"The Perfect People"

shot of a presidential hopeful on the campaign trail? What kind of crowd would you want assembled around you to communicate that you're the other guy, the progressive, anti establishment choice, and who could say those things for you simply by being at your side? Now you're seeing this little bird doesn't know it? Oh, I think, I think that may be some symbolism here. I know it doesn't look like it, but that bird is really a dove asking us for world peace, no more wars. That's Bernie Sanders at a

two thousand sixteen rally in Portland, Oregon. You may remember this moment. He's going on about the merits of public education when a tiny finch lands on his podium in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. It's a moment straight out of the show Portlandia, Irony and Serendipity. All wrapped into one. Sanders takes one look at the bird and raises his fists like a magician who just conjured a rabbit from a hat. It was a whole thing. The

Sanders campaign started selling Bertie Sanders merch. Of the more than eleven thousand attendees who was stationed directly behind Sanders, Jen Sarah, Marcus Davante, Abigail Jeremiah, and Sierra Hart. There they are on a Friday morning in March, jumping up and down in matching royal blue Bernie T shirts. I saw them, and they're you know, they're right in the direct head on. This is Mark Levitt. He worked as Bernie's director of scheduling in advance work during his presidential campaign.

He even helped create and popularize Sanders a Future to Believe in branding efforts. He remembers the bird moment, well, I mean, jeez, best laid plans right, um, you know, we we have no way of planning for that sort of thing. I mean that was that was actually a level of serendipity that in my entire time working in scheduling in advance, I don't think I'd ever encountered. It was said half jokingly at the time, but you know, there was some sense in which he had sort of

performed a miracle or whatever. I mean. This is this is what people were saying online. And this wasn't the first time the Heart Tribe had gotten near the Senator. Earlier that same week, Jen roused her family at four thirty in the morning to attend a rally in Vancouver, Washington. She wrote on Facebook that she had the kids stand for four hours in the rain to ensure they wouldn't miss out on this opportunity. She even made the blue

shirts herself. Family friend Machine baktr says members of the Sanders campaign approached the family and invited them to attend to the Portland rally. Here's Lauren talking to Machine about that day. They went to the Washington rally and there it was Bernie's campaign people that sort of gave them tickets to come to the Oregan one. Yeah, and they asked them and they put them they like wanted them

to sit right behind them. That video of Bernie Sanders putting a bird on it with the Heart family squarely in the shot. It's been viewed over two point three million times on YouTube. Part of the reason that you, um, you know you want to craft that shot behind the candidate very carefully? Is because uh and then this happened with Obama on an handful of occasions that the people

in that shot functionally sharing with the candidate. From Glamour and how stuff works, This is Broken Hearts, I'm Justine Harmon and I'm Liz Egan. Crazy things like this, moments of infamy, seemingly random or unsolicited brushes with fame, like that vibral photo of Davante crying and hugging the cop. They were nothing new to the Heart family, yet, despite the relentless fascination from the outside world, friends like Ian Spurling marveled at Gen's ability to protect her children from

prying eyes. Our Field reporter Lauren chatted with Ian over the phone back in May You and Spilling as a dad who often met up with the Hearts that shows around Portland, Jen would tell him that the kids were developmentally delayed from their terrible lives before they were adopted, and he had bought it, so that was why the

kids acted a little differently. Maybe that's why Davante smiled all the time and seemed to act a little younger than his age, or why Marcus and Jeremiah would look listless and suddenly snap into smiles and personality when he greeted them. Jen also explained why the kids were so thin they had a vegetarian organic diet. She always had

an answer for everything. I mean when I say that Jen was good, she was good, and she made parenting look unbelievably easy and awesome and there was no red flags, zero, Like the way she respected Davante's privacy when he was took the picture with the cop, and the way she would talk to us about that stuff in private. You know, it's like we looked up to her, like, Wow, she's the best parent in the world. Were horrible, you know, kind of thing. Jen often wrote about the importance of

