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E005 The Keddie Murders
3.3k Plays6 years ago
Keddie had represented hope for the Sharp family (a single mother and her five children)-- hope that they could escape the evils already inflicted upon them in this world. So, when 14-year-old Sheila walked into the front door of her home after staying the night with a friend to find her mother, brother, and her brother's friend brutally murdered, she knew that the escape had only been temporary. Evil, worse than they had ever known, had come knocking again.
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Transcript
Sinister Houses and Infamous Cabin 28
00:00:00
Speaker
It seems that every town has one. The house where something sinister happened. The abandoned or condemned building with windows long since boarded up, and with plenty of ghost stories to accompany it. The house you're not supposed to look directly at, or else some evil will follow you. The kind of house most of us wouldn't even go into on a dare.
00:00:26
Speaker
In Kettie, California, right outside of Quincy, that house is cabin 28 at the Kettie Resort, at least before the house was demolished in 2004.
00:00:38
Speaker
But that wasn't before ghost stories were passed from friend to friend, tales of strange noises and dares waged to even step foot into the place where such a grisly crime had taken place. So gruesome, in fact, that the population of Kettie has dwindled down to nearly nothing, and speculation of what happened has neared the level of legend.
00:01:02
Speaker
In fact, if you've seen the movies The Strangers or Cabin 28, then you know what I'm talking about, since those movies were based on the case Maggie and I are bringing you today. While the story begins as one of a fresh start, a new independent life for a young, newly single mother and her five children, it ends in one of the most gruesome, quadruple homicides in American history. Just ask Brian Bertino.
00:01:31
Speaker
writer and director of The Strangers, who said that the inspiration for his film about the random attack on and brutal slaying of an entire family by masked strangers came from real life events. First, his own childhood of strangers knocking on his door and asking for people who didn't live there, who were later linked to robberies in the area.
00:01:55
Speaker
Second, the Manson family murders, again, strangers, groups of them attacking and taking delight in torture. And third, as many journalists speculate, by the case today.
00:02:10
Speaker
Just ask those who attempted to accept dares to stay the night in the cabin where the story takes place and who swears they saw things, heard things. Just look for yourself at the crime scene photographs of blood on the walls, furniture, doors, floor, and even ceiling. This is that house. Cabin 28, the site of the Keddie murders.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah.
Introduction to the Podcast Mission
00:03:15
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases, where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning these cases
00:03:30
Speaker
We'll take those tips to law enforcement so justice and closure can be brought to these families. With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases, because as these families know, conversations help to keep their missing family members in the public consciousness, helping to keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:03:54
Speaker
Maggie, I have to warn you that this case today gives me goosebumps and it actually made it hard for me to sleep while I was researching it. So I wanted to warn you and our listeners that the episode today does contain gruesome and graphic content. Listener discretion is advised.
Sue Sharp's New Beginning at Cabin 28
00:04:15
Speaker
Maggie, when Glenna Susan Sharp, called Sue by those who knew her, moved to cabin 28 at the Keddie Resort in 1980. She had to have thought that things were looking up. I mean, true. The name resort for the cabins in Keddie is a bit of a misnomer. It wasn't some luxurious spa town with amenities.
00:04:40
Speaker
Instead, it was a defunct railway town that had been transformed into low-income housing, but at least Sue felt like it was safe for her children. Even though there are stories that Kettie and the nearby Quincy were quote, drug and party towns, the dangers posed by those possibilities had to have seemed small in comparison to all of the horrific events that the family had already faced.
00:05:07
Speaker
So when you said resort, I was definitely picturing like dirty dancing, like that type of resort or like a cabin in the woods. Right. Well, now it is a cabin in the woods, but not like a vacation cabin. No, no.
00:05:24
Speaker
So Sue Sharp, 35 at the time, had already escaped by her daughter Sheila's accounts, an abusive and pedophilic husband, a career sailor at a naval base in Connecticut. And she did exactly what I would do and moved her family as far away from the abuse as possible all the way across the country to California. She brought into her five children, who in 1980 were John,
00:05:54
Speaker
age 15, Sheila age 14, Tina age 12, Ricky age 10, and Greg age 5. So five children. This lady had her hands full. Yes, she did. And
00:06:11
Speaker
The reason why she moved to California in particular is because she had come to be close to her brother Dawn, who actually lived in a trailer park in Quincy. And I'm sure, you know, after especially something like a divorce, having family close is probably exactly what Sue felt like she needed to begin a new life.
00:06:33
Speaker
However, the positive changes that I'm sure Sue had envisioned did not happen. Instead, she found out that her 12 year old daughter Tina was being molested by one of the people that lived near them. So she moved away from an abusive husband.
00:06:51
Speaker
to a situation where her child was being molested. Right. So she picked up everything again and moved again. This time to a less populous town called Kebbe.
00:07:05
Speaker
I'm sure she was thinking, Maggie, that since people had been the root of the family's problems, maybe fewer people might be the ticket to a peaceful life that Sue so desperately wanted to provide for her kids, which would explain why this move to Kettie would make sense. Seemed like a good one. Exactly. And for a while, things were looking up. Those who knew Sue have said that she was, and this is according to an article in the Feather River Bulletin that was published on May 13th, 1987,
00:07:35
Speaker
Sue was a small, statured woman who kept to herself and was hardworking, just struggling to get by. In her time in town, she had gone on dates with a few men, but none of them really developed into any relationships. Perhaps she struggled with trust after her previous experiences and who could blame her. Yeah, I don't think I would ever be able to date anyone.
00:07:59
Speaker
Right because you want to make sure you're safe and your kids are safe. Instead her focus was on holding down several part-time jobs which she was forced to use welfare to supplement because it was hard to pay the $175 a month rent for her small cabin and take care of her five children and to make sure that they had warm clothes and full bellies and well we know how expensive life is and I have one child I can't imagine
00:08:28
Speaker
Five.
00:08:30
Speaker
But life wasn't without some struggle of readjustment for the kids. After all, they too had been through a lot. When they settled into the cabin, Sue and her daughter Tina shared a bedroom. Her youngest sons, Ricky and Greg shared a room. And her oldest son, John, took an unfinished room downstairs off of a utility room in the basement where even though it didn't have a bathroom and he would have to mount the back staircase of the house,
00:08:58
Speaker
or walk around to the front door to get a meal or make a bathroom trip because there was no inside staircase. It was at least some independence for him. I know I went through that. Like, first you want your own room and then you're like, oh, I want to be in my own room that's like in a different place of the house. Exactly. I remember my big thing. I wanted my own telephone line. Oh, that was big. So I get junior high. No interruption. Yeah. Nobody picking up and hearing your conversations. I didn't get one.
