Keddie Cabin Murders Part 2
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. One night in April 1981, a grisly quadruple murder took place in the small northern California town of Keddie.

To this very day, the case remains unsolved. But that doesn't mean there isn't any forensic evidence or suspects. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 258. The Keddie Cabin Murders, part two. ♪

Thank you.

Hi everyone, welcome back for part two of this story. If you haven't had a chance to listen to part one yet, I highly recommend that you press pause right here, go back and listen to last week's episode so you're fully caught up on the story. But for those of you that have already listened, here's a quick recap of part one.

In April of 1984, four people were murdered in Keddie, California. They were Sue Sharp, her son, 15-year-old John, her daughter, Tina, and John's friend, Dana Wingate. Sue, John, and Dana were all found murdered in cabin 28 of the Keddie resort. And the body of 12-year-old Tina was found exactly three years later, but miles away from the cabin. Almost nothing about this quadruple homicide made any sense.

Starting with the attacks themselves, Sue was discovered on the living room naked from the waist down and gagged with a blue bandana in her own underwear, which was secured over her mouth with a piece of tape. She had been stabbed in the chest and her throat slit, but there weren't any signs of a sexual assault.

Her son John's throat had also been slit, and he had been struck multiple times in the head with a claw hammer. His friend Dana Wingate was also murdered. He had multiple blunt force trauma injuries to the head that were most likely caused by a hammer, and he had been strangled to death. Then there were the three to survive. Inside one of the bedrooms in the cabin, three boys were found fast asleep in their beds.

They were Rick and Greg Sharp and their neighbor friend, Justin Smart. When it comes to the forensic evidence, here's everything that we know, at least until this point. Three murder weapons were found inside of the cabin. A bent steak knife, a bloody butcher knife, and one of the claw hammers. But at least two of the murder weapons were still missing. The other hammer and the rifle that was used to strike Sue over the head.

Blood evidence throughout the cabin suggested that all three of the victims had either been moved or staged before the killers left. And despite the amount of blood evidence they had, the Plumas County Sheriff's Department, the lead law enforcement agency on the case, didn't find any of the killers' DNA. Or at least that's what they thought back in 1981. They had DNA, they just didn't know it yet.

But that probably shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. DNA collection at crime scenes didn't really take off until 1984. But that doesn't mean there isn't any evidence connecting a suspect to the murders. We're going to talk a lot more about that in part two of this episode.

A bloody fingerprint was found on a post connected to the handrail leading up to the cabin's back door, which seemed to suggest that that's where the killers left. But to this day, we aren't sure if an identification for that fingerprint has ever been made.

Whatever happened that night inside cabin 28 didn't happen quickly. Based on the forensic evidence at the crime scene, whoever did this was slow and deliberate. They weren't just in and out. This took some time. We're talking about three victims here.

Sue's feet were covered in blood like she had tried to walk around in it. There was also blood on one of the boys' shoes. But surprisingly, whoever did this didn't make much noise. If you remember from Part 1, the three boys to survive were all apparently sound asleep in the bedroom right next to where these murders took place.

It was only Justin Smart who seemed to eventually change his story later on, and he was the one that said that he heard and saw the murders happen, but he just pretended to be asleep so that he wouldn't become a victim as well. But besides Justin's changing stories, there were no other witnesses to what happened.

Not even the cabin next door, cabin 27, where the Seabolt family lived and where Sheila spent the night, they didn't hear anything either. And that cabin was only about 15 feet away at the very most. There was only one other cabin that reported hearing screams that night. But the people who lived there didn't go out and investigate.

There also weren't any signs of forced entry, which doesn't mean too much for this investigation because this is Keddie 1981. No one locked their doors at night. So that brings us to where we are now, April 1984, exactly three years after the original murders inside of Cabin 28.

A man named Ronald Padrini was out in the woods near Feather Falls, California, in the neighboring Butt County. While he was apparently out collecting bottles and cans to recycle, he stumbled upon something strange. And when he kneeled down to see what it was, he thought it looked like human bones.

In reality, he was exactly right about what he saw. It was a partial human skull in a very deep stage of decomposition. These bones had clearly been there for a while.

