Tina remained a missing person until April 1984, when her skull and several other bones were recovered at Camp 18, California, near Feather Falls in Butte County, about 62 miles from Keddie.

[7] On April 11, 1981, at around 11:30 a.m., Sue, Sheila and Greg drove from the residence of their friends, the Meeks family, to retrieve Rick, who was attending baseball tryouts at Gansner Field in Quincy.

[10] That same evening, Sheila had plans to spend the night with the Seabolt family, who lived in adjacent #27, while Sue remained at home with Rick, Greg and the boys' young friend Justin Smartt.

[9] At approximately 8:00 a.m. on the morning of April 12, Sheila returned to #28 and discovered the dead bodies of Sue, John and Dana in the house's living room.

[14] Sue was discovered lying on her side near the living room sofa, nude from the waist down[11] and gagged with a blue bandana and her own underwear, which had been secured with tape.

[22] Justin's stepfather Martin Smartt, a neighbor and main suspect, claimed that a claw hammer had inexplicably gone missing from his home.

[10] It was never explained why, with access to the Justice Department's and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) top forensic artists, law enforcement chose to use an amateur who sometimes volunteered to help local police.

[27] According to a 2016 article published by The Sacramento Bee, Martin Smartt had left Keddie and driven to Reno, Nevada shortly after the murders.

While there, he sent a letter to his wife Marilyn ruminating on personal struggles in their marriage, which he concluded by stating: "I've paid the price of your love & now I've bought it with four people's lives.

"[11] A counselor whom Smartt regularly visited also alleged that he had admitted to the murders of Sue and Tina but claimed, "I didn't have anything to do with [the boys].

[27] On March 24, 2016, a hammer matching the description of the one Smartt had claimed to have lost was discovered in a local pond[11] and taken into evidence by Plumas County special investigator Mike Gamberg.

[15][27] Plumas County sheriff Greg Hagwood, who was 16 years old at the time of the murders and knew the Sharp family,[3] stated: "the location it was found...

[27] In April 2018, Gamberg stated that DNA evidence recovered from a piece of tape at the crime scene matched that of a known living suspect.