George “G” Williams
August 14, 2026
During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, George “G” Williams carried out a murderous vendetta against Suge Knight and his Death Row Records.
Keddie Murders
"It haunted people"
On the evening of April 11, 1981, three people were brutally slain in what became known as the Keddie Murders in Cabin 28 at the Keddie Resort in Plumas County, California. Residents Sue Sharp, her son John and his friend Dana Wingate had been tied up, bludgeoned with a hammer and stabbed to death with a knife. When police arrived on the scene they found Sue’s two youngest sons and their friend safe and unharmed in another room.
However, her youngest daughter was nowhere to be found, and detectives believed she had been taken by whomever perpetrated the gruesome killings. In April 1984, bones and a skull were identified as the remains of the missing girl, Tina Sharp. One of the young boys who survived, Justin Eason, claimed he witnessed the brutal murders that occurred in Cabin 28, and gave detectives a description of the two men he said were the killers, but with few leads the police investigation came up with very little in the way of motive or suspects.
Keddie Murders: The Sharp Family
Glenna Susan Sharp had moved her family from their Connecticut home in the fall of 1980 and began renting a cabin at the Keddie Resort. The resort was a small community based in rural Sierra Nevada, located next to the Keddie Wye, a railroad junction on the Union Pacific Railroad in Plumas County, California. Known to her friends as Sue, 36-year-old Glenna had separated from her allegedly abusive husband, James Sharp.
Sue Sharp decided to relocate her five children to Keddie, where she rented Cabin 28. Her eldest children were 15-year-old John, along with 14-year-old Sheila and then she had 12-year-old Tina, 10-year-old Rick and her youngest, Greg aged 5. The Sharp family were well liked within the small community, and the children would often spend time with the Seabolt family who resided adjacent just some 15 feet away in Cabin 27.
John Sharp was most often found in the company of his friend 17-year-old Dana Wingate, who lived in Gansner Park in Quincy which was just 5 miles away. In November 1980, Marilyn Smartt move into Cabin 26 with her son, 12-year-old Justin, and Marilyn’s new husband Marty Smartt. Glenna and Marilyn began spending time together, as did their sons.
Justin often stayed over at Cabin 28 with Ricky, Greg and young Jamie Seabolt. Marilyn would often confide in Glenna about Marty, and how she wanted to leave him. As a result, Glenna began to encourage her, mainly because of his behaviour towards her son John, whom Marty Smartt had grown to thoroughly dislike. On April 11, 1981, Glenna had driven down the Ganser Park in Quicy with her daughter Sheila at around 1:30pm to pick up John and Dana and bring them back to Keddie.
The boys were planning on attending a party that evening and had returned to Keddie for John to change his clothes. They then hitchhiked back to Quincy at 3:30pm, where they were going to meet with friends. A local woman, Donna Williams gave them a ride from a tire store down the road where their friend lived and later they were seen attending the party. Meanwhile, back in Keddie, Tina was spending the evening at Cabin 27 with the Seabolts and their children, daughters Alysa and Paula, and son, James “Jamie” Jr.
Sheila was planning on spending the night there, and left the cabin at around 8:00pm, whilst Glenna stayed at home with Rick, Greg and Marilyn’s son Jason, who were watching TV in the boys room. Around 9:00pm, Zonita and James Seabolt Sr. saw an unknown green van parked outside Cabin 28, and 30 minutes later Tina returned home from the Seabolts cabin. The following morning Sheila went home to Cabin 28 and discovered the bodies of her mother Glenna, brother John and his friend Dana Wingate, who had all been brutally murdered.
The Keddie Murders at Cabin 28
She ran back screaming to Cabin 27 to alert James and Zonita Seabolt, and James then went to the rear of Cabin 28 and opened the back door which he found unlocked, where he saw the murder scene. He then retrieved Rick, Greg and Justin through the bedroom window and returned to Cabin 27 to notify the site owners.
