"Fear"

On other trips, Jan and her wife Sarah might have pulled to the side of the road and had their brood line up, as they often did, backs to the camera, hands raised in peace signs, a technicolor sunset framing their silhouettes. They were Marcus nineteen, Hannah sixteen, Davante fifteen, Abigail and Jeremiah both fourteen, and Sierra twelve, two sets of biological siblings, both black, adopted by two white moms. A beautiful family

by most accounts. Friends called them the Hart Tribe, but this trip wouldn't be like the others the tribe took to places like Bliss Idaho or Zion National Park in Utah. Investigators have been desperate to figure out how that family flew off that cliff in California and whether it was on purpose. I was at the scene two days ago. There were no skid marks. We have no evidence and no reason to believe that this was an intentional act.

Certainly people are wondering what plaused this. On March two, eight, a German tourist spotted the families two thousand three GMC Yukon x L belly up on the rocks below the picturesque Mendocino Cliff. The car plummeted more than a hundred feet. Here's what we know happened in the days leading up

to the crash. On March at three am, Sarah's co workers at Cole's, where she worked as an assistant manager, received a text from Sarah saying she was too sick to open the store that more n that same morning, the Hearts next door neighbors, Bruce and Dana Deco, noticed that the Yukon was no longer in their driveway and that the bright red kayak that typically sat on top of it had been removed. Cinder Blocks littered the driveway, suggesting that the family had crashed into a retaining wall

in their rush to leave. On March at eight oh five am, a surveillance camera in a Fort Brag safeway captured gen in eyeglasses and an ill fitting gray hoodie, paying twenty dollars and eight cents in cash for groceries. She bought bananas, saltines, and Chef Boyardi ravioli, and used a club card for discounts. Friends said she looked twenty five pounds heavier than they'd ever seen her. On March at one pm, Sarah's co worker, Cheryl Hart no relation,

called asking for a welfare check on her friend. Thanks for all and can I help you because I was calling to Seethe Willford checks done? Okay? And her? Are we checking on Sarah? Hart told me the reason that we're checking on her? Um. She sent out a text message at three o'clock in the morning on Saturday morning stating that she was sick, But nobody's been able to get ahold of her talk to her or being her since that text message. Okay or her wife was his jin,

So we're just confirmed, okay. And did she say when she said she was sick? Did she say what was going on? Or she just said that she just is unable to come out and wasn't able to go to work and thought she was gonna have to go to the doctor. Um, I've checked the hospital. If they didn't have any records of her, and I think her phone is now dead. Okay. And just the children was there? They have six children, okay. Any known medical history, not that I'm aware of. Now. She has been sick, and

I think she's like a cool okay. Has she been so vital at all? Or see? Not that I'm aware of. The call you just heard came several hours too late. Early the morning of March, rescue workers were pelled down the cliff, where they lifted the dead bodies of three children, later identified as Marcus, Abigail and Jeremiah Hart, and spotted two more, Sarah in the back and Jen in the

driver's seat. The corner found an ingredient commonly used in allergy medicines like benadro, in the bodies of Sarah and two of the kids. Jen's blood alcohol content was over the legal limit. No one had been wearing a seatbelt. The cars computer revealed that Jen had stopped on a pull out some seventy ft from the cliff moments before the free fall. She then gunned it off the ledge. Ten days later, the county sheriff issued a statement about the gruesome incident. I'm to the point where I no

longer I'm calling this an act sit in. I'm calling it a crime from glamour and how stuff works. This is broken Hearts. I'm Justine Harmon and I'm Liz Egan. Together we've been looking into this story for the past six months, and what has emerged is one of the most complex and compelling stories of abuse, neglect, privilege, and

confusion in the digital age we've ever encountered. One astounding element of this story is that this family, the Heart Tribe, didn't just burst into the news after the horrific crash. Over the years, they had somehow managed to be at

the center of multiple news events. Remember that picture of a young black boy in a blue fedora embracing a white cop in riot gear at a Black Lives Matter rally in two thousand fourteen, and the debate that ensued over whether it was a symbolic moment of racial healing or semi staged theater. That was DeVante Hart, the third oldest of the Heart kids. Davante was a trumpet player who loved to brush his dog, Kenya. He had big teeth and big eyes. His whole face looked like a smile.

