Speaker 1: We've talked about how Jenn and Sarah Hart met each
Speaker 1: other and how they quickly adopted six kids. We've talked
Speaker 1: about how Jen curated an identity for the family on
Speaker 1: social media and at music festivals. And we've talked about
Speaker 1: how the Hearts lived. Now we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how they died. This is hard stuff, obviously, and we've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time thinking about it. What happened
Speaker 1: in the week leading up to the hearts five and
Speaker 1: sixty one mile trip from Washington to California, and when
Speaker 1: Jen arrived at the edge of the cliff, what made
Speaker 1: her keep her foot on the gas From Glamour and
Speaker 1: how stuff works. This is Broken Hearts. I'm Liz Egan
Speaker 1: and I'm Justine Harmony. We're going to check back in
Speaker 1: with Bruce and Danna decalb who were the Hearts neighbors
Speaker 1: in Woodland, Washington. You'll remember they're the ones who were
Speaker 1: woken up in the middle of the night by Hannah
Speaker 1: Heart shortly after the handa incident. They bought blinds and
Speaker 1: never ever opened up, never closed. You couldn't see in
Speaker 1: the house, you couldn't see in their car. They would
Speaker 1: go from the house to the car and from the
Speaker 1: car to the house literally single file, and it was
Speaker 1: like kind of at a fast clip, almost like running.
Speaker 1: Jennifer would get out and open the doors. Then they
Speaker 1: would get out and single fowl to the house. I
Speaker 1: was hoping to see Anna again because I was hoping
Speaker 1: to get it to her that you are always welcome
Speaker 1: to my home, that no matter what, feel free to
Speaker 1: come here, or have her give me a signal all
Speaker 1: you know that she needs help. I wanted to let
Speaker 1: any of the kids know that, you know, if they
Speaker 1: need help, just give me the not because I just
Speaker 1: never felt comfortable about what I was observing. That's Dana
Speaker 1: who still teared up when talking about the hearts nearly
Speaker 1: two months after they died. Even though the sheriff's deputy
Speaker 1: had told Dana it wasn't illegal to not let kids
Speaker 1: play outside, she still had a bad gut feeling about
Speaker 1: the family. In fact, she vowed to keep watch on
Speaker 1: the comings and goings of their cars on anything she
Speaker 1: could decipher from the house. With the blinds drawn tightly shut.
Speaker 1: She made sure to take notes of each new visit
Speaker 1: Davante would make to their house. For months, Dana had
Speaker 1: only gotten tiny tidbits Davante's clipped greetings when she tried
Speaker 1: to intersect him in the driveway on garbage runs. But
Speaker 1: now finally, little by little, Davante was opening up. We
Speaker 1: have to take our garbage cans to the street, and
Speaker 1: it's a long ways, and so I would watch for
Speaker 1: the kids because I wanted to try to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with any of them, you know, But I could
Speaker 1: never get him to talk to me, and I never
Speaker 1: saw Hannah. One time, Davante and I kind of waited
Speaker 1: for him and caught up with him, and I talked
Speaker 1: to him, but he wouldn't answer me. Finally, right when
Speaker 1: we went to split and I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a good day, and he goes, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 1: and that was all I got from the whole way
Speaker 1: up the driveway. He got back up to the house
Speaker 1: and I saw Jennifer scolding him. She went inside and
Speaker 1: left him standing out the rain. And my first reaction,
Speaker 1: my gut was he just got in trouble for talking
Speaker 1: to me. And then from that day on we never
Speaker 1: saw him take the garbage. They did it in the night.
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, obviously there's something going on that they've
Speaker 1: been instructed not to speak with us from that day forward. DeVante,
Speaker 1: he was the only kid of the six of them
Speaker 1: that was ever outside doing work. He was raking leaves
Speaker 1: or puling things. One day, I sat watched he carried
Speaker 1: ten bags of soil from the front of the back,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking, my god, there's six of them.
