Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language, along with references
Speaker 1: to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: This book is about grief, It's about loss, and it's
Speaker 2: about what parents we consider good parents and which parents
Speaker 2: we give chances to.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with the details that have never been published. Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. Most of you have probably heard the
Speaker 1: story of the Heart Family, the couple that drove a
Speaker 1: car off a cliff with all of their adopted children inside.
Speaker 1: Our guest rock Sanna as Garian unfolds the story with
Speaker 1: details that we've never heard before, including an investigation into
Speaker 1: the child welfare system. I'll warn you that much of
Speaker 1: this is difficult to hear. Well, why don't we start
Speaker 1: with the story of the birth families. How these kids,
Speaker 1: these six kids, ended up with these two women, and
Speaker 1: how potentially these two women ended up in the state
Speaker 1: they were in when they made this terrible decision. So
Speaker 1: let's start with the families.
Speaker 3: So there's two birth families.
Speaker 2: The first birth family that I encountered where the Davis is,
Speaker 2: and that's a birth family of Divine Tay, Jeremiah, and Sierra.
Speaker 2: And so they were actually the second group of kids
Speaker 2: that were adopted, but I started with them because we
Speaker 2: were all living in Houston. So the kids were removed
Speaker 2: from their mom because she had a drug problem. She
Speaker 2: used cocaine that came up when she gave birth to
Speaker 2: Jeremiah at first, and then when Sierra was born and
Speaker 2: Sherry tested positive for cocaine. The kids were ultimately removed
Speaker 2: from her care and she was living with a man
Speaker 2: named Nathaniel who was a much older guy who was
Speaker 2: actually the primary caretaker. And Nathaniel was sober, he received
Speaker 2: disability benefits, and he was, by all accounts, are really
Speaker 2: loving father. He was the first person I actually ended
Speaker 2: up talking to was Nathaniel. They were removed from him
Speaker 2: when they were removed after Sierra's birth, so ultimately they
Speaker 2: moved to their aunt's house. And their aunt's name was Priscilla,
Speaker 2: and Priscilla as a church going woman who worked full
Speaker 2: time at a hospital in Houston at the time. DeVante, Jeremiah,
Speaker 2: and Sierra had an older brother named Dante, and all
Speaker 2: four of those kids were initially involved in this CPS case.
Speaker 2: So all four of those kids lived with Priscilla up
Speaker 2: until this fateful day when she was unable to find childcare.
Speaker 2: She got called into work and her daughter, who was
Speaker 2: a grown woman at that time, usually watched the kids,
Speaker 2: but she was unable, so she asked Sherry, who's their
Speaker 2: birth mother, to watch the kids. And while she was
Speaker 2: out and Sharry was there with the kids, a caseworker
Speaker 2: stop by unannounced, and because Sherrie's rights to her kids
Speaker 2: were terminated, she wasn't allowed to be around them, and
Speaker 2: so the kids were removed immediately when the caseworker showed up.
Speaker 1: So this is four kids at this point who were removed.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Dante was the oldest, so he was ten
Speaker 2: at this time. He was acting out. He was the
Speaker 2: oldest so he understood sort of what was going on
Speaker 2: more than the other kids. He really didn't want to
Speaker 2: be removed from his family. He was fighting and arguing,
Speaker 2: and he ended up getting sent to a residential treatment center,
Speaker 2: which is sort of like an institutional setting for mostly
Speaker 2: foster youth. So he was split from his siblings at
Speaker 2: that time. Kind of the frustrating thing about this story
Speaker 2: is that Sherry terminated her rights voluntarily because she was
Speaker 2: told that she needed to do that in order for
Speaker 2: Priscilla to adopt the kids, because you can't adopt kids
Speaker 2: when they have legal parents already.
Speaker 1: So these four kids go into foster care, well one
Speaker 1: of them goes into a residential facility, but the other
Speaker 1: three kids go into foster care. What is their journey
Speaker 1: to where they eventually land with the hearts?
Speaker 2: So Texas has a website that you can look at.
Speaker 2: It's called the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange, and you can
Speaker 2: essentially shop for kids that you would like to adopt
Speaker 2: using that website. So Jennifer and Sarah Hart, who are
Speaker 2: a white married couple who both were from South Dakota
Speaker 2: but at this time we're living in Minnesota. They were
Speaker 2: looking at the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange which they called
Speaker 2: TAR and they stumbled on DeVante and Jeremiah and Sierra,
Speaker 2: and they had used this website two years earlier when
Speaker 2: they adopted their first set of three children, also from Texas,
Speaker 2: so by that point they'd already been through the process
Speaker 2: once it went really quickly. Kids have to live in
Speaker 2: pre adoptive homes for at least six months before you
Speaker 2: can initiate adoption, and they had lived with their aunt
Speaker 2: Priscilla for five and a half months. She was attempting
Speaker 2: to adopt them even though they got removed. She had
Speaker 2: hired an attorney, she got denied, and then she appealed
Speaker 2: that decision, but before that appeal went through in the courts,
Speaker 2: the kids were already adopted by the Hearts.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that they did not give prential treatment to
Speaker 1: a family member, but I guess she had a mark
Speaker 1: against her for leaving the kids with their birth mother,
Speaker 1: who had no rights and who obviously had some problems
Speaker 1: to begin with. Is that the thinking? Why would they
Speaker 1: not hold to see what Priscilla was going to do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I actually spoke to another judge who wasn't
Speaker 2: involved in this case, but he was a judge for
Speaker 2: these types of cases in Harris County, and he said
Speaker 2: that was actually not the way that it should have gone.
