"Two Questions, Eight People"

the consciousness of people who are following his case. Sheriff Allman is jovial and good natured. He's allowed talker and sometimes wears a Sheriff's star pinned to the lapel of his navy suit. He's been known to give exploding fist bumps. One gets the sense that not only does Tom Allman love his job, he loves the nature of the work, the responsibility, the respect, the attention to detail, and the intrigue.

If there was ever someone whose job it is to drum up interest in something as morose sounding as a coroner's inquest, it's him. When I left the meeting hearing, some of it I just walked out of the room and said, oh my god. He thought live streaming the event would be helpful for everyone at home with questions. Remember what the whole purpose of the quarters in question was. All purpose is to answer two questions about eight people,

the manner and cause of death. That's it. The first new development in some time came last month, when a California Superior Court judge officially pronounced Davante dead. Even though his body hasn't been found. His whereabouts have remained a huge point of contention for many people who have been following the case closely. But the court filing from the Sheriff's department reads, it is more probable than not that Davante Hart is deceased and died along with his siblings

and parents in the vehicle crash. Almond says he is closing DeVante's case with an asterisk. I'm certainly aware of a contingent of citizens who have a belief that DeVante was not in the car. To those and to all, the Sheriff's Office would certainly welcome any information that would

prove our belief incorrect. It is our opinion and the jury's opinion, that he lived with his family, and unfortunately he perished with his family, and the inquest made it clear that Jenn and Sarah made a deliberate decision to drive off that cliff. They planned it, they worked together. It was not a spur of the moment act. But as Almond points out, for those of us seeking a

tidy explanation as to why that will never come. There's one question that nobody will ever answer, and that's why we can tell you what we can tell you almost when we can tell you certainly where we can tell

you who. But as a as an adult whose brother committed suicide many years ago, I've learned that sometimes the question why I can never be answered, and we can give people the reason that they can find their own answer and say, well, I believe it happened because of an infilling players, but there's not going to be any black and white answer to why. From Glamour and I Heart Radio, this is Broken Hearts one year later, I'm Justine Harmon and I'm Liz Egan. Last week, Lauren returned

to Mendocino County to attend the coroner's inquest. Over the course of two days, witnesses ranging from first responders to detectives sat at a wooden desk and shared the brutal facts of the investigation. Behind them was a whiteboard on which assistants taped diagrams of the site and photos of the family. It was especially hard to look at the smiling faces of the Heart kids as the experts relayed the grotesque details of what their little bodies endured before

and after the fall. An inquest seats a jury. This one had fourteen jurors, but it isn't the same as a criminal trial. During an inquest, witnesses speak straight to a hearing officer. There are no objections or interruptions. During recesses in the courtroom, Lauren was able to grab a cup of coffee or check in with us back in New York. On the live stream, those brakes were filled with a stock video of a babbling brook. It's a civilized affair, almost amusingly civilized, a at the least civilized

thing you can imagine. Here's Lauren. I've been to will It's once before. Back in November, I drove through on my way to the Heart crash site. Ominous smog hung about the town. The first sign of the Paradise fire that covered northern California in Hayes for a week. The Justice Center is a cream colored stucco building that used to function as a bustling courtroom but now serves as the police station. As Tom Alman explained it to me, well,

it's a small town of five thousand people. We are in a courtroom that hasn't been used for over twelve years because the the Supere Court of the state closed this courtroom officially. So this is not actually a courtroom. We're in a justice center. Literally, it has not been used for twelve years. And so we came in here a couple of weeks ago and we looked at it, and we changed the battery of the clock, and we put up a new calendar, and it's ready to go.

