January 1, 2019 • 25 mins
The Harts' neighbors don't know what's going on with the family on the other side of the driveway. Until one day, Devonte Hart starts begging for food.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
We've talked about how Jenn and Sarah Hart met each
other and how they quickly adopted six kids. We've talked
about how Jen curated an identity for the family on
social media and at music festivals. And we've talked about
how the Hearts lived. Now we're going to talk about
how they died. This is hard stuff, obviously, and we've
(00:26):
spent a lot of time thinking about it. What happened
in the week leading up to the hearts five and
sixty one mile trip from Washington to California, and when
Jen arrived at the edge of the cliff, what made
her keep her foot on the gas From Glamour and
how stuff works. This is Broken Hearts. I'm Liz Egan
(00:50):
and I'm Justine Harmony. We're going to check back in
with Bruce and Danna decalb who were the Hearts neighbors
in Woodland, Washington. You'll remember they're the ones who were
(01:12):
woken up in the middle of the night by Hannah
Heart shortly after the handa incident. They bought blinds and
never ever opened up, never closed. You couldn't see in
the house, you couldn't see in their car. They would
go from the house to the car and from the
(01:33):
car to the house literally single file, and it was
like kind of at a fast clip, almost like running.
Jennifer would get out and open the doors. Then they
would get out and single fowl to the house. I
was hoping to see Anna again because I was hoping
to get it to her that you are always welcome
(01:54):
to my home, that no matter what, feel free to
come here, or have her give me a signal all
you know that she needs help. I wanted to let
any of the kids know that, you know, if they
need help, just give me the not because I just
never felt comfortable about what I was observing. That's Dana
(02:16):
who still teared up when talking about the hearts nearly
two months after they died. Even though the sheriff's deputy
had told Dana it wasn't illegal to not let kids
play outside, she still had a bad gut feeling about
the family. In fact, she vowed to keep watch on
the comings and goings of their cars on anything she
could decipher from the house. With the blinds drawn tightly shut.
(02:39):
She made sure to take notes of each new visit
Davante would make to their house. For months, Dana had
only gotten tiny tidbits Davante's clipped greetings when she tried
to intersect him in the driveway on garbage runs. But
now finally, little by little, Davante was opening up. We
(02:59):
have to take our garbage cans to the street, and
it's a long ways, and so I would watch for
the kids because I wanted to try to have a
conversation with any of them, you know, But I could
never get him to talk to me, and I never
saw Hannah. One time, Davante and I kind of waited
for him and caught up with him, and I talked
to him, but he wouldn't answer me. Finally, right when
(03:21):
we went to split and I said, well, you know,
I have a good day, and he goes, yes, ma'am,
and that was all I got from the whole way
up the driveway. He got back up to the house
and I saw Jennifer scolding him. She went inside and
left him standing out the rain. And my first reaction,
(03:42):
my gut was he just got in trouble for talking
to me. And then from that day on we never
saw him take the garbage. They did it in the night.
I thought, Okay, obviously there's something going on that they've
been instructed not to speak with us from that day forward. DeVante,
(04:05):
he was the only kid of the six of them
that was ever outside doing work. He was raking leaves
or puling things. One day, I sat watched he carried
ten bags of soil from the front of the back,
and I kept thinking, my god, there's six of them.
Even if Hannah's too tiny, there's three boys, and Marcus
(04:28):
was way bigger than Dante, and so it blew my
mind and I sat and watched that, thinking, eventually, I'm
going to see another kid. But it only was DeVante.
When you tell me that the kids chose to live
out in the country, you want to become self sufficient,
then I would expect to see kids out in the
yard planting or enjoying the property. You know, if you
(04:50):
want to live like this, you enjoy it. And so
it wasn't adding up my gut instinct still at me
on alert. She talked about it, for I was obsessed
with She was obsessed with it. I watched their comings
and goings. I mean, I knew when Sarah had a
day off. Um I stopped him essentially because I just
(05:14):
couldn't let it go. Aside from a few brief conversations
in the driveway, the decalbs felt the Hearts were avoiding them,
but that changed on Thursday, March two, eighteen, when Davante
approached Bruce, who was working on his truck, and asked
(05:34):
for tortillas. It was a simple request, like asking for
a cup of sugar or a stick of butter, and
Bruce was happy to help. That same day, over on Facebook,
Jen was celebrating the ninth anniversary of Davante, Sierra and
Jeremiah's official adoption date. She posted six black and white
pictures of the kids grinning and wearing cute hats. We
(05:57):
won't read the whole status update, it's a long one too,
but the lions are about to hear are pretty poignant.