He often wore a free hugs sign around his neck. He was an extrovert and an EmPATH. That photo from the rally was taken in two thousand fourteen, nearly four years before the family's death, and that wasn't the only time the Hearts found themselves in the spotlight, but we'll get into that later. A few weeks ago, our producer Jason asked us what drew us to this story in the first place. Our answers were different. I was on

a ten day road trip with my family. One afternoon, after spending about nine hours in the car with my three kids, who are seventeen, fourteen, and eleven, I looked at the New York Times homepage and I read a story about the Hearts. I was really surprised by how quickly it fell out of the news. There weren't that many stories that sent me down a rabbit hole of

wondering what had happened. At Glamour morning meetings, we discussed not only what we're working on currently, but what stories are sort of piquing our interest, and Liz brought up this story that I had almost surreptitiously clicked on the night before. Something about the picture. I saw these two women, white very attractive, sort of every day looking. Nothing seems

sinister about them, and six really adorable. I mean, the kids just looked so happy and so to have that juxtaposed with such an egregious storyline and headline, I was instantly captivated by, Well, what have driven these women to do such a thing? How does someone get to a place where they're willing to choose not only a path for yourself, but that of six young people. I am a mother of a two year old. I can't imagine

ever being pushed to the brink that way. But at the same time, it is a relatable feeling as a mother, as a woman to feel trapped by the choices you make. The story is so complex, in fact, that we brought on Laurence Smiley, a San Francisco based investigative reporter, to help us figure out what really happened in the days, months, and years leading up to the crash. You'll hear from Lauren. She's the intrepid interviewer with the throaty chuckle and the

Iowa accent. Over the course of this cross country journey that leads us from South Dakota to Minnesota, to Oregon, Washington, and ultimately a cliff in California. You'll also meet a variety of people who knew the Hearts or thought they did, and you'll get an exclusive look into a case that left six people said to missing and a nation puzzled

over the perfect family they never knew. But the most important voices in this podcast belonged to the people we couldn't interview, the Heart Kids, Marcus, Hannah, Davante, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra. Hannah and Davante were not found in the car that day in March, and their bodies have not yet surfaced at the crash site. Since their whereabouts have yet to be located, some fear they were killed before the plunge. Others speculate they escaped in the nick of time.

Back in May, we sent Lauren to Woodland, Washington to meet with Dana and Bruce Decalb, the Heart's next door neighbors. The families shared a driveway. Take the fork to the left and you'll hit the Decalb's red split level. Take the one to the right and drive down a little bit and you're at the Hearts. This is Lauren. I got out of my car and felt like I'd landed in a postcard of the Pacific Northwest. It seems like the Decalb's property could be swallowed up by ature at

any moment. Their house is blanketed by pine trees and rhododendron bushes. Just for some orientation, I'd driven up from Portland for about an hour on I five, which continues on up to Seattle. I took an exit and then drove along this twisty road with trees overhead for five minutes, even though there's this huge freeway just minutes away. By the time you get to the Decalps, it feels really remote. You move out here to be close to nature, not people. Dana agree to me at the door. She's in her

late fifties and his short, curly hair. She's a talker and always wears a smart watch to track her daily steps. Two decades ago, she and Bruce moved from a California cul de sac to the spot in the foothills of the Cascades where you can see cleared amount st Helen's Bruce is about six ft tall. He's more laid back. He's chatty too, but went together. Let's Dana do the talking. Their days usually include some beating back of the Washington Wild than of venturing out on jet ski or kayak.

Last September, the retirement good life was interrupted when a small, frightened girl wrapped in a fleece blanket rang their doorbell at one in the morning. Doorbell rang, and I went to the front door. Here's this girl standing there on a blanket wrapped around her. She comes bolton in the house and I'm yelling for Dana, you know, hey, wake up, come help me, and she ran up the stairs on her own. She bolted upstairs pounced on me. Because that's when I woke up, thinking who are you and where'd

you come from. I came down here and was talking to her and trying to get her to calm down, to understand what was going on. And she was just frantic and begging, you know that take me to Seattle. Don't make me go back there. They're racist, they're abusive, you know, and we're just going hole, you know, Bruce Astrab what do you mean And she's like, well, they whip us with a belt and he was like, well,

I've been whipped with a belt. Trying to think of you know, and in the meantime, I'm trying to figure out where she came from, because we don't know she lives next door. I noticed that the whole family was outside looking forward with flashlights, and she's freaking out, and I'm like, you know what they're coming. I have to figure this out. Just stay put. They came in and they just kind of pushed their way into Sarah and Jennifer did and they started going around looking through the

house and went up to the bedroom. Did you invite the family to go into a house? Know? And we you know, it's one thirty in the morning, and you're freaking out. Hannah had crouched down between my bed and dresser and this little spot and she was like in the beetle position. And when they just went in and Sarah approached her first, and Hannah she was like no, you know, And so I said, well, you back up, give her some space. You know, you guys are freaking

around and freaking me out. Let's just back up. At about that time, Jennifer kind of grabbed Sarah and said, I'll deal with this. You go down back downstairs with the kids. So Jennifer started talking to her and you know, calling her and being all nice and stuff. So I thought Okay, I'm gonna give him a minute, and so I left the room be correctly, and then they came back downstairs, and they when they started coming back downstairs, Jennifer told Sarah, you need to take the kids and go.