The court room fits an audience of approximately fifty, but nearly half the seats are empty. No family members, adoptive or biological, are in attendance. The Hearts neighbor Danta de cal told me she'd be watching from home. The inquest is conducted by Matthew Guichard, a white haired attorney with nearly four decades of law experience. B sharts diligent and

soothing manner kept things on track. He typically oversees in quests back in the Bay Area for death that directly involved law enforcement, like a police shooting or an inmate dying in custody. He's done more than a hundred of these before it all begins. I have questions, big ones. I want to know what investigators heard from their friends and family members who declined to speak with me on the record. I want to know at what point, after fleeing from CPS, Jens, Sarah or both of them together

finalize their plan. I want to know whether the kids had antihistamines in their system to treat allergies, or if their moms gave it to them to lull them to sleep. I want to know where Jen got the alcohol that was in her system. Did she stop somewhere on the side off of high Way One or did she bring it with her knowing she might need it for what was to come later. Call it closure, even obsession. I want absolute clarity about what happened in those final days.

And I thought I'd just tell the jury how we're going to proceed today and for the record, I'm going to initially call some of the first responders, and I mentioned the name The inquest is a step by step presentation of the forensic evidence collected over the course of the past year. Evidence the California Highway Patrol says took tens of thousands of hours to compile. The key testimony

comes from HP officer Jake Slates. Much of what Slate's disclosed on the stand is familiar territory for listeners of this podcast, but there are new details and accounts too. He says that after the photo of Davante hugging the cop went viral, Jen received harassing emails. These were not invented.

Slate's read them himself. Another shocking reveal there was a new witness, a camper who says he heard the revving engine of the Yukon and a cry from the bottom of the cliff at three am, but dismissed it as an animal sound. It's awful to think someone could have responded sooner, but the inquest pathologist Dr. Greg Pizzarro thinks it's unlikely anyone could have survived a fall of that magnitude.

The deaths, he says, would have been nearly instantaneous. Slate says when rescue workers towed the yukon back up the cliff. Jen's body, which had been wedged behind the steering wheel, fell some sixty ft, which made it difficult to identify her at first. Those details are hard to stomach, but deep into the second day of the inquest, we got the answer to a question that has been bugging us for over a year. What role did Sarah Hart play and all of this? Was she complicit in Jen's plan?

Slates revealed that he was able to recover Sarah's cell phone records from right before the crash. Sarah began asking Google questions such as, canis of benadryl kill pound woman? What over the counter medications can you take to overdose? How can I easily overdose on overcounter medications? As death by drowning relatively painless? How long does it take to die from hypothermia and water while drowning in a car?

What will happen when overdosing with benadryl. One of the last searches that she did on her phone was while they're traveling through Oregon, and it was a search that she entered in and requesting Google to identify no kill shelters for dogs. These questions went on for hours. Sarah kept googling from after midnight the friday they fled until six thirty pm the next evening, and this wasn't a hypothetical.

At the time of her death, Slates estimated Sarah Hart had ingested forty two doses of an off brand antihistamine. Both liquid and pill versions of the drug were found in the Yukon. The family had stopped to buy the medicine at Walmart before ever leaving Washington, so there it was. Sarah was in on it. She wanted to die. She wanted all of them to die too, and she wasn't the only one with shockingly high levels of the drug

in her system. Marcus, after doing the math, would have had to take in nineteen approximate nineteen point to uh single dose units, Abigail would have had to take in fourteen dosage units, and Jeremiah would have had to take in eight point eight single dosage units in order for them to get at level at that point that the blood is drawn. Now that doesn't mean that they took that number. They could have been given more, but just at the time of the autopsies when we drew their blood,

that's what would have been in their system. Slate said that Sarah would likely have been extremely intoxicated by the amount of medication she had taken, and the kids would be quote more than likely unconscious or sleeping. Jen, who was driving, didn't have the drug in her system, but had a blood alcohol content of point one oh or about five drinks, which Slate said was especially significant. We also know through our investigation and interviews of people that

Jennifer never drank either. Witnesses stated that they never saw her have a drink, or they'd say occasionally they'd see her maybe have a glass of wine, but never finished that wine. Um So for a person to be at that level of intoxication and to have never drank or rarely ever drank, it would be extremely difficult for that person to function. Slates testified that he didn't believe Jen and Sarah knew exactly what they were going to do when they sped out of their Washington home on Friday night,

even when Sarah was googling suicide methods on Saturday. He didn't think they had fully committed to the plan. Here's why. On Sunday morning, the day before their death, Jen bought groceries it Safe Way. Remember that's where she used her club card for discounts. That same day, she picked up eight toothbrushes and deodorant at a nearby dollar tree. We've had a bit of an internal debate here. Could this be evidence that they still wanted to live? After all?