At 08:05am the Keddie Resort co-owner Jan Albin, who resided at Cabin 25, the Landlord Cabin, contacted the Sheriff’s office and reported a possible homicide. When law enforcement arrived on the scene they found all three victims had been brutally murdered in the most vicious manner. Glenna Sharp was found in the living-room lying on her right side by the sofa, bound with white adhesive tape and black electrical cord around her wrists and ankles.
She was naked from the waist down and her panties had been stuffed in her mouth, presumably to gag her along with a blue bandana secured with the same adhesive tape. She had several stab wounds to her chest, her throat had been slashed, and the killer had then placed a yellow blanket upon her to cover the body. It appeared she had died from blunt force trauma, after she was beaten on the side of the head with the butt of a rifle.
This weapon must have been removed by the perpetrators, but was later determined to be a Daisy Powerline 880 BB gun, after investigators found pieces of the barrel sight at the crime scene along with a pellet which had been fired. John Sharp was found lying face up with severe head injuries. It appeared he had been beaten with a hammer and then his throat was slashed with a knife.
His body was lying next to his friend Dana who was lying face down with his head resting on a sofa cushion which was stained with his blood. He had suffered head injuries from multiples blows, possibly from the same hammer and he was then strangled to death. The boys had been loosely tied together with cord at the ankles but not on their wrists, possibly as a means of preventing them from running away.
The murders had taken place in the livingroom, and blood was found splattered on the walls, the floor, and ceiling which indicated the killer had bludgeoned the victims in a frenzy. Plumas County Patrol Commander Rod DeCrona arrived on the scene and would later describe what he saw, “They stabbed and pounded on everything in visible sight–the walls, the people, the furniture, everything. There was blood sprayed absolutely everywhere. You knew right away we were involved with a psychopath.”
A bloodied hammer and two knives were found at the scene, which were presumed to be the murder weapons. One of the knives had been used with such force, it had bent in half. The lights in the cabin had been turned off and the drapes were all closed, whilst the telephone had been intentionally left off the receiver. During the initial search of the Cabin, Tina Sharp was not located and police believe she had not been present during the murders.
It was only when they questioned Sheila they realised she had returned home and was now missing from the crime scene. It was later established by Sheila that her jacket and shoes were missing, and it was her yellow blanket which had been placed to conceal her mother’s body. The case was now under the authority of Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas, and his investigators were dealing with three homicides and the potential kidnapping of a minor.
Whilst they had very few leads, police decided to question the three young boys who had been present in the other room during the attack. But firstly they interviewed Sheila and the Sharp’s neighbours at the Keddie Resort, specifically the Seabolt family who all recalled hearing no unusual noises emanating from Cabin 28, and nothing out of the ordinary, except for the presence of the green van parked outside.
Other residents recalled seeing a brown coloured Datsun parked outside, which was gone by the early morning hours. One couple did remember hearing what seemed like muffled screams which woke them around 1:30am, but they could not work out where it was coming from and went back to sleep. The occupants of Cabin 26, the Smartts were questioned, and Marilyn told investigators she had been asleep during the time of the murders.
Her husband Marty had been home that night, but left to go drinking at a local bar with a friend and they both returned during the early morning hours. The friend in question, who had been staying with them temporarily, was a man known as Severin John Boubede.
Marty Smartt worked as a chef at Backdoor Bar and it was his evening off the night of the murders. He had previously fought during the Vietnam War and suffered from PTSD, seeking treatment for the condition at the VA hospital where he met John “Bo” Boubede. They had met only several weeks before when Marty invited Boubede to stay with them at Cabin 26 on a temporary basis.
The Keddie Murders Investigation
During his interview on April 13, 1981, he described the events of the evening of April 11. He said that he, Bo and Marilyn decided to go out for drinks at the Backdoor Bar, and Marty recalled stopping in on Glenna Sharp to ask if she wished to join them. After she told them no, they went onto the bar and ordered drinks, and Marty complained to the bartender about how loud the music was.
