On today's episode, we explore the heartbreaking story of the Hart family murder-suicide. On March 26th, 2018, the family's SUV was found at the bottom of a cliff in California, with the bodies of all eight family members inside. Investigations revealed that the crash was not an accident but a deliberate act, orchestrated by the parents, Jennifer and Sarah Hart. As we delve deeper into the story, we examine the factors that may have led to this tragedy, including the family's history of abuse, neglect, and isolation. Join me as I try to make sense of this tragic story and honor the memory of the Hart family and their children.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready this week?
0:31 Has been absolutely crazy at our office.
0:34 We have had a ton of suicides.
0:36 I don't know what's going on.
0:38 There's so much depression, so much illness.
0:42 Some of the elderly, I feel so bad.
0:45 They get diagnosed with cancer or other medical issues and start to feel like they're a burden to their family and just decide that suicide is the best way out.
0:57 I know that a lot of them are in a lot of pain.
1:00 So it's been just a really busy hectic week at our office.
1:05 I did a little bit of research on the Hart family and I don't know if y'all have heard of them, but this was a murder suicide that happened back in March 26th of 2018.
1:16 And it was in Mendocino County, California.
1:20 There was a couple Jennifer and her wife Sarah and they actually murdered their six adopted Children.
1:28 Now the kids were 12, 2 of them were 14.
1:32 And then there was one that was 15, 1 that was 16 and then a 19 year old in this murder suicide, Jennifer intentionally drove their SUV off of a cliff.
1:45 Sarah was in the passenger seat, they drove off a cliff and killed themselves and the Children.
1:52 So Jennifer was born June the fourth of 79.
1:58 Sarah was born just before her April 8th.
2:02 Same year, they were both from South Dakota.
2:05 Jennifer was raised in Huron and Sarah was raised in Big Stone City.
2:13 They were both the eldest in their family.
2:17 Jennifer had two younger siblings and Sarah had three and Jennifer attended her on high school and Sarah attended high school in Minnesota and they actually met, they started their relationship at Northern State University.
2:36 They were both majoring in elementary education.
2:40 Sarah was focused more on special education and she actually graduated in 2002 from Northern State and Jennifer left before she graduated.
2:54 So in 2005, Sarah asked the local court to have her last name match her partners.
3:03 Eventually in 2009, the two were married in Connecticut, you know, marriage, not legal in every state.
3:12 And so they went to Connecticut at that time to get married.
3:18 They stayed closeted most of the time that they lived in South Dakota.
3:24 But when they did come out, they ended up losing a lot of friends, people weren't very accepting.
3:31 Some of their friends weren't really their friends because they ended up not wanting to be around them anymore.
3:39 Which is really sad.
3:41 So, they moved to Alexandria, Minnesota in 04.
3:46 They both worked at a store called her Burgers.
3:51 And they opened up to everyone about their relationship at that time.
3:57 And then, oh six, Jennifer actually became a stay at home mom and then Sarah became the manager of the store and then they moved near Woodland Washington after that, which is where they lived when the murders occurred.
4:16 So they received funds from Texas that covered the adoption of six Children.
4:23 Those funds were actually 50% of their income.
4:27 Their sexual orientation was accepted by their family.
4:32 But I think that relatives criticized their parenting and so they kind of distanced themselves and cut themselves off a little bit from contact and from family.
4:43 There wasn't a lot of support there and it may have been mostly their doing because they chose to distance themselves.
4:50 They didn't like being criticized.
4:52 So they were fostering a 15 year old and they had arranged to adopt the first three Children about a week before the first three Children were due to arrive.
5:06 They dropped the 15 year old off at the therapist's office and did not come back for her.
5:13 So that poor little girl was left there and was told that her foster parents were not coming back for her.
5:21 I'm sure she had already been through a lot and that had to be traumatizing for her, but she had no idea what a blessing that turned out to be because she wasn't a part of the family and ended up not being in the vehicle whenever they committed this murder suicide.
5:40 So blessing in disguise, you know, I always say everything happens for a reason.
5:45 There was a reason that she was not supposed to be with this family.
5:50 The first three were adopted and that was Abigail, Hannah and Marcus.
5:55 They were adopted in Colorado County Texas.
5:59 The adoption took place in September of oh six, but they were actually placed in the home sometime in March.
6:07 So from March to September, they lived in the home before the adoption actually took place in June of 2008.
6:17 They adopted Sierra, Devante and Jeremiah and this adoption took place in Houston after their mom lost custody of them because of substance abuse.
