Keddie Cabin 28 Murders

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, glad you could make it.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Before you head into the bar for today's true crime story,
just a warning that TCB might contain disturbing content, so
it's not for kids. Enjoyed the episode, Welcome to True
Crime Brewery. I'm Chill and Dick. In the quiet mountain
town of Ketty, California, a brutal crime shattered the piece

(00:26):
of a spring night back in nineteen eighty one. Four
lives were taken in a cabin that was tucked deep
in the woods. Three victims were found in a scene
of unimaginable violence, and one victim went missing for years.
So despite decades of investigation, the case remains unsolved, draped
in mystery and fear. Who committed the murders, Why were

(00:50):
key pieces of evidence ignored? And why did this small
town tragedy become one of the most haunting cold cases
in American history. Join us for Ketty Cabin twenty eight murders.
The murders of Susan Sharp, John Sharp, Tina Sharp, and
Dana Wingate had all the things that make up a
horror movie, but this is real life and real people

(01:13):
were devastated by these murders. All that's left of Cabin
twenty eight is the land, and that's where the dark
secrets linger while justice still remains just out of reach.
So what are we having for a beer?

Speaker 1 (01:27):
We're having an imperial stoubt. It's called the Nothing, brewed
by Smock City Brewing Company in Torrance, California. It's a
pitch black colored beer, tiny tan head, really strong chocolate
aroma and some booze and a taste, big time chocolate taste.
It's almost like eating a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting,

(01:48):
a little bit of coffee and bit of charcoal and
some bourbon.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Okay, I'm not sure about the cake thing if it's
got bourbon and charcoal, but the chocolate's overwhelming.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
No Oh, I thought it was very good and nice
balance between the sweetness of the chocolate and the bitterness
of the bourbon. Okay, it worked really well. But it
is ten percent alcohol by volume. So we're passing this
around to a bunch of people.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Okay, Well, just an apology in case we don't sound great.
We both are getting over a cold, but I think
we're at the tail end of it and should be Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, I think I have a very sexy voice now, well.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Of course, yes, okay, let's open some beer, how about that.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, I'm good with that.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Okay. So in the spring of nineteen eighty one, Glenna

(02:53):
Susan Sharp, a thirty five year old mom of five
children who went by Sue, lived with her children and
in Cabin twenty eight in the small community of Ketty, California.
They'd moved there back in November of nineteen eighty after
they moved from Connecticut to be closer to her brother
after divorce from Sue's husband. The Ketty cabins were listed

(03:14):
as resort cabins, but this was really in name only
at this point. By the time Sue and her children
moved in, these were already run down cabins in need
of repair, and they were being rented out as low
income housing. Sue held part time jobs in the nearby
town of Quincy, but she still had to depend heavily
on the welfare system to get by, so although the

(03:36):
family was living in poverty, Sue did her best to
provide for her children. She was described as a selfless
mother who made sure that her children had food to
eat and warm clothes for the winter, even if she
had to go without. The Sharp family was a modest
and close knit unit in search of a peaceful life.
Sue had relocated there after separating from her husband, James Sharp.

(04:01):
As a dedicated and caring mother, she was focused on
providing a stable and nurturing environment for her children, and
this is despite all the challenges of single parenthood. So
Sue was known for her quiet strength and determination. She
would remain optimistic in the face of circumstances that others
of us might find impossible. Friends and neighbors described her

(04:23):
as a kind woman who was deeply devoted to her children.
She'd move to Ketty with the hope of starting fresh.
Sue's decision to move there was partly influenced by its
picturesque setting and the sense of community that the small
town offered. So Sue was born back in March of
nineteen forty five in Springfield, Massachusetts. She married James Sharp

(04:46):
in the sixties, and together they had five children. The
marriage was troubled from early on, though James Sharp, a
Vietnam veteran, struggled with alcoholism and became increasingly abusive throughout
their marriage. In July of seventy nine, Sue finally made
the difficult decision to leave him. So she packed up
her five children and she moved across the country to

(05:09):
northern California, and there she had support because she would
be closer to her brother Don. So at first the
family rented a small trailer in Quincy. The Sharp children
attended school there, where teachers reportedly believed there wasn't much
support at home, and this was probably due to Sue
working a part time job and taking typing classes at

(05:31):
the Feather River College through the California Education Training Act.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Pleasure's got five kids.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
To take care of, Yeah, and you get paid a
little bit of money for going through that training. So
when Sue moved her family into Cabin twenty eight, Ketty
had definitely seen better days. The collection of aging cabins
surrounding a central lodge was home to many low income
families who were seeking affordable housing in the mountains despite

(05:58):
the rundown condition, and Sue worked hard trying to create
a stable home for her and her children. So Sue's children,
John fifteen, Sheila fourteen, Tina twelve, Rick ten, and Greg
five adapted to their new life well. Johnny the oldest,
was described by those who knew him as friendly, outgoing,

(06:19):
and he was a teenager who made friends easily. As
the eldest son, he kind of saw himself as the
protector of the family, and although he was kind of
a small guy, he could be a fighter. He was scrappy.
Sheila was quieter, but she was thoughtful and very well liked.
Twelve year old Tina was known for her sweetness and
her vibrant personality, and they were all good looking kids.

(06:43):
Although Tina struggled academically, her teachers saw her as a
really good kid. They just thought she brought a light
to the class that wasn't there before. She was Now,
the two youngest boys, Rick and Greg were ten and
five years old, and they added boundless energy to the household.
Despite Sue's efforts to care for her children, some neighbors

(07:03):
were still pretty judgmental of her. They gossiped that she
wasn't the most attentive mother and that male visitors were
frequently seen coming and going from her cabin. A small
household with five children meant there was constant activity there.
The Sharps had become friendly with the Smart family who
lived around the corner. In the welcoming spirit of the

(07:25):
mountain resort town, Sleepovers were a regular occurrence for the kids.
Sheila and Tina often stayed over with their friend Alissa Sebell,
who lived in a neighboring cabin, while Johnny had grown
close to seventeen year old Dana Wingate, a local teenager
who frequently spent the night at Cabin twenty eight. Cabin
twenty eight was a very modest home. While life wasn't

(07:47):
easy there, the Sharp family made the best of their circumstances.
By that spring, they felt like they were part of
the community. They were well liked and had friends in
the area, so in the days leading up to the
tragic events in April nineteen eighty one, nothing really seemed
amiss in the lives of the Sharp family. They were
now going about their routines, having no idea of the

(08:11):
horrors that actually awaited them.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
In the early spring of nineteen eighty one, Sue told
her brother Donald and his wife Nancy that she had
grown increasingly concerned about her teen son's use of alcohol
and marijuana and his tendency to engage in other risky behavior.
Johnny was involved in two incidents ten months prior to
his death and another about four months before his death,

(08:34):
in which he allegedly stole an ounce of marijuana from
a small tron Quincy drug dealer. He was caught by
the dealer, and they worked out an informal agreement between
Johnny and a dealer where Johnny cut firewood for the
man to pay off his debt.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, that's a kind drug dealer that will let you
work out a deal.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
That's I'd want to be aware of that, given the
carnage it takes place in their home.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
That's true. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
One witness claimed that when he agreed to take john
and his friend Dana Wingate East Quincy one day, they
robbed the houses and drugs, two bags of marijuana and
sheets of what Johnny and Dana said was acid. Johnny
was prone to fighting, and he got a black eye
during a fistfight a week before the murders. Johnny spent
many weekends away from home, staying at the homes of

(09:22):
friends in Quincy. Dana Wingate, who had been placed into
a group home, liked drinking beer and smoking pot, but
he tried to refrain from both because he was diabetic
and insulin dependent. So yeah, probably smoking and drinking and
all that is not a good way to treat your diabetes.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Well, alcohol is some sugar, it will hurt.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
In fact, according to law enforcement, Dana's last injection of
insulin before his murder a crib between six thirty pm
and seven thirty pm. It's about six hours before his death.
Dana lived in a foster home in the Quincy area,
placed there by the Plumus County Probation Department in October
of nineteen seventy nine. He was placed on probation because

(10:08):
he had tortured a cat in Quincy by injecting the
animal with insulin while a friend burned the cat alive.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Well, that's horrendous. That is really horrendous. In another incident,
which I find much better, I guess, Dana smashed a
series of lights at the airport in Quincy. Now, he
was only seventeen, but Dana had become a ladies man
with the girls at Quincy High School, and he was
regularly having sex with a twenty seven year old woman too,

(10:35):
So he just basically had a rough life and was
a rough kit. These two teenagers misadventures, witnesses have speculated
could have resulted in their deaths because one witness claimed
Johnny and Dana were killed by a drug dealer because
they had stolen those ten sheets of acid. Another witness
claimed the murders occurred because of a botched drug deal,

(10:57):
and yet another witness claimed that Dana confided to him
mere hours before his death that some people were after him.
But when it came to April eleventh of that year,
by all accounts, Johnny and Dana were not looking for
trouble and they had not been using drugs. Toxicology studies
would show that there were no signs of drugs or

