keddie murders and Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders case linked

i don't know what dna or fingerprint evidence they may have found but given the similarities between the two crimes, i'm putting it out there that they may be linked by same offender.

dna and/or fingerprint would be ideal way to link these crimes and/or rule out same offender theory.

both in forest-camp sites, both happened at night but killings involving blood, young girls targeted, etc.

I had to look up Kiddie Murders as I had not heard of them.
My suspects in the Girl Scout Murders could well have been in Northern California in 1981

dna would be ideal but until then all we have is the crime scene

- The killings

Sunday, June 12, 1977 was the first day of camp. At around 6:00 PM CST, a thunderstorm hit the area, and the girls huddled in their tents. Among them were Lori Lee Farmer, 8, and Doris Denise Milner, 10, along with Michele Guse, 9, of Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa. The trio were sharing tent #7 in the camp's "Kiowa" unit.

On Monday morning, a camp counselor made the discovery of a girl's body in the forest. Soon, it was discovered that all three girls in tent #7 had been killed. Subsequent testing showed that they had been raped, bludgeoned, and strangled.


- The Keddie Murders is an unsolved 1981 American quadruple murder that took place in Keddie, a former resort town in the foothills of Northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The murders took place in cabin 28, during the late evening of April 11, 1981 and/or early morning of the 12th. The victims were Glenna Sharp, known as Sue (age 36), her daughter Tina (age 12), her son John (age 15), and his friend, Dana Wingate (age 17).[1][2] Tina was determined to be missing after the crime was first discovered. Her skull and several other bones were recovered in 1984 near Camp Eighteen, California, in Butte County.[3] Sue's oldest daughter, Sheila, had stayed with next-door neighbors in cabin 27 that night and discovered the murders the morning of April 12.[4] Sue's two youngest sons and their friend, who were having a sleep-over at cabin 28 that night, were found, uninjured, in the boys' bedroom that morning.

No arrests have been made in connection with the Keddie murders. The cabin in which the murders took place was demolished in 2004.
Details of the crime

Glenna "Sue" Sharp, 36, and her five children had been renting the cabin since November 1980. On the night of April 11, 1981, Sue was home with her daughter, Tina, her two youngest boys, and a young friend of the boys, Justin, who was staying the night. Her oldest son, John, and his friend Dana Wingate, had spent the day in nearby Quincy and were also going to stay the night at cabin 28. John and Dana were last seen hitchhiking from Quincy to Keddie. The crime may already have been in progress when they arrived at the cabin.[1]

At approximately 8 am on the morning of April 12, Sheila Sharp, upon returning from the sleepover next door, discovered the bodies of Sue, John and Dana in the cabin's living room. All three victims had been bound with medical tape and electrical appliance wire. Later, Tina Sharp was determined to be missing from the cabin.[1]

Examination of the bodies determined that each of the victims had been bludgeoned with a claw hammer, and Sue and John had been stabbed repeatedly, including both being stabbed once in the throat. Dana Wingate was also manually strangled and bludgeoned with another weapon. An inexpensive steak knife discovered at the scene had been used so forcefully that the blade had bent approximately 25 degrees.[5]

The case grew cold, but in 1984 the cranium portion of Tina Sharp's skull was recovered near Camp Eighteen, a geodesic distance of roughly 29 miles from Keddie. Months later, after an anonymous caller to the Butte County Sheriff's office claimed the skull was Tina's, the Camp Eighteen area was searched again for several hours over a period of days. The jawbone and dozens of other bones were found, along with other potential evidence. From these discoveries, no new information regarding the crime surfaced in the media. The murders remain unsolved to this day.

Done some google mapping-- Interesting is that one of my suspects in the GS murders , also committed crimes about 400 miles NE in Newport Oregon or 8 hr. drive in 1996 and maybe before. If that was Tina sharps skull found in Butte County, this would be near a road that would lead to the inter connecting hy-way to Newport.
The suspect I am referring to is Bobby Jack Fowler-- He committed crimes in at least 9 states and Canada-- The most notable of his crimes being the killing fields of his home state Texas. A roofer and construction worker. I see a lot of MO here with victims being hit with a hammer and victims strangled .
also his know crimes in Iowa and Texas put him on a road system that would take him into Oklahoma and right into the camp site of the 3 murdered girl Scouts . And his time line could be there as well.
Sounds like according to what I read Bobby Jack Fowler would fit right in there with the locals of Quincy CA.

