Dateline NBC - Along Came Sarah

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

When a woman's fifth husband dies in a hospital under suspicious circumstances, an investigation reveals a checkered past full of spurned lovers and wild allegations. Keith Morrison reports.

Tonight on Dateline. She has a way of making you feel really important. When she's the girl that you fall in love with, she's an amazing person. You could walk right into that little spider's web. Yes. I think I really truly did dodge a bullet. My mom said that he had had a stroke. She had posted that he had collapsed and he was in a coma. Somebody called the sheriff's office.

It appeared that he may have even been poisoned. Yes. This was her fifth marriage. She'd been married five times. Five times. I started Googling. It was just snowball after snowball. She had been involved in a shooting.

I believe he was a fiancé. I'm getting a phone call saying your house is on fire. I started fearing for my life. Did she actually do these horrible things? This is one of those thousand piece puzzles. It's two very different people. I don't know which one is the real one. Five husbands, two dead bodies. Is this widow a killer? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Along Came Sarah. Who were they seeing when they saw her? Angel? Protector? Best friend?

What was true? Or was there a truth at all? Behind the smile that might also be deadly. This is a story about charm and charisma and what lived in the red sweatshirt is Sarah Jean Hartsfield. The man on the gurney, her husband, Joe, a diabetic. When Joe was admitted to the hospital in Baytown, Texas, unconscious, his blood sugar levels were dangerously low. So the medical staff went to work, put Joe on a glucose drip, and waited for him to bounce back.

But he didn't. His brother Tony and mother Helen got the news in a phone call. Ain't nothing you want to hear. You hurry up and get down there as quick as you can because you don't know what's happening. What was the situation when you arrived? He was unresponsive in ICU. The medical staff was baffled. For hours, they worked on him.

Nothing helped. All the while, a worried Sarah Jean posted medical updates on Facebook. She had posted that he had collapsed and he was in a coma. So I messaged, like, how's it going? You know, what are the doctors saying? Sarah's friend, Evangeline Kelsall, wasn't just being nosy. She's a nurse who had recently been instructing Sarah as to how better manage Joe's diabetes with a digital glucose monitor. That attached to him that would alarm on his phone

and to make sure your alarms are loud enough that it'll wake you up so that if he goes too high or too low, you can catch it quickly. Somehow, Sarah said, she and Joe slept through the alarms during the night, and Joe went into a diabetic coma. That his sugar had dropped way too low. And then a few days later, Sarah posted a change in Joe's diagnosis. She said that he'd had an ischemic stroke. She told me that he had a completely clogged artery. Sarah's oldest child, Ashley.

She said that he had had a stroke and that he might not be able to come back from it. And then she was like, they pronounced him brain dead. And then, yeah, she was very upset about that. Then after eight days in ICU, Sarah finally made the decision to disconnect Joe's ventilator and let him die peacefully. She arranged the donation of his organs and later had him cremated. But from the night Joe Hartsfield was wheeled into the ER, the doctors and nurses had been uneasy. Why hadn't his body responded to standard treatments? Why was he getting worse when he should be getting better?

Amid quiet but growing alarm, a nurse slipped away, made a phone call. An ER nurse called our dispatch facility. This is Brian Hawthorne, the sheriff of Chambers County. I think everybody at the hospital was potentially seeing it as foul play.

So the sheriff sent over a newly minted detective named Skylar Rocks, who, conscientious and by the book, has declined our request for an interview. But back then, she certainly talked to Chambers County District Attorney Cheryl Leak. The story that was being given to medical staff about what happened was not really lining up with what the medical staff saw. What was Sarah Jean's story about what happened? That she woke up and found him that way and tried to revive him to no avail and eventually

called 911. And my understanding is when they brought him in via ambulance, they knew when they took one look at him that he wasn't going to make it. In her report, Detective Rocks wrote that Joe's body was reacting to treatment like there was too much insulin in his system, classic signs of an overdose. It appeared to the nurses or to the attending people at the emergency that he'd maybe been poisoned. Yes. Now, with Joe dead, D.A. Leak wondered if she had a murder case on her hands.

When did you start looking into Sarah Jean as a possible suspect? Immediately. Because they were the only two living in the house together. And yet, this Sarah Jean had been so apparently loving, worried, attentive. Was this grieving widow really capable of killing her husband? She does not have a criminal history. There was no big life insurance payoff for Sarah. No obvious motive.

What then? Cheryl Leak takes some pride in her own personal BS detector. And this charming woman, this Sarah Jean Hartsfield, D.A. Leak was sure there was something disturbing about that woman. Something she was hiding. And Leak was determined to was something disturbing about that woman, something she was hiding. And Leak was determined to find out what it was. I mean, every day is new. I'm finding out something new every single day.

This was her fifth marriage. Wait a minute, how old was she? 48, I believe. 48, and she'd been married five times? Five times. Wow. And she had lived in about 39 different places. And she's very smart.

The problem for Leak was, while she suspected Joe Hartsfield was murdered by his wife, Sarah, how could she prove it? How could she prove Joe, a diabetic who died from complications of his own disease, was ever murdered in the first place? Good question. But as for us,

we decided to conduct our own investigation into Sarah Jean. An investigation that took us on a zigzag course across the country from rural Missouri... Draped her on fire and everything else. And it just roared course across the country. From rural Missouri... Drapes were on fire and everything else. It just roared right to the house. To Fort Hood, Texas... I really feared for my life. We went to Virginia.

Florida. It tore me up. And up into northern Minnesota. It was like a scene out of a bad action movie. We heard so many strange and conflicting stories for a while we didn't know what to believe. I firmly believe she could kill somebody right in front of a police officer

and make him believe that she did not do it. I think she has that ability. We heard about this Sarah. Four great kids, nice house. I mean, they were living the American dream. And this Sarah, too. And she continued beating me for what felt like hours. We learned Sarah was a mother of four,

a foster kid who bootstrapped her way into an Army intelligence career, once had a top-secret security clearance, and had once shot a fiancé to death. We were told she was violent, controlling, charismatic, intelligent. She's smart as a whip and can manipulate a situation to her advantage in a heartbeat. Which of the many faces of Sarah Jean was real? Finding out would be a long, strange trip indeed. It was Tolstoy who wrote the famous line about families.

All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. In the case of young Sarah Jean's benighted family, make that many ways. Relatives, neighbors, and friends here in the rolling farmland of Missouri where we started our journey tell stories still about a multi-generational dynasty of dysfunction with a legacy of violence, suspicious deaths, and abuse. My father Thomas Smith was incarcerated for a while. This is Cody Lee Smith, oldest of Sarah's three brothers, describing their dad. I just learned to stay out of his way. And I learned not to say anything unless he said something to me.