He then said the three of them returned to the cabin where Marilyn watched tv and went to bed. Marty said he was still angry about the music and called up the bar to complain again, then he and Bo went back there for more drinks. Boubede was not considered a person of interest and left Keddie two days after the murders when Marty was first questioned.
The Plumas County Sheriff’s office now believed they had a potential suspect, and requested assistance from the Department of Justice in Sacramento. Two investigators, Harry Bradley and P.A. Crim, were despatched to conducted additional interviews with Marty Smartt. He recalled seeing an unknown man enter the Backdoor Bar, whom he described as “out of place” and said he was the only guy he noticed because of his appearance.
He was described as a white male, early 20’s, 5ft 7in to 5ft 8in tall, with long hair tied in a pony tail and a dark moustache with a buck knife on his belt. When asked if he saw anyone else, he described a second man who entered the bar around 1:00am to buy a case of beer. The man was in his late 20’s, early 30’s and was around 6ft 1in to 6ft 2in tall, with short curly hair.
Marty also told the investigators he lost a claw-hammer from his home, which he couldn’t account for that had inexplicably gone missing. He then suggested to the investigators that his son Jason may have witnessed something the night of the murders. The DOJ investigators managed to locate John Boubede and questioned him on May 4 about his whereabouts on April 11.
Although he gave often conflicting details in his account of the evening, both men were later ruled out, and Marty passed a polygraph test, clearing him of involvement. Marty Smartt and Plumas County Sheriff Thomas were allegedly good friends, and he was not questioned further over his whereabouts during the hours of the Keddie murders or the circumstances of the missing claw-hammer.
There was very little evidence from the killer or killers, however detectives managed to recover an unidentified fingerprint from a handrail on the stairs leading to and from the back door of the cabin. Several days after the murders, the victims bodies are autopsied by the Sacramento County coroner and it was determined they had all died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head, as well as being stabbed to death. Except in the case of Dana Wingate, who had been bludgeoned, stabbed and manually strangled.
Police then focused on the three young boys who were present in Cabin 28 during the night of the murders. Ricky and Greg Sharp could recall no unusual events during the evening, as they were sleeping in their room, however Justin Eason gave police conflicting stories of what transpired. Initially he told investigators he had dreamt specific details of the murders, but then later claimed he had actually witnessed what happened.
In an attempt to ascertain fact from fiction, Justin was placed under hypnosis by Dr. Jerry Dash, a psychologist at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. During the first of his sessions on May 19, 1981, Justin described in great detail about a dream in which he was on a boat and saw John and Dana fighting with an unknown man with long black hair, a moustache and dark glasses.
He said the man was carrying a hammer and first threw John overboard, then Dana who he described as very drunk. Justin then described a body lying on the bow covered in a sheet. When he looked under it he saw it was Glenna Sharp and she had a knife wound in her chest. He attempted to patch the wound with a cloth but eventually threw it in the water. This might have been a subconsious theme from the tv show the family had been watching the evening of the murders.
Justin, Rickey and Sue Sharpe had been watching “The Love Boat”, before going to bed at 10:00pm. During a second session, Justin changes his story again and admits he witnessed the murders. He said he awoke after hearing unusual noises coming from the living room while he and the other young boys were sleeping. He then decided to investigate the sounds and peered through the crack in the door, where he saw two men enter the home, and stand in front of Glenna who was sitting on the sofa.
He described one of the men as having a moustache and long black hair, whilst the other was clean-shaven with short blonde hair and wearing army boots. He remembered both were wearing dark glasses that may have been sunglasses. Once again he described how John and Dana returned home and confronted the two men, and a fight breaking out between them. As Dana attempted to run, he was hit with a hammer by the man with the blonde hair and John was attacked by the man with the black hair when he tried to help his mother.