Speaker 2: If her appeal would have gone through, then the adoption
Speaker 2: would have been void.
Speaker 3: It felt pretty rush.
Speaker 2: It was basically at the exact time when it could happen.
Speaker 2: It happened despite the fact that there were family members,
Speaker 2: and despite that there is a federal mandate that family
Speaker 2: members must be given preference for placement of kids who
Speaker 2: are involved with CPS. That is there for a reason,
Speaker 2: and that's because there's plenty of research that shows that
Speaker 2: kids do best with their families, They do best with
Speaker 2: their parents, and when they can't be with their parents,
Speaker 2: they do best in family homes. And we understand this
Speaker 2: across the child welfare system, but I think in the
Speaker 2: case of the Davis family, it became clear that to
Speaker 2: me that sometimes the preference is more theoretical than it
Speaker 2: is actual.
Speaker 1: So will you educate me a little bit on in
Speaker 1: time where we are and what is the view of
Speaker 1: a same sex couple adopting kids, because I just assumed
Speaker 1: it was not going to be that easy, particularly in
Speaker 1: a state like Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question, and it's an interesting wrinkle
Speaker 2: in the case. I think I started looking into the judges,
Speaker 2: you know, in Harris County, and there's a whole history
Speaker 2: of corruption and racism, and there are actually instances of
Speaker 2: not the judge in this case, but a judge next
Speaker 2: door being very vocally anti LGBT for adoptive parents. So
Speaker 2: I think that that is true that there. It kind
Speaker 2: of depends on the judge. The judge in the Davis
Speaker 2: family's case was really super interested in speed in clearing
Speaker 2: out the docket, so to speak, you know, in his mind.
Speaker 2: And I spoke to him actually about this case, and
Speaker 2: he said, there are kids that languish in foster care,
Speaker 2: which is true, especially sibling groups, because they're hard to
Speaker 2: place multiple kids. And he said Minnesota has been great
Speaker 2: for like providing people who want to adopt essentially, and again,
Speaker 2: because they had already adopted three kids from Texas, they
Speaker 2: kind of knew the process. I will say that at
Speaker 2: the time that the Davis kids were adopted, there had
Speaker 2: already been an allegation of abuse against Jennifer and Sarah
Speaker 2: Hart regarding the three children that were already adopted.
Speaker 1: Were they in Minnesota during that accusation or were they
Speaker 1: in Oregon at that point.
Speaker 2: They were in Minnesota and that either got totally missed
Speaker 2: by Texas, which it kind of looks like it did.
Speaker 2: I have some records, so I have their actual adoption paperwork,
Speaker 2: and I also have the foster care case file of Dante,
Speaker 2: the oldest.
Speaker 3: All of the movil stuff that was happening.
Speaker 2: Is in that file as well, because they kind of
Speaker 2: grouped the file by birth mom.
Speaker 1: So this judge is moving through his docket quickly. Are
Speaker 1: we also thinking that he's looking at these three black
Speaker 1: children and thinking they are better off with a white family.
Speaker 2: I think that the facts of this case make that
Speaker 2: pretty clear. The officials that were involved assumed that the
Speaker 2: white women were a better home for the kids. There's
Speaker 2: a couple of ways that that becomes clear. Like in Priscilla,
Speaker 2: the aunt's appeal that got denied, the court said why
Speaker 2: should she have another bite at the proverbial apple, you know,
Speaker 2: like they were saying, no, you can't adopt these kids,
Speaker 2: and we're going to be a little.
Speaker 3: Mean to you about it too.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: But on the other side, the you know, the abuse
Speaker 2: allegation sort of just went by. I mean, there was
Speaker 2: no charge, you know, like criminal charge. Yet at that
Speaker 2: point a criminal charge did happen later, but it felt
Speaker 2: very clear that Texas thought, Okay, this is the best
Speaker 2: place that these kids can end up, and after that
Speaker 2: just kind of wipe their hands and never really checked,
Speaker 2: although they did continue to pay monthly payments per child
Speaker 2: to the Heart Women until their murder.
Speaker 1: Will you tell me about the first family and those
Speaker 1: kids before we sort of get into Sarah and Jennifer
Speaker 1: and what they were like.