When the local police from Butt County were called, they recovered the cranium portion of a skull and part of a mandible, which were found near a child's blanket. They also found a blue nylon jacket, a pair of Levi jeans with a missing back pocket, and an empty surgical tape dispenser.

At first, no one locally knew who the remains belonged to. Not only was it just part of a skull and a mandible, but they were in the very late stages of decomposition. They had been there for at least a couple of years. So there was no way of knowing who it belonged to just by simply looking at them.

So neither the local police or the Plumas County Sheriff's Office had any idea that the remains actually belonged to missing Tina. That discovery would eventually come later, and it went something like this. An anonymous caller called the Butt County Sheriff's Office saying that he had a weird suspicion that the skull might belong to a girl who had gone missing a few years prior up in Keddie, Tina Sharp.

Now, if that's not strange enough, the caller was never documented in the Keddie Cabin murders case file. But a recording of the phone call would eventually be found years later in 2013 when the case was looked at again.

So we've got human remains found almost three years to the day since the Cabin murders, and now an anonymous tipster calls the police saying that it might be Tina Sharp. Coincidence? Or did someone want the police to find Tina's remains?

Whether he wants to be or not, Ronald Pedrini remains a central character in this part of the story. Most people believe that he was just an innocent bystander in all of this. He just so happened to be looking for recycled cans and bottles on the three-year anniversary of the Keddie Cabin murders. He just so happened to be in the right place at the right time. But other people aren't so sure about that.

The timing of it is just weird, and so is the location. This was an area that no one ever went. That's why the remains hadn't been found in three years. So did someone tip Ronald off? Or maybe someone pointed him in that direction so that Tina's body would be discovered on purpose.

Then there was the anonymous caller who said that he thought it could be Tina. No one had identified the bones yet, and this person was already calling the law enforcement authorities to say that he thought he knew who they belonged to. This seems like an incredibly impossible coincidence, especially given the fact that nothing was released to the media or the public about finding these bones.

So how did this individual even know that they were found in the first place? Tina was just one of thousands of missing people out of Northern California at the time. So this led a lot of people to wonder, did this anonymous caller know something about the Keddie Cabin murders? Could they even be the person responsible?

Now, who is this mystery person? Well, the short answer is, we don't know. Either the original investigators at the time didn't fully investigate this lead, or they simply forgot to write down his name. The caller is just simply listed as anonymous. So you could probably add that to the list of the mistakes that the original detectives in Plumas County made.

By June, a forensic anthropologist had officially confirmed that the remains belonged to Tina. They compared her dental records to the skull and jawbone, and they came back as a perfect match.

Because of how badly decomposed the bones were, the forensic anthropologist thought that Tina was probably killed the same night as the rest of her family. So that's officially four victims from that night. Tina Sharp, John Sharp, Dana Wingate, and Tina Sharp. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

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Babbel.com slash Spotify podcast spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Spotify podcast. Rules and restrictions may apply. Let's now dive into the theories. One of the many puzzling parts of this story is the three boys who were left unharmed in one of the bedrooms.

If someone is capable of murdering four people in cold blood, why did they spare these boys' lives? Well, here's one possible theory and the introduction of one of the suspects.

Justin Smart was one of the boys who survived. He was the one that gave those conflicting stories about what he remembers over the years. Well, his stepfather is Marty Smart, the guy who lives in the cabin right next door with his wife, Marilyn Smart.

Also staying with the Smarts that night was their friend, John Bobadie, who went by Bo, a convicted felon who had been in and out of prison for multiple different crimes, including burglary and several drug-related crimes.

Bo is also believed to have connections to organized crime and gangs in Chicago and was alleged to have been a mobster living in Las Vegas before he met Marty Smart at the VA hospital. Both Marty and Bo were veterans.

Apparently, several weeks before the murders, Bo started sleeping on Marty and Marilyn's couch and they became really close friends. They seemed to have a lot in common. They were both Vietnam War veterans who suffered from pretty bad cases of PTSD. That's actually how they met. They were both being treated at the local VA for PTSD.

They both had tempers, something that we're going to talk about, and they liked to drink together. So when Marty offered him a couch to sleep on at night, Bo happily accepted the invitation.