protecting her kids privacy. Once, when a Facebook follower asked if she'd ever considered a reality TV show, she said, no, We've had multiple offers in this area. She wrote, no amount of money would ever be worth the trials and tribulations that would surely come from media slash producers manipulating

our lives on a TV show. Ian remembers hearing about the offers, she was extremely stressed, doesn't know what to do with getting offers from like Good Morning America or the Today Show specifically, and a few others to take him on there, and she declined to do that. Now, that plays into what we're learning now because obviously we learned now that there was some abuse charges in Minnesota there, you know, um fleeing to Oregon for lack of a better term, and so there's probably more of a reason

why she didn't want to go on national TV. At the time, we're thinking, Wow, phenomenal parenting. Nice work, you're not exploiting your children. Perfect. That's just adds more to the legacy. You know, Liz and I have talked about this part of the story a lot. How could one family, one seemingly interested in maintaining a low profile and living off the grid, consistently find itself in the news. How often, really do people become famous, like virally famous by accident?

Mark Levitt says, from his experience, not that often. With respect to getting back and behind Bernie at the Bernie rally, I would say that if they had seen the process at the rally that they had been to a few days earlier, that would have given them a hint that most people otherwise don't have as to how to do it so that you know, most people when they arrive at these rallies, is that their first rally or their

only rally or whatever. It's not that common to have people go to these rallies twice, in part because they are pretty onerous affairs. You know, you wait for a long time for the candidates, that sort of thing, so you don't get a whole ton of repeat customers. But if these were repeat customers, that they could have very easily seen how the selection process goes forgetting people in that shot in the head on shot. So be honest, what does a photo of two moms and six black

kids say to you? Depending on how you were raised, your background, and your life experiences, it could mean any number of things. For Zippy Lomax, who first encountered the Heart Tribe back in two thousand thirteen, the family was the perfect visual symbol for the kind of transformational, inclusive

music festivals she attended and often photographed. They were very unique, you know, and I know I'm not the only person who could who 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 there's a heart,

there's a hard time. Beloved is just one of many many that have this very similar kind of uh the goal I guess of like, you know, like experimental community, different ways of coming together and being supportive rather than competitive. As a photographer, Zippy observed how these festivals could serve as a form of emotional release. Attendees often dressed up in costumes, with hundreds of people standing on a lawn,

rocking and swaying to the music. Footage from the events look more like emotionally raw group therapy than raucous jam sessions. In a video posted to Jen's YouTube page, Davante and Jeremiah are at the two thousand twelve Project Earth Festival in Minnesota. The boys, both under ten at the time, have flowers around their necks. Davante is wearing his free Hug sign. They're both dancing, and around the second mark you hear Jen's voice You're going to give Naco a hug.

Jeremiah runs up to Jen's favorite musician, Nacobert, who is dancing shirtless in the crowd, the to embrace for a few seconds, while Abigail, Sierra, and Hannah danced nearby with Sarah, it's one of the rare moments you get a glimpse behind the curtain. Some might see it as proof that Jen coerced the kids into performing for the camera, but if anything seemed off when the family was in public,

onlookers like Ian Spurling didn't notice. In ours these are superhuman people, like they're living the perfect lives there, perfect people, we have perfect kids. Zippy noticed their infallibility too. She started a friendship with Jen one mostly maintained over Facebook Messenger,

and frequently took pictures of the family. All of these events are opportunities for people to kind of reinvent themselves and experiment with what it would be like to to be to show up in a different kind of way, So it's hard to say because people are maybe not showing up at those events in the same kind of wearing the same persona or even the same kind of clothes that they would wear in just everyday life. Between shows, the festival crowd kept taps on one another on Facebook,

where Jen racked up the likes. Her feed was full of well staged family photos and long form captions. Opposed from January sixteen shows silhouettes of three of the Heart children at sunset. The location is Malala River State Park in Clackamas County, Oregon. It reads him sitting in the mud watching the sunset. Do you ever think society overcomplicates life? There's so much business, technology obsession and worrying about crossing things off a to do list, while forgetting what it's