I don't know about Fowler but what I do find about the 2 cases--

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/haunted_places/2.html

crime wrote:
Keddie Resort, Calif.: The Unsolved Nightmare in Cabin 28

Movie poster: The Strangers
Movie poster: The Strangers

Basis for the 2008 film The Strangers

On the morning of April 12, 1981, 14-year old Sheila Sharp left a next-door sleepover and returned to Cabin 28 at the popular Keddie Resort, where her family had been living for the past two months. What she found there would cast a permanent shadow over this bucolic vacation spot in the northern Sierra Nevadas of California. The walls and furniture had been destroyed and were covered with blood. Amid the chaos were the bound, mutilated and nearly unrecognizable bodies of her mother Glenna Susan "Sue" Sharp, 36, her brother John, 16, and his friend Dana Wingate, 17. Her sister Tina, 13 was missing; three younger children, her two other brothers and their friend, were unharmed in another room.

John Sharp and Dana Wingate had hitchhiked to Keddie from Quincy, Calif., the night before, possibly after a party. Either awaiting them, accompanying them, or soon to follow them were the killers, who used duct tape and electrical wire to truss Sue, John and Dana Wingate, as well as Tina Sharp. Then, over the course of ten hours, the killers brutally attacked the group—and their surroundings—with steak knives and a claw hammer. The next cabin was a mere 15 feet away, but neighbors and passersby didn't hear a thing.

Cabin 28
Cabin 28

Tina Sharp wasn't there when police arrived, but subsequent investigation showed that she had been there part of the night. The friend who'd been in the other room was able to convince police that Tina had indeed been there, and helped them determine that there had been two assailants and put together sketches of the pair. The killers were never caught. Some think the neighbors who'd invited Susan Sharp to a bar that night (she declined) were involved—the list of accusers at one time included one of the men's own wife. Other locals whisper about Satanic worship; yet others suggest there was a drug connection, either through the two young men or in a case of mistaken identity.

In a gruesome coda, Tina's head was found three years later near a waterfall fifty miles down the hill. The case has never been solved.

The once-welcoming Keddie Cabins would subsequently fall into disrepair. Longtime owner, Gary Mollath, tried to sell the place and renovated it, but the tragedy made the once-beautiful place unattractive. After a period of decay and infestation by squatters, he again rented some of the cabins, but Cabin 28 remained empty, becoming the object of rumors of hauntings. Locals say they've heard moans and the sound of slamming doors from the abandoned building and seen shadowy figures. Mollath's stepdaughter recounts once seeing the word "no" scrawled on the house's door, with a pitchfork propped beside it—the next day, both the writing and the tool were gone. In 2004, Mollath razed Cabin 28.

Annette Martin, a psychic in nearby Campbell, warns that victims of violent, unsolved crimes may stick around because their traumatized spirits don't understand that they're dead. She maintains that this mysterious "no" was the victims' continuing cry against their assailants—and that simply razing a building won't quiet its ghosts.

ibid wrote:
In late April 1977, a counselor at Oklahoma’s Camp Scott returned from a training session to find her belongings strewn. Her doughnuts were gone but a paper was inside the empty doughnut box. She took it out and found a handwritten note in which the writer vowed to murder three campers. Since pranks are common at camps, she discarded the note.

On June 12, 1977, a group of Girl Scouts arrived at Camp Scott, a 400-acre camp at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Tent units were named after Indian tribes: Osage, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and the like. The outermost unit was Kiowa. As girls were transported on buses on the road called the “Cookie Trail,” they merrily called out the names of the units they passed.

A thunderstorm erupted at about 6:00 p.m. that evening. Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Doris Denise Milner, 10, who went by her middle name of Denise, and Michele Guise, 9, huddled in that last tent of the Kiowa group. Lori and Denise were from Tulsa; Michele from Broken Arrow. Denise was a black girl; Lori was a blonde white girl; and Michelle was a brown-haired and bespectacled white girl.