Considering what was about to happen, and considering that DeVante
might have been asking Bruce for food at the very moment,
Jen type these words, I am a better human in
every possible way for knowing these children. They have been
(06:19):
my greatest teachers. Contrary to the common notion that we
can't choose our family, we absolutely can. We choose by loving,
and that's worth celebrating every damn day. Dana and Bruce
weren't friends with jan on Facebook. In fact, they had
no idea she was active on social media until after
(06:40):
she died. On Friday, March six eighteen, around nine am,
they answered a knock on their door. There was Davante
again asking for bread. This time Dana was the one
who gave him the food. She didn't have bread, so
she gave him tortillas instead. The first night, I didn't
think anything when he came back, I was like, m
(07:02):
that's weird, okay. He would kind of watch down the road,
watch down the road, and you know, but he was
the only here as long as he needed to be.
He would never come in the house, never came in
that not in the rain, no, no, never came in
the house. Would not step but I'd say come in
and it's raining, Nope, And he'd be like he was
always really in a hurt. But then when he came
(07:25):
back Friday night, It's like, wait a minute, I just
gave you like thirty tortillas A specifically put I gotta
take a step back and just you know, size him up.
He was always dressed in baggy or clothes, rubber boots
and longer sleeves, you know, I mean in March when
he started coming over here, it's still wet and cold.
(07:47):
His shoulders were super small and comparison to his head,
I have little shoulders. He was smaller than me. He
was really thin, you know, like his arms rose because
of my wrists. That's all? Are you? By four? Was
he taller than you? Around my height? The next day,
(08:08):
around five pm, Davante was back. He wanted more food.
Bruce and Dana tried to get him to stay and talk.
Dana was determined to collect information she could share. When
she called Child Protective Services again. Remember the first time
she spoke to them after her dad reported the hearts,
(08:30):
she was told there was nothing they could do to help.
That's when it was like, okay, we gotta get details.
So every time he came over, I would ask him
a little more and a little more. You know. First
it was just about playing outside, you know where you
are allowed to play outside at your other house? And
then it was what about school? Meanwhile, Jen continued to
post about Davante on Facebook. He was one of her
(08:53):
favorite subjects. We know that. Already four days after his
first visit to the Decalbs, she shared a pick sure
where you can only see his eyes brown and smiling.
The bottom of his face is obscured by a tray
full of dirt and seedlings. The post reads, we currently
have six hundred flowers slash vegetables growing in the living
(09:14):
room before theyre moved to the little greenhouse. She goes
on to say that the kids are quote reading their
environmental biology books out loud to each other and to
the plants. It sounds like a cozy scene. On Tuesday, March,
(09:38):
Davante returned to the Decalbs house twice. Although he still
wouldn't come inside, he was at least more forthcoming than
he'd been on previous visits. I asked him how he
was able to sneak over here. He told me they
weren't very observant. Now I've learned that Jennifer was a gamer,
a video gamer on computers, and so he came over
(10:00):
when she was probably gaming, or he would come over
late at night when they were probably asleep. Sarah was
never home. I don't think when he made his trips
over here, she was either gone to work or it
was late enough that she would probably be in bed.
This made sense while Sarah was working long hours at
Cole's Jen was running a guild of video game enthusiasts,
(10:24):
sometimes dominating group chats to the point where one dubbed
her a stone cold narcissist. So it seems like there
wasn't a whole lot of supervision happening in the hearthouse
and the family life, DeVante described to the Decalbs bore
little resemblance to the rosy utopia Jen described to her
fans they were withholding food as punished. He would say, well,
(10:45):
we're teenagers and we act out, and so we get
punished in that way. And Danis said, well, there's nothing
you could ever do that would warrant someone taking food
away from you. I don't care what it is. So
to a degree he did say, we're teenagers and act out,
like trying to claim there was some sort of cause, yeah,
(11:07):
or that maybe that they thought that there was a cause,
you know, trying to make it like it was normal somewhat,
but obviously it wasn't. Just to recap Davante showed up
at the Decalps on March and one. He showed up
(11:29):
for the last time on March twenty two. He started
asking for cured meat and six stars of peanut butter
and six packages or tortillas and apples, and then he
he goes and donuts and he kind of looked and
I said, no, I'm not doing no junk food. He goes, okay,
(11:50):
you know when you say specifically cured meats, and he
told us non perishables. He even said non perishables. You
can't have anything that's frozen or needs to be fagerating it.
It was like, is he going to run away? Was
there like a moment that you felt the pitch change
of just like I'm not gonna be guarded about this anymore.