00:09:27
Speaker
You tried. Yeah, I tried, but I didn't. That 1987 article indicates that Sue had been struggling to keep her oldest child John in line and that he had been getting into a little bit of mischief. He was a teenage boy trying to prove he was stronger than the circumstances that surrounded him. And as a result, he got into arguments with peers. He acted tough. He got into a little bit of trouble with the law after an incident of breaking into a house to steal marijuana.
00:09:57
Speaker
And he tried to always be a leader, never a follower. And I think that explains why he probably felt very adult to have his own room downstairs.
00:10:07
Speaker
Her daughter, Sheila, whose absence was initially felt in the cabin, because notice I only mentioned four of the children and where they were staying. Sheila, at the time when they first moved to Keddie, was actually in Oregon giving birth to a baby. And yes, how old is she? She was 14 when she moved into the cabin with them. So, I mean, this family, they had been through
00:10:34
Speaker
a lot, right? This was not an easy life that they had had so far. Since she was only 14 at the time, Sheila maturely put the baby up for adoption and in mid-February she moved back in with her mother.
00:10:52
Speaker
When Sheila moved back, Sue gave Sheila and Tina the bed in that bedroom that I mentioned and would then alternate between sleeping on a twin bed in the same room with the girls and sleeping on the living room couch. So again, she obviously was a caring mother. Her son has that separate room downstairs.
00:11:12
Speaker
One bedroom in the cabin is for her two youngest sons, Ricky and Greg, and then the other bedroom went to Sheila and Tina, and she would sacrifice her own comfort. My heart really does ache for her. I just feel so bad that her family's been through so much, and they're living in this little tiny cabin, all five of them now. I just feel bad for her.
00:11:34
Speaker
And even though the living situation was modest, at least the family was together. And it's reported that the kids loved running around in the woods, walking down the old railroad tracks that were behind it, because remember this is a defunct railway town, playing in the ponds and the streams that surrounded the property, just the joys of living in a rural area. And Maggie, I don't know about you, but
00:11:56
Speaker
I can remember days like those. I lived outside of town and I would walk to a friend's house, we would play on old bridges, we would hide in old barns, like we would get lost in the fields. I mean, that's a typical day. Yeah, I lived very close to my cousins and we would play in like this bottom that was beside the creek and catch tadpoles and play on the railroad tracks. So yeah, very much also my childhood. Yeah.
00:12:23
Speaker
And none of those places, back then at least, seemed to hold any danger, I don't think, for any kids. You know, today, obviously, I would be hesitant to let my child do the same things that I did just because of the world today. But back then, all those places just held mystery and wonder. And Tina, Sheila's younger sister that she was in the bedroom with, she had some of those special hiding places too. Like her mom, it's reported she liked to keep private in a lot of occasions.
00:12:52
Speaker
but she loved the newfound attention. She was getting at school and she was beginning to thrive because of the extra help that she was getting and it was encouraging her to do better. And that makes me very happy because again, she has also been through a lot at this point. And finally, finally a long deserved turn for the better.
The Discovery of the Murders
00:13:16
Speaker
But less than a month later,
00:13:20
Speaker
Everything changed.
00:13:24
Speaker
April 11th, 1981 was a normal Saturday. John was with his friend, 17-year-old Dana Wingate. Dana was, according to most accounts, immature, but an extremely likable guy. He was a ward of the court and was currently living in a group home, so he too knew the struggles that were faced by so many with a tough childhood circumstance, you know, and trying to find your place.
00:13:51
Speaker
in this world. And while he liked to party and was John's best friend, he also did what he was supposed to do. And on April 11th he got the proper permission from the group home to go and stay with John. So I mean even if he's troublesome sometimes like he's still gonna follow the rules and do what he's supposed to do. And also he's only 17. So he's still a kid. Exactly. You're well not free to make immature choices but
00:14:21
Speaker
I guess I could forgive it. Yeah, more forgivable. Exactly. As was much more common back in the 80s than today, and because Kettie was such a small town and John remembers 15, he didn't have a license yet, he and Dana had hitchhiked. According to many reports several times that day, including that night, to a party in Quincy, because that's like the nearest town.
00:14:47
Speaker
We know this because several witnesses had reported seeing John and Dana around 1015 that evening at the corner of Highway 70 and Lawrence Street making their way back home. Sheila had asked to stay the night at the next door neighbor's house, the Seabolt's, with a friend, and Tina had joined her there for much of the night before Sue then walked over to the Seabolt's and ordered Tina back home right before bed. Sue's son, Ricky,
00:15:17
Speaker
had a friend of his own to stay the night, another boy from the neighborhood, 12-year-old Justin Smart-Eason. He would be sleeping with Ricky and Greg in their home. So was Sheila sleeping at the neighbors at the Seabolds? And with Tina, Ricky, Greg, so her youngest three children, and Ricky's friend Justin asleep, Sue just waited for John and his friend Dana to return home before being able to completely settle herself down for the night.
00:15:46
Speaker
The next morning, Sunday, April 12th, Sheila walked back over from the Seabolt's house to grab some Sunday clothes so she could go to church with her friend. She noticed that the front door was ajar and walked into an appalling and grisly sight and smell.
00:16:04
Speaker
She was nearly toppled by the nauseous smell burning her nostrils and by the sight of her mother, brother, and Dana, savagely murdered in the front living room. Blood everywhere.
00:16:23
Speaker
Not knowing what else to do, she ran back to the neighbor's house. Her friend's father went to the home to see if anyone was alive and her friend's mother went to the cabin that belonged to the Keddie Resort owner to phone the police because the Seabolds didn't have a phone themselves. I am speechless right now. This
00:16:43
Speaker
went downhill very quickly for me. Things were looking up and then here Sheila going to stay the night with a friend you know coming in just expecting to just grab some clothes go to church and to walk in and see that.
00:16:57
Speaker
Well her friend's father knocked on the window of the boy's bedroom and he saw a face pop up in the window and not wanting them to see the scene that was literally a few feet away in the living room, he prompted them to leave the house through the bedroom window. It was Sheila alone of the children who would be haunted by the sight and it was a chilling sight indeed.
00:17:27
Speaker
The three, Sue, John, and Dana, had all been bound with electrical wire and medical tape at the hands and feet. They had been brutally beaten and stabbed multiple times. John's hands were bound with electrical tape. He had been beaten with a hammer and had his throat slit.