(11:17):
alcohol use by either boy near the times of their deaths,
So it could be that stories about their drug and
alcohol use were just exaggerated. There are a lot of stories,
and many of them were conflicting about Johnny and Dana's
whereabouts on the day of April eleventh.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
I don't know that the stories are necessarily exaggerated. I
think they're probably true.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
They could be, but for that some reason that day,
they didn't do any drugs, at least not within the
timeframe where it would show up in their bodies.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Well yeah, yeah, but we haven't been told that they
were heavy drug users. No, no drug users.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
No, we haven't heard that at all. I don't think
Johnny was I'm not sure about Dana.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, they hung out together.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
They did, yep. So let's go over the day of
April eleventh, which is the day before these people are
found murdered. So nine thirty am on April eleventh, Sue
drove herself, Sheila, Ricky, Greg, and Justin to Quincy. Justin
was the neighbor boy, Justin Smart. Sue left Ricky and
Justin at little league practice and then drove to Richard

(12:23):
Meeks's home in East Quincy. Sheila walked to her friend
Alice Thompson's home in East Quincy as well. At about
ten fifteen, Sue called Sheila at Alice's house. Sue, Sheila,
and Greg then drove home. On the way, they picked
up Johnny and Dana. They just saw them. They were
out hitch hiking Gansner Park, which is located on the

(12:45):
northwest end of Quincy. So at eleven am, Richard Meeks,
who was the father of Sheila's baby now Sheila fourteen,
had had a baby that she put up for adoption
and Richard was the father, but he hung out with
John at Holiday Market in East Quincy, and one of
Dana's foster parents drove up and let Dana out of

(13:06):
the car, and then the three boys went to visit
a friend. At around noon, Sue, Sheila, Gregg, Johnny, and
Dana all arrived back in Ketty. Tina had stayed home
and she was there when they got back. Not long
after they returned to Ketty, Dana and Johnny decided to
return to Quincy and they hitched a ride into town

(13:27):
about one point thirty. The two boys ended up hanging
out a friend's home in a trailer park in Quincy,
and after hanging out there for a while, Johnny and
Dana decided to head over to Dana's Foster home and
then back to Ketty. So they returned to Cabin twenty
eight later that evening sometime around nine pm. Although we're
really not completely sure, Justin Smart visited the Sharp house

(13:52):
and he and Ricky rode their bikes until about six
pm before they returned to Cabin twenty eight. Sue, Ricky,
Greg and Justin all had burritos for dinner. Ricky, Greg
and Justin ate in the kitchen, but Sue ate while
sitting on the sofa in the living room. Then Sheila
went over to the Seabolt's cabin to hang out with
her friend Alyssa, so the family's plans for that evening

(14:14):
were not unusual. Rick and Greg's friend Justin was staying over,
while Sheila planned to sleep over at the Sea Bolt
family's cabin next door with her friend Alissa's Seabolt. Tina
joined them to watch TV, but returned home around nine thirty,
but Sheila stayed at the sea Bolts, so by then, Sue, Johnny, Dana, Tina,

(14:35):
Greg and Justin were all gathered together in Cabin twenty eight.
Ricky and Justin came into the Sharp cabin and started
to watch Love Boat with Sue and Greg around nine.
Tina walked home from the Seabolts around the same time
and got ready for bed in Cabin twenty eight. At
nine point thirty, the Sharp's telephone rang. Sue answered the

(14:55):
phone and she was overheard asking who is this, but
no one knew who. Marilyn and Martin Smart, who are

(15:19):
Justin's parents? And John Bubbadet walked to the tavern, passing
the Sharp's cabin on the way, so Martin said the
cabin appeared darker than usual. Ricky and Justin went to
bed after watching Love Boat. They talked for about ten
minutes and then Ricky fell asleep. He would say he
didn't wake up at all. During the night, there would

(15:40):
be a witness who saw a man leaving the tavern
and described him as unclean, about five foot six and
less than one hundred and fifty pounds, with dark brown
hair stubble on his face, wearing a floppy, faded denim hat,
faded blue jeans, and a blue jean jacket. At eleven pm,
Martin Smart observed the two men, who he called bearded hippies,

(16:02):
leaving the tavern and getting into an older truck. So
at eleven thirty PM, a witness said the light in
the front yard of the Sharp's cabin was off and
it was normally On so April twelfth, slightly after midnight,
a witness left the tavern and saw a dark colored,
square shaped van parked across the bridge that connects the

(16:23):
Highway to Kenny. Johnny and Dana arrived at the Sharp's
cabin by then, according to Justice, So at twelve thirty am.
Martin Smart claims that he became angry at the tavern
because the music was changed from country to rock music,
even though people would say he actually preferred rock music,
so Martin, his wife Marilyn, and Bubbadet left and walked

(16:46):
home past the Sharp cabin. So what happened in Cabin
twenty eighth that night has been the subject of speculation
for over forty years. Based on the evidence recovered from
the crime scene and the witness statements throughout the year,
investigators believed that it was sometime after nine pm on
April eleventh when at least two assailants entered Cabin twenty eight.

(17:09):
So the lack of any signs of forced entry suggests
that either the victims knew their attackers or that they
had somehow convinced someone to let them in. But what
followed was a prolonged, violent and bloody home invasion, assault
and murder. Sue, Johnny, and Dana were bound with electrical

(17:30):
wire and medical tape before being brutally beaten with multiple weapons.
Two bloody knives and a hammer were found at the
crime scene. One of the knives, a stake knife, was
bent at approximately thirty degrees, so anyone who saw this
scene would say that the level of violence was shocking.
Sue Sharp was found nude from the waist down. She

(17:53):
was gagged with a blue bandana with her arms and
legs secured with tape. She'd been stabbed in the chest
multiple times, ms her throat was slashed horizontally through her larynx,
and there was an imprint on the side of her
head matching the butt of a Daisy Bebe pellet rifle.
Her son, her oldest son, Johnny Sharp, His throat was

(18:14):
slashed and he had suffered severe blunt force trauma to
his head from what seemed to be hammer strikes. Dana
Wingate had multiple head injuries and had been manually strangled
to death in addition to suffering blunt force trauma similar
to Johnny's. Autopsies later determined that Sue and Johnny died
from their knife wounds and the blunt force trauma, but

(18:36):
Dana died from asphyxiation due to strangulation. During this attack,
twelve year old Tina was abducted from the cabin. Whether
she was removed before, during, or after the murders of
her other family members is not known, but the youngest Sharps,
Greg and Rick, and their friend twelve year old Justin Smart,
who were sleeping in a bedroom, were left unharmed. The

(19:00):
cabin's telephone had been taken off the hook and the
cord was cut from the outlet. The curtains were all drawn,
and some of Tina's belongings, including her jacket, her shoes,
as well as a toolbox Johnny had made at school,
were missing from the house. So really just a horrible crime.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah, bad of blood by a disarray.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yes, it was very violent, and investigators really think it
had to be more than one person.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, I think it would have to be.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, it would be really hard for one person to
do that, although there have been suggestions that maybe one
of the victims helped, especially Dana. Dana may have been
forced to help bind people, So it is possible it
was one person, but more than likely it was two
or even more people.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
So.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
The next day was Sunday, April twelveth Sheila Sharp walked
sixty feet from her neighboring friend's cabin to her own.
Sheila had stayed the night with Alissa, and she had
home around eight am. As the fourteen year old opened
the front door to her family's cabin, she saw the
living room prior to entering, and something just appeared very wrong,

(20:11):
but it took her a second or two to register
in her mind. What she was seeing. She was seeing
the mutilated bodies of her brother John and John's friend Dana.
A blanket covered her mom's suess body. So later, in
a memoir that Sheila wrote, she described what she saw
that morning. She wrote, I stood in complete shock, and

(20:33):
I didn't move into the house more than a step
beyond the threshold. I heard screaming, but I couldn't locate
the source. Suddenly, my friend's older brother seized me by
the arm and dragged me back to their home next door.
Apparently I had been the one screaming, and my friend's
mother had dispatched her oldest son to investigate the ruckus.

(20:56):
When Sheila returned to the Seabolt's cabin, she was crying out,
come quick. There are three bodies over there, blood all
over and a knife and their hands are tied. So
it was the Seabolts who contacted a neighbor who called
the Sheriff's office. And this was right after she'd gotten there.
It was about ten after eight. Sheila, along with James
Sebolt Junior, and his mother, Zanita Seabolt, went back to

(21:20):
the Sharp's cabin. They rescued her brothers Greg and Rick,
and their friend Justin Smart, who'd spent the night now.
Not wanting them to see the massacre in the living room,
Sheila helped the boys to exit through her brother's bedroom
window instead of leaving through the front door.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
That's a good idea, yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
And it's pretty remarkable that they weren't harmed and that
they didn't wake up.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Now, it'll be questionable about whether Justin woke up or not,
but the other two boys honestly did not seem to
hear anything.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
By eight thirty in the morning, the first law enforcement
officers arrived on the scene. Blood spatter covered the walls
and floor, Furniture was overturned, and personal belongings were scattered
throughout the room. The body closest to the front door
was fifteen year old Johnny Sharp. Johnny's friend, seventeen year
old Dana Wingate was next to him. Sue Sharp had

