RedHanded - The Hart Family Murders | #464

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

In 2018, married couple Jen and Sarah Hart accelerated their SUV over the edge of a 100ft cliff in Mendocino County, California… with their six Black adopted children in the back. The world was left in total shock. Jen and Sarah had seemed like model parents: social justice-loving lesbians who’d bravely taken in six Black children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and – according to Jen’s gushing Facebook posts – giving those kids the dream life they’d never had. But behind the glossy image the Harts presented, a far more sinister reality lurked… --Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

On Facebook, Jen and Sarah Hart seemed like perfect mothers. But in the middle of the night in March 2018, they drove their whole family of a picturesque California cliff into the Pacific Ocean. Killing themselves and all six of their adopted black children. Marcus, Hannah, Devonte, Jeremiah, Abigail. And Sierra. To their online friends, the tragedy made no sense. Jen and Sarah had been an inspirational lesbian power couple.

They were social justice warriors who'd given six disadvantaged kids the idyllic life that they otherwise never would have had. And they were even sort of famous. Ever since, a picture of Devonte tearfully hugging a white cop during a protest went viral back in 2014. But as investigators dug deeper, a more sinister picture emerged because behind the carefully curated Facebook posts, Jen and Sarah Hart were hiding years of abuse against their adoptive kids, escaping punishment from child welfare authorities in four different states.

It was only in the aftermath of the crash that people were. realise just how little they really knew about the Hart family, and just how tragically those six children had been betrayed. I'm Hannah. I'm Suruti. And this is red-handed. To understand what led the Hart family to the edge of that 100-foot cliff in California, we have to go back to the beginning. Who were Jen and Sarah Hart?

And how had they gone from being a carefree 20-something couple to the mothers of six troubled kids in the span of just a few years. Jen and Sarah both grew up in small towns in South Dakota, where the populations were about as white-bred American as you can imagine. It was the heartland, with farms as far as the eye could see and big Christian families. Childhood friends describe Sarah Gengler as shy in public but goofy and private, and they said how she loved to make up dances to Depeche Mode during weekend sleepovers. And while Sarah was actually engaged to her high school boyfriend, she broke up with him,

just before flying the nest to attend Northern State University. Tale as old as time. Which is where she met and fell in love with, the gorgeous Jennifer Hart. And while Jen did come from a similar background, otherwise, she was everything Sarah wasn't. While Sarah was the type of teacher's pet student to maintain the perfect GPA, and get her name on the Dean's list, Jen took things a lot less seriously. She once even got arrested for shoplifting

and just shrugged it off by telling the officer that she didn't know why she did it. So what was it that drew these two souls together? Maybe it was the opposites attracting because apart from a shared obsession with the Green Bay Packers, Jen and Sarah didn't really seem to have much in common. Jen actually dropped out of uni just a semester shy of graduation.

while Sarah finished with a degree in special education. By now, Sarah and Jen stopped telling their friends that they were just roommates. They were a bona fide couple. And it was around this time that they began distancing themselves from their own families. This wasn't totally out of character for Jen, who didn't speak to her dad, but it was highly unusual for Sarah, who was incredibly close with her mum, or at least had been. Jen implied that homophobia was to blame, later writing on Facebook, that the Midwestern mindset had been unforgiving and unaccepting when she and Sarah came out as a couple.

And this might well have been a part of why some of their relationships crumbled. But as you'll soon learn, anything Jen writes on Facebook needs to be taken with a massive fuck-off pinch of salt. because, according to family friends on both sides, the break in contact had nothing to do with Jen and Sarah's sexuality at all. For one thing, Jen never explicitly came out to her family, so how could they have cut her out for being a lesbian? Not to mention, one of her brothers was gay, and still very much welcome in the familial fold.

The excuses just didn't wash. So where had this sudden rejection of all of their loved ones really come from? If you ask Sarah's mum, it actually came down to an ultimatum posed by Jen. She claims that Jen forced Sarah to choose between her family or their relationship. And Sarah, clearly too blinded by love for Jen to see how manipulative this proposition really was, made one of the most damning decisions she'd ever make. She chose Jen. Newly estranged from their families, the pair made a fresh start miles away from anyone they knew

in the town of Alexandria, Minnesota. Let's look up the state motto of Minnesota. I don't know that one. Ugh. It's in French. No. Mm-hmm. Wow.

Le Tour de No, the Star of the North, apparently. That's nice. I thought... Oh, no, Maryland is in Italian. That's the one I was thinking of. Anyway, well, that's thoroughly disappointing. Moving on. Both of them took jobs at a department store called herbageers in the local shopping centre,

where Jen quickly became known as the bigger personality of the chief. While Sarah was more reserved and sensitive, Jen was confident, funny and brash. And let's just say, not afraid to speak her mind. A former colleague remembers an incident when Jen complained that the nipples on the female mannequins were sexist. and took it upon herself to remove them with a hacksaw. Come on. Surely that's raising some red flags. No?

Like, there are things that are actually upsetting, you know? Just put your energies elsewhere. Anyway, Jen was growing into her new identity as a self-styled woman warrior, correcting what she felt were the wrongs of the world. Which eventually came to include, becoming a mother to children in need. Jen and Sarah both knew that they wanted to adopt children from foster care, which is a notoriously challenging route to parenthood.

These are children who've been taken from their families out of necessity, likely coming from abusive or neglectful backgrounds. People who pursue this route to parenthood agree not to take on just a child, but their traumatic history too. point being it's really fucking hard and it takes a hell of a lot of courage to do but Jen and Sarah Hart seemed to be up for the challenge and in 2004 they decided to become certified foster parents

as their first step on the road to adoption that summer Jen and Sarah Hart took in a 15-year-old teenage girl named Bree Bree had been in and out of foster care since she was 12 since her mum suffered from debilitating depression and she desperately needed a stable home. So when Brie moved in with the hearts, she hoped this placement would see her through at least until she turned 18.

But there were red flags from the start, and they were all waving like crazy around Jen. Jen had constant mood swings and would hide in her room for days at a time, leaving the more passive Sarah to look after Bree and also tackle all of the household chores alone. And whenever Jen did emerge from her pit, it was even worse. Petty doesn't even come close to describing Jennifer Hart.

On a trip to the Green Bay Packer's training camp, Jen flipped her lid when her favourite player signed Bree's football jersey instead of hers. So she gave Bree her adoptive foster daughter the silent treatment for two weeks. Everything we're about to tell you about Jen Hart just screams that typical narcissistic domestic abuser. That's what she is, like through and through. It's the silent treatment. It's the making everybody in the house walk around on eggshells. It's flying into absolute rages and then hiding in her bedroom.

It's like all of the manipulation, the like lies. It's so, so just perfect in terms of like this perfect storm. of exactly this type of person. Nothing here is surprising in terms of like how she treats her family. Worse still, Jen also felt the need to exert control over everyone living under her roof. All the money Brie earned from her part-time job at Subway went straight into an account that only Jen had access to. Surprise, surprise, the money always came to Bree at least $100 short. Still, Brie clung to hope that life with the hearts would work.