Because if you did, you're going to get knocked on the floor. Cody said his dad never struck Sarah, though. No. He believes she was abused in an entirely different way. He had molested her. And at a very young age like that, and we don't know how many times. Sarah's mom, Janie, kicked the dad out of the house and filed for divorce, and then married a new guy named Richard, who just happened to be fresh out of Missouri State Prison after serving a sentence for murder. And a few years later, Sarah came forward with new accusations of assault, saying, My stepdad Richard had touched

my sister Sarah in the wrong way. Didn't believe her that time, said Cody. I said, so I'm not buying your story, because I was there, and, you know, he didn't do anything to you. There was a trial. Richard was acquitted. And Sarah, claiming she didn't feel safe at home, demanded to be placed in foster care. She wanted to be away from the family, had no desire to come back, and did not want any care given as far as from my stepdad or my mother or anybody that would have her facilitated back into the home with us. Her mother brought into child services and basically dumped off and said, I can't handle her. Foster parents Barbara Stewart and her husband Steve welcomed 12-year-old Sarah into their home. We were very close. She fit into

the entire family, and everybody in our family accepted her. I felt like, man, she is one lucky girl. Sarah's friend, Sharesa Ferris, envied her. She hit the gold mine of getting really good parents who really advocated for her. But Charissa, though she liked Sarah, was never quite sure if the things Sarah said were actually true. I knew she had been molested or sexually assaulted by a stepdad or her real dad or both. Sometimes the story would change. I just know that she's smart as a whip

and can manipulate a situation to her advantage in a heartbeat. Barbara saw that side of Sarah a lot. Like the time when Sarah was angry about a punishment and Barbara said Sarah responded by accusing her husband Steve. She goes well you don't know how he touches me when you're not here and I'm like you know you've done this before at other families and not every family in the world does that and I know better and she got mad went to her room slammed the door never said it again. Still, Barbara and Steve stood by Sarah, and she thrived under their care.

In high school, Sarah worked on the student newspaper, was in the band, and was very popular. She was a very pretty girl. Bill May and Sarah were good friends in high school. They even dated for a bit, though Bill clearly understood he was just one guy in a long line. Sarah was just wild. You know, she'd sneak out of the house and, you know, mess around.

There was not a male that she did not like. She just was a flirt. I mean, just a flirt, I would say. But when it came to flirting with shy jock Titus Knirnsold, Sarah put her wild child self on the shelf and nestled up to him like a girl next door. We'd go to the movies, we'd go on a couple picnics, we'd drive around. I played a lot of sports in high school, so she'd show up to the sports games and then we'd talk after or whatever. And you found yourself falling in love with her gradually? Yes, sir.

She was this real sweet, nice person, caring, easy to be with. Foster dad Steve walked Sarah down the aisle when she married Titus right out of high school, class of 93 at just 18 years old. A month after the wedding, as they had planned, Titus joined the army. And no sooner was he off training than Sarah was off with another guy. And when I came back, she was pregnant. I actually had several people come up to me and tell me they were having affairs with her. But one gentleman that said, yes, I was with her during this time frame,

and she told me it was probably my baby. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, said Titus. And in 1995, after just two years of marriage, they got a divorce. Good riddance, thought Titus. I figured I was out of it. I don't have to worry about her anymore. We are divorced. Game over. thought Titus. I figured I was out of it. I don't have to worry about her anymore. We are divorced.

Game over. But that's only true if your opponent leaves the field. Titus's new girlfriend, Angela, whom he later married, said Sarah started stalking her as soon as she and Titus started dating. Strange things began to happen. Angela's car was vandalized repeatedly. All four of my tires were flat. Laundry detergent in the gas tank of my car.

Some choice words in the back of my car with expletives everywhere. And every time something like that happened, they said they'd call police and tell them they were sure it was Sarah. The few people, they had seen her out there doing it. We talked to two of Titus and Angela's friends from that time who said they saw the vandalized car. And one of them said they witnessed Sarah verbally abuse Angela.

But in a text message, Sarah told us that was nonsense, that she never vandalized anyone's car. If anything, they harassed me. She also said police never talked to her about vandalizing the car. Titus and Angela, though, said police did talk to her, but seemed to take her side. She would always get it turned back where it was our fault. Somehow it persuaded the police? Yes. Yes. You were at fault and not her? Right. our fault. Somehow persuade the police? Yes. Yes. You were at fault and not her.

Right. And they'd buy that? Yes. Even to the point we were told if anyone initiated a conversation, we'd be arrested for harassment. What'd you think when you heard that? There was nothing the police will ever do to help us. They said the harassment, which went on for close to a year, escalated over time. I was babysitting my friend's son while she was working an overnight shift, and Titus

and I were on the couch with their child in their home, and I smelt gasoline. And I thought, where's that coming from? And I could smell it was coming from the front of the house. And so I thought, something's wrong with one of the cars. So I got Titus, and we went out there. And there was a gas can. There was gasoline splashed all over the front of the house. And I see her leaving the vicinity.

Wow. And at that point, I was like, she was going to set that house on fire. This time, they thought Sarah had gone too far. Surely there'd be a reckoning for Sarah Jean. Well, maybe. Maybe. Finally, they thought they had her dead to rights. For so long, Sarah Jean had made Titus and Angela Knirnchold miserable. But now they felt sure they'd caught her red-handed,

pouring gasoline on a house with them in it. No doubt in their minds, Sarah was intending to burn the place down. So... We went to the police, told them the story, and they said, well, it's either arson or it's not. Apparently there's no such thing as attempted arson. Sarah was never arrested, never charged with anything, and in a text message to us, said she had no knowledge of anything that might have happened at the house.

We asked the police for reports of these incidents, but we're told records from that time period are long gone. Anyway, back then, much to Titus and Angela's relief, they said, Sarah took her anger elsewhere. She moved on and married one of Titus's friends. But he soon dumped her after he caught her cheating with a fellow soldier. And then, after two failed marriages, Sarah decided it was time to shake up her life. And at the age of 22, she joined the Army as a truck driver.

She called me and said, I just want you to know I've joined the service. I'm like, well, good. That'll be good for you. And after I got off the phone, I thought, hmm, you're going to know what the rules are now. Sarah found herself stationed way up north at Alaska's Fort Wainwright, where she met a fellow soldier named Chris Donahue. He was a couple years younger than her. And I think he was one of those guys that was just very innocent and trusting. And then the next thing you know, she's pregnant.

And you're going to have a baby. Would they have married were it not for that? Who knows? Chris also politely declined the chance to talk about Sarah on camera. But that's when Ashley was born. And 18 months later, son Ryan, followed in due course by two more daughters. Her years with Chris perhaps Sarah's most stable. In fact, in 2005, while Chris was away and with four young children to look after, Sarah took in her sickly dad.