(22:15):
been beaten stabbed and was lying nearby covered with a blanket.
Killers had sliced her chest, scalp, throat, and face. Her
skull and right eye socket were fractured, her teeth were broken.
All three were tied up with medical tape and electrical cords,
and Sheila could not find her twelve year old sister
Tina inside or outside the house.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
So this is incredibly violent. I just don't understand the
violence here. Her teeth were broken, her skull was fractured.
This was really, really a horrible crime, and it almost
seems like Sue was the target because she got the
worst of it.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
She was the worst beat up.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yes, which wouldn't be surprising if there was some man
that felt slighted by her or something. Of course they
would suspect ex boyfriend's ex husband all that.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Well, then we'll get back to what you mentioned earlier
that Sue's acquaintances or friends or whatever said that she
didn't keep a good house and there are men coming
and going all the time, right.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
But other people would deny that to be true, so
we're not sure about that. So if you're a fan
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(23:40):
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(24:01):
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TI Grabber community today. So shortly after the bodies were discovered,

(24:50):
the Plumbus County Sheriff's Department contacted Don Stoy. This was
the agency's investigations supervising sergeant. The dispatcher told Stoy about
multiple homicides, possibly as many as four in Ketty and
this was shocking. This wasn't the kind of thing that
happens out in the country. Stoy drove from his Indian

(25:10):
Valley home to Ketty, which was about a twenty mile drive,
and when he arrived at the scene it was around
nine thirty am. This was about an hour and a
half after Sheila had discovered her family's bodies. Stoy met
up with assistant sheriff Ken Shanks. Then Stoy and Shanks
walked inside the cabin to assess the scene. Stoy immediately

(25:32):
saw what he later would describe as two bodies on
the living room floor and a hump under a yellow
blanket in front of the couch. He also saw the
bent steak knife near Johnny. Stoy said both Johnny and
Dana were bloody, especially on their necks and heads. Johnny
was face up, Dana was face down with his head

(25:53):
laying on his right arm and partially on a pillow.
Both boy's feet were tied with an electrical core and
linked together with the cord. Sue's Sharp's legs and feet
were tied with an electrical cord too, and she had
been covered with that yellow blanket. Like the boys, Sue's
head and neck were covered in blood. Stoy said all

(26:14):
three bodies were cold and stiff, and it was obvious
that they were dead. No sane person could have performed
these acts. Stoy observed that in addition to the bent
steak knife, a butcher's knife and a claw hammer were
on the scene and they were found on a table
at the entryway into the kitchen, so blood was on
the knife and the hammer. Knife marks had damaged the walls,

(26:38):
so there was a big struggle here. The phone was
off the hook, and except for a light inside the bathroom,
the cabin was dark. Seized as evidence was a fingerprint
that was found on a post at the bottom of
the rear outside stairs. There was additional evidence seized as well.
They totally dismantled the walls. Everything was examin photograph following

(27:01):
the search inside the house, including in April sixteenth walkthrough
that was done with Sheila Sharp. The Sheriff's office made
sure the crime scene was kept clean. Deputies were posted
at the crime scene around the clock to prevent anyone
from contaminating it. So Stoy said. The back door was
doubly secured with locks, then they sealed it off with

(27:24):
nails and the search continued both inside and outside the
cabin for the following six days, but they said the
scene was well contained and locked up. Evidence items weren't
sent to the Department of Justice for DNA testing until
two thousand and four. Now, use of DNA for criminal
investigations wasn't developed until nineteen eighty five, so that would

(27:47):
be four years after the crimes, and it was not
used to secure a criminal conviction until nineteen eighty eight.
But we really didn't even hear much about that till
the nineties. It was still quite rare. Oh yeah, and
expensive and I'm consuming absolutely so. Sue's brother, Donald Davis,
showed up at the crime scene at about eight forty five.

(28:09):
He was in front of the cabin after being called
by Sheila, and he connected with law enforcement. Law enforcement
described Donald as being terribly upset and tearful when he
arrived that morning. Of course, it took him some time
to process, and then he was able to identify the
victims as his sister, her son, and her son's friend.

(28:30):
Donald said Sue was in the process of divorcing her
estranged husband. He also said that Sheila had recently become pregnant.
That's the fourteen year old daughter who discovered the bodies,
and she had delivered a child in the recent months
in Oregon and had given that baby up for adoption,
so they would definitely look into the father, who was
Richard Meeks the California Department of Justice. The DOJ was

(28:54):
called in by the Sheriff's office to assist with the investigation,
and because it appeared that Tina Sharp had been kidnapped,
the FBI also assisted them. So a search party, which
focused heavily on finding Tina, included four dog teams. But
Tina was just nowhere to be found, and of course
she was feared dead. So an interesting piece of evidence

(29:18):
was an account of the events by twelve year old
Justin Smart, the only confirmed known witness to the killings
and a step son to one of the suspects. Justin
possibly was law enforcement's best hope to focus the investigation.
He was interviewed under hypnosis, which was pretty unusual, and
he described the events leading up to the murders and

(29:40):
Tina's disappearance. During the session, Justin said he ensues two
other sons went to bed for the night around ten
after ABC's nine PM show The Love Vote. He claimed
he fell asleep shortly after going to bed. Now five
or ten minutes passed before he nodded off was his estimate.
During this hypnosis session, Justin was asked whether he was

(30:03):
awakened during the night, maybe by a thumping noise, and
whether he recalled the events of the night. So this
was done by a policeman with very little training, and
it seemed kind of suggestive because it was the policeman
who brought up the thumping noise. So there was a
lot of things being suggested in that. Under the hypnosis,

(30:24):
Justin described the day he'd had. He said that later
in the day, Sheila and Tina were next door at
the Seabolts. Tina came home around seven thirty pm, according
to him, to wash the dishes and then went back
over there. Sheila was staying the whole night there, but
Tina had to go back home. Justin said that Tina
returned to the cabin around nine thirty and went to bed. Justin,

(30:47):
Ricky and Sue Sharp had been watching The Love Boat
on TV before going to bed around ten pm, so
that seems to be the theme. As he described an
alleged dream in which two men were involved in a
fight with John Sharp and Dana Wingate and they got
thrown overboard. So he had this dream, he was on
a boat. But the things he said happened a lot

(31:09):
of it matched up with the crime inside the cabin.
So in one dream, one of the men had a
pocket knife in his right hand and cut Sue Sharp
in the chest, and Sue had been cut in the chest.
He also said that the same man had a hammer
in his other hand. So they hypnotized him again on
May nineteenth, nineteen eighty one, this time by a psychologist

(31:31):
at the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. So Justin spoke
about Tina Sharp. He said, Tina woke up and appeared
in the living room to see what was going on.
She was carrying a blanket, and according to what Justin said,
under this hypnosis, a man grabbed Tina and carried her
through the kitchen and down the back stairs. The man

(31:53):
then returned, removed a hunting knife that someone had stuck
in one of the walls, picked up the blanket, and
left again. So what do you make of that? What
do you make of his dream slash memory that he
came up with when he was hypnotized.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Well, as you said, this man wasn't trained.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
The first man, yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
And the second one probably was better trained. It's interesting,
and you wonder, is this something that comes out of
under hypnosis? Did he really see it?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
I don't know if hypnosis has really looked at.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
As is he dreaming?

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Science? Is it? I mean, really, isn't it? A lot
of is just suggestibility.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
It's kind of quasi science.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Okay, all right, But I don't think that law enforcement
uses hypnosis much anymore. They used to know back in
the seventies and eighties a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
And I don't think you can use hypnosis as evidence
in court, can you?

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Oh? Probably not. No, although that's a whole other thing
with repressed memories and all that, which for a time
that was allowed in court. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
But I'm just curious about how he had that dream
of being on a boat and seeing two men fighting
with Johnny Sharp and Dana Wingate. Could he have kind
of been in a dream state and confused what really
happened with whatever his dreams were after watching The Love Boat?
Or Another thing is was he trying to hide what

(33:18):
he'd seen because he didn't want to be a witness.
Maybe he didn't want to say who did it even
if he knew. So there could be a lot of
aspects to that.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
I believe it could be.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
I mean, from the little bit we know, it's really
hard to see or say what exactly that was coming from.
Was it coming from reality? Was he trying to please
the psychologist? You know, kids will do that. They can
kind of sense what they want.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, they can pick up what the therapist is.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Looking for right exactly, So that could be it too.
Now they would say that the stabbing in Sue's chest
and the man having a hammer were things that actually happened,
but we really don't have any way of knowing if
he'd been told that beforehand, right right, he may have
overheard that.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Well, it certainly didn't help solve the case, didn't.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Seem to know, but it does suggest a few things
that we'll get into now. There were some neighbors near
Cabin twenty eight who reported hearing some muffled screams that
woke them up between one and two am, but unfortunately
they didn't know where it was coming from, and they
went back to sleep. How many times have we heard that?
Were someone here screaming and they go back to sleep? Yeah,

(34:33):
I know, it's remarkable.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
That wouldn't happen in our house.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Uh No, Well, the dogs would never stop barking start,
but I'd be on the phone in an instant.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, we'd want to find out what was going on.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Sure. So Justin Smart was present in cabin twenty eight
with Greg and Ricky on the night of the killings,
and he was sleeping in a separate bedroom with the
Sharp boys, and they were all left physically unharmed. The
three boys said that they had slept through everything, but
that's difficult to believe too, because there had to be

(35:07):
quite a ruckusse. Yeah. There's been long standing speculation that
Justin Smart may have witnessed part of the murders, either
consciously or subconsciously. According to some reports, Justin later described
what he called a dream about the murders, and it
did have these details that were eerily accurate, and they

(35:30):
may not have been publicly known, but he could have
overheard them from Sheila or the Sea Bolts or someone
who had seen the scene right. His mother allegedly claimed
that Justin had blood on his shoes when he came home, too,
suggesting he may have been closer to the crime scene
than was believed. But I don't know why his shoes
weren't taken into the police then you would think, but

(35:53):
we're going to find out that the police really did
not handle this the best either, that something will be
going pretty deeply into It's a big part of why
this case is unsolved. According to most people, that's right.
So some investigators and researchers do believe that Justin may
have repressed the memory, or like I said, maybe he
confused it with a dream due to the trauma or

(36:15):
the fear. But no definitive evidence confirms that Justin consciously
witnessed the murders. His statements remained controversial and they're really
an ambiguous part of the investigation. But Justin did say
that he saw two men who both wore glasses. One
of them was tall and blonde with a mustache, and
the other had shorter, dark hair and was clean shaven.