Hannah's having a problem with her big brother. Right now, we were like, what her issue? Wasn't her brother at all? What do you mean? So that kind of was a little bit weird, but you know, I don't know. So they sat there saying, you know, you needed to tell these people you're sorry, yes, ma'am. And you need to explain to him you just had a really bad week, yes, ma'am. And she just constantly was looking at Jennifer. Never even talked to us. It was just robot And so they

ended up leaving. Now it's like two thirty in the morning. You're trying to figure out what, Wow, What's what's really going on here? You know? And I guess it was just beyond our imagination. For a variety of reasons. The Decals wouldn't call the authorities until nearly six months after the incident, but that didn't stop her eight year old dad, whom she told about the event, from getting involved. On November,

nearly three months after Hannah visited. In the middle of the night, Dana's dad, Steve, plays the call to there are some kids that I feel as being highly abused, and how I know. Okay, I'm gonna get to the address of my daughter's house because it's right next door. Yeah, if you're going up to the road to her house, it's a house on the right, okay. And what's going on there, Well, they helped flock children. What's that part?

Doesn't matter, they're they're new here. But the other night a little girls jumped out of the second story window on the roof and then down onto the ground and ran to my daughter. And this is like two in the morning, begging him to help her, to help her. And when they came looking for her, she was begging my daughter not to let him know she was there. And then eventually my son in law let him know. He doesn't want to get involved. But the more I sit on it, I just can't live with it. Somebody's

got to go there and check it. And know how old less the little kid that did that, that Randy a Gotta's house about twelve years old, thirteen and then she had all four of the kids come back later and to say everything was okay, and they're all standing at attention like they were just scared to death. And I think there's something very serious going on there, and they're here from Texas. The kids might even be kidnapped.

And and basically my son in law was like most people, they don't want to get involved, and so he's keeping my daughter out of it. But since she's told me about it, I just can't live with it. I'm very concerned for these kids. Someone from the County Sheriff's office called the Helps to ask whether there have been more incidents, and Dana explained what she had observed since that night. The kids next door were almost always indoors. She remembers

being told it's not illegal to keep kids inside. On August, a little less than a year after her dad called, I contacted County Sergeant Brent Wadel over the phone, so Dana's dad and called down here and reported that Dana's neighbor child had come over in the middle of the night, and the deputy contacted Dad and also contacted Dana. When the deputy talked with Dana, there was no indication that

there's any ongoing issues or anything like that. What else wasn't the one who talked with Dana, but the department had done an internal review of how they handled their interactions with Dana and her dad. He inquired and documented that he talked with Dana and they had discussed is there anything over there, sense that's happened, anything concerning And Dana basically said, you know, we never see him, see

him out. For us to go up and knock on the door, we would need something a little bit more. People have rights in this country and in this state, and just because your neighbor, you know, if there's something a little bit more current, and some other factors. Again,

we don't know what happens behind closed doors. So just because the kids aren't playing outside or aren't outside aren't seen that much, that amongst itself is not a trigger or red flag hindsight being who knows, but you know, there's you know, the deputy and Dana had a conversation and and the deputy was okay with not going up and knocking on the door, But what really went on behind the white door in that baby blue split level? Who are these women and how did they come to

adopt six children? Two sets of three black siblings. Their story starts in small town South Dakota, where Sarah Gangler and Jen Hart both grew up. A photo of five year old Gen shows her dressed up in a roughly blue dress with knee high white sox outside a cornflower blue home with astro turf covered stairs. Extremely rare, fine, she wrote on Facebook in May of two thousand sixteen,

me in address. The women met when they were twenty years old as undergraduates at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was American pie was the biggest thing at the box office. Jfk Jr. Had just been found dead off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, still strapped into the pilot's seat of his plane. Live in La Vida Loca was the biggest thing on the radio. But it would be more than a decade before Ricky Martin would publicly come out as gay. At Aberdeen, Sarah would go

on to earn her degree in education, Jen never graduated. Later, Jen would describe on Facebook how she called Sarah her friend or her roommate once they did come out as a couple. However, the Midwestern mindset, she wrote, was relentlessly unforgiving. The pair eventually moved to Alexandria, Minnesota, a laketown famous for Big Olie, a foot tall statue of a Viking

that was built for the sixty four World's Fair. Her Burger's where the women worked, Jen in the junior's department, Sarah as a department manager, was the biggest store at Viking Mill Plaza, a one level strip mall located off of Root twenty nine. Jen was probably the one I met first. She was taller than me. She had like the big, bright red hair. I remember her feeling so much older than she actually was, like she probably was twenty six or twenty seven at the time, and she

was confident and assertive and intimidating. I immediately did not feel like I was on the same level as her. This is Jordan Smith. Jordan worked with Jen and Sarah in the summer of two thousand four at her Burgers. We asked Lauren to find out what they were like. Most people who knew the women back then noted their differences. Jen was more colorful, outgoing, abrasive. That would be the