When it comes to the Keddie Cabin murders, both Bo and Marty look like pretty good suspects. In Marty's first interview with the police only one day after the murders, he claimed that he had been at the local bar named Keddie's Back Door with his wife Marilyn and their friend Bo. That's also where he worked as a chef.

He said they went to Sue's cabin before heading to the bar and asked her if she wanted to go, but she said she couldn't because she was staying back to watch the children. So the three of them went without her.

While at the bar, Marty got mad at the bar manager who was on duty because he said the music was way too loud. So they didn't end up staying for very long before they headed back to their cabin. That's where Marilyn watched a little bit of television before going to sleep and Bo and Marty decided to give the bar another shot and have a few more drinks. But that's not all that Marty said. He still had a lot more to say.

Multiple times during this interview with the police, Marty seemed to intentionally insert himself into the murders. The first thing he said was that he saw two suspicious looking men at the bar that night who ironically looked exactly like him and Bo. And he told the police that he thought these two suspicious looking men at the bar might be the ones responsible.

He also said that he heard about the victims being killed with a hammer. Well, in part one, I talked about how Marty told the police that a similar claw hammer had been missing from his garage. So in both of these statements, he seems to be intentionally inserting himself into the mix, something that we know certain perpetrators are known to do after committing their crimes.

First, he says the real murderers were probably at the same bar he was at that night. And second, whoever the real murderer is somehow broke into his garage, stole his claw hammer, and then used it to commit the murders.

After hearing just that, you might think that that would potentially be enough for the police to arrest him, or at the very least, question him a little bit more. But that's not what happened. After this very strange interview, the Plumas County Sheriff's Office let him go and said that they didn't think he was involved at all. Now, before we talk about his wife Marilyn's interview with the police, let's circle this back to Justin.

If Marty Smart is a viable suspect here, then that could explain why Justin wasn't killed like the others that night. Marty wouldn't kill his own son. And since he was in the same bedroom as the other two Sharp kids, then that could explain why all three of them survived.

By Marty's own admission, he and Bo stayed at the bar until they closed that night, which was sometime around 1.30. This was around the same time that one of the cabins heard the screams. But according to some of the other people there, when Bo and Marty returned after dropping Marilyn off at home, they were both wearing different outfits. They both had on three-piece suits and sunglasses.

Yes, three-piece suits and shades. Now, that seems a little strange, right? Why would they wear such fancy suits and sunglasses to a dive bar in Keddie, California? It was hardly the place to dress up at. Also, why did they change clothes in the first place? Well, some people wonder if they did it because they wanted to establish some type of alibi.

If Marty and Bo walked into the bar wearing three-piece suits and sunglasses, then obviously they're going to stick out like two sore thumbs. And people, they're going to remember seeing them.

Then if anyone at the bar was questioned by the police, then they would all say that, yeah, we saw Marty and Bo there all night long, so they couldn't have been the ones to commit the murders. So maybe it was all part of their plan to try and to establish this alibi.

During her interview, Marilyn was much more forthcoming. According to her, she went with her husband and Bo to the bar, and the three of them came back sometime around 11. She went to bed, but Marty and Bo decided to go back to the bar a short time later. So all of this matches up with Marty's story.

But Marilyn said that when she woke up sometime around 2 o'clock that morning, she said she saw Marty and Bo burning something in their wood stove. She said she didn't know what it was, what they were burning, but now she thinks that it might have been something that was used in the murders. Although when Marty was asked about this later on by the police, he just said that it was another piece of firewood.

But to this day, we have no idea what they were burning or whether it had any connection to the murders or not. Over the next several days, Marilyn would eventually tell the police that yes, she did think her husband had something to do with it. Not only because of his strange behavior that night, but also because they had separated the day after the murders.

She also told investigators that he was short-tempered, violent, abusive. She said he tried to run her over and one of her sons in a car once, and that in a 1980 incident, he allegedly pulled a knife on her and threatened to cut her with it. But even after both of those incidents, she continued to stay with him. Okay, but what's the motive for the murders?

Well, if Marilyn and Marty separated the day after the murders, then maybe the murders had something to do with that. Here's how some of those theories go. Some people speculate that Marty was abusive toward Marilyn and Marilyn may have told Sue about it and Sue was trying to convince her friend to leave him.

