classes, Marilyn and Martin Smart. They lived there with Marilyn's two sons from a previous relationship, but 12-year-old Justin and his younger brother Casey. They also had a roommate, a friend of Martins, named Severin John Bubaday, who everyone called Bo. For a while, things felt good. Sue had a support system. The kids had friends.

They had a home. After everything she'd been through, Sue was finally building the kind of life she wanted for her family. But there was something off about the neighbors. in Cabin 26. And before long, Sue Sharp found herself right in the middle of it all. Marilyn Smart had started confiding in Sue about her marriage to Martin. She said he was jealous, controlling, and possibly violent. After their worst fights, Martin would swing the other direction and write these long, emotional love letters to Marilyn, telling her how much he'd sacrificed for her. It was a classic cycle of abuse.

and Sue understood that pattern all too well. She'd lived it with her own ex-husband. And according to some reports, she was encouraging Marilyn to leave Martin. There's also some speculation that Martin had feelings for Sue herself. Some investigators believe he asked Sue out on a date at some point, and she turned him down. However you cut it, a few things seemed clear.

Martin's marriage was falling apart. and it's possible that he felt rejected by one woman and betrayed by another. All of those factors could make a volatile man like Martin very, very angry. And then there was his buddy, Boobaday, who lived right there in the same cabin with Martin and Maryland. Bo was a mysterious figure. He had a shadowy past that would later attract the attention of federal investigators. He and Martin were incredibly close. Some might say they were partners in crime.

And unfortunately, the Sharp family was about to learn just how dangerous that partnership could be. Think about some of the cases that defined true crime in America. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the Karen retrial. Some crime cases are so shocking. They don't just make headlines they forever change a country. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases, whether it's unfolding now or etched into American history,

revealing not just what happened, but how it forever changed our society. Serial killers who terrorized cities, unsolved mysteries that kept detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong. wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. These are the stories behind the headlines. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes available now wherever you get your podcast.

Saturday, April 11th, 1981 started like any other day for the Sharp family. 36-year-old Sue spent the morning running errands and shuttling the kids around. She dropped off 10-year-old Rick and his friend, 12-year-old Justin Smart at baseball practice down the road in Quincy. Then she headed into town with Sheila, who was 14 or 15 years old, five-year-old Greg and 15-year-old John. Sue went to visit friends while Sheila walked to a friend's house, and John went to hang out with his buddy, 17-year-old Dana Wingate. And Dana was a teenage boy who'd had some run-ins with the law,

possibly for burglary, but by all accounts, he was a good kid in a rough situation. He didn't have a stable home life or a family looking out for him the way John did. The sharps were one of the few places where Dana felt welcome. Sue treated him like one of her own, and she didn't mind John spending time with him. What Sue didn't know was that John and Dana had hitchhiked to a party in East Quincy that day. Typical teenage stuff, not great, but not unusual. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Tina stayed back at Keddy, spending part of her day hanging out with her friend Paula Seabult next door. Later that evening, everyone made their way home.

The night unfolded like this. Sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., Tina left the Seabult's cabin and headed back to Cabin 28 to go to bed. But Sheila stayed next door for his sleepover, giggling with Alyssa Seabult about crushes late into the night. Around 10 p.m. Rick and his friend Justin went to bed in the boys' room. At about 10.30, John and Dana got a ride back to the cabin from a local woman, not wanting to wake anyone. They slipped in through the basement entrance and started to settle in for the night. Sue was stretched out on the couch in her robe, probably enjoying the first quiet moment she'd had all day.

Five-year-old Greg was asleep. Tina was in the adjacent bedroom. It was a quiet Saturday night at the Keddy Resort. just another evening in the woods. And then, sometime between 11.30 p.m. and 1.15 a.m., everything changed. The following is graphic. If you'd like to skip this section, I'd recommend jumping forward about a minute. At some point during that window of time, at least two assailants entered cabin 28 through the back door. They were armed with hammers, knives, and a pellet rifle.