00:17:52
Speaker
He was found face up in the living room closest to the front door. Dana was next to him, face down and his head halfway on a pillow. Dana had suffered multiple traumatic blows to the head from a hammer and had been strangled.
00:18:13
Speaker
John and Dana's feet were bound together with one long piece of electrical wire connecting the two boys. So their feet, John's feet were bound, Dana's feet were bound together with that same wire. The soles of one pair of their shoes had blood on the bottom, revealing that they had at some point walked through the pulled blood. So this was
00:18:35
Speaker
It's led police to believe this was an ongoing, torturous death. Like this wasn't... Just quick. No. Sue's body was next to the couch. Her hands were tied tightly and that knot was connected to the wire which bound her feet. She was naked from the waist down, even though the autopsy showed no sign of semen.
00:19:02
Speaker
Her throat had been slit. She had the imprint of the butt end of an 880 pellet gun on her head. She had been gagged, again tightly, with a bandana and her own underwear stuffed into her mouth, with electrical tape wound to hold it in place.
00:19:21
Speaker
She also showed signs of blunt force trauma, had defensive marks on her arms, blood on the soles of her bare feet, and several stab wounds to her chest. Her body was partially covered by a blanket, but that didn't do anything, obviously to calm
00:19:42
Speaker
or quite the sight that Sheila walked into. Some of the murder weapons, including a claw hammer, a butcher knife, and a bent steak knife were found at the scene. And Maggie, I'm gonna show you a picture of the steak knife that was recovered. So Maggie, here's the picture of the knife. What do you notice?
00:20:06
Speaker
So upon first glance, because there's a shadow, it looks almost like there's two blades, but it's bent so much that it's causing a shadow and it is like bent upward when it's laying on its side. Which shows you the force that was used with this knife. So again, this was not, no death is easy, right? But some deaths are exactly are quick and this one was not.
00:20:36
Speaker
So as Maggie and I just noted, you can tell by the way the steak knife is bent in the attack that this was brutal. And as I mentioned before, blood covered the furniture. It splattered the walls and ceiling, and it was pulled on the carpet. And we'll have a picture of that on our Facebook page as well. Didn't you say there were four homicides? It was a quadruple homicide.
Tina Sharp's Disappearance and Investigation
00:21:01
Speaker
Yep. I did mention, and I'm glad that you caught it, Maggie.
00:21:05
Speaker
At the beginning of this episode, this was a quadruple homicide, and what I've mentioned to you so far would only be a triple homicide. Remember, Sheila was safe. She went to stay the night with a friend. Also safe, and we'll hear the details about this in a minute, were Ricky, Greg, and their friend Justin. Missing from the crime scene completely,
00:21:31
Speaker
was 12 year old Tina. As in she's not in the home at all. No. We don't know where she is. No. The neighbors remember knocked on the boys bedroom. And saw the little head pop up. And was able to get them out of that bedroom. But Tina was just gone.
00:21:51
Speaker
Immediately, Sheila had noticed that her sister was missing and everyone was telling the police, hey, there's this child who's unaccounted for. According to Ted Kammerer, when Deputy Hank Clement first arrived at the scene, he knew something about this scene was off. With this amount of blood and the placement of it in relation to the bodies, he felt that the bodies had been moved.
00:22:20
Speaker
arranged after their murders. See, this is even more weird to me. First off, it's weird that you're gonna kill someone. And then it's even more weird that you are going to move their bodies after they're dead to place them. That's a different type of, like, psycho to me. I agree. I can't imagine. Even a loved one, I don't want to touch. Yes. After they're dead. Right.
00:22:50
Speaker
Maybe that says something more about me, I don't know, but I would not. Even like an animal or anything, I don't want...
00:22:59
Speaker
I wanna dissociate myself from it. But in addition to wanting the police to find out obviously what kind of monster or monsters could commit this act, they also wanted somebody to go find Tina. After all, she could be out there, right? In one of her special hiding places alone, scared. But when the police arrived, it would be hours before they began to search for her. And before the FBI would be brought in to aid in that search.
00:23:30
Speaker
first the police began processing the crime scene. Is there not multiple groups someone couldn't do the crime scene and someone could hunt for Tina? I mean I'm not a police officer so I don't know but. And you're gonna hear there are a lot of criticisms of this particular investigation that being one of them that they would not immediately have started
00:23:49
Speaker
Especially if her mother and brother and brother's friend had just been killed. I feel like that would be priority number one, find this kid so you could possibly save her life. Exactly. But they didn't. And when they started processing the crime scene, interestingly, they found no sign of forced entry. Well, of course, because she kept the back door unlocked for her kid to come up. Right. Yeah. And sometimes he would even come into the front door. So we don't know if the doors were just unlocked.
00:24:17
Speaker
Maybe she knew them? Exactly. It could be someone she knew. What they did find was furniture knocked over, the drapes were closed, the lights were off, and the phone was off the hook. And while there was lots of blood, curiously, there were some things that the police didn't find much of. Footprints, fingerprints by whoever committed this crime, or
00:24:46
Speaker
witnesses. So you know when you come into a crime scene and you you don't have now this does kind of predate the big like DNA investigations that we have today. But they're still searching for fingerprints. I think they found one on the rail on the back steps. And if the
00:25:10
Speaker
victims walked through blood you would feel like the murderer slash murderers would have walked through blood and all of the blood that was on the furniture the walls the carpet the ceiling all of that was blood of the victims
00:25:26
Speaker
And so you think, again, Sue had defensive wounds. And so she would have at least been fighting back. So you think there's a shot that maybe some of their blood was somewhere. Right. Or to scratch them or something. But no, nothing.
00:25:44
Speaker
There was a single neighboring couple who reported that they had been woken up around 1.30 that morning on April 12th with the noise of what they thought sounded like a muffled scream. And these houses were pretty close together. They are. So you would see something. We'll post some pictures so you can see how close they are. I mean some of these houses, you're right Maggie, they're within like 15 feet.
00:26:08
Speaker
So they're pretty close. Well, this neighboring couple thought they heard the scream and it woke them up, but then they couldn't tell which direction it came from and they didn't hear it again. And so I'm sure they were just kind of like, oh, it could have been an animal. It could have been a kid laughing or something. Something going on. And so they had gone back to sleep, obviously not thinking anything of it until they find out what happened. And then they report what they heard.
00:26:39
Speaker
What's interesting to me is that despite the neighbor reporting a scream, even more interesting, Ricky, his friend Justin, and Greg had seemingly slept through the entire attack that happened right outside of their bedroom door.