While her foster mum's could be overbearing, she enjoyed the frequent hiking and camping trips they took her on. And when they told her about their plans to adopt, Brie was excited to become a big sister, as Jen and Sarah promised her she would be. Bree said she would frequently find the couple browsing adoption websites for potential children to adopt. But here's the weird part that Brie noticed. All of the children that Jennifer and Sarah Hart were looking at were black. We're black. Okay, Madonna. Yeah.

And Bree remembers hearing her foster mum saying things like, Oh, look at this beautiful child. Isn't she adorable? I would love to just have this child and bring her home. It sounded like they were browsing for puppies and an animal shelter or something. And look, this case obviously brings up questions and feelings that people have around

cross-racial adoption, right? It's a tricky one, isn't it? Because, like you said, with Madonna pointing that out, there was obviously a big Hollywood boom back in the day of white celebrities adopting black babies. Like, we all remember that. And those kids are grown up now, like you can still see them, like accompanying their parents,

accompanying their often a list of parents, like on the red carpet and whatnot. Yeah. And it did and does feel a bit cringe. Like, I don't know, to me, because I've really thought about this. And I'm like, to me it feels a bit cringe because it feels like they're so desperately trying to seem good and virtuous. And is this child that they've adopted somehow like meant to be a symbol or a representation

of like how noble a person they are? Or am I just being awfully, awfully cynical? Because at the end of the day, if a child who is alone and doesn't have anybody and is stuck in some sort of horrible, nightmarish situation, then they go on to be adopted by a family who will love them and provide for them. Isn't that the best outcome? So, like, who cares who it is? It's tricky.

Like, I absolutely get where you're coming from because, like, it's the ultimate virtue signal, really, isn't it? Like, it's, look how good I am. But then I hate myself for thinking that as well because I'm like, no, no, I totally agree. Like, it's a tricky thing. I can see. Yeah.

I can see how it appears to, cynics. And that is because of my unbearable personality where my brain goes first. But like I think I'm also with you and like, who cares? Is their life better? Probably. Exactly. If they've been adopted and they're in a good situation, like isn't that just the best thing? Like there are so many children in the world who just need love and stability and a home and, you know, parents who care for them. Like, is that the worst thing? I don't know. Obviously there's question around like how ethical some of the adoptions have been. Like if the child still has parents and they just can't afford to take care of the child,

like wouldn't it be better for you to, I don't know, start a school somewhere or like provide funds for at risk children so that they can stay with their actual parents rather than just like, well, I'll take your child and I'll raise them. Again, I don't know. It's getting so into like the nitty gritty of each individual case, isn't it? rather than just like the overall feeling we have around these situations. And I guess some people will make the argument that they don't like the whole thing because it's like somehow if you adopt a child from a race or a culture that isn't yours,

then you're somehow robbing that child of their cultural heritage, etc. Which like isn't really a strong argument for me personally. I think kids need love, they need warmth, they need stability, they need a home before we even worry about like are there cultural needs being met? I just, that's just my opinion anyway. And I don't think people who adopt cross racially really need to beat themselves up for not being able to provide that, especially if they're meeting that child's needs in every other way. It's a nice to have, but like is it that important? And an awareness of it as well, I think.

Like it's, it's, and I also, I often sound like I think about this all the time. I rarely think about this. But what is the alternative? If we say, okay, no cross-racial adoptions, are we just segregating? Yeah. What are we saying if we say that? What are we saying in that case? We're saying that, like, there's somehow such a stark difference between people of different races that we cannot allow cross-racial adoption. That feels really regressive to me. But at the same time, I do find it hard when I look at those situations sometimes, particularly with. celebrities, and very much so in this case, with Jennifer and Sarah Hart, that is it down to performative virtue signalling rather than what's best for the child. But how can we tell

the difference? How can we tell the difference between someone who has really good, pure intentions and somebody who was doing performative virtue signaling? Like, it's very, very hard to be able to tell. We literally cannot. No one's ever going to tell you which one it is. You just have to make your best guess, get on with your life, I think. It's really hard. And I think a story that we're stuck with me. And I think I have said this on the podcast before. I can't remember why. But Prue Leith, who used to be the judge on bake-off. Bake-off. I watched a documentary with her because she adopted. Which Americans call the Great British Baking Show, by the way. Yes, they do. Why do you find the concept of a

bake-off too difficult for a television program? Maybe they just don't have bake-offs and they're like, what the fuck's a bake-off. But then they have balance-offs. You can figure out what a bake-off is. Anyway, so Prueleith, who was on that, has now been replaced by Nigello. for the next season. Did you know that? Has she real? Yeah. Love a bit of Nigella. So yes, Prueleith. I watched a documentary with her where she was talking about how she had adopted. I think her daughter was Vietnamese.

Cambodian. A Cambodian. Yeah. So she adopts a little girl from Cambodia. Sorry, I know, I'm terrible. Those black Vietnamese are really haunting you. And she basically is like really, really. And her daughter's like, you know, a grown woman in this documentary. And like, Prulith, it was so. sad to see her like crying and crying and crying in this documentary because she felt like she had

failed her daughter because she hadn't like taught her Cambodian and hadn't like allowed her daughter to be imbibed in like Cambodian culture while she was growing up in London or wherever they were in the UK. And I'm like, your daughter seems really happy. She seems really healthy. You gave her a great life. Like, I feel sad that this woman is sat here crying after she has done the best for this woman who is very happy and thriving. because she didn't learn Cambodian. I'm like, come on, guys. Like, I get it.

But I'm like, parents are always going to feel like they didn't do enough. But I think give yourself a break. Give yourself a fucking break. Like, I'm saying this as a woman who's bilingual, but I'm like, if I have a child, I'm like, I'd love to be able to teach them Tamil. Will I succeed in doing that when I have to deal with all of the other pressures of being a mother?

I'll probably be sad about it, but I'll get over it. And like, that is somebody who is, that is my culture. And that is my language. And I still probably won't be able to do it because life is hard. So, yeah, my friends are in a sort of multilingual household. And you know, had all of the best intentions. But she was like, it is so hard when your child starts to speak to tell them they're doing it wrong. Yeah.