At this point Justin said he hid behind the door and continued to watch the events in the living room. He then saw the men tying up John and Dana, and then Tina came into the living room holding a blanket, wondering what was going on. He said one of the men took Tina outside through the back door, and the man with the black hair used a pocket knife to stab Glenna in her chest.
The man who took Tina then returned, removing a hunting knife someone had stuck in one of the walls, picked up the blanket and left again. Some of the details of Justin’s hypnosis session matched with what was known about the murders. The boys were tethered together, with medical tape tied around their ankles, preventing them from running away and Glenna had been stabbed in the chest with a knife.
His description of Tina being taken through the back door was plausible given it had been left unlocked when James Seabolt arrived to locate the boys. Justin also worked with a sketch artist and composites of the two men were made based on his descriptions. The first suspect was between 5ft 11in to 6ft 2in tall, with short dark blonde-hair, whilst the second suspect was shorter, around 5ft 6in to 5ft 10in, with long black greasy hair. Both men were believed to be in their late 20’s to early 30’s and wearing gold rimmed sunglasses.
Police now attempted to understand the sequence of events which led to the deaths of Glenna Sharp, her son John, his friend Dana and the disappearance of young Tina Sharp. Based on Justin’s account of what he witnessed, it was surmised that Glenna was home with the boys when two unidentified men entered the cabin. They were either invited in or somehow forced entry without damaging the front door to gain access.
These men were then confronted by John and Dana who returned home shortly after, resulting in an argument and a fight which erupted between the boys and the men. It was likely the boys attempted to escape, and that is why the men tied their legs to one another whilst they decided that to do with the three victims. Glenna had been tied up as well as gagged to possibly prevent her from calling out for help, and all three were then bludgeoned, stabbed, and in the case of Dana, strangled to death.
This would have been around the time young Tina Sharp had entered the living-room from her bedroom and witnessed the deaths of her mother and brother, when one of the men grabbed and carried her out through the back door. Then the other man picked up her yellow blanket and placed it over the body of Glenna. Police believed at least one more weapon was brought to the crime scene, possibly another hammer which was removed from the house along with the pellet gun which had been used to bludgeon Glenna. The killer or killers had apparently wore gloves and left no physical evidence of their identity.
Motive for the Keddie Murders?
Rumours began to circulate through Plumas County that the Keddie murders were the result of drugs or were associated with a killer who had ritualistic motivations. These theories were dismissed by Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas, because no drugs were found in Cabin 28, despite unsubstantiated claims from Carla McMullen, a family acquaintance of Dana Wingate, who told detectives that he was involved in the theft of LSD from some local drug dealers.
The police spent thousands of man hours working the case, and detectives even ruled out the involvement of notorious serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole in December 1983. Because Tina Sharp had been missing, presumed kidnapped, her disappearance was initially investigated by the FBI. However they eventually withdrew their presence in late April 1981, as they believed the Department of Justice was conducting an adequate investigation.
But there were no leads as to the whereabouts of Tina Sharp, and the authorities did not know if she was still alive or dead. The answer to that question would be revealed just over 3 years after the Keddie murders. On April 22, 1984, the cranium part of a skull was found by a bottle collector at Camp Eighteen at Feather Falls, which is located in neighbouring Butte County, over 100 miles away from Keddie. Several months later an anonymous caller contacted the Butte County Sheriff’s office and said the remains found belonged to Tina Sharp.
Another search of the area was undertaken, and police searchers found part of a mandible and several other bones. Forensic testing later confirmed the skull and bone fragments were those of Tina Sharp. Numerous items of clothing were found near the remains, including a blue nylon jacket, a pair of Levi Strauss jeans with a missing back pocket, a blanket and an empty surgical tape dispenser. Police held the original recording of the anonymous call and a copy was made and distributed, however both copes would later mysteriously disappear from the police records.
