Speaker 1: Back in January, a few weeks after Hannah Heart's remains
Speaker 1: were identified, our field reporter Lawrence Smiley reconnected with Sheriff
Speaker 1: Tom Allman about the upcoming coroner's inquest. Lauren, good morning,
Speaker 1: Tom Allman from Medin. You'll remember Sheriff Allman. He's been
Speaker 1: on the Heart case since the crash and hasn't wavered
Speaker 1: on his conviction that it was an intentional act. He
Speaker 1: was the one who told us that the proceedings of
Speaker 1: the two day hearing would give evidence that will shock
Speaker 1: the consciousness of people who are following his case. Sheriff
Speaker 1: Allman is jovial and good natured. He's allowed talker and
Speaker 1: sometimes wears a Sheriff's star pinned to the lapel of
Speaker 1: his navy suit. He's been known to give exploding fist bumps.
Speaker 1: One gets the sense that not only does Tom Allman
Speaker 1: love his job, he loves the nature of the work,
Speaker 1: the responsibility, the respect, the attention to detail, and the intrigue.
Speaker 1: If there was ever someone whose job it is to
Speaker 1: drum up interest in something as morose sounding as a
Speaker 1: coroner's inquest, it's him. When I left the meeting hearing,
Speaker 1: some of it I just walked out of the room
Speaker 1: and said, oh my god. He thought live streaming the
Speaker 1: event would be helpful for everyone at home with questions.
Speaker 1: Remember what the whole purpose of the quarters in question was.
Speaker 1: All purpose is to answer two questions about eight people,
Speaker 1: the manner and cause of death. That's it. The first
Speaker 1: new development in some time came last month, when a
Speaker 1: California Superior Court judge officially pronounced Davante dead. Even though
Speaker 1: his body hasn't been found. His whereabouts have remained a
Speaker 1: huge point of contention for many people who have been
Speaker 1: following the case closely. But the court filing from the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department reads, it is more probable than not that
Speaker 1: Davante Hart is deceased and died along with his siblings
Speaker 1: and parents in the vehicle crash. Almond says he is
Speaker 1: closing DeVante's case with an asterisk. I'm certainly aware of
Speaker 1: a contingent of citizens who have a belief that DeVante
Speaker 1: was not in the car. To those and to all,
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Office would certainly welcome any information that would
Speaker 1: prove our belief incorrect. It is our opinion and the
Speaker 1: jury's opinion, that he lived with his family, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: he perished with his family, and the inquest made it
Speaker 1: clear that Jenn and Sarah made a deliberate decision to
Speaker 1: drive off that cliff. They planned it, they worked together.
Speaker 1: It was not a spur of the moment act. But
Speaker 1: as Almond points out, for those of us seeking a
Speaker 1: tidy explanation as to why that will never come. There's
Speaker 1: one question that nobody will ever answer, and that's why
Speaker 1: we can tell you what we can tell you almost
Speaker 1: when we can tell you certainly where we can tell
Speaker 1: you who. But as a as an adult whose brother
Speaker 1: committed suicide many years ago, I've learned that sometimes the
Speaker 1: question why I can never be answered, and we can
Speaker 1: give people the reason that they can find their own
Speaker 1: answer and say, well, I believe it happened because of
Speaker 1: an infilling players, but there's not going to be any
Speaker 1: black and white answer to why. From Glamour and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, this is Broken Hearts one year later, I'm
Speaker 1: Justine Harmon and I'm Liz Egan. Last week, Lauren returned
Speaker 1: to Mendocino County to attend the coroner's inquest. Over the
Speaker 1: course of two days, witnesses ranging from first responders to
Speaker 1: detectives sat at a wooden desk and shared the brutal
Speaker 1: facts of the investigation. Behind them was a whiteboard on
Speaker 1: which assistants taped diagrams of the site and photos of
Speaker 1: the family. It was especially hard to look at the
Speaker 1: smiling faces of the Heart kids as the experts relayed
Speaker 1: the grotesque details of what their little bodies endured before
Speaker 1: and after the fall. An inquest seats a jury. This
Speaker 1: one had fourteen jurors, but it isn't the same as
Speaker 1: a criminal trial. During an inquest, witnesses speak straight to
Speaker 1: a hearing officer. There are no objections or interruptions. During
Speaker 1: recesses in the courtroom, Lauren was able to grab a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee or check in with us back in
Speaker 1: New York. On the live stream, those brakes were filled
Speaker 1: with a stock video of a babbling brook. It's a
Speaker 1: civilized affair, almost amusingly civilized, a at the least civilized
Speaker 1: thing you can imagine. Here's Lauren. I've been to will
Speaker 1: It's once before. Back in November, I drove through on
Speaker 1: my way to the Heart crash site. Ominous smog hung
Speaker 1: about the town. The first sign of the Paradise fire
Speaker 1: that covered northern California in Hayes for a week. The
Speaker 1: Justice Center is a cream colored stucco building that used
Speaker 1: to function as a bustling courtroom but now serves as
Speaker 1: the police station. As Tom Alman explained it to me, well,
Speaker 1: it's a small town of five thousand people. We are
Speaker 1: in a courtroom that hasn't been used for over twelve
Speaker 1: years because the the Supere Court of the state closed
Speaker 1: this courtroom officially. So this is not actually a courtroom.
