What The Ale?
45. The Keddie Cabin Murders
ghosts, cryptids, murder, conspiracies, beer, what? The ale. Hello friends. Hello. Welcome back to What The Ale. I'm Alana Ray. And I'm Mama J. And before I get into it, Mama, what are you drinking and do you have any What The Ale moments? I'm drinking some peppermint tea because it's morning where I am, so I'm just starting my day. Yeah, and my What The Ale moments is just probably I have a difficult person in my life who continues to make things difficult and I'm just feeling super frustrated this morning. And so I cannot wait until I no longer have to deal with this person. Aaron Ballad, listen, we all, we all have those people. I'm doing work right now, but today's for last day. Oh, that's good. Yeah. So yeah, I'm just feeling frustrated with somebody who just does things to make my life difficult. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my What The Ale. I wish people would just be like good humans and do the right thing and you can't make people always do the right things. So it's frustrating. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, I'm also having caffeine today because, you know, it's a really I still have a full day of work. So no drinking after I might have someone. But I will say my What The Ale moment is similar in that I are not not similar actually, I'm just more being hard on my brain and very much like have to deep clean my entire apartment before I have people come stay in my house for a week. So I've been doing that between work things and meetings. And so I'm just feeling a little like tired, yeah, just ready for it to be done, but it's okay. You have nice visit with people. Yeah. No, I think it'll be a good visit. I just, yeah, it's definitely that, you know, rush of trying to get everything together. Like, do I have groceries and that type of thing. Yeah. Um, but I guess we can get into the story if you're ready. Yeah. Um, so friends and mom, I don't know if you remember, but I had mentioned a during our movie flight, I had mentioned a murder case that I had wanted to cover, which was that of the kettie cabin murders. You did mention that. Yeah. And so I decided to circle back to that because it's, it's been a while and I totally forgot about it. So I figured. Okay. So this is a really sad case to me, but I wanted to just kind of cover the case and some of the theories. Um, but it starts off, so the sharp family moved into cabin 28 and kettie, California, the year before the murders, it was because Sue had divorced her husband and she decided to bring her family all the way from Connecticut to kettie, California. And it seemed like they were kind of saying in this like little cabin resort where you can like rent a cabin long term, um, and they were friends with all of the other people that were renting cabins at the resort. Like, they didn't seem like they had any enemies, didn't seem like anything was really going on. Um, so the night before, um, Sheila, the oldest daughter who was 14 slept at a friend's house down the street, um, her brother, John, who was 15, um, and his friend, Dana, went to, they hitchhiked to Quincy, which I guess is a nearby town for a house party. Um, later in the evening, and then 12 year old Tina Sharp was at the neighbor's house with Sheila for a little bit, but then decided to go home. So on April 12th of 1981, Sheila Sharp, like I said, the 14 year old came home, uh, to cabin 28 and found her mother, Sue, her brother, John, his, and his friend, Dana, all dead inside. Wow. That would be so scary to walk into. And then, you know, the grief on top of that, but yeah, to walk in as a teenager and see that as horrible. Yeah. Um, they were all bound by medical tape, um, and had either been stabbed, strangled, or bludgeoned, um, her sister Tina, who's 12, was nowhere to be found. And in the adjoining room, her two younger brothers, Ricky, who was 10 and Greg, who was five, and their friend Justin Smart, who was 12, were all found unharmed. And they somehow slept through the entire thing. Okay. Um, so Sheila ran to the neighbor's house for help, um, and they were actually able to remove the boys from the bedroom through a window. So they wouldn't have to see the scene, which I think is good for the little boys. Yeah. Yeah. I would not want them to have to walk through that. And so, um, Deputy Hank Clement was the first on the scene. Um, he said there was blood everywhere on the walls on the bottom of the victim's shoes and the bedding and Tina's room, the furniture, the ceiling, the doors, the back steps. Um, and they said that the amount of blood indicates the victims were moved from the positions they were murdered. Okay. They found John closest to the door, his, he was face up and his hands were covered in blood and bound with medical tape and his throat had been slit. Um, Dana was right next to John on his stomach and his head had been bashed in with a blunt object. He was partially laid on a pillow. They found that he was manually strangled. Um, and his ankles were tied with electrical wire. Um, and the wire was also tied around John's ankles connecting their two feet together. Oh, well, um, maybe they were bound while something was happening. Um, Sue was covered partially with a blanket and was laying on her side. She was naked from the waist down and gagged with a bandana and her underwear. And she was secured with medical tape. She had lots of injuries that were consistent with the struggle, like on her hands and arms. And she had an imprint of a 88 caliber pellet gun on the side of her head, um, her throat was slit, um, all of the victims had suffered blunt force trauma by a hammer or hammers and a bent steak knife was found on the floor. There was also a. They just, they just use like every weapon they could possibly use to kill these people. I think they just like found whatever was in the house is kind of what it's. I mean, gosh, they hurt them in multiple ways. It sounds like before killing