6:30 So of course, we see a lot of substance abuse everywhere around and mom lost custody.
6:37 The Children were originally given to their aunt, mom's sister under the condition that there was no contact with the biological mom whatsoever.
6:47 However, the aunt had to go into work when not unexpected and allowed the mom to babysit and a case worker actually observed this happening and at that time, they were removed and placed into foster care.
7:04 Now, there was an older brother named Dante who was not adopted.
7:09 Now, he apparently had behavioral issues and for whatever reason, he was not adopted.
7:16 So he was, I believe originally supposed to be a part of the family.
7:20 Again, everything happens for a reason.
7:23 Blessing in disguise that Dante did not become a part of the family and was not in the vehicle.
7:29 When this occurred.
7:30 There were allegations of child abuse in oh eight.
7:36 In Minnesota, a teacher observed bruises on Hannah's left arm and Hannah said that Jennifer had hit her with a belt.
7:46 Now, I have experienced this when my kids were younger and had friends over and I saw bruises or marks on them.
7:56 I usually brought it up and brought it to their attention would ask them, you know how it happened.
8:02 I feel like a lot of kids, they don't want to tell the truth because they don't want to get their parents in trouble.
8:06 They still love their parents.
8:08 They try to hide it.
8:10 But there have been a couple of times when I've seen marks on my kids' friends that made me kind of stop and think what's going on at home.
8:19 But within months of Hannah telling the teachers that Jennifer hit her with a belt, the kids were all removed from public school.
8:31 So something's being hidden.
8:33 Obviously, they didn't want them to be in school.
8:37 They didn't want other people to see injuries and they did not want the kids to talk about it.
8:42 Obviously, I mean, then they'd get in trouble.
8:44 Right?
8:44 And that's what they were trying to avoid.
8:47 So, in 2010, Abigail said she had allies on her back and stomach, she claimed that she was beat, her head was held under cold water and that was because they assumed that she stole a penny that was missing a penny y'all.
9:06 I mean, it's not $100 bill.
9:09 They assumed that she took a penny and so they beat her and held her head under cold water.
9:16 These poor Children who had been already gone through so much at home with their mom and then removed from their aunt.
9:25 And then this, all the Children claim that they were deprived of food and spanked all the time.
9:33 Sarah actually took responsibility for that and she pled guilty to assault, was sentenced to one year community service.
9:42 So Sarah gets back, everything should be better.
9:47 She's been in trouble for what she's done.
9:49 But a year later, Hannah claimed that again, she was not being fed and again, the couple took them out of public school and they were homeschooled from then on, obviously, again, trying to hide what was going on, prevent the kids from talking.
10:10 Now later in 2013, authorities were notified of previous abuse allegations and everyone in the family was interviewed and they also interviewed people who knew the family.
10:25 So two family, friends said that they had observed things at the home.
10:32 One, the kids were forced to raise their hand before they were allowed to speak.
10:38 They couldn't even wish each other happy birthday and they couldn't laugh at the dinner table.
10:43 And this is so sad y'all because I mean, those are things I remember the most about growing up was birthdays and the whole family sitting around the dinner table.
10:55 My parents never would even think about making me raise my hand before I spoke.
11:01 So there were reports again that the Children weren't fed well and that they looked a little bit underfed that they were small for their age.
11:12 And then one family friend said that Jennifer had ordered a pizza for the kids at one time and they were each only allowed to have a very small slice.
11:21 But because there was six of them, of course, the pizza didn't last very long and she punished them by not feeding them breakfast and making them go to bed and lie in their beds.
11:35 So the kids were obviously scared of them, afraid that anything they did or said would result in them not getting dinner and being punished in some way.
11:48 So when the kids were interviewed, however, they didn't reveal anything.
11:54 When they interviewed Jennifer, she just claimed that the neighbors said what they said because they were not happy that they were two lesbian mothers who had six African American Children.
12:12 And the fact that the kids didn't say anything made that look true.
12:18 And then in the end.
12:19 They couldn't really conclude when they did the investigation, whether they were guilty or not and whether there was actually a threat to the Children.
12:30 So at that time, it was kind of let go in 2017 when the hearts were in Washington.
12:40 Hannah actually jumped out of the second story bedroom window and it's about 1 30 in the morning, she went next door to a neighbor's house and asked them not to make her go back home.
12:51 She said that they were racist that they were abusing the Children.
12:55 She didn't want to go back home.
12:57 She didn't want to be around Jennifer and Sarah.
13:00 Soon after that, they found her and took her back home.
13:04 They told the neighbors that Hannah was lying and acting out.
