Hart Family Parents Killed 6 Children in Murder-Suicide, Jury Determines . The mothers were … The photo the world saw from that day was of the family Yukon belly-up on the rocks below the scenic overpass. “While I know deep in my heart how much she loves me...she is just horrible about showing it.”, “I have felt that I have been raising the kids on my own,” she added. “This month will be the first time she will have done the actual procedure. Armchair sleuths convened in private Facebook forums to pore over each detail of the case and each seemingly idyllic image on Jen’s feed looking for answers and doling out pop psychology diagnoses. 3 Profile Searches. 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. 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. According to a police report, the girl said that after a penny fell out of her pocket—the moms thought she'd stolen it—Jen "took her into the bathroom and put her head in cold water" and struck her with a fist. When Highway Patrol officers arrived, they found the S.U.V. Without asking permission, Sarah and Jen entered the house, looking all over before jetting upstairs to the bedroom, where Hannah was balled up between the bed and dresser. To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then View saved stories. No one saw there was no paint on the paintbrushes until it was too late. "We all feel guilty, because it's the professionals' fault." "I'm to the point where I no longer am calling this as an accident," the county sheriff declared 10 days later. ", 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. Two weeks later Sierra’s body washed ashore. The children were returned to foster care, and in 2008, a private adoption agency in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, matched Devonte, Jeremiah, and Ciera with two hopeful parents: Jennifer and Sarah Hart. YouTube videos posted by Jennifer, for instance, show Devonte dancing and the other children singing, “We are so provided for.”. But it also introduced an element of doubt into the equation. Law enforcement officials in California have issued only one statement on the case since May, though the investigation continues. The bodies of Markis, Abigail, and Jeremiah were found a few hundred yards from the wreckage. 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. ", 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. Thank you for being kind. ", After their move to Washington, Sperling made plans to hang out with the Hart family, but they canceled at the last moment. A Facebook photo of "mini Jackson Pollocks" Devonte, Sierra, and Jeremiah at home in 2013. 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." "You gotta help. “There wasn’t anything we could have done.”. Like most of Jen's posts, it has more than 100 likes. He asked the DeKalbs to place these items in a box by the fence in a place where his moms couldn't see. (Jen had remained behind the wheel. In one episode, Sarah admitted to having physically harmed Abigail. She competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics and the 1992 Summer Olympics. According to a CPS report, Devonte volunteered to go first, and all of the kids' answers were nearly identical. Between shows the festival community kept close tabs on each other on Facebook, where Jen racked up the likes. The Hart children, clockwise from center, Markis, Abigail, Sierra, Hannah, Jeremiah and Devonte smile in November 2009, months after the adoption of three of the children became final. ", Dana didn't think the note sounded like something a child would write—the language smacked of parental coaching. Sarah told them that her children “could not function on their own,” had “food issues” and were not allowed in the kitchen. Just before 3 a.m. the next day, records show, Sarah Hart texted at least three co-workers: “I thought I would be able to go to work but I’m too sick to come in.”. Sarah Ruth Gengler, age 32, Milwaukee, WI 53212 View Full Report. "At the time," he says with remorse, "you're just happy they're human.". [Read more about the reports made to child welfare officials’ and their attempts to intervene. Still, Ms. DeKalb was worried. Eventually the California Highway Patrol will gather all findings into a report that will determine whether crimes were committed—though they told Glamour in an email, “We have no survivors in this case and no one to prosecute.”. The Harts did find a community that embraced their rainbow family. The split-level had recently been renovated with new wooden floors and freshly painted walls (Jen had shared pictures of the kids working industriously). Subscribe now to our new podcast, Broken Harts, based on this story and available now on Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever you like to get your podcasts. The following fall they were reenrolled. Jen said. (While being questioned at the time, she volunteered that she'd stolen movies on an earlier occasion too.) 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. "I guess I want to believe there were good times," she says. In a quiet moment, Sperling told Sarah that she seemed worn down. The moment is forever immortalized on YouTube. Join Facebook to connect with Sarah Gengler and others you may know. “The Hart family takes every opportunity to celebrate the children’s ethnic heritage,” a caseworker wrote in a report for the Permanent Family Resource Center, a foster care and adoption agency in Fergus Falls, Minn., that later closed after being cited for code violations. By May 2017 the Harts were living on more than two acres of land in Woodland, Wash. In 2013 the family relocated from Minnesota to Portland, Oregon—a move that brought them closer to many of their favorite musicians. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. The personal information that is included in the full report could contain schools that they attended, degrees earned, … They were both born in 1979 Jennifer Hart attended Huron High School (South Dakota) and Sarah attended high school in Minnesota. "There's no part of me, with all of my looking back, with all of my observations of them, that is capable of seeing that it was just a charade," she says. 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. The Hart Tribe was officially off the grid. Back in Minnesota, Jen stayed home with the kids while Sarah kept working in retail, eventually becoming a sales area manager at Herberger's. Sarah was more sensitive, Smith recalls; she'd be "nearly in tears" during high-pressure days when they'd count inventory. Jen backed up her accounts, and investigators believed them. Sarah “didn’t used to go along with it,” Devonte told Ms. DeKalb, but was now “tolerating” Jennifer’s behavior. The next day the Yukon was gone, and cinder blocks from a retaining wall were scattered about the driveway, hinting at a hasty departure. She remembers being told, "It's not illegal to keep kids inside." (DNA tests of her siblings were inconclusive.) "For the Harts, it seems likely that their whiteness netted them multiple passes despite all the warning signs," wrote Morgan State University professor Stacey Patton in The Washington Post. According to Smith, the couple immediately started complaining about the teen, saying she would pick food out of the garbage. See what Sarah Engelhardt (infinity2600) has discovered on Pinterest, the world's biggest collection of ideas. Dana DeKalb is an earthy 58-year-old who tracks her steps with a Samsung smartwatch when she's not chatting into it with her two grown children. A note 16-year-old Hannah gave the DeKalbs after begging them to “protect” her in 2017. She explained that she had been whipped and that her mothers were racist, Mr. DeKalb said. That evening Bruce and Dana noticed that the bright red kayak they'd always seen on top of the Yukon had been taken down. By 2005, they were living together in Alexandria, Minn. The DeKalbs say everything changed on a Thursday in March when Devonte approached Bruce as he worked on his truck and asked for tortillas. It reads: "I stopped this morning because I feel awful about disturbing your peace and worring [sic] you in the middle of the night. Authorities interviewed Jennifer and Sarah, who said they weren't sure how it happened. 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. Once, Sarah told a coworker she wished someone had told her it was OK not to have a big family, because she never would have adopted children at all. As news and damning headlines dribbled out in the days and weeks following the crash ("Drunk, drugged, and seemingly on the run," CNN's headline blared, some who knew the Harts scrambled to social media to defend them. Sarah Gengler, 39 Spearfish, SD. She reemerged in the spring of 2017, writing, "This. Later Sperling mentioned to his wife that something was off with the Harts. BAD 1 - 2 POOR 2 - 3 FAIR 3 - 4 GOOD 4 - 5. (Dontay remained in foster care until his 18th birthday in 2014, at which point Nathaniel adopted him.) Few saw six young people in desperate need of help. The caseworker “whole heartily” recommended that the family be able to adopt a second sibling group. No one had been wearing a seatbelt. (Jen later told a social worker this was a requirement of the adoption agency. Friends called them the Hart Tribe. She had spotted something jarring: a brown sport-utility vehicle, upside down, in the Pacific Ocean. 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. The Oregon caseworker’s report also showed that all but one of the kids had fallen off the growth chart for their ages, but the doctor didn’t have any past medical records to compare them against and didn’t have concerns, also noting the kids seemed “very intelligent.” Officials determined that while "there are some indications of child abuse or neglect," there wasn't enough data to prove that it had occurred. ", Jen answered for him: "We certainly hope he's not leaving.". Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com: accessed ), memorial page for Sarah Margaret Gengler Hart (8 Apr 1979–26 Mar 2018), Find a Grave Memorial no. She figured they wanted to get away temporarily. March 2004: Earliest known public record that shows Jennifer Hart and Sarah Gengler, both from South Dakota, residing in Alexandria, Minnesota. Sarah Gengler’s full report may contain information on how to contact them such as phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses. 