True Crime Snippet: Keddie Cabin Murders
In the late spring of 1981, a small mountain community was rocked by a mass murder in the middle of the night.
Sue, John, Tina, Dana, Ricky, Greg and Justin were all in Cabin 28. Four of them were murdered. Three were left unharmed. One was missing.
A mother and two children were slaughtered in their cabin. Another child went missing for years and was only discovered when her skull was found over 60 miles from the crime scene. The 14-year-old daughter of the slain mother entered the cabin expecting to greet her family for breakfast. Instead she was met with the horrific site of her family, bound, bludgeoned, and bloody.
On April 11, 1981, the Sharp family and a few friends were enjoying a Saturday in Keddie, California. The family had lived in Cabin 28 for just over a year after moving from Connecticut after a divorce. Sue was escaping an abusive marriage and moved with the kids across the country to the small town in the Sierra Nevada region.
When police arrived on the scene the morning of April 12 they found the body of 15-year-old John Sharp. His mother Sue was found dead on the couch. The third body found in the living room of this California cabin was that of family friend and 17-year old Dana Wingate.
The weapons were left behind by those by those responsible. A hammer and butcher knife were next to the bodies and the walls were covered in knife stabs. Another kitchen knife was found badly bent. The only area outside of the main living room that had any sort of disturbance was the bedroom of 12-year-old Tina Sharp. Her bed was bloody, but there was no body to be found.
There was blood everywhere. Not only on the victims, but on the furniture, the doors, the ceilings and the back steps.
Police concluded that the bodies were moved after they were murdered and placed in specific positions. When they realized that Tina was missing, the FBI was called in to investigate. The detectives found a set of fingerprints from a guard rail, but they were unidentified. The telephone was off the hook, the lights were off and the drapes were closed. There didn’t seem to be any forced entry.
In 1984, a man discovered a skull thirty miles from Keddie in Butte County. A kid’s blanket, a blue nylon jacket, jeans and an empty surgical tape dispenser was found near this same area.
The sheriff’s department for Butte County received an anonymous phone call shortly after the news broke that remains were found. The call was not initially investigated and instead was left in evidence until 2013.
There are people locally who know more than they’ve said. And I believe we have identified some of them. 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.
-Sherriff Hagwood in 2017.
There are still six people of interest and all six are still alive. Keddie remains a small town with a population of under 70 people. If the murder was committed by a member of the Keddie community maybe someone out there knows about the horrific circumstances of Cabin 28.
My Sources:
ABC News Article https://www.abc10.com/article/news/crime/true-crime/murder-in-cabin-28-keddie-murders-unsolved-california/103-1e3e7671-8c2c-4f4c-abb3-fae3ae07425e
Buzzfeed Unsolved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USL6P8haroY
ATI Article — https://allthatsinteresting.com/keddie-cabin-murders
