The Keddie cabin murders are difficult to read about without returning to one fact: children were sleeping only a short distance from where the violence happened. Cabin 28 stood in a small Sierra Nevada resort community in Plumas County, California. On the night of April 11, 1981, it held a family, visiting friends and the ordinary clutter of a crowded home.
Keddie cabin murders
Keddie was a small mountain community north of Quincy, California. By 1981 the old resort had become home to families renting weathered cabins surrounded by forest and railroad country.
Glenna “Sue” Sharp lived in Cabin 28 with her children. On April 11, her daughter Sheila spent the night with a friend nearby. John, fifteen, was out with his friend Dana Wingate, seventeen. Tina, twelve, was at home during part of the evening, along with younger children in the household.
By the following morning, Sue, John and Dana were dead inside the cabin. Tina had disappeared.
A Bedroom Away
One fact has haunted the case from the beginning: younger children were in the cabin during the night and survived. The exact sequence of what they heard, saw or slept through became part of a confusing investigative record.
The murders were not a quick attack in an empty building. People were present. The cabin was small. Whatever happened unfolded within a home where children were nearby.
The Door Opens in the Morning
Sheila returned early on April 12. She entered the cabin and saw enough to understand immediately that something terrible had happened. She ran for help.
Authorities found Sue, John and Dana inside. At first, the full scale of the crime was not understood because Tina was not there. She was eventually recognised as missing, transforming the investigation from a triple homicide into a homicide and child-abduction case.
The Child Who Was Gone
For almost three years, Tina’s fate remained unknown. In 1984, human remains were discovered far from Keddie in Butte County. They were later identified as Tina’s.
That distance deepened the mystery. Someone had not only killed inside Cabin 28 but had removed a twelve-year-old child from the scene and taken her elsewhere. The question of when, how and by whom became central to every later theory.
Years Without an Answer
The early investigation has been criticised for missed opportunities and evidence problems. No one was charged. Over time, attention settled on several people known to the community, but suspicion did not become a prosecutable case.
Decades later, Plumas County investigators reopened old evidence. A hammer recovered from a pond near Keddie was examined because it resembled a tool described as missing by a long-discussed suspect. Investigators also reported obtaining a DNA match from material on tape recovered from the crime scene, linking it to a known living suspect. Despite those developments, there has still been no criminal prosecution.
The Cabin Was Demolished
Cabin 28 was eventually demolished. The physical place no longer carries the burden of the case, but the investigation continues. The Plumas Sun’s January 2025 coverage described the case as still officially unsolved.
For Sheila Sharp and the rest of the family, the case has never been a legend. It began with a walk home from a friend’s house and a door opening onto a scene no child should ever have had to see.
A Case Reopened by New Clues
Keddie has accumulated decades of allegations, confessions attributed to third parties, remembered conversations and competing reconstructions. Some of those claims come from investigators who later revisited the file; others come from witnesses whose memories changed over time. The responsible way to read the case is to distinguish what was found in Cabin 28 from what people later said about the people around it.
The physical scene established the murders and Tina’s disappearance. Later forensic work produced new leads, including DNA testing and the recovered hammer. Those developments show that a cold case can move again, but they do not equal a conviction.
For readers, that distinction can feel frustrating. For the surviving family, it is essential. Naming a suspect in a story is not the same as proving guilt in court.
The featured image is an atmospheric illustration, not documentary evidence from the case.
Sources and record
Key references include Plumas News reporting on renewed evidence, CBS Sacramento’s cold-case reporting, and 2025 coverage from The Plumas Sun confirming that the case remains open.
Continue with Lake Bodom or Hinterkaifeck.
