Examining the Keddie cabin murders

On the morning of April 12, 1981, fourteen-year-old Sheila Sharp had returned home from a sleepover, only to discover something shattering. Laying in pools of blood in the living room were the lifeless bodies of her mother, older brother, and his friend.

This terrible tale begins in the fall of 1980. Susan “Sue” Sharp and her five children left their home in Connecticut in order to flee Susan’s abusive marriage. Sue moved to northern California, where her brother Don had been living at the time. Sue rented a cabin at the Keddie Resort in the rural Sierra Nevada community of Keddie. Sue, her fifteen-year-old son John, fourteen-year-old daughter Sheila, twelve-year-old daughter Tina, ten-year-old son Rick and five-year-old son Greg began to settle into their new life in California. The kids had made friends with the neighboring children, and it wasn’t unusual for their friends to spend the night in the family’s cabin. Cabin 28 had been a home of refuge and peace for Sue and her children. The cabins were located along the edge of the wilderness, surrounding Sue and the kids in nature.

On April 11, 1981, Sue and Sheila drove to Quincy to pick up John and his friend Dana Hall Wingate. Later that afternoon, John and Dana decided to hitch-hike back to Quincy to meet with some friends. A woman named Donna Williams claimed to have picked them up and given them a ride to a friend’s house. The two were later seen attending a party at Oakland Camp in Quincy.

Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Sheila Sharp had made plans to spend the night with the Seabolt family, who resided in a nearby cabin. She left for her sleepover at around 8 pm with her twelve-year-old sister Tina. Tina decided to go home at around 9:0pm.

Sheila returned home the next morning, and upon discovering the scene in the living room, she had gone back to the Seabolt’s cabin for help. Sue’s two youngest sons, Rick and Greg had their friend Justin over that night. The three boys were alive and well in a bedroom in the cabin. Tina was nowhere to be found. Police were quickly dispatched, and James Seabolt had claimed to have pulled the boys from their bedroom window.

The Keddie cabin murders remain unsolved to this day, despite confessions, witness statements, and concrete evidence. So, what happened in cabin 28?

From the start, the investigation was riddled with incompetence. Errors had been made, and important evidence had been overlooked, but we’ll get to that shortly. The investigation was initially handled by the Plumes County Sherriff’s office. The most notably shocking point is that police didn’t believe Sheila when she said that she had a younger sister named Tina. It wasn’t until hours later that police realized that twelve-year-old Tina was missing.

These murders were brutal, to say the least. All 3 victims had been bound with adhesive tape and wires at the wrists and ankles. A hammer and two bloodied knives- one of which was a steak knife that had been bent in the process of stabbing- were found at the scene of the crime. Blood spatter evidence from inside the cabin indicated that the murders had taken place in the living room. Blood was everywhere. Police found no signs of forced entry or robbery. The telephone had been placed off the hook, the lights were off and the curtains were shut.

Police interviewed the three boys who had been in the cabin but were unharmed. At first, they all claimed to have slept through the murders. As time went on, Justin Eason had begun to change his story. He said that he might have been awake and might have seen two men enter the cabin with John and Dana when they got back to the cabin. He said that he had a dream about the murders that night, and then he later said that he might have been awake. Justin said that he had seen the two men in question take Tina out the back door as she tried to scream for help. The Plumes Country Sherriff’s Office identified Justin’s stepfather, Martin Smartt, and his friend, John “Bo” Boubede as prime suspects. Both men had criminal histories. Bo had ties to organized crime and was known to be a mob enforcer.

On the night of the murders, John Boubede had been staying with the Smartts on a temporary basis. Martin suffered from PTSD as a result of his time fighting in the Vietnam war. He said he and Boubede had met a few weeks earlier at the Veterans Administration Hospital. Martin was known to be a very abusive husband, and Sue had been encouraging Martin’s wife, Marilyn to leave the marriage. Marilyn did eventually leave Martin; the very day after these murders were committed. Police claimed that they knew nothing about this during the investigation.

Martin and Bo had an alibi. Martin said that he and Bo had gone for drinks the night of the murders. It is unclear whether or not Marilyn accompanied them. A few drinks were all that it took for Martin to become aggressive at the bar; he became upset about the music being played in the bar and angrily complained to the manager. It’s unclear what time they returned home. When Martin was questioned by the police, he said that a hammer had gone missing from his basement about a week before the murder. At some point, Marilyn had told the police that she found a blood-covered jacket in her basement. She believed that it belonged to Tina. The police failed to make a record of this event. Eventually, Martin and Bo had been dismissed as suspects. No one could find a motive for the killings, and it was concluded a random act of violence.

At this point, we’re faced with multiple questions, but let’s take a second to talk about Tina Sharp. When police had finally conceded that Tina was missing, they put together a search and had no luck in finding her. Tina’s story begins once more in 1984 when a cranium was found about 30 miles from Keddie. An anonymous tip to the Butte County Sherriff’s office indicated that the remains might have once belonged to Tina Sharp. Oddly enough, the call had been placed on the three-year anniversary of the murders. The Butte County Sherriff’s Department told the Plumes Sherriff Department about this discovery. It is said that nothing was done about it until 2013. Other items that had been found with the remains included a nylon jacket, a blanket, and an empty medical tape dispenser.

Tina’s remains were not the only pieces of evidence that the police had been ignoring. After Marilyn had left Martin Smartt, he had sent her a letter begging for her to come back to him. In the letter, he said, “I’ve paid the price for your love, and now that I have bought it with four people’s lives you tell me that we are through. Great. What else do you want?” Police did not consider this letter to be a confession and they never questioned Martin about it.

In May of 1981, a counselor at the Veterans Administrations met with Martin, who allegedly said, “I killed the woman and her daughter, but I didn’t have anything to do with the boys.” The counselor reported this to the police, but this confession was dismissed as hearsay. It is widely speculated that Martin had been good friends with Plumes County Sherriff, Doug Thomas. It is said that Marilyn knew nothing of this friendship.

Remember how James Seabolt claimed to have rescued the boys through the window? Well, that didn’t exactly happen. Instead, he went into the cabin to see if anyone was still alive, contaminating the crime scene in the process. Police found a fingerprint of an unknown person on the scene but didn’t do anything about it. The original case log is missing, and evidence had been handled with neglect. Needless to say, everything about this investigation seems sinister. The Keddie cabin murders are still being investigated, but this time by a new Sherriff and new investigators.

So let’s weigh-in. I am unsure why this case is deemed as unsolved considering the presence of a confession. Martin Smartt and John Boubede are both deceased, but according to the current investigation, there are living suspects who may have played a role in these deaths. One of the most widely accepted and speculated theories is that there was some sort of love triangle between Martin, Marilyn, and Sue.