Yes, the same man she claimed had molested her. And she told me that she was going to go get him and bring him home. I said, this is the guy that you've hated all your life and you've talked about so terribly? Well, somebody has to. And it did not make any sense to me. Ashley's memory of her grandfather's brief time with them is very vivid. How could it be otherwise?

He was at our house for like two or three days and he died right in front of me. He died right in front of you? Yeah, I was sitting right there when it happened. And she had given him his medicine. Like he had a liquid medicine to take. And like he grabbed his chest like this and he just he started to cough a little bit. And like he's having a hard time breathing. And then after that, just died.

Like, yeah. Sarah texted us that her father died of natural causes. He was given medication prescribed to him. Nothing else. In 2007, after eight years in the reserves, Sarah returned to active duty and became something of a soldier soccer mom. The neighbors would compliment her and my dad as parents because they always saw all of us outside working together in the yard. So I think they thought that we were nice kids with a great family. Whenever we had people over, she'd go crazy in the kitchen. Sarah's son, Ryan.

Honestly, those are my favorite memories of my mom just making food. You know, she was really good at it. Like Thanksgiving, she'd go nuts. Christmas, she'd go nuts. Like there's decorations everywhere. She was really good at it. Like Thanksgiving, she'd go nuts. Christmas, she'd go nuts. Like there's decorations everywhere. She was very family-oriented. She adored her children. Evangeline Kelsall and her family were Fort Hood neighbors.

She would brag up one side and down the other about how wonderful her kids were. Meanwhile, Sarah's military career took off. She was assigned to intelligence, rose to the rank of Sergeant First Class. She had a top-secret security clearance. And later, when the war in Iraq got hot, resulting in a massive surge of U.S. troops to the region, both Sarah and Chris were deployed. I know they had some heavy, specific responsibilities, and they were executing them well. Former Army officer Kevin Robinson, who served with the Donahues in Iraq, said Sarah was a respected soldier. She had a very good professional relationship with everyone there in the division

headquarters because she was selected, essentially, to be the person that was the go-between between the intelligence section of the headquarters to everyone else in the staff. With both parents gone, the kids were farmed out to relatives. How was that? It was all right. They were gone for, I think, a year. Yeah, it was definitely a big change when we went back.

Which is one way to put it. Sarah's return from Iraq would be no happy homecoming for the kids. More like a horror movie. I felt like she was a ticking time bomb. What was true and what was not? To the public, Sarah seemed like some sort of super soldier mom

with a fine career handling top secret intelligence, a charming husband, a spotless house, and obedient children. We were really big on presentation, so how you dress is important, how you act is important. Like, what other people see from the outside is very important. But inside? Well, that was very different. Altogether different.

The biggest rule we had was, you know, what happens in the house stays in the house. The neighbors, they didn't know anything about what happened behind closed doors. Inside said her children, Sarah was a different person. I felt like she was a ticking time bomb. If we did something that had upset her, like, it was kind of zero to 100. Big temper. Yeah.

They learned to be wary, to watch her mood, especially when their soldier mom put on her uniform. I felt like she was a completely different person when she had her hair up in a bun, had a uniform on. I hated that. How was she different? In what had her hair up in a bun, had a uniform on. I hated that. How was she different? In what way? I don't know how to describe it. I think it was just the look that she had on her face and the way, you know, when the other person's getting hit in the other room, you could hear every hit through the house because it would echo. Brian said the worst beating he took was after he broke a wall hook in a house they were renting.

She had the belt in her hand. She was just swinging, doing her thing. And after a while, she throws the belt to the side, and she just starts punching me in the face. And it was so bad that I had bruises from my whole face down and from my shoulders to my ankles. And I missed school for a whole week. How old were you when that happened? I'd say like, I'd say 10. And that was when I realized I was scared of my mom

because right after everything happened, the whole beating thing, we went downstairs and, you know, she was being all nice. She was cutting me up oranges and stuff, you know, talking all sweet and whatnot. She's hit me in the face multiple times before, as a child, also as a teenager. There was a time that was so bad, I told her I was going to call CPS. That would be Child Protective Services. And she said if I was going to call CPS, she was going to give me a reason to call CPS. And she continued beating me for what felt like hours. Because she would stop, she'd be talking, and she'd be yelling.

And then all of a sudden, she'd pick up a belt, and she'd start wailing on me again. And I was like, is this ever going to be done? And I was covered in bruises. I had bruises all over my legs. I had a bruise on my face. I had them all over my arms and my back. Did you complain to CPS? No, because I was too scared of what would happen.

I didn't tell anybody to call CPS. I didn't ask any of my friends. But CPS did get called. And police showed up at the door one day after school. And here is the report about that visit from the Bell County Sheriff's Office. It says a father of one of Ashley's friends called them saying Ashley was beaten pretty bad, had a black eye, looked like her fingers were possibly broken, and had whipped lacerations all over her

back. And I was like, oh my gosh, because then that would mean it would go to CPS and my mom could get in trouble and then she would use it against me. You didn't see the police as a savior, you saw them as getting you in trouble even more. Yes. I was very upset that they came to the house. So much so, Ashley said she lied. And sure enough, the report quoted Ashley telling the deputies her black eye was an accident. The report concluded with, There's no evidence of ongoing abuse. When we asked Sarah about this, she wrote, I'm sure my kids would call it a beating, but no, no one was beaten.

But Barbara Stewart said she heard about this incident and others. The kids were threatened. They better not say anything. They better not admit any of this happened. And family services would always believe her. She would always talk her way out of it. Ashley said her dad, Chris Donahue, seemed powerless with Sarah. There was only so much he could do, because if he stood up for us, she would get very,

very angry at him. I think he wanted to do anything to make it work and keep his family together. And he really did try, and she just made it difficult. In 2014, Sarah and Chris bought an impressive, big custom-built place on the lake, not far from Fort Hood. And there they reconnected with Kevin Robinson and his wife, Melissa. Everybody just loved them, because they were just like a great couple. They seemed like happy, had it together, four great kids, nice house. I mean, they were living the American dream. But money was tight.

And then, just three months after buying their home, Sarah got a call from her brother Cody. Their grandmother Merle Repper had died. Leaving behind a house and 325 acres of prime farmland. There was bound to be a big inheritance. And Sarah, with family in tow, rushed off to Missouri, where she was about to get some bad news. Bad news for her, anyway. After she screamed and yelled at my wife that day on the porch,

I should have known right then there was not going to be any kind of peaceful, amicable anything with my sister. You can't watch Sarah's long-suffering older brother, Cody, amble about his land in Missouri and not be reminded of Job. Living alone in a single wide, no car, no internet. The family farm long gone. His wife and mother and youngest brother dead. Sad. It wasn't always like this. Cody had done so well despite his messed up family, his troubled upbringing. Life was pretty good.

