"Bakhtiar's phone shows she contacted Hart at least six times asking to see her and the family.She never was invited. Empty picture frames hung on the walls, and the room where the kids slept on two small beds and a mattress on the floor had nothing to personalize it. one said. The only people who probably knew the truth are dead. Jennifer and Sarah Hart moved their six adopted children to Oregon after teachers in Minnesota repeatedly reported signs of abuse. He wouldn't come inside but would accept several protein bars, then come back later for more. By 2005, they were living together in Alexandria, Minn. Food seemed to be a major source of stress in the Hart family. The school also reported instances of the kids saying they hadn’t been fed or asking classmates for food. She coauthored the only known study on female "family annihilators," or people who kill multiple members of their family. "His first Saturday Market: Ends up in the Portland newspaper," she wrote. A friend recalls Jen Hart, who often used the social media platform as a way to communicate familial bliss, as a "master poster.". Glamour may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. "And you need to explain you just had a really bad week.". Two weeks later they greeted a man from South Dakota who identified himself as Sarah's dad, out with his son and wife to pick up some personal effects. Shonda Jones, the Houston attorney who represented Sierra, Devonte, and Jeremiah's aunt in her custody battle, says she is still haunted by how her client was treated 10 years ago: "I don't believe that Ms. Celestine had ever had as much as a traffic ticket. How the blinds were always drawn. she wrote. The family’s treks to nature sometimes lasted a day or a month. Jennifer e Sarah Hart giù dalla scogliera in Suv con i sei figli adottivi. Jenifer Hart, née Jenifer Margaret Fischer Williams (31 January 1914 – 19 March 2005), was an English academic and senior civil servant.At one time she was accused of having been a spy for the Soviet Union, a claim which she always denied.. The photo the world saw from that day was of the family Yukon belly-up on the rocks below the scenic overpass. Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to a domestic assault charge involving one of her daughters in 2011. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Your California Privacy Rights. Jeremiah and Abbi taught a kindergarten song to their younger sister Sierra. Friends called them the Hart Tribe. Jen, who worked in the juniors department, was the bigger personality of the two—confident, funny, "kind of abrasive—that would be the Minnesota term for it," recalls Jordan Smith, then a 19-year-old working at the store’s Clinique counter. A week after his initial defense of Jen and Sarah, as the accounts of abuse piled up, Ian Sperling returned to Facebook. Soon after, the new family was pictured on an adoption agency site, smiling and happy—this time seeking up to three more kids of “any” ethnicity up to eight years old. The man admitted in June 2009 that "he had made some comments about the Harts' sexuality." Thank you for being kind. "My mom just told you those things to make you happy. Believe it or not, kids get bruises that do not get beat.” Shelton also denies reports that he, or his associate judge, favored nonrelative adoptions over placements with family members. Gengler was a resident assistant from Big Stone City, a small town east of the school. "Now is not the time.". Known as the Hart Tribe, the multiracial family of two married women — Sarah and Jennifer Hart — and six adopted children took spontaneous road trips … "There was nothing [in that call] that said I better go up there,” says County Sergeant Brent Waddell. Five of the eight members of the Hart family — parents Jennifer and Sarah and three children — were discovered dead after their vehicle was found Monday at … (CNN) As a drunk Jennifer Hart drove her six adopted children in their family SUV, her wife, Sarah, sat in the passenger seat looking up different ways to end a life. Markis, Hannah, Devonte, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra died because everyone saw something different when they looked at them—the "perfect" family; some lucky, rescued kids; a symbol for postracial kumbaya. Hannah and Devonte had already spoken up. "He is a really great friend," one student told the teacher. But when she rang the bell minutes later, no one answered, so she left her card in the door. Devonte was not born on drugs. (Jen had remained behind the wheel. She wrote that Sarah Hart often stayed behind to work and caught up with the family when she could. Sarah had told colleagues that Jen struggled with depression and anxiety, and often stayed in bed to cry. I don't hear that very often." Get push notifications with news, features and more. As admirers fawned on social media, a different version of the Harts emerged in government files. Join Facebook to connect with Sarah Hart and others you may know. When the Green Bay Packers made it to the Super Bowl, she buzzed a "G" into Devonte's hair. "I felt more connected to this little boy … more than I had ever felt to anyone in my life," she wrote on his 10th birthday in 2012.Sarah Hart moved to the Portland area that fall for a job. But at 6:30 A.M., the DeKalb's doorbell rang. They danced in Bliss, Idaho, meditated in Zion National Park and made their own brass band in New Orleans. Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Hart (née Gengler) were both from South Dakota; Jennifer originated from Huron, Sarah from Big Stone City. He hugged her, said he was sorry she had to put in so many hours at work to support the family of eight, and Sarah answered, "Thanks. Jen played the trumpet at church Christmas services. Yet she and Sarah were committed to healing the kids over time. Jen Hart stayed behind with the children for six months until the family's house sold. "You gotta help. Year. They felt discriminated at home, too. The split-level had recently been renovated with new wooden floors and freshly painted walls (Jen had shared pictures of the kids working industriously). At Herberger's, after complaining to Smith about the "sexist" nipples on female mannequins, Jen used a hacksaw to remove the offending anatomy herself. On Sunday morning a surveillance camera in a Fort Bragg Safeway captured Jen, in eyeglasses and a hoodie, paying $20.08 in cash for groceries (bananas, carrots, Chef Boyardee beef ravioli, wheat bread, cereal bars, and Saltines), using her club card for discounts. ", "That just crushed me," she says. ", She told the DeKalbs they'd moved to Washington—to a place with a grazing pasture and a hen house—because it had been the kids' dream to raise animals, grow their own food, and be "self-sufficient." She figured they wanted to get away temporarily. she says. She changed her phone. She eventually moved out of campus housing and into an apartment with Hart. Zippy Lomax was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, "Jen and Sarah were the kind of parents this world desperately needs. She wrote that the food, from Heart 2 Heart Farms in Sherwood, would have otherwise gone to waste. It was Jen's last name the couple used as their own. The couple walked outside to meet the onslaught—Dana's voice trembling; her husband Bruce looking on stoically. About two hours later, a German tourist reported the Yukon, just 25 minutes away from the Safeway. But nothing in her carefully curated online life or her few friendships provided answers to what she was thinking in the days and hours before the family died.Hart, 38, cut herself off from nearly all relatives, yet passed many facets of her Midwestern upbringing along to her children. "It seems obvious that we didn't know Jen and Sarah Hart as well as we thought we knew them," he wrote. But then the 15-year-old returned Friday morning, and again Saturday evening just before the DeKalbs were going out of town. Two years later, in 2006, Jen and Sarah took in three siblings from the Texas foster system: Markis, seven, Hannah, four, and Abigail, two. The family moved to Washington. She said she believed she'd have a home with the Harts until she turned 18, but then the women dropped her off at her therapist's office and never returned. Hannah’s teeth were missing, Jen continued, because she'd knocked them out in a fall and didn't want them replaced. We urgently need your help. This June 2014 photo shows Sarah and Jennifer Hart and four of their children at a celebration of “The Goonies” movie in Astoria, Oregon. One coworker at Kohl's told investigators that Sarah constantly took calls from her wife who said the kids were "making her crazy." And what, if anything, can we learn from the fall? As for the hardest question—why?—we may never have a satisfying answer. They were Markis, 19, Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, Abigail, 14, Jeremiah, 14, and Sierra, 12—two sets of black biological siblings adopted by two white moms—a beautiful family, by most accounts. I've been pretty sad about 2 of our cats dying recently, so I was just very sad and frustrated last night. Maybe Jen and Sarah really believed they were heroes, martyrs who couldn't overcome the tyranny of racism and childhood trauma and prejudice and six kids who kept running to the neighbors. Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Gengler grew up about 150 miles apart in South Dakota and met at Northern State University. Later that year the women married in Connecticut with only their children as witnesses, "because our support system was so small," Jen wrote. A jury has confirmed that Sarah and Jennifer Hart drove off of a cliff in Mendocino County, California in March 2018 intentionally, to kill their six adopted children and themselves.. The bodies of Markis, Abigail, and Jeremiah were found a few hundred yards from the wreckage. “Unless there’s a criminal charge, what can you do? "I don't know what's real or fake anymore," Sperling says. Jennifer Hart and Sarah Gengler met while they were both attending Northwestern University. Once they did come out as a couple, "the Midwestern mind-set was relentlessly unforgiving and unaccepting," she said in a Facebook post, claiming that she’d lost friends as a result. Her name appears in the 2000 yearbook on the same page as another transfer student: Sarah Gengler. Both mothers were there, but it was Jen who talked for nearly an hour. ), Now this young girl bolted past Bruce, up the steps, and into the bedroom where Dana was sleeping. But when Jen and Sarah were questioned separately, they told a different story. He was usually gone during the week for his job with the federal Western Area Power Administration. -- Molly Young. After rescue workers rappelled down the cliff, they lifted the dead bodies of three children and spotted two more corpses: 38-year-old Sarah in the back and Jen, also 38, in the