(12:12):
I'm just telling you we're being abused. Yeah. That was
on Wednesday, when he first started telling us a little
more about abuse. Um and then asking as please don't
call the cops. Told us that everything Hannah told you
was true, the things my mom told you were just
to make you happy, and it was just like, oh god,
(12:36):
I totally bought into it. And I was just like,
oh God, yeah, just kill me. I said, okay, so
why did she run away that night? Because my mom
was abusing her? It was just like too much had
(12:57):
started out just as you know, a meal air or there,
but now it was long periods of time, and then
he said, Sarah used to not go along with it,
but she is now. You know. I just felt like, Okay,
now I have enough to get somebody's attention. On March two, eighteen,
(13:18):
Jen made her final Facebook post. It was a thirty
second video of a pair of ducklings, one yellow, one black.
We see the ducks splashing together in a bowl of water,
cuddling in someone's arms, someone who is white and wearing
a gray sweatshirt. Then the ducks are balancing on the
back of a rabbit and a cat, and finally climbing
(13:41):
over a bowl filled with geode starfish and shells. In
the background, we see a woman with long brown hair
wearing a blazer and a T shirt, probably Sarah, on
her way to work. It's a peaceful, domestic scene, and
the last frame says happy Spring in a jaunty font.
The caption cuteness overload Alert. These spring equinox babies have
(14:06):
waddled right into our hearts. So much joy in New life.
Two likes comments, many of which were posted after the
Hearts died. On Friday morning of March Danna de Cau
called Child Protective Services to report all of the information
(14:27):
she had collected about jen and Sarah Hart. Officials showed
up within a couple hours, but by then Dana thought
every second counted CPS had been contacted and gone out
to see them. When she coming back, I'm here, but
I can't find you. There's wild I'm I'm up where
(14:49):
there across the street is a bank of mailboxes. I said, okay,
well turn around and I'll watch for you, you you know,
and then I'll tell you turn now. So I'm literally
standing you're watching for her to go by, and I
see Jennifer coming down the hill and I was thinking,
a crap, maybe the kids were home, you know alone,
(15:14):
CPS could have been here by now. So I watched
Jennifer coming up the driveway and I'm like, well, their
whole So I told the lady turn in when you
come up the driveway, go to the right. She came
to my house, so she pulled up. I might, you know,
given a signal to go back. I just motioned because
(15:34):
I didn't want to yelp next door, you need to
go next door, because I thought, well, I could be
out in the driveway, and so she got back in
her car and went next door. She wasn't there very long,
and I watched her leave and I'm like, crap, nothing
came of this. But they never asked it to door.
(16:00):
Even if you do answer the door, you can say
I'm sorry, you didn't have to come back another time.
What were your feelings when you actually made the call
and reported in. I think I was nervous, You know,
I was glad I did it because I got the
feeling it had to happen. I mean, I knew it
(16:22):
had to happen. Were you worried that they then they
would get abused more? I was. That was my biggest
fair But what actually happened was worse. Dana saw Sarah's
(16:43):
car speeding into the driveway and then at some point
during the night, the car disappeared. As far as Dana
could tell, the house next door was completely empty. You
just put it together that they had gone on the run.
You didn't see them blaze out. Well, the rock wall
was knocked on the end of it was clipped left
(17:05):
so fast that they backed over that rock wall and
knocked it down. This, you know, that was Saturday morning,
then Sunday when the car was gone Sunday morning, that's
when we said they're running they're gone at that moment.
What did you think would be the outcome of this?
I guess I just figured they were trying to hide
long enough to sort it out. Yeah, figure out their story.
(17:28):
They owned the house. Where are they gonna what are
they gonna do? They gotta come back, even they had
chicken still here in the animals are all up there,
and Sarah's cars. I mean, it just didn't occur to
me that this was going to be the outcome. You know,
you don't really think about I didn't think they killed
in my wildest imagination. Sarah was scheduled to open coals
(17:52):
at six am on Saturday morning. At three am, she
texted co workers, I'm so sorry. I thought I would
be able to go to work, but I'm too sick
to come in. Sarah's colleague, Cheryl Hart, had worked with
her the day before on that Friday. She says she
didn't notice anything unusual about Sarah, at least not then.
(18:16):
Her mood that day I felt was fine. I had
just found out that I was getting promoted, and she
had actually known before me, so she was like, oh,
I'm so glad that now you know. Now I could
tell you congratulations and everything, and so she was excited
for me, and so we were um, laughing and stuff.
(18:41):
On Saturday, March, the Hearts phones pinged off cell towers
along the Oregon coast into California, and as you know,
on Sunday, Jen showed up in Fort Bragg on a
Safeway surveillance video. She was alone and about twenty five
pounds heavier than friends had ever seen her, wearing a
(19:03):
gray sweatshirt, possibly the same one we caught a glimpse
of in the video with the Ducklings. By Monday afternoon,
Cheryl Hert was getting concerned. Sarah hadn't shown up for
work all weekend and wasn't responding to texts, So Cheryl
decided to call. When she said she was sick, did
(19:24):
she say what was going on? Or she just said
that she just is unable to to come out and
we're being able to go to work and thought she
was gonna go to the doctor. Um. I've checked the hospitals.