Until the day his grandmother Merle passed away. It was August 2014. There was a funeral, of course, and Sarah came, like some dark, prodigal child. She stayed the night at the house with us, and I guess it was, I don't know, maybe a couple days later, she wanted to kind of look through things, and I said, well, the will doesn't have you in it. Cody and his wife, Mary Nancy, had been tending to grandmother Merle and her farm for years. Only once in the family to do so. Which is why Merle, in her will, left everything, the farm, the house, the furniture, all of it, to Cody and nothing to Sarah. It just became more or less a screaming match. She said she was going to fight me for the house and the land and everything because she owed $200,000-some-thousand on her place,

wherever she was living at the time. And everything she sold out here, that would pay for it. That was the story I got. Sarah up and left after that, but Cody said she came back later that day. The next thing I know, they've got trucks and trailers, and they're hauling everything and then looking on her laptop to see how much it was worth. And I told my wife, I don't know what to do about it, really.

I mean, I'm just going to let her have what she wants to have, and maybe then she'll let us alone. Sarah's son, Ryan, was there. He saw it all. Cody, he let her take whatever she wanted. My mom took a whole U-Haul full of stuff. Ashley was there too. My mom cleared out a lot of things.

Like had myself, my brother, my dad, a bunch of people helping her carry stuff up out of the basement. Like we don't really need all this stuff. But to her it was the most important thing in the world because she said her grandmother was the only person that ever truly loved her. And she felt entitled to it. She did. She felt entitled to a lot of things. By nightfall, Sarah was gone. And Cody and his wife curled up on the couch

with their eight-year-old nephew, Xander, who was spending the night. I want to say it was about two o'clock in the morning. I'm not certain, but I know when I got up, I smelled smoke. I knew that wasn't good. Cody opened the door and saw a broken window, burning drapes and flames spreading rapidly across the pine floors. I mean, the faster you snap your hand, it just roared right to the house. The smoke just billowing, you know.

And I mean, it was thick and it was black, and when it come, it come. And I couldn't see my hand and it was black, and when it'd come, it'd come. And I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, honestly. Cody said he passed out, but came to after hitting the floor. When I came to, all I could do was crawl out the door. And I could hear Xander behind me, and I kept hollering, grab my hand, and he couldn't grab my hand. So all I could do, I got out the door, I took in a deep breath, and I ran down to my brother's place. I woke him up,

grabbed him up, and up to the house we came. My brother dove in the house. Of course, he starts choking immediately. Let's just see if you can grab him. If you can't grab him, then get back out of here. Otherwise, none of us are going to make it.

So he went back in and somehow grabbed ahold of something that he thought was him and grabbed him and jerked him, and then out he came. And that was rough. I love little boy. They rushed Xander off to the hospital, suffering from smoke inhalation,

where he finally did recover. But Cody's house was a total loss. We got to watch everything we had go in a matter of just hours. The first thing I did after that fire, the next morning when it got to be daylight, I called her. Her being his sister, Sarah.

Because I wanted her to know that I'd survived. And the big plan of taking the house out and leaving me with nothing didn't work so well for her. That's why I called her. I said, I just want to tell you it didn't work. I'm still here. I said, I'm here. The wife's here.

Xander's is doing okay as well. And the first thing she said was, well, what was Xander doing here? Sarah denied any involvement, of course. She denied it to the fire investigators. She denied it to the police. She denied it to everybody, including their lawyer. She denied it in a text message to us, too, saying, I did not set my grandma's house on fire and was never suspected or questioned.

But according to Ryan, not everyone believed Sarah's denials, not even her own children. The consensus throughout the family was she was pissed off that he got the house and she didn't. Was it the family consensus that she started the fire? A lot of people believe that. The sheriff's department said the cause of the fire was undetermined. The fire department said the same. But according to Cody's friend and neighbor, Billy May, the fire marshal did find something noteworthy. Where the fire had started, there was poison ivy in the back of the house.

And the fire marshal said when they went and visited Sarah that her face was covered in poison ivy and that he couldn't prove for certain, but he pretty well thought that she probably started the fire. Cody heard the same thing from his brother, who saw Sarah right before she left town. He said she had poison ivy all over her face. But it wasn't quite proof, was it, said Cody, rather sadly. I'd love to tell you that I knew what happened, and I'd love to say, well, she's going to get hers for this, but I can't.

And Sarah was never charged with anything. And despite all the talk around here about Sarah and the fire, it never stopped her from coming back time and again to see a guy who was about to explain why he would like to take it all back. I think I really, truly did dodge a bullet. When Sarah Jean defurnished her brother Cody's house, she got more than a truckload of old furniture and family keepsakes. She also picked up her next boyfriend.

Not to mention a convenient place to store all that stuff. It went into this guy's garage. I mean, it got to the point where I was like, how much more crap do you really want? Because my garage was getting full. Brian Altus is an old childhood chum of Sarah's. They reconnected during the grandmother's funeral. And the very night Cody's house burned down, Sarah crawled into Brian's bed. Just to sleep, he told us. And if she started the fire, he said, he wasn't aware of it. Anyway, that's how the affair and Brian's two-year rollercoaster ride with Sarah began.

And the inconvenient fact that she was very married to Chris Donahue? She informed me that she and Chris were going to get divorced. Brian fell hard. There was something irresistible about that woman. she and Chris were going to get divorced. Brian fell hard. There was something irresistible about that woman. When she's the girl that you fall in love with, if she could be that person day in and day out, she's an amazing person.

What did you love about her back then? She has a way of making you feel really important, like you matter. When I brought around some of my family members and some of my friends, and they're like, oh, I'm glad for you. She's just a very likable person at first impression. Was she attractive? Was she good in bed? Was she enticing?

Was she? Yes. Yes to pretty much about everything I think you just said. So she could persuade you that up was down and down was up? Oh, yeah. She has a way of talking to people to make you believe everything. Yeah. And I firmly believe she could kill somebody right in front of a police officer and make him believe that she did not do it.

I think she has that ability. You might want to remember that. But for two years, Brian was as happy as he'd ever been and as miserable. There's no way you can be this person that everybody loves to be around

and got to know to be downright mean and hateful in a matter of seconds. Basically the devil's daughter, if you ask me. Things got contentious between them. They even filed for restraining orders against each other. And then one day when Brian was in court, Sarah had an envelope delivered to him. So I open it up and I look at it and I remember the smell of urine and it was a pregnancy test. Oh my. And it said it was positive and I'm like, nah, this ain't legit. Still, Brian agreed to meet with Sarah at his house to hash things out.