Speaker 2: Sure, So, as I was reporting this story, nobody knew
Speaker 2: who the family of Marcus and Hannah and Abigail was,
Speaker 2: and that was partly because Texas refused to disclose that information,
Speaker 2: even to the police who were investigating the murders, which
Speaker 2: is I would say an unusual level of confidentiality given
Speaker 2: specifics of the case. So it was six months after
Speaker 2: the crash when I noticed a family name for Marcus
Speaker 2: in a big passle of records that the Sheriff's department
Speaker 2: in Washington, which was the last place that the family lived,
Speaker 2: released to the public. I guess it's important to note
Speaker 2: that the police did have these files as well. I
Speaker 2: just looked up the name on Facebook. I knew they
Speaker 2: came from the Corpus Christi area, and I ended up
Speaker 2: reaching out to their grandmother, and it became clear almost
Speaker 2: immediately that she did not know what had happened to
Speaker 2: the children. So I ended up telling her that, which
Speaker 2: was really awful because it had been six months. It
Speaker 2: was a huge national story, as you remember, so that means,
Speaker 2: you know, millions of people heard this awful news before
Speaker 2: the family was told. I got to know Tammy, who's
Speaker 2: the birth mom of Marcus and Hannah and Abigail, and
Speaker 2: her story which involves experiencing childhood sexual abuse at a
Speaker 2: really young age and having resultant mental health struggles, so
Speaker 2: she spent time in like a state mental hospital as
Speaker 2: a child. She was experiencing homelessness and housing instability when
Speaker 2: she had Marcus, who's the oldest. Marcus was being raised
Speaker 2: mostly by Tammy's grandparents great grandparents, but ultimately the reason
Speaker 2: they were removed from Tammy was Hannah got really sick
Speaker 2: and needed to go to the hospital, and Tammy didn't
Speaker 2: trust the hospital in Columbus, Texas, where they were living,
Speaker 2: and she wanted to go to Houston, but she had
Speaker 2: two other kids and they couldn't fit in the ambulance
Speaker 2: and she didn't have a ride there, and so there
Speaker 2: was this period of time that she was trying to
Speaker 2: figure out a way to get Hannah to the hospital,
Speaker 2: and she ended up calling her caseworker, who picked her
Speaker 2: up and took them to the hospital and immediately handed
Speaker 2: her removal paperwork and the kids were removed at that point,
Speaker 2: and Tammy was actually charged with medical neglect and she
Speaker 2: ended up having to spend time in jail because she
Speaker 2: couldn't afford to pay the fees that resulted from the case.
Speaker 2: And she had the same situation as Sherry. When she
Speaker 2: gave up her rights. She was under the impression that
Speaker 2: they were going to a foster home. Like that foster
Speaker 2: home was going to adopt them. It was a black
Speaker 2: couple who also had black children, and who told Tammy
Speaker 2: that she would be able to be in their lives.
Speaker 2: But again, you give up your rights, and you give
Speaker 2: up your right to know anything and anything can happen
Speaker 2: to the kids after that, and so she doesn't know
Speaker 2: what happened with the prospective adoptive family. And there's actually
Speaker 2: no records that I could ascertain because of how Texas
Speaker 2: is very confidential with its records. In cases like this,
Speaker 2: But they did end up in Minnesota with Jennifer and Sarah.
Speaker 1: So at what point in what year do Jennifer and
Speaker 1: Sarah have all six kids together?
Speaker 2: In two thousand and eight, they were all adopted, But
Speaker 2: there are some files that show that Jennifer and Sarah
Speaker 2: did not necessarily think that their family was complete. They
Speaker 2: had continued to look for kids on the Texas Adoption
Speaker 2: Resource Exchange, and they had also tried IVF successfully.
Speaker 1: Well, now I think we need to talk about them
Speaker 1: because all of the lives and at this point, what
Speaker 1: can you tell me about either woman? Whichever one you
Speaker 1: want to go with first.
Speaker 2: We'll start with Jennifer because Jennifer was the much more
Speaker 2: vocal person in the couple. Jennifer grew up in here
Speaker 2: on South Dakota. She was gay, but she never actually
Speaker 2: came out to her dad, at least not explicitly. She
Speaker 2: met Sarah in college, and Sarah was from an even
Speaker 2: smaller town in South Dakota, right on the border of Minnesota.
Speaker 2: They moved to Minnesota after college, and Sarah was working
Speaker 2: for a department store and Jennifer she never got her degree,
Speaker 2: And I think they started planning pretty quickly after that
Speaker 2: for adopting through the foster care system. So they originally
Speaker 2: got a foster youth named Brie, who was a teenager
Speaker 2: who lived in Minnesota. I think Bree's experience actually shows
Speaker 2: a lot because she was able to mean, she lived
Speaker 2: there with a couple. Well, she actually saw them looking
Speaker 2: through the website and talking about adopting kids, and she
Speaker 2: was under the impression that she would be a part
Speaker 2: of that family.
Speaker 3: Shortly before they went to go pick up.
Speaker 2: Marcus and Hannah and Abigail from Houston, they dropped Brie
Speaker 2: off for her therapy appointment, and the therapist told Brie
Speaker 2: that it wasn't going to work out and that they
Speaker 2: had already had all of her stuff packed up, and
Speaker 2: she had no idea and still basically to this day,
Speaker 2: has no idea what caused their change in thinking.
Speaker 3: I mean, she was really upset.
Speaker 2: She said that she saw later saw them with their
Speaker 2: kids and felt really awful, you know, because it was
Speaker 2: this pretty small town in Minnesota where they all lived.
Speaker 2: And she still to this day is like very confused
Speaker 2: about what happened, especially in light of what came afterwards.
Speaker 1: Did you say Brie was black? I can't remember if
Speaker 1: you said.
Speaker 2: That Bree was white, and also her rights to her
Speaker 2: mother were not terminated, so she wasn't open to be
Speaker 2: a permanently. That's part of an issue with the foster
Speaker 2: to adopt is that there are some people who use
Speaker 2: the foster system as it means, like directly to adopt,
Speaker 2: But there are a lot of kids in the foster
Speaker 2: system who need temporary safe places with loving parents and
Speaker 2: don't need to have.