They didn't come any records of her, and I think
her phone is now dead. We were curious about why
(19:45):
Cheryl made this call. Jessine and I worked pretty closely
together and we definitely talked about our families and what
we did over the weekend. But I'm not sure I
would call if she didn't show up for work for
a few days. Can talked through just why you made
the call. Well, so it started because Sarah was stick
(20:07):
and because Sarah wasn't answering her phone. So they had
asked me how to pull up the emergency contact list
because they thought that maybe they could contact Jen. So
I pulled it up. They called Jen and left a message.
(20:27):
I sent a text message to the coworker like Sunday night,
and I said, you know, saying by her from Sara
yet And she said, no, she does. It's really kind
of weird. And I said, that is really weird. I said,
she would not miss, you know, two days of work
without checking in or anything like that. I'm like, it's
so bizarre because everything that was going on, she still
(20:48):
did her job. She still showed up every day, she
wasn't late, she still took initiative to get her projects done.
She still had great ideas. I mean, she did everything.
If you were just to walk in and not know
her history or her family, or her home life or whatever,
(21:09):
you would never have any idea because done bits showed
when she was out on that sales floor. She had
that hatlog, you know, all of her stuff. Aside, she
did her jobs. So then we went in Monday and
we waited until about nine o'clock and she still hadn't
(21:30):
shown up. By this time, the storm manager had come
in and I had filled him in on everything that
had happened over the weekend, which was like, you know,
something's going on, you know, what do we do? And
he's like, well, I don't know. I don't know if
we can get involved or anything. And I was like,
it's kind of course to me, and she like, I
think we have to get involved in the stuffing that's
(21:51):
going on. He had talked to his manager and they
said we'll like give it another hour or so. And
I was like, oh my gosh, you guys are being men.
This is ridiculous. Something needs to be done. So then
I figured out that Jen's emergency contact number was actually
(22:11):
Sarah's phone number, so we didn't have an emergency contact
number for Sarah. So I finally got the okay to
call it in and I made the call and then
here I sit today. About two hours after Cheryl hung
(22:32):
up the phone, a German tourist spotted the Hearts Tan
two thou three Yukon Xcel upside down at the bottom
of the cliff in Mendocino County. The police report includes
a photo of the car from above, and it looks
like it's flat to the ground with its brown and
gray machinery camouflaged by the rocks, sand and water. When
you look at aerial shots of the scene, the car
(22:55):
blends in so well it's hard to see. The bodies
of Marcus, Abigail, and Jeremiah were found nearby. Sierra's body
washed ashore. About two weeks later. A foot presumed to
be Hannah's was found nearby as well, but at the
time of this recording, investigators were still trying to match
it with DNA from a woman claiming to be Hannah's
(23:17):
biological mom. Davante's body is still missing. The car's computer
showed that moments before the crash, Jen had stopped on
a gravel pull out seventy ft from the edge of
the cliff and then accelerated. You might wonder if the
brakes malfunctioned, but according to a Carfax report, the pads
have been replaced the previous July. Her industry experts The
(23:39):
average brake pads last for around forty miles, so unless
the Hearts had driven back and forth across the country
six times, the brake pads should have been in perfect
working order. Meanwhile, remember all that lush Greenerygen wrote about.
When the police showed up to search the Heart's house,
they found no plants inside. But over on Jen's Facebook,
(24:02):
the ducklings continue to splash in their bowl of water,
one yellow, one black. The most recent comment comes from
a loyal friend wishing Jen a happy birthday months after
she died. Next time on Broken Hearts, the kids are skinny. Well,
we just thought they were eating organic food. We thought
(24:25):
they were all the same age. They were small, so
we thought they had to be in kindergarten. Looking back
on it, it doesn't look like they were normal kids.
They didn't really have friends. Abigail had bruising on her
stomach area from her stern um to waistband, and bruising
on her back from mid back to upper buttocks, reportedly
caused by Jen Hart. For access to exclusive photos and
(24:50):
videos and documents about the case, visit glamour dot com.
Slash Broken Hearts have questions for us about this podcast
reach us on Twitter at almermag or at Broken Hearts Pod.
If you like what you heard, leave us a review.
Broken Hearts is a joint production between Glamour and How
Stuff Works, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts
(25:13):
is co hosted and co written by Justine Harman and
Elizabeth Egan and edited by Wendy k Nockle. Lauren Smiley
is our field reporter. Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief.