like to be her, be what him alive. This zest for life and jens seemingly endless off for her children is something Friends of the Hearts loved about her. In fact, she's often described as the more gregarious and social of the two women. Jen and I were closer. She's also an amazing photographer, and so we had another point of connection there and um mutual respect I guess for each

other's craft. But we were friends on Facebook and we interacted in that way, and so I think that, like in this age of social media, it's interesting because we feel like we're more um engaged with people then maybe we actually are. I was very much engaged, like commenting and interacting with Jen and the all the amazing photos she was posting about the kids, and definitely kind of aware of what was happening in their lives. The last

time Zippy saw the heart family in person. Was at that same Bernie Sanders rally in Portland where the bird landed on the podium. She was there once again to take pictures. Zib read us a Facebook message Jen sent after that memorable day. So she was telling me how she was watching me instead of Bernie Sanders, watching you work your magic behind the lens was so special. Seeing you just made that much more magical. She saw me capture that bird moment, caught a glimpse of you capturing

the beyond amazing bird moment. I love you um and then the she just said it made her heart. This moment genuinely made my heart exploding the best possible way. This is how jan Hart spoke on her Facebook page, a feat of countless posts that spanned from two thousand seven, a year before she and Sarah adopted their second set of biological siblings, up until March eighteen, four days before

the crash. She was effusive and passionate about everything from her children, to her wife, to the many animals the family rescued and rehabilitated. In a post from June two thirteen, she wrote, in what reads like something from a children's book of a red robin and a baby blackbird she discovered in her yard. The young blackbird hopped onto my knee and proceeded to look me in the eye and go back and forth between me and nuzzling the baby robin.

It was beyond clear that he was trying to communicate a message. I lightly stroked the back of the robin's neck and checked for injuries. This has been my deeply connected purpose for as long as I can remember. Take care of all beings in need. Like so many of her posts, it feels just a little too good to be true. Along with the post is an image of Jen wearing a gray graphic tea and cuffed jeans, several beaded bracelets lining her wrist, clutching a small bird between

her palms. She added an inspirational quote from an obscure science fiction author named Lloyd Biggle Jr. Life is life's greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own. It was a kind of slightly mythological story. Ian Spurling knew well. I think she was a master Facebook poaster, like I've never seen anyone articulate so well with photos. My wife said something that made sense like after everything was done, she says, there's not even paint

on the paintbrush, you know. And and that was, you know, like a Facebook picture and uh, you know when you're like, whoa what So it was like stage like stage photo maybe because they're they're sitting in front of a canvas a painting. Look what the kids are doing today, and then you look on the paintbrush and there's no paint on it. Now had idea as a mom or whatever, you're like, oh, shoot, we just did that. We didn't give you pictures. Hey, you guys, let's grab a picture

real quick, you know, what have you. But in hindsight, that's probably a little bit of the case. You know, it was almost too good to be true. Ian tells one story about how the Heart Children befriended a homeless man, and his version has almost the same hyperbolic language gen use. In April two, thou post there was a gentleman who was and if I told you this already, I apologized. Um they were. She took her kids down to the clack and Mr every one night and they're playing around.

It was a hot, sunny summer day and they're playing around down there and swimming, and Devonte and two the other kids walked on the way to what looked like a homeless man, and Jen in her the way she told it was, I didn't know what to do, Uh if I should let my kids talk to this homeless person who looked extremely disheveled, um and a bit suspect. But she's taught her kids to not be afraid of strangers, proceed with contion, but to spread love in this world.