Speaker 1: Even if Hannah's too tiny, there's three boys, and Marcus
Speaker 1: was way bigger than Dante, and so it blew my
Speaker 1: mind and I sat and watched that, thinking, eventually, I'm
Speaker 1: going to see another kid. But it only was DeVante.
Speaker 1: When you tell me that the kids chose to live
Speaker 1: out in the country, you want to become self sufficient,
Speaker 1: then I would expect to see kids out in the
Speaker 1: yard planting or enjoying the property. You know, if you
Speaker 1: want to live like this, you enjoy it. And so
Speaker 1: it wasn't adding up my gut instinct still at me
Speaker 1: on alert. She talked about it, for I was obsessed
Speaker 1: with She was obsessed with it. I watched their comings
Speaker 1: and goings. I mean, I knew when Sarah had a
Speaker 1: day off. Um I stopped him essentially because I just
Speaker 1: couldn't let it go. Aside from a few brief conversations
Speaker 1: in the driveway, the decalbs felt the Hearts were avoiding them,
Speaker 1: but that changed on Thursday, March two, eighteen, when Davante
Speaker 1: approached Bruce, who was working on his truck, and asked
Speaker 1: for tortillas. It was a simple request, like asking for
Speaker 1: a cup of sugar or a stick of butter, and
Speaker 1: Bruce was happy to help. That same day, over on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Jen was celebrating the ninth anniversary of Davante, Sierra and
Speaker 1: Jeremiah's official adoption date. She posted six black and white
Speaker 1: pictures of the kids grinning and wearing cute hats. We
Speaker 1: won't read the whole status update, it's a long one too,
Speaker 1: but the lions are about to hear are pretty poignant.
Speaker 1: Considering what was about to happen, and considering that DeVante
Speaker 1: might have been asking Bruce for food at the very moment,
Speaker 1: Jen type these words, I am a better human in
Speaker 1: every possible way for knowing these children. They have been
Speaker 1: my greatest teachers. Contrary to the common notion that we
Speaker 1: can't choose our family, we absolutely can. We choose by loving,
Speaker 1: and that's worth celebrating every damn day. Dana and Bruce
Speaker 1: weren't friends with jan on Facebook. In fact, they had
Speaker 1: no idea she was active on social media until after
Speaker 1: she died. On Friday, March six eighteen, around nine am,
Speaker 1: they answered a knock on their door. There was Davante
Speaker 1: again asking for bread. This time Dana was the one
Speaker 1: who gave him the food. She didn't have bread, so
Speaker 1: she gave him tortillas instead. The first night, I didn't
Speaker 1: think anything when he came back, I was like, m
Speaker 1: that's weird, okay. He would kind of watch down the road,
Speaker 1: watch down the road, and you know, but he was
Speaker 1: the only here as long as he needed to be.
Speaker 1: He would never come in the house, never came in
Speaker 1: that not in the rain, no, no, never came in
Speaker 1: the house. Would not step but I'd say come in
Speaker 1: and it's raining, Nope, And he'd be like he was
Speaker 1: always really in a hurt. But then when he came
Speaker 1: back Friday night, It's like, wait a minute, I just
Speaker 1: gave you like thirty tortillas A specifically put I gotta
Speaker 1: take a step back and just you know, size him up.
Speaker 1: He was always dressed in baggy or clothes, rubber boots
Speaker 1: and longer sleeves, you know, I mean in March when
Speaker 1: he started coming over here, it's still wet and cold.
Speaker 1: His shoulders were super small and comparison to his head,
Speaker 1: I have little shoulders. He was smaller than me. He
Speaker 1: was really thin, you know, like his arms rose because
Speaker 1: of my wrists. That's all? Are you? By four? Was
Speaker 1: he taller than you? Around my height? The next day,
Speaker 1: around five pm, Davante was back. He wanted more food.
Speaker 1: Bruce and Dana tried to get him to stay and talk.
Speaker 1: Dana was determined to collect information she could share. When
Speaker 1: she called Child Protective Services again. Remember the first time
Speaker 1: she spoke to them after her dad reported the hearts,
Speaker 1: she was told there was nothing they could do to help.
