January 22, 2019 • 36 mins
Jen is in the one in driver's seat, both literally and figuratively. But what makes her tick? And what was the state of Jen and Sarah’s relationship? Meet the people who try to answer these questions—and many more—after the crash.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
There were multiple times when the search parties came here
and scoured the bluffs with fancy helicopters and airplanes and
boats and everything else. But in the end, what really
was was the ocean stirring things up and calming down again,
and then diligent people looking. No one that I know
of witnessed the accident. That's that's the word. Every time
I go by there, I think of those poor kids.
(00:22):
It's the part about those kids losing their life that
I think of the most, because even though all of
it and all the search and rescue and all the
people who came here, what I remember is because I'm
a father, the most important thing is is that those
kids don't go home and they don't have a life.
So I don't know what happened, but I know that
that's the end result of all of it. That's Valentine Hail,
(00:43):
also known as VOW. He's the owner of VAL's Towing
in the Westport Community Store, which is the social hub
of the town where the Hearts died. He had a
bird's eye view of what happened in the aftermath of
the crash. It turns out Justine and I weren't the
only ones who couldn't stop thinking about this case. People
(01:03):
from as far away as Italy and Australia wondered what
had happened to the hearts. And we're worried about Hannah
and Davante, whose whereabouts were still unknown. But in January
two th nineteen, almost ten months after the crash, officials
announced that a foot discovered near the crash site belonged
to Hannah. Davante's body has not been found. From Glamour
(01:28):
and How Stuff Works, this is Broken Hearts. I'm Liz
Egan and I'm Justine Harmon. Our focus was on finding
the kids because we mainstream media did not seem interested
and there wasn't a lot of articles about it, and
I thought, how can they just be a race? That's
(01:49):
Ami Atlas, who started a Facebook group called Finding the
Missing Heart Children and Honoring the Heart Children back in April.
The heart story piqued her interest, mostly because she felt
there was enough urgency to the search for the missing kids.
Amy's group now has two hundred and seventy four members.
There are other groups, so many others, Heart Family Case Discussion,
(02:11):
which has one thousand, four hundred and eleven members. Heart
Family Case discussion, this time in all caps, with one
hundred and seventy members, What happened to the Hearts, their history,
the Crash, the Kids four hundred and ninety members, Heart
Family Crash Theories on one members, and Let the Heart Shine,
(02:31):
a two three member closed group for people who quote loved, knew,
or were connected to the Heart Family in some way.
In order to get into this one, you have to
explain how you knew the Hearts. Lauren and Liz tried
and failed. Apparently it wasn't enough to have examined every photo,
read every article, and even taken a virtual tour of
(02:53):
their house via an old real estate listing, because no
matter how much we felt like we knew the Hearts,
we did and actually know them at all. Last Spring,
I joined to Facebook groups at the time they were
at peak activity, but conversation in both forums remains busy
to this day, with dozens of comments following each picture
(03:15):
or post. In both groups, there's a lot of discussion
about adoption, about Jen and Sarah's history of child abuse,
about whether or not they were racist, and about whether
or not the drive over the cliff was premeditated or spontaneous.
Did Sarah know what Jen was planning to do was
one of them. Terminally ill members even reached out to
(03:37):
the Decalves about organizing a search party. They debated about
the hearts financial situation, their clothing, their smiles, their sleeping arrangements,
the contents of their refrigerator, their decor, and even why
Jen and Sarah let their chickens roam free in the house.
For months, I read every post and all the comments
in both groups. I was the quintessential lurk, her never
(04:00):
contributing to the conversation myself, but still going numb while
I poured over pictures of the Hearts in happier times.
There are a lot of disagreements in the Heart Facebook groups.
Several women and they're almost all women as far as
I can tell. Are members in other groups too, and
tensions rise when a member of one group share secrets
(04:21):
with another group and word trickles back to the original group.
There's discussion about who's racist and classist and who's not,
and who's even entitled to level this charge in the
first place. The groups are pretty diverse, both racially and geographically.