driver's seat. In a Facebook post, Jen dramatically described her first night as a mother of three: Abigail "urinated everywhere" and gashed her chin falling down the stairs; Hannah smeared feces on the wall and "gorged herself with food until she…needed the Heimlich, resulting in episodes of projectile vomiting." "I'm like, 'Shit's getting real,'" Dana says. Weeks have passed since investigators rifled through the property, and yet so many questions still haunt her. Jen Hart, right, and her wife, Sarah Hart, pose with their six children, from left: Jeremiah, Markis, Sierra, Hannah, Devonte and Abigail, in this photo posted in June 2015. "Bruce doesn't do confrontation," she says. But it also introduced an element of doubt into the equation. Later Jen would describe on Facebook how she purposely called Sarah her "friend" or her "roommate" back then. Teachers, a friend and neighbors all alerted child welfare workers the children were being denied access to food. She defied barriers, playing boys baseball rather than girls softball. Devonte Hart = #healtheinternet," she wrote.Her positivity dimmed in 2016, after the Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando and the election of Donald Trump, events discussed frequently online. She said they were discriminated against because of their race and parents. She told him she had turned down offers to appear on national TV and had to dress the kids in Star Wars costumes so they could play outside without being recognized. The woman told the Seattle Times she was pushed out as the couple adopted their first three children: Markis, 8, Hannah, 4, and Abigail, 2. ", In the three months the new neighbors had lived next door, the DeKalbs had never seen any kids in yard, but they'd exchanged a quick hello with Sarah Hart when she jumped out of her car to introduce herself. Maybe it looked like the only way out. "She fed into a stereotype that reinforced other people's racism. So they did what they'd done before: They ran. All rights reserved (About Us). No criminal charges were filed, and two months later the women took their three school-age kids out of school. Someone from the county sheriff's office called the DeKalbs to ask whether there had been more incidents, and Dana explained what she had observed: The kids were almost always indoors. How each child was born addicted to drugs or alcohol and faced their own set of problems. They told authorities that the moms were hardest on Hannah and Markis, “either ignoring or berating him.”, Another caller to CPS identified herself as Alexandra Argyropoulos, a friend with whom the family stayed with on two occasions, once for two weeks, in her San Francisco Bay Area home. In 2004, in their mid-twenties, Sarah and Jen took in a 15-year-old foster daughter. The family gained sudden visibility in 2014, when a photo of their middle son Devonte hugging a white Portland police officer grabbed worldwide attention. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your California Privacy Rights (each updated 1/1/21). The kids were homeschooled because one of the boys, Devonte, had been bullied. Her wife Sarah and two of the children had high amounts of Benadryl in their system. My children are black. Within a day of the crash, news vans pulled into the gravel driveway that forks to the DeKalbs' red split-level on the left and the Harts' baby-blue one on the right, both built in the '70s by two brothers who'd divided the property. The “wandering H(e)arts” logged thousands of miles, according to Jen Hart’s social media posts. Devonte came home with a worksheet that listed his classmates' compliments, his proud mother wrote. An elite FBI behavioral analysis unit that had worked on the Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer cases joined the efforts to solve the mystery. St. Helens. She reemerged in the spring of 2017, writing, "This. The state closed the case. © 2021 Condé Nast. Sierra, Jeremiah, Abigail, Devonte, Hannah and Markis Hart smile on a the family adventure to San Francisco. A Look Inside the ‘Perfect’ Hart Family. Her posts did not slow when the family was investigated for child abuse or neglect: in 2008, 2010 and 2013, the final time in Oregon.One thread that tied the accusations together were claims Jen Hart withheld food from her children as punishment. "Physical attacks, death threats, name calling … and so much more on a daily basis." Other than a ripped-open bag of chicken feed on the living room floor and some clothing strewn on the mothers' bed, investigators found the home's interior orderly to the point of seeming "sterile." The family lived in … "When I bring up this case in the professional community, there is a heaviness," Dinwoodie says. We’re human, and we struggle through life’s ­obstacle course just like everyone else.” Later that year Jen took a six-month hiatus from social media. Her feed showed Abigail and Sierra covered in mud holding their fists to their chests ("Warrior women! She noted that the boy's head seemed larger than his body, and that he claimed his parents withheld food, sometimes for days at a time. She said, "I'm just so tired." "The court seemed to have had a complete disregard for her.". There was no other follow-up. In other circumstances, on other trips, Jen and her wife, Sarah, might have pulled to the side of the road and lined up their brood as they often did: backs to the camera, hands raised in peace signs, a Technicolor sunset framing