Speaker 1: That's when it was like, okay, we gotta get details.
Speaker 1: So every time he came over, I would ask him
Speaker 1: a little more and a little more. You know. First
Speaker 1: it was just about playing outside, you know where you
Speaker 1: are allowed to play outside at your other house? And
Speaker 1: then it was what about school? Meanwhile, Jen continued to
Speaker 1: post about Davante on Facebook. He was one of her
Speaker 1: favorite subjects. We know that. Already four days after his
Speaker 1: first visit to the Decalbs, she shared a pick sure
Speaker 1: where you can only see his eyes brown and smiling.
Speaker 1: The bottom of his face is obscured by a tray
Speaker 1: full of dirt and seedlings. The post reads, we currently
Speaker 1: have six hundred flowers slash vegetables growing in the living
Speaker 1: room before theyre moved to the little greenhouse. She goes
Speaker 1: on to say that the kids are quote reading their
Speaker 1: environmental biology books out loud to each other and to
Speaker 1: the plants. It sounds like a cozy scene. On Tuesday, March,
Speaker 1: Davante returned to the Decalbs house twice. Although he still
Speaker 1: wouldn't come inside, he was at least more forthcoming than
Speaker 1: he'd been on previous visits. I asked him how he
Speaker 1: was able to sneak over here. He told me they
Speaker 1: weren't very observant. Now I've learned that Jennifer was a gamer,
Speaker 1: a video gamer on computers, and so he came over
Speaker 1: when she was probably gaming, or he would come over
Speaker 1: late at night when they were probably asleep. Sarah was
Speaker 1: never home. I don't think when he made his trips
Speaker 1: over here, she was either gone to work or it
Speaker 1: was late enough that she would probably be in bed.
Speaker 1: This made sense while Sarah was working long hours at
Speaker 1: Cole's Jen was running a guild of video game enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: sometimes dominating group chats to the point where one dubbed
Speaker 1: her a stone cold narcissist. So it seems like there
Speaker 1: wasn't a whole lot of supervision happening in the hearthouse
Speaker 1: and the family life, DeVante described to the Decalbs bore
Speaker 1: little resemblance to the rosy utopia Jen described to her
Speaker 1: fans they were withholding food as punished. He would say, well,
Speaker 1: we're teenagers and we act out, and so we get
Speaker 1: punished in that way. And Danis said, well, there's nothing
Speaker 1: you could ever do that would warrant someone taking food
Speaker 1: away from you. I don't care what it is. So
Speaker 1: to a degree he did say, we're teenagers and act out,
Speaker 1: like trying to claim there was some sort of cause, yeah,
Speaker 1: or that maybe that they thought that there was a cause,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to make it like it was normal somewhat,
Speaker 1: but obviously it wasn't. Just to recap Davante showed up
Speaker 1: at the Decalps on March and one. He showed up
Speaker 1: for the last time on March twenty two. He started
Speaker 1: asking for cured meat and six stars of peanut butter
Speaker 1: and six packages or tortillas and apples, and then he
Speaker 1: he goes and donuts and he kind of looked and
Speaker 1: I said, no, I'm not doing no junk food. He goes, okay,
Speaker 1: you know when you say specifically cured meats, and he
Speaker 1: told us non perishables. He even said non perishables. You
Speaker 1: can't have anything that's frozen or needs to be fagerating it.