Early in the morning of June 13, camp counselor Carla Emery, 18, was walking to the showers when she let out a shriek of horror. She had discovered the dead body of little Denise at a fork in a trail. A rope and towel were wrapped around the child’s neck. She soon found Lori and Michele nearby; both dead inside their sleeping bags and both with their mouths sealed with black electrical tape.

Police were called. Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) Officer Michael Wilkerson recalled, “People were talking in whispers. I remember how tiny, tiny, tiny the figures were in the sleeping bags.”

The three had been sexually molested – but not raped. Doris had been strangled. Lori and Michele were bludgeoned. Their bodies had been carried more than 100 yards from the tent.

The surviving girls went home. Camp Scott had served Girl Scouts for almost half a century but has never re-opened since this tragedy.

Gene Leroy Hart. Police photo.

On June 14, 1977, the bloodied wooden floor of the tent in which the murdered children had slept was airlifted to a crime laboratory. It appeared that someone had unsuccessfully tried to mop up the blood with towels and mattresses. According to Girlscoutmurders.com, a site dedicated to the event, reports, “Against the wishes of investigators it is published in the press that a tennis shoe print is found outside the tent and a different print was found inside the tent.”

A red flashlight with a piece of newspaper inside it, a roll of duct tape, and a nylon rope were found close to the bodies. Throughout Camp Scott, several pairs of prescription eyeglasses had been taken and discarded on its grounds.

John M. Crewdson reported in the New York Times that police believed the murderer had to be “physically agile.”

“Wonder Dogs” from Pennsylvania arrived at Camp Scott on June 16, 1977. Police deduced from the tracking of the K-9 cops that the perpetrator(s) passed by a counselors’ tent on the way to the tent in which the victims slept.

Men working at Camp Scott were investigated and cleared. Investigators looked into Jack Shroff who owned a nearby ranch. A few days prior to the murders, he had reported items stolen from his home. He passed a polygraph and was cleared.

both crime scenes

attack outdoors in a remote forest camp area though in both cases there were a cabin and tent of others nearby

at night

use of duct tape and/or electrical tape
bludgeon death
one victim apparently removed from the original site
use of electrical wire/nylon rope

frenzy in killing
overkill
severe damage to bodies

highly possible same offender-s- at both crime. if so Hart can be eliminated.
copycat can't be ruled out

in the news

http://people.com/crime/girl-scout-murder-mom-lori-farmer-speaks/

Forty years after sending her 8-year-old daughter off to the overnight Girl Scout camp where she was brutally killed, Sheri Farmer is still searching for answers — and still remembers her last words to her little girl, Lori.

“We hugged and I told her I loved her,” Farmer recalls to PEOPLE. Then she watched Lori get on the bus that would take her to Camp Scott for a two-week stay 45 minutes outside their home in suburban Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Farmer never saw her daughter alive again.

“I wish I had not let her go,” Farmer says. “It was her first time to ever go to camp anywhere.”

On June 13, 1977, the very night she left her family, Lori and two other scouts, Michele Guse, 9, and 10-year-old Denise Milner, were raped and murdered.

“She had just finished the fourth grade,” Farmer tells PEOPLE of Lori. “Being the oldest of five, she was very mature, smart, so really, really pretty. She was just a really good oldest sister.”

not sure why its being reported again

not sure why its being reported again

They're gonna take another crack at the DNA.


I researched the Keddie Murders in college. I focused on it after hearing The Strangers was loosely inspired by the crime. I don't see any similarities between Keddie and the Girl Scouts. The main oddity in the Keddie Murders was how Tina was kidnapped for some reason. The rest of the crime is a full blown rage attack against the mother and teens while the children were unharmed. It was also committed by multiple people....and likely revolved around drugs.

TracyB wrote:

not sure why its being reported again

They're gonna take another crack at the DNA.


I researched the Keddie Murders in college. I focused on it after hearing The Strangers was loosely inspired by the crime. I don't see any similarities between Keddie and the Girl Scouts. The main oddity in the Keddie Murders was how Tina was kidnapped for some reason. The rest of the crime is a full blown rage attack against the mother and teens while the children were unharmed. It was also committed by multiple people....and likely revolved around drugs.

you know that in the room adjacent to the murders 2 boys claim to slept through the entire thing, didn't notice a thing and just slept.

in this thread i speculate the Oklahoma girl scout murders and keddie murders are linked