Julie Sheen and Dianna Buckman head up the business side
of this partnership. Joyce Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke Zeleski
(25:34):
are a research team. Jason Hoke is executive producer on
behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Julian Weller,
ben Ky Brick and Josh Thine. Special thanks to Jen
Lance
We've talked about how Jenn and Sarah Hart met each
other and how they quickly adopted six kids. We've talked
about how Jen curated an identity for the family on
social media and at music festivals. And we've talked about
how the Hearts lived. Now we're going to talk about
how they died. This is hard stuff, obviously, and we've
(00:26):
spent a lot of time thinking about it. What happened
in the week leading up to the hearts five and
sixty one mile trip from Washington to California, and when
Jen arrived at the edge of the cliff, what made
her keep her foot on the gas From Glamour and
how stuff works. This is Broken Hearts. I'm Liz Egan
(00:50):
and I'm Justine Harmony. We're going to check back in
with Bruce and Danna decalb who were the Hearts neighbors
in Woodland, Washington. You'll remember they're the ones who were
(01:12):
woken up in the middle of the night by Hannah
Heart shortly after the handa incident. They bought blinds and
never ever opened up, never closed. You couldn't see in
the house, you couldn't see in their car. They would
go from the house to the car and from the
(01:33):
car to the house literally single file, and it was
like kind of at a fast clip, almost like running.
Jennifer would get out and open the doors. Then they
would get out and single fowl to the house. I
was hoping to see Anna again because I was hoping
to get it to her that you are always welcome
(01:54):
to my home, that no matter what, feel free to
come here, or have her give me a signal all
you know that she needs help. I wanted to let
any of the kids know that, you know, if they
need help, just give me the not because I just
never felt comfortable about what I was observing. That's Dana
(02:16):
who still teared up when talking about the hearts nearly
two months after they died. Even though the sheriff's deputy
had told Dana it wasn't illegal to not let kids
play outside, she still had a bad gut feeling about
the family. In fact, she vowed to keep watch on
the comings and goings of their cars on anything she
could decipher from the house. With the blinds drawn tightly shut.
(02:39):
She made sure to take notes of each new visit
Davante would make to their house. For months, Dana had
only gotten tiny tidbits Davante's clipped greetings when she tried
to intersect him in the driveway on garbage runs. But
now finally, little by little, Davante was opening up. We
(02:59):
have to take our garbage cans to the street, and
it's a long ways, and so I would watch for
the kids because I wanted to try to have a
conversation with any of them, you know, But I could
never get him to talk to me, and I never
saw Hannah. One time, Davante and I kind of waited
for him and caught up with him, and I talked
to him, but he wouldn't answer me. Finally, right when
(03:21):
we went to split and I said, well, you know,
I have a good day, and he goes, yes, ma'am,
and that was all I got from the whole way
up the driveway. He got back up to the house
and I saw Jennifer scolding him. She went inside and
left him standing out the rain. And my first reaction,
(03:42):
my gut was he just got in trouble for talking
to me. And then from that day on we never
saw him take the garbage. They did it in the night.
I thought, Okay, obviously there's something going on that they've
been instructed not to speak with us from that day forward. DeVante,
(04:05):
he was the only kid of the six of them
that was ever outside doing work. He was raking leaves
or puling things. One day, I sat watched he carried
ten bags of soil from the front of the back,
and I kept thinking, my god, there's six of them.
Even if Hannah's too tiny, there's three boys, and Marcus
(04:28):
was way bigger than Dante, and so it blew my
mind and I sat and watched that, thinking, eventually, I'm
going to see another kid. But it only was DeVante.
When you tell me that the kids chose to live
out in the country, you want to become self sufficient,
then I would expect to see kids out in the
yard planting or enjoying the property. You know, if you
(04:50):
want to live like this, you enjoy it. And so
it wasn't adding up my gut instinct still at me
on alert. She talked about it, for I was obsessed
with She was obsessed with it. I watched their comings
and goings. I mean, I knew when Sarah had a
day off. Um I stopped him essentially because I just
(05:14):
couldn't let it go. Aside from a few brief conversations
in the driveway, the decalbs felt the Hearts were avoiding them,
but that changed on Thursday, March two, eighteen, when Davante
approached Bruce, who was working on his truck, and asked
(05:34):
for tortillas. It was a simple request, like asking for
a cup of sugar or a stick of butter, and
Bruce was happy to help. That same day, over on Facebook,
Jen was celebrating the ninth anniversary of Davante, Sierra and
Jeremiah's official adoption date. She posted six black and white
pictures of the kids grinning and wearing cute hats. We
(05:57):
won't read the whole status update, it's a long one too,
but the lions are about to hear are pretty poignant.