Minnesota term for it. Smith says Sarah could be more emotional and stressed, but she lovingly kept the picture of her in Jen cuddling on her office desk. When I talked to Jordan's she remembered the time Jen complained about a mannequin's nipples being sexist. Jen hauled the mannequin to a back room at her burgers and manually cut them off with a hack saw. She pulled the mannequins in the back to do it. She wasn't doing it like

on the floor in front of customer. Um. It was probably her relationship with Sarah that like gave her, you know that kind of like I can do this as a couple. They were very uh discreet. It took me almost nine months to realize they were a couple. I mean we're talking real rural Minnesota, like the Bible Belt of Minnesota. That's Alexandria. In two thousand four, Alexandria, Minnesota, a town located one and thirty two miles northwest of Minneapolis,

had a population of around eleven thousand. It was a bit more progressive than rural South Dakota, but it wasn't exactly the most tolerant of places either. As Jordan recalls, it was pretty usual to get called a diake or a bag and uh, you're gay and everything negative. It may not seem that long ago, but two thousand four was a very different time socially, especially in the rural Midwest. You could kind of describe the mentality as well, don't ask,

don't tell. Jordan identifies as queer now, but back then it wasn't so easy to be out to Sarah and John Credit they were probably one of very rare handful of open and out um homosexual couples in the area. Years later, in a Facebook post, Jen would recall the realities of being a gay woman living in the unforgiving

and unaccepting Midwest. The truth of our love was clouded with fear, she wrote, Fear of rejection from family and friends, fear of being unwanted, unloved, fear of not being able to get a job, fear of acts of violence, fear of not being able to have a family, fear of walking through this life alone with our love keeping it a secret. The Hearts would eventually find a community over

the years. They became regulars at transformational festivals, days long socially conscious mashups of music, yoga, dance, and creative costumes. The kids would join too, often dressed in colorful costumes and carrying motivational signs and interacting with the musical acts. In one YouTube clip, we see Davante at the Beloved Festival, and annual gathering dedicated to what its website describes as vulnerability, belonging,

and liberation. In the clip, a large group of adults dressed in tai edie and bucket hats congregate around the musician Xavier Rudd as he plucks at a guitar placed across his lap. Rudd is shirtless, his long blonde hair is pulled back with a headband. His eyes are closed. About eight minutes into the song, he notices someone in

the crowd and beckons him to the stage. Davante, dressed in a zebra costume, a free Hug sign around his neck and the word Beloved shaved into his head, approaches the musician and gives him a hug, their tears in his eyes. The embrace lasts over a minute. The whole moment is a lot, but it was also at these festivals that friends like Zippy Lomax, a Portland based photographer,

first encountered Jen and Sarah. After the news of the crash broke Lomax, like so many of the people in the Heart's inner circle, took to social media to defend the women. She knew. They were that really bright kind of presence. It was pretty hard to miss them any event that I was at where they were if I had a camera, I was of course attracted to that. I was inspired by them. They gave me hope. Everyone

considered them like the Heart tribe. It was just sort of like a natural term that would kind of come out when you would see them showing up at places, though, like there's a heart tribe. That term like tribe has been thrown around a lot in that because there's some sort of like returning, like reindigenization and like these interesting terminologies. There's even a book that this other photographer put out called Tribal Revival, and it's all about like the people

from all these different festivals. So Beloved is just one of many of these kind of festivals that sort of fit under the umbrella of what would be considered transformational festivals that have this very similar kind of goal, I guess, of experimental community, different ways of coming together and being

supportive rather than competitive. Looking a little deeper into understanding what that festival is kind of a part of will maybe give a little bit of context for why there were so many people quick to kind of like jump up and say, like, wait a minute, you guys have the story wrong. Zippy Lomax and Jen especially became close,

often communicating over DM and social media. Zippy shared with us over three hundred of Jen's Facebook posts, often accompanied by long, well written captions, many of which served as a keyhole into who these women and who these six kids were. There are photos of Abigail and Davante eating breakfast with hens perched on their heads, vegetarian chicken and waffles. The caption reads Davante, Jeremiah, and Sierra painting on the

living room floor. Minnie Jackson pollocks all six kids grinning with a kindness is contagious sign Redwood Nation is about to get blasted with kindness. Gen wrote, each post reaffirms the same storyline, two moms and their rehabilitated kids thriving against all odds. But as we've had to remind ourselves to the course of digging into the story, Jen Hart, who is far more active on social media than her wife Sarah, isn't the most reliable narrator. This is something