them. Mm hmm. Yeah. They also found a butcher knife and a claw hammer with blood on them, um, on a wooden table near the entry of the kitchen. Wow. Um, and it actually took them hours to realize that Tina was missing, but when they discovered it, they, uh, brought the FBI onto the scene. Um, and how old was Tina? She was 12. Wow. Okay. Um, and so the sheriff, Doug Thomas and Don's story was his lieutenant. Um, they really couldn't figure out a motive for the murders. Um, they felt it wasn't a random act of cruelty. Um, the entry to the home did not indicate any sort of forced entry, but the detectives did find an identified fingerprint from a handrail on the back of the stairs. Um, the telephone had been left off the hook and the lights were shut off and drapes were closed when they came on the scene. Um, and they also thought it was very strange that the three younger boys had not been harmed. Yeah. Initially, all three boys said nothing like they didn't see anything. They didn't hear anything, but later on Justin Smart, um, who was 12 said that he saw Sue with two men later in the night and that one had a mustache with long hair and the other was clean shave and with short hair, but they both wore glasses and he said that one of the men had a hammer and then he said that when John and Dana got home, they argued with the men, which resulted in a fight and Tina was taken out the back door by one of the men. Wow. They didn't know who they were, but he didn't know who they were. That's what he said. Um, so they did make a police sketch, which I will show you later. Um, and then a woman and her boyfriend were in the cabin next door and they said they woke up around 1 30 a.m. and heard some muffled screaming, but they couldn't figure out where it was coming from. And they weren't sure if it was like a TV or something and not like an actual noise. So they just went back to bed, which, you know, on one hand, you would like to think that if I heard a scream, I would, you know, call the police or get help, but also, yeah, if it was muffled and it kind of sounded like it could be a TV. Like I mean, call them for not. Yeah. You don't want to overreact if it could be something else, but yeah, I think, you know, the next day when you found out what happened, you'd probably feel really bad that you didn't do more. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I feel like sometimes it's so hard to know what to do. And, you know, even if you heard one scream and you didn't know where it was coming from, it's like, you might listen to see if there's anything else, but then if there's not, you know, yeah, it's hard to know what to do. Yeah. I don't know what I do in that situation. I mean, I think sometimes even like I'll be in my apartment and I hear someone yelling down the street the other day there was a fight right outside my apartment. And I was like, well, these are people coming from the bar, not my place and then the police game, you know, so it's like, there's stuff, you know, where it's like, I don't want to say bystander effect, but it is kind of true where like things are happening and, um, all of that, um, but anyway, so they did collect a lot of evidence, but it was before DNA testing was used. And so there was really not a lot of evidence that was helpful at the time, um, but a lot of people suspected that it was Justin Smart's father, Martin and his friend, uh, John Bodaby, um, but he also goes by bow, um, where the suspects and it's, I do want to say John or bow was an ex-con and he had ties to organize crime. Okay. Um, not that that means that he murdered a whole family, but you know, it makes him not maybe a good person. Um, did they know what the motive was? They still don't really, we'll get into that, actually, there's, there's some theories. Um, but both men had been seen in suits and they had, um, been acting strangely at a bar the night before, um, and Martin told police that he had a hammer that matched the one discovered, um, at the crime scene and noticed, noted that it had gone missing shortly before the murders, um, and then later that year, a knife was recovered in the trash of the kettie general store, um, and it was believed to be linked to the crime. And I think the knife was like a knife that, um, Martin had had, um, so three years later in Butte County, a man discovered a human school about 30 miles from kettie. They found a child blanket, they found a blue nylon jacket, they found a pair of jeans with a missing back pocket, and they found an empty surgical tape dispenser. And the remains were confirmed to be Tina Sharp. So the little girl was murdered, but she was taken somewhere else. Um, and there's a lot of reasons why people think that it was, um, Martin, or Marty and his, um, friend bow. And one of them is that his wife, Marilyn, left him the day of the murder discovery. And she actually gave the sheriff's department a handwritten note signed by Martin, which read, I paid the price of your love. And now that I bought it with four people's lives, you tell me we are through. Great. What else? Wow. He thought he was going to buy her love by killing four people. Yeah, apparently. I guess in crazy town, that makes sense. I was going to say that's some delusional stuff. I mean, did she know the people? Yeah, they were neighbors, like her son was sleeping in their house. Like she knew the family. It seems. What if it was him to do that? Well, her son is in the house. Like that's just crazy too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like if he woke up, what would he have done? Kill him too? I mean, that would not have won her affection. Yeah. And the crazy thing was the sheriff's department didn't treat this like a confession. And they didn't follow up on it because apparently Martin had passed a polygraph. But let's, let's also say that Martin and the sheriff were friends. So, I'm not trying to whatever sounds a bit like a cover up. A lot of people think it was a cover