(36:37):
So police did have a sketch made of these two
men that were described in his hypnosis session, and the
sketch of the dark haired man did look very similar
to Justin's stepdad, Martin Smart, who would be a suspect.
So there was also speculation that maybe Justin was afraid
of Martin, so he put what he had witnessed into

(36:59):
a dream scenario kind of to protect himself. Yeah, which
I think that's possible. I could see a child doing that.
So why don't you tell us a little bit about
the autopsies that were done the next day?

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Right? They're done April thirteenth by doctor Pierce A. Rooney.
Rooney was a pioneering pathologist who was the first board
certified forensic pathologist and Sacramento taking the position more than
a decade prior to the Ketty homicides. Rooney was widely
consulted as an expert for his experience, performing thousands of

(37:31):
autopsies during twenty years at the Sacramento County Coroner's Office.
Rooney conducted research into causes of sudden infant death syndrome
and worked on cases involving serial killer Juan Corona and
husband and wife serial killers Gerald and Charlene, and Diego.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
I've never heard of either of those, so no, I
have to look them up. Yeah, for sure. So in
the Ketty case, Rooney said, the perpetrators tortured Dana and
the sharps. So how did they do that?

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Well, Danis killer strangled the teenager from the front with
two hands and then eventually pounded his head with a hammer.
And sliced it with a knife.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
God brutal.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
So the clause of death was noted by Rooney as
granio cerebral trauma and strangulation. The beating to Dana's head
and brain produced mark trauma, resulting in major bloodluss. The
strangling closed a large sized area of hemorrhage in the
musculature over the thyroid cartilage. Gashes were all over Dana's

(38:31):
face and skull, and his teeth were broken. So everybody's
getting the blunt forced trauma to the head and face.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Just the idea of teeth being broken sounds just so
horrible to me. I just think you'd have to be
so violent to do that, and that would be so painful.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Wouldn't it. Yeah, So, you know, if you're doing this
to get information from a person, chances are they'll talk.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, But we don't have any indication that that was
the case, although I guess if it was drug related,
that's possible.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
So Johnny Sharp, though the cause of death was different,
was similarly overpowered, and like Dana, Johnny had no clear
signs of any defensive wounds. His killers battered his skull
and brain and stabbed his chest, his head, sustained multiple
depressed fractures with lacerations and contusions of the brain with

(39:26):
just massive brain swelling. The beating also fractured Johnny's right
eye socket. However, Johnny died when his right carotid artery,
jugular vein, and larynx were sliced open, and that would
do the trick. That sure would eccinguinate pretty quickly. So
if the three found dead in the cabin, Sue Sharp

(39:46):
was the only victim who had possible defensive wounds, with
cuts on her arms and blood on her hands. Though
she was not sexually assaulted, Sue suffered more than Dana
and Johnny, if that's possible. Sue's killer gagged, stabbed, cut,
beat her, and bloodied her face. Sue sustained multiple stab

(40:07):
wounds of the anterior chest with involvement of her ascending aorta,
pericardial sack, and her left lung, So Sue had at
least four stab wounds to the chest and another to
the neck. Her head and face showed numerous points of
blunt force trauma, including broken bones, bruises, and cuts. One

(40:28):
of the perpetrators also stabbed Sue in the stomach, so
this woman really suffered and so much trauma. Did raise
the idea that Sue was the primary victim. This was
a theory that investigators had considered from the very beginning.
Plus you would think an adult would be more likely
to be the target than a child, although there's also

(40:49):
the thought that maybe kidnapping Tina was the whole idea
behind this. But meanwhile, one of the underlying issues that
came from the three autopsies was evadens that one, if
not all, of the bodies were moved post mortem to
stage the crime scene. So that is interesting, very interesting. Why.

(41:10):
I can't imagine why if you're leaving that huge of
a mess and a struggle, why would you bother staging it.
It's interesting, It's very interesting. But the staging it did
kind of mess things up. So maybe the killer was
smart enough to know it would cause a problem for
the investigation. It made it hard for them to determine

(41:32):
the sequence of the events in this mass murder.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
I guess you could say that the two boys were
killed first because the mother Sue had numerous injuries. You
could i possible defensive injuries, So maybe the boys were first,
and then they're attacking Sue.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Which is really hard because that means she saw her
own child be murdered in front of her, which most
mothers would rather be killed than have to watch. There's
also the idea that maybe, like I think I mentioned
that a little bit ago, how Dana could have helped
If these were drug dealers, they could have forced Dana
to help bind the other people. So that's a possibility.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Too, and his reward was to get killed.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, but maybe he wouldn't know that at the time.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
No, I'm true.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
I mean people can be forced into doing helping people
with crimes if they think that's the only way to
save themselves. That's just human nature. So Plumbus County authorities

(42:42):
did turn to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit the BSU.
That's the branch known for criminal profiling. The name the
public associates with criminal profiling the most is Special Agent
John Douglas. That was the mind hunter guy, right, that's
the mind So although by the early nineteen eighties, Douglas
and the BSU were overwhelmed with requests for their expertise,

(43:05):
Douglas and his team helped out Plumus County. The request
was made through the California Department of Justice. So the
report to the BSU provided information about the victims, and
that includes Sue. Sharp was not a known drug user,
nor was she known to drink alcohol very much. No
drugs or alcohol were found in the house at the

(43:27):
time of her death, so not even a bottle of
wine in the house. She was not known to frequent
bars in the area either, and the report also described
Sue as not a fancy dresser and a loner. So
basically that means she wasn't getting all gussied up, as
my grandma would say, and going out to the bars
to pick up men.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Nope, she was not.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
She was not doing that. She was known to have
dated at least two men in the year prior to
her murder. One of these men was about a decade
older than her and the other was about her age.
According to law enforcement reports, Joe Bays and Daryl Josephson
were among her known boyfriends, but neither of these men

(44:09):
were near Quincy at the time of the homicides, so
they were never even considered suspects. Now, Sue was described
as impoverished. They were living like you know, on a thread.
Her only source of income came from her enrollment as
a vocational student at the Feather River College under that
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. In addition, the US Navy

(44:31):
did withhold two hundred and fifty dollars each month from
the wages of James Sharp, the father of Sue's five children,
for child support. But still she was really scraping by.
It was noted that her house was very sparsely furnished,
and most that was there was of little or no value,
and most had been left behind by the previous tenant.

(44:53):
When her and her kids went there, they really had
the clothes on their back, and you know, a few boxes,
not a lot of stuff that much. No, there was
no moving truck. But the Sharps were really typical of
many residents at the Ketty Resort. They were all living
in poverty or on the vert of poverty, and it
was low income housing.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Douglas devoted parts of his profile to Sue Sharp, as
well as Tina Sharp and their possible related roles in
the case, but the profile also examined the role of
Dana Wingate, who Douglas saw as a probable criminal in
the making. Well, from what you've talked about earlier, I'd said,
that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah. This kid was, you know, in foster homes, was
selling drugs, was hanging out with the wrong kind of people,
and it had to be really hard to manage diabetes
in the lifestyle he had.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
The implication was that Wingate may have associated with, or
at least knew neck killers. Yes, Dana Wingate appeared to
fit a prior pattern of behavior that could very definitely
lead him down a self destructive path. His previous antisocial
and crime relax made it possible that he'd associated with
other criminals. Oh.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
I think it's more than possible. I would feel pretty
positive that he had. But not all of the killings
appeared to be planned. According to Douglas, the crime scene
showed that the offender responsible for the murders exhibited great
control if he'd acted alone. The crime scene also reflected
that he may not have planned on killing all of

(46:25):
the victims because, with the exception of a pellet rifle
that was recovered at the crime scene, all of the
weapons had come from the residence of the victims, like
the steak knife and the hammer, So this indicated that
killing the victims was possibly an afterthought. But Douglas really
did not believe that the killings were committed by one person.

(46:47):
For one subject to gain and maintain control of the victims,
he would have had to have some assistance. So it
looked like victim Dana Wingate was not killed in the
same way as the other two victims. He was made
comfortable by receiving a cushion from the couch to rest
his head on prior to being executed. So does that
mean he didn't think he was being executed or they

(47:10):
actually said, here's a pillow before we shoot you. I mean,
who would really care about being comfortable when you're going
to be killed?

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Right?