He brought his sister for support. And I said, let's go do our own test together so that I can see for sure that you're pregnant. And she wouldn't do it. They stood outside the house and argued about everything then. And finally, Sarah agreed to leave for good. But she made one last request. Can I use the bathroom before I leave? I'm like, sure, no problem. She was in there for a while. I remember that because my sister and I both looked at each other and we're like, wow,

what the hell? And finally she came out. She went her way. I went down to the local bar in town to meet up with some coworkers. 20 to 40 minutes later, I'm getting a phone call from the local police station saying your house is on fire. Do you think she started the fire? And you'll never hear me say that. Do I believe there is a possibility? Yes. But I will never, ever. Yes, she did it. I can't prove it. Nobody proved it. Sarah told us by text she had nothing to do with the fire. Anyway, she was out of Brian's life. Finally.

And what did she leave him with? No, not a child, but perspective. You know, everybody joked about the fire, you know, how I was lucky to survive that. But I think I really, truly did dodge a bullet. And I meant that, literally. The next fella Zara Jean set her eyes on wouldn't be so lucky. Can we talk about David? Yes. What he was like? He was a big teddy bear.

Anytime he walked into a room, he'd have a big grin and he'd give you a big hug. Carl and Laura Bragg told us their son, David Bragg, was this teddy bear. An Air Force veteran known for taking care of people? Maybe because he was the eldest of eight siblings, five of them adopted, including Daniel and Ronald Bragg. When you were growing up, how do you remember his presence in your life? I remember him being very tall, just like my dad. So he had a presence to him. Honestly, spinning image of our dad. It's kind of weird. You see him side by side and it's like, well, who's who sometimes? Was he welcoming to all you younger ones?

Yeah. You know, my mom used to tell me stories about how he'd walk around the neighborhood with his little, you know, mixed race brother to try to get the ladies to look at him. Ladies would look at David and sometimes David looked back. He was married when he met Sarah, had two kids, but he spent a lot of time on the road working in construction. And while absence is said to make the heart grow fonder, distance from his wife did not have that effect on David. What happened between them? Sarah happened between them. Sarah happened, yeah. Well, Brian was out of her life,

and David Bragg was on a construction project right at Fort Hood, where Sarah was stationed. They hid their relationship from her husband, Chris, until he was stationed in Korea. And then everything changed. And the day he left, David was over at the house. In fact, he was at the house a lot. Overnight, too, sometimes.

My mom would tell me that he was sleeping in the front room. And I didn't believe it. One time I walked to the front of the house and I peeked in the bedroom that David was supposedly staying in. And it looked like somebody was laying under the covers. So I went in there and he yanked the covers back and there was pillows. And I was like, oh my God. While Chris suspected his wife had been running around on him for years, this was it for him. Made him so mad he flew halfway around the

world to confront her. And so my dad got permission to come back to the States from his boss, and I basically helped him catch her cheating on him. She helped her dad by ensuring the garage door was unlocked, and once in his house, Chris went to his bedroom and made a shocking discovery in his bed. They were in bed together, and she's made a whole bunch of excuses about it, didn't know what to say. The marriage was effectively over, but Sarah was all in with David Bragnow.

She even went to meet his deeply religious parents. What were your first impressions of Sarah? We kind of liked her. Kind, charismatic Sarah, intent on being a good wife to their son. Or so it seemed to Carl. We were convinced for a long time that, you know, she had been wronged in her first marriage. That is, her marriage to Chris, which, of know, she had been wronged in her first marriage. That is her marriage to Chris,

which, of course, was actually her third, though they didn't tell the parents that. We loved her. We loved her kids. She's got beautiful kids. Sarah definitely had David hooked. But then work had David on the move again, this time some 1,200 miles away to a tiny hamlet called Garfield, Minnesota. So he and Sarah made a plan, a life plan. He ended up going to Minnesota, and I believe the idea or what was supposed to happen was that she was supposed to come up there and live, you know, happily ever after, of course.

The only problem with happily ever after is that it tends to be the provenance of fairy tales. And the story David Bragg was living in was going to be more Brothers Grimm. She had a temper that she could be really sweet one minute and just crazy in the next minute. Sadly for David, crazy was just around the corner. In the winter of 2017, the woman still known as Sarah Donahue settled in with David Bragg in tiny Garfield, Minnesota. Her plan was to make him her fourth husband.

Mind you, David was no stranger to starting over himself. Now he's going to be married to woman number three. Yeah, number three. And they were together for about six, six and a half months and engaged. So it wasn't very long at all. Did you see them together at all? No. See, it was so quick, and they were thousands of miles away. I actually met Sarah face-to-face over FaceTime one time.

Just a normal, happy lady, and my brother loved her, and we trusted him. To be clear, Sarah was still married to Chris Donahue when David and Sarah Jean found an old white farmhouse in which to start their new life together. The idea was they'd rent Dubai and fix it up as they went along. Jeff Wood would be their landlord. A really nice couple. David was very gentlemanly, had that southern thing about him. I thought they were a great couple. At the beginning, that is, everything fresh and perfect the way new love feels. Seemed to be in love. That kind of changed as the time moved on with them working on the house and stuff.

She started getting very agitated, really short, because David wasn't getting the house done fast enough. Part of the deal was that David would remodel the kitchen of the old farmhouse, but, well, he had his own idea of how long it should take and wanted to surprise her, perhaps. She had gone down to Texas for two and a half weeks, and when she came back, David had hired somebody to make a path through the woods

instead of working on the house, and, oh, she was just irate because he had wasted all that money on this guy and not put it into the house. So she had a temper that she could be really sweet one minute and just crazy the next minute. If some alarm went off in David's mind, he seemed to show no sign of it, but rather tried harder to please her.

At least that's how his parents saw it. I wondered whether he would be somebody who would always try to see the good side in people, even if maybe other people didn't. Absolutely. Yes. That he was always trying to make things right in a relationship. He'd had failed relationships,

and he kept trying to give this woman chances because he didn't want another failed relationship. But it wasn't long before David had to stop living in denial. He told his family the real Sarah wasn't at all the woman he thought he'd fallen in love with. You know, when the last time I saw him, he kind of wanted out. You know, he wasn't as happy as it. David wanted out? Mm-hmm.

Okay. I remember very vividly my dad telling me that he reached out and was like, I don't have a good feeling about this. Maybe I made a mistake here. Yeah, I made a mistake. But just hearing that, it gave me goosebumps. Even talking about it makes the hair on your neck stand up. And then one spring day in May 2018.

We heard it come across our scanner. Al Eatonloff is editor-in-chief of the local newspaper. Something happening at that old white farmhouse. A few minutes later, landlord Jeff Woods' phone rang, too. One of my co-workers called me at work and said I better get over to the house because there's squad cars all around the house. The sheriff told me that there was a shooting

and that there was a body found in the downstairs portion of the house, in the downstairs living room. What in the world had happened in that old farmhouse? It was David Bragg in the living room, shot dead. And the shooter? Well, that would be Sarah Jean. And she even admitted it,

telling detectives that there had been an argument and Bragg pulled a gun. In a string of texts, she told us, I was looking down the barrel of a.45 thinking this man is really going to kill me. He's going to kill all of us. He fired at me first. Had I not dove into the floor at the base of the stairs, he would have shot me in the head. She had to shoot back, she said.