their silhouettes. She was not raised in the faith but sought it out and was baptized, her dad said.In 1999, she transferred to Northern State University, three hours away in Aberdeen. Slates also said Jennifer Hart, the driver, had a blood alcohol level over the legal driving limit, OPB reports, and that Sarah and the children had high amounts of … Jennifer Hart shared a photo of herself as a 5-year-old in 1984 on her social media accounts. + Follow She also wrote more than once about the abusive world that her children had left behind. Dana asked questions—lots of them—and after Devonte would leave, she'd type up notes on her phone. Jen and Sarah continued to use their family to attract attention. Her father said she loved animals and sports as a girl. Flashlights soon strobed over the front yard, followed by voices calling, "Hannah!" Mostly, Dana noticed how rarely the kids left the house. She remembers Abbi as outgoing, Markis as shy and Sierra as giggly. All rights reserved. However, the investigators did find a pipe and a jar of Purple Widow cannabis—a strain thought to mellow depression—and a refrigerator stocked with lunch meat, fresh beef, hot dogs, and chicken. But eventually, Jen Hart did not view school as a safe place for him or his brothers. Why, Bakhtiar wonders, did the tests turn up any alcohol? blake coleman trade. The family as they appeared on Jen Hart's perfectly curated Facebook feed (3/3): The six Hart children strike their trademark pose at Fort Stevens State Park in Hammond, Oregon, in 2013. After the middle-of-the-night interruption from Hannah, Dana DeKalb says she spent a lot of time looking out her front window at the house next door. This brings the question of coercion to my mind. Bakhtiar said she connected instantly with Jen Hart when they met at a charity concert in November 2013. "We're two lesbian moms with six black kids. In a text message to Bakhtiar last fall, she said she turned down offers for "everything imaginable." But by then it was too late. A note 16-year-old Hannah gave the DeKalbs after begging them to “protect” her in 2017. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. When 6-year-old Abbi showed up at school with bruises, she told her teacher that her mom Jen had hit her. Bruce and Dana DeKalb at home in Woodland, Washington in July 2018, At the end of last summer, their retirement idyll was interrupted when a small, frightened girl wrapped in a fleece blanket rang their doorbell at 1:30 in the morning. This time the DeKalbs relented and opened the door to see the entire Hart family standing in a row. The curated life Jen Hart presented on social media contains elements that appear unreal or overstated. Jen wrote), they didn't mention it in their glowing comments. Roma, maxi incendio visibile dal raccordo: un'alta colonna di fumo nero. After the photo of Devonte went viral, hitting the national news and even appearing in a skit on Saturday Night Live, it triggered a nationwide debate. Each time, Devonte would nervously glance back down the driveway and plead with Bruce and Dana not to tell his parents. "Born into a world of drugs (pumping through his newly born body), weapons and extreme poverty, one would assume his future was bleak. "Jen, no matter how much people loved her, always felt very isolated and alone," said Nusheen Bakhtiar, a close friend of Hart's since 2013. Jen Hart shared the photo on Facebook. The Oregonian/OregonLive reviewed hundreds of documents and social media posts and traveled to South Dakota and Minnesota to interview people who knew her. Both were majoring in elementary education. In the upscale suburb of West Linn, they settled into a modest rented ranch house where they raised goats and chickens in the backyard. None mentioned past episodes of abuse, and Markis said he was grateful for the moms for “changing his life.” One social worker noted that, with the exception of Devonte, “the kids appeared very reserved and showed little emotion or animation.”, When it was their turn to speak to caseworkers, Jen and Sarah reported that Abigail had been “labeled borderline mentally retarded” (but said they didn’t believe the diagnosis) and that Jeremiah was “globally delayed,” possibly even autistic. Then Hannah handed over a note she had scrawled in green letters. She told Bakhtiar that she had been stalked, harassed and threatened. Ad Choices, Two White Moms. If she'd called earlier, "Would the outcome be the same? She still wanted to report what had happened, but her husband was reluctant to create drama with the new neighbors—especially after a years-long dispute with a previous owner over the property line. The reason Jen Hart drove off the cliff remains the central mystery. Please protect me! Jen Hart later both reveled in and decried the overwhelming response. When she was 12, her parents divorced. One Unthinkable Tragedy. By law, parents who want to homeschool their children must notify their district, and kids still typically have to take certain standardized tests. "Those are all lies, that did not happen. Subscribe now to our new podcast, Broken Harts, based on this story and available soon on Apple, Google, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. ... By the time he was 4, he had smoked, consumed alcohol, handled guns, been shot at and suffered severe abuse and neglect. ", Jen answered for him: "We certainly hope he's not leaving.". Jen also wrote about the challenges of raising black children