Speaker 2 (47:17):
But like I mentioned earlier, Dana Wingate may have been
used to assist.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
You know, when you started discussing this, it sounded like
someone in the crowd was targeted, right, the mother or
Wingate kid or.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Tina being kidnapped if someone had their eye on Tina.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Right. But as somebody said a long time ago, if
you're intending to kill someone, you bring your own weapons.
You don't look for weapons in the household exactly.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Question you're going to kill, right, Yeah, because most of
the weapons were at the cabin.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
So I just again, if I'm entering a house to
kill someone or someone's I'll bring my own tools, you
would think. So.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Well, it's interesting because they did talk to friends and
associates of Dana and they said that Dana is the
type of guy who would succumb if threatened and would
go along rather than fight back against an assailant, So
that was a distinct possibility. Douglas said that Sue Sharp's
murder possibly holds the central clue, and that is that

(48:21):
blood was on the feet of Sue Sharp, which suggests
that she was alive when she walked into a pool
of blood, which would go along with the idea that
the boys were killed first. The profiler did not know
whose blood was on her feet, which would have been
good to know, right it would be help. According to
investigative reports, though Sue was covered with a blanket after

(48:42):
she was killed, and this blanket had come from her bed.
This one act on the part of the offenders is
probably the key to who's responsible for the murders. We
always hear if someone covers the face, it's someone who
knew or cared about the victim. Yeah, Douglas said the
crimes appeared to lack an obvious motive, which really reflected

(49:04):
the general consensus of law enforcement about this case. The
killings had a lot of mixed messages left behind. The
homicide appeared to be without any motive. Neither sex nor
money was the motivating factor. The crime scene reflects anger
and rage on one hand, and remorse and guilt on
the other. But I still think if it was like

(49:25):
a pedophile there to take Tina, then we don't know
what was done to Tina.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
No, we don't.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
So the murders could have been an afterthought because of
the weapons used, like you said, because these could be
called weapons of opportunity. The offenders knew the victims, particularly
John and Sue Sharp. The profiler also offered a theory
about Tina Sharp that fueled the belief that maybe an
admirer of some kind. That's kind of a polite way

(49:52):
to say, a pedophile, yes, who was known to Tina,
was somehow responsible for the crimes, and this offender motivated
by his commitment and love for Tina Sharp. So the
profile suggested that the killer may have been in love
with her and she was planning on running away with him.
Douglas said it was Tina Sharp who probably went to

(50:14):
her mother's bedroom after she was killed, got the blanket
from her bed and covered her mother with the same.
Tina Sharp, at twelve years of age, may have had
conflicts with her mother, like many pre adolescent girls at
that age, Douglas continued. However, since the homicide, she's probably
demonstrated a great deal of remorse and guilt. Her feelings

(50:36):
will be in direct conflict with her abductor and may
lead to her own death if her abductor feels that,
she may go to the police. So I don't know.
We've dealt with teens that have wanted to run away
and have had their parents killed, and twelve seems awfully young.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yes, it does.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
So the offenders spent a fair amount of time in
the house in order to control, tie up and kill
the victims. However, the scene indicated that the offenders left
immediately after killing the victims. The three younger children were
left unharmed in the next room, either because the offenders
didn't know they were there, or they may have been
close to one of the offenders. The offenders also used

(51:16):
a vehicle to kidnap Tina. The nearest town was at
least seven miles away, and they would have been seen
walking on the highway by someone if they'd done that.
But the case study was really at a loss to
determine why the killers committed the crimes, so although profiling
can be valuable, it really didn't seem to help in
this case. Still, the person or persons responsible for these

(51:38):
murders did display characteristics of a psychopath, and Douglas said
that this would include an absence of guilt. The crime
scene reflected a lot of anger and rage on the
one hand, but then remorse and guilt on the other.
Since it's unknown whether the offender or Tina or Justin
put the blanket over Sue's body and the pillow under

(51:58):
Dana's head, remorse may not have been from the killer.
So the way the three victims were killed indicates a
complete lack of guilt on the killer. The offender likely
rationalized the need to kill these victims and would put
blame on them for being in the wrong place or
maybe for saying the wrong thing to him. So another
characteristic that would line up with being a psychopath is

(52:21):
the need for immediate satisfaction. Whatever the motive was for
the murders, the offender wanted it right then he was
not willing to wait for another time when he may
not have had to kill these victims to prevent him
from getting what he wanted now. This was evidenced by
the weapons and the bindings coming from inside of the cabin.
Douglas also said the killer would be extroverted. There was

(52:43):
no evidence of forced entry into the residence, which was
another indication that he knew the victims. So for the
offender to gain access to the inside of the cabin,
gain control of the victims, and then take Tina with him,
he would have had to play against reactions of all
the victims, especially Tina. The offender demonstrated control and confidence,

(53:05):
which is consistent with someone who is generally outgoing and
accepted by others or maybe even looked up to. He
showed disregard for community or group standards of behavior, and
had the need to kill all of the victims, which
demonstrates his loyalty only to himself. Brutally murdering women and
children shows the ultimate disregard for the acceptable social standards.

(53:29):
So the profile laid out the case that there were
at least two killers, primarily because of that confusing crime scene.
The crime scene displayed characteristics of both an organized and
a disorganized defender, and the reasons for this would be
best explained if there was more than one offender.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Yeah, well, otherwise you're trying to explain to Doctor Jekyll
and mister Hyde type of character.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Right, So either one of the victims was made to
help or there was more than one offender.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Right.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
The characteristics of the crime scene were consistent with those
of an organized defender when you think about that, the
kidnapping appeared to be a planned event, that the crime
scene did reflect a lot of control of the victims,
with submissive action on the part of Dana, restraints used
on all the victims, and there was a great deal

(54:20):
of violent aggression in the course of murdering the victims.
So it's not like the person just when it had
murdered them. There was a lot of violence, a lot
of fighting and torture, as some people put it, but
there were no signs of any sexual acts prior to
or after these deaths. Now, the characteristics of the crime
scene that are consistent with those of a disorganized defender

(54:44):
are that the murders of the three victims at the
residence really appeared to have been an afterthought and were
not planned the offender was familiar with the sharp's residence
and he was known to the victims, so there was
minimal conversation between the victims and the offender except that
which would be necessary to gain control. The crime scene

(55:06):
was sloppy, bindings and weapons were obtained from and left
at the residence, and potential witnesses were left unharmed. So
the attack on the victims was sudden and very violent,
probably triggered by some resistance, especially by John, and no
efforts were made to hide the weapons that were used
to kill the victims. There was blood spattered throughout the

(55:28):
crime scene, and the profile report concluded that the killers
were psychopaths. So, based on the demographics of this violence profile,
an analysis of the crime scene, and characteristics of antisocial
behavior displayed by the offender, it was concluded that the
person responsible for this triple homicide, kidnapping, and subsequent fourth

(55:51):
murder of Tina was a psychopathic, disorganized, or perhaps an
inexperienced organized defender who would not likely be benefit from
any form of punishment or any attempts at rehabilitation, which
I don't think you need to be a profileer to
come to that conclusion.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
No, No, Sue's husband and the father of her children.
James Sharp had to be considered as a suspect. Sharp
was registered as a sex offender in Missouri, having been
convicted of second degree statutory sodomy, So there was a
possibility that he had sexually abused one or more.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Of his children, and may be more than a possibility,
more like a likelihood given his history.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Yeah, it was determined that James Sharp was off duty
April tenth at about four pm and returned to duty
as expected on April thirteenth, following two days off work.
So at first glance, his timeline leaves open a window
of opportunity for Sharp to travel fifty eight hundred miles
round trip. That's so difficult to see that as an opening.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yeah, that's quite a trip.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
But on closer examination, and the opportunity for Sharp to
travel to Keddy from Groton and back while committing a
complicated crime pretty much is non existent.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Yeah. And also because Sharp went to his part time
job added at a repair shop on April twelfth, working
a swing shift from three am to eleven pm.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, so that's virtually impossible.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
I don't see how you can even come close to
doing it now.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
If the homicides happened between midnight and two am, then
his window of opportunity was about twelve hours to commit
three or four homicides, somehow moved Tina or Tina's body
to feather Falls and then fly back to Connecticut. Pretty
much impossible. Yeah, yeah, too many things would have had
to go perfectly for James Sharp to accomplish this, even

(57:44):
if he did have help. When he was interviewed by
police in September of nineteen eighty one, he insisted he
did not commit these murders. He said he had no
idea who killed them, stating that Sue's brother would probably
have a clearer picture than he did of what was
going on in Sue's life. That's because Sue and the
children moved into the brother's home near downtown Quincy when

(58:07):
they first split up in September of nineteen seventy nine. Then,
about a year after they split up, Sharp drove a
nineteen seventy five Chrysler from Connecticut to Quincy to visit
Sue and to retrieve his vehicle. And she was still
living with her brother at that point, so James had
traded vehicles with Sue and it was the last time
he had seen Sue alive. He recalled that he had

(58:28):
phoned her about five months before her death, that would
be around November of nineteen eighty, using the payphone at
the auto repair shop where he worked. He also recalled
that at some point following the phone conversation, he received
a letter from Sue informing him of the family's move
to Ketty. He also told investigators that he had not
communicated with Sue or any of his children since the