Speaker 3: Their rights of their parents totally severed.
Speaker 1: Are people in her life, their lives? Sarah and Jennifer
Speaker 1: shocked based on what they know, not about the crash necessarily,
Speaker 1: but the allegations that came before it. Does this just
Speaker 1: seem completely out of character for either of these women.
Speaker 1: But when they came together, something happened, something changed with
Speaker 1: both of them. What is even the dynamic?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 2: I think that first and foremost, Jennifer was very active
Speaker 2: on social media, and she spun a story, a narrative
Speaker 2: about her relationship, about her family, about the kids, and
Speaker 2: that heavily influenced how people perceived her and the family.
Speaker 2: There were a ton of friends that were completely shocked
Speaker 2: by what happened. You know, one of her friends right
Speaker 2: after the crash had said, Jennifer and Sarah are the
Speaker 2: kinds of parents that this world needs.
Speaker 3: So that was a fiction.
Speaker 2: Really that was spun with really beautiful photography of the children,
Speaker 2: like in their chicken coop and at the Grand Canyon
Speaker 2: and all of this.
Speaker 3: Kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: That's partly I think why people were so drawn to
Speaker 2: this case is because there was this whole record of
Speaker 2: a life, the reality of the situation, and those things
Speaker 2: were so hard to reconcile with each other. Before the
Speaker 2: inquest happened, there was a line of thinking from a
Speaker 2: lot of people who were following the case that Jennifer
Speaker 2: was probably the abuser of the family. I think in
Speaker 2: this case, though, it became pretty clear that the evidence
Speaker 2: that was there actually pointed to both women being involved
Speaker 2: in the abuse. The first thing is Sarah was charged
Speaker 2: with domestic violence for putting bruises on one of her
Speaker 2: children that was in Minnesota. She pled guilty and serve probation.
Speaker 2: There was some confusion maybe that like jen had sort
Speaker 2: of asked her to fess up to it or something,
Speaker 2: but that's not what the evidence showed, and ultimately after
Speaker 2: the crash, they looked through the women's cell phones and
Speaker 2: they found a whole bunch of really incriminating Google searches
Speaker 2: on Sarah's phone about how much benadryl would kill a
Speaker 2: certain pound person. The kids were all found to have
Speaker 2: ingested huge quantities of benadrul before they went off the cliff,
Speaker 2: and you know, searches about like hypothermia, of drowning and
Speaker 2: all kinds of really awful stuff. And it became clear,
Speaker 2: at least to me, that it was both Jennifer and
Speaker 2: Sarah that were involved in the abuse of the kids.
Speaker 1: Let's take these offenses and now let's pick up the
Speaker 1: timeline sort of in real time. They're in Minnesota with
Speaker 1: these kids, and there's this domestic abuse allegation against Sarah
Speaker 1: and she pleads guilty, but they don't lose the kids,
Speaker 1: right What happens step by step? Where did they go
Speaker 1: and what do they do and what do people see
Speaker 1: as this escalates?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, prior to the criminal complaint, the teachers of
Speaker 2: the kids in Minnesota were reporting alarming behavior. So they
Speaker 2: were reporting that the kids were really hungry and that
Speaker 2: they didn't seem to have enough food to eat, and
Speaker 2: that they were asking other people for food and even
Speaker 2: looking in trash cans, and to that, Jennifer and Sarah
Speaker 2: said that the kids had food issues because of foster care,
Speaker 2: which is not rare actually, but it became clear to
Speaker 2: the teachers that when they were calling home that the
Speaker 2: kids were getting disciplined, and so they stopped basically reporting
Speaker 2: this stuff. But when Sarah pled guilty, they pulled their
Speaker 2: kids from public school, and that was the last time
Speaker 2: the kids were in public school or any school, and
Speaker 2: because of that, they lost contact with really any other
Speaker 2: adults besides their parents. Sarah had to finish probation, but
Speaker 2: once that probation ended, they immediately moved to Oregon. They
Speaker 2: lived in Oregon for a little while before a second
Speaker 2: investigation started, and this one was reported by friends of
Speaker 2: the family who witnessed some really alarming punishment of all
Speaker 2: of the kids, but particularly of Marcus. They had gone
Speaker 2: to visit this woman at her house and they were
Speaker 2: only each allowed to have one small piece of pizza,
Speaker 2: but they had ordered a lot of pizza, and so
Speaker 2: they had a bunch in the fridge, and when they
Speaker 2: woke up in the morning, the woman made a comment
Speaker 2: to her husband, like did you eat all the pizza
Speaker 2: in the fridge, and that set off Jennifer, who forced
Speaker 2: all the kids to lay on their air mattress with
Speaker 2: eyemasks on for like the whole day. And it was
Speaker 2: Marcus's birthday and she wouldn't let anyone say happy birthday
Speaker 2: to Marcus. And the kids were very skinny at this point,
Speaker 2: like alarmingly skinny, and Hannah was so small that people
Speaker 2: regularly thought that she was like five years younger than
Speaker 2: she actually was. That woman reported this, and there was
Speaker 2: another investigation, and they actually reached out to the Minnesota
Speaker 2: child welfare officials who said, you know, the problem is
Speaker 2: these women, they look normal, and when they're confronted with
Speaker 2: these alarming behaviors, they have a tendency to put them
Speaker 2: back onto the kids and explain it by their trauma
Speaker 2: histories and their experience in foster care. And that Oregon investigation,
Speaker 2: a doctor found that five of the kids were so
Speaker 2: small that they weren't even on the growth charts at
Speaker 2: all for their ages, and still they were not removed.
