Keddie murders

The Keddie murders is an unsolved 1981 American quadruple murder that took place in Keddie, a former rail road town in the foothills of Northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The murders took place in cabin 28, during the late evening of April 11, 1981 and/or early morning of the 12th. The victims were Glenna Sue Sharp, known as Sue (age 36), her daughter Tina (age 12), her son John (age 15), and his friend, Dana Wingate (age 17). Tina was determined to be missing some time after the crime was discovered. Her skull and several other bones were recovered in 1984 at Camp Eighteen, California, in Butte County. Sue's oldest daughter, Sheila, had stayed with next-door neighbors in cabin 27 that night, discovering the murders the morning of April 12. Sue's two youngest sons and their friend, who were having a sleepover at cabin 28 that night, were found uninjured in the boys' bedroom that morning.

No arrests have been made in connection with the Keddie murders. Several cabins that had eventually been condemned, including 28, were demolished in 2004.

Glenna "Sue" Sharp, 36, and her five children had been renting the cabin since November 1980. On the night of April 11, 1981, Sue was home with her daughter, Tina, her two youngest boys, and a friend of the boys, Justin, who was staying the night. Her oldest son, John, and his friend Dana Wingate, had spent the day in nearby Quincy and were also going to stay the night at cabin 28. John and Dana were last seen hitchhiking from Quincy to Keddie. The crime may already have been in progress when they arrived at the cabin.

At approximately 7:45 am on the morning of April 12, Sheila Sharp, upon returning from the sleepover next door, discovered the bodies of Sue, John and Dana in the cabin's living room. All three victims had been bound with medical tape and electrical appliance wire. Plumas County Sheriff's deputies later determined Tina Sharp was missing from the cabin, after some confusion about whose bodies were in the cabin.

Examination of the bodies determined that each of the victims had been bludgeoned with a claw hammer, and Sue and John had been stabbed repeatedly, including both being stabbed once in the throat. Dana Wingate was also manually strangled and bludgeoned with another weapon. An inexpensive steak knife discovered at the scene had been used so forcefully that the blade had bent approximately 25 degrees.

The case grew cold, but in 1984 the cranium portion of Tina Sharp's skull was recovered near Camp Eighteen, a distance of roughly 29 miles from Keddie. Months later, after an anonymous caller to the Butte County Sheriff's office claimed the skull was Tina's, the Camp Eighteen area was searched again for several hours over a period of days. The jawbone and dozens of other bones were found, along with other potential evidence. From these discoveries, no new information regarding the crime surfaced in the media. The murders remain unsolved to this day.