It was self-defense. Sarah's son Ryan was living at the farmhouse then, but he was out when it happened. And when he got home, she told him more or less the same story she told police, but with a few extra bits added. Details that made Ryan wonder. She said he fired at her first. That his gun was fired first.

As she's coming down the stairs, she dropped in place and had her arm over the railing and fired that way. So you're just picture yourself crouched down, arm over the railing and just shooting blindly. She hit him center mass. Like there's, there's no way. The story couldn't be true. No. Like, there wasn't a lot of blood there. It was probably, like, maybe, like, this big, that much blood. Because she hit his heart right off the bat. And then one of my younger sisters came in. She's like, I heard bubbling, like this bubble noise. And he just died there.

When Jeff Wood, the landlord, heard that version of events straight from Sarah Jean, he too had doubts. I don't buy it because the way she explained it, it was like out of a bad action movie. I mean, she explained how she dove onto the landing of the steps, and she pulled her gun and shot between the spindles of the steps going upstairs and shot him and returned fire, which I just don't buy. So I think if David wanted to shoot her, he would have shot her. I don't buy it at all.

Whatever the actual story was, the sad fact remained that Sarah's fiancé was dead. So after the chaos and the cops were gone, Ryan grabbed a bucket and a rag. I cleaned up the mess and switched around the room. You cleaned up the blood and the mess from his body? Yeah. Of course, there was an investigation.

It involved the Douglas County Sheriff, the county prosecutor, and even state law enforcement. It went on for months. And then the prosecutor's office released a statement that there was some ballistic evidence to support a case of self-defense. They determined they would not be filing charges, that there just wasn't enough evidence to justify or say there was anything else, and it was a justified shooting. David's family can never forget

hearing about how their son had been killed. What was it like for you, Carl? It tore... It... Just breathe. It tore me up. Still tears you up. These years later.

Yeah. I'm sorry, Carl. David's brother, Daniel, believes those investigators got played by Sarah. That's the thing that got us, was the fact that, like, all right, well, let's let the police figure it out. You know, let's let law

enforcement figure it out. And they didn't prosecute it. But Sarah's daughter, Ashley, out. You know, let's let law enforcement figure it out. And they didn't prosecute it. But Sarah's daughter, Ashley, also had a story to tell. It started a few months before the shooting. Sarah's husband, Chris, had filed for divorce. It would be finalized soon when Sarah got word that Chris had begun dating again. She got really sad and upset about my dad because my dad had started talking to somebody. She hated that. So what did she do? Ashley said her mother told her she was sending a text to David Bragg. Saying that now it was over and she didn't want to be engaged to him anymore. So she's pulling away from David now? Supposedly. But I think that she was

playing house with David at home, but then like still trying to get with my dad behind David's back. Oof, complicated. She and complicated go along very well. Did Sarah actually send that breakup text? Ashley couldn't say for sure, but she did see her mother pack up her car and head north to keep playing house with David Bragg. But before she left Texas, she said something Ashley thought was very strange, or in retrospect, downright ominous. She told me if anything happens when I go back to Minnesota and I have to defend myself, call this person and tell them to come pick up the girls.

And I was just like, why? And I told her, I was like, Mom, I don't think anything's going to happen like that. And she was like, well, if it does, she's like, call them and tell them to come pick up the girls. I was like, okay. And then I get a call a couple days later and I was like, whoa. That is how Ashley learned David Bragg was dead. In your heart of hearts, what do you think happened in there? With David?

Yeah. I personally think that she provoked a fight and she thought that she would be able to get my dad back. He would want her back if David was no longer in the picture. I'm like, my dad doesn't want to be with you. Like, he's completely detached himself from you. So, like, anything you doesn't want to be with you. He's completely detached himself from you. So anything you're doing at this point is just a waste of time. But by the time of the shooting, it appears Sarah was already moving on. Another man, another premature death, another fire. Sarah Jean settled right back into life at the old white farmhouse in tiny Garfield, Minnesota,

the very house in which she had just shot her fiancé, David. Self-defense, she'd said. And the authorities finally agreed officially. Their months-long investigation ended with no charges against Sarah Jean. In any case, if it seemed odd to some that she'd go on living in the very place where she killed her man, it certainly seemed to suit Sarah. She made herself at home in more ways than one.

One day I was over there, I was talking to her getting the rent, and the propane guy drove up and came in the house, and well, apparently she's dating him now. And it was a pretty short time after she had shot David, and so I thought that was kind of odd. The propane guy was another David, David George. Not just a propane guy, by the way, but a local farmer. And before long, he was Sarah Jean's fourth husband. I thought that was a pretty quick marriage after, you know, killing her fiancé. Sarah's son Ryan got on quite well with his new stepdad. What was he like?

He was a great guy. I got nothing but good things to say about him. He really cared about us. He tried helping us every way he could. I think his only flaw, it doesn't make him a bad guy, is the fact that, you know, my mom was his wife. And even when she's wrong, he sides with her. And I don't think he knew she was in the wrong, but he truly loved her. And, you know, he'd stand by her wife, you know. Which is something to keep in mind when you hear what happened next, or what didn't quite happen. But first, to bring you up to date, ex-husband Chris had married again, too, to a woman named Heather.

They seemed very happy, except for one big problem. Chris and Sarah had a custody agreement for their two youngest daughters, but Sarah wasn't honoring it, according to Chris. She refused to let him get anywhere near the girls. And then one day, one of those girls, Hannah, texted Ashley and told her she wanted to see her. So I got ready, dropped everything. But when Ashley met her then 16-year-old sister,

Hannah was suddenly reluctant to talk. So Ashley pressed her. She's like, I can't tell you. She's like, George told me not to say anything. And I was like, Hannah, if it has to do with dad or Heather's safety, I know you don't know Heather, but she's a nice person. And she means a lot to dad. But you know dad and dad or Heather's safety. I know you don't know Heather, but she's a nice person. Like, and she means a lot to dad. But you know dad and dad is a good person.

And I was like, if it has to do with their safety, I need to know. Heather, remember, was Chris Donahue's new wife. I was like, I'm not going to run back to mom or tell her that you said anything. And so she tells me, and she, like, whispers it to me. The secret was unbelievable. And Ashley knew she could not let it remain secret. I texted my dad and I was like, I need you available to talk as soon as I leave this place, because there's something really important that you need to know. What did Hannah tell you was going to happen? George had told her that my mom wouldn't let George back in the house until he killed Heather.