Who takes these precautions or buys these items when certain death is only a few hours away. On Saturday night, they switched off the vehicle's GPS for the first time in nine years. But Slates thinks Jen and Sarah's decision fully crystallized on Sunday as they drove up and down the coast near Fort Bragg, in between stops at beaches and parks a wanderer's itinerary, they stopped waffling. They drugged the kids, Sarah numbed herself with pills, and Jen, who

always called the shots in the relationship, finished the job. Ultimately, I feel that, based on Sarah and Jennifer's past history, the pattern that we see of um, the alleged child abuse, and confrontations that they may have received out of the community, that this was just another case where they would run. One of the final questions I would ask all my witnesses would be based on the fact and how well you know Sarah and Jennifer Hart. Would this be an

act that they could do? Would this beast? Would they be the type of people that would say, if I can't have my children, nobody can have my children. And most of the witnesses either stated yes Jennifer would say that, or yes, that would be a decision that either both of them would make. The jury only deliberated for an hour,

the verdict was swift and unanimous. The death certificates for Jennifer and Sarah Hart will be listed as suicide, and the six children who perished on that day, their death certainly, as a jury rule, was determined to be at the hands of another other by accident, and their death certificates will list homicide as a demander of death. Afterward, most jurors quickly made their way to their cars, but one, Tony Howard, stayed back to talk to reporters for a

few moments. I'm going to be really honest with you guys. Coming up with the decision really wasn't the hard part. Dealing with the told tragedy was the hard part. There was some discussion, however, after some short discussions, it was the anemous just the magnitude of all the children. Um, that was a hard part for a lot of people. It's been nearly four months since we wrapped the eighth

and final episode of Broken Hearts. Since the series launched in December, it's been downloaded over six million times, something Liz, Lauren and I didn't expect when we first started thinking about this case. With the wide reach of the series, also came comments from our listeners, many of whom experienced the same roller coaster of emotions we did while trying

to better understand what happened to the Hearts. There was positive feedback about how we viewed the story through an empathetic lens, question how social media can distort the truth, and how we were able to reveal the cracks and loopholes in the interstate adoption system. There was also criticism were we really the right people to tell the story? Should we have brought our own experiences as mothers into it? And how could we have used the word anti hero

to describe Jen and Sarah in the final episode. We've read all the reviews and one point of clarification. Anti hero doesn't mean a sympathetic hero. In fact, it means the opposite, an anti hero is someone who altogether lacks heroic qualities, and Jen and Sarah were not heroic. While the details revealed at the inquest confirmed the worst of our suspicions, we still believe that trying to see the humanity in even the ugliest stories is the only way

to understand why people do the things they do. More than anything, we created this podcast not to tell a story perfectly or to solve a crime, but to try to give a voice to six children whose own voices were silenced. Their names were Marcus, Hannah, Davante, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra. Through all of our reporting, there were very few recordings or pieces of evidence that could help us

fully understand the hell the Heart Kids endured. A few weeks ago, a listener emailed us about her own experience. She says she was one of four black siblings adopted out of foster care by a white family across state lines, and her story bears more than a passing resemblance to the Hearts. She told us it was hard to listen to this podcast because so many times she thought that could have been me. My mother during the eighties had

a crack. Addition, for about twenty years and she had eight children's totals a little blurred because I've never been able to get a clear cut story from my adoptive mother. Because of the sensitive nature of her story, we've chosen not to use this listener's name. They were like the granola eaters. If you had a blueprint, it was them. They were vegan hindoo, tree huggers. You know, we didn't

have any process. Some clothes were hand me down, I mean, wild hair, you know, like the ultimate hid the lifestyle, and for us it was shocking because we're coming from you know, eating long John Silber's and living in a