And you're just like, you've got to worry about potty training and then biting other kids. And like, you know, there's loads of shit to worry about. Oh, yeah. Like, are they killing frogs when I'm not looking? Exactly, exactly. And you're just like, you know, the last thing I think parents need to worry about is like, am I culturally providing for this child? Like, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe that's just my opinion. Anyway. Well, it's your show. I refuse to make any other qualifiers than by ending everything we're saying, well, that's just my opinion. Do you like scary stories? If you're anything like us, you'd agree that the scariest stories are the ones people actually live. through. And that's why we think you'll enjoy true scary story. Every episode features first-hand

accounts from people who've experienced something they still can't explain. Things like eerie encounters, living in haunted homes and unsettling moments that have stayed with them for years. Their real experience is told by the people who lived them. What makes it compelling is how grounded it is. The host lets the storytellers take center stage, creating the feeling that you're sitting across from someone who's finally sharing the story they've been carrying around for years. Search for true scary story wherever you get your podcasts and give it a listen. And maybe don't start your first episode right before bed. So aside from Jen and Sarah's obvious desire to build a rainbow family,

they assured Bree, who was white, that she was welcome to stay once any future adoptees came home to live with them. But a little over a year after moving in with the hearts, Brie had the rug swiped out from under her in the most brutal way. One afternoon, the couple dropped her off at a scheduled therapy appointment and never came back. This is disgusting. At the end of an otherwise normal session,

Bree's therapist explained that her caseworker was waiting outside to take her to a new foster home. no explanations, no goodbyes. All of Bree's belongings had already been taken from the heart's home. That is diabolical. Isn't it? And what is really diabolical about it for me is the fact that it's not just Sarah and Jen who have done this. Like there are other people in the system who are complicit in allowing this situation to unfold.

Like the arrangements for her to go somewhere else have already been made. Her belongings have already been moved. And the therapist is told, you can tell her, right? You can tell her for us. We're just going to go. You can deal with this. Like, how has this been allowed to happen? And how are they then allowed to go forward and adopt children?

Because this, this scenario, if you're going to be like, do you know what? We wanted to try fostering and it's really hard. We're really struggling. We don't think we can do this. we'd like to not do it anymore. Okay, fine. That's a conversation to be had. Everything needs to be dealt with sensitively.

But like, you're just like, we don't want to do this. We're going to adopt instead. Like, how is that being allowed to happen? Like, why are these people not, like, they're not fit? They're not fit to adopt if they can't deal with a foster situation in a more sensitive way. It's really bizarre to me. It's really bizarre. It's awful.

Now, as you can imagine, for years afterwards, Brie kept wondering what she had done wrong. But the timing of Bree's abandonment may have been the answer in its own right. Because just two weeks after they ditched their foster daughter, Jen and Sarah adopted their first three children. Why are they allowed three in one go? I think it's because they're siblings and they're... Okay, that makes sense. And they don't want to separate them,

and it's probably quite hard to find people who are like, we'll take three. I mean, that's probably how they managed to pull it off so quickly. Getting someone to take three is quite difficult probably. Yeah. And this does make us ask, did the hearts ever actually intend to let Brie build a life with them? Or had the whole project of fostering been about making themselves look like solid candidates for adoption? And once they got what they wanted, they cast her aside, which in and of itself how they cast her aside, like I said, should have proven that they were not a solid fit for adoption. But the state's desperate.

And I think that is, that's what rings through a lot of this story, is the desperation of the. of the social services and of like the fostering system, the adoption system and the state to just be like, we need homes for kids. Do you want them? Do you want one? Do you want two? Do you want three? Do you want six? Okay, fucking great. We don't tell us anything else. Whatever it was, Jen and Sarah now found themselves starting a whole new chapter. In March 2006, they became the proud mums to three black children from Texas. 8-year-old Marcus, his younger sister's 4-year-old Hannah and 3-year-old Abigail. The kids had been placed in foster care after their mum was accused of neglect.

Although Jen and Sarah were young and lacking family support, they didn't have to say much to convince the adoption agency that they were the perfect fit. The fact that they were willing to adopt a set of three black siblings at all was convincing enough for the Texas foster care system. So in a matter of months, the children were sent to their new home in the 96% white town of Alexandria, Minnesota, on the other side of the country. Where their new mums seemed eager to show off the poor disadvantaged kids that they had just saved, giving themselves an industrial-sized pat on the back. But let's just say, Jen and Sarah weren't quite prepared for the challenge that they had taken on. As part of agreeing to adopt the siblings, Jen and Sarah had agreed to support them with any therapy that they might need, given their rough start in life.

But as Jen would later confess on Facebook, by God, did these kids need therapy? Duh! What did you think was going to happen? This is the thing, right? I'm going to tell you what she talks about, like what they talk about being the problems with these kids. I have no doubt that these kids had challenges. Of course they did. But I don't believe.

Or we don't have evidence that it was as bad as Jen is making out on Facebook. Because she has to be the martyr, the hero. Not only have we adopted these three black kids from Texas that were neglected by their mother, they're also completely fucked. So yeah. Jen would write on Facebook. Things like this. And let's look at one intensely detailed post from Jen's social media page, where she described their very first day of motherhood.

Shared on the 10th anniversary of the kids' adoption, Jen bragged about the triumph they'd felt at becoming lesbian mothers in rural Minnesota. And this is important. Not only is it like we're saving these black kids, not only are these black kids totally fucking crazy. We're also lesbians in Minnesota, and everybody hates us here because we're lesbians. Whatever. Nobody seems to give a fuck.

literally no one seems to give a single fuck that they're lesbians with adopted kids but she's just like hey I see you I see you looking at me yeah we're lesbians and these are our black kids everyone's like cool

Minnesota nice and she's just like fuck off like honestly it is like that that's her mentality so yes she basically says it was a huge triumph

because it had been so hard because they had adopted these children only to realize the catastrophic challenges each child presented within the very first 12 hours of bringing them home. She said Marcus repeatedly bashed his head on the wall after being denied a Tutsi roll. Abigail suffered an asthma attack that caused her to stop breathing, while Hannah smeared feces on the walls. I needed the heimlich manoeuvre after eating so much food she choked.

And then, in a grand finale, she projectile vomited all over the place. Jen wrote how she and Sarah were questioning everything that night. But when a social worker shrugged the next day that they should just give the kids wherever they want, Jen's social justice, spidey senses, were well and truly activated. Because to super mum Jen, this was abhorrent advice. And this is it again. It's like, I'm not saying the social worker didn't say that. I don't know what the social worker said.

But whether that was said or not, again, it's another thing. Not only now is the world against her. It's like even the social workers don't really know what they're talking about. Not like I do. I am a mum and I know what's right for these kids. She'd only been a mum for a matter of hours. But she absolutely knew better than a social worker. Here is a quote from the end of this particularly lengthy Facebook post.

We could not give up on these kids. I should hope not after four hours. How can a child even know what they want when they haven't been gifted with what they need? If not us, who? But I will. At 25 years old, we didn't have any parenting experience under our belts, but we had boatloads of love, compassion, intelligence,

and the natural instincts to navigate these wild and uncharted waters. Yeah. Give me strength. Like, without any of the information that I have, Just reading that, I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that person knows fuck all about what it is to be a mother. Absolutely nothing. Yeah. And this is just the running theme throughout this.