The most incendiary debate arises again and again and again,
and the conversation goes on and on and on. When
(04:44):
someone suggests they might feel a shred of sympathy for
Jen and Sarah, these people are swiftly attacked, flamed to
the point of being char broiled. The prevailing senses the
Heart Moms were monsters, and if you don't agree, you
should go start your own discussion group for friends of
mass murderers. As much as I wonder why Jen kept
(05:07):
her foot on the gas, I also wonder what drives
someone to invest so much time interacting with complete strangers online.
Seven months after the accident, before Hannah's foot was positively identified,
I decided to check in with Amy Atlas to find out.
The group is called Finding the Missing Heart Children and
(05:30):
Honoring the Heart Children. The short term goal or to
find Sierra, Davonta, and Hannah now Davon, Dan, Hannas and
Sierra has been found, and also honoring all the children
for the abuse that they endored and though that they
did not die in vain through longer term solutions such as,
you know, homeschool regulations or adoption reform. I think that
(05:53):
at the maximum capacity we probably had, maybe it was
five people. We asked people what their skills were from
you know, being the grant writer, a lawyer, somebody who's
worked in the legislature, to somebody's who's worked in social services, community,
you name it. We asked like what people's skills were,
and according to that, we would assign people have different responsibilities.
(06:18):
At the peak level, I would absolutely say, you know,
myself and a few others who were working on this
twenty hours a day. So we were sleeping four hours
and we were doing this full time twenty hours a day.
That is a serious commitment for someone with a family,
a career, a life. Amy is a mom of two
(06:38):
and a cookbook author who happens to have a law degree.
There really were only about four of us that were
in the core group like standing up twenty hours a day. Yeah,
and then there was probably a group of you know,
fifteen people that had like a real interest in helping.
We were calling all of the counties every single day
(07:01):
to all the different county sheriffs to find out what
was happening with the search. That was all the counties
that Cannifer and Sarah drove through in Washington and Oregon
and California. From calling there to having correspondence with the FBI.
We also tried to organize peaceful protests and also create
(07:23):
media awareness of the story. Didn't die. We created flyers
for them and put them all over everywhere we could
on the web, from Facebook pages to emailing different inflorishers
and asking them to speak out. We'd also emailed their
flyers to a missing Christon organizations or authorities and kind
(07:43):
of like missing person investigations. Mostly it was an online effort.
We tried to make an effort where we would go
to the West Coast when there wasn't enough interest. Unfortunately,
I was ready to go out there. Even when we
gave it a tip to the FBI, they didn't reach
back out to us, and so we sent an email
to the press person for the FBI. I think it
(08:04):
was six days for somebody to get back to us,
which I thought was rather alarming since it was still
very much a case the same like they were looking into,
and it was a designated phone line for tips. The
FBI still has a site soliciting information about the heart crash,
and the messaging on there includes a warning that tips
(08:24):
may not be followed up on. But still Amy was
frustrated and when you're putting that kind of time in
it just was frankly disgusting because it felt like, Wow,
there are lives were erased when they were living, and
now it's so easy to erase them when they're not
a lot. How would you react if you found out
your sister or friend was investing twenty hours a day
(08:47):
in trying to solve a crime that happened in a
far away state involving strangers. I asked Amy what people
in her life had to say about it and how
she knew when it was time to dial back her
time in the group. The reaction from the people that
I spoke with that were offline was mick. First of all,
some people hadn't even heard about the case, and then
(09:08):
I sent them more information about it, and they couldn't
believe that it wasn't something that they had heard about
or they hadn't recalled seeing a headline of family drives
off of a cliff but didn't have all the information.
But then the people that did know about the case
a little more. It was a combination of Wow, this
is so wonderful that you're doing this, and then there
were a few people like, well, why are you doing this?
(09:30):
But I would say by a large more people thought, Wow,
it's so great that somebody is doing something. Sleuth groups
often pop up after an especially grizzly crime, possibly as
a receptacle for all the emotions sparked by tragedy. But
there's a certain poetic justice to the hearts immortalization on Facebook,
(09:50):
considering it was Jen's preferred mode of communication, and in
recent months we've uncovered another world where she was equally entrenched.