Considering what was about to happen, and considering that DeVante
might have been asking Bruce for food at the very moment,
Jen type these words, I am a better human in
every possible way for knowing these children. They have been
(06:19):
my greatest teachers. Contrary to the common notion that we
can't choose our family, we absolutely can. We choose by loving,
and that's worth celebrating every damn day. Dana and Bruce
weren't friends with jan on Facebook. In fact, they had
no idea she was active on social media until after
(06:40):
she died. On Friday, March six eighteen, around nine am,
they answered a knock on their door. There was Davante
again asking for bread. This time Dana was the one
who gave him the food. She didn't have bread, so
she gave him tortillas instead. The first night, I didn't
think anything when he came back, I was like, m
(07:02):
that's weird, okay. He would kind of watch down the road,
watch down the road, and you know, but he was
the only here as long as he needed to be.
He would never come in the house, never came in
that not in the rain, no, no, never came in
the house. Would not step but I'd say come in
and it's raining, Nope, And he'd be like he was
always really in a hurt. But then when he came
(07:25):
back Friday night, It's like, wait a minute, I just
gave you like thirty tortillas A specifically put I gotta
take a step back and just you know, size him up.
He was always dressed in baggy or clothes, rubber boots
and longer sleeves, you know, I mean in March when
he started coming over here, it's still wet and cold.
(07:47):
His shoulders were super small and comparison to his head,
I have little shoulders. He was smaller than me. He
was really thin, you know, like his arms rose because
of my wrists. That's all? Are you? By four? Was
he taller than you? Around my height? The next day,
(08:08):
around five pm, Davante was back. He wanted more food.
Bruce and Dana tried to get him to stay and talk.
Dana was determined to collect information she could share. When
she called Child Protective Services again. Remember the first time
she spoke to them after her dad reported the hearts,
(08:30):
she was told there was nothing they could do to help.
That's when it was like, okay, we gotta get details.
So every time he came over, I would ask him
a little more and a little more. You know. First
it was just about playing outside, you know where you
are allowed to play outside at your other house? And
then it was what about school? Meanwhile, Jen continued to
post about Davante on Facebook. He was one of her
(08:53):
favorite subjects. We know that. Already four days after his
first visit to the Decalbs, she shared a pick sure
where you can only see his eyes brown and smiling.
The bottom of his face is obscured by a tray
full of dirt and seedlings. The post reads, we currently
have six hundred flowers slash vegetables growing in the living
(09:14):
room before theyre moved to the little greenhouse. She goes
on to say that the kids are quote reading their
environmental biology books out loud to each other and to
the plants. It sounds like a cozy scene. On Tuesday, March,
(09:38):
Davante returned to the Decalbs house twice. Although he still
wouldn't come inside, he was at least more forthcoming than
he'd been on previous visits. I asked him how he
was able to sneak over here. He told me they
weren't very observant. Now I've learned that Jennifer was a gamer,
a video gamer on computers, and so he came over
(10:00):
when she was probably gaming, or he would come over
late at night when they were probably asleep. Sarah was
never home. I don't think when he made his trips
over here, she was either gone to work or it
was late enough that she would probably be in bed.
This made sense while Sarah was working long hours at
Cole's Jen was running a guild of video game enthusiasts,
(10:24):
sometimes dominating group chats to the point where one dubbed
her a stone cold narcissist. So it seems like there
wasn't a whole lot of supervision happening in the hearthouse
and the family life, DeVante described to the Decalbs bore
little resemblance to the rosy utopia Jen described to her
fans they were withholding food as punished. He would say, well,
(10:45):
we're teenagers and we act out, and so we get
punished in that way. And Danis said, well, there's nothing
you could ever do that would warrant someone taking food
away from you. I don't care what it is. So
to a degree he did say, we're teenagers and act out,
like trying to claim there was some sort of cause, yeah,
(11:07):
or that maybe that they thought that there was a cause,
you know, trying to make it like it was normal somewhat,
but obviously it wasn't. Just to recap Davante showed up
at the Decalps on March and one. He showed up
(11:29):
for the last time on March twenty two. He started
asking for cured meat and six stars of peanut butter
and six packages or tortillas and apples, and then he
he goes and donuts and he kind of looked and
I said, no, I'm not doing no junk food. He goes, okay,
(11:50):
you know when you say specifically cured meats, and he
told us non perishables. He even said non perishables. You
can't have anything that's frozen or needs to be fagerating it.
It was like, is he going to run away? Was
there like a moment that you felt the pitch change
of just like I'm not gonna be guarded about this anymore.
(12:12):
I'm just telling you we're being abused. Yeah. That was
on Wednesday, when he first started telling us a little
more about abuse. Um and then asking as please don't
call the cops. Told us that everything Hannah told you
was true, the things my mom told you were just
to make you happy, and it was just like, oh god,
(12:36):
I totally bought into it. And I was just like,
oh God, yeah, just kill me. I said, okay, so
why did she run away that night? Because my mom
was abusing her? It was just like too much had
(12:57):
started out just as you know, a meal air or there,
but now it was long periods of time, and then
he said, Sarah used to not go along with it,
but she is now. You know. I just felt like, Okay,
now I have enough to get somebody's attention. On March two, eighteen,
(13:18):
Jen made her final Facebook post. It was a thirty
second video of a pair of ducklings, one yellow, one black.