home with other black people. So it didn't, of course start off to be a horrible situation because their intentions, in my opinion, were good, and they have to be because of the fact you're taking on children that you know will have some type of attachment issues, emotional issues. They have a slight understanding of the children that they're bringing on, but I don't think it's a full understanding

of what they're about to take on. She says she and her siblings only took instruction from an older sister. There were trust issues, there were behavioral issues. She thinks her adoptive mother became overwhelmed by her lack of control over the kids. She thinks, no, she knows there are many more children with a similar story, and she wants them to know they're not alone. She wants to help

lift them out of the despair. She so acutely understands her type of punishment wasn't necessarily that she would hit us or beat us to start off doing that, and realized that really wasn't effective for us, because you know, we came from flosph Care. We used to get our aspet all the time with self from the flospterh paars, So you would really have to do a number in

us for us to really be moved by violence. As far as punishment, she used the Star Wars show bad that we would still from the neighbors, we would break that to their home and raise the frigerators because we were the mostated children on the block. Because we wouldn't still thinks we'd break into their homes and still food cps got involved a few times, but the warning signs, and there were many warning signs, didn't sound any alarms.

People saw what they wanted to see. Nobody's coming out to the check up on five children, so just not it's too far out. The closest office probably would have been a good two and a half hour drive. They just felt like you were saying in the podcast that what could possibly be wrong? Thank God? These white people want to take care of these black children who are visit to crack and have all these issues. Thank God, Like you should be grateful that they've been adopted as

a sibling group. You know, she has thought long and hard about trying to press charges, but it's complicated. So I still have relationships with both of them. Actually have spoke to my dad yesterday. He has a new partner, and um, she's really helped him not trying to sweep things under the rug. She has been able to kind of give him perspective as to why his children are so mad at him and what he's done and now has to truly internalize that that's his burden right there there.

And with also my adoptive mother. You know, there's no way she cannot sit here and think about the things that she's done and stilly, that's also her burden. She says she'd like to write a book about all of this one day. She has a baby of her own now and while it's been healing to feel that love it all, who reminds her of what she lived through

now that I know would have felt like. And I knew it was going to change after you know, I have childs because everyone always told you could felt differently. We have a child, and now that I do, it's like, I don't understand how old you could even look in the face of a child and neglects them, not feed them or do anything. So where do we go from here? There was a woman at the inquest named Mary. She says she never knew the hearts, but the story hits

close to home. She adopted three of her four kids out of the foster system, and those firsthand how taxing and isolating it can be to raise children, especially multiple children who have experienced trauma. You know, when you're going through the process out of foster into adoption, you know there are people and agencies around that can answer questions and you know, uh provide some amount of support. But for most families, once the adoption papers are signed, you

are pretty much on your own. And of course it's it's after that time where a lot of the um issues come out from you know, whatever led to those kids being um taken away from the biological families, whether it was abuse and neglect, UM, drunken alcohol issues, violence, UM, that is all going to come out eventually, and sometimes when the kids are younger, but very often when their teens. And you know, if you have more than one team going through all those issues at once, it can be

really extremely challenging. I told a few friends that I was thinking of coming, and they all tried to talk me out of it, knowing that it would be really distressing. But UM, I don't know, really that's okay. I just feel like I need to be witness to what happens to the tragedy of their family. Mary hopes that if anything comes from the rehashing of the grisome details of this case, it's reform in the adoption and foster systems.

This just is not something that was just obviously happened overnight. It's something that happened at various places over time. And UM, I mean, I I don't know them, I've never you know, met anyone from the family. But as an adoptive mom, UM,

something's going to come out of this. It shouldn't just be about finger pointing it needs to be about what help and support can we give other people who are in these situations where you just feel like you don't know where to go or who to turn to and who can help and um that I mean, if we're going to um honor them in any way that to

me would be would make the most sense. Sheriff Allman hopes this story and the findings from the inquest will show lawmakers how desperately we need a national database for child abuse. After the inquest, he held a brief press conference. We have a national database that reports mental illness, which prohibits him from having guns. We have a national database for criminal histories. We also have a national database for gun registration. We do not have a national database for