Jen was an a a video gamer. The name of
her game of choice, ironically enough, was Oz Broken Kingdom.
She played for hours on end while Sarah was at work.
That may explain why Davante told Dana Decalb that his
(10:13):
moms weren't really paying attention to what went on at home.
Jen was a guild leader, which is kind of like
being a team captain, and she kept meticulous handwritten notes
of her players moves. Investigators found pages and pages of
them when she died. We're about to hear from Drew,
(10:40):
who knew Jen through the gaming world. He asked us
not to use his last name. If my employer knew
the amount of hours I dedicated to gaming, I would
be fired. Drew met Jen when they were both playing
oz and ended up in the same clan. If you're
a gaming novice like us, you might be wondering what
in the world this means. Online gaming offers social components,
(11:04):
at least the best games do, and to foster this
social environment, they've created these entities called clans, and usually
clans consist of about fifty people, and you join a
clan and then you compete against everyone else, and enjoining
a clan, the benefit you gain, of course, is obviously
(11:24):
the social component. In order to keep you hooked, gaming
developers understand they have to foster that social environment. So
what they'll do is offer you rewards in game for
being part of a clan. And so to put it simply,
if you're highly competitives and you also happen to like
(11:45):
people on any level, then you will definitely join a
clan because it's the only way to really win. Jen
was a co leader of the clan that I happened upon,
and she was good, and by good, I mean she
developed relationships very quickly with people. With all clan members,
(12:06):
she got to know them on a personal level, talking
to people, making sure everyone's good and Jin really signed
when there was a newcomer if someone didn't know how
to conquer a particular part of the game. That was
her wheelhouse. She loved the the bird with a broken Wing.
(12:28):
I became part of the leadership board for for that
clan with Jin, and we would have conference calls on
a fairly regular basis where we would just touch upon
gaming concepts on a weekly basis, you know, we would strategize.
Jen's clan was called Dropping Houses and her screen name
(12:49):
was simply Heart. There were a bunch of different characters
you could choose from. Hers was the tin Man. Remember,
the tin Man was the one who went down the
Yellow Brick Road in search of a heart juice. As
it isn't unusual for a player to spend twelve to
fourteen hours a day building a character, there's opportunities in
these games where you could have hours, endless hours of
(13:10):
intense concentration. There would definitely be weeks where I mean,
just judging by her rank, it was clear that she
had spent a ridiculous number of hours. Drew describes Jen
as highly competitive. Another gamer we spoke to called her
a stone cold narcissist because she kept her clan members
(13:31):
on such a tight leash, bossing them around at all
hours of the day. It was common for Jen to
sit near the top of the rankings, not just the
clan rankings, but the individual ones, which is a bigger deal.
Team members teased her about how she was the first
to crack a really complex part of the game. Drew
told her she must have developed a diagram to figure
(13:51):
it out. In fact, she had. Sometime in the summer
of two thousand seventeen, Jen abruptly left the game, claiming
she wanted to spend more time with her kids. Drew
believes her hasty departure was because of a conflict with
a fellow gamer who she believed was cheating. Jen refused
to continue on if he stayed in the clan, and
(14:12):
when he didn't leave, she signed off the chat with
a picture of her kids at the beach. She would
consistently show photos of her with her kids you know
in the woods, are all at the beach or wherever
in clan chat and talk about these escapades that they've
gone on or that they are planning. She taught and
(14:35):
nauseam about the fact that they were adopted. But far
more than that, even just the amount of oppression that
she experiences because she is the mother of black children.