From the very start, Jen was casting herself in the role of a heroine for these kids. It was the beginning of the fabled heart family saga, one that Jen would continue to pedal in rambling Facebook posts. right until the very bitter end. Now it's absolutely true that the trauma children face when placed in care can manifest in all kinds of behavioural problems down the line. Nobody is denying that. But here's the thing. It's impossible to confirm if the physical and psychological issues Jen claimed

Marcus, Abigail and Hannah had were even real. A lot of what Jen shared on Facebook and were child protection services would later prove to be a load of bollocks. So we have to exercise a bit of skepticism here. Not to mention, Jen also seemed determined to prove that all of these supposed issues, these myriad issues that these kids came to them with, were all basically completely cured whilst the children were under her care. I'm so annoyed with myself that I didn't see that coming.

Which is what makes me more sceptical about what she's saying, because she's not an expert in anything, and she somehow manages to cure these kids of all of these rampant issues that she says that they have. Fuck off. No way. I don't think that was ever happening. Jen would also go on to claim that Abigail came to them, quote, borderline mentally retarded,

and Hannah was morbidly obese. But with their boatloads of love and their natural instincts, that all curiously just vanished. Because, of course, it would enhance Jen's story if she painted an even bleak a picture of the children when they first arrived into her warm maternal bosom. Seems obvious, really, doesn't it? Now, soon enough, the hearts decided that three rambunctious kids just wasn't enough,

because they had plenty more love to go around. So they went back to the same Minnesota Adoption Agency, seeking three more children of, quote, any ethnicity, up to eight years old. Well, why not? They did such a good job with the first three. Exactly. Get brain transplant and crash dieting. Yeah, absolutely. And in 2008, they got their wish.

Five-year-old Devonte and his siblings, four-year-old Jeremiah and three-year-old Sierra, came from Texas to live with the hearts for a six-month trial placement before adoption. Their mum, Sherry Davis, had lost custody in 2004 after she and a newborn Jeremiah tested positive for cocaine. The children had been living with their aunt,

Priscilla Celestine, which is a great name. That is a fantastic name. And Priscilla had been not only woman with a great name, but the ideal guardian. Priscilla worked a stable job, had no criminal record. And most importantly, she wanted to look after these children, and she is also blood-related to them. Sherry and the kid's father actually relinquished their paternal rights to increase the kids' chances of being adopted by Priscilla. And that meant that they weren't allowed any contact with them. But when Priscilla had no choice but to ask Sherry to babysit the kids when she had to work,

a CPS worker showed up unannounced at the worst possible time and removed Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra, and put them in foster care the same day. Since their biological parents had given up any rights, the kids' adoption was then opened up, not just to their aunt, but to any interested party. with the Texas CPS system using a process called concurrent planning.

This meant that basically whoever was approved first would win custody. Like eBay. Yeah. It's just, again, showing the desperation and showing how, like, are you really putting the kids' best needs first? It's like, do you want to do something fast or do you want to do it right? And they're like, fast, please.

Totally unrelated. But this is, I think, maybe, the most lateral my brain has ever gone. But very famously, Stephen Sondheim, I can't remember which musical, maybe a little night music. He made the producer and director

pushed the press night for two weeks because he wanted to add a song. And the director goes into a complete connoisseons. Like, I cannot believe you're expecting me to do this. And Stephen Sondheim just goes, do you want it now or do you want it to be good? He also wrote,

Send In the Clowns, the night before a little night music went up. And it's probably his most famous one. Sometimes it can be fast and right. If you're students on time, it is possible. Most of us aren't. Someone get him a job at the Texas Adoption Centre. Anyway, despite Priscilla's desperate attempts,

Jen and Sarah Hart, a pair of total strangers in another state, won that race. Here's the real kicker. Those two strangers in the completely other state would soon have an allegation of child abuse made against them. It was during Devonte Jeremiah and Sierra's trial placement with the heart that this first report of abuse emerged. A school teacher reported the women to the police

after discovering bruising on six-year-old Hannah's arm, which she said she had got by being whipped with a belt. Jen and Sarah denied any responsibility saying they had had no idea how it had happened. And because there wasn't enough evidence to suggest otherwise, the case was closed. And despite this deeply concerning report, the hearts were able to sail through and finalise their adoption of Devonte Jeremiah and Sierra in 2009. With no one from the state of Texas ever checking on them again. As the family of eight settled into in Minnesotan life, Jen took on the role of stay-at-home mum

while Sarah worked full-time as a sales manager at Herbages. Later that year, the six children were the only witnesses at their mum's wedding in Connecticut. Is that legal? That seems illegal. Anyway, they were the only witnesses because, as Jen put it on Facebook, our support system was so small. Because you alienated all of your own family by cutting them off. Because you're unpleasant to be around. That's why.

According to the narrative that Jen was meticulously crafting online, it was the heart family against the world, united by love. But in the real world, where we live, a much darker picture was emerging. Between November 2010 and January 2011, the Minnesota CPS received six allegations of child abuse against Jen and Sarah. The first was when seven-year-old Abigail told her. a teacher that her mum Jen gave her an owie and then pulled up her shirt to reveal serious bruising on both side of her torso. According to Abigail, they discovered a penny in her pocket and accused her of stealing. And then Jen bent her over the side of the bath and spanked her repeatedly before

pushing her head under cold water with both hands on her neck. This time, the heart mums, surprisingly, didn't deny it. But contrary to Abigail's version of events, they insisted the one to blame wasn't Jen. It had been Sarah. Now given what we know about these women, this is particularly hard to believe. Not only was Sarah clearly the more passive partner, she was also at work most of the time while Jen was the one at home looking after the kids. And just a month later, eight-year-old Hannah separately disclosed. that Jen had hit her for lying.

And she also said, in fact, that Jen hit her all the time. And this is the thing that I find really odd about this, is that why don't they just deny hitting the kids at all? Why would Jen and Sarah lie about which one of them was actually hurting the kids? Because the more truth you include in a lie, the more believable it becomes. Yeah.

And I guess the kids are saying it, even though the kids are saying it's Jen. Maybe they can't deny the bruises. Who knows? It could be also because it's Jen's name who's on the monthly assistance checks that come from the state of Texas for adopting the kids out of foster care. So was Jen worried that those funds might be put in jeopardy if she was found to be the one at the center of the child abuse investigation? But like surely it's not much better if your wife is the one beating these kids. Like, I don't know. So perhaps it's more to do with the unequal power balance at play between Jen and Sarah.

and the way that Jen was absolutely determined to dominate the narrative of their story. Maybe Jen just knew her wife would go along with whatever version she wanted her to tell because she'd had Sarah under control for years by this point. And this is also another way for her to control Sarah, but also another way for her to paint herself as even more of a victim and even more of a hero. Because now not only is she the long-suffering wife of this lesbian power couple that have adopted these children. Her wife goes to work all day, comes home, angry and beats the children,

and she's just stuck there trying to save everybody. Oh, yeah. Not only am I, you know, fighting for my life as a lesbian in Minnesota, I'm the best one. Yeah. Whatever the reason. In April 2011, Sarah pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of domestic assault. She received a 90-day suspended sentence. One year probation and community service,

and CPS ordered her not to use physical discipline with the children. Was their custody challenged? No. And worse, it was becoming increasingly clear that corporal punishment wasn't the only form of abuse taking place in the heart home. Around the same time as Abigail's incident, the school nurse called the hearts to tell them that Hannah had been begging her classmates for food

and digging around in the bins. And when a nurse got in touch with Sarah about this concern, she dismissively told them. She's playing the food card. Just give her water. Fortunately, this wasn't quite good enough for the school. So they got CPS involved. Which no school wants to do, by the way.