We see the ducks splashing together in a bowl of water,
cuddling in someone's arms, someone who is white and wearing
a gray sweatshirt. Then the ducks are balancing on the
back of a rabbit and a cat, and finally climbing
(13:41):
over a bowl filled with geode starfish and shells. In
the background, we see a woman with long brown hair
wearing a blazer and a T shirt, probably Sarah, on
her way to work. It's a peaceful, domestic scene, and
the last frame says happy Spring in a jaunty font.
The caption cuteness overload Alert. These spring equinox babies have
(14:06):
waddled right into our hearts. So much joy in New life.
Two likes comments, many of which were posted after the
Hearts died. On Friday morning of March Danna de Cau
called Child Protective Services to report all of the information
(14:27):
she had collected about jen and Sarah Hart. Officials showed
up within a couple hours, but by then Dana thought
every second counted CPS had been contacted and gone out
to see them. When she coming back, I'm here, but
I can't find you. There's wild I'm I'm up where
(14:49):
there across the street is a bank of mailboxes. I said, okay,
well turn around and I'll watch for you, you you know,
and then I'll tell you turn now. So I'm literally
standing you're watching for her to go by, and I
see Jennifer coming down the hill and I was thinking,
a crap, maybe the kids were home, you know alone,
(15:14):
CPS could have been here by now. So I watched
Jennifer coming up the driveway and I'm like, well, their
whole So I told the lady turn in when you
come up the driveway, go to the right. She came
to my house, so she pulled up. I might, you know,
given a signal to go back. I just motioned because
(15:34):
I didn't want to yelp next door, you need to
go next door, because I thought, well, I could be
out in the driveway, and so she got back in
her car and went next door. She wasn't there very long,
and I watched her leave and I'm like, crap, nothing
came of this. But they never asked it to door.
(16:00):
Even if you do answer the door, you can say
I'm sorry, you didn't have to come back another time.
What were your feelings when you actually made the call
and reported in. I think I was nervous, You know,
I was glad I did it because I got the
feeling it had to happen. I mean, I knew it
(16:22):
had to happen. Were you worried that they then they
would get abused more? I was. That was my biggest
fair But what actually happened was worse. Dana saw Sarah's
(16:43):
car speeding into the driveway and then at some point
during the night, the car disappeared. As far as Dana
could tell, the house next door was completely empty. You
just put it together that they had gone on the run.
You didn't see them blaze out. Well, the rock wall
was knocked on the end of it was clipped left
(17:05):
so fast that they backed over that rock wall and
knocked it down. This, you know, that was Saturday morning,
then Sunday when the car was gone Sunday morning, that's
when we said they're running they're gone at that moment.
What did you think would be the outcome of this?
I guess I just figured they were trying to hide
long enough to sort it out. Yeah, figure out their story.
(17:28):
They owned the house. Where are they gonna what are
they gonna do? They gotta come back, even they had
chicken still here in the animals are all up there,
and Sarah's cars. I mean, it just didn't occur to
me that this was going to be the outcome. You know,
you don't really think about I didn't think they killed
in my wildest imagination. Sarah was scheduled to open coals
(17:52):
at six am on Saturday morning. At three am, she
texted co workers, I'm so sorry. I thought I would
be able to go to work, but I'm too sick
to come in. Sarah's colleague, Cheryl Hart, had worked with
her the day before on that Friday. She says she
didn't notice anything unusual about Sarah, at least not then.
(18:16):
Her mood that day I felt was fine. I had
just found out that I was getting promoted, and she
had actually known before me, so she was like, oh,
I'm so glad that now you know. Now I could
tell you congratulations and everything, and so she was excited
for me, and so we were um, laughing and stuff.
(18:41):
On Saturday, March, the Hearts phones pinged off cell towers
along the Oregon coast into California, and as you know,
on Sunday, Jen showed up in Fort Bragg on a
Safeway surveillance video. She was alone and about twenty five
pounds heavier than friends had ever seen her, wearing a
(19:03):
gray sweatshirt, possibly the same one we caught a glimpse
of in the video with the Ducklings. By Monday afternoon,
Cheryl Hert was getting concerned. Sarah hadn't shown up for
work all weekend and wasn't responding to texts, So Cheryl
decided to call. When she said she was sick, did
(19:24):
she say what was going on? Or she just said
that she just is unable to to come out and
we're being able to go to work and thought she
was gonna go to the doctor. Um. I've checked the hospitals.