00:27:03
Speaker
That also to me stood out to me because it was very brutal just from the pictures that I've seen that you showed me so far. And I feel like you would hear that. And it wasn't lit. It was in the room next to you. Yeah, they were tortured. It wasn't like they were stabbed and it was done. They were tortured. I would think that if a neighbor could hear a muffled scream,
00:27:27
Speaker
you would have heard something scuffling. Were they hiding maybe the boys? See I didn't read anything that said that Ricky and Greg particular. I'll get to Justin a little bit later but that Ricky and Greg had heard anything but I don't understand because they're right there and I know that a lot of kids are sound sleepers especially children a lot more than adults I feel like but
00:27:54
Speaker
I don't know if you could sleep through what they went through. Exactly. So the police had little to go on. And since nothing was taken from the house, so this wasn't a robbery, the attack appeared to be random.
00:28:10
Speaker
In fact, that's initially what Sheriff Doug Thomas and Deputy Lieutenant Don Stoy ruled. Stoy told the Sacramento Bee newspaper in 1987 that cases like these with no motives are the hardest to solve, obviously. Stoy said, as reported by the Feather River Bulletin, quote, if you don't have a why to start with, it's difficult to determine who, end quote.
00:28:37
Speaker
But he did also say, quote, no sane person could have performed these acts. I mean, obviously we talked about how brutal they are.
Lack of Motive and Psychological Insights
00:28:47
Speaker
So this isn't like, Oh, I'm angry. I'm going to kill somebody. This is personal vendetta territory because I feel like
00:28:57
Speaker
And in the shows I've watched and things I've listened to or read, that if you stab someone, it's a lot more personal than if you shoot them because you have to be right up on them to be able to do that. Right. And we're getting stabbing, throats cut, bound, they're bound together with this electrical wire and surgical tape. So it definitely feels very personal to me.
00:29:27
Speaker
So with no why, where do you even begin? But Maggie, were the officers telling the truth? Was there really no evidence and no motive? And did none of the boys see what happened to Sue, John, and Dana, nor know what happened to Tina?
00:29:52
Speaker
Perhaps one of them did see something. And because it was so traumatic, he blocked it from his mind. And if that is what you listeners are thinking as well, you could be right.
00:30:09
Speaker
The neighborhood friend, 12 year old Justin Smart, was put under hypnosis to see if he would be able to recall anything from that night and what he said would change the path of this investigation. And I think that's pretty cool. I don't even know myself how I feel about hypnosis. I don't know if I think that it would. If it's reliable or not. Right.
00:30:32
Speaker
I don't know how you would even judge that or be able to tell, but like I said, what he said under hypnosis and as a result of it did end up changing this investigation. There were two memories of the event that Justin would share. In his first memory, Justin reported a dream.
00:30:55
Speaker
According to Charles Montaldo in the dream, this is what Justin said. He said he was on a boat and he reported that he saw John and Dana fighting with a long haired and mustached man with glasses. Justin said that this dark haired man in his dream carried a hammer and that he threw both John and Dana overboard.
00:31:20
Speaker
In the dream, Justin then turned and saw someone covered with a sheet. So he looked under the sheet in this dream. It was Sue. And she had a knife wound in her chest.
00:31:34
Speaker
And the sight in his dream even made him so sick that he leaned overboard and threw up. And what's interesting is, you know, I was just saying, I don't know how I feel about this hypnosis thing, but Sue did have a knife wound in her chest. And she was covered with a sheet. That's right. So is there something that he did see and then later he blocked it? And that's kind of where we get with the second memory that Justin had.
00:32:03
Speaker
The second event, he said, you know what, it wasn't a dream. I'm pretty sure I saw what happened. He said he saw Sue with two men that night, one with long hair and one with a mustache. He reports that one of the men had a hammer.
00:32:25
Speaker
He then reports that he heard John and Dana arguing with the men and heard fighting. He said that Dana tried to escape to the kitchen when one of the men hit him in the head with a hammer. He said as this was happening, John was being attacked by the other man and Sue was trying to protect her son, John. Justin said he saw all of this by cracking the door into the living room.
00:32:51
Speaker
And that breaks my heart as he saw it happen. Even worse than seeing the aftermath, seeing it happen. And he was so young. Not knowing what you could do to stop it. He said that when the men were tying the three up is when Tina
00:33:09
Speaker
remember 12 year old Tina who's missing, wandered into the room with her blanket to see what was going on, that she had been woken up by the noise and came in there to find out what it was. Justin said that the men grabbed Tina and took her out the back door and down the steps.
00:33:29
Speaker
and that one of the men cut Sue in the chest and that that was what he saw. And it makes me question those neighbors who heard that muffled scream. Was that Tina's muffled scream as she was being taken out the back? At least from Justin's memory, the police were able to create a sketch.
00:33:55
Speaker
Okay Maggie, here is the sketch that they were able to draw of the two men based on Justin's recollection. How would you describe these men? They look very hippies to me, like very 1970s, early 80s to me almost. If I
00:34:19
Speaker
walked up on these dudes in the street, I would probably walk to the other, like, sidewalk, or like, they're not someone that they look, they don't look friendly. Like, I wouldn't just stop and talk to them. Right. And to me, I mean, they don't look that, that different, other than, you know, one has long hair and the other one doesn't. Their face shapes are a little different. Yeah, the one with the shorter hair has a little bit bigger of a jaw, and the one with long hair has a stronger jaw.
00:34:48
Speaker
But there's nothing, again, other than hair length and glasses. That's very distinguishable. No, nothing identifiable that I think. Well, the sheriff, Doug Thomas, called the Sacramento Department of Justice to help process this crime scene. And this is where things get a little odd, Maggie. The Department of Justice didn't send in homicide detectives. I mean, this is a homicide.
00:35:16
Speaker
Instead, they sent in agents from their organized crime unit. As in like gangs? Exactly. So then this is obviously confusing a lot of people because it's almost as if they're like a cult maybe. Maybe they think it's like a cult activity. Right. They're investigating some sort of connection to
00:35:39
Speaker
some organized group as opposed to, you know, just one person killing another. Well, the oddities like this, they become more and more commonplace in this particular case. So much so that many argue that the police originally tried to cover up what really happened in Cabin 28 that night.
00:36:04
Speaker
Maggie's giving me a kiss. I am. You all can see my faces. I'm so confused.
00:36:11
Speaker
There were two original suspects in the case, Martin Smart, Justin's stepfather. Yes, the boy who stayed the night. So maybe that's why the boys were safe because Justin was in there. Exactly. So the original suspects, Martin Smart, Justin's stepfather, and Martin's friend, Bo Bobidi, who was staying with the Smarts at the time and whose criminal history links him with organized crime.