Don't forget, Sue herself had just gotten out of a very violent and abusive relationship with her ex-husband. That's basically how she ended up in Keddie in the first place. So if Marilyn told her about Marty's abuse, it makes sense that Sue would probably try to talk her into leaving him.

So that's how the story goes. If Marty found out that Sue had told Marilyn she should leave him, then maybe that was motive for murder. He essentially could blame her for the end of his marriage. There were a few different rumors about romance in the air.

Some say that Bo might have developed a crush on Sue and tried to make a move on her that night, which she flat out rejected. So in a drunken rage, he and Marty went back to Sue's cabin and murdered her. Others say it could have been Marty who had the crush on Sue. There were rumors about them being romantically involved as well.

Marilyn told Sue about the abuse. Sue and Marty were secretly having an affair behind her back. Sue told Marilyn she should leave and break up with him. Marty didn't like that. He didn't want his girlfriend Sue telling his wife that she should leave him, so he killed her.

On top of that, people said that Marty didn't like Sue's son John. He actually hated him. So that could explain why he became a victim as well. He probably didn't know his friend Dana Wingate very much, but since they were together that night, it just made sense why he would become a victim too. But wait, there's still more about Marty and Bo that you should know about.

It's been said that then-sheriff Doug Thomas was close personal friends with Marty Smart, so that might explain why he was never really considered an official suspect or why he was allowed to leave after just one interview with the police. If Marty and the sheriff are personal friends, then you get where I'm going with this.

Also, Sheriff Doug Thomas resigned from the Keddie Cabin murders just three months in and took a job at the Sacramento Department of Justice.

He also denied ever being friends with Marty Smart and said that he took and passed a polygraph about the murders so that there was no reason to arrest him. According to Sheriff Doug Thomas, Marty and Marilyn had come down to the sheriff's office one day looking for some counseling because they were having marital problems. And Doug Thomas agreed to counsel them for a session.

Now, what exactly is a sheriff doing providing marital counseling to a couple living in Keddie? No one knows. But that's what then Sheriff Doug Thomas said and explained that that was the extent of their relationship. They weren't actually friends, according to him. He just provided some marital advice one day.

Within weeks of the murders, both Marty and Bo skipped town. Bo moved back to Illinois and Marty went north to Oregon, and eventually both of them would pass away. Bo died in 1988 and Marty died in 2000 without ever being considered official suspects in the Cabin Murders, or at least not back during the original investigation.

But before Marty left Keddie, he left a very strange and very incriminating letter to his wife Marilyn, or ex-wife. At the end of the letter, which Marilyn eventually turned over to the authorities, it read, quote, I've paid the price of your love, and now I've bought it with four people's lives. You tell me we are through? Great. What else do you want?

So obviously when a lot of people heard about this letter, they saw it as a written confession. Marty was confessing to the four murders. And it's probably not just that letter. According to other sources, Marty might have confessed to the murders during a therapy session with the VA. At the time, Marty was suffering from a pretty bad case of PTSD from his time in the Vietnam War.

And as part of his treatment, he was attending therapy classes at the local VA hospital. Well, apparently, during one of these therapy sessions, Marty had confessed to his therapist about killing Sue and Tina Sharp, but he denied having anything to do with either John or Dana's murders.

He said he did it because Sue was trying to convince Marilyn to leave him. He also supposedly told this therapist how easy it was to beat the polygraph examination and that, yes, he really was good friends with Sheriff Doug Thomas. He was essentially bragging about how easy it was to get away with the murders.

Now, years later, in 2016, this VA therapist allegedly came forward with this information, but also said that they told the police about it years earlier. They just never did anything with the information.

So here's how that theory goes. Marilyn, Marty, and Bo all went out drinking that night. Bo may or may not have a crush on Sue, and Sue may or may not have told Marilyn to leave her husband. Or it was the other way around. Marty was the one with a crush on Sue, and this was all some sort of love triangle.