That is like panic stations. Like absolutely no school wants to do that for no reason. For fun, because it's not fun. Like everyone's under scrutiny. Like, it's not something that's done lightly. I think there's a bit of a misconception about that. Yeah. Now, from their interviews with the Hart Children,

it emerged that withholding food was one of Sarah and Jen's favourite punishments for misbehaviour. When they were confronted about it, the mum's babbled excuses about the children being high risk and having food issues from their troubled early years. But that didn't account for how tiny the kids were.

CPS reported that Abigail, who was six years old at the time, looked like she was just two, advising that she'd be seen by a doctor over concerns of malnourishment. But the doctor came back saying that Abigail was just small, shrugging that our biological family history was unknown since she was adopted. And as soon as the assessment was over,

just two days before Sarah was convicted of domestic assault, the heart's pulled all six children out of school. They likely realised that if they just minimised the kid's contact with other adults, all this CPS business would go away. And one very astute caseworker clocked this at the time. They wrote in a report that because these women look normal, there was a risk of any issues being fobbed off and falsely attributed to the children's high-risk early lives. And now the kids were cut off from their peers and teachers.

The CPS worker literally wrote that they risked falling through the cracks. And this person was dead on the money. They smelled Jen and Sarah's bullshit from a mile away, but as we have seen many times before when it comes to child protective services in this country and the States, nothing was done. And the Harts were free

to take things a step further, which is a lot easier when your kids are not in school. Yeah. In early 2013, the Harts decided to escape the prying eyes of the Minnesota child welfare system entirely by moving to West Lynn, Oregon, just outside Portland.

Though the law requires parents to notify the local district if they want to homeschool their kids, Jen and Sarah never actually registered the Hart children in Oregon. Now they were really off the grid. That's terrifying, truly. On social media, Jen painted a rosy picture of life in Oregon, including Lessons by the Lake, hanging out with their pet chickens and going to music festivals. And that last bit became a key part of Hart family life. While Sarah worked to bring home the bacon, Jen would regularly drag the kids along to vibey new age music festivals across the West Coast, often for weeks at a time.

And because this is Jen, she obviously documented every moment of these trips. She shed countless photos of her children throwing peace signs against bright sunsets or holding signs with generic inspirational bullshit, like kindness is contagious. And this wasn't just fun for Jen. It was free PR. At these festivals, Jen got to a. embody the role of the inspiring, vivacious queer woman who'd selflessly taken in half a dozen black children and given them lives that they could have only dreamed of, basically making

her a hero in their peace-loving hippie community. And as the sprawling heart family became a fixture on the New Age music fest scene, its star act quickly became clear. Devonte. Despite being the middle child, Devonte emerged as the most charismatic. and outgoing of the bunch. Did you see that article recently that people are only having two children like three and up is stopping happening in the UK and I saw someone comment on it being like

middle children disappearing is the most middle child thing I have ever heard. Yeah, I texted to my sister she did not appreciate it. Devonte premiered his iconic free hugs sign at one of the festivals, which Jen insisted on Facebook was his idea. Ugh. Don't encourage strangers to hug your child.

What the fuck? It's so, because these children mean nothing. The welfare of these children, as if I need to say it, mean absolutely nothing to her. She's gone from this like mentality of we're going to be in Minnesota and like, I'm going to pretend like everybody is persecuting me for being in a lesbian couple and like adopting these kids. when nobody cares and actually all that's happening is she's getting a load of shit from the Minnesotan like adoption send. When I say a load of shit, the mildest of scrutiny is what I should actually say. Then she's like, fuck this. Let's go off the grid. Let's go to Portland.

Like, not even Portland. Let's go to outside of Portland and drag our kids around these new age festivals. Where she knows exactly the type of person who's going to be there. No shade if you're that kind of person who's hanging out at these festivals. But the kind of people that are going to put her on this pedestal that she can just fucking revel in. The people who are like only at a festival where she has to meet them there, so they're not really going to be like your neighbors who are like watching you and seeing if the kids are like functioning on whatever. This is her absolute dream. And the fact that she gives Devonte a free hug sign sums up how much she doesn't give a fuck about these kids. And this is where it goes.

Very like Jackson 5, I feel like. She doesn't give a shit about any of them except Michael, who is Devonte. Devonte became known for him. his trademark wide smile and affectionate nature. So like any stage mum worth her salt, Jen saw Devonte's star quality and she ran with it. But also like every other stage mum, it's because they secretly wish she was there. While the other siblings barely featured, Devonte appeared as the main attraction in Jen's countless Facebook posts

and YouTube videos interacting with musicians on stage, dancing for hours at home, being goofy on camera. Sometimes Jen even took him to festivals alone because why bother with the hassle of five other kids when you can just take the good one? Devonte personified the whole vibe Jen was keen to show off a happy, sensitive black boy showing the world how loving he had become

since his white mothers had rescued him. But even with Devonte as their poster boy, the heart's cruel parenting habits persisted behind the scenes and they didn't go unnoticed. In June 2013, a friend was disturbed to notice that Jen only allowed the children a tiny slides of pizza each during a sleepover. And when she discovered that one of them had crept into the kitchen in the middle of the night for another slice, Jen had doled out a bizarre, extreme punishment on all six kids, forcing them to wear sleep masks and lie down on an inflated mattress with their arms at their sides for five hours.

Just a few days after this incident, another whistleblower called CPS. They claimed that the kids seemed scared to death of Jen and even asked her permission to answer the most basic questions. With these troubling reports, Oregon CPS decided it was time to pay the family a visit. Unsurprisingly, they got the welcome wagon from Chatti Devonte. Jen bragged that he was famous across the country for his free hugs, and the caseworkers noted that he was the only child that she showed any affection towards.

In contrast, the other heart children were extremely reserved and showed little emotion. But even Devonte's chattyness couldn't hide the fact that all of these kids were extremely small for their ages. The CPS report noted, again, that Abigail was tiny for her age. Still, Jen had an explanation ready.

She claimed that the family followed a strict vegetarian diet that made them all naturally slender. And it was all again frustratingly shrugged off as being due to the children's traumatic pre-adoption years and unknown biohistory. During the CPS visit, none of the children mentioned any abuse, not even Hannah and Abigail

who'd previously made disclosures to their teachers. But considering that Jen and Sarah were in the next room, that's hardly surprising. And the CPS workers were definitely not prepared for football fanatic Jen's ironclad defence tactics. During that CPS visit, Jen Hart was noted to dominate the conversation, and when Sarah did speak, her answers were verbatim the same as her wife's. And the key line of Jen's defence was the lesbian mum's card.