Suspects: Martin Smart and Bo Bobidi
00:36:37
Speaker
So maybe that's the explanation for the Department of Justice also who were sent into this crime scene from the organized crime unit instead of the homicide unit. The night in question, the two men had gone to the local bar where Martin worked. They went dressed in three-piece suits.
00:36:56
Speaker
Remember, this is a very small town, correct? Right, low-income, small town, went dressed in three-piece suits, and left fairly early because they were complaining a bit too loudly, a lot of people say, about the choice of music. At the bar? At the bar. And this, to me, seems odd because, well, first, in terms of their dress, why are you gonna wear a three-piece suit to, you know, a low-income bar? Exactly, the town, hole-in-the-wall bar.
00:37:24
Speaker
Second, that without being intoxicated that they would make, you know, this huge public scene about something as small as music choice. And third, that they would later that night return to the bar. Because if you're so mad about something like that, why would you go back? These people are sketching me out. Well, and this makes me question Maggie. Were they trying to be noticed?
00:37:50
Speaker
Because if you're noticed, then what are you guaranteed? An alibi. Alibi.
00:38:00
Speaker
And, you know, if something happens that's memorable, like if I'm out somewhere, let's say I go to a restaurant and somebody walks in dressed like a clown, right? I'm gonna remember that they were dressed like a clown. And I threw a fit because I brought in the wrong soda. Exactly. But am I gonna look at my watch and see what time it is that I saw the clown? No.
00:38:22
Speaker
So these people at the bar might remember the what, the complaining, and the who, Martin and Beau. But they're probably, just like I wouldn't, not gonna look at their watch and remember a when. And that's perfect for somebody who wants an alibi. Martin Smart was also, according to many reports, an abusive man.
00:38:45
Speaker
And from a lot of the accounts that I read, Sue had been counseling Martin's wife and Justin's mother, Marilyn, about how and why to leave Martin. Remember, she had been in an abusive relationship herself. So maybe this was a motive. Exactly, and that's what a lot of people believe that it was. And here she's just trying to help her friend get out of this horrible situation. So could Martin have found out this information and become angry? Angry enough to kill?
00:39:17
Speaker
Marilyn reports that she woke up around 2 a.m. This is the morning of April 12th, right? So the morning right before Sheila comes home and sees the scene. That she woke up around 2 a.m. to see her husband Martin burning something in the wood stove. Now he says, oh this was just my normal routine. I always wake up around 2 in the morning to restoke the fire. But Marilyn wasn't so sure.
00:39:43
Speaker
She also reported that she never again saw that three-piece suit that he had worn to the bar. So could there have been something on? And he was burning the evidence? Right. But what she did do just days after the murders was to leave Martin.
00:40:04
Speaker
So that makes me question, maybe she did believe that he was involved. And she wanted to get away to be safe. And she would know as a suspect, and he was a named suspect even from the beginning, that this was her chance. Everybody's gonna be watching him. And now, if any time is the time to be able to get away without him doing something extreme as a response, now might be the time. At least that's what's going through my head.
00:40:32
Speaker
That's what I would think. Yeah, because he's gonna try to lay low. Mm-hmm, exactly. And it did seem like the murderer was a person that Sue and John and Dana and the Sharp family knew because, remember, there's no sign of forced entry. We talked about that earlier. So if it is Martin, when he lives in the same community, right, his son is friends with Sue's son.
00:40:59
Speaker
So if he had knocked on the door, he would open it. Exactly. She would have opened it. And added to that fact, like Maggie and I said before, is the injuries, especially those to Sue, seemed, well, personal.
00:41:14
Speaker
why was she partially undressed especially if no sexual assault occurred? And that's the detail Maggie that gets me is because I guess I would expect if she's only half clothed that it would have been because of some sort of sexual assault. And
00:41:32
Speaker
It could be that whoever had done all of this, if they were coming just for Sue, then maybe that was their intent. But then John and his friend Dana get back home and they somehow interrupt this.
00:41:48
Speaker
And a lot of people thought, you know, maybe that's what happened. Maybe whoever did this, that it was something against Sue, and that they were in the middle of this attack when John and Dana get home. And then they're like, yeah, but if that were the case, wouldn't John and Dana have run? Because one of them would have walked in first, so the other would have been able, you know, to get away. And I get that. But at the same time, I mean, if I saw a family member being attacked, I would not run. I would start attacking the attacker.
00:42:17
Speaker
even if there were multiple people because I would want to protect my mom. I would want to save my mom. Exactly. And you know, here's Dana who's a little bit bigger than John is and he's a little bit older. You know, maybe he was like, no, I've got to help my friend. So
00:42:34
Speaker
I mean that could explain it to me but if not an attack on Sue I don't understand why she would be in this kind of compromising. Maybe they did it to like embarrass her because don't some criminals do that like put their victims into like compromising or embarrassing situations just for like the psychiatric
00:42:57
Speaker
a thing. Right. I mean that could be it. And I read, this was actually, I was watching a documentary on the Amanda Knox case and Meredith Kercher in that case, when they found her body she had been covered up with a comforter.
00:43:18
Speaker
And one of these psychiatrists or psychologists that they were interviewing said that for a criminal to cover up a body. They're like ashamed. Right. Of what they've done. So there's some sort of like immediate sense of, I don't know, guilt. And so that also seems to say to me that this wasn't some random person. This was
00:43:44
Speaker
somebody who maybe after they had committed the crime then somehow felt guilt. Well despite all of the clues that could link Martin and Beaux to this murder, Deputy Lieutenant Stoy believed that it was somehow linked to narcotics.
00:44:02
Speaker
his belief at the time was that the person whoever it was who drove John and Dana home from that party and Quincy was likely under the influence and then because they were under the influence of drugs had you know followed John and Dana into the house and committed this crime and that to me is even well I don't know what's scarier. I don't know if it's scarier to think that somebody I know personally
00:44:27
Speaker
could hate me enough that they would want to commit this crime against me or to think that somebody who I've never even spoken to could commit this brutal act against people. Oh, I definitely think option number one is scarier because I feel like you have built trust with that person and they're violating your trust. That's true. But then the second makes me nervous to answer the door. Yeah. Oh, always. Somebody came knocking. Even when people are like trying to sell like
00:44:58
Speaker
different services or newspapers or whatever and they come knocking on the door. I'm telling you right now if my husband is not home I do not go to the door. No. I don't. No. And I have my phone like ready to call 911. I know that seems so silly but I'm like ready to go. Like finger on the button. Ready to go. Well he said that he believed because the force that was required to commit the crimes that the perpetrators in his mind were male.