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. They appeared to be “scared to death of Jen.”). She was alone and maybe 25 pounds heavier than friends had ever seen her. Court Records found View. (The Harts changed the spellings of the younger children’s names.) If she'd called earlier, "Would the outcome be the same? The couple walked outside to meet the onslaught—Dana's voice trembling; her husband Bruce looking on stoically. The Harts never registered their kids as homeschooled in Oregon, but news of the family still reached authorities in 2013, when two whistleblowers called CPS. "I was obsessed," she says. So they did what they'd done before: They ran. In response to questions from The Appeal about how the Harts were allowed to adopt Devonte, Jermiah, and Ciera after an allegation of child abuse had already been made against them, he pointed to the lack of criminal charges in Minnesota. Jen wrote), they didn't mention it in their glowing comments. I thought I would be able to go to work but I'm too sick to come in.". "I'm like, 'Shit's getting real,'" Dana says. Looking back on her texts with Jen, Zippy Lomax was surprised to see the last time they’d interacted was two years ago; she’d felt up to date on their lives via Jen’s posts. (Records about the first trio of siblings are sealed, but ones for Devonte, Jermiah, and Ciera Davis show that, at the time of their adoption, Devonte had an inhaler and was taking medication for ADHD; Jermiah had tested positive for cocaine at birth, but otherwise he and his siblings were healthy and able to participate in age-appropriate activities.) No answer. She also found other ways to keep watch: She checked her mailbox more often; she worked in the lower yard; she power-walked up and down the drive, noticing little things. 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 next night, when Devonte visited, she said he asked, “Have you called yet?”. The family often wore matching T-shirts. 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. An hour later it rang again. Sarah Gengler; Sarah Gengler's Reputation Profile. Tristan Fortsch/KATU News, via Associated Press. Though, remarkably, a payment on the family's Discovery card was posted the morning of the crash. By law, parents who want to homeschool their children must notify their district, and kids still typically have to take certain standardized tests. Six Black Kids. Sarah, at left, and Jen Hart celebrating their eighteenth anniversary in 2017. A Look Inside the ‘Perfect’ Hart Family. 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. Says Sperling: "Everyone was envious. Her front teeth were missing. A few months later, Minnesota Child Welfare received six reports of abuse or neglect by the Harts — two of which it deemed credible. A screenshot of surveillance video appears to show Jennifer Hart, right, at a Safeway in Fort Bragg, Calif., on March 25, 2018. Now CPS was on the case in a third state. They told investigators that they had been excited to have new neighbors. I've been pretty sad about 2 of our cats dying recently, so I was just very sad and frustrated last night. Today’s biggest stories, from pop culture to politics—delivered straight to your inbox. "The court seemed to have had a complete disregard for her.". 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. From left: Hannah, Abigail, Sierra, Jeremiah, Jen, Devonte, Markis, and Sarah Hart at a Bernie Sanders rally in Vancouver, Washington, in 2016. she says. "They're racists, and they abuse us!". According to an Alexandria, Minnesota, police report, in September of 2008, six-year-old Hannah showed up at school with bruising on her arm and told a teacher that her mother had whipped her with a belt. The family as they appeared on Jen Hart's perfectly curated Facebook feed (2/3): The Hart children with their moms at the 2013 Mystic Festival in Mystic, Connecticut, one of the many "transformational festivals" the family attended over the years. And they show that by that fateful Monday last March, as child welfare officials came knocking, some neighbors, relatives and co-workers were growing alarmed. Don't make me go back!" Mostly, Dana noticed how rarely the kids left the house. So the caseworker knocked on the front door. Tracks led away from the edge of the cliff that the Harts’ vehicle went over in March 2018. By 2005, they were living together in … Flashlights soon strobed over the front yard, followed by voices calling, "Hannah!" The assistant manager told the authorities about a conversation with Sarah that stood out: Sarah once said she wished that someone had “told her it was O.K. Join Facebook to connect with Sarah Gengler and others you may know. Hard,” and announced that the family had relocated to Woodland, Washington, saying that they'd invite people out "when the time is right. 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. Devonte obliged and photographers snapped pictures as tears streamed down his cheeks. 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." I'm working on being more honest and find better ways to communicate my frustrations. California Highway Patrol, via Associated Press. Learn to sing, choose songs together, breathing, support, range, care of vocal cords. It’s kind of nervewracking.”, But by July, she wrote to someone else, the doctor “couldn’t find the baby’s heart beat.”, She updated the person six days later: “The baby did not make it.”, In an August 2010 email to another woman, Jennifer complained about Sarah, who she said had “said some hurtful things.”, “For quite some time I have felt very under appreciated, and taken for granted in our relationship...and at times unloved,” she wrote. In a March 2009 email, Jennifer shared plans for the family’s next step: Sarah is “trying to get pregnant,” she wrote. 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. one said. Sarah and Jen Hart / Facebook In the U.S., foster parents are given monthly payments from the state for taking care of their children. I was very frustrated with my brother and didn't handle things very maturely, and I'm sorry for telling lies to get attention. That afternoon a CPS worker coming to visit the Hart house saw Jen's Yukon pull into the driveway. 