Speaker 2: Shortly after that, they moved to Washington, not too far away,
Speaker 2: just sort of the other side of Portland basically, and
Speaker 2: essentially DeVante started going to their neighbor's house and asking
Speaker 2: for food, large amounts of food, and Hannah had one
Speaker 2: time ran away in the middle of the night and
Speaker 2: told the neighbors that she was being abused and her
Speaker 2: parents were racist, and finally the neighbors called that in
Speaker 2: to CPS and that was sort of the inciting incident
Speaker 2: that led to the family leaving and driving to California
Speaker 2: in the first place.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the racism allegations. What did Hannah say
Speaker 1: was going on in this house?
Speaker 2: Well, the thing with Hannah was that she basically jumped
Speaker 2: out of the second story window ran over to the
Speaker 2: neighbor's house in the middle of the night. The neighbors
Speaker 2: were like sleeping and kind of confused and obviously really
Speaker 2: like alarm. The other thing is that Hannah, again she
Speaker 2: looked really young, so they're thinking like, maybe this is
Speaker 2: like an eight year old. I think at that point
Speaker 2: she was fifteen. She had no two front teeth because
Speaker 2: they had got knocked out, which was another social media
Speaker 2: post that was really alarming, where Jennifer's fingers were holding
Speaker 2: like an entire tooth root to tip, saying like, oh.
Speaker 3: Hannah's slipped in.
Speaker 2: The rule is no running in the house or something
Speaker 2: like that, but she never got replacement teeth, so it
Speaker 2: ended up making her look a lot younger. And I
Speaker 2: think they didn't get any specifics because shortly after she
Speaker 2: came over the family had come to look for her.
Speaker 2: Jennifer would not allow the neighbors to talk to Hannah
Speaker 2: on her own after they arrived, and again, I think
Speaker 2: partly because they thought she was so much younger. They
Speaker 2: just thought and they said, oh again with the she
Speaker 2: has a lot of problems and you know, and then
Speaker 2: she wrote a note where she said I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have come here and all of this, and so
Speaker 2: they didn't really get any clear sense of what was
Speaker 2: going on. But when Davante started coming over repeatedly and
Speaker 2: asking for food, and it wasn't just food for him,
Speaker 2: it became clear that it was food for all of
Speaker 2: his siblings.
Speaker 3: He told them, though, please don't.
Speaker 2: Call CPS because we don't want to be split up
Speaker 2: from each other, which is probably a pretty reasonable fear,
Speaker 2: you know, because there's six of them.
Speaker 3: And I think that might have contributed to why they.
Speaker 2: Were never removed in the first place, was like they
Speaker 2: didn't know necessarily who was responsible for them and there's
Speaker 2: no process for that. And that became clear because multiple,
Speaker 2: multiple people were very alarmed by what they saw with
Speaker 2: this family, and repeated attempts to protect the kids went unheeded.
Speaker 1: So do you think Jennifer and Sarah were feeling increasing pressure?
Speaker 1: There's more and more incidents because the kids are older
Speaker 1: now and they are making kind of bigger moves. They're
Speaker 1: getting attention. We talk about the inciting incident. What was
Speaker 1: it that got them loaded up into that gold Yukon
Speaker 1: and drove down into California to have what happened? What
Speaker 1: leads up to that?
Speaker 2: I think that's a good point, that the kids were
Speaker 2: getting older. Marcus was nineteen at that time. I also
Speaker 2: think that there might have been a sense that their
Speaker 2: luck would run out at some point. With investigations, often
Speaker 2: people say like, Okay, they must have been really overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: I will say that if there was already an abuse
Speaker 2: allegation before they adopted the second set of three kids,
Speaker 2: they doubled the number of kids. Six kids is a
Speaker 2: huge number of kids, but also six kids from two families,
Speaker 2: mixed ages, right, and trauma has extensive trauma histories. I
Speaker 2: couldn't imagine that and that stands to reason that like
Speaker 2: that might have been instead of fast tracking the second adoption,
Speaker 2: that might have been like a pause, like, Okay, that's
Speaker 2: a lot of kids for anyone. You know, that's a
Speaker 2: lot of kids for like trained therapists.
Speaker 1: And then you're thinking, if you're the judge, why are
Speaker 1: you not thinking maybe these are parents who are doing
Speaker 1: this for the paycheck and that's it. You know that
Speaker 1: many kids.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. And it's four hundred dollars per child.
Speaker 2: Additionally, DeVante and Jeremiah got disability payments from Nathaniel Davis,
Speaker 2: their father figure, that they also continued to receive until
Speaker 2: their deaths.