Jen insisted that she and Sarah weren't abusive or neglectful, it was just that other people were too small-minded to comprehend her family's alternative lifestyle. According to Jen, the small-minded rednecks in their town just couldn't handle them being queer moms as six black kids, so they were trying to bring them down. Jen presented their home as a peaceful, queer Nirvana, where discipline meant silent meditation and the kids were encouraged to work out their feelings through yoga. And so, being investigated for suspected child abuse, Jen managed to play the reverse Uno card and present herself as the real victim here.

And if it didn't work, no one would do it. This time it works as well. CPS officials concluded that they were unable to determine if Jen and Sarah were actually guilty of neglect. It was an incredible missed opportunity for the heart kids to get the help they sorely needed. And it might have saved their lives. But that was...

The last time, CPS went anywhere near them. Because the following year was 2014, and the Hart family were about to make their worldwide debut. On the 8th of November, Jen posted to Facebook about an interaction Devonte had had with a customer in line at a grocery store. Essentially, a man had apparently made a comment about Devonte looking like he'd be an athlete when he got older because he was black. And according to Jen, Devonte very gracefully put the man in his place.

She wrote this up in a classic yarn weaving Jen style, making Devonte seem like the wisest 10-year-old alive. As the sort of feel-good story moms on Facebook share like mad, this post went viral. Jen was interviewed by the Huffington Post and out came an article entitled Meet Devonte, the little boy with a big heart. And since this is Jen Hart we're talking about,

But she couldn't just tell an international news outlet any old boring adoption story. She painted them a graphic picture of Devonte's tragic pre-heart family life. That's interesting, isn't it? She doesn't know anything about it when CPS ask. According to the article, before Jen and Sarah came to rescue Devonte, he'd already smoked, drank, handled guns and been shot at, all before the ripe old age of four. And she said that when they adopted their star child age six, the only words he knew was shit and fuck. Now there's no denying that Devonte and his siblings' original environment

was not suitable for children. Their biological mother was battling drug addiction for much of their early lives, and it wasn't in their best interest to stay there. But there's no evidence to suggest that Devonte had been exposed to the level of violence that Jen claimed, or that he had such a limited vocabulary at the age of six. It very much feels like Jen saw this moment as an opportunity to take her reputation further,

build on the Facebook posts and make everything seem so much more intense than it really was. Because the smiley, gregarious black boy in the cute fedora was all the more inspiring when you knew the harrowing odds that he'd overcome to get there. And the only ones to thank for, for this happily ever after? Well, they were his two white lesbian mums, Jen and Sarah Hart. But of course, mostly Jen. Then came December 2014,

when the killing of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri sparked racial reckonings across the country. After a grand jury refused to indict the officer, protesters, with the newly formed Black Lives Matter movement, took to the streets in cities from coast to coast in response. And naturally, the Hart family were among the protesters in Portland.

It was at this protest that Devonte was photographed, with tears streaming down his cheeks in a tender embrace with a white cop. For a moment in time, it was the photo scene around the world, smacked onto the front page of newspapers everywhere. You've seen it, I promise you, I just looked it up. Devonte wearing his trademark for Doria and his free hug sign became a symbol for racial healing literally overnight. or at least to some people.

A substantial chunk of the internet did not see the photo as a snapshot of genuine reconciliation in a tense political movement. They saw what it was, a cynically staged photo opportunity. The hearts were suddenly the subject of unprecedented media attention. And this time, it wasn't like getting a few comments on Jen's personal Facebook page.

There were op-eds arguing over what the photo represented and discussion threads about why Devonte was really crying. And people online were even speculating on Jen's role in the photo. To a lot of them, it looked like Jen was deliberately posing her adopted black child as a prop in the name of social justice. Which, let's be honest, that's exactly what she was doing. Yep. But needless to say, it was the exact opposite of how Jen wanted to be perceived.

After everything kicked off, Jen became reclusive and depressed, was Sarah telling a friend that the whole thing had changed Jen for good. Jen even took a six-month hiatus from social media in 2016, re-emerging on Facebook in the spring of 2017, to announce that the Hart family had moved once again, this time to Woodland, Washington, into the last house they would ever live in. It was here that the now 15-year-old Hannah made her last desperate bid for help.

One night in September 2017 at around 1.30 a.m. Neighbours, Dana and Bruce DeKalb woke up to frantic knocking at their door. When they opened the door to find Hannah outside, they nearly didn't recognise her. Because ever since the Hart family moved in, they'd barely caught so much as a glimpse of the children. But now, here was Hannah, bolting inside as soon as they opened the door, saying that she jumped from a second story window to get out of her house. Hannah told them that her mothers were racists who whipped her with belts and she begged the DeKalps to hide her. Minutes later, Dana and Bruce heard Jen Sarah and the other kids calling Hannah's name. When they appeared at the DeKalb's doorstep, Jen explained that Hannah struggled with mental health issues and her behaviour was the result

of a rough week. Since it was the middle of the night, they didn't. know what else to do. Dana and Bruce accepted Jen's explanation and went back to bed. But at 6.30 a.m. the next morning the entire heart family was ringing their doorbell. The early hours' visit was jarring enough, let alone all eight of them being stood there. Hannah gave Dana a handwritten note apologising for disturbing their peace and for telling lies to get attention, saying I'm working on being more honest. To Dana, those didn't really seem like the words of a child. Then Jen proceeded to monologue for nearly an hour

about how the kids had all been drug babies while her family stood silently by. Needless to say, as we all would be, Dana was completely freaked out by the whole situation. Her instinct was to call CPS, but her husband Bruce didn't want the drama with the new neighbours. So Dana did the only other thing she could think of. She kept watch from her window and started taking notes. She noticed the controlling way Jen would let the kids out of the car, first getting out herself, then going around

opening each door one by one, then sending the kids in single file. Dana also noticed that Devonte was the only child who ever did garden work, as she sometimes saw him hauling large bags of dirt by himself. But mostly, Dana noticed that the kids rarely left the house. and the blinds were always drawn. When Dana told her elderly father about her concerns, he took matters into his own hands and reported the hearts to the police in November 2017. But when someone from the county sheriff's office

called the DeKalbbs to follow up, the dispatcher was dismissive and told Dana, it's not illegal to keep kids inside. Even though they sent something wasn't right, the DeKalbs felt powerless to help. By March 2018, things and the... the heart home seemed to have reached breaking point. This time Devonte nervously approached the DeKalbs and begged them for food. He specifically requested non-perishables, including six jars

of peanut butter, and asked them to leave it in a box by the fence for him to secretly share with his siblings. Dana knew then that these children were being starved. And her heart dropped, when Tofonte finally admitted that everything Hannah had told the DeKalbs that night back in September 2017 was true. Devonte confirmed that Jen was the main enforcer of the kid's cruel punishments. And while Sarah used to refuse to go along with it, even she had stopped trying. But despite these horrifying confessions, Devonte still pleaded with Dana not to confront his mum's or to call the police because he was afraid that they would split him and his siblings up. Dana kept taking notes of everything Devonte told her, certain that the next time she rang the

CPS they would have no choice but to listen. Almost every day from the 15th to the 21st of March, Devonte showed up at the DeKalb's house for food and sometimes several times a day. During this time, Jen kept up her cheerful Facebook diary like nothing was happening, posting a cheery picture of Devonte holding a tray full of dirt and claiming they were having loads of fun planting fruit and veggies at home. All the while, he was literally begging the neighbours to feed him and his siblings. Now from here, things get a bit blurring.

So here's what we know about the Hart's vinyl days. Devonte visited the DeKalbbs for the last time on the 22nd of March 2018, and the next day they called CPS to conduct a welfare check on the family. While Jen's Yukon SUV was in the driveway, no one answered the door when the CPS agent came to visit the same day. Less than an hour later, Dana saw Sarah's car speeding up the driveway to the house. and by the next day the SUV was also gone. Sarah had been scheduled to open the retail store

where she worked at 6am on the 24th, but at 3 a.m., she texted her co-workers saying she was too ill to come in. On the 25th of March, a surveillance camera captured Jen at a supermarket in Fort Bragg, California, a 10-hour drive from their Washington home. It was less than 20 miles from the cliff her car would drive off, less than 24 hours later. At around 3 a.m. on the 26th of March, a couple sleeping in their van at a turn off alongside the Pacific Coast Highway were awoken by the sound of tyres screeching on gravel.

Earlier that night, the man had peaked outside when he heard another car parking up nearby. And when he got out to investigate now, he noticed that that car had gone. The man walked to the edge of the cliff and stared into the inky darkness. and heard what he thought sounded like a whale coming from below. Whale as in cry, not whale as in aquatic mammal. It wasn't until after sunrise that the shocking truth would come to light. That morning, a German tourist spotted the Hart's SUV flipped upside down at the bottom of the cliff. The incident was initially called in as a multiple fatalities traffic accident.

When emergency responders repelled down to the wreckage, they found the bodies of Jennifer and Sarah Hart inside the car. The bodies of Marcus, Abigail and Jeremiah were found on the rocks nearby. Once investigators ID'd the hearts, they knew they'd only found half the family. Sierra, Hannah and Devonte was still missing. Two weeks after the crash, Sierra's body washed ashore. And in May, when a passer,

by found a pair of trousers and a small shoe on a Mendocino beach. The decomposed foot inside came back as a DNA match for Hannah. But to this day, Devonte's body has never been found. A day after the crash, investigators discovered a card from CPS, still wedged in the front door of the family's home in Woodland, Washington. Other than a ripped open bag of chicken feed on the living room floor and some clothing strewn around on the mother's bed. The house was perfectly neat. But it did not look like a home where children lived. The kids shared a room containing just

two small beds and a mattress on the floor with no decor whatsoever. What investigators did find was a fully stocked fridge. Remember what a strict vegetarian Jen said the whole family were? Well, inside the fridge they found lunch meats, hot dogs, chicken and fresh beef. Again, it's It's perfectly emblematic of the real Jen. Not only a woman with a fully stocked fridge while her children starved, but also, once again, I can't help but feel like the virtue signaling of we're very strict vegetarians in this house. A hypocrite of the highest order.

The more evidence emerged, the less it looked like a tragic accident. Information downloaded from the car's computer confirmed that Jen, the driver of the car, made no attempt to. to hit the brakes. The SUV had stopped 70 feet from the cliff edge and then rapidly accelerated to 90 miles an hour before hurtling towards the ocean. There was also no evidence that anyone in the car

had been wearing seat belts. Toxicology tests showed that Jen's blood alcohol level was well over the legal limit. Sarah and the children's autopsy showed significant amounts of the drug Diffenhydramine, which is the main ingredient in allergy medications like Benadryl, which is what people take to fall asleep on planes. The high levels of this drug found in the heart family system

suggested that they had been drugged an hour or two before the incident, so they would have been sound asleep when Jen drove them over the edge. Data pulled from Sarah's phone also revealed some disturbing searches. Can 500 milligrams of Benadryl kill a 120,000, £25-pound woman. And how long does it take to die from hypothermia while drowning in a car? It was obvious. This crash was no accident.

It was a deliberate, premeditated murder-suicide family annihilation. At first, nobody could believe the seemingly happy heart family had gone out like this. Their social media presence was all rainbows and smiles. So surely there had to be a mistake. Even as details of the family's history with CPS began to emerge in the press, friends and acquaintances initially refused to believe that Jen and Sarah had ever been anything but loving parents. But most of the examples these friends had were only what they'd seen online.

So basically, exactly what Jen had wanted them to see. Because Jen Hart was actively dedicated to maintaining an online version of her life that bore absolutely no resemblance at all to the... real one. It's a skill that is extremely characteristic of manipulative abusers. Managing their public identity is crucial to keeping their private abuses private. When the rest of the world only ever gets to see their curated side, it makes it easier for victims' claims of abuse to be dismissed. That's exactly what happened at first. But with her car crashed at the bottom of a cliff and true stories spilling out.

Jen's House of Cards finally came tumbling down. Now everyone could see the heart women for who they really were. But the real question isn't how they duped everyone into believing their lie of a picture-perfect life. It's how they were allowed to get away with it for so long. Investigative journalist Roxanna Ascarian tried to answer this question in her 2023 book, We Were Once a Family. So let's just make it worse and take a difference. dive into the very fucked-up American child welfare system, because why not?

Tragically, in 2006, when Devonte Jeremiah and Sierra were removed from their biological mother, black children in Texas were almost twice as likely to be reported as victims of abuse or neglect than white children. And since the federal government gives generous funding to states who quickly get kids out of foster care into adoptive homes, that meant that there was a financial incentive for the state of Texas to ship these children out to the first family that would take them. Ascarian found that Texas is known for terminating the parental rights of children and foster care at a rate that far outstrips the rest of the nation, creating adoptees that can essentially be farmed out for cash. In 2008, the year Devonte and his siblings were adopted, the state

of Texas, earned 8.5 million in federal adoption incentives. And the injustice runs even deeper. When Devonte and his siblings, Aunt Priscilla, was looking after them, she didn't qualify for the financial support that an external fosterer would have got because she was a relative. This is unbelievable because if Aunt Priscilla had had that kind of support financially from the state, she would have been able to hire a babysitter rather than relying on the kid's biological mum to help babysit the kids when she had to go to work.

The mistake that cost her dearly with CPS and ended up having the kids taken off her. And despite the family pooling together, around $3,000 to appeal the decision, Priscilla was pipped to the post by the hearts because of what we told you about earlier, concurrent planning. With all of this in the mix,

you end up with a system that disproportionately favours outside adopters rather than keeping the kids with their families. Basically, the attitude of the state tends to be that biological families must have fucked up once if the kids landed in foster care. So why even bother with lengthy court protocols to reunite them when we can just as quickly find a new family and wipe the slate clean? As if remaining with your biological family means nothing, if that is even an option. So with that mentality, it didn't even seem to matter that an abuse allegation was made during Devonte Jeremiah and Hannah's six-month pre-adoption trial period.

