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Keddie Cabin 28 Murders

·1 hr 34 min·5 clips

Sheila Sharp found John, Dana, and Sue dead inside Cabin 28 and then discovered Tina was missing.

True Crime Brewery opens with a warning and a drink, then settles into the Keddie Cabin 28 murders in Keddie, California. Four people were killed in a cabin in 1981, and the episode keeps coming back to the same grim fact: after all these years, the case is still unsolved. The hosts keep asking who did it, why certain evidence seems to have been brushed aside, and how one victim went missing for years before the full story came into focus. The tone stays serious, but the conversation still feels like a familiar back-and-forth. The episode starts with the hosts easing in over an imperial stout called The Nothing from Smog City Brewing Company, then turns to the Keddie case with a clear warning that the material is upsetting. It treats the murders as real horror, not a genre puzzle, and keeps reminding listeners that real people were left wrecked by what happened at Cabin 28. From there, the hosts lay out the basics of the crime and the frustrating lack of answers. The cabin is described as sitting deep in the woods, with only the land left where the violence happened. That emptiness matters, because the place itself becomes part of the story. The hosts make it clear that this small-town tragedy is still one of the most unsettling cold cases in American history. The discussion then moves into the aftermath and the civil suits that followed. A listener named James comes up as the hosts discuss Dr. Pierce A. Rooney, a pioneering Sacramento forensic pathologist and first board-certified forensic pathologist in Sacramento, who had worked major cases before the Keddie homicides. Rooney is described as someone widely consulted because of his experience, and the episode says he believed Dana and the Sharps were tortured. Dana Sharp's death is described in blunt medical detail, including strangulation, blunt-force trauma, and knife wounds. The hosts react the way most people would, with disbelief, saying the injuries are horrible and difficult to picture. They point out that broken teeth and severe facial trauma suggest extreme violence. The conversation then shifts to Johnny Sharp, whose injuries are laid out with the same attention to cause of death and force used. The episode notes that Johnny showed no clear defensive wounds and was overpowered before his death. Even as the medical detail gets heavier, the hosts keep the tone conversational, asking practical questions about what the violence might mean and whether drugs or information-gathering could explain it. They do not pretend the case offers certainty where it does not. Near the end, the episode widens back out to civil suits and the chance that they may lead to more answers. It also briefly points ahead to the Adelson family and the murder of Dan Markell, with the hosts saying they still expect Wendy to be arrested. The closing returns to the show's familiar listener signoff, but the case itself remains open, raw, and unresolved.

As heard by us

A careful, unsparing cold-case account that keeps the human cost in view.

True Crime Brewery takes the Keddie Cabin 28 murders seriously. It lays out the spring-night attack in a quiet California mountain town, the four deaths, and the fact that the case still sits unsolved decades later.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a careful true-crime account of the unsolved Keddie Cabin 28 murders.

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