child abuse allegations. And the fact that there were five states involved Texas, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, California certainly should be an enlightening moment for our national legislatures. I'm not going to say that that if there we had a national database that the Heart family would still be alive, but certainly there would have been more of an investigation and find out if the adoptions had been appropriate in or if CPS should be a little bit more involved in

what they were and then it was all over. The live stream shut off. It was time for Lauren to go home. After all was said and done, Sheriff Almands circled the parking lot, shaking journalists hands as they got into their cars and saying goodbye to investigators. He finally walked over to where I was sitting on a bench

and asked why I looked so despondent. I had, in fact found the last bits of the puzzle shocking, just as he had predicted, imagining just how awful those last hours were for the kids, And when the hearing officer read the verdict, the most closure we'd ever get in this case, I ugly cried silently for a few seconds before collecting myself. I didn't even want to be at an inquest. I wanted to be at a trial with someone there to actually punish, someone, to take the blame.

The Hearts is a horror story, yes, but it's more explicitly an American horror story, one that could only happen here, and one that was aided and abetted by the culture in which we live. And I'm not just talking about our adoption courts and CPS systems. If we believe Jennifer Hart into a lesser extents Sarah were con women, as friends and neighbors we've interviewed now understand them to be, then it's worth considering this. A con woman doesn't succeed

by making up new rules for society. She succeeds by artfully using the rules by playing on our expectations. More often than not, Jen found people would trust the explanations of a charismatic woman, and yes, a white woman, more than her black children. Friends and neighbors noticed how robotic and thin her kids were, but in the end they trusted Jen more than their own eyes. She also knew

political correctness would be a shield against unwanted scrutiny. She knew the power of a strong narrative on social media. She knew how much people, mostly white people, wanted to believe images of racial reconciliation, whether it was fawning over Davonte, hugging that cop, or liking Facebook images of their rainbow family. When I say that Gen was good, she was good. They were one of my early role models for what

like a non traditional family could look like. Everyone was very envious of them because of how they could pull this off, how they can raise the six quote unquote developmentally the late children. There's no part of me and all of my looking back and that's capable of seeing that. It was just as sure. We assume that people who are abusive are abusive both in their private lives but also in their public lives, and we know this now not to be true. Oh God, looking back on it,

it doesn't look like they were normal kids. They didn't really have friends. We thought they were almost sage. They were wow, so we thought they had to be in kindergarten. The kids are skinny, well, we just got there any organic food. When I realized that she wasn't on school, mom, I'm like, there's no way in hell those kids are learning.

It's impossible. With the amount of time she was devoting to us, to our game, that was an issue for her, you know, being uh, well gay, I guess so I just thought, you know, I don't want her to think that I'm being judgmental. I just want to be a good neighbor, like son laws, like most people, they don't want to get involved. I feel so guilty for not realizing, you know that these were red and flags and it was just like, oh god, I totally bought into it. Absolutely.

I think race is playing a part. These kids are being used as a prop. These white ladies came in and saved these six black children. Nice work, he saved him. You know that was the narrative always, which is just man, young parents do operate this way. You know, look what we did. We're symbols of racial harmony, and our kids are evidence of that. We love those kids so much, and it's sort of heartbreaking the fact that that would be utilized as a way to mass some of the

abuse and neglect that was happening. It's just us just disturbing, and too many people bought it. Jenn and Sarahart got away with what they did because there were green lights where there should have been read ones. They weren't criminal masterminds, they just weren't stopped. Kids love too. Yeah. Broken Hearts

is a production of I Heart Radio and Glamour. If you suspect a child as being abused, call one eight hundred for a child that's one eight hundred numeral four a C H I L D. Or visit child help dot org to find out how to report your concerns. 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 Pod. 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 Nogal. 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 Saying and Luke Zeleski are a research team.

Jason Hoke is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Julian Weller, ben Kiebrick and Josh Stain. Special thanks to Jen Lance. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.