Speaker 1: It was like, is he going to run away? Was
Speaker 1: there like a moment that you felt the pitch change
Speaker 1: of just like I'm not gonna be guarded about this anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you we're being abused. Yeah. That was
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, when he first started telling us a little
Speaker 1: more about abuse. Um and then asking as please don't
Speaker 1: call the cops. Told us that everything Hannah told you
Speaker 1: was true, the things my mom told you were just
Speaker 1: to make you happy, and it was just like, oh god,
Speaker 1: I totally bought into it. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: oh God, yeah, just kill me. I said, okay, so
Speaker 1: why did she run away that night? Because my mom
Speaker 1: was abusing her? It was just like too much had
Speaker 1: started out just as you know, a meal air or there,
Speaker 1: but now it was long periods of time, and then
Speaker 1: he said, Sarah used to not go along with it,
Speaker 1: but she is now. You know. I just felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I have enough to get somebody's attention. On March two, eighteen,
Speaker 1: Jen made her final Facebook post. It was a thirty
Speaker 1: second video of a pair of ducklings, one yellow, one black.
Speaker 1: We see the ducks splashing together in a bowl of water,
Speaker 1: cuddling in someone's arms, someone who is white and wearing
Speaker 1: a gray sweatshirt. Then the ducks are balancing on the
Speaker 1: back of a rabbit and a cat, and finally climbing
Speaker 1: over a bowl filled with geode starfish and shells. In
Speaker 1: the background, we see a woman with long brown hair
Speaker 1: wearing a blazer and a T shirt, probably Sarah, on
Speaker 1: her way to work. It's a peaceful, domestic scene, and
Speaker 1: the last frame says happy Spring in a jaunty font.
Speaker 1: The caption cuteness overload Alert. These spring equinox babies have
Speaker 1: waddled right into our hearts. So much joy in New life.
Speaker 1: Two likes comments, many of which were posted after the
Speaker 1: Hearts died. On Friday morning of March Danna de Cau
Speaker 1: called Child Protective Services to report all of the information
Speaker 1: she had collected about jen and Sarah Hart. Officials showed
Speaker 1: up within a couple hours, but by then Dana thought
Speaker 1: every second counted CPS had been contacted and gone out
Speaker 1: to see them. When she coming back, I'm here, but
Speaker 1: I can't find you. There's wild I'm I'm up where
Speaker 1: there across the street is a bank of mailboxes. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: well turn around and I'll watch for you, you you know,
Speaker 1: and then I'll tell you turn now. So I'm literally
Speaker 1: standing you're watching for her to go by, and I
Speaker 1: see Jennifer coming down the hill and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: a crap, maybe the kids were home, you know alone,
Speaker 1: CPS could have been here by now. So I watched
Speaker 1: Jennifer coming up the driveway and I'm like, well, their
Speaker 1: whole So I told the lady turn in when you
Speaker 1: come up the driveway, go to the right. She came
Speaker 1: to my house, so she pulled up. I might, you know,
Speaker 1: given a signal to go back. I just motioned because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to yelp next door, you need to
Speaker 1: go next door, because I thought, well, I could be
Speaker 1: out in the driveway, and so she got back in
Speaker 1: her car and went next door. She wasn't there very long,
Speaker 1: and I watched her leave and I'm like, crap, nothing
Speaker 1: came of this. But they never asked it to door.
Speaker 1: Even if you do answer the door, you can say
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you didn't have to come back another time.
Speaker 1: What were your feelings when you actually made the call
Speaker 1: and reported in. I think I was nervous, You know,
Speaker 1: I was glad I did it because I got the
Speaker 1: feeling it had to happen. I mean, I knew it
Speaker 1: had to happen. Were you worried that they then they
Speaker 1: would get abused more? I was. That was my biggest
Speaker 1: fair But what actually happened was worse. Dana saw Sarah's
Speaker 1: car speeding into the driveway and then at some point
Speaker 1: during the night, the car disappeared. As far as Dana
Speaker 1: could tell, the house next door was completely empty. You
Speaker 1: just put it together that they had gone on the run.
Speaker 1: You didn't see them blaze out. Well, the rock wall
Speaker 1: was knocked on the end of it was clipped left
Speaker 1: so fast that they backed over that rock wall and
Speaker 1: knocked it down. This, you know, that was Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: then Sunday when the car was gone Sunday morning, that's
Speaker 1: when we said they're running they're gone at that moment.
Speaker 1: What did you think would be the outcome of this?