Sue was the first one they went after. Her screams woke 15-year-old John and 17-year-old Dana in the basement, and the two boys rushed upstairs to help. But before either of them could do anything, the attackers struck them in the head with hammers. The boys were bound with medical tape and electrical cords. John's throat was slashed. Dana was strangled to death.

Then Sue was gagged with a blue bandana and her own. clothing. According to investigators, the killers forced her to walk around the room, stepping through the boy's blood. They made her look at the bodies. They tortured her, and finally they stabbed her in the chest, drove a knife through her throat, and bludgeoned her with the butt of their pallet rifle. The level of violence was staggering. This wasn't just murder. It was rage. It was personal. And investigators would later note that all three bodies appear to have been moved and posed after death. Sue was found lying on her side, naked below the waist, partially covered by a blanket.

And that kind of staging suggests that killers weren't in a hurry. They took their time. They wanted the scene to look a certain way. Even then, they still weren't done. After killing Sue, the attackers went into the bedroom where 12-year-old Tina was sleeping. But they didn't kill her there. Instead, they dragged her past the bodies of her mother, her brother, and his friend, and took her with them out of cabin 28 and into the night.

And here's what makes this even harder to process. Three other people were sleeping in that cabin. 10-year-old Rick, 5-year-old Greg, and 12-year-old Justin Smart were all in the boys' room, just steps away from where the murders happened. And all three of them claim they slept through the entire thing. Some people have suggested the children might have been drugged. Others think the sheer terror of waking up in that situation could have caused a kind of shock where they froze and pretended to be asleep to survive.

We don't know for sure, but whatever the explanation, those three boys made it through the net alive while the people in the next room didn't. The next morning, Sunday, April 12th at around 8 a.m., Sheila Sharp walked back from the Seabult's cabin to grab her curling iron before church. But when she opened the front door of cabin 28, she walked into a nightmare. The first thing she saw was blood. it was everywhere than the bodies. Her brother, John, was beaten so badly that she could only recognize him by his hair. Dana was lying face down on the floor, and behind them was her mother, lifeless. Sheila screamed.

She didn't even realize she was doing it until 15-year-old James Siebel Jr. grabbed her arm. He'd heard the scream from next door and ran over. Junior's first thought was the younger kids. He tried his best to avoid the puddles of blood on the floor as he stepped over their bodies and checked the boys' room. To his relief, Rick, Greg, and Justin appeared to be unharmed, still asleep. But Tina was gone. Junior assumed she just hadn't been home that night. He ran to get his father and together they removed the three boys through the bedroom window

so they wouldn't have to walk through the crime scene. But nobody could undo what Sheila had already seen. That image of her mother and brother would follow her for the rest of her life. She later said the only thing that kept her going in those first days and weeks was rage. Rage at whoever did this. And rage at a system that she'd soon find out was completely unprepared to give her family justice. Hi, listeners, it's Carter Roy. Are you interested in the mysterious parts of history?

Like when in 1518, an entire European city couldn't stop dancing. Or in 1908, when something flattened over 800 square miles of Siberian forest in an instant. I'm excited to tell you about a new show, Hidden History, with Dr. Horini Bott. Dr. Bott has spent her entire career demanding evidence and asking why. Now every Monday on Hidden History, she's going where history touches the unknown, vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files, not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations, waiting for a closer look. At the end of every episode, she'll tell you,

exactly what she thinks happened and ask, what if it happened today? Hidden history drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery. By the time, police arrived at Cabin 28 on the morning of April 12th, 1981, the investigation was already at a disadvantage. First, the crime scene had already been contaminated.