(58:52):
November phone call. Now, i would think if he was
a registered sex offender, he would not be allowed around
the children, So I'm not sure what was up with that.
If the laws were different in the eighties, or if
that's the case, I would.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Think that you wouldn't be allowed to be nearest kids, right,
or at least not without supervision.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
That's true, Yes, I agree. Detectives did extensive interviews with
residents of Caddy and the surrounding areas that included the
Sharp families, friends and acquaintances. They hoped to uncover any
leads or information about the suspicious activities of individuals in
the area. So the police also canvassed nearby cabins and
businesses searching for anyone who might have seen or heard

(59:33):
something unusual on the night of these murders. A significant
part of the investigation centered on the disappearance of Tina Sharp.
Her absence from the crime scene was really perplexing and
searches were conducted through the area and her information was
circulated nationally. The two lead suspects early on in the

(59:54):
investigation were Justin's Smart stepfather and Sue Sharp's neighbor mar
And Smart, as well as his HouseGuest, ex convict John Budebbi.
Boudebbi was known to have connections to organized crime in
the area. He had a long criminal history as a
thief and even as a hit man. Both men had

(01:00:14):
been seen in suits, ties and sunglasses behaving oddly in
the bar the night of the murders. So Martin's wife,

(01:00:38):
Marilyn told the police that Bo had asked Sue out
earlier that night and Sue had rejected him, so that
could have been a motive. She also said that she
had overheard Bo telling Martin that he felt like killing someone,
so there's a couple of red flags. Quite a bit
so when the police interviewed Bo, he claimed to be

(01:00:58):
a former police officer. He also said that he would
have no interest in sue because he was impotent. His
alibi was that he had been with Martin at the
bar that night.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Yeah, they're kind of each other's alibi.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah, which isn't great. No, detectives interviewed Martin and Bow
together and before it was released to the public that
a hammer had been one of the murder weapons, Martin
Smart told the police that he had a hammer that
matched the one discovered and that his hammer had gone
missing shortly before the murders. Really, yeah, he gave an
extremely specific description of that hammer, but this was never investigated.

(01:01:34):
Martin and Bow left the state for Reno, Nevada, and
it really seemed like a purposeful cover up and the
case went cold. So that's a big part of this story,
is a bungled or purposely.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Interviewing him together.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah, right, so it seems like a cover up that
included some of the crime enforcement agents.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
So, later that year, a knife was recovered in a
trash can outside of the Hetty General Store, and authorities
also believed that this item was linked to the crimes.
During the reopened investigation, which was started in twenty thirteen,
investigator Gamberg located a second hammer, likely owned and used
by Martin Smart and missing since nineteen eighty one, and

(01:02:20):
they believed that that had also been used in the homicides.
So that was found in March of twenty sixteen in
a nearby pond. About three years after the homicides, about
one hundred miles southwest of Ketty, a man named Ronald
Pedrini was searching for antique bottles and other discarded items
at a camp in a remote area known as Feather

(01:02:42):
Falls when he discovered what he believed to be the
remains of a partial human skull. The collar suggested that
the skull could belong to Tina Sharp. So although Feather
Falls lies on the Plumus National Forest, it's part of
Butte County, and as a result, Pedrini's discovery was first
investigated by Butte law enforcement. So at about noon on

(01:03:05):
April twenty second, nineteen eighty four, so really almost three
years to the day, Butte County Deputy ron Laurimore met
Pedrini at an area in Featherfalls known as Camp eighteen.
So it took a lengthy, extensive search by the Butte
County Sheriff's Department and the California Department of Justice to
track down the part of the skull containing the lower jaw.

(01:03:29):
It was found on June eighth, about six weeks after
Pedrini's original discovery and more than three years after Tina
Sharp's disappearance. So scientists were able to confirm the skull
belonged to Tina when they matched the skull parts with
her dental records, but they didn't find any more remains
and they could not determine a cause of death. So

(01:03:49):
two days after completing testing on the skull, Bloomis County
coordinated door to door and terrain searches trying to track
witnesses and evidence. A helicopter was used for an aerial
search as well. Investigators found an empty medical tape dispenser,
a portion of a pair of Levi's jeans, and a
decomposed blue nylon jacket, and these are believed to be

(01:04:12):
associated with Tina and with the home invasion. So years later,
it became known that Marilyn Smart, Marty's wife and the
mother of Justin Smart, had left her husband on the
day the murder was discovered. Now afterwards, she provided the
Plumous County Sheriff's department with a handwritten letter sent to
her and signed by her estranged husband. It read, I've

(01:04:33):
paid the price for your love, and now that I've
bought it with four people's lives, you tell me we
are through great? What else do you want? This is
only part of the letter, but this is the part
that the police thought could be quite significant because of
course he's a suspect.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
In suspect, this sounds to me like a confession kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
I mean, it wasn't treated as one, but it wasn't
even followed up on really in time to do much there.
Even though Marilyn admitted in a two thousand and eight
documentary that she thought her husband and his friend Bo
were responsible for the murders and the kidnapping, Sheriff Doug
Thomas contradicted this, and he said that Martin Smart had

(01:05:15):
successfully passed a polygraph test.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Well, so what right?

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Those are not that reliable. Plus, it was later confirmed
that Martin Smart was close with the sheriff, so they
had a friendship. So this is very corrupt once we
get into it, Well, it smells that way, it certainly does. So.
In twenty sixteen, investigators met with a counselor at the
Reno Veterans Administration, and the anonymous counselor said that in

(01:05:41):
May of eighty one, Martin Smart had confessed to killing
Sue and Tina Sharp. So, according to this counselor, Martin said,
I killed the woman and her daughter, but I didn't
have anything to do with the boys. But when the
DOJ was alerted to this confession in nineteen eighty one,
they just dismissed it pretty much out of hand as hearsay,

(01:06:04):
which is another really questionable thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Yes it is, but why.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
In the world didn't it come out until twenty sixteen. Anyway,
that's just weird because the confession was supposedly in eighty one,
the same year.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Yeah, something smells like corruption.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Yes. Now, the most widely accepted theory involves Martin Smart,
Marilyn Smart, and Sue Sharp. It was believed that Sue
was counseling Marilyn on leaving her husband because Martin was
abusive to Marilyn. And when Martin found out about this,
he got his friend Bo, And you know, Bo was

(01:06:41):
like a known mob enforcer who was living with the
Smarts for about ten days before the murders, so he
got him to go with him to kill Sue. According
to Marilyn, Martin Smart had clashed with Sue Sharp and
the whole family right away after they moved to Kendy.
She said that Martin had expressed a lot, a lot
of hostility towards the victims on several occasions. She also

(01:07:04):
said that Martin detested Johnny Sharp and had vowed to
break the boy's hands.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
No, what was wrong with Johnny? Why was he singled out?

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
I don't know. Martin also accused Sue and Tina of
being professional prostitutes. We're talking about a child when we're
talking about Tina. Remember, So these are just crazy accusations
that are really not based on anything factual that we
know of. But this you could quite possibly explain why
Marilyn left her husband the day that the murder was discovered.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Yeah, if you look at it that way, it all
falls into place.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
Yeah, would also explain why Justin Smart and the other
two Sharp boys in that adjoining bedroom weren't harmed. If
that was Martin's step son and he didn't want to
kill him, they might just leave those boys alone because
they knew them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Yeah, But then also, I haven't heard anything about any
of those three boys reporting that it could be Martin.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Well other than that dream that Justin described, right, Yeah, Well, anyway,
it really gives some context to Martin's handwritten note that
Marilyn gave to the plumous Sheriff's Department, which they basically
did nothing with. So some investigators who picked up the
case when it was reopened in twenty thirteen, that's when

(01:08:20):
it was initially reopened after many years, tied the slayings
into an even larger plot. They alleged that Bow and
Martin fit into a larger drug smuggling scheme that involved
the federal government. So Martin was a known drug dealer
and Bo was connected to Chicago crime syndicates with some
monetary interests in their drug distribution. This might explain why

(01:08:43):
the Sacramento DOJ sent two allegedly corrupt organized crime special
agents instead of agents from the homicide Department to investigate
the Keddy murders. And it also provides an explanation why
the two lead suspects were given a free pass really
and just told to leave town by Sheriff Thomas. And

(01:09:04):
that's when they went off to Reno. And that was
what like less than a month after the murders something
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Yeah, very very short time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Yes. Furthermore, it suggests an answer as to why this
case was managed so sloppily, whyatt still remains unsolved and
it really doesn't seem like a priority to the Sacramento DOJ.
But there are some detectives that handled this case who
are really dedicated to it and have passed it on
to younger detectives who do want to solve it. So

(01:09:34):
not all of law enforcement is corrupt here, but there
certainly was a segment.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
There is a portion. It has a whiff of corruption.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Yes, yes, So Bo died in nineteen eighty eight and
then Martin Smart died in the year two thousand. Although
both Martin Smart and Bo Bodebi are now deceased, new
DNA evidence may point investigators to other suspects who may
have had a part in these murder and they think
some of them may still be alive.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
Well, yeah, that could be. But you could also look
at it that two of the primary suspects are dead
end of case.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
It might be. Yeah, we might never know, right, it's
been so long eighty one, you know, over forty years, right, Yeah.
So in this book I read called Solving Ketty by
David Heller. In a Plumous County Sheriff's Office report submitted
by special investigator Mike Gamberg sometime around twenty sixteen, Gamberg stated,

(01:10:32):
during my investigation and review of the case, my attention
was drawn to the manner in which the investigation was conducted.
This has to do with suspicion of a possible cover
up during the initial investigation in nineteen eighty one, So
even he is acknowledging this, so crediting internet websites for
bringing to light a cover up, Gamberg explained, while reviewing

(01:10:56):
documents pertaining to the investigation of the Kedy Hama sides,
it's brought to rise questions that I feel need to
be answered. So in the report, Gamberg names DOJ agents
Mike Krim and Harry Bradley, and former sheriff Doug Thomas
as the alleged perpetrators in the cover up. Gamberg said

(01:11:17):
law enforcement did not further investigate suspects Martin Smart and
his friend Bow and other persons of interest. Law enforcement
may have taken a hands off approach with Bow and
Smart because Bo may have been uninformant for either state
or federal government. And possibly he was in the witness
protection program, which would be a reason for them to

(01:11:39):
cover up for him and just tell him to move away.
Although normally, if you're in that program, don't you have
a different name?