Speaker 3: So this was like twenty six hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 1: And isn't it if the kids need therapy? I interviewed
Speaker 1: a different author about a similar sort of situation. If
Speaker 1: the kids need therapy or they need anything that's special,
Speaker 1: there's more money that the state provides, right with the
Speaker 1: intention that you're going to use that money to help
Speaker 1: them get the help they need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good point. And it's also true that
Speaker 2: the family was really open about taking the kids off
Speaker 2: of all of their psychiatric meds, and the foster care
Speaker 2: system has a tendency to over medicate children, for sure,
Speaker 2: that's documented, But they didn't go to therapy. The kids
Speaker 2: didn't continue going to therapy. The thing that happens when
Speaker 2: kids get removed from home at a young age, especially
Speaker 2: if they get moved around from place to place, is
Speaker 2: that every single time they move, they internalize the idea
Speaker 2: that they're never going to be safe or stable, that
Speaker 2: even if it seems good, it might not last. It
Speaker 2: probably won't last, and that's really harmful psychologically for kids.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that. We do have to talk
Speaker 1: about the psychology or because we've been talking about the facts,
Speaker 1: what is going on? What do you think they're doing.
Speaker 1: You've got this sort of picture perfect family on the outside.
Speaker 1: They're over the top with their social media posts. They're
Speaker 1: really trying to present themselves not just as a happy, healthy,
Speaker 1: blended family, but like activists. They have them out there
Speaker 1: in the Black Lives Matter protests. You know, there's all
Speaker 1: this sort of facade going up, but so much bad
Speaker 1: behind it. What are people saying about what they were doing,
Speaker 1: what they were thinking?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know, I'm not a psychologist, but
Speaker 2: to me, Jennifer seemed to have a really sort of
Speaker 2: a mindset of like she herself being persecuted, persecuted for
Speaker 2: her black children, and persecuted for her lesbian relationship. And
Speaker 2: I think she sort of shows the signs of narcissism.
Speaker 2: And again I'm not a psychologist, but the idea that
Speaker 2: like everything is taken through the frame of herself primarily.
Speaker 2: There were some things in the social media posts that
Speaker 2: were really inappropriate. I felt, talking about private and kind
Speaker 2: of embarrassing potentially situations with the kids, because the kids
Speaker 2: were going through a lot of stuff, and you know,
Speaker 2: she talked about the first night that Marcus and and
Speaker 2: Abigail spent in their home and how Marcus was banging
Speaker 2: his head against the wall and you know, bleeding and
Speaker 2: screaming and.
Speaker 3: You know, and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And it's like, if that's true, which we don't know,
Speaker 2: and we don't have really any evidence for any of
Speaker 2: the stuff that she was saying, but if that's true,
Speaker 2: how embarrassing is that for him? You know? I mean
Speaker 2: it's a really challenging move. There are thousands of miles
Speaker 2: away and the totally different climate in like a basically
Speaker 2: all white town. They're never going to see their mom again,
Speaker 2: like these are reasons that kids do act out and
Speaker 2: it's normal, and you can really understand that.
Speaker 1: And it's framing her as this savior, literally a white savior,
Speaker 1: savior coming in and saving him. Look what I have
Speaker 1: to deal with. Look at what's happening, and look how
Speaker 1: lucky this kid is to have Sarah and me.
Speaker 2: As parents exactly, And even that exact same post where
Speaker 2: she was talking about their first night there she said,
Speaker 2: if not us who we have natural maternal instincts and
Speaker 2: we have gits of love and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And it's like, the central character in the story, especially
Speaker 2: in the story of adoption and especially adoption from foster care, right,
Speaker 2: should not be the parent, because it's the kid's journey,
Speaker 2: and the kid is experiencing it with a lot less
Speaker 2: power and with a lot more internal instability, without really
Speaker 2: understanding developmentally the sort of context for it, just having
Speaker 2: really big feelings around it.
Speaker 1: Are we seeing anything in their backgrounds that points to
Speaker 1: these tendencies before they have any of these children, maybe
Speaker 1: even before we met. I'm assuming people have been looking
Speaker 1: and talking to family members or talking to friends from
Speaker 1: high school.
Speaker 2: So I did speak to some family members that ended
Speaker 2: up not wanting to be on the record, and there
Speaker 2: were a couple specific stories that were quite alarming, especially
Speaker 2: regards to Jennifer.
Speaker 3: There was one story about how.
Speaker 2: One of Jennifer's siblings was using a Q tip and
Speaker 2: she walked by and banged her head against the Q tip.
Speaker 1: Ooh, okay. So they get into the gold Yukon and
Speaker 1: when are they thinking the timeline starts for obviously a
Speaker 1: panic to set in. They think that CPS is going
Speaker 1: to come knocking at their door and take away these kids,
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So they came home, actually I think they were home
Speaker 2: because they didn't answer the door, so the caseworker put
Speaker 2: her card in the door. When the caseworker returned, still
Speaker 2: not unable to get a hold of the family, the
Speaker 2: card was gone. But also the Yukon was gone. And
Speaker 2: they had a little sort of a small wall along
Speaker 2: their driveway and it was like they had backed into
Speaker 2: the wall and like toppled over some of it. I
Speaker 2: think the panic set in before they ever left. I
Speaker 2: think they probably realized or maybe thought that just because
Speaker 2: they had recently been investigated in Oregon, you know, and
Speaker 2: like you said, the kids were getting older, which means
Speaker 2: they were able to leave. I think they had a
Speaker 2: lot of that white savior idea that like the kids
Speaker 2: couldn't function without them. I think they probably did also
Speaker 2: believe that the kids are really messed up and kind
Speaker 2: of assigned all those behaviors.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think probably in their minds, they thought the things
Speaker 2: that they were doing, like with the withholding food and
Speaker 2: all that were like necessary.