00:45:26
Speaker
absolutely for him and because they would have had to forcefully subdue three people and kidnap a child and because of the use of multiple weapons and multiple different types of injuries, he also believes that there were multiple men involved. So this is not the act of one person. I agree with that statement.
00:45:50
Speaker
And we'll see even the current investigators, they actually take the number up from two to an even greater number. The police though, even though a lot of they've gotten a lot of criticism for botching it, they did collect more than 200 pieces of evidence from the scene. But as we later found out, a lot of that evidence never processed.
00:46:16
Speaker
And some of it I read was kept in a, it's either a freezer or a refrigerator and the power had gone out. So all of those samples, completely contaminated, can't use them. Yeah. And a lot of the evidence that they collected literally just sat in boxes. Why would they not run evidence? Unprocessed. I have no idea. And that's what's led a lot of people to say they were trying to cover something up.
00:46:45
Speaker
Well, rumors abound, even though I couldn't find any solid proof to verify it, that the sheriff at the time and Martin were friends. That's what the rumor said. But again, I couldn't verify it. And even Martin's wife, Marilyn, who wasn't exactly the biggest fan of Martin, said that she knew of no friendship between them. But again, you know how rumors are, even if there's no proof, they continue to spread.
00:47:14
Speaker
the rumor was that the sheriff helped martin to pass a lie detector test which again the same way i don't know how i feel about the hypnosis to try to verify anything lie detector tests they're they've been proven not credible they're not admissible evidence in court so i feel like
00:47:34
Speaker
even if you pass one. Does that really say anything? I don't think it does and there are accounts later that Martin joked about how easy it was to fool.
00:47:47
Speaker
a lie detector test. Martin, dude, you are not looking good. No. And according to an interview by CBS in 2016 with Sheila Sharp, remember she's the sole survivor of the girls of this family, had said that she had heard that the sheriff had told Martin and Beau to get out of town. So somehow trying to protect them.
00:48:16
Speaker
And while some rumors can be discounted, others that can be proven were strangely not questioned or followed up on. For example, why, when questioned by police, did Martin offer up the information that, oh, you know what?
00:48:38
Speaker
I noticed that I was missing a claw hammer that I own. I'm sure you are Martin because you probably got rid of it. Right. And so like again this isn't something if you're being interviewed and you have at this point none of these details are out. And you're a named suspect. You're a named suspect. Nobody knows exactly how Sue and John and Dana were killed.
00:49:03
Speaker
You're just gonna be like, you don't even know what the murder weapon is. I'm missing a hammer. Oh, by the way. If you find this, it's probably mine. I forgot to tell you, somebody stole this from me. So yeah, if you find it.
00:49:16
Speaker
it must have been the person who stole it, right? Like why would you offer up something like that? And the police in the interview didn't ask follow up questions. So we'll never, we'll never be able to know. And I thought this was super interesting. I read a statement analysis of one of Martin Smart's interviews with the police.
00:49:38
Speaker
And they were asking him, you know, is there anybody strange you've seen? Anybody unfamiliar in town? And he mentioned somebody who he had seen at the bar when he and Beau went, right? When he was describing this unfamiliar person that he said he saw at the bar that night, he describes the person as, in one instance, this guy and another, the individual. And then in another instance, in another sentence in the interview, the person
00:50:08
Speaker
And in this statement analysis that I read, and I've never heard this before, I've never thought about this before, but it said that generally people who are telling the truth will use the same word to describe a single thing. Like, I saw the girl riding her bike down the street, the girl turned left. Right. And you would continually refer to her as the girl.
00:50:28
Speaker
Or if you said the gun, you wouldn't in the next sentence say the weapon. Exactly. You would call it the gun. So the statement analysis said the fact that he says guy, individual, person, and that he's continually changing the word is a sign of deception. He's a liar. That's what they say. But again, we don't know. This is statement analysis.
00:50:54
Speaker
What goes into that? I don't really know. Right, and how do you prove that that's true without physical proof? Other evidence from that night later surfaced. At the Kettie General Store, a year after the murders, another knife appeared that is believed to be linked to that night. And two years after that,
00:51:19
Speaker
three years to the day of the Kettie murders, something else was found. Or should I say, someone?
00:51:33
Speaker
A bottle hunter in Butte County stumbled upon the part of a crania of a skull and an empty surgical tape dispenser.
Discovery of Tina's Skull and Renewed Investigations
00:51:42
Speaker
Well, at the time when the story appeared on the news about the discovery that this man made, a recorded call came in that said, and I quote,
00:51:53
Speaker
I was wondering if they thought of the murder up in Keddie in Plumas County a couple years ago where a 12-year-old girl was never found. Who said this quote? An anonymous person who called in. Again, that call, which was recorded,
00:52:13
Speaker
was never followed up on. What is wrong with these people? And this recording that I just told you about Maggie, it wasn't even found until 2013 when new investigators, Sheriff Greg Hagwood and Special Investigator Mike Gamborg, were combing through the boxes and boxes of evidence and found it in a sealed envelope.
00:52:43
Speaker
They're just gonna be like, yeah, this might be important. Let me seal it up in an envelope and throw it in this box. But never listen to it. Or follow up on it. Never follow up on it. So the current investigators are trying to voice match that anonymous call with all of the recordings of interviews that they have of suspects. So I think that's pretty smart. But you know, this was happening several years ago and there's still no
00:53:09
Speaker
named person who has committed this which makes me feel like well either they need to build a better case other than just voice recognition or they weren't able to match it. In fact these new investigators are more than trying. They are determined because Maggie both Hagwood and Gamburg knew the victims.
00:53:33
Speaker
Dana had just been at Ganberg's house the day before this happened. So you can see why they care so much about it. They're invested. Exactly. It's now believed, so that skull, that portion of the skull that the bottle hunter found, it was Tina's skull.
00:53:54
Speaker
And they now believe that Tina died that same night. And that's what makes this the quadruple homicide that I mentioned at the beginning. What we now know also is that there was a letter addressed to Marilyn from Martin.
00:54:13
Speaker
And she has said in interviews that she doesn't recall receiving it, but she did say, yes, I recognize that. And this was after she had already left him? Yes. Okay. Yes. And she says, yes, I recognize that. Well, here's what the letter, and again, the investigators didn't find this letter until they're combing through these boxes of evidence that were left. The letter said, quote,
00:54:40
Speaker
I've paid the price of your love and now that I've bought it with four people's lives, you tell me we're through? Great. What else do you want?" End quote.