Speaker 1: I guess I just figured they were trying to hide
Speaker 1: long enough to sort it out. Yeah, figure out their story.
Speaker 1: They owned the house. Where are they gonna what are
Speaker 1: they gonna do? They gotta come back, even they had
Speaker 1: chicken still here in the animals are all up there,
Speaker 1: and Sarah's cars. I mean, it just didn't occur to
Speaker 1: me that this was going to be the outcome. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't really think about I didn't think they killed
Speaker 1: in my wildest imagination. Sarah was scheduled to open coals
Speaker 1: at six am on Saturday morning. At three am, she
Speaker 1: texted co workers, I'm so sorry. I thought I would
Speaker 1: be able to go to work, but I'm too sick
Speaker 1: to come in. Sarah's colleague, Cheryl Hart, had worked with
Speaker 1: her the day before on that Friday. She says she
Speaker 1: didn't notice anything unusual about Sarah, at least not then.
Speaker 1: Her mood that day I felt was fine. I had
Speaker 1: just found out that I was getting promoted, and she
Speaker 1: had actually known before me, so she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that now you know. Now I could
Speaker 1: tell you congratulations and everything, and so she was excited
Speaker 1: for me, and so we were um, laughing and stuff.
Speaker 1: On Saturday, March, the Hearts phones pinged off cell towers
Speaker 1: along the Oregon coast into California, and as you know,
Speaker 1: on Sunday, Jen showed up in Fort Bragg on a
Speaker 1: Safeway surveillance video. She was alone and about twenty five
Speaker 1: pounds heavier than friends had ever seen her, wearing a
Speaker 1: gray sweatshirt, possibly the same one we caught a glimpse
Speaker 1: of in the video with the Ducklings. By Monday afternoon,
Speaker 1: Cheryl Hert was getting concerned. Sarah hadn't shown up for
Speaker 1: work all weekend and wasn't responding to texts, So Cheryl
Speaker 1: decided to call. When she said she was sick, did
Speaker 1: she say what was going on? Or she just said
Speaker 1: that she just is unable to to come out and
Speaker 1: we're being able to go to work and thought she
Speaker 1: was gonna go to the doctor. Um. I've checked the hospitals.
Speaker 1: They didn't come any records of her, and I think
Speaker 1: her phone is now dead. We were curious about why
Speaker 1: Cheryl made this call. Jessine and I worked pretty closely
Speaker 1: together and we definitely talked about our families and what
Speaker 1: we did over the weekend. But I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: would call if she didn't show up for work for
Speaker 1: a few days. Can talked through just why you made
Speaker 1: the call. Well, so it started because Sarah was stick
Speaker 1: and because Sarah wasn't answering her phone. So they had
Speaker 1: asked me how to pull up the emergency contact list
Speaker 1: because they thought that maybe they could contact Jen. So
Speaker 1: I pulled it up. They called Jen and left a message.
Speaker 1: I sent a text message to the coworker like Sunday night,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, saying by her from Sara
Speaker 1: yet And she said, no, she does. It's really kind
Speaker 1: of weird. And I said, that is really weird. I said,
Speaker 1: she would not miss, you know, two days of work
Speaker 1: without checking in or anything like that. I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: so bizarre because everything that was going on, she still
Speaker 1: did her job. She still showed up every day, she
Speaker 1: wasn't late, she still took initiative to get her projects done.
Speaker 1: She still had great ideas. I mean, she did everything.
Speaker 1: If you were just to walk in and not know
Speaker 1: her history or her family, or her home life or whatever,
Speaker 1: you would never have any idea because done bits showed
Speaker 1: when she was out on that sales floor. She had
Speaker 1: that hatlog, you know, all of her stuff. Aside, she
Speaker 1: did her jobs. So then we went in Monday and
Speaker 1: we waited until about nine o'clock and she still hadn't
Speaker 1: shown up. By this time, the storm manager had come
Speaker 1: in and I had filled him in on everything that
Speaker 1: had happened over the weekend, which was like, you know,
Speaker 1: something's going on, you know, what do we do? And
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I don't know. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we can get involved or anything. And I was like,
Speaker 1: it's kind of course to me, and she like, I
Speaker 1: think we have to get involved in the stuffing that's
Speaker 1: going on. He had talked to his manager and they
Speaker 1: said we'll like give it another hour or so. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my gosh, you guys are being men.