Before the authorities got there, multiple people had walked through the cabin to rescue the surviving children. That's completely understandable. But it meant potential evidence was lost before anyone with a badge ever set foot inside. Footprints were smudged, blood was tracked through the rooms, and the chain of custody on the scene was broken before it even began. On top of that, witness accounts from that night were all over the place. Some people at the resort claim they heard screams coming from cabin 28. Others said they heard nothing at all. In a tight-knit community where the cabins are practically on top of each other,

well, you'd think people would have noticed something, but nobody called the police that night. Second, the local sheriff's department was way out of its depth. There was exactly one person in the entire county with homicide experience. The sheriff's deputy named Mike Gamberg. But Gamberg had a personal connection to the family. He was the younger boys' martial arts instructor, and he knew 17-year-old Dana Wingate. Because of that, he was pulled off the case.

Third, forensic science in 1981 was limited. It would be another five years before DNA evidence was first used in a criminal case. So investigators were working with old-school methods. fingerprints, witness statements, crime scene photos, and in terms of fingerprints, they found none. The sheriff at the time, Doug Thomas, knew they needed backup, so he called the U.S. Department of Justice. They agreed to help and send agents from their organized crime unit. Now, that's a strange choice for a family murder in the woods, right? Why send organized crime investigators to a cabin in the mountain?

that might have been because of one particular person of interest. Boobabodei, Martin Smart's friend who lived with the smarts in Cabin 26. Bo reportedly had mob connections. It's possible that DOJ wanted to investigate him for other reasons and saw the Keddy case as an opportunity to get close to him. Whatever the reason, the investigation was now a patchwork of agencies, the Sheriff's Department, the DOJ, and eventually the FBI. And right away, there was disagreements about how to work the case.

One of the first big questions investigators faced was, why was 12-year-old Tina taken? Why kill three people but kidnap fourth? The FBI called in one of their top criminal profilers, a man named John Douglas, who later inspired the Netflix show, Mind Hunter. According to him, it was possible that the whole operation was about abducting Tina, that she might have been the target all along, and the others were killed because they got in the way.

That theory had some backing. In July of 1980, about nine months before the murders, Tina had reported that a man in Quincy had molested her. The sheriff's office looked into it, but charges were never filed. Some investigators wondered, could that man have come back for Tina? Could he have been willing to kill several members of her family just to get her? There was even speculation that Tina might have been pregnant and that the person responsible couldn't risk her being found, alive or dead,

because an autopsy would reveal what he'd done. Police even spoke with one of Tina's teachers during the investigation. and discovered that he had photos of Tina on his desk at school and at his home. That definitely raised eyebrows, but it never led to an arrest. In the end, none of the leads connected to Tina's abduction went anywhere, which left detectives wondering. If Tina wasn't the primary target, then who wanted Sue Sharp dead? Sue's ex-husband James was an obvious place to start.

He had a history of abuse, and Sheila's accusations against him painted a dark picture. But James was quickly ruled out. He was on the other side of the country, working for the military on the night of the murders. There was also a man Sue had been dating, referred to in police records, only as Robert T. Who sang at a local bar in Quincy. But Robert was never questioned because he was killed in April 1981, while running from the police for a separate unrelated crime. So that lead died with him.

And that brings us to the suspect who, in my opinion, is the most compelling. Martin smart. Remember, Martin lived just two cabins away. His 12-year-old son, Justin, was sleeping over at the Sharps' cabin that night. There were rumors that he was angry at Sue because she turned down his romantic advances and had encouraged his wife to leave him. So what was Martin doing on the night of April 11th? He and his buddy, Bo, spent the evening drinking beers before heading to the Kettie

Resort Bar with Marilyn. Initially, Martin said he and Bo stayed at the bar until 2 a.m. But other witnesses at the bar said they left earlier than that. So Martin changed his story and said they came home around. around 11 p.m. Well, here's the problem with that. Marilyn had got home before them, and she said that when she woke up at some point during the night, Martin and Bo still weren't there. Not only that, but according to witnesses at the bar, Martin seemed tense and agitated that evening. He reportedly got angry when the DJ switched from country music to rock. Small thing, maybe, but it paints a picture

of a man who was already on edge. And then there's what happened after the murders. When Martin and Bo finally did come home that night, Marilyn noticed they were burning something in the wood stove. In the days that followed, Martin threw away a pair of shoes and he had to replace a hammer that had mysteriously gone missing. A hammer, the same type of weapon that was used to kill the victim. Then there's the question of young Justin Smart, Martin's 12-year-old son who's sleeping in the boys' room that night.