Either way, Marty and Bo, after a night of drinking, decide to go over and pay Sue a visit. They murder her, but while doing so, John and Dana come home and surprise Bo and Marty. So they had no choice but to murder the boys as well. They couldn't murder the other boys in the bedroom because one of them was Marty's son Justin. Marty and Bo wouldn't kill him, so

So that's why they were left unharmed. That's how that theory goes. Support for this episode comes from Smart Labels. Have you ever gone on a hunt for a holiday decoration that you know you have, but you just can't remember where you put it last year? Well, those days are over with Smart Labels.

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Some of the other theories are the murders were ritualistic or motivated by drug trafficking. But those were both dismissed by Sheriff Doug Thomas about a week after the murders because no drugs or any type of drug paraphernalia were ever found in the cabin. Another thought, Tina Sharp was the primary reason and the primary target for the murders.

She was the only one taken from the cabin, so it's possible that she was the intended target in all of this. She was kidnapped from the cabin, taken out of Keddie, and then murdered somewhere else for some reason. But no one can explain why. And if Tina was the primary target, why also murder three other people? Why not just sneak into the cabin, kidnap little Tina, and then be done with it?

Then finally, the theory that John and Dana's hitchhiking that night had something to do with this. Whoever gave them a ride home committed the murders. They could have been dropped off in front of the cabin. That person waited for them to go inside. Then that's when they followed them in and then committed the murders.

Maybe John and Dana were killed first. And while that was happening, Sue woke up from the bedroom, came into the living room, becoming a victim herself. But again, what's the motive? Nothing was taken from the cabin, so you can't say this was a robbery. And what motive would someone have for killing two innocent teenage boys who were just hitchhiking home one night? None of that made any sense either.

The only one that seems to make the most sense is the one involving Bo and Marty. But even that theory has some holes in it, especially when it comes to kidnapping Tina. Killing Sue is one thing, killing John and Dana is another, but what did Tina have to do with all of this? Or was she just kidnapped because she was the only girl and the youngest out of all the victims?

Cabin 28 was condemned and torn down in 2004, so you can't actually go to Keddie anymore and visit the site for yourself. But photos of the cabin are everywhere on the internet. It was probably torn down because so many people have been fascinated with the murders and they would go and visit it.

And besides, they were old and run down in 1984. So by 2004, I can't even imagine what kind of shape they would be in. But if you've ever thought about going to the cabins yourself, you can't anymore.

Another big update in the case surfaced years later. In March of 2016, a hammer was found that matched the description of the one that Marty Smart had claimed was missing just days after the murders. If you recall from Part 1, the police had always suspected that the killers had used two different types of hammers. One was found inside of the cabin, but the second one was never found.

Whoever the killer was had taken it with them. But now, over 30 years later, the exact same type of hammer was found at the bottom of a nearby pond, a steel blue-handled claw hammer. And the police don't think that it got there by accident. Speaking with reporters, this is what then-Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hadwood said about that particular location. Quote,

The location it was found, it would have been intentionally put there. It would have not been accidentally misplaced, end quote. That hammer, a hunting knife, and the recorded message sent to Butt County about the discovery of Tina's remains are all in the possession of the DOJ and the FBI. And all three pieces of evidence are apparently awaiting some type of forensic analysis.

But as of right now, no results of that forensic analysis have ever been released. So all we know at this point is that the hammer found at the bottom of the pond looks like the one that went missing from Marty's garage, but we aren't sure if it's actually the one. We also don't know if that hunting knife had anything to do with the murders or not, or whose voice is on that recorded message to the Butt County Sheriff's Office.

So there are still so many unanswered questions. Now on a side note, Sheriff Greg Hadwood was 16 when the murders happened, and he even personally knew the Sharp family. So for him, this investigation has always been personal. He took over the case years ago after Sheriff Doug Thomas resigned and went to another agency.

Sheriff Greg Hadwood also said that at the time, six potential suspects were being examined but wouldn't go into detail about who those six people were. Going forward another two years. In April 2018, Sheriff Hadwood announced that new forensic evidence had surfaced and it might just be a matter of time before we really know who the killers were.

According to a 2018 article by Plumas News, DNA was found on a strip of white medical tape that was used to bind the victim's hands and ankles and to cover one of their mouths. And that's not all. The DNA matches that of a known living suspect, according to Sheriff Hagwood.