They didn't come any records of her, and I think
her phone is now dead. We were curious about why
(19:45):
Cheryl made this call. Jessine and I worked pretty closely
together and we definitely talked about our families and what
we did over the weekend. But I'm not sure I
would call if she didn't show up for work for
a few days. Can talked through just why you made
the call. Well, so it started because Sarah was stick
(20:07):
and because Sarah wasn't answering her phone. So they had
asked me how to pull up the emergency contact list
because they thought that maybe they could contact Jen. So
I pulled it up. They called Jen and left a message.
(20:27):
I sent a text message to the coworker like Sunday night,
and I said, you know, saying by her from Sara
yet And she said, no, she does. It's really kind
of weird. And I said, that is really weird. I said,
she would not miss, you know, two days of work
without checking in or anything like that. I'm like, it's
so bizarre because everything that was going on, she still
(20:48):
did her job. She still showed up every day, she
wasn't late, she still took initiative to get her projects done.
She still had great ideas. I mean, she did everything.
If you were just to walk in and not know
her history or her family, or her home life or whatever,
(21:09):
you would never have any idea because done bits showed
when she was out on that sales floor. She had
that hatlog, you know, all of her stuff. Aside, she
did her jobs. So then we went in Monday and
we waited until about nine o'clock and she still hadn't
(21:30):
shown up. By this time, the storm manager had come
in and I had filled him in on everything that
had happened over the weekend, which was like, you know,
something's going on, you know, what do we do? And
he's like, well, I don't know. I don't know if
we can get involved or anything. And I was like,
it's kind of course to me, and she like, I
think we have to get involved in the stuffing that's
(21:51):
going on. He had talked to his manager and they
said we'll like give it another hour or so. And
I was like, oh my gosh, you guys are being men.
This is ridiculous. Something needs to be done. So then
I figured out that Jen's emergency contact number was actually
(22:11):
Sarah's phone number, so we didn't have an emergency contact
number for Sarah. So I finally got the okay to
call it in and I made the call and then
here I sit today. About two hours after Cheryl hung
(22:32):
up the phone, a German tourist spotted the Hearts Tan
two thou three Yukon Xcel upside down at the bottom
of the cliff in Mendocino County. The police report includes
a photo of the car from above, and it looks
like it's flat to the ground with its brown and
gray machinery camouflaged by the rocks, sand and water. When
you look at aerial shots of the scene, the car
(22:55):
blends in so well it's hard to see. The bodies
of Marcus, Abigail, and Jeremiah were found nearby. Sierra's body
washed ashore. About two weeks later. A foot presumed to
be Hannah's was found nearby as well, but at the
time of this recording, investigators were still trying to match
it with DNA from a woman claiming to be Hannah's
(23:17):
biological mom. Davante's body is still missing. The car's computer
showed that moments before the crash, Jen had stopped on
a gravel pull out seventy ft from the edge of
the cliff and then accelerated. You might wonder if the
brakes malfunctioned, but according to a Carfax report, the pads
have been replaced the previous July. Her industry experts The
(23:39):
average brake pads last for around forty miles, so unless
the Hearts had driven back and forth across the country
six times, the brake pads should have been in perfect
working order. Meanwhile, remember all that lush Greenerygen wrote about.
When the police showed up to search the Heart's house,
they found no plants inside. But over on Jen's Facebook,
(24:02):
the ducklings continue to splash in their bowl of water,
one yellow, one black. The most recent comment comes from
a loyal friend wishing Jen a happy birthday months after
she died. Next time on Broken Hearts, the kids are skinny. Well,
we just thought they were eating organic food. We thought
(24:25):
they were all the same age. They were small, so
we thought they had to be in kindergarten. Looking back
on it, it doesn't look like they were normal kids.
They didn't really have friends. Abigail had bruising on her
stomach area from her stern um to waistband, and bruising
on her back from mid back to upper buttocks, reportedly
caused by Jen Hart. For access to exclusive photos and
(24:50):
videos and documents about the case, visit glamour dot com.
Slash Broken Hearts have questions for us about this podcast
reach us on Twitter at almermag or at Broken Hearts Pod.
If you like what you heard, leave us a review.
Broken Hearts is a joint production between Glamour and How
Stuff Works, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts
(25:13):
is co hosted and co written by Justine Harman and
Elizabeth Egan and edited by Wendy k Nockle. Lauren Smiley
is our field reporter. Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief.
Julie Sheen and Dianna Buckman head up the business side
of this partnership. Joyce Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke Zeleski
(25:34):
are a research team. Jason Hoke is executive producer on
behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Julian Weller,
ben Ky Brick and Josh Thine. Special thanks to Jen
Lance
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