in a racist world. He keeps an album with snapshots of her life. How they had to leave school because teachers punished them more severely than classmates. Devonte obliged and photographers snapped pictures as tears streamed down his cheeks. "Her mother declined comment. Each post reaffirmed the same storyline: Here are two moms and their rehabilitated kids thriving against all odds. "If not us—WHO?" "When a publication posted his photo, Jen Hart remarked on about Devonte's fame. She enrolled in Augustana University, a Lutheran school in Sioux Falls. Le due donne, entrambe 38enni, hanno drogato i figli di età compresa tra i 12 e i 19 anni prima di lanciarsi con l'auto da una scogliera vicino Mendocino, in California. Enraged commenters trawled through Jen’s YouTube videos—including a birthday trip for Sarah in which every moment appears to be choreographed and another where four kids sing along to one of Nahko’s songs, with the chorus, “We are so provided for.”, Adding outrage to the discourse was the fact the kids had been removed from their black families and placed with white parents who were deemed more fit. ", The California coastline where the wreckage of the Hart family was found on March 26, 2018, A month and a half after the crash, Dana DeKalb wades through knee-high prairie grass to reach the house next door. Both studied education. December 28, 2018 The Hart Family [Mendocino County Sheriff's Office] (Jen later told a social worker this was a requirement of the adoption agency. Devonte stood out. Jennifer Hart attended Huron High School. A slew of investigators began trawling through the remnants of the Harts' life, combing through the moms' phones and social media accounts, and searching their house. Like the way Jen circled the Yukon and let the kids out, door by door, before they all went single-file into the house. Animal control came to collect the pets they left behind. Yet in photos posted over nearly a decade, she showed the children posed next to bountiful displays of vegetables, veggie burgers, blackberries and chocolate cream pie. Jennifer and Sarah Hart adopted six children. Everton Bailey Jr. and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh of The Oregonian/OregonLive and freelance journalist Roxanna Asgarian contributed to this report. Dana asked if she could have a moment alone with Hannah, but Jen declined: "We do everything as a family," she said. She taught the kids to play trumpet and learned to cut their hair. Jennifer Hart drove hundreds of thousands of miles with her six children in tow. (In April 2018, Oregon child welfare services issued a statement, saying they had made the records public in order “to prevent a similar incident from happening again in Oregon or any other state.”). Us. The Harts lived in this two-story house in Alexandria, Minnesota, until early 2013. Two decades ago she and Bruce moved from a California cul-de-sac to this spot in the foothills of the Cascades, where you can see clear to Mt. The Harts did find a community that embraced their rainbow family. Inquest finds the Hart … They ignored it. The last two times she texted her friend, Jen Hart did not respond. "At the time," he says with remorse, "you're just happy they're human.". She attended two post-election rallies with her children and said people responded with questions about why she would put her kids in danger.Soon after, she disappeared from Facebook for six months. Over time, Bakhtiar said Hart confided in her about the struggles of raising six kids. she said, waking Dana. The moms would later tell a social worker that the kids had food issues “which the school didn’t understand." She thought the girl was 7 or 8. Jen was a "narcissist," Sarah an "enabler." As this story went to press, Devonte's body was still missing, and investigators were still trying to find Hannah's biological relatives to try to match the DNA of a foot that had washed up onshore near the crash site. She spent months in 2015 making costumes to mark the 30th anniversary of The Goonies, a movie she memorized with her dad and brothers. Hannah and Jeremiah recited the Greek alphabet. Sarah attended high school in Minnesota. Eventually, Dana would learn that Hannah was actually 16. To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then View saved stories. Her status updates wove a years-running narrative, starring herself as the world's most progressive parent. Jen Hart told Bakhtiar via text that she cut out nearly all people from her life and struggled with anxiety over the threats she faced. Sarah said she’d been the one who hit Abigail in anger. She attended a Bernie Sanders rally with the family in 2016. Image via social media. When Jennifer asked to move in at 14, he drove home from work sites every day, sometimes hundreds of miles. In a statement after their deaths, she said Jen ran the family "like a regimented boot camp," not letting the kids cry and punishing them for laughing too loudly. Devonte, 5, Jeremiah, 4 and Sierra, 2, completed the family two years later in 2008. The remains of the other kids have been released to Jen’s and Sarah's families. Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 39, and their children Markis Hart, 19; Jeremiah Hart, 14; and Abigail Hart, 14 were killed and recovered, while Hannah Hart, 16; Devonte Hart, 15; and Sierra Hart, 12 were missing but were said to have been killed in the vehicle.

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