He said that he's had the DNA for several years, but it wasn't until recently, in 2018, that he obtained the needed samples and found a match. Up until this point, there had been a lack of fingerprints or identified DNA found at the crime scene. So this announcement in 2018 was huge. But here's the critical piece of the puzzle that we're still missing. Who's the match?

Who is the known living suspect? Because the Plumas County Sheriff's Office hasn't said yet. For a long time, the sheriff has said that they think as many as six people were involved in some way or another. They may or may not include Bo and Marty, but we could be looking for as many as six possible suspects. And maybe the DNA recovered on the tape belongs to one of those five or six people.

When it comes to Tina, the police don't think her remains ended up in neighboring Butt County by accident.

In an interview with People magazine, the sheriff said this, quote, End quote.

It's also no secret that they don't think the anonymous caller about the remains was a coincidence. Whoever that caller was knows something about the murders and may have even been one of the killers themselves. They probably even directed that Ronald Padrini person to go to that particular location and start looking for bottles and cans to recycle.

If he hadn't been in that particular spot, the remains might not have ever been found. Again, let me ask you, is that just some type of coincidence? Exactly three years after the murders?

We've talked a lot about the criticism of the Plumas County Sheriff's Office and how then-Sheriff Doug Thomas handled the investigation. From being personal friends with the primary suspect, Marty Smart, to dropping the ball when it came to knowing that Tina was missing, to possibly mishandling forensic evidence and ignoring important leads. But Sheriff Doug Thomas isn't the only one that's being talked about.

Although, to be fair, this next part seems to be more just rumors than anything else. Internet talk seems to suggest that maybe there was some type of cover-up for Bo's involvement in the murders, and here's how that goes.

We already talked about Bo's connections to organized crime out of Chicago. Well, the rumors are that Bo might have been a police informant for organized crime. So when he became a suspect in the Keddie murders, he needed to be protected in order to help the police solve bigger mob-related crimes.

If he was thrown in jail for the Keddie murders, then he wouldn't be of use anymore to the DOJ. Those people who believe in this story also point to this. Why did the DOJ send two agents from their organized crime unit to help the local sheriff's office? Why didn't they send homicide agents?

So that decision has led a lot of people to suspect that maybe there's a possible cover up here involving Bo. Maybe it was just a mistake or maybe it was something bigger than that. But in reality, there's no credible evidence of that. And it's really only something that's been rumored about on the Internet. So I don't want to spend too much time talking about it.

This case has no shortage of theories. We've already talked about so many of them. And there's still probably so many more out there that I don't even know about. But the most widely accepted one involves that love triangle between Marty, Marilyn, and Sue. Most people believe that Marty and Sue were having an affair and that Sue was counseling Marilyn to leave him.

When Marty found out about this, he enlisted his friend Bo to take Sue out of the picture. Both of them were drunk. They had a history of being violent and assaulting women. But when they got inside of the cabin, John and Dana came home and became victims themselves. This seems to explain almost everything.

Why Marilyn apparently left Marty the day after the murders and why the three boys in the other bedroom were spared. But one thing it doesn't explain is why Tina was abducted. What motive would either Bo or Marty have to want to take her?

Maybe there doesn't need to be a motive that makes sense. Both Marty and Bo were just bad guys. Marty was a known drug dealer and Bo with those connections to Chicago mobs. So by all accounts, they might just be bad people who probably did a lot of bad things.

Some of the investigators who reopened the case in 2013 say the murders might be linked to an even larger plot and that may or may not involve a possible law enforcement cover-up. But so far, no solid proof of any type of cover-up has ever turned up. That's just more rumor talk.

If any law enforcement agency, like the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office or the DOJ, did something that they shouldn't have to provide a cover-up for the real killers, then we don't know about it, and again, there's no evidence of it. It's unclear where exactly the case stands today, or who that DNA found on the piece of tape collected from the crime scene belongs to.

Despite it being over four decades old, the Keddie Cabin murders remains one of the most highly talked about unsolved murders in California history. You can't go online and look up anything about the case without coming up with hundreds, if not thousands, of possible theories and rumors. So how does this case get solved? Well, the answer might be with the forensic evidence.