At first, Justin said he slept through everything. But then he told his mother, Marilyn, that he had a dream that night about someone hurting Sue. After a polygraph test, Justin changed his story again. He said he actually woke up during the murders. He described seeing someone with a pocket knife cutting Sue's chest. He also said he saw Tina being dragged away by two people, one with black hair and one with brown hair. An amateur sketch artist created composite drawings based on Justin's description,

and one of the sketches looked a lot like his own father, Martin Smart. Years later, when modern forensic testing was done on evidence from the crime scene, DNA found on a piece of tape used to bind the victims was a possible match for Justin. Now, does that mean the 12-year-old helped commit a triple homicide? Probably not. All three people killed that night were bigger and stronger than he was. It's far more likely that Justin witnessed something horrific, and his young brain processed it as a bad dream.

And finding his DNA in that house isn't exactly shocking. He spent time there all the time. But it does add another layer to an already complicated picture. While investigators were chasing leads and sorting through evidence, one question hung over everything. Where was Tina Sharp? The 12-year-old had vanished the night of the murders, and no matter how hard they tried, no one could find her.

Leeds dried up, the case went cold. Then on April 22nd, 1984, a little more than three, years after the murders, a man was hiking in the Feather River Canyon, roughly 60 miles from the Keddy Resort, when he stumbled onto something in the underbrush. Bones, human bones, including part of a skull. He reported it to police and the discovery made the local news. What happened next is one of these strangest moments in this entire case. A man called the tip line and said,

I was wondering if they thought of the murder up in Keddy, up in Plumas County a couple years ago, where a 12-year-old girl was never found. At the time, the operator logged it as just another tip. But when a forensic pathologist confirmed the bones belong to Tina Sharp, that phone call took on a whole new meaning. How did the caller know those bones would turn out to be Tina's? Was it a lucky guess? Or did he know?

because he'd put them there. You'd think that recording would be a critical piece of evidence, but instead the tape was placed in storage. The public didn't even learn it existed until 2016, more than 30 years later, when it was finally handed over to the Department of Justice. And it's also worth asking, is it a coincidence that Tina's remains were found so close

to the third anniversary of the murders? In a remote canyon that a random person just happened to wander into? That timing has always felt suspicious to me. Still, suspicion and speculation can only take you so far. At some point, you need evidence. And when it comes to the Keddy murders, the evidence that exists points most directly at one person.

Martin, smart. Remember those emotional love letters he used to write to Maryland after their fights? about two weeks after the murders. Marilyn had kicked him out of the house and Martin wrote her another letter. In it, he said he'd, quote, paid the price for her love with four people's lives. Four people, the exact number of victims.

And that's not all. Martin allegedly confessed to the killings to a counselor at the VA hospital in Reno, Nevada, just weeks after the murders. According to the counselor, Martin admitted to killing Sue and Tina, but he denied killing Dana or John. And he wouldn't say who did. Okay, think about that for a second. If Martin killed Sue and Tina but says he didn't kill the two boys, that means someone else was in that cabin with him.

The most likely candidate, his buddy, Bo, Bubadee, who was unaccounted for that same night. Martin also reportedly told his wife and several other people over the years that he was responsible for the murders. And in 2016, a rusty hammer was recovered from a pond near Cabin 28. It matched the description of a hammer Martin claimed to have lost right before the murders. If law enforcement has been able to confirm it's connected to the crime, they haven't said so publicly. So you've got a changing alibi, physical evidence that went missing, a written reference to four people's lives, a confession to a therapist, and multiple admissions to people he knew, and yet Martin Smart was never charged. Why? Well, that's where the conspiracy theories start, and honestly, I think some of them deserve a hard look. Remember Mike Gamberg, the deputy with homicide experience who got pulled off the case early on?