Speaker 1: We're in a justice center. Literally, it has not been
Speaker 1: used for twelve years. And so we came in here
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago and we looked at it,
Speaker 1: and we changed the battery of the clock, and we
Speaker 1: put up a new calendar, and it's ready to go.
Speaker 1: The court room fits an audience of approximately fifty, but
Speaker 1: nearly half the seats are empty. No family members, adoptive
Speaker 1: or biological, are in attendance. The Hearts neighbor Danta de
Speaker 1: cal told me she'd be watching from home. The inquest
Speaker 1: is conducted by Matthew Guichard, a white haired attorney with
Speaker 1: nearly four decades of law experience. B sharts diligent and
Speaker 1: soothing manner kept things on track. He typically oversees in
Speaker 1: quests back in the Bay Area for death that directly
Speaker 1: involved law enforcement, like a police shooting or an inmate
Speaker 1: dying in custody. He's done more than a hundred of
Speaker 1: these before it all begins. I have questions, big ones.
Speaker 1: I want to know what investigators heard from their friends
Speaker 1: and family members who declined to speak with me on
Speaker 1: the record. I want to know at what point, after
Speaker 1: fleeing from CPS, Jens, Sarah or both of them together
Speaker 1: finalize their plan. I want to know whether the kids
Speaker 1: had antihistamines in their system to treat allergies, or if
Speaker 1: their moms gave it to them to lull them to sleep.
Speaker 1: I want to know where Jen got the alcohol that
Speaker 1: was in her system. Did she stop somewhere on the
Speaker 1: side off of high Way One or did she bring
Speaker 1: it with her knowing she might need it for what
Speaker 1: was to come later. Call it closure, even obsession. I
Speaker 1: want absolute clarity about what happened in those final days.
Speaker 1: And I thought I'd just tell the jury how we're
Speaker 1: going to proceed today and for the record, I'm going
Speaker 1: to initially call some of the first responders, and I
Speaker 1: mentioned the name The inquest is a step by step
Speaker 1: presentation of the forensic evidence collected over the course of
Speaker 1: the past year. Evidence the California Highway Patrol says took
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of hours to compile. The key testimony
Speaker 1: comes from HP officer Jake Slates. Much of what Slate's
Speaker 1: disclosed on the stand is familiar territory for listeners of
Speaker 1: this podcast, but there are new details and accounts too.
Speaker 1: He says that after the photo of Davante hugging the
Speaker 1: cop went viral, Jen received harassing emails. These were not invented.
Speaker 1: Slate's read them himself. Another shocking reveal there was a
Speaker 1: new witness, a camper who says he heard the revving
Speaker 1: engine of the Yukon and a cry from the bottom
Speaker 1: of the cliff at three am, but dismissed it as
Speaker 1: an animal sound. It's awful to think someone could have
Speaker 1: responded sooner, but the inquest pathologist Dr. Greg Pizzarro thinks
Speaker 1: it's unlikely anyone could have survived a fall of that magnitude.
Speaker 1: The deaths, he says, would have been nearly instantaneous. Slate
Speaker 1: says when rescue workers towed the yukon back up the cliff.