up. Yeah. Kind of sounds like a cover up, but I also, you know, polygraphs aren't always that reliable, but I mean, that seemed like a clear kind of confession to me, but. Yeah. Wow. And in 2016, they actually, so the case was closed for a bit, but they reopened the case in 2016, and that investigator, Detective Gamberg met with a counselor at the Reno VA. And they told him that in May of 1981, so a month after the murders, Martin confessed to killing Sue and Tina. He said, I killed, I killed the woman and her daughter, but I didn't have anything to do with the boys. But when it was reported to the DOJ, they dismissed it as hearsay, which I mean, I guess if you have a confession that's like 40 years old, like I get why they might not, you know, but at the same, I don't know. To me, I'm like, at the same time, it's a lead. Yeah. Well, but so, but he didn't have any explanation for the fact that he was saying he didn't kill the boys, no, um, I'm assuming that probably means he had helped. That's what I was wondering. Does that just mean somebody else that was with him did it? And so he's like, oh, I didn't do that. You know, and it's like, well, yeah, but you were still a party to it. Yeah, exactly. And so like I said, there's a pretty accepted theory that there's a love triangle involved, which is that Martin and Sue, so then the mother who was murdered and then Martin were having an affair and Marilyn and Sue were friends. And so Sue was basically telling Marilyn to leave Martin. Not only because they were having an affair, but also because he was an abusive asshole. And so Martin found out and was like, I'm going to get Sue out of the picture because it's making my life complicated, um, which to me explains why the other boys were spared because Justin was in that room and it explains the note to Marilyn that he was like, I'm trying to like when you're loved back and I did this, you know, um, it is also believed or like, um, like Gamburg, the detective who reopened the case, he believed that there was a cover up because Bo and Martin were clearly involved in like a drug smuggling scheme. Um, he said that Martin was a drug dealer, like a well-known drug dealer and smuggler. And that Bo was connected to the Chicago crime syndicates and that he actually had ties to like drug distribution through the syndicate. So he believed that maybe there was a cover up because they were trying to nail them on other charges and so they wanted to be able to cover that up. And yeah, so like I said, a lot of people didn't believe that, you know, evidence was taken seriously. Um, they also located a hammer in 2016 that could have been the murder weapon, um, but it was found in a dried up pond in, in caddy and so it was kind of hard to lift evidence off of it. Uh, but yeah, I mean, the only main theory is that there are people who have tried to take some DNA evidence from the scene that are actually kind of indicating that other people might be suspects. Um, those people are alive, I would say Martin and Bo were now deceased. So we will never really know on that end, like if they were responsible, but there are people who, whose DNA was linked to the crime, um, that are still alive. Um, and Detective Gamberg said that, um, it's his belief that there were more than two people who were involved in the crime, the disposal of evidence and the abduction of the little girl, and they are convinced that there are a handful of people that fit these roles who are still alive. So I will say, I think the case is still ongoing and they're still kind of investigating, but it's hard. Like, like I said, it's been 40 years and all of that, but, um, I don't know. It's definitely sad. So did they connect, did they collect any DNA that they could retest now that we have technology or? Well, that's what I mean. I said that they were testing and they were able to tie it to suspects who are still alive, but they're not releasing names. So I'm sure they're gathering evidence if they're doing anything with it, but they haven't released anything, which makes sense if no arrests have been made. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, that's really sad though. And like I said, to have that 14 year old be the one to discover it, I just can't even imagine. I mean, even to like be the boys who were in the room, like the cabin and I mean, the one kid said he woke up and maybe he did, but, um, you know, the other two, I mean, first of all, for the little boy to wake up, I don't blame him for not doing anything like that. Be terrifying. And then, you know, the ones who slept through it, I mean, it's still also terrifying just to like wake up and be like, Hey, you have to come out this window and then finding out like your whole family's been murdered. That's insane. Yeah. That's horrible. Um, and I, you know, for me, like I wonder with like the, um, the little girl who, you know, was found three years later, like was the motive always to kidnap her and like was, was like the rest of the family just there. And so they had to deal with like, you know, like in my brain, I'm trying to figure out like what the motive could be if it wasn't Martin, um, but Martin seems like a good suspect to me. So it's hard to tell. It seemed strange to take the little girl, like, yeah, because I don't know. Yeah. Maybe if she was the, the reason, like they wanted to kidnap her, I don't know, but I mean, she still ended up dead. So did it seem like she had passed around the same time that they did or did it seem like they had kept her alive for a while? Yeah. They said that it seemed like she probably, I mean, it's hard because she was a skeleton, but the remains like were of a realm, like the same age, like she was when she was kidnapped. So it doesn't seem like she was kept or anything. Yeah, that's interesting then to take her to a different location. Yeah. Well, and even like they didn't say, at least from what I could see that there was evidence of a sexual assault, but it's interesting that Sue was naked from the waist down. Yeah. Stuff like that as well. And you think about like, okay, well, typically when people are undressed, like we know some things happen, you know, there wasn't a lot of mention of that. So yeah, I just don't know. Yeah, that does seem strange that she would be undressed. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really sad case. I apologize for that noise. We have a little herb garden in here that automatically waters and apparently it's out of water. So it's beeping at me. So I hear it. But anyway, yeah, but I mean, that's all I got for you. And this was this was one of the cases that inspired the strangers movie or which one because I remember you saying that we talked about it during the movie. It's like, okay, yeah, I think I think it was one of the ones that inspired the strangers. Okay. Because a lot of people thought it was the Manson family murders, which makes sense. But I think a lot of people are also like, yeah, but this is kind of weird. Like the family was just like tormented in the middle of the night and no one knew what happened. Like when I guess I go back to that's the other part because, you know, it sounds like they were injured with multiple weapons before they were actually killed. And that just seems really like, I don't know, I mean, it just seems like very vicious, you know? Yeah. Because if they were hit or strangled or stabbed or, you know, like, but all these different weapons, you know, it just seems like they were, yeah, it does have the feeling of like they were messing with them or just hurting them before they just went in for the kill, you know? So that feels a little bit creepier and darker too. Yeah. Well, to me, it seems very personal, like it seems like these people, I don't know, like I would, I would assume that if they were really just after the girl, they probably would have done something short and quick. Yeah. I would think so. That's just how I feel. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's a tragedy and it's, it's so sad. Like, they moved to California to like start a new life and then this happens and yeah, I don't know. And I don't know if they would have like taken a little girl, you know, for some kind of ransom or for, you know, trying to just have a hostage or something in case they got followed or whatever. Right. But yeah, I mean, that's, it's so sad to not even really know what happened to her, why she was taken, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah. Like you said, it's sad too, because like she was a skeleton, like there was not a lot of evidence outside of what they found with her body and yeah, that just makes it really hard, really hard to know. So yeah. So still a lot of questions. I hope, I hope that with technology, I hope they're able to get them answers. Yeah. Yeah. So I think with DNA evidence, they would have been able to identify if like Martin Short, not Martin Short. Oh my God. Martin Smart. I apologize. Martin Smart had been involved, right? If they had found DNA on the scene, but then it's hard to because like his son was there and they were friends and so if he had been like his DNA would be there. So it's still hard. Yeah. It just seems like only if DNA was on the weapons specifically or on the body specifically. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then the house that would be harder to prove. Right. Well, then you, you wonder too, like why were they acting weird at a bar? Like why were they in suits acting weird at a bar? Yeah. So. Yeah. I wonder what, what weird meant like, you know, how were they acting, but like were they acting like paranoid, suspicious, like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. They didn't really give a description of that. So. Yeah. Oh, but. Yeah. That's, that's the caddy cabin murders. It's really sad. I wish there was more, you know, closure to it. Do you know anything about what happened to the 14 year old or the boys after all of this? I think they went back to live with their father in Connecticut. And there wasn't a lot known about like what happened to them. They've obviously been interviewed and stuff for things. But I think they kind of wanted them to have a semblance of a normal life after. Yeah. I was gonna say it would be really hard to get back to normal life after something like those. I hope they're all doing okay. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't do too much digging, but I think I'm pretty sure they went back with their, with their father after, which maybe a change of scenery was good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's so sad. I know. Sorry to like do a downer first thing in the morning for you. I was gonna say I haven't even started my day yet and you got me feeling all sad. But yeah, I really hope they do get some answers because I mean, even all these years later, you know, any of the surviving, you know, family members or friends, you know, they deserve to have those answers. So I hope someday they get them. Yeah. Well, I'm glad they reopened the case, especially now that we have more technology and yeah, national database for fingerprints and stuff is pretty well, I don't know, pretty well maintained and everything. I think, I think hopefully we'll get some, some closure there. But yeah. Well, anyway, friends, thanks for listening. You can follow us on, you can follow us on Instagram at what the ill pod. You can also send us an email with your own personal stories or topic ideas or anything like that to what the ill pod at gmail.com. If you like our episodes in our show, please like rate five stars or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and outside of that, we do have a patreon where you can subscribe and get some extra bonus episodes and fun swag. So feel free to join our patreon if you want. But outside of that, I just want to say I appreciate you, mama. I appreciate you. I appreciate you friends. Bye bye.