Speaker 3: In some way.
Speaker 2: It did seem like they had like a complex right
Speaker 2: of like being the victimized people. And so in that
Speaker 2: frame of mind, they probably thought that if they couldn't
Speaker 2: have the kids, then you know, I mean, that's really
Speaker 2: awful to think, right, that you would think of killing
Speaker 2: your family before you would think of just letting them
Speaker 2: exist without you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they think they're doing them a favor. I mean,
Speaker 1: any of the research I've done on family annihilators, some
Speaker 1: of them say in their heads, they don't want to
Speaker 1: live with a shame, They don't want them to go
Speaker 1: on without them. They wouldn't be able to function. It's
Speaker 1: so narcissistic, and it makes me wonder what that day
Speaker 1: was like. Do you think that they left Washington knowing
Speaker 1: that this was going to be a plan that this
Speaker 1: is what they should do, or do we get the
Speaker 1: impression from any of the evidence that this was spur
Speaker 1: of the moment, even if that means they decided that
Speaker 1: morning to do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the evidence shows that they were kind
Speaker 2: of figuring it out as they were driving because of
Speaker 2: Sarah's Google searches, so she searched for no kill shelters
Speaker 2: for dogs, they had animals. I think it started forming,
Speaker 2: like how to do it. I think they did realize
Speaker 2: that they were trapped before they left, but I don't
Speaker 2: know that they came up with the plan. It's really
Speaker 2: hard to say because there's the evidence on their phones.
Speaker 2: There's the evidence on the car itself, right that shows
Speaker 2: that they didn't break But I don't know what was
Speaker 2: like in that car and how they were able to
Speaker 2: drug the children or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Are either women talking to friends texting in the days
Speaker 1: leading up to this at all. I had read somewhere
Speaker 1: that maybe Sarah regretted something beforehand. This just seems like
Speaker 1: everybody's on edge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sarah.
Speaker 2: This was a while back that Sarah had told one
Speaker 2: of her coworkers that she wished that she knew that
Speaker 2: you don't have to have a big family.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about that day. So the crash happens
Speaker 1: on March twenty sixth of twenty eighteen. What do we
Speaker 1: know from I know their CCTV, there's receipts, there's cell
Speaker 1: phone records. Piece together what happens leading up to what
Speaker 1: happens on March twenty sixth.
Speaker 2: So they left the house and they started driving. I
Speaker 2: don't think they stayed at any hotel or anything. They
Speaker 2: stopped at a grocery store and bought some bananas and
Speaker 2: snack foods. They parked their car at this turnoff off
Speaker 2: the Pacific Coast Highway, and there was another couple, like
Speaker 2: an older couple who had an RV and was driving
Speaker 2: down the coast from Alaska. They heard the car, and
Speaker 2: they poked out and saw the car. And then he said,
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night, this was like three
Speaker 2: in the morning, he heard what sounded like bottoming out.
Speaker 1: Wait, what is bottoming out mean? Exactly?
Speaker 2: You ever hit like a speed bump too fast, you know,
Speaker 2: like it makes a loud sound where the bottom of
Speaker 2: the car hits the ground. Okay, what he thought happened
Speaker 2: was that they had like peeled out to go down
Speaker 2: to the town which was nearby, so he thought maybe
Speaker 2: they just left fast. He said he thought he heard
Speaker 2: something like off the cliff, and that he thought maybe
Speaker 2: it was a seal, and then he went back to bed.
Speaker 2: He left with his wife the next day. And then
Speaker 2: there was a German tourist who spotted like it was
Speaker 2: a lookout point, right, so people would come there and
Speaker 2: park their car and look at this beautiful view. And
Speaker 2: that's what this German tourist was doing when they noticed
Speaker 2: the car flipped on its hood at the bottom of
Speaker 2: the cliff.
Speaker 1: And we know that. We have rescuers going down there
Speaker 1: and they're looking and tell me what the scene is
Speaker 1: because it's a total disarray.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a really difficult scene, actually a crime scene,
Speaker 2: because the car was actually on the shore but partly
Speaker 2: in the water, and because of that, the tide had
Speaker 2: been coming in and out right. So in addition to
Speaker 2: the impact, which was a huge impact because it was
Speaker 2: one hundred foot cliff that the car went off and
Speaker 2: it was on its hood, there was also this tide
Speaker 2: which was coming in and going out. There had been
Speaker 2: a storm recently, so it made it really challenging for
Speaker 2: investigators to find the rest of the bodies, because three
Speaker 2: of the kids were found, two of the kids were
Speaker 2: found much later, one was found weeks later, and one kid, Davante,
Speaker 2: was never found. And that's partly because the conditions were
Speaker 2: so changeable. So, like one of the searchers said, you'd
Speaker 2: go down to the beach at two pm, and you'd
Speaker 2: go down at the beach at eight pm, and it
Speaker 2: was like a totally different beach. You were seeing all
Speaker 2: different things, which made it really challenging for people to
Speaker 2: do the search.