00:54:55
Speaker
Okay, again, we're just gonna leave this in a box of evidence and just not even care that he may have admitted to killing four people. Let's not even question him about it. It's fine, normal. I guess this letter too, I mean obviously we have the four people's lives, but I don't know what he meant by I've paid the price of your love. I think he's crazy.
00:55:23
Speaker
Like, did he think that he needed to do this? To prove he loved her, maybe. Right? Maybe because Sue was trying to talk Marilyn into leaving him, so he feels like... The price for my love is a box of Raisin Cane's chicken and french fries. I mean, that sounds wonderful to me. Coffee? Yeah. I'll take coffee with new ink pens. Yeah. Hot chocolate. Send them my way. I mean, if you want to get extravagant, you can buy me a diamond ring. Right.
00:55:50
Speaker
You don't have to hurt anybody. That would make me want to leave. That would make me want to stay. Also, this is curious too Maggie. I read that John's bedroom, which remember is downstairs, was according to a lot of accounts that I read never processed.
00:56:10
Speaker
So you know that question I asked earlier was this an attack on Sue and John and Dana happened to walk in while it was happening or did someone come in with them? One of the reasons why we're never going to know is because we don't know if the boys went back to their room
00:56:29
Speaker
after the party was over, you know, did they go back in there and then they heard something upstairs? They came running up the back stairs or even through the front door which would explain why it was left ajar because you wouldn't, you know, worry about closing it. And they came in with the attack in progress. We do know that Dana was a diabetic and so he would have had his insulin and we don't know where it is because again that bedroom was never processed. So we don't know.
00:56:59
Speaker
and added to all of this, I know this is gonna disgust you Maggie, there was an apparent confession. According to a counselor at the Reno Veterans Administration who wishes to remain nameless, Martin admitted to having killed Sue and Tina, but he said he didn't have anything to do with the deaths of John and Dana. That doesn't make you any better.
00:57:23
Speaker
No, I know. Yeah. Killed two or killed four. It's the same thing. You so killed someone. Right. But he admitted it to a counselor. The counselor took this to the police and said, hey, which I didn't know this, but apparently, obviously, there's
00:57:41
Speaker
patient confidentiality, but if someone admits to something like a murder, then that is enough to be able to take that information to the police, right? And you can, for that reason, break the confidentiality. And so he took it to the police, but when the information was reported in 1981, so this is, again, the year that this happened, to the Department of Justice, this is according to writer Ted Kammerer,
00:58:10
Speaker
he said it was quote dismissed as hearsay. Okay, if I came up to someone and was like,
00:58:19
Speaker
Someone on the street just told me they murdered someone. Then maybe you could dismiss it as hearsay. If it's a professional licensed counselor and they come up to you and say, one of my patients just said, he killed so and so, I think we can assume they are a credible person. Right. I mean, it's just like us, Maggie, as teachers, if we hear a student say something that is concerning to us, it is our duty to then report that information. And when we report it,
00:58:47
Speaker
We should be respected, trusted people reporting that to authorities who wouldn't say, oh, well, that's just hearsay. I'm not going to follow up on it. And that's exactly what happened in this case.
00:59:03
Speaker
Another thing that happened is that a relative of Bobobody, so we've heard like Martin Smart's connection to this case, here's Bobobody's connection. A relative of his led investigators to the spot in the yard and they said, hey, you know, I overheard some conversation. If you dig right here, you're gonna find something. So they dig and they found another hammer
00:59:32
Speaker
that they've linked to these murders. So again, there's all this stuff that keeps piling up against Martin and Beau that seems to point to them. And the police are like, meh. Yeah. Whatever. I know, maybe, maybe not. As recently as 2016, so this is just three years ago, Maggie, more evidence was discovered when Gamborg located another hammer
01:00:01
Speaker
at the bottom of a pond and it had been dried up and that's how he knew. And the water, I saw a picture of it, the water's pretty clear so you can see into it. They found another hammer in a pond in Keddie and they've also sent it to get DNA tested for possibly a perpetrator.
01:00:20
Speaker
So, and you mentioned this earlier, if Martin Smart were involved, that would explain why the boys, including his own stepson, were left unharmed, right? Because he wouldn't want to hurt them. Especially if he's doing this to quote, prove to his wife he loves her. Right.
01:00:41
Speaker
And is this why some have argued, even though, again, I'm gonna mention this, but I couldn't find it substantiated anywhere, that Martin accidentally said in an interview that his stepson Justin saw something, quote, without me detecting him? So it's almost like he seemed to let it slip. Oh, Justin saw something that he wasn't supposed to see?
01:01:07
Speaker
But if that's the case, and again, I couldn't find it substantiated anywhere, I would think that the police would catch that if you said it. And if that did happen, did Justin feel so scared that that's why he maybe made up a story about seeing these two men? But I have to feel, especially when his mom is able to get away,
01:01:32
Speaker
that you would say the truth and that makes me think. And especially he was under hypnosis. Right. Can you lie in those circumstances? I wouldn't think so. I wouldn't think so because you're not like in your full mental capacity you know to like rationalize I wouldn't think. And so I would I feel like if he had seen his stepdad do something then he would have said it at some point.
01:01:58
Speaker
So that doesn't make much sense to me. But what also doesn't make much sense to me, in the evidence photos, and we'll post these on Facebook, there is some blood that's on the door that leads to the boy's bedroom on the inside. So either, you know, this traumatic event happened and Justin
01:02:23
Speaker
don't know open the door and there was blood on the outside of it and he got it on his hand and you know he closed the door in that memory that he said you know he he did see what happened or if his stepfather martin saw him peeking in that he would have gone over and like closed the door you know and he might have had blood
01:02:46
Speaker
on his hands. Or maybe he was checking to see if they were like asleep and Justin had time to run back and pretend to be asleep. Right. Or maybe they even were asleep. Like maybe, and again, while this happened in the Amanda Knox case, I feel like sometimes when police are asking for confessions and they're very adamant about it and I totally understand why and they have to be that sometimes people have quote unquote false memories and they're like, oh,
01:03:16
Speaker
We talked about it in the last episode even with our own memory how you can see somebody and you can be like I'm never gonna forget those blue eyes and then somebody else mentioned that their eyes were green and then you start questioning especially for a child who's being questioned how much influence I guess could the questions maybe have on the responses right and so did he have some sort of false memory that he saw something that he didn't see and
01:03:43
Speaker
But here's a bigger question still. If it were Martin and Beau, why would they have chosen even a night to do this when his stepson would be over there? That's true. Why would they have chosen a weekend night when all of the kids would be there?