Zippy and many friends of the Hearts struggle with. Zippy has received a lot of messages from people who once knew the family but maybe lost touch over the years. It's a nice counter, she says, to the loads of hate mail she received, like this letter she got two months after the crash from a high school friend of Gent's, with the subject line your heart subject she just said, your heart has Appora. I wanted to reach out to

after all of this heart story broke. I could sense that you're a beautiful soul with good intentions caught defending some people you think you knew. I knew Sarah and Jen from college, and I too was in disbelief. I was not even brave enough to admit knowing them. So I was proud of you for stepping out there and speaking up. The people I knew in college were not capable of this act, although looking back now it's clear there were warning signs from Jen and the way she

exerted absolute control over Sarah. I just thought they were in love. I'm wondering if you two have had any change of heart. I'm looking for some deep philosophical guidance on this because it is weighing heavily on my heart. I go between anger and confusion and sadness and love and then disbelief. I visited them in Alexandria in two thousand and five before they adopted their kids. After that, I followed them on Facebook and was amazed and proud

of how many lives they were touching. I know you're busy, but if you ever have time, please send me a message or a point me to a person who can. I hope you're doing okay. I'm sure the painting grief you feel is a thousand times worse than mine. I was grateful for that, because, um, every other message I got was hateful and awful, like that's somebody saying that just kind of echoes what other people said, kind of in in more quiet ways. That they were grateful that

I was willing to speak up. No part of Zippy is able to reconcile the women she once knew with the women who began to emerge on paper after the fateful crash. As we've been reporting, most of the Hard family was found dead at the crash site in March. That was just days after Child Protective Services tried to visit their home in Calrk County to look into reports

the potential neglect against parents, Sarah and of her Heart. Tonight, investigators held a telephone news conference to confirm that they believe the suv was crashed on purpose. What first appeared to be a tragic accident now looks much more sinister. Captain Bart said information downloaded from the air bag control module shows the suv actually stopped before accelerating over the cliff.

It was pure acceleration from the last break application until it hits the bottom of the Cliff's investigators are releasing new details about the Heart family tragedy, telling us that Jennifer Hart was drunk when she drove the family's car off a cliff in northern California, and her wife Sarah had a drug in her system. Even now, Zippy has a hard time believing her friends were living dual lives.

There's no part of me and all of my looking back at my observations of them, that's capable of seeing that it was just a charade. Somehow, the smoke and mirrors of the compelling digital narrative Jen created was able to cloud a sense of civic responsibility. It's not unlike the same mental gymnastics we perform on a daily basis

while absent mindedly scrolling through anyone's feed. We know, of course we do, that perfect is a myth, but we also convince ourselves that other people must have achieved it. Pictures have an uncanny way of making any story true. Marcus, Hannah, Davante, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra died because everyone saw something different when they looked at them. The perfect family, some lucky rescued kids,

a symbol for post racial kumbaya. No one saw six young people in desperate need of help, not even the people who were looking right at them. Next time on Broken Hearts are so priceful. She was eating out of the garbage, and to this day it just seems so straight. I remember vaguely hearing that they dropped the foster daughter off and like just abandoned her. That should kind of like be a clue right there and there that this is a person you don't think kind of operating the

child's best interest. My inner monologue would like something not right about them. Absolutely, I think is playing a part. You know, when people are sitting in the audience thinking that, okay, well, why did the judgements, rule that way gets me. Maybe he loves you. Broken Hearts is a joint production between Glamour and How Stuff Works, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts is co hosted and co written by Justine Harmon and Elizabeth Egan and edited by Wendy Nogal. Lauren

Smiley is our field reporter. Samantha Barry is Glamorous editor in chief. Julie Sheen and Dianna Buckman head up the business side of this partnership. Joyce Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke Czeleski are our research team. Jason Hope is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Julian Weller, ben Kiebrick and Josh Stain. Special thanks to Jen Lance. Have questions for us about this podcast, reach

us on Twitter at Glamour mag. For access to exclusive photos and videos and documents about the case, Visit Glamour dot com slash Broken Hearts. If you like what you heard, leave us a review,