On March 26, 2018, a German tourist spots a flipped 2003 GMC Yukon XL at the foot of a steep cliff, off U.S. Highway 101 near Mendocino, California. In what appears to be a horrific accident, the vehicle had driven off the cliff and plummeted more than 100 feet to the rocks below. The car’s passengers, many of whom are found either inside or near the vehicle, are pronounced dead at the scene. They were two moms, Jen and Sarah Hart, who were white, and three of their adopted black children—Markis, 19, Abigail, 14, and Jeremiah, also 14.
Two weeks later the body of 12-year-old Sierra, the youngest adopted Hart child, washes ashore. The Harts’ other adopted children, Hannah, 16, and Devonte, 15, are not immediately found. At the release of this podcast, their whereabouts remain a mystery, though they are believed to have been in the car. A foot found near the crash site, widely believed to have been Hannah’s, is being tested for DNA.
Below, a closer look at the crash site, courtesy of Broken Harts field reporter Lauren Smiley.
In the weeks following the incident, upsetting new details begin to emerge: None of the victims in the car was wearing a seatbelt. Jen, who had been at the wheel, had an elevated blood alcohol level, while Sarah and two of the kids had an ingredient commonly found in Benadryl in their system. The speedometer was stuck at 90 miles per hour.
In episode one of Broken Harts, we delve into the questions on the minds of so many: What happened that day in March? And why did it happen? And, as we uncover over the course of reporting this story, the truth isn’t always one-sided.
PHOTO: Shutterstock
The cliff where the wreckage of the family was found on March 26, 2018
PHOTO: AP Images
The rocky coastline near where the Harts’ Yukon was discovered by a German tourist
This story starts in small-town South Dakota, where Sarah Gengler and Jen Hart both grew up. The women met in 1999 when they were 20, in Aberdeen as undergrads. Once they did come out as a couple, “the Midwestern mind-set was relentlessly unforgiving and unaccepting,” Jen said in a Facebook post, claiming she’d lost friends as a result. The pair eventually moved to the lake town of Alexandria, Minnesota, where they worked at Herberger’s, the biggest department store in the Viking Plaza Mall.
When Sarah became a manager, she placed a cuddly photo of herself and Jen on her desk—a bold move for the time. Sarah and Jen were different but seemed to complement each other. Sarah was emotional, quiet, and introspective. Jen was confident, assertive, and “intimidating,” as a former colleague described her.
In 2006, Jen and Sarah adopted their first set of siblings: Markis, 8, Hannah, 4, and Abigial, 2. And in February 2009, they officially adopted Devonte, 5, Jeremiah, 4, and Sierra, 3.
In 2013 the family relocated to West Linn, Oregon, a small suburb located 30 miles south of Portland. Over the years the pair became regulars at inclusive “transformational” festivals, always joined by their kids, interacting with musical acts, carrying motivational signs, and dressing in colorful costumes. One YouTube clip shows Devonte in a zebra costume, holding a “Free Hugs” sign and embracing musician Xavier Rudd as he performs, shirtless, for a crowd of adults.
Between shows, the festival crowd kept tabs on one another on Facebook, where Jen racked up the likes. “She was a master poster,” a friend recalls. Her feed showed Abigail and Devonte eating breakfast with hens perched on their heads (“Vegetarian chicken and waffles”); Devonte, Jeremiah, and Sierra painting on the living room floor (“Mini Jackson Pollocks”); all six kids grinning with a “Kindness is contagious” sign (“Redwood nation is about to get blasted with kindness”). Each post reaffirmed the storyline: two moms and their rehabilitated kids thriving against all odds. The narrative was, “You saved them, awesome,” says family friend Ian Sperling: “Everyone was envious. They were the perfect people with the perfect kids.”
Jen also often took to Facebook to comment on how the family she was born into bore little resemblance to the one she and Sarah built from scratch. “Apparently my 5-year-old self needed to remind this 36-year-old self about following the dream,” she wrote on Facebook in May of 2016. “My heart is still yearning for a special piece of land where our family can live more sustainably, grow, create, hold space for community gatherings, and thrive in a more natural setting. It’s time to delve into making this lifelong dream a reality.” It was important to her, it seems, to prove to everyone that she was in charge of her own destiny—”unforgiving and unaccepting” naysayers be damned.
PHOTO: Jen Hart Facebook
The following year the family relocated once more—to Woodland, Washington, where Jen bragged of their greenhouse, a coterie of farm animals, and the nature that enveloped their home. Jen Hart often painted an idyllic picture of her blended family. In lengthy, paragraphs-long posts, Jen spun the tale of a loving couple raising a brood of six happy, adopted children. Somehow the smoke and mirrors of Jen’s Facebook feed successfully fooled even those closest to her.
On March 24, two days prior to the discovery of the crash, Sarah’s coworkers at Kohl’s, where she worked as assistant manager, received a text from their friend at 3:00 A.M. saying she was too sick to open the store later that morning. When she hadn’t heard from Sarah by that afternoon, Kohl’s employee Cheryl Hart (no relation) called 911:
In this recording, Cheryl notes that when she tried to contact Sarah it seemed as if “her phone is now dead.”
That same morning the Hart’s neighbors, Bruce and Dana DeKalb, noticed that the Harts’ Yukon is no longer in the driveway, and that the bright red kayak normally affixed to its roof had been removed and left behind.
PHOTO: Holly Andres
Bruce and Dana DeKalb at home in Woodland, Washington, in July 2018
This wasn’t the first time the DeKalbs had worried about the welfare of the Hart children. The previous summer Hannah Hart appeared on their doorstep, visibly upset. She frantically explained she’d jumped out of her second-floor window to escape from her moms. “Hide me,” she pleaded. “They whip us with a belt… Don’t make me go back! They’re racists, and they abuse us!”
PHOTO: Holly Andres
A note 16-year-old Hannah gave the DeKalbs after begging them to “protect” her in 2017. It reads: “I stopped this morning because I feel awful about disturbing your peace and worring [sic] you in the middle of the night. I was very frustrated with my brother and didn’t handle things very maturely, and I’m sorry for telling lies to get attention. I’m working on being more honest and find better ways to communicate my frustrations. I’ve been pretty sad about 2 of our cats dying recently, so I was just very sad and frustrated last night. Thank you for being kind.”
Dana’s father, Steve Frkovich, had placed a 911 call months later to report suspected abuse in the Hart household. “I think there’s something very serious going on there,” he tells the dispatcher. Listen to the call below.
Upon investigation, the police said there is “no indication of ongoing issues.”
In pictures and in public the family appeared to be an emblem of warmth, love, and protection, but postmortem accounts of the Hart Tribe, as many called them, paint a very different picture. Who were the Harts? What were they hiding? We delve into that, and more, in episode 2 of Broken Harts, “If Not Us—WHO?” out Tuesday, 12/11.
Subscribe now to our new podcast, Broken Harts, from Glamour and HowStuffWorks and based on this story from the October 2018 issue of Glamour. New episodes will air each Tuesday; find them on Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever you like to get your podcasts. For the full transcript of this episode, click here.