And they went down and talk to this guy blah blah blah. Then she saw them hugging this guy. Okay, and the kids walked back and she's like, well was that all about? And they're like, oh, we just wanted to brighten this guy's day, you know. Of course, beautiful kids, and that's this is an exaggeration of how they would be,

because I wanted at plenty. And then the guy walks down to Jenny goes, it is are your kids, I assume, and and she said yeah yeah, And he says, well, I gotta tell you they just changed my whole life. And she goes, oh, how so, and he goes that hug I got from him. I don't get that from anybody here. See the problem is I have face cancer and half of my face is gone, so I look really scary and it's terminal. And he goes, I don't have any hope. I look like a homeless person. He goes,

I'm not. I have a all, I have money. I just looked scary and I've just completely depressed about the end of my life. And your kids just took all of that aside, saw me for who I am inside, and gave me a huge hug because that meant the world to me. I can die a peaceful person. You know something along those lines. This is Jen telling us the story. So now do you take it as a grain of salt or what. But I've watched the kids do this to people, so it didn't surprise us one bit.

You know. The last time Ian saw the Hearts was in November two, four months before the crash, at a Knacko and Medicine for the People concert in Portland. In a quiet moment, Sperling told Sarah that she seemed worn down.

She said, I'm just so tired. He hugged her, said he was sorry she had to put in so many hours at work to support the family of eight, and Sarah answered, thanks, I don't hear that very often, so I think she was definitely a fan girl, like following these bands like Nacho, Trevor Hall, Xavier, read some of these bands and like getting to know them. And this was her backstage pass as your kids, you know. And the look on Sarah's face every time was cool, I'm

just taking along. I gotta work in a few hours, and that was it was Sarah constantly. That night at the Naco concert at Last November, Ian noticed that Sarah took most of the kids home after sound check, while Davante stayed on with Jen through the concert. This was the only time he noticed anything remotely strained, anything other than synchronicity in the relationship. And it wasn't even like they were fighting so much. It was just Sarah's tired,

she wanted to go home. She took the kids, Jenn and Davante stayed dance Snia and then left, and uh so that was it, you know, and we just are like, oh cool, They're normal. To say that Jen was the fan girl while Sarah was the adult with a job would be an oversimplification, but Sarah did work a lot. She was an assistant manager at the Coles in Hazel Dell, Washington, where she put in long hours, sometimes six days a week. Her colleague Cheryl Hart, the one who requested a welfare

check the same day they were found dead. Remember Sarah as super professional on the sales floor, but relaxed and chatty in the back office. One thing about Sarah is she was most definitely a talker. It was always a bit hard if you got caught up in a conversation with her because she would just rattle on sometimes. And Sarah would often talk about her home life with Jen and the kids. I mean, she would definitely talk about

her family. One thing I would notice so is that she would never she would never mention like the kids' names. She would always just you know, say the kids, or you know, like the girls or the boys. I mean, when she first came on with us, she let everybody know right off the bat that her family was the

family with the hug heard around the world. Basically, the hug had gone viral and I didn't know anything about it, so I actually had to look it up and I was just like, oh, okay, well that was pretty cool, and you know, she said that it wasn't cool. It caused a lot of stress in her family, and and it had really changed her wife, and not for the good. Um that Jen had come really closed in and really depressed,

and just it had just changed her immendsly. But Cheryl, a mother of two herself, understood the pressures of co managing a household as a new mom, especially with so many kids. She would talk about how the the kids would stress her out. Um, you know, I have two kids myself, so I mean, obviously two kids versus six kids, that's it's different. But you know there's three times where you know, parents get times where it's like, you know, my two girls are be like, oh my gosh, my

kids are driving me insane, you know. And she would say the same thing like, oh yeah, when I get home, you know, I have to take over and deal with the kids because you know Jen's had them all day. You know, when I get home, I got to deal with them. Tensions plagued the family, according to newly released emails made public in October two eighteen, in the months following the adoption of Davante, Jeremiah, and Sierra, Their days appear to be a chaotic jumble of post office runs, paperwork,

and dentist appointments, six dentist appointments. Sarah wrote to Jen in April two nine, I will take my lunch hower from one to two to help out with the kids during that time waiting there. Sorry, I made such a mess of everything. That same spring, Sarah tried to get pregnant with donated sperm and later suffered a miscarriage. Jen wrote in July two tho nine to an administrator at the agency that facilitated the adoptions, I don't know what else to say really now, we just take it one