Speaker 1: Jen's body, which had been wedged behind the steering wheel,
Speaker 1: fell some sixty ft, which made it difficult to identify
Speaker 1: her at first. Those details are hard to stomach, but
Speaker 1: deep into the second day of the inquest, we got
Speaker 1: the answer to a question that has been bugging us
Speaker 1: for over a year. What role did Sarah Hart play
Speaker 1: and all of this? Was she complicit in Jen's plan?
Speaker 1: Slates revealed that he was able to recover Sarah's cell
Speaker 1: phone records from right before the crash. Sarah began asking
Speaker 1: Google questions such as, canis of benadryl kill pound woman?
Speaker 1: What over the counter medications can you take to overdose?
Speaker 1: How can I easily overdose on overcounter medications? As death
Speaker 1: by drowning relatively painless? How long does it take to
Speaker 1: die from hypothermia and water while drowning in a car?
Speaker 1: What will happen when overdosing with benadryl. One of the
Speaker 1: last searches that she did on her phone was while
Speaker 1: they're traveling through Oregon, and it was a search that
Speaker 1: she entered in and requesting Google to identify no kill
Speaker 1: shelters for dogs. These questions went on for hours. Sarah
Speaker 1: kept googling from after midnight the friday they fled until
Speaker 1: six thirty pm the next evening, and this wasn't a hypothetical.
Speaker 1: At the time of her death, Slates estimated Sarah Hart
Speaker 1: had ingested forty two doses of an off brand antihistamine.
Speaker 1: Both liquid and pill versions of the drug were found
Speaker 1: in the Yukon. The family had stopped to buy the
Speaker 1: medicine at Walmart before ever leaving Washington, so there it was.
Speaker 1: Sarah was in on it. She wanted to die. She
Speaker 1: wanted all of them to die too, and she wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one with shockingly high levels of the drug
Speaker 1: in her system. Marcus, after doing the math, would have
Speaker 1: had to take in nineteen approximate nineteen point to uh
Speaker 1: single dose units, Abigail would have had to take in
Speaker 1: fourteen dosage units, and Jeremiah would have had to take
Speaker 1: in eight point eight single dosage units in order for
Speaker 1: them to get at level at that point that the
Speaker 1: blood is drawn. Now that doesn't mean that they took
Speaker 1: that number. They could have been given more, but just
Speaker 1: at the time of the autopsies when we drew their blood,
Speaker 1: that's what would have been in their system. Slate said
Speaker 1: that Sarah would likely have been extremely intoxicated by the
Speaker 1: amount of medication she had taken, and the kids would
Speaker 1: be quote more than likely unconscious or sleeping. Jen, who
Speaker 1: was driving, didn't have the drug in her system, but
Speaker 1: had a blood alcohol content of point one oh or
Speaker 1: about five drinks, which Slate said was especially significant. We
Speaker 1: also know through our investigation and interviews of people that
Speaker 1: Jennifer never drank either. Witnesses stated that they never saw
Speaker 1: her have a drink, or they'd say occasionally they'd see
Speaker 1: her maybe have a glass of wine, but never finished
Speaker 1: that wine. Um So for a person to be at
Speaker 1: that level of intoxication and to have never drank or
Speaker 1: rarely ever drank, it would be extremely difficult for that
Speaker 1: person to function. Slates testified that he didn't believe Jen
Speaker 1: and Sarah knew exactly what they were going to do
Speaker 1: when they sped out of their Washington home on Friday night,
Speaker 1: even when Sarah was googling suicide methods on Saturday. He
Speaker 1: didn't think they had fully committed to the plan. Here's why.
Speaker 1: On Sunday morning, the day before their death, Jen bought
Speaker 1: groceries it Safe Way. Remember that's where she used her
Speaker 1: club card for discounts. That same day, she picked up
Speaker 1: eight toothbrushes and deodorant at a nearby dollar tree. We've
Speaker 1: had a bit of an internal debate here. Could this
Speaker 1: be evidence that they still wanted to live? After all?