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Yeah, they usually provide a new identity for you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
Well, anyway, due to the severity of these nineteen eighty
one crimes, the DOJ was contacted by the Plumous County
Sheriff's office for assistance with the investigation. And it appeared
unusual that Bradley and Krim arrived in Plumous County because
they were assigned to the DOJ's Organized Crime Unit. So
why are they being called in for this, this home

(01:12:10):
invasion in a rural area.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Why?

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Indeed, it makes you question, it doesn't it? It does now.
Gamberg questioned why members of the unit would be sent
to investigate a local rural homicide, and Gamberg said this
leads one to believe the possibility that one of the
subjects involved in the case and later identified as a
suspect they're mostly talking about bo here was possibly an

(01:12:36):
informant or in the witness protection program. So there are
several people who believe this could be the case.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
A compelling argument.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Well, it's believed that Bo reached out to his handlers
for assistance due to the way the case was being handled,
and Gamberg explained that Bradley and Krim controlled the investigation
from the get go. Krim and Bradley interviewed virtually all
of the major persons of interest in this case, most
importantly Martin Smart and his friend Bo, both who were

(01:13:06):
less than truthful, and actually Bo was the worst of
the two. For example, he told DOJ investigators that he
was a retired cup from Chicago who'd been shot in
the line of duty, when in fact he was a
convicted felon spending time in prison for armed robbery and
he had been arrested in Oakland for attempted armed robbery.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Yeah, and both Bow and Smart gave what could have
been planned statements to Bradley and Krim, and after their interviews,
both men were released and never contacted again. Remarkable, no
follow up or anything. Nope, even after receiving information that
Bo had lied to them, he was allowed to leave
the county almost immediately after the interview. Martin Smart was

(01:13:49):
never interviewed again. After his polygraph test, when the polygraph
examiner advised law enforcement to talk to Smart again as
he believed he had more information. It was Bradley and
Kri who spoke with Smarts counselor regarding his supposed confession,
and report on this did not mention his admission.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, it was never even mentioned. Can you imagine even
if you didn't one hundred percent think it was true,
it should be in the report, right, absolutely, So, Krim
already had a bad reputation in law enforcement circles. In
some California appellate court documents, he was described as an
incompetent investigator, and Krim also had been accused of attempting

(01:14:29):
to block an official investigation. Also, the district attorney put
together a report about Krim which noted his incompetence and unreliability. Crazy,
absolutely crazy. So there's another book I read about this case.
It's called Ketdy twenty eight, Behind the Scenes of the
Kenny Murders, And this was written by Brian Lee Tucker,

(01:14:51):
and he wrote that Kendy holds many skeletons in its closets.
There were in nineteen eighty one so many potential perpetrators
in You could have stood in the main street thrown
a dart with your eyes closed, and hit one. So
this was a fascinating book because Brian Lee Tucker wrote
the book kind of like a novel, like a story. Now,

(01:15:12):
of course he had to assume and make a lot
of inferences, but it was a more interesting read than
just a factual book, to be honest with you. Fascinating
so if you really are interested in kind of how
the victims were feeling beforehand, maybe some things that were
happening before the murder. These things are not proven, but
they are still interesting to read about. So the Sharp

(01:15:35):
family were in this little resort town surrounded by child molesters,
drug runners, professional criminals, corrupt cops and businessmen, habitual transience,
and at least one known serial killer. According to Brian
Lee Tucker. It was discovered also that Tina Sharp's teacher,
who later became a registered sex offender, had had an

(01:15:57):
obsession with Tina. Rob Skert Silveria was around at the
time and was even employed by Plumus County at one point.
That he'd been to Ketty. Is highly likely he would
be later linked to a murder in a hobo camp nearby.
Even the owner of the Ketty resort had once been
a suspect in a similar murder. Several of the men

(01:16:19):
leaving a stone's throw from Cabin twenty eight were said
to be creepy around children as well, and the resort's
caretaker has been described as a chronic peeping tom. More
than one registered sex offender was connected to the case,
either closely or incidentally. So it feels like the Sharp
family was just moving into a hornet's nest without knowing,

(01:16:42):
moving in there with her children where all these people
were living.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Not a healthy environment, No, it really.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
Didn't seem to be. Thirty one years after the homicides,
Sheila Sharp, the girl who found her family members dead,
published a memoir and it really gives insight into her
life after this tragedy. Now she takes issue with how
certain people have inaccurately characterized her mother, and she wrote,

(01:17:09):
my mom's character has been subject to all manner of
cruel supposition, including accusations that she was a drug addict,
drug dealer, prostitute, or at the very least an unfit mother.
For the record, she was none of these things. She
was a kind and loving mother who was doing her
best to raise five children on her own. She was

(01:17:31):
dutiful in her attention to each of us. And while
we lived in relative poverty, we also lived in a
home of love. So it doesn't surprise me that a woman,
especially a woman with that's a single mom with five
children and is attractive, that she would be talked about
in that way. It's just blaming the victim victim abuse, really,

(01:17:53):
so that doesn't surprise me, unfortunately. So it was in
two thousand and four when Cabin twenty eight was torn
down to keep ghost hunters and other people from trespassing there.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Yeah, I'm sure there's a magnet for all sorts of people.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Yeah, right, And there was actually a horror movie made
that was titled Cabin twenty eight and it was about
kind of a similar thing. I haven't watched it, but
it was about a similar type of thing, but of
course it was a horror movie and it was very
hyped up. So there's been a lot of talk and
a lot of media about this case over the years,

(01:18:27):
but still unsolved and really doesn't appear like it's going to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Be no I think at this point. I mean, it
was the committee of twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Well, they reopened it in twenty thirteen, and then there
was more investigation in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Yeah, and there was talk about, well there's maybe some
DNA testing, right right, Yeah, so that's like nine years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Right, So if that was somebody they could identify, it
would have happened.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Yeah, I think we would have heard, we'd have been
news by now.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
So the fact that here we are or in twenty
twenty five, not any closer really to solving who done it.
I don't think it's going to be solved. Plus, the
main suspects are both dead, so they're not going to
give any sort of confession.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
No, No, they're not. No, And anyone who was involved
in this would be getting on the elderly side by now,
you know, unless they were a teenager or something.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
Well, Sheila would be in her sixties right now.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
She was fourteen and eighty one. So yeah, yeah, So yeah,
it's unlikely that it will be solved at this point.
But it's a fascinating story. This is the kind of
story that's just terrifying to me because it feels random.
It may not have been completely random, but I don't
think that there was any real reason that anyone would
want to kill all these people. I think that they

(01:19:50):
really did target either Sue or Tina, or it could
have been one of the boys for a drug thing.
But I really don't think that would have happened over
the kind of drugs these kids were dealing in. These
kids were maybe doing some acid and pot. I don't
think it was enough that people are going to go
in and kill a family.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Yeah, probably not. Although the two boys that were killed were.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Troublesome, Yeah, but a lot of teens are troublesome. Their
families don't get slaughtered, right right. Plus, I think if
it was just random drug dealers, why would they leave
those three boys alive when it seems like maybe Justin
did see something maybe, And why would they take Tina?

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
I know, I can't get the taking of.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Tina makes me feel like it was a pedophile who
wanted Tina, or even more horrific, a couple of pedophiles
who wanted Tina. Because we don't know exactly when Tina
was killed, she could have been kept for quite some time.
Her remains were found a distance away. Yeah, so Tina
could have been held and god knows what could have
happened to her. Her remains were skeletal by the time

(01:20:52):
they did find some, so we have no idea how
she was killed or what she went through.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
No, but the fact that they took her instead of
just and leaving her.

Speaker 2 (01:21:01):
Exactly makes you think she was the target, right, Yeah,
because Sue Sharp was not sexually assaulted, so I kind
of feel like if she was the target, she would
have been sexually assaulted. Makes me think they killed those
other three and took Tina because they wanted Tina.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
Yeah. Well, so Sharp was found dude from the waist down.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
Yeah, but no sign of anything happening to her sexually. Now,
I guess something could happen without any evidence of it,
now that you bring that up. But they didn't seem
to think she was raped or anything. There was no semen,
there was no injuries to the genitalias, so there was
really no signs of a rape or an assault in
that manner.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
Yeah, just that the fact that nothing was found doesn't
mean that nothing had happened.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
I see what you're saying. Yes, but just the I
go back to Tina being kidnapped and think Tina was
the target. That's how I see it in my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
Yeah, I'll go with that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
In the book I was telling you about where it
reads more like a novel the two killers, which be
Bo and Martin, were actually really horrific people who wanted
to kill everybody. So I'm not sure if that's true either.
There's so much we don't know, I guess, but if
any of our listeners know more about it, I know
there's a lot on Reddit about it. So if there's

(01:22:15):
anything you'd like to add, we'd be happy to address
that in their feedback. One of these.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
Days, it's time for listener feedback.