She wanted him to shoot her. And Hannah was able to provide me with details about this car. That's the car that George was supposed to drive down there. And he was supposed to knock on the door. Heather was supposed to answer. And then he was supposed to shoot her. He didn't want to do it. And my mom kept pressuring him to do it. What was it like to hear that? It honestly made me sick. Like, I felt like there was a pit in my chest. I just

kept thinking, she always used to say to me when I was younger, if there's a will, there's a way, and if she really wanted that to be done, she would find a way for it to get carried out. Ashley got her dad on the phone. Wow. How did your dad react to what you told him? I think it really, really stressed him out. I think it worried him because his main concern was making sure his wife was safe. Chris and Heather were nearly a thousand miles away in Arizona, a seemingly safe distance. But Sarah had a way of making men do what she wanted. And David George seemed quite intent on pleasing her,

even if she asked him to be her hitman. Yes, hello? Yeah, I have two followers. Far away in southern Arizona, Chris Donahue had just learned that his ex-wife Sarah Jean was supposedly cooking up a plot to kill his new wife, Heather. He knew he had to act fast. First it was making sure Heather was safe. Then it was talking to the person that told Hannah this.

And then it was talking to his lawyer so that he could try to get his daughters out of that house because they shouldn't have to go home to a woman that one of them knows wants to kill somebody else or wants somebody else killed on their behalf. Just the idea. Yeah, he was already trying to get them out of the house. He wasn't even trying to take them from my mom.

He just wanted to be able to see them. He hadn't seen them in almost four years because she wouldn't let him. The urgency intensified for Chris and Heather once Chris realized he had already been face to face with David George, Sarah's current husband and the would-be hitman. As you can see yourself. This delivery man on doorbell video at the Donahue residence is David George. Yes, hello? Yeah, I have some flowers for Donahues.

The flowers were addressed to Chris's wife, Heather. Okay, Heather. But then, something curious. Was there a hint of nervousness in the delivery man's voice? Chris waited, but the mysterious delivery man never returned. And a few minutes later, Chris saw a black Honda Accord drive out of the neighborhood. The man behind the wheel was David George. It's all documented, every bit of it, in court filings. In a signed affidavit, Chris Donahue described a phone call in which George told him he'd been sent to deliver more than just flowers.

He'd been sent to kill Heather. He told me that he had a pistol that was given to him by Sarah to carry out this act. He also said that he came to my house 16 November 2020 and had flowers. Chris went on to say that David George said he ultimately refused to do Sarah's bidding. David told me that he even told Sarah once over the phone to call what she wanted done what it was, murder. He told me that she got mad at him and hung up. Mad at him is one way to put it. After David George returned from Arizona, said Landlord Jeff, David told him Sarah refused to let him back into her house

or her life at all. He was basically really mad bitter that, you know, she did that. I mean, to put somebody in that position where if you don't kill somebody, I'm going to leave you. I mean, that's kind of something you don't really want to hear. As for Chris, he filed for sole custody of his two youngest daughters and sought a protective order, barring Sarah from getting anywhere near him or his children. And perhaps not surprising after all that, the judge granted his requests, both of them. And that, said Ashley,

that seemed to send her mother right over the edge. Of course, she like lost her mind on him when she lost custody of my sisters. So what was your mom's motivation? What did she want out of this? She doesn't like Heather. She doesn't have to like Heather because Heather's the other woman that she has to share her children with, and she doesn't like that. But even though she'd finally lost Chris Donahue for good, had dumped David George, and finally had no man in her life, well, it wasn't like she was a nun after all.

I think during that time she had also started seeing other men that she met on Christian Mingle or something is what my sister told me. Christian Mingle? Yeah. My sister said there was a few guys that would come over to the house after George left. David George declined our request for an on-camera interview, but he told us that Sarah gave him a gun, though he said he didn't have it on him at the Donahue's front door. He also said he had no intention of killing Heather

and, quote, hoped Sarah Jean would come to her senses and know that was not going to happen. Sarah texted us to say it's not true, and she never gave George any kind of gun ever. George said he's not in touch with Sarah anymore, but he still talks to Ryan Donahue. Does he talk about the whole experience of having been with your mom? Yeah. He says he'll always have some sort of love for my mom, but he's happy he's got away from it. Happy to be rid of Sarah Jean?

Indeed, he told us, that while he was once entranced by her, in his words, I got burned. I got burned hard. But there may be more to this story. Four months before he moved in with Sarah, George's partner of 25 years, Rebecca Kunze, died suddenly. And a few months later, the house they had shared burned down. Coincidence? Her brother Dana doesn't think so. I think that there was a point in their life where they had a happy relationship, but I feel as though there was also a point when that all stopped. And then, you know, not too long after that, she's dead. And not too long after that,

now they're married. The whole picture together, that alone made us wonder and question that whole relationship at the end. And now, of course, learning what we've learned, you know, has just made those questions even harder to swallow. We had questions too. And we asked the Todd County Sheriff's Office for investigative reports concerning Rebecca Kunze's death and that house fire. Their response? They're reopening both investigations in light of new information. What that might be, they wouldn't say.

David George told us Rebecca died of a heart valve problem and he had nothing to do with her death. And he said Sarah and he were both out of the state at the time of the fire. As for Sarah, she put it all behind her when she dumped David George and left Garfield, Minnesota and moved back to Texas, where she set her sights on a brand-new man. But soon, someone would be setting their sights on her. You know, thank God somebody was paying attention. You know, the attending physician, the nurses that were on staff that night, they knew something was wrong. By July 2021, Sarah Jean's carefully crafted facade,

high-functioning mom and soldier, was in ruins. Since leaving the army, Sarah had dumped her husband, killed a fiancé, was implicated in an alleged plot to kill the new wife of her ex-husband, lost custody of her children, and had been blocked from even seeing them. It always seemed like she was the most unlucky woman in the world. Evangeline Kelso, Sarah's old friend from Fort Hood,

stayed in touch through all that emotional chaos. It always seemed like she would start getting to a good spot and then a relationship would end or she would get sick or she was trying to fight for her kids or whatever. But Sarah was nothing if not relentlessly resilient. By November of 2021, after four failed marriages and one dead boyfriend, Sarah was on a dating website, trolling for a new guy.

Which is how she met Joe Hartsfield. We talked about it all the time because she started dating him a few months after I started dating my now boyfriend. Evangeline said within weeks of meeting Joe, Sarah married him. And it was, like, very, very quick. Like, I think from proposal to walking down the aisle might have been a month. Which now brings our story full circle.

Sort of. During our journey through Sarah's life, we also learned new things about how Joe's ended. Learn, for example, that by December 2022, just weeks before she rushed him to the hospital, Sarah was letting it be known she was done with Joe. She said her house was destroyed and he had left mess everywhere. There was food out, all kinds of stuff.

Evangeline, a nurse who'd been giving Sarah advice about treating Joe's diabetes, said Sarah's texts about him quite suddenly went from caring to complaining. And she was livid. She was absolutely livid. And she said that she was going to sit him down and have a come-to-Jesus moment about, this is my house, these are my things, how dare you. This isn't going to work unless you kind of fall into step with me.