At a later date, Marilyn Smartt was questioned again by DOJ investigators Bradley and Crim and gave them new information regarding the case. She said she had left her husband Marty the day after the murders because of his abusive and violent behaviour towards her. She said Marty drove to Reno two weeks after being interviewed by Police and on April 27, 1981, 16 days after the murders, he wrote a letter to his estranged wife.
In it he told her, “I’ve paid the price of your love & now that I’ve bought it with four peoples lives, you tell me we are through, Great! What else do you want?”. She strongly believed her husband was involved in the murders, and then recounted a different version of events during the evening of April 11. She said they did go to the Backdoor Bar for drinks and then went back to the cabin where she watched TV, however she then remembered Marty and Bo had changed their clothes and put on matching three-piece suits and sunglasses, returning to the bar without her.
When they came home in the early morning hours, she recalled they were acting weird and she saw them burning something in the stove outside the cabin. She told them Marty had a particular hatred for John Sharp, and despised Glenna for her continued interference in their relationship. It was whispered around Keddie before and after the murders that Glenna and Marty had been involved in an affair, which ended when Marilyn found out. She turned the letter from Marty over to the investigators, and would later claim she handed them a bloody jacket which she had found in her basement
She strongly believed this item of clothing had belonged to Tina Sharp, however no police records exist to support this. The case is considered by many to have been a botched investigation from the start, with the police failing to collect vital information, whilst crucial evidence had been lost. Other evidence had never been followed up, such as a second bloody knife that was found in the trash bin at the Keddie General Store.
The investigation continued into the 1990’s, with police looking at the involvement of other potential suspects, such as serial killer Robert Joseph Silveria Jr., who was briefly considered a suspect in 1996. Known as the “Boxcar Killer”, Silveria rode the rails for over fifteen years, killing fellow freight-train riders throughout the U.S., and who would eventually confess to murdering some twenty-eight people. He would be ruled out however, as there was little evidence linking him to the crime, which had been perpetrated by two individuals, and Silveria was a lone killer.
The case eventually went cold, with the prime suspects, Martin Smartt and John Boubede, both dead by the new Milennium. The crime would continue to be discussed on websites and message boards, with numerous theories about who the killers were and the motivations behind the gruesome murders. By 2013, the Plumas County Sheriff’s office re-opened an investigation into the Keddie murder case. Althought Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood was then in his third year of office, he faced numerous issues within his department and in the county.
Despite his department being short of funding and short staffed, the murders of Sue Sharp and her children still haunted him. Hagwood went to school with John and Dana, and knew them personally. He was also familiar with Cabin 28, having spent the night there with a friend and his family years before the Sharps moved in. Hagwood eventually graduated from California State University, Sacramento, with a degree in criminal justice.
The Keddie Murders Reinvestigation
By 1988, he began as a deputy in his hometown, and during this time he saw the investigation into the crimes and what was being done and what wasn’t. At that time, the case was still open, but no longer a priority. The case had since become known as “The Keddie Murders”, and was one of the most infamous of the country’s unsolved crimes. Sheriff Hagwood decided to resurrect the case, because of his own personal connection, and provided the resources and time needed to solve it.
That’s when he invited Mike Gamberg, a private investigator, if he would take over the case as a Plumas County Special Investigator. Gamberg had previously been a deputy with the Plumas County Sheriff s Office prior to the murders, but was fired. He got reinstated, but Sheriff Thomas kept him out of the investigation, and even his leads in the case were ignored. As he knew many of the residents, had a good understanding and experience of homicide investigations, and knew some of the victims, Gamberg believes his input should have been taken seriously.
Gamberg had also known the boys, and was their coach in martial arts and other activities. The day before the murders, Dana Wingate had been over at his house. Gamberg has his own suspicions about what happened in that cabin some 32 years previously. He accepted the job and began following the evidence and leads that still existed. He began by going through the boxes of evidence at the Keddie murders crime scene room, which was filled with drawers full of information and other evidence that was all in disarray.