Speaker 1: Who takes these precautions or buys these items when certain
Speaker 1: death is only a few hours away. On Saturday night,
Speaker 1: they switched off the vehicle's GPS for the first time
Speaker 1: in nine years. But Slates thinks Jen and Sarah's decision
Speaker 1: fully crystallized on Sunday as they drove up and down
Speaker 1: the coast near Fort Bragg, in between stops at beaches
Speaker 1: and parks a wanderer's itinerary, they stopped waffling. They drugged
Speaker 1: the kids, Sarah numbed herself with pills, and Jen, who
Speaker 1: always called the shots in the relationship, finished the job. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I feel that, based on Sarah and Jennifer's past history,
Speaker 1: the pattern that we see of um, the alleged child abuse,
Speaker 1: and confrontations that they may have received out of the community,
Speaker 1: that this was just another case where they would run.
Speaker 1: One of the final questions I would ask all my
Speaker 1: witnesses would be based on the fact and how well
Speaker 1: you know Sarah and Jennifer Hart. Would this be an
Speaker 1: act that they could do? Would this beast? Would they
Speaker 1: be the type of people that would say, if I
Speaker 1: can't have my children, nobody can have my children. And
Speaker 1: most of the witnesses either stated yes Jennifer would say that,
Speaker 1: or yes, that would be a decision that either both
Speaker 1: of them would make. The jury only deliberated for an hour,
Speaker 1: the verdict was swift and unanimous. The death certificates for
Speaker 1: Jennifer and Sarah Hart will be listed as suicide, and
Speaker 1: the six children who perished on that day, their death certainly,
Speaker 1: as a jury rule, was determined to be at the
Speaker 1: hands of another other by accident, and their death certificates
Speaker 1: will list homicide as a demander of death. Afterward, most
Speaker 1: jurors quickly made their way to their cars, but one,
Speaker 1: Tony Howard, stayed back to talk to reporters for a
Speaker 1: few moments. I'm going to be really honest with you guys.
Speaker 1: Coming up with the decision really wasn't the hard part.
Speaker 1: Dealing with the told tragedy was the hard part. There
Speaker 1: was some discussion, however, after some short discussions, it was
Speaker 1: the anemous just the magnitude of all the children. Um,
Speaker 1: that was a hard part for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It's been nearly four months since we wrapped the eighth
Speaker 1: and final episode of Broken Hearts. Since the series launched
Speaker 1: in December, it's been downloaded over six million times, something Liz,
Speaker 1: Lauren and I didn't expect when we first started thinking
Speaker 1: about this case. With the wide reach of the series,
Speaker 1: also came comments from our listeners, many of whom experienced
Speaker 1: the same roller coaster of emotions we did while trying
Speaker 1: to better understand what happened to the Hearts. There was
Speaker 1: positive feedback about how we viewed the story through an
Speaker 1: empathetic lens, question how social media can distort the truth,
Speaker 1: and how we were able to reveal the cracks and
Speaker 1: loopholes in the interstate adoption system. There was also criticism
Speaker 1: were we really the right people to tell the story?
Speaker 1: Should we have brought our own experiences as mothers into it?
Speaker 1: And how could we have used the word anti hero
Speaker 1: to describe Jen and Sarah in the final episode. We've
Speaker 1: read all the reviews and one point of clarification. Anti
Speaker 1: hero doesn't mean a sympathetic hero. In fact, it means
Speaker 1: the opposite, an anti hero is someone who altogether lacks
Speaker 1: heroic qualities, and Jen and Sarah were not heroic. While
Speaker 1: the details revealed at the inquest confirmed the worst of
Speaker 1: our suspicions, we still believe that trying to see the
Speaker 1: humanity in even the ugliest stories is the only way
Speaker 1: to understand why people do the things they do. More
Speaker 1: than anything, we created this podcast not to tell a
Speaker 1: story perfectly or to solve a crime, but to try
Speaker 1: to give a voice to six children whose own voices
Speaker 1: were silenced. Their names were Marcus, Hannah, Davante, Abigail, Jeremiah,
Speaker 1: and Sierra. Through all of our reporting, there were very
Speaker 1: few recordings or pieces of evidence that could help us
Speaker 1: fully understand the hell the Heart Kids endured. A few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, a listener emailed us about her own experience.
Speaker 1: She says she was one of four black siblings adopted
Speaker 1: out of foster care by a white family across state lines,
Speaker 1: and her story bears more than a passing resemblance to
Speaker 1: the Hearts. She told us it was hard to listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast because so many times she thought that
Speaker 1: could have been me. My mother during the eighties had
Speaker 1: a crack. Addition, for about twenty years and she had
Speaker 1: eight children's totals a little blurred because I've never been
Speaker 1: able to get a clear cut story from my adoptive mother.