day at a time, true to form. If there was anything stressing the family, overwhelming schedules, infertility or mental health issues, even racist stalkers, you would never know it from Jen's Facebook. But back in June of two thousand seventeen, gent old family friend neu Sheen baktr that someone had left upsetting racist notes in their mailbox. The first time Neuchen baked are encountered the Hart family was at an event Machine

put on called Portland's for the Philippines. It was a concert series for charity hosted in New Sheen's dad's place, a Mediterranean restaurant called blew Olive. She noticed that all the hard kids were sitting at a table and had incredible posture. Sheen had Jen in her phone as Je double in because she says Jen dropped F bombs all the time, so Jen was her favorite four letter word. The first show was at my dad's place. It was all ages, and they brought Jen and Sarah both came

and they brought all six of their children. And at first they were sitting at a table right in front of the stage, and um, they were just eating food and they were super polite and they were all sitting really like, um, it was just the best posture that I had ever seen like kids have. And then to see like all the kids have that great posture, it was like, holy crap. So that's actually I think what I commented on and how I started talking to Jen and Sarah and then um, yeah, I was like, oh

my god, what is up with your kids? How are they so well behaved? And she's like, oh, you don't know. That's just because there's not a dance floor. That's how it happened. So we moved the tables and we moved their table. They were done eating and we made a dance floor. And that was like my first connection with the children. We spent the rest of the night, you know,

dancing and having fun and all those like pictures. A lot of those pictures are literally from the first night, and like we're all holding each other and there was just like this really great connection. I've always thought that that's because I think other people tell me it's because I'm a person of color, But I always forget that I'm a person of color. So like people who are young who are like that, who are pocs, need other pocs to look up to, but I never I always forget.

I didn't even know what POC meant until somebody applied for a job last year and they're like, hey, saying, as you're a POC and I'm a POC, I think we could get along. And I was like, what, that's not how that works. We're all just humorous. Now, she remembers the good times they had and the collective effortvescent she experienced when the family was all together. She even talks about Jen and Sarah like they're still alive. Jen loves Sarah Uh to an insane degree, and she always has,

and she says the most beautiful things about her. Have you seen Jen's Facebook In fact, even though Jen would text Machine about her growing anxiety about being stalked, harassed and threatened on social media about the Trump election or the never ending racist, bigoted feedback from that photo of Davante at the rally, she was convinced the family was adjusting well to life in Washington. The last year of my friendship with John was pretty much me reaching out.

We talked, she confided in me, but me reaching out, asking her to come around, asking her if I can come up there, her sending me photos and videos of upgrades of the house, and then um, and they were happy. They actually were really really happy. I thought, when it comes down to it, isn't that the weirdest part of social media? Aren't we all guilty of looking at a picture of a smiling person and just taking it at

face value? Who among us hasn't looked at someone we don't know all that well and thought, damn, those people are pretty perfect. You may remember a similar story Madison Holleran, the upen track star who jumped off a parking garage in two thousand fifteen and whose sunny Instagram feed didn't betray her own struggle with mental illness, Much like what happened there. Machine believes these social media platforms come with deadly side effects. I think if it were not for

social media that they'd still be alive. Absolutely one. I just feel like because of that second persona, you know

what I mean. I feel like if that second persona wasn't there, and she didn't dedicate so much time to focusing only on the good and only being comfortable and only being you know, only being vulnerable when it came to the good, and not just learning to be vulnerable vulnerable, then then she could have actually sought help and her experiences in this life would have been more real and meaningful. I don't think social media is a real or meaningful thing.