With the original case history log gone, it was difficult to know who did what on what date. Gamberg believes he knows what happened to it, but it has not been recovered. Much of the physical evidence taken from Cabin 28 is still in storage, including the living-room carpet, wallboard and other items marked with blood along with other potential evidence. Of the remaining evidence in the Keddie Murders investigation, much of it is disorganised and some kept in storage had been contaminated.
Gamberg said, some of the evidence was placed in a freezer to preserve it, but the freezer got turned off. He said, “This case is as screwed up as a soup sandwich, It’s not about what was done, but what was not done.” He said much of the available evidence in 1982 was never followed up on. He sorted through and found one bag of evidence that was never opened. The items inside were never entered into evidence, a crucial part of the chain of evidence necessary in crime investigation.
Gamberg is now following evidence that should have been investigated 37 years earlier. On 24 March 2016, a hammer was discovered in a pond near the Keddie Resort, that matched the description of the hammer Marty Smartt claimed had been stolen from him. It had been recovered by Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg, who said another man had happened upon it when the pond was dry, and left it there until he summoned police. Sheriff Hagwood commented on the find, telling the press, “the location it was found… It would have been intentionally put there.”
“It would not have been accidentally misplaced,” he said. The main suspects in the case, Marty Smartt and John Boubede both moved away from the area almost immediately after the Keddie murders. Severin John Boubede left Keddie two days after the events, and moved to Chicago, Illinois where he had known connections to organized crime and was involved in scamming police officers out of money. He was about to be sentenced to jail for it when he died in 1988. Marty moved to Klamath, California and later Oregon where he died of cancer in June 2000.
Keddie Murders: Marty Smartt and John Boubede
That same year the Plumas County Sheriff’s office released details of Marty Smartt and John Boubede’s interviews, which were made public for the first time. Plumas County authorities and residents were outraged over how many inconsistencies and outright lies were in their statements made to the DOJ investigators. Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas later admitted that Marty Smartt had made many inconsistent remarks.
He stated his belief that these had been made to divert suspicion away from him, but stressed he had personally interviewed Smartt and he passed a polygraph examination. The investigators were accused of making many blunders with their interviews, and failed to corroborate statements made by Smartt and Boubede, which later turned out to be untrue. For instance, John Boubede told the agents he had worked as a police officer for 18 years in Chicago, but retired after he was shot in the line of duty.
However, this could have easily been exposed as a lie by cross checking Boubede’s date of birth. He also told Bradley and Crim that Marilyn was his niece, which was also untrue, and that he had lived in Keddie two weeks longer than he did. He also said Marilyn was asleep when he and Marty returned home from the bar in the early morning hours, which contradicted what she said.
He also claimed to have never met Sue Sharp, despite testimony the three had stopped by Cabin 28 to ask Glenna if she wanted to join them that evening. Gamberg reported after Marty’s death, that he had confessed to the murders during a session with his therapist at the Veterans Administration in Reno. It was during his seventh appointment in May 1981, when he allegedly admitted he killed Glenna “Sue” Sharp, because she interfered in his relationship with Marilyn.
When asked about Tina, he said she was taken because she could identify him as the culprit. Asked why the young girl didn’t run away, Marty indicated, without speculating further, that he’d incapacitated her. He told this counselor he had to killed Tina Sharp because, “She saw the whole thing. I couldn’t have a witness.” He claimed, “I killed the woman and her daughter, but I didn’t have anything to do with the [boys]” He didn’t mention who murdered John and Dana, but said they were “collateral damage” because they were present at the time.
The counselor advised Smartt to turn himself in, but told investigators his patient had merely smiled at the suggestion. Gamberg had said that in an earlier session with the counselor, Smartt said he had become so angry that they were unable to achieve a worthwhile dialogue, but the counselor couldn’t remember the name of the woman Smartt was angry with, but Gamberg believes it was Sue Sharp. Marty stated he had beaten the polygraph easily and his friendship with Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas ensured he faced no further questioning regarding the murders.