Speaker 1: Because of the sensitive nature of her story, we've chosen
Speaker 1: not to use this listener's name. They were like the
Speaker 1: granola eaters. If you had a blueprint, it was them.
Speaker 1: They were vegan hindoo, tree huggers. You know, we didn't
Speaker 1: have any process. Some clothes were hand me down, I mean,
Speaker 1: wild hair, you know, like the ultimate hid the lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and for us it was shocking because we're coming from
Speaker 1: you know, eating long John Silber's and living in a
Speaker 1: home with other black people. So it didn't, of course
Speaker 1: start off to be a horrible situation because their intentions,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, were good, and they have to be
Speaker 1: because of the fact you're taking on children that you
Speaker 1: know will have some type of attachment issues, emotional issues.
Speaker 1: They have a slight understanding of the children that they're
Speaker 1: bringing on, but I don't think it's a full understanding
Speaker 1: of what they're about to take on. She says she
Speaker 1: and her siblings only took instruction from an older sister.
Speaker 1: There were trust issues, there were behavioral issues. She thinks
Speaker 1: her adoptive mother became overwhelmed by her lack of control
Speaker 1: over the kids. She thinks, no, she knows there are
Speaker 1: many more children with a similar story, and she wants
Speaker 1: them to know they're not alone. She wants to help
Speaker 1: lift them out of the despair. She so acutely understands
Speaker 1: her type of punishment wasn't necessarily that she would hit
Speaker 1: us or beat us to start off doing that, and
Speaker 1: realized that really wasn't effective for us, because you know,
Speaker 1: we came from flosph Care. We used to get our
Speaker 1: aspet all the time with self from the flospterh paars,
Speaker 1: So you would really have to do a number in
Speaker 1: us for us to really be moved by violence. As
Speaker 1: far as punishment, she used the Star Wars show bad
Speaker 1: that we would still from the neighbors, we would break
Speaker 1: that to their home and raise the frigerators because we
Speaker 1: were the mostated children on the block. Because we wouldn't
Speaker 1: still thinks we'd break into their homes and still food
Speaker 1: cps got involved a few times, but the warning signs,
Speaker 1: and there were many warning signs, didn't sound any alarms.
Speaker 1: People saw what they wanted to see. Nobody's coming out
Speaker 1: to the check up on five children, so just not
Speaker 1: it's too far out. The closest office probably would have
Speaker 1: been a good two and a half hour drive. They
Speaker 1: just felt like you were saying in the podcast that
Speaker 1: what could possibly be wrong? Thank God? These white people
Speaker 1: want to take care of these black children who are
Speaker 1: visit to crack and have all these issues. Thank God,
Speaker 1: Like you should be grateful that they've been adopted as
Speaker 1: a sibling group. You know, she has thought long and
Speaker 1: hard about trying to press charges, but it's complicated. So
Speaker 1: I still have relationships with both of them. Actually have
Speaker 1: spoke to my dad yesterday. He has a new partner,
Speaker 1: and um, she's really helped him not trying to sweep
Speaker 1: things under the rug. She has been able to kind
Speaker 1: of give him perspective as to why his children are
Speaker 1: so mad at him and what he's done and now
Speaker 1: has to truly internalize that that's his burden right there there.
Speaker 1: And with also my adoptive mother. You know, there's no
Speaker 1: way she cannot sit here and think about the things
Speaker 1: that she's done and stilly, that's also her burden. She
Speaker 1: says she'd like to write a book about all of
Speaker 1: this one day. She has a baby of her own
Speaker 1: now and while it's been healing to feel that love
Speaker 1: it all, who reminds her of what she lived through
Speaker 1: now that I know would have felt like. And I
Speaker 1: knew it was going to change after you know, I
Speaker 1: have childs because everyone always told you could felt differently.
Speaker 1: We have a child, and now that I do, it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand how old you could even look in
Speaker 1: the face of a child and neglects them, not feed
Speaker 1: them or do anything. So where do we go from here?