Another friend, who did not want to be identified, shared a text from Sarah, dated December 19, 2022, saying, Joe has turned into a nightmare. I can't take the level of financial irresponsibility. He was just looking for a meal ticket and way back to a lifestyle he could never attain on his own. I have to save myself and figure out how to recover. I have a plan. It's now a matter of implementing, executing,

and finding a place to go. By Christmas, Ashley said her mother's hatred of Joe had reached such a boil, it was all she could talk about. And how she was so over her marriage, and she just, he's this, he's that. And it's like, it's Christmas, can you just, can you just chill? And then all of a sudden, I don't know what it was, it was like a flip of a switch.

She comes storming in the room with the gifts that I wrapped and starts unwrapping them. And she was like, he's not getting this. She's like, I'm sending it all back tomorrow. She's like, I'm so done with him. Eleven days later, Joe told his family he was the one who wanted out of the marriage. That, according to a report by Detective Skyler Rocks, who wrote, I spoke with numerous family members of Joseph who advised Joseph was planning on divorcing Sarah, and he was concerned for his safety,

thinking Sarah might try to kill him. And then, two days after telling his family that, Joe was in the hospital, and Sarah was on Facebook posting that Joe's condition had nothing to do with his insulin or blood sugar levels. Oh no, she was saying Joe had a stroke from a clogged artery after years of eating too much junk food. It seemed like she was blaming him for having a stroke.

Almost patient shaming. And when Evangeline heard Joe died, her mind went to a very dark place. She wondered if Sarah Jean had been playing her all along. I wasn't sure if she had taken my information and used it the wrong way. It was almost like Evangeline was reading Detective Rocks' mind.

Chambers County District Attorney Cheryl Leak had a problem. A big one. No matter how suspicious Sarah's behavior, or strange the conditions under which Joe Hartsfield died, the case against her simply wasn't strong enough to make an arrest. We didn't really have enough. We had to wait for more information to come in. Still, D.A. Leak went to work.

How could she not, given what she learned about Sarah's background and the alleged plot to kill Chris Donahue's wife and especially the David Bragg shooting? Leak thought that should have been prosecuted. I can see it clearly that it needs further investigation. Fearing Sarah was close to moving away from Chambers County, and thus her jurisdiction, D.A. Lake broke the glass. She convened an emergency session of the county grand jury to see if she could get Sarah indicted now, before the investigation into Joe's death was completed.

So we presented everything we had at that point, and they indicted her. And then she was arrested after that. She will go on trial charged with what? Murder. Sarah was booked into the Chambers County Jail on a $4.5 million bond and was soon on the phone to her daughter, Ashley. I was getting my hair done and I saw that I was getting a call.

And it said prison slash jail. And then it said Chambers County and I was like, where's Chambers County? Who's calling me? I didn't know anybody else that could have went to jail. And she answered and I was like, what did you do? And what'd she say? She said, they she answered, and I was like, what did you do? And what'd she say? She said, they arrested me. And I was like, for what? And she said, murder.

What was it like to hear that? I didn't really know how to feel about it because my phone was on speaker, so my hair lady heard it. Oh, boy. It didn't really hit me because at first it was just very chaotic. I had a lot of things rushing through my mind. But then later that night, it really was just very chaotic. I had a lot of things rushing through my mind, but then later that night, like it really, it really was just heavy on me. And I think I came to the realization that I had to accept that something was really wrong because you don't arrest somebody and charge them with murder if they did nothing, unless you have like something.

Have you gotten to see her in jail? I have not. I don. Have you got to see her in jail? I have not. I don't think I want to. On April 27th, Ashley was only a block away from the jail in Chambers County, but she was not in town to visit her mom. No. Ashley was there to testify about her mom

before a grand jury. And up in Minnesota, where they've reopened the David Bragg shooting case, a spokesperson for the county attorney's office told us they expect a decision on possible charges within the next couple of weeks. We wanted to hear what Sarah had to say about Hartsfield and Bragg and the alleged plot to murder Heather and Cody's house fire, the whole lot of it. We visited her in jail, twice,

where she told us she wanted to appear on our program to answer any questions I might have, and that once she had done that, we'd all understand that she was innocent. But then, the day before we were to talk, she consulted her attorney and changed her mind. But she did send us a whole slew of text messages, hundreds of them.

She wrote that she's a 20-year combat veteran of the Army who had a top-secret security clearance, that she is completely innocent, has always loved her husband Joseph and is devastated at the loss of him. Sarah said she never knew anything about Joe's insulin, specifically how much he took and when, and she said she was disappointed and heartbroken

her two oldest children aren't supporting her after all she did for them. As for people in Sarah Jean's past, those we've been able to speak to, they all said they were surprised by her arrest, but for a number of reasons. I honestly thought she wouldn't get caught and she'll get away with it. I was like, yeah, about time. I was like, what? What are you talking about? Arrested for what?

Well, apparently it's murder or something. Murder? Who? It didn't match the person that we had met and we had known for those years. My sentence is directed towards the hearts field because this could have been avoided. Our biggest fear the whole time has been

that this would happen to someone else. It wouldn't surprise me if she did do it. Somebody had posted the news article with her mugshot, and I honestly thought it was a joke because the person I knew, I didn't think could have been capable of that. Meanwhile, evidence is assembled. It's a puzzle that is continuing to be put together, the pieces. And this is a big puzzle. This is one of those thousand-piece puzzles. Shortly before we sat down for our interview with Ashley,

the medical examiner made public the primary cause of Joseph Hartsfield's death. It was complications of toxic effects of insulin. In other words, an insulin overdose. Just as the medical team suspected. But not at all what Sarah had posted on Facebook. She said it was from a stroke. Those are not the same, are they? No.

Joe's mother and brother, potential witnesses both of them, are afraid to say anything about Sarah before the trial. What did it feel like when you heard that Sarah had been arrested and charged? I don't think we need to talk about that. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that. While DA Cheryl Leak builds a murder case against Sarah Jean. It sounds to me like you don't think you know everything there is to know about her yet. I really do not think that we do.

What happened when the press release about her arrest was posted on Facebook? I went crazy. It just was like bugs hitting a windshield. It just went crazy, went everywhere. We started getting phone calls and messages on social media. And that's why I'm talking to you right now. It's because we're just asking everybody that knows her or that knew her to come forward. Even if you were her best friend, I want to hear about her. I want to hear about your experience with her. DA Leak might want to give Sarah's son Ryan a call. Do you suspect that there are other incidents in your mother's life which the police will end up being interested in as they continue their investigation?

100%. Yeah. There's some that I have in mind that I'm kind of waiting for them to come to light. So maybe the story of Sarah Jean isn't fully told. Yet. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We're off this Sunday, but we'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night.