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. "There was nothing [in that call] that said I better go up there,” says County Sergeant Brent Waddell. That girl, now in her late twenties, told The Seattle Times that she lived with the Harts for less than a year and never ate out of the trash. Or the way Devonte was the only kid who did yard work, hauling large bags of dirt by himself. When Oregon CPS raised the issue of the Minnesota abuse report to Sarah, she “became emotional” and said, “It just got out of control.” According to the report, the Minnesota Child Welfare worker warned: "The problem is these women look normal." There were twigs in her hair, Bruce noticed as he opened the door. According to reports compiled by the Clark County Sheriff's Office the couple was over $16,000 in credit card debt. The gold S.U.V. Should she have called CPS sooner? "So much joy in new life" reads her last entry. Jennifer and Sarah Hart, along with three children, were killed. The women met in 1999 when they were 20, in Aberdeen as undergrads. How do we create a person’s profile? ", "That just crushed me," she says. An elite FBI behavioral analysis unit that had worked on the Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer cases joined the efforts to solve the mystery. One whistleblower mentioned that Jen had allowed each kid only a single slice of pizza for dinner, and when it turned out that someone had eaten more during the night, she punished all six children by making them wear sleeping masks and lie on an air mattress for five hours. Jim Ryan/The Oregonian, via Associated Press. In the spring of 2008, they took in three more foster kids: five-year-old Devonte and his younger siblings, Jermiah, four, and Ciera, three. The coroner found diphenhydramine, an ingredient commonly found in allergy medicines like Benadryl, in the bodies of Sarah and two of the kids; Jen's blood alcohol content was over the legal limit. A child welfare official responding to Ms. DeKalb’s call that morning arrived at the Hart home about 10 minutes before that and saw a gold S.U.V. "); 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. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person’s profile. Photos | Summary | Follow. She said the kids were adopted and had been "drug babies." She said Hannah was 12, and that her mom had been bipolar. 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. On Monday afternoon a Kohl's coworker called 911 and requested a welfare check on Sarah, who had uncharacteristically missed work all weekend and hadn't responded to texts. If any of Jen's followers noticed that Markis' face was so thin his jawbone popped out at a rigid angle or that Jeremiah looked alarmingly bony ("That's my string bean!" I believe those kids are being highly abused." All rights reserved. From … The moms would later tell a social worker that the kids had food issues “which the school didn’t understand." They also explained Hannah’s missing front teeth: She’d knocked them out while running on a hardwood floor the year before. After they came downstairs, Hannah apologized, and they went home, Ms. DeKalb said. There were pictures of the kids hugging a redwood and playing Twister on the beach. The family as they appeared on Jen Hart's perfectly curated Facebook feed (1/3): Jeremiah and Devonte, who were pulled out of school in 2013, get an education in the great outdoors in 2014. Her status updates wove a years-running narrative, starring herself as the world's most progressive parent. 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. Sarah had been scheduled to open Kohl's at 6:00 A.M. on Saturday morning, but at 3:00 A.M. she texted coworkers: "I am so sorry. Investigators returned to the Harts’ home in Washington State the next day. The cliff near Westport, Calif., that the authorities say Jennifer Hart drove off in March 2018, killing her wife, Sarah, and their six adopted children. Animal control came to collect the pets they left behind. ), Now this young girl bolted past Bruce, up the steps, and into the bedroom where Dana was sleeping. Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Gengler grew up about 150 miles apart in South Dakota and met at Northern State University. He confided that Sarah used to push back on Jen, but not anymore. Jen’s high school teachers and classmates posted on Facebook about her compassion. When she mentioned that their oldest son, Markis, was 19, Bruce piped up, "You must be getting ready to leave the house, then? They had. “I absolutely, from the bottom of my heart, trust what he said,” Ms. DeKalb added. "You need to tell these people you're sorry," Jen said. 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. Each time, Devonte would nervously glance back down the driveway and plead with Bruce and Dana not to tell his parents. (Dana declined.) Was it that very phone call that set into motion the events that ended with a Yukon over a cliff? When Sarah became a manager, she placed a cuddly photo of herself and Jen on her desk—a bold move for the time. Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, although the sentence was suspended. "Devonte was crying before approaching the officer while he was talking to his guardian, presumably because he was terrified. Sarah earned her degree in special education; Jen never graduated. Jennifer and Sarah Hart with four of their children in 2014. One Unthinkable Tragedy. “Are you ok? ], But any private turmoil was glossed over by public videos and posts on social media that portrayed a happy, if eccentric, family.