Jen and Drew spent hours chatting about everything, the game, politics,
(14:55):
their families, but he says there was one subject that
never came up. S Aaron. She never once and I'm
talking like six months of consistent talking. She never once
mentioned her wife Sarah in personal communication with me or
in the clan chat. She never mentioned her sexual orientation
(15:20):
to me um For whatever reason, Drew happened to check
in with Jen shortly before she died. We had both
left the game. I hadn't talked to her in several months,
and I just reached out to say, hey, see how
things were going. And in that conversation and we got
around to uh talking about our real life personas a
(15:40):
little more. She once again sided a scenario where she
was oppressed. She had been grocery shopping with the kids
and a person in Lyne, you know, gave her a
nasty look because of what she believes. She believes it
was because of the color of her kid's skin. Yeah,
she illustrated that in far more words, but that was
(16:03):
the basic gist of it. And I really did sympathize
with her like I wanted. It was clear that because
she talked about these scenarios so often, Like it was
pretty clear that she was being hyperbolic, but Jim was
just such a fun personality you couldn't help but give
(16:25):
her the benefit of a doubt. So I'm like, this
is absurd. I can't believe you're enduring this. Again. In retrospect,
I'm convinced that almost none of it actually happened, and
that I guess I should preface this by saying, I've
never met anyone like Jim. I think she became so
fixated on this persona that she really did become convinced
(16:48):
of it herself. And you know, when she's following these
statements up with these these photos of her precious children
like it, I mean, it just it pulls the dart strings.
Drew has five young kids, so he and Jen bonded
about the challenges of living in a crowded house. Her
(17:10):
message to him enjoy it while it lasts. He says
he got the impression that she missed being able to
control her kids. Who doesn't when they have teenagers. We wondered,
did she ever talk about her kids being delayed? The
way she communicated it to me was more focused on
the idea that they were developmentally delayed when she adopted them,
(17:35):
but thanks to her efforts, they've come so far. They're
different people, they're better people. Of course, the bird with
the broken wing, this sounds like the Jen we've come
to know. We wondered if Jen talked about the kids
futures Withdrew never never once to read now that she
(17:55):
was reportedly depriving them of food, like it is in oriating,
like not just to me, but to all of us
who spent so much time online with her, because we
can't help but think that the hours that she was
devoting to us and to our clan and to our game,
the money that she was devoting to the game, it
(18:17):
should have it should have gone to the children. When
I realized that she was a home school mom, I'm like,
there's no way in hell those kids are learning. I mean, really,
it's impossible with the amount of time she spending on
this game, and with the with the gaming community there,
it's impossible that six kids could be learning. Like many
people who thought they knew jenn Hart, Drew has really
(18:39):
struggled to figure out why she did what she did.
Her life had become wrapped up in this image that
she so carefully crafted this image of her as this
doting mom and champion of racial reconciliation. Her life had
(19:00):
become so identified, she had identified herself by this cause,
if you will, that when she came to grips with
the fact that it was all going to fall apart,
strangely enough, I think she took the same approach that
she took with that guy in the game. It was like, Okay,
it's either him or me, but in this case it's
(19:21):
it's all of us. Either I get to maintain my image,
my my preferred image, or none of us get to
maintain anything at all. Drew also points a finger at
video games which give players a quick hit of dopamine
they come to crave. He describes this phenomenon as quote
(19:43):
an endless rewards based experience. I think about the Vegas shooter,
and his motive has been so elusive. He was spending
even more absurd hours and money pulling this random number generator,
seeking these flashing lights, this dopamine it. And I think
in my experience, the more I played, the less impressive
(20:06):
real the real world proved to be. I have been described,
I hope, in some sense justifiably as of like a
pretty great dad, like a very involved dad, like I
really do take my kids. Uh, my wife and I
both are very active with our children. We love to
go high team, we love to play sports. We I mean,
the list goes on and on. But it's strange, Like
(20:29):
the more I played, the more in depth I got
into the game, the gaming experience, the less interested I
was in playing catch with my son, the less interested
I was in spending time with my wife. And I
really like her, like I really do, She's great. But
it's just I was addicted, truly addicted to these the
(20:51):
highs that the game provided. And then on top of that,
I didn't want to let my clanmates down, and like
I wanted to win, and I didn't want to let
gen down. When real life gets more stressful is when
the temptation to escape and to this alternative life becomes stronger.