Speaker 1: What does the car say actually happened? Because a car
Speaker 1: I can tell you right the black box inside the
Speaker 1: car can tell you whether or not the car was
Speaker 1: breaking at the time of a crash or accelerating.
Speaker 2: Yes, it accelerated off the cliff. That became clear pretty
Speaker 2: early on when there were no skid marks. You often
Speaker 2: see some evidence at the street level that there's breaking,
Speaker 2: that there's attempts to, you know, turn really fast or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: So there was nothing like that at.
Speaker 2: The actual and there's a berm, like an eighteen inch berm,
Speaker 2: which is just like a raised amount of earth around
Speaker 2: the whole lookout just for safety, and so you would
Speaker 2: have to accelerate to get over that.
Speaker 1: What is the toxicology saying about the two women and
Speaker 1: the kids that they were able to recover? I know
Speaker 1: we talked about benadryl. Did both women take benadryl or
Speaker 1: was there alcohol?
Speaker 3: Sarah took benadryl.
Speaker 2: Sarah wasn't driving shoes in the passenger seat, so all
Speaker 2: of the kids and Sarah were found with like massive
Speaker 2: amounts of benadryl, like overnoses of benadryl, and Jennifer was drunk.
Speaker 1: Has there been any kind of reckoning with the foster
Speaker 1: care system in Texas once this story came out and
Speaker 1: these families, I mean the Davis family in particular, I
Speaker 1: know that they had been interviewed. Was there any kind
Speaker 1: of a reckoning? Were there apologies? Was there acknowledgment that
Speaker 1: this was a mistake.
Speaker 2: No, there was no acknowledgment at all on the part
Speaker 2: of Texas. The caseworker that was Tammy's caseworker, so she
Speaker 2: had a big hand in placing Marcus in Hannah and Abigail,
Speaker 2: and after that adoption went through, she actually wrote this
Speaker 2: glowing letter of recommendation that this family should get any
Speaker 2: kids that they want right they're just the wonderful parents.
Speaker 2: I followed up with her and asked her sort of
Speaker 2: how she felt about it, and she said, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Something must have happened, but I still don't really believe
Speaker 2: it that they did this. And I said, have you
Speaker 2: read the news stories? And she said no, Will you
Speaker 2: tell me?
Speaker 1: Do you know what happened to Bree who was a
Speaker 1: teenager who too lived with the hearts, and to Dante,
Speaker 1: who was the ten year old who did not go
Speaker 1: with them, who would have presumably ended up dead but
Speaker 1: instead went to like a mental health facility.
Speaker 3: So Brie I reach out to her.
Speaker 2: She still lives in Minnesota, in the same town she
Speaker 2: actually works for like a behavioral health program. She seems fine,
Speaker 2: and she's in contact with her mom and they get
Speaker 2: along well and they've sort of worked through some of
Speaker 2: their issues that they'd had that had resulted in her
Speaker 2: being in care. With Dante, his story is a big
Speaker 2: part of the book, and he spent years in that institution,
Speaker 2: which it's called a mental health facility, but they don't
Speaker 2: provide very much mental health care and the place is
Speaker 2: rife with abuse. He did experience abuse there at least
Speaker 2: one documented incidence where his shoulder was dislocated by a
Speaker 2: staff member. He actually was able to reunite with Nathaniel
Speaker 2: at age sixteen. He walked across town, he recognized the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: He went and found Nathaniel, and Nathaniel was able to
Speaker 2: gain custody of him before he aged out.
Speaker 1: This was Sherry's boyfriend and not his biological son.
Speaker 2: No, but he never gave up hope, and he never
Speaker 2: gave up hope on the other kids too until he
Speaker 2: found out that they were killed, and it was really tragic.
Speaker 3: It was really tragic.
Speaker 2: For Dante too, because Dante has years and years of
Speaker 2: case reports where he was begging his caseworker to contact
Speaker 2: his siblings. He felt responsible for them being taken from
Speaker 2: him because he was the oldest and he thought that
Speaker 2: his bad behavior led to their removal. He felt responsible
Speaker 2: for that also. He begged to the point where they
Speaker 2: did ask Jennifer and Sarah if he could have a
Speaker 2: phone call with them, and they said no.
Speaker 1: What has been the lesson? Do you think just in
Speaker 1: the national news, what do people take away when they
Speaker 1: read your book or any narrative on this story.
Speaker 2: My hope is that my book adds to what's out
Speaker 2: there already about this case that helps people understand that
Speaker 2: the way that the child welfare system works or doesn't
Speaker 2: work greatly contributes to traumatizing kids, because I think we
Speaker 2: have this tendency to think of parents who are involved
Speaker 2: with CPS as bad parents, bad people, and that you know,
Speaker 2: removing kids from that situation is helping them.
Speaker 3: But I think that's often not true.
Speaker 2: I think there are so many kids that are stuck
Speaker 2: in foster care dealing with just really horrific abuse in care,
Speaker 2: and that we provide no support to them, real emotional support,
Speaker 2: like a kid needs someone who loves them, and we
Speaker 2: take all the people, all of their family away. Even
Speaker 2: this case, like the Heart Family case, is a story
Speaker 2: that Texa is considered a win, and it's not a win.
Speaker 2: So I want to sort of draw attention to the
Speaker 2: idea that the system is not set up to really
Speaker 2: help children.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Alex Chi. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 1: Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga Executive
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow
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