Speaker 2 (01:22:44):
Okay, well, speaking of feedback, what have we got?

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
We've got some emails for you today. So the first
one is from Jacob and he wants us to do
an episode on Doris Andrews. So Doris Hoskins, that was
Doris Andrews before her marriage. Doris Hoskins thought she'd finally
found the man of her dreams when she met Mark
Andrews in two thousand and nine. Doris had been married

(01:23:08):
and divorced three times and was hoping to find a
man she could grow old with. Now Her boyfriend at
the time, Mark Andrews, was a four time loser in marriages,
but he seemed to Doris to be the one, so
after a year of dating, he got married in twenty
ten and seemed to be a happy couple. Doris was

(01:23:29):
a teacher, Mark was a truck driver. However, he liked
to gamble in a spare time, and he won some,
he lost some, But in the twenty fifteen he won
two hundred thousand dollars gambling. So this made him think
that he was quite the expert in gambling, so he
quit his job as a trucker and became a full
time gambler.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
That doesn't seem very.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
Wise, Well, it turned out not to be. He wasn't
real good at doing the gambling part, so by Christmas
of twenty fifteen, he was deeply in debt. His credit
cards were mixed out, there was no money in their bank.
He had borrowed money from everybody who would be willing
to lend him money, so he wasn't going to get

(01:24:11):
any money from anybody to keep his gambling going. But
Doris had life insurance policies a total over three hundred
thousand dollars, so you can guess the rest of what's
going to happen. I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
Okay, sounds interesting. Our second email is from David and
he has comments on a case we did on the
Susan Woods murder. So David writes, Hello, guys, this was
an informative episode on how not to do police work.
In my opinion, there needs to be some serious reform
regarding how cops go about destroying innocent lives when trying

(01:24:45):
to solve a crime. I think it's called accountability. I'd
love it if police departments could get charged with aiding
and a betting criminals who continue to cause harm while
the cops rely on confirmation bias instead of evidence to
continue harass an innocent suspect. Also put a stop to
the lies, the tricks, all the deceitful behavior to coerce

(01:25:07):
someone to confess. I also think we citizens are held
to a higher standard than the cops are. It should
be the other way around. When I see a police
car behind me, I don't feel safer. I feel terrified.
I do not respect authority that relies on fear and
intimidation to attain cooperation. If they have to operate that way,
then there is something very wrong with the kind of

(01:25:29):
person who wants to be a cop. Oh boy, David,
You've really opened the can of worms here, Because I
do believe there is a segment of people usually men
who want to be a cop because of bad reasons,
not the best intentions. They want the power, they want
to carry the gun. I mean, of course, we could
go on and on about how policing is done in

(01:25:49):
our country. When it comes to Susan Woods, I think
it was really just terrible. You're right, because this guy
wasn't even there, He had no history of violence. They
were kind of basing their idea that he was guilty
on him being a hippie and the ex boyfriend, yeah,
hippie free or ex husband. I think they were married actually,

(01:26:10):
So yeah, I am with you there. I think that
we do need to take a look at that and
have some reform, for sure. I think that would definitely
play into the case we just covered as well, the
Keddy murders, which we see a lot of corruption there.
We don't see anyone being forced to confess, but we
do see people who were probably guilty being let off

(01:26:31):
the hook and we don't really know the reasons why,
but it certainly seemed that way.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
Well, I think it would be nice to have a
pre hiring neuropsych exam or at least some questionnaire filled out.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
Well, there might be, but I think it's kind of
easy to bypass.

Speaker 1 (01:26:47):
That could be.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
Yeah, but no, I do see what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
I would like to see some screening to see if
there's any antisocial behaviors that could be present.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Yeah. Well, we do find that there are quite a
few policemen who are abusive to their families and their wives.
And I'm not saying this to criticize all policemen, because
I think there are many police who have a very
difficult job and do their best to do it right.
On the other hand, I think the system does need
to be.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
It needs to be fixed, needs to be fixed. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Okay, so those are our thoughts, David, and I think
you have a really good point there. Thank you so
much for sharing that with us. So our next email
is Carrie from Australia with a case suggestion and Carrie
Wrights Hi from Australia. Still enjoying your podcasts and slowly
working my way through all of them. I've just finished
the story on Eton Pats. As with a lot of

(01:27:39):
your stories, I search after to see if someone has
been found guilty or is still in jail. I found that, surprisingly,
Pedro Hernandez was found guilty in twenty seventeen, but just
this past week a federal appeal court has overturned the
conviction and ordered a retrial. Now I have a case
suggestion Constance Martin and Mark Gordon, who this week have

(01:28:01):
been found guilty of the death of their newborn in
a British court. I listened to a podcast of the
original trial, which resulted in the jury being unable to
reach a verdict. They were then retried this year. Lots
involved in this case would be interested in your take
on this one. All the best, Thank you, Carrie. I
think we'd be happy to do that. We try into

(01:28:23):
a limited amount of cases involving children or infants, just
because they're so difficult for most people, ourselves included. We
do have some people who won't even listen when it's
that kind of a case for their own reasons. But
we all have things that trigger us, and we certainly
would be I wouldn't say happy, but we would be
inclined to cover this. Also, I really think that all

(01:28:45):
Dick's years of pediatrics really helps with these kinds of cases,
especially with infants. So yes, thank you very much. And
Carrie did go on to explain the case a little
more and a little bit more about it. In early
January of twenty twenty three, Constance Martin and Mark Gordon

(01:29:06):
were sought by authorities when their burning car was found
on the breakdown lane of a highway. The couple was
found almost two months later. Constance had given birth very recently,
but there was no baby with them. Then the infant's
body was found two days later in a sack hidden
in a hut adjacent to a public garden. The couple

(01:29:27):
was arrested and went to trial. After two trials, the
couple was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence. So
that's just very curious because if something happened to the
baby from their own negligence, why wouldn't they at least
get help. Why would they hide the body? That just
makes them look so guilty.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
You there's a lot of stuff about this couple. I
bet she was born to a fairly high status family
money and Gordon, who was below them really socially. So
the interesting dynamic between the two. They had four kids,

(01:30:07):
four other kids. I think they had been taken away
from them by the state.

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
Well god, I hope, so they.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
Kind of snook the pregnancy in there without anybody who
realized she was pregnant apparently.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
Oh so maybe that was one of the reasons for
hiding it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
I think so could be. Okay, I mean it's pretty recent.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
Well, yeah, there have been three or four cases I've
been following recently about parents and young children are infants.
There are quite a few of those to cover, but
this one seems particularly interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Yes, it does, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
One last email, and this is James, who wants an
episode on Noah press Grove. I think we kind of
remember that we did hear about that case.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
We've heard about that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
This was fairly recent. This was Labor Day twenty twenty three,
when the body of nineteen year old Noah press Grove
was found next to an Oklahoma road. So his body
was new and he was wearing two mismatched shoes. The
medical examiner stated that Noah died by blood force trauma
and the manner of death was undetermined. The Oklahoma Highway

(01:31:10):
Patrol called the case suspicious, but six months later said
it was not a murder. Noah's family has filed a
civil suit against several people, so his family thinks it
was a murder.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
They do so that someone in like four or five
lawsuits whose civil suits filed and the family suspects it
one or more of them was involved in Noah's murder.

Speaker 2 (01:31:37):
Okay, do we think it was some kind of a
hate crime? Was he a person of color or a
gay man or anything?

Speaker 1 (01:31:43):
Nope?

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Nope, So we don't know what the motive would have been.
We don't maybe a personal motive.

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
He had been to a Labor Day party, yeah that day.
There isn't any report of anything happening at party other
than he was in an RV that tipped over.

Speaker 2 (01:31:59):
Wasn't her so kind of a wild party?

Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
It sounds like it was a kid's party that was
a little bit unruly, a.

Speaker 2 (01:32:05):
Little bit of drinking going on, quite probably.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
Okay, and I would be suspicious say it wasn't a homicide.
If you find this body nude with this match shoes on,
it doesn't sound like a hit and run or anything
like that. No.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
The nudity kind of puts that to rest. Plus, yeah,
he was off to the side, and usually if you
get hit by a car, they say your shoes come off. Yeah,
that's right, just really weird. Huh. Okay, Well, I don't
know enough to say anything intelligent about it, but I'll
definitely look into it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
We'll have to keep track of these civil suits and
see what's going on.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
Absolutely all right, Well, thank you James, thank you everyone
for your emails, and we do have more on the
Adelson family and the murder of Dan Marcal So we've
had several emails and voicemails on that case. So next
episode we'll go over that again. Still waiting for Wendy
to be arrested, but I still think it's happening. We'll

(01:33:00):
see okay, all right, everyone, thank you for listening, and
thank you so much for sharing your feedback and your
case suggestions. Very much appreciate it. We hope you're all
having a wonderful week. We will see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
At the Quiet d Comne down plenty of seats.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Bye bye, bye, guys,

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