He told the counselor, “I beat it. Those things are easy to beat. I was lying, and they let me go!” Gamberg was informed by the counselor that he had alerted the DOJ investigators at the time, but was surprised it didn’t lead to an arrest. The counselor said he called the DOJ and asked to speak with the lead investigators working the Keddie case, Bradley and Crim. He told them of the confession and was told they would meet with him. Gamberg said that although the agents did meet with the counselor, they dismissed his allegations as “hearsay”.
The friendship between Martin Smartt and Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas would be revealed to be more than just a casual acquaintance. Smartt had allegedly told his counselor that Sheriff Thomas had once lived in Cabin 28 prior to the Sharps’ arrival in Keddie. The distance between Cabin 28 and Cabin 26, where Marty resided, was just a short walk along the Keddie Resort, and both men could have met up often at the local bar, and even been involved in nefarious activities together.
Smartt further added that Thomas had allowed him to live in Cabin 28 with him for a time, when he was having marital problems with Marilyn. When asked if he knew Marty Smartt, Sheriff Thomas replied that they were “great pals”, and Marty spent many hours with him while on patrol. Thomas even said that Marty allegedly came to him once for marriage counseling, but he said he pointed out he was hardly the right person to give advice, as he himself was recently divorced.
This is all considered by Gamberg to be yet more evidence of a potential cover-up of the Keddie murders. Others have pointed to the possible involvement of corrupt DOJ special agents and their potential involvement in the big drug smuggling operations conducted and backed-up by the CIA in the early 1980’s. Both Hagwood and Gamberg are critical of the role the California Department of Justice had been given the case, and their inability to follow through with an adequate investigation.
According to Gamberg, immediately after the murders, Sheriff Doug Thomas contacted the DOJ in Sacramento, and two special agents, Harry Bradley and P.A. Crim, were sent from the division’s organised crime unit to investigate. They believe it is odd that agents from the DOJ’s homicide division were not sent instead, and believe this only makes sense considering the background of one of the prime suspects.
Severin John “Bo” Boubede, Martin Smartt’s friend, had at least two known alias, John DeSantis and Booby Lake, and had known connections with organised crime in Chicago. This points to a DOJ interest in Boubede, and Gamberg suspects it may have been to protect him. The DOJ investigation was led by special agents Bradley and Crim, along with fingerprint expert, Spiro Vasos, and Bruce Palmer, an evidence expert. Although a lot of potential evidence was collected from the crime scene and catalogued, very little worthwhile information was obtained from the scene.
This was primarily because it was 1981, and DNA collection and processing at crime scenes did not begin until 1985. One piece of perhaps vital evidence that Gamberg discovered was found in an envelope that had never been opened. It contained the tape recording of the anonymous telephone call to Butte County dispatch, which came in just after someone discovered the skull and bones of Tina Sharpe, roughly 80 miles down the Feather River Canyon in a spot known as Camp 18, about 5 miles from Feather Falls.
In 2016, Gamberg shared the contents of the tape with “People” magazine, when it featured the crime in two magazines and in a news documentary aired on CBS. The anonymous caller had said he was watching the news about the discovery at Feather Falls down Highway 70 from Keddie. He said, “And I was wondering if they thought of the murder up in Keddie up in Plumas County a couple years ago where a 12-year-old girl was never found.”
Gamberg has his suspicions about the identity of the caller, and said that although both Smartt and Boubede fled Plumas County shortly after their interviews with the DOJ, it has become known that Smartt allegedly lived in Paradise at the time of the phone call. Another person of interest also lived in Butte County according to Gamberg. He is having professionals analyse the tape recording to compare the male voice to recorded voices of others identified as potential or known suspects.