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It seems like the key to this case is locked up in a few critical pieces of forensic evidence. One, the DNA profile identified on the tape, and number two, the claw hammer found at the bottom of the pond. But if the DNA found on the tape matches that of a known living suspect, then why haven't there been any arrests? And why don't we know who the DNA belongs to?

It seems like that DNA profile is essentially the key to solving this entire thing. Even if the DNA doesn't belong to our primary suspects, Marty and Bo, it can still give us an idea of who we're looking for. Because even if the DNA belongs to someone else, someone associated with Marty and or Bo, then maybe we can figure out what everyone's role was in this entire thing.

Of course, both Marty and Bo are now dead, so even if we can somehow connect them to the murders with some type of forensic evidence, there's unfortunately nothing we can do about it as far as justice goes for them. But still, it can provide closure to the case that has left everyone on edge for over four decades.

On the other hand, if the DNA belongs to someone that's still alive, like what's seemed to be suggested, maybe Marty and Bo had nothing to do with this. And their roles in the murders have just been speculation. Who knows? But if we're going to try and answer any of those questions, we have to know whose DNA was found on that piece of tape.

Now, second, the hammer found at the bottom of the nearby pond. It's possible that some type of forensic evidence can be still found on it.

But at this point, that seems unlikely. With it being in the water for that long, 40 some odd years, whatever fingerprints or DNA were on it back in 1981 are probably long gone by now. Water just naturally washes away the essential components of fingerprints like residue and natural oils, etc.

And it does a similar thing with DNA. Water essentially breaks down the DNA molecule, leading to the loss of its genetic information. And the longer something is exposed to the water, then the more loss you're going to see.

We also can't deny the reality that it might not have anything to do with the Cabin murders at all. So it would be a long shot for that claw hammer to be the one piece of forensic evidence that eventually solves this. Now, that just leaves the DNA found on that piece of tape. From an evidence collection standpoint, though, this case was a complete disaster.

Most detectives who have looked at the case over the years all agree that the crime scene, the cabin, wasn't handled right from the very beginning. For example, the scene wasn't immediately secured.

James Seabolt, the neighbor who lived in cabin 27, not only helped Rick and Greg Sharp and Justin out of that side bedroom window, but he also admitted that he went back up the stairs and into the cabin to see if anyone else was alive. So who knows what that did to any potential forensic evidence.

Another example, Don Davis, Sue Sharp's brother, was reportedly at the scene either just before or right at the same time that the police got there. And he was also allowed to go inside of the cabin essentially before anyone else was.

Sheila Sharp, the one that discovered the bodies, is now in her 50s, married with three children and two grandchildren. She told People magazine in November 2016 that she has pretty much given up hope on finding out who murdered almost her entire family. Quote, I gave up. I pretty much thought I'm going to my grave not knowing. End quote.

In 2012, she co-wrote a book with her husband called How to Survive Your Visit to Earth. It's part a memoir and part a self-help book. In the book, she talks about her personal beliefs that the murders were in fact carried out by Marty Smart and Bo Bobity because her mom told Marilyn Smart that she should leave him.

After the murders, Sheila, Greg, and Rick were all sent to live with an aunt outside of California. But that arrangement didn't last long because the aunt had several other children of her own, so they were later on put in foster care. At first, all three of the kids were kept together, but eventually they were separated.

This is what Sheila said about how her surviving brothers have coped with what happened. Quote, End quote. She also reportedly doesn't remember much about finding the bodies. Quote,

The most vivid image I have is of my brother laying there. The neighbors say I came back screaming. They said I said it was Johnny, but I don't remember that. It's a little bit confused. It could have been that I blocked it out and the shock of it too. There's times I think, gosh, should I get hypnotized to see what I remember? But do I really want to remember? I want to remember the happy times."

As of today, there is a $5,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers, which in my opinion is a relatively low amount for such a well-known and talked about quadruple homicide. According to the Plumas County Sheriff's Office, any tips can be submitted at 530-283-6360.

The mystery about what happened inside Cabin 28 lives on, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Hopefully, someday, the truth about what happened to those four innocent people will surface, and justice can finally be served after four long decades, and maybe forensic science will be the key to unlocking everything.

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