The Texan judge who approved Jen and Sarah's adoption noted that since there were no criminal charges, it was fine to proceed. Jen and Sarah were given the benefit of the doubt, a privilege that Aunt Priscilla never got. The fact that multiple states were involved in this story made things even murkier as it usually does. The child welfare system is a huge web of independently operating state, county and city agencies.

with no universal oversight or rules. And to this day, there is no national database for child abuse allegations in the US. That's shocking. Yeah. Wow, so you can just move from state to state and basically just be like, nah, redo. Yeah. And the hearts use that to their advantage many times over. They first adopt the children from Texas and then they moved them to Minnesota.

and when CPS in Minnesota started pissing them off, the hearts moved to Oregon, and then when it got too hot in Oregon, they moved to Washington. And everywhere they went, people already gave Jen and Sarah a wide birth because they were lesbian moms parenting high-risk children.

Nobody else wanted to take on. The hearts used their protected status to dismiss any criticisms of their parenting as veiled forms of prejudice against their sexuality or their children's race, painting themselves as victims. So no one could even think, about accusing them of victimizing anyone else.

By the time the CPS came knocking on that door in Washington, it was too late. And in one crushing final insult to the biological families, they weren't even notified that their children had been murdered. They found out on TV like everyone else. Jesus. A year after the crash in April 2019, a jury led inquest into the manner of death unanimously ruled,

that Sarah and Jen had died by suicide and that their six children had been murdered by their parents. Now this deliberately vague verdict didn't specify whether it was believed that the women had equally colluded on the plot to annihilate the family. But based on what we know about the dynamics within the heart household,

we lean towards Jen being the primary perpetrator. She'd always called the shots, and she was the one behind the wheel. The fact that searches about, like, is 500 milligram going to kill a 125 pound woman were made on Sarah's phone, may indicate that she knew what was going to happen and that she was possibly a willing participant,

but also Jen could just have used Sarah's phone. I don't buy that, man. I think Jen has control over everything in that house. She's going to have access to Sarah's phone. Absolutely. I think, you know, one last fuck you to take Sarah down with her. She knows it's going to be investigated after their found head. And so, yeah, she could have easily used the phone

and the presence of Benadryl in Sarah's bloodstream could suggest that she was probably also a victim along with the children. Because it's surprising to me that Jen would be drunk, but Sarah's had Benadryl. Like... Yes, yes. But sadly, we'll never know for certain what happened in those last haunting hours. The truth died at the bottom of that cliff,

but the entire Hart family. If we consider Jen Hart as a family annihilator, which I do, she joins the rare ranks of women. who have committed this style of crime. As we've covered time and time before, family annihilation is an overwhelmingly male thing. Research actually estimates that men are responsible for about 83% of cases. In cases of suicidal women who kill their kids,

it's usually motivated by fears about who will take care of the children after they're gone, so instead mothers choose to take the children with them. But for Jen Hart, it was all about. control. With Marcus age 19 and even the youngest approaching teenhood, perhaps she felt that her perfect family was slipping through her fingers. She knew CPS were onto her, and if she couldn't keep those kids, nobody could. Yeah, I think the mounting pressure from CPS and then moving state to state trying to evade it, but it feels like it's going to come to ahead at some point. is definitely a trigger. I also think the trigger was the picture that goes viral and all of the

backlash she gets from that because I think to Jen Hart, that was like the perfect moment. The country is in a racial storm. Everybody is talking about this. She represents what in her mind, and she's described often as like this white, woke lesbian woman. In her mind of like, I am the epitome of what this movement should represent. I am this person. I am this person, this like protected status. I have these black children that I've adopted and look at what a great job I'm doing. And I think much like the music festivals, this is her chance to take that to another level. She thinks, these people are my allies. These people are my people. I'm going to put myself out there and everybody's going to fucking love me and I'm going to ride this wave.

And then when that backfires and people accuse her of what she was, a virtue signaling fucking child abuser, she loses it because she is like she cannot stand that destruction of this persona that she has created. On a global scale to... Absolutely. Oh my God. The scrutiny involved in something like that that she inserted herself into needlessly. And let's talk about even like the fucking idea of taking a child to a protest like that.

Like it's all so abusive. It's all so abusive. and yeah, I think she was probably completely flawed by the reaction that she got because she's living on another planet. I agree. I think you're absolutely right. I think the CPS turn out wherever she goes. I think she probably in the back of her mind knows that she's not going to get away from it forever,

and they're going to grow up and they'll leave anyway. And they'll tell everybody how awful she was and then everyone will know. And it's more likely that they'll believe in adult than when they were children. And she's not going to be able to get new ones because CPS are on a day. tale all the time. Yeah. So. And it wasn't serving her need anymore. If that picture went viral and she didn't get the same fuzzy mums sharing it on Facebook like she did with the Huffington Post article years before that, then what's the purpose? Like she's not getting that feedback that she needs, which is people telling her, oh my God, you're a hero. And she didn't. She got the opposite of that. So she's like,

fuck this. I'm done. I'm done. Let's go. And like any good family annihilator, she's not like, let me just find another way out of this. It's we all go. We're all done. So yeah, to conclude. Children are of course adopted into loving homes every single day, and they do get there happily ever after. But this is not that kind of story. The heart story ended in tatters off the Pacific Coast Highway when it became clear that Jen's fairy tale vision of her perfect family had crumbled beyond saving. She didn't see those children as real humans in their own right. but as props in a play. Marcus, Abigail, Hannah, Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra

became side characters in an overly simplistic story of racial stereotypes. And in the end, the story of the hearts amounts to an incredibly grim collision of failures by CPS, the Texas child welfare system, the adoption agencies, and the greatest tragedy beneath it all, those six children were robbed of the full lives ahead of them. And Jen and Sarah never paid the price for what they did. So that's ever bummer.

Yeah. It's a really, really sad, very, very, very sad story. I hate it for so many reasons. And this is what we talk about, right? Often, this definitely comes out after we've done Golden State Killer. But we were talking there, right, about how people don't do these things for no reason. They commit crimes. They do these things because what they're doing,

doing gives them some feedback, gives them some positive, like, thing that they need within themselves. And the minute Jen Hart stopped getting that thing, she was like, right, I'm going to hit the self-destruct and family-destruct button and fuck you all. It's so diabolical. It's also, you know, that's none of us ever do anything that isn't serving us in some way, right? even if it's something that is self-destructive or like you're doing it because you're getting something out of it, whether it's because you feel clean, or like the only reason anybody does anything ever

is because they're getting something out of it. They might not know it. It might be outside of consciousness, but like that's the only reason anything ever happens. So yeah, that's it, guys. A very sad story. I don't really have anything nice to say at the end of that. Hug your kids.

No, I'm really scrambling. go hug your kids take them outside let them go outside that's it and we'll see you next time we'll see you next week bye bye