01:04:05
Speaker
potential other witnesses, if there's a word of vendetta against Sue, why not wait until the middle of the week when the kids are all at school? And there's no chance for a witness. Right. So that part doesn't make much sense to me in and of itself. Maybe it's a combination of it was them and maybe they were just so high they didn't know.
01:04:30
Speaker
mean it could be because remember story thought narcotics were involved and they were linking Bobobody to this organized crime. And that's another theory Maggie is that somehow it wasn't necessarily a vendetta against Sue but that the two men were somehow involved in some sort of narcotics scandal that went all the way up in the government
01:04:56
Speaker
And that's why a lot of people are like, oh, you know, even the sheriff was trying to... Brush it under the rug. Right. And so, but again, what link does Sue have to narcotics? Unless maybe her son was involved. But everything I read said that he never really did anything other than marijuana. You know, he wasn't doing like hardcore drugs. He wasn't selling it. He wasn't...
01:05:24
Speaker
So many unanswered questions. A lot. Now some people have also argued, you know, this could be a cult. You mentioned that earlier Maggie. Especially because of the multiple murders and the brutality of it. But that was quickly dismissed because they said, you know, there were no markings. There were none of like the traditional things. I don't even know what they traditionally link to a cult.
01:05:52
Speaker
and a murder that's committed by a cult, but nothing that they saw. So this is what that was. There was the one theory that I mentioned earlier that whoever drove John and Dana home had just followed them in and committed the murder, but years later they found that it was this woman
01:06:13
Speaker
And so a woman, which we already heard from Stoy, who was like, no, it had to have been a man because of the strength that you would have to use to bend the steak knife and all of that stuff.
01:06:26
Speaker
So it was a woman and she reports that when she dropped John and Dana off, that the drapes were already closed and she just kind of saw a dim light shining through and it creeped her out. So as soon as she dropped them off, she booked it, like she was out of the air. So maybe it's like you said, they walked in mid whatever was happening. Right. Another theory is that this bottle hunter, right? So he's literally going to look for bottles to recycle.
01:06:55
Speaker
So lower income community writes on anything to make money that he would have had something to do with it because one of the investigators said when he was trying to find where this guy said he found the skull, you would think bottles and trash would be near where people live.
01:07:14
Speaker
But that where he found this skull was like, I think the investigator said something like, I got lost myself twice trying to find where he said he found the skull. Oh, so it wasn't like off a road. It was like in the wilderness. So again, not exactly where you're going to go to find all kinds of bottles, which I would imagine is your goal if you were a bottle hunter.
01:07:38
Speaker
So that could be the case that whoever this bottle hunter is had something to do with it. There's the theory that it was just complete strangers. There were several serial killers who were in the area but one of them they found was incarcerated. A pair of serial killers were incarcerated. Another was in Florida.
01:08:03
Speaker
who had committed a crime there. So all of those theories seem to be dead ends. Yeah, easily dismissed.
01:08:11
Speaker
Hagwood compared the actions by the officers in 1981 to having a shotgun loaded with evidence and no one following up on it as it was all spread out like pellets.
Flawed Past Investigations and New Hope
01:08:27
Speaker
Like, have you ever seen like shotgun pellets? They just shoot out everywhere. And Hagwood compared that original investigation to all of the evidence being shot out of a shotgun and nobody following up on
01:08:39
Speaker
any of it which i think is accurate pretty accurate description even hagwood admitted to people magazine quote i'm not by nature a conspiracy theorist but there are facts and circumstances the number and the nature of which i can't ignore anymore so he's basically saying there's too much about the original investigation
01:09:05
Speaker
for me to think, like he was saying even rookie cops wouldn't have made the same mistakes that were made. So was there a cover up? And if so, why are they covering up? Yeah, it's all so fishy. And very.
01:09:21
Speaker
However, and this is what's interesting, just because the evidence that's now been brought to light, that doesn't mean, and all this evidence that we've talked about that's related to Martin and Beau, doesn't mean that the answer is so easy.
01:09:40
Speaker
While both Martin and Beaux are now deceased, the investigation is still ongoing. In fact, apparently the new evidence, so the hammer and they found potential DNA on a piece of surgical tape, have police still questioning people who are alive today who they think were involved. In fact,
01:10:02
Speaker
Hagwood stated, and this is according to Tony Lopez in a report to CBS 13 Sacramento, quote, we're convinced that there are a handful of people that fit those roles who are still alive.
01:10:18
Speaker
quote. And according to an article by Victoria Metcalfe in 2018 quote, both Ganberg and Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood believed that possibly as many as six people were involved in one capacity or another in the murders or the cover-up end quote. We still don't know what happened
01:10:44
Speaker
but we do know that things are not always as simple as they seem. While this crime happened in 1981, clues are still being revealed that helped detectives inch closer to what really happened. In fact, Sheriff Hagwood said in 2016, quote, there are people locally who know more than they've said, and I believe we've identified some of them.
01:11:13
Speaker
And we know who they are. And we know where they are. And I have every confidence that they either participated after the fact, or they have first-hand information. It's obviously a worthwhile pursuit. There's not an expiration date on homicides. And to the extent that we have surviving siblings and family members, it is our fundamental obligation to them
01:11:43
Speaker
to understand who did this and why." Sheila Sharp, now in her fifties, has moved on as much as she is capable with her own family, a loving husband, children, and even grandchildren.
Lasting Impact on the Surviving Sharp Children
01:12:03
Speaker
But that night has never left her. In a 2016 interview, Sheila said, one of the main things I have a hard time with
01:12:13
Speaker
is getting close to people for fear that something is going to happen. She had a hard time shaking the fear that happiness will abruptly come to an end. You see, even after the trauma of that night, the remaining sharp children didn't have the easiest time.
01:12:36
Speaker
They were sent to live with an aunt who had several children as well. Overwhelmed by the situation, their aunt placed Sheila, Ricky, and Greg into the foster care system, and they were soon separated. That kind of suffering and trauma is difficult to heal. But someone out there knows the truth, and truth holds at least the possibility for some form of closure.
01:13:05
Speaker
I think we would all agree that 38 years is long enough to hide. The truth, Maggie and I hope, will soon make its way to the light because Sheila, left in the wake of this horrific tragedy, at least deserves that.
01:13:25
Speaker
Anyone who has any information on the Kettie Murders is asked to call the Kettie Murder Hotline at 530-283-6360.
01:13:41
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
01:14:10
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.