13:09 That was because when she was born, her mom was on drugs and her biological mom was bipolar and she was having these behaviors that caused her to act erratically and that she had gone over there and made those claims because of her history.
13:28 The neighbors eventually came into contact with Devote and he begged them for food and he asked them not to tell Jennifer that he was asking for food.
13:39 He told them that Sarah and Jennifer withheld food as punishment and that the kids were abused.
13:45 So because Devante said that and Hannah had mentioned that to them earlier, they went to the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services and then case workers tried to reach the hearts twice once on March 23rd, 2018, which was three days before the murders occurred.
14:07 And then the day of the murders, they had actually gone over there to try to find them and talk to them.
14:13 March 26th was when Jennifer and Sarah Hart murdered all six Children.
14:20 So Jennifer drove the vehicle which was a GMC Yukon over a 100 ft cliff and this was on California State route one in Mendocino County.
14:32 Strangely enough, the bodies of five of the Children, Hannah, Marcus, Jeremiah, Abigail and Sierra were found in or near the vehicle.
14:43 Some of them were not in it, but the vehicle landed upside down on a beach below the cliff.
14:51 But the body of Devante still has not been found as of 2022.
14:57 There were no signs of him at the accident scene.
15:00 So eventually a superior court judge ruled that he was in the vehicle, which I don't know how you could rule that.
15:09 I don't think it caught fire.
15:10 So I don't think there was like a body of it.
15:13 They couldn't see.
15:14 But shortly after April 3rd, the accident happened on March 26th.
15:20 So by April 3rd, a superior court judge actually issued a death certificate on Devante even though his body was never found.
15:29 I don't know about y'all.
15:31 But it sounds to me like Sarah and Jennifer did something to him because he's the one that went to the neighbors that essentially ended up in them being investigated again, they were angry and did something to devote and then decided to kill everyone else just to avoid being in trouble.
15:50 So where is Devante?
15:52 Whenever they did an analysis on the S U V, they determined that the Yukon had been intentionally driven off the side of the cliff that it was sitting still at the top and then she accelerated 20 miles an hour in about three seconds.
16:10 And that caused it to go over the edge of the cliff.
16:14 They apparently had a coroner's jury which we don't have here.
16:19 I mean, we call it the medical examiner, but they had a jury and the coroner ruled unanimously that this was a murder suicide.
16:29 The California Highway patrol said that of course they weren't gonna go forward with any criminal prosecution because the responsible parties, Jennifer and Sarah were dead.
16:40 Now, they did do toxicology which tells us a lot.
16:44 In many, many cases, those results showed that Jennifer's blood alcohol content was over the legal limit at the time of the crash.
16:52 And remember she was the driver and that both Sarah and two of the Children, only two of them actually had diphenhydramine, which is Benadryl in their systems before the crash.
17:05 Sarah had made some Google searches and she had looked up how lethal Benadryl was and she had looked up information on drowning deaths.
17:19 She'd also ironically looked up no kill shelters for their dogs who were found inside their home.
17:26 Fine.
17:27 And the case was closed in 2019.
17:33 And then it came out that Sarah had actually mentioned to a coworker that she wished someone had told her that it was not ok to have a big family.
17:42 And if she had known that, that her and Jennifer would not have adopted the Children.
17:48 So this saddens me greatly because these poor kids had already gone through so much being removed from their families and rightly so not that that should not have happened, but they were removed from their families and then given to a family that obviously was using them as a form of income and not feeding them and abusing them, which may happen a lot.
18:15 I mean, I don't know, I had a case many, many years ago where two foster Children came in to our emergency room and I had suspected there was some abuse just because of certain things that I saw and this was when I worked in the, so I chose to call C P S and I chose for them to investigate it.
18:39 Sometimes you just know, sometimes you just have a feeling when the kids won't answer your question without looking at the parents first to see if it's ok for them to speak, you just know that something's not right and you see certain marks on people and even adults, you know, I've seen fingerprint marks on my friend's arms.
19:00 And I'm like, ok, what's going on at home?
19:02 I think that it's a conversation worth having.
19:05 If you see someone that you think may be being abused or assaulted in any way, I think you could save their lives.
19:13 It's so important.
19:15 It's not a comfortable discussion, but it is a necessary discussion.
19:21 So, because I had called C P S, they did do an investigation and I of course, got a subpoena I had to testify in court and the kids were removed.
19:31 But, you know, it could have saved their lives anyway.
19:35 Again, keep an eye on your friends and have those difficult conversations because they could be life saving.
19:43 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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