He eventually came out of retirement decades later to work on the Keddy murders again, alongside the county's current sheriff Greg Hagwood. Gamberg believes this case was solvable back in 1981, but he thinks it was deliberately sabotaged. He points to the sheriff at the time, Doug Thomas, who reportedly had a personal friendship with Martin Smart. Could Thomas have shielded his friend from serious scrutiny? And then there's the DOJ angle.

Martin's counselor said he tried to report Martin's confession to the federal agents handling the case. They brushed it off. Gambard thinks that's because they were protecting Boobodeh. Remember, Boob was said to have mob connections, and some investigators believe those connections ran deep, possibly into government circles. The early 1980s were a wild time for federal agencies with documented involvement in drug running and other corrupt operations. So the theory goes like this. If Beau had been charged in connection with the Keddy murders,

it could have exposed something much bigger. So the case was allowed to go cold, not because the evidence wasn't there, but because the wrong people had too much to lose. Is that far-fetched? Maybe. But when you look at how many times this investigation was seemingly derailed from the inside, it starts to feel less like incompetence and more like something intentional.

There's also a strange detail from the day of the murders that's never been explained. Two unidentified men were spotted in the area that day. They knocked on the door of a nearby apartment and asked for someone named, JR, who the tenant didn't know, then they left. These men matched the composite sketch Justin Smart later helped create. They were never identified. Were they casing the area? Were they connected to Martin and Bo?

Or were they complete strangers who had nothing to do with any of it? We still don't know. Here's where things stand today. Martin Smart died in 2000. Bo Buba Day died in 1988, the two people most investigators believe were responsible for the Keddy Cabin murders, both took whatever they knew to the grave. But Sheriff Hagwood has confirmed that there are six living persons of interest in this case who still need to be ruled out, and law enforcement knows exactly where all six of them are. Special investigator, Gamburg,

is still actively working the case, and he's asking anyone with information to come forward. You can contact the Plumas County Sheriff's Office at 530-283-6360. You can call the Secret Witness Program at 775-3-2-2-4-9-00, or text them at 847-4-1-1. You can submit a tip online at www.com or you can email Gamberg directly at Gamberg at PCSO.net. All of those options except anonymous tips and there's a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest. After everything, I keep coming back to the people at the center of this. Sue Sharp. who left everything she knew on the East Coast and drove across the country to build something better for her kids.

She took typing classes. She worked part-time jobs. She did whatever it took. John, her 15-year-old son, who heard his mother screaming and didn't hesitate. He ran straight into danger to try to save her. Dana Wingate, a 17-year-old without a real family of his own. who was only there because the Sharps made him feel like he belonged. And Tina, who at 12 years old, never got to grow up.

They deserved so much better. And the people who loved them, the siblings who survived that night, deserve answers. What gets me about this case is how close it feels to being solved. You've got a suspect who practically told anyone who had listened that he did it. You've got physical evidence. You've got a mysterious phone call that might belong to the killer. You've got six people still alive who might know something. And yet, more than 40 years later, nobody has been held accountable.

Was it Martin Smart and Beau Buba Day, driven by jealousy and rage? Was there a cover-up to protect people who should have been behind bars? Was Tina the real target all along? And the rest of the family just got in the way. Or is the truth some combination of all of it? I don't know. But I believe someone out there has the missing piece, and I hope that person is listening

because it is never too late to rewrite the ending. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram.

Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, Subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad-free. We'll be back on Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios.

This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Protofsky, Lori Marinelli, Cassidy Dillon, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes available now wherever you get your podcast. Looking for your next listen, check out Hidden History with Dr. Horini Bot.

Every Monday, Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophets. and events that science still can't fully explain. Follow Hidden History Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.