I think it can bring about real and meaning will change. But I also think that when we're lying to ourselves and then we are posting that lie about ourselves that we want to believe, and then we're getting this fake feedback of of you know, acceptance and all this type of stuff, then then we're literally causing harm. We were crushed by this idea. So we invited Dr Amy Service, a psychologist for the online therapy site talk Space, to

discuss the psychological effects of social media. She says, the medium can trick of your into thinking they have more information than they actually do. That sort of two dimensional or even one dimensional, flat perception of what's going out there or going on with somebody's somebody's life, and so you might that sort of lack of compassion or even curiosity because you already know it's like a full complete

picture out there. If they are then revealing that this is what's going on, we might not really be invested to reach out or to care to connect because those pictures tell a different story. One of the things that really stuck out to me is that when they're quote unquote friends that they saw and interacted with were interviewed, they kind of were like, maybe we didn't know them as well. And I think that begs the question what were their interactions Like were they not sustained and why

weren't they sustained? Were they rely on social media as opposed to picking up the phone or continuing a more in depth relationship. But we become lazy and we kind of rely like, oh, I'll just catch up with them because I'll see these posts on Facebook as opposed to a real conversation, And those are that sort of question and bigger concept of relationships and how we sustain them in the meaningfulness of relationships that really stuck out that

really wasn't present for them. Zippy refers to the process of looking at pictures and only seeing what we want to see as confirmation bias. You might remember that term from psych one oh one. Here's zippy. We had our own confirmation bias that we were looking at them through this lens of compassionate understanding or who we thought we knew them to be, and of love and care. And of course can you blame us for not being so quick to to believe that our these people we loved

and cared about were capable of something like this. We were looking at them with a lot more willingness to imagine that this was a horrible accident, and so the details looked very different to all of us. Ultimately, the inability to sess out the truth about who her friends really were and the inability to see past her own confirmation bias is why is it be got off Facebook? So much of my um engagement with John in particular was via Facebook, so I only saw what was represented there,

but it it basically corroborated. I had experienced when I witnessed them in person. So there was like there was nothing about the way that that Jen was presenting their life that seemed um at all at odds with with my understanding of who they were. It is in a different place now than she was when she knew the Hearts. She's gotten to a point where she can picture Jen

doing something like this. I'm imagining Jen having a moment of just feeling like she'd kind of dug herself into some hole she would never be able to get out of that. I mean, I just feel like I can

see her having kind of a moment of desperation. I'm imagining Sarah being maybe sleeping, maybe other kids being asleep too, and her driving and her just like, you know, the only this is the only answer, and they're never going to leave us alone, and the only answer, the only way I can protect them, or like, the only we answer is to to this awful thing. I'm going to

drive off the cliff. No matter what happened in the moments leading up to that crash back in March, Zippy thinks, at the core of this tragedy is Jen a woman who had reached her breaking point. I feel like One of the things that has been totally um there has been no acknowledgement here is like, this was somebody who was desperate enough to kill herself and to take the lives of all the people she cared about in the same breadth. And what I want to know is what

led to that? What happened to jen Next time on Broken Hearts, you know when you say specifically cured meats, it was like, is he gonna run away? I saw Jennifer scolding it. She went inside and left him standing out in the rain. Wow, they knocked that rock wall down. That's what we said. They're rock it. They're gone. And it was just like, oh God, actually bought into it, and I was just like, oh God, yeah, just kill me.

So I finally got the okay to call it in and I made the call and then here I sit tonight. Broken Hearts will be off next Tuesday, which is Christmas Day, but look for a new episode on January one. For access to exclusive photos and videos and documents about the case, visit glamour dot com slash Broken Hearts. Have questions for us about this podcast, reach us on Twitter at Glamour mag or at Broken Hearts pot If you like what

you heard, leave us a review. 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 Harman and Elizabeth Egan and edited by Wendy Noagle. Lauren Smiley is our field reporter. Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief. Julie Sheen and Dianna Buckman head up the business side of this partnership. Joyce Pandola,

Pat Singer and Luke Zeleski are a research team. Jason Hoke is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Julian Weller, ben Kie Brick and Josh Thine. Special thanks to Jen Lance