Despite this promising lead, the process of scientific methods is slow, and because the crime was committed so many years previously, it doesn’t garner the priority of recent crimes. Gamberg said he believes the tape was deliberately ignored when it arrived at the Plumas Ciounty Sheriff’s Office. Hagwood told People magazine, “I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but there are facts and circumstances — the number and the nature of which — I can’t ignore anymore,”
Just three years after reopening the case, Gamberg was revealing to the media that they had new evidence that had been recovered, namely the hammer that matches the one Marty Smartt said went missing from his cabin shortly before the murders, as well as a hunting knife that had been recovered in Keddie. Two years later, he announced that there was more evidence that links to a living person or persons to the crime.
Neither Sheriff Hagwood or Gamberg would reveal specifics on whom they are watching, but the new evidence gave them some solid leads. While the two leading suspects Martin Smartt and his friend John Boubede are now dead, others are alive and have been identified, said Hagwood recently. It is now believed that up to 6 suspects were involved, and that Tina Sharp was taken for a specific reason.
Hagwood said in 2016, “There are people locally who know more than they’ve said, and I believe we’ve identified some of them, and we know who they are, and we know where they are. And I have every confidence that they either participated after the fact or they have first-hand information… It’s obviously a worthwhile pursuit. There is not an expiration date on homicides, and to the extent that we have surviving siblings and family members, it is our fundamental obligation to them to understand who did this and why”.
Hagwood and Gamberg have both said the sheriff’s office and the California Department of Justice dropped the ball with the case in 1981. Important leads weren’t followed and evidence wasn’t checked, whilst other evidence was ignored. In Gamberg’s opinion, “You could take someone just coming out of the academy and they’d have done a better job,” of investigating the case. In April 2018, the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office made further announcements after new evidence was found in the case.
Special investigator Mike Gamberg said DNA taken from a strip of white medical tape, consistent with that used to bind the victims’ hands and ankles, and to cover the mouth of one victim, has provided significant leads. A segment of the tape found near the body of Glenna “Sue” Sharp was found to contain identifiable DNA. Gamberg added that the DNA matches that of a known living suspect.
According to Gamberg, he’s been in possession of the DNA for several years, but it wasn’t until recently that he obtained much needed samples and found the match. Up until now, the investigation has been stymied by a lack of fingerprints and identifiable DNA left at the scene by the perpetrators. He said that those who were inside Cabin 28 on the night and/or early morning hours of April 11 and 12, 1981, were somewhat prepared.
It is suspected that someone brought a hammer to the scene, the one recovered from a nearby pond in March 2016, as well as using a hammer and knives found in the home. It is also believed the medical tape used to bind some of the victims was brought along, and there is some evidence that an 880 BB or pellet rifle was used, but was not recovered from the scene.
Both Gamberg and Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood believe that there were possibly as many as six people involved, in one capacity or another, in the murders or the cover-up. Because of the lack of fingerprints at the scene, Gamberg said that most of the suspects wore gloves, while no identifiable footprints were recovered inside the cabin. During the frenzied attack, Sue Sharp, her son John and his friend Dana Wingate, were bludgeoned and stabbed to death, however none of the suspects were injured or left their own blood at the scene.
According to Gamberg, every bit of evidence that can still be recovered is important to the case, and he continues to search for leads and re-interviews anyone linked to the Keddie murders. It was known that John Sharpe and Dana Wingate caught a ride home sometime between 10:00pm and 1:00am, and it had always been a mystery as to who gave the two teens a ride home. But Gamberg has since identified the individual, and has interviewed her.
Reflecting on the effect the crime has had on the community of Plumas County, Gamberg said that “Life changed dramatically in 1981 for this whole community,” meaning not just Keddie, which is six miles west of Quincy. “Everybody was suspicious of everybody and afraid of everybody else,” he said. “It haunted people. And there were few reassurances from the sheriff s office that they were doing everything possible to catch the killers.”
Gamberg recalled his time as a deputy, and how his young sons began locking the doors to their house at night. Before the Keddie murders, they never felt the need to do that. Both Hagwood and Gamberg said residents had very little trust or confidence in the Sheriff’s department before the murders, and in many ways there was even less trust following the deaths.
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