Speaker 1: There was a woman at the inquest named Mary. She
Speaker 1: says she never knew the hearts, but the story hits
Speaker 1: close to home. She adopted three of her four kids
Speaker 1: out of the foster system, and those firsthand how taxing
Speaker 1: and isolating it can be to raise children, especially multiple
Speaker 1: children who have experienced trauma. You know, when you're going
Speaker 1: through the process out of foster into adoption, you know
Speaker 1: there are people and agencies around that can answer questions
Speaker 1: and you know, uh provide some amount of support. But
Speaker 1: for most families, once the adoption papers are signed, you
Speaker 1: are pretty much on your own. And of course it's
Speaker 1: it's after that time where a lot of the um
Speaker 1: issues come out from you know, whatever led to those
Speaker 1: kids being um taken away from the biological families, whether
Speaker 1: it was abuse and neglect, UM, drunken alcohol issues, violence, UM,
Speaker 1: that is all going to come out eventually, and sometimes
Speaker 1: when the kids are younger, but very often when their teens.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you have more than one team
Speaker 1: going through all those issues at once, it can be
Speaker 1: really extremely challenging. I told a few friends that I
Speaker 1: was thinking of coming, and they all tried to talk
Speaker 1: me out of it, knowing that it would be really distressing.
Speaker 1: But UM, I don't know, really that's okay. I just
Speaker 1: feel like I need to be witness to what happens
Speaker 1: to the tragedy of their family. Mary hopes that if
Speaker 1: anything comes from the rehashing of the grisome details of
Speaker 1: this case, it's reform in the adoption and foster systems.
Speaker 1: This just is not something that was just obviously happened overnight.
Speaker 1: It's something that happened at various places over time. And UM,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I don't know them, I've never you know,
Speaker 1: met anyone from the family. But as an adoptive mom, UM,
Speaker 1: something's going to come out of this. It shouldn't just
Speaker 1: be about finger pointing it needs to be about what
Speaker 1: help and support can we give other people who are
Speaker 1: in these situations where you just feel like you don't
Speaker 1: know where to go or who to turn to and
Speaker 1: who can help and um that I mean, if we're
Speaker 1: going to um honor them in any way that to
Speaker 1: me would be would make the most sense. Sheriff Allman
Speaker 1: hopes this story and the findings from the inquest will
Speaker 1: show lawmakers how desperately we need a national database for
Speaker 1: child abuse. After the inquest, he held a brief press conference.
Speaker 1: We have a national database that reports mental illness, which
Speaker 1: prohibits him from having guns. We have a national database
Speaker 1: for criminal histories. We also have a national database for
Speaker 1: gun registration. We do not have a national database for
Speaker 1: child abuse allegations. And the fact that there were five
Speaker 1: states involved Texas, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, California certainly should be
Speaker 1: an enlightening moment for our national legislatures. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say that that if there we had a national
Speaker 1: database that the Heart family would still be alive, but
Speaker 1: certainly there would have been more of an investigation and
Speaker 1: find out if the adoptions had been appropriate in or
Speaker 1: if CPS should be a little bit more involved in
Speaker 1: what they were and then it was all over. The
Speaker 1: live stream shut off. It was time for Lauren to
Speaker 1: go home. After all was said and done, Sheriff Almands
Speaker 1: circled the parking lot, shaking journalists hands as they got
Speaker 1: into their cars and saying goodbye to investigators. He finally
Speaker 1: walked over to where I was sitting on a bench
Speaker 1: and asked why I looked so despondent. I had, in
Speaker 1: fact found the last bits of the puzzle shocking, just
Speaker 1: as he had predicted, imagining just how awful those last
Speaker 1: hours were for the kids, And when the hearing officer
Speaker 1: read the verdict, the most closure we'd ever get in
Speaker 1: this case, I ugly cried silently for a few seconds
Speaker 1: before collecting myself. I didn't even want to be at
Speaker 1: an inquest. I wanted to be at a trial with
Speaker 1: someone there to actually punish, someone, to take the blame.
