April 1981. A tiny railroad town in California’s Sierra Nevada. A 14-year-old girl comes home to cabin 28 and finds her mother, her brother and his friend dead. Three young boys slept in the next room, unharmed. Her 12-year-old sister Tina is gone. 45 years later, no one has ever been charged.
Tonight on The Unmarked West: the Keddie cabin murders. A boy who “dreamed” the killings, sketches drawn by an untrained volunteer, a missing claw hammer, a letter that counted four victims when only three were known, a skull found on the anniversary, a recorded tip that vanished for 30 years, and DNA that matched a living suspect.
Chapters
0:00 Three dead. One missing.
0:37 Keddie, California
1:26 Cabin 28
2:08 Saturday, April 11th, 1981
3:04 1:15 a.m.
3:25 The morning after
4:06 Where’s Tina?
4:38 A scene gone wrong
5:35 The boy who dreamed it
6:30 The missing hammer and the letter
7:13 A skull in the woods
8:02 The case reopens
8:50 Found in a pond
9:35 The theories
10:31 Sheila
11:09 What do you think?
Sources
– Keddie murders, Wikipedia (summary of contemporary reporting): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keddie_murders
– Metcalf, V. “Keddie murders revisited,” parts 1 to 3, Plumas County News / Lassen County Times, April to May 2018: https://www.lassennews.com/plumas-countys-keddie-murders-revisited-part-iii
– Little, J. B. “New evidence revives Plumas County quadruple murder case,” The Sacramento Bee, May 7, 2016
– Truesdell, J. People, Nov 2016 (Sheila Sharp interview)
– Scott, R. “Nightmare on Spanish Creek,” in Masters of True Crime (Prometheus, 2012)
Images: Wikimedia Commons. Keddie crime scene photos and 1981 composite sketches, Plumas County Sheriff (public domain on Commons). “Keddie Cabin 28” site photo, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Keddie Wye photos by Roger Puta (public domain). Other Commons public domain images of the Feather River canyon, Plumas National Forest and Reno.
Narration is AI-assisted voice. Respect to Sue, John, Tina and Dana, and the Sharp family.
#truecrime #unsolved #california #keddie #mystery
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