The game is not the cause. I think the game
(21:13):
just creates conditions that perhaps contribute to acts like the
heart crash or the Vegas shooting. So maybe Jen was
(21:36):
running away from her real life, from her six growing kids,
who had little to no education and uncertain futures, into
the arms of Facebook and video games. It's sad if
you think about it. Of course you wish someone had
heeded the cause of the kids, but you also wish
Jen had gotten some help, let someone come into the
house and keep her company, taking a walk with a friend,
(21:58):
talked to a therapist, joined to support group for adoptive parents.
Would any of this have made a difference. The source
close to the family agrees that Jen needed help. This
person says, I think that this whole thing comes down
to she was always trying to fix everybody else and
make herself look good, when in fact she was the
(22:18):
one who needed the help. Of course, all of this
begs the question where was Sarah. Of all the people
we've spoken to, her coals colleague Cheryl Hart is the
one who knew Sarah best. She had said that they
used to just always go out and go to concerts.
They would go to shows and and Jen was always
(22:39):
really happy all the time and stuff, and and now
Jen was just really closed off, and she was tired
all the time when she had migraines. When Cheryl would
press for details about medications Jen might try, or whether
or not she was seeing a doctor, Sarah shut down
the conversation. She'd get personal, but only to an extent.
(22:59):
And while Sarah was willing to acknowledge that Jen might
be suffering from depression, she definitely didn't want to get
into specifics other details sharel remembers. The Hearts had a
family library, but the kids were only allowed to check
out two books at a time. Jen never slept in
a bed. She always fell asleep on the couch in
front of the TV. She also wouldn't let Sarah wear
(23:21):
her hair in a ponytail. None of this paints and
portrait of the happiest marriage. Jen had some sort of
online game that she ran through Facebook. That was her
escape ever since, kind of like the whole thing went
viral with Davante. Yeah, she didn't want to do the
trips or the concerts or any of that stuff, so
(23:43):
she kind of did the virtual world. Because she did
call the store one morning. It was before we had opened,
so the call came to my desk, so I had
answered the phone and it was a woman on the
other end, and they had asked to speak with Sarah
Hart and my place her on hold, and I told
Sarah was for her, and Sarah had gone into a
(24:04):
complete panic, and she had gone into an office and
shut the door, and she came out about her about
ten to twelve minutes later, and she had told us
that it was Jen that was on the phone and
she was upset with her because Sarah had not done
her part of that game for the day, setting up something.
(24:29):
And Jen was really upset because it was really important
that Sarah do whatever it was that she was supposed
to do for that game. She was really upset. She
had told Sarah that that was her only out, that
was her only reason for living, and there was no
If she wasn't gonna help her through that, then there
was no reason for her to exist anymore. He just
(24:51):
kind of gave me this look like of kind of
like fear. And I remember making this comment like you're
like an abused wife, and she just kind of gave
me this look like no kidding, and it just kind
of kind of like the whole tone kind of changed
after that. It was just like, Okay, something's not right.
(25:11):
Would Cheryl have responded differently if Sarah had described this
kind of controlling behavior coming from a man. Now, it's like, oh, well,
you're lesbians. You guys can do whatever you want, and
then you try not to delve into their personal relationship,
and you don't know what boundaries you can cross. Cheryl says,
Sarah was very open about her marriage to Jen. She
(25:34):
didn't try to hide the fact that she was married
to a woman. In fact, she says, Sarah probably used
the word wife a hundred times a day, to the
point where other colleagues teased her about it. She could
never say Jen. It was always my wife, my wife,
my wife, and it was like she rarely ever called
her by name. We just always thought it was funny
(25:54):
because it's like I didn't go around saying, well, my
husband and my husband that Cheryl says, Sarah talked about
what it was like to work long hours and then
go home and take over from Jen, who had been
alone with the kids all day. Cheryl got the impression
that Sarah did most of the cooking. Sarah was also
open about the pressure of being the breadwinner. She carried
most of the credit card debt, which Cheryl says was
(26:16):
the result of everyday expenses and home renovations. Sarah's unpaid
balance was over fourteen thousand dollