UPDATE 4/4/19 8:50 PM

The jury returned verdicts in the Hart case on Thursday, ruling that the mothers died by suicide and all six children died by homicide. Each decision was unanimous and the deliberations took just one hour. The manner of death will now be entered by the county onto each one of their official death certificates.

The four options presented to the jury were: natural, suicide, accident, and “at the hands of another, other than by accident,” which the sheriff clarified is homicide.

In some of the final testimony of the day, California Highway Patrol Officer Jake Slates said, “Ultimately, I feel that based on Sarah and Jen’s history, the pattern of alleged abuse, that this was just another case where they ran.”

Slates believes the women had not yet totally decided on the suicide plan while Googling about methods on Saturday or while they were buying groceries at Safeway or toiletries at Dollar Tree on Sunday morning. At some point, Slates says, while driving along the coast in their final day, they decided to commit to the plan. That “if they couldn’t have those kids, then nobody was going to have those kids.”

Mendocino County Sheriff Lt. Shannon Barney echoed Slates’ conclusion on the stand: “It is my belief that both Jennifer and Sarah succumbed to a lot of pressure … to the point they made a conscious decision to end their lives and to take the children with them.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

Last September Glamour reported on the tragic story of the Harts—mothers Jennifer and Sarah Hart and their six adopted children. On social media Jen Hart portrayed the image of a happy, postracial American family, but what was going on inside their Woodland, Washington, home turned out to be something very different.

Jen, Sarah, and their children Markis, 19, Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, Abigail, 14, Jeremiah, 14, and Sierra, 12 (two sets of black biological siblings) were often referred to as the Hart Tribe. But on March 26, 2018, their car was found at the bottom of a cliff off California’s Highway 1.

In the coroner’s inquest today at the Willitts Justice Center in Willitts, California, investigators have revealed the timeline of what happened in the family’s final hours. Among the new details revealed in testimony today was exactly what was in the system of each family member when the Yukon plummeted off the cliff. Evidence presented showed that many members of the family were most likely heavily sedated, with Sarah, who investigators say was in the passenger seat, having the equivalent of 42 single doses of diphenhydramine, a Benadryl-like drug, in her system.

Jennifer was driving—and was legally drunk—but didn’t show signs of having taken diphenhydramine. Investigators revealed that the family had purchased an Equate-branded version at a Walmart in Washington State shortly after leaving their house on March 23, 2018, before continuing down the Pacific coast. Both liquid and pill versions of the drug were found in the family’s car.

California Highway Patrol Officer Jake Slates, the lead investigator on the case, testified that by his calculations Markis had taken the equivalent of more than 19 doses, Abigail had taken 14 doses, and Jeremiah had taken more than eight single doses. Slates said that Sarah would have likely been “intoxicated” by the amount she had taken, and the kids would “more than likely be unconscious or asleep.”

The body of Devonte, the teen featured in a photo hugging a cop that went viral, is still missing, though he was officially pronounced dead in a California court in March.

Investigators also concluded that no one had been wearing a seat belt and that Jen had accelerated the car before going off the cliff.

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