Speaker 1: The Hearts is a horror story, yes, but it's more
Speaker 1: explicitly an American horror story, one that could only happen here,
Speaker 1: and one that was aided and abetted by the culture
Speaker 1: in which we live. And I'm not just talking about
Speaker 1: our adoption courts and CPS systems. If we believe Jennifer
Speaker 1: Hart into a lesser extents Sarah were con women, as
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors we've interviewed now understand them to be,
Speaker 1: then it's worth considering this. A con woman doesn't succeed
Speaker 1: by making up new rules for society. She succeeds by
Speaker 1: artfully using the rules by playing on our expectations. More
Speaker 1: often than not, Jen found people would trust the explanations
Speaker 1: of a charismatic woman, and yes, a white woman, more
Speaker 1: than her black children. Friends and neighbors noticed how robotic
Speaker 1: and thin her kids were, but in the end they
Speaker 1: trusted Jen more than their own eyes. She also knew
Speaker 1: political correctness would be a shield against unwanted scrutiny. She
Speaker 1: knew the power of a strong narrative on social media.
Speaker 1: She knew how much people, mostly white people, wanted to
Speaker 1: believe images of racial reconciliation, whether it was fawning over Davonte,
Speaker 1: hugging that cop, or liking Facebook images of their rainbow family.
Speaker 1: When I say that Gen was good, she was good.
Speaker 1: They were one of my early role models for what
Speaker 1: like a non traditional family could look like. Everyone was
Speaker 1: very envious of them because of how they could pull
Speaker 1: this off, how they can raise the six quote unquote
Speaker 1: developmentally the late children. There's no part of me and
Speaker 1: all of my looking back and that's capable of seeing that.
Speaker 1: It was just as sure. We assume that people who
Speaker 1: are abusive are abusive both in their private lives but
Speaker 1: also in their public lives, and we know this now
Speaker 1: not to be true. Oh God, looking back on it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like they were normal kids. They didn't
Speaker 1: really have friends. We thought they were almost sage. They
Speaker 1: were wow, so we thought they had to be in kindergarten.
Speaker 1: The kids are skinny, well, we just got there any
Speaker 1: organic food. When I realized that she wasn't on school, mom,
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's no way in hell those kids are learning.
Speaker 1: It's impossible. With the amount of time she was devoting
Speaker 1: to us, to our game, that was an issue for her,
Speaker 1: you know, being uh, well gay, I guess so I
Speaker 1: just thought, you know, I don't want her to think
Speaker 1: that I'm being judgmental. I just want to be a
Speaker 1: good neighbor, like son laws, like most people, they don't
Speaker 1: want to get involved. I feel so guilty for not realizing,
Speaker 1: you know that these were red and flags and it
Speaker 1: was just like, oh god, I totally bought into it. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think race is playing a part. These kids are
Speaker 1: being used as a prop. These white ladies came in
Speaker 1: and saved these six black children. Nice work, he saved him.
Speaker 1: You know that was the narrative always, which is just man,
Speaker 1: young parents do operate this way. You know, look what
Speaker 1: we did. We're symbols of racial harmony, and our kids
Speaker 1: are evidence of that. We love those kids so much,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of heartbreaking the fact that that would
Speaker 1: be utilized as a way to mass some of the
Speaker 1: abuse and neglect that was happening. It's just us just disturbing,
Speaker 1: and too many people bought it. Jenn and Sarahart got
Speaker 1: away with what they did because there were green lights
Speaker 1: where there should have been read ones. They weren't criminal masterminds,
Speaker 1: they just weren't stopped. Kids love too. Yeah. Broken Hearts
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and Glamour. If
Speaker 1: you suspect a child as being abused, call one eight
Speaker 1: hundred for a child that's one eight hundred numeral four
Speaker 1: a C H I L D. Or visit child help
Speaker 1: dot org to find out how to report your concerns.
Speaker 1: For access to exclusive photos and videos and documents about
Speaker 1: the case. Visit Glamour dot com slash Broken Hearts. Have
Speaker 1: questions for us about this podcast, reach us on Twitter
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Speaker 1: like what you heard, leave us a review. Broken Hearts
Speaker 1: is a joint production between Glamour and How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts is co
Speaker 1: hosted and co written by Justine Harman and Elizabeth Egan
Speaker 1: and edited by Wendy Nogal. Lauren Smiley is our field reporter.
Speaker 1: Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief. Julie Sheen and
Speaker 1: Dianna Buckman head up the business side of this partnership.
Speaker 1: Joyce Pandola, Pat Saying and Luke Zeleski are a research team.
Speaker 1: Jason Hoke is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: along with producers Julian Weller, ben Kiebrick and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Jen Lance. For more podcasts from I
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