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. Something needs to be done. So then
Speaker 1: I figured out that Jen's emergency contact number was actually
Speaker 1: Sarah's phone number, so we didn't have an emergency contact
Speaker 1: number for Sarah. So I finally got the okay to
Speaker 1: call it in and I made the call and then
Speaker 1: here I sit today. About two hours after Cheryl hung
Speaker 1: up the phone, a German tourist spotted the Hearts Tan
Speaker 1: two thou three Yukon Xcel upside down at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the cliff in Mendocino County. The police report includes
Speaker 1: a photo of the car from above, and it looks
Speaker 1: like it's flat to the ground with its brown and
Speaker 1: gray machinery camouflaged by the rocks, sand and water. When
Speaker 1: you look at aerial shots of the scene, the car
Speaker 1: blends in so well it's hard to see. The bodies
Speaker 1: of Marcus, Abigail, and Jeremiah were found nearby. Sierra's body
Speaker 1: washed ashore. About two weeks later. A foot presumed to
Speaker 1: be Hannah's was found nearby as well, but at the
Speaker 1: time of this recording, investigators were still trying to match
Speaker 1: it with DNA from a woman claiming to be Hannah's
Speaker 1: biological mom. Davante's body is still missing. The car's computer
Speaker 1: showed that moments before the crash, Jen had stopped on
Speaker 1: a gravel pull out seventy ft from the edge of
Speaker 1: the cliff and then accelerated. You might wonder if the
Speaker 1: brakes malfunctioned, but according to a Carfax report, the pads
Speaker 1: have been replaced the previous July. Her industry experts The
Speaker 1: average brake pads last for around forty miles, so unless
Speaker 1: the Hearts had driven back and forth across the country
Speaker 1: six times, the brake pads should have been in perfect
Speaker 1: working order. Meanwhile, remember all that lush Greenerygen wrote about.
Speaker 1: When the police showed up to search the Heart's house,
Speaker 1: they found no plants inside. But over on Jen's Facebook,
Speaker 1: the ducklings continue to splash in their bowl of water,
Speaker 1: one yellow, one black. The most recent comment comes from
Speaker 1: a loyal friend wishing Jen a happy birthday months after
Speaker 1: she died. Next time on Broken Hearts, the kids are skinny. Well,
Speaker 1: we just thought they were eating organic food. We thought
Speaker 1: they were all the same age. They were small, so
Speaker 1: we thought they had to be in kindergarten. Looking back
Speaker 1: on it, it doesn't look like they were normal kids.
Speaker 1: They didn't really have friends. Abigail had bruising on her
Speaker 1: stomach area from her stern um to waistband, and bruising
Speaker 1: on her back from mid back to upper buttocks, reportedly
Speaker 1: caused by Jen Hart. For access to exclusive photos and
Speaker 1: videos and documents about the case, visit glamour dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash Broken Hearts have questions for us about this podcast
Speaker 1: reach us on Twitter at almermag or at Broken Hearts Pod.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, leave us a review.
Speaker 1: Broken Hearts is a joint production between Glamour and How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts
Speaker 1: is co hosted and co written by Justine Harman and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Egan and edited by Wendy k Nockle. Lauren Smiley
Speaker 1: is our field reporter. Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief.
Speaker 1: Julie Sheen and Dianna Buckman head up the business side
Speaker 1: of this partnership. Joyce Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke Zeleski
Speaker 1: are a research team. Jason Hoke is executive producer on
Speaker 1: behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Julian Weller,
Speaker 1: ben Ky Brick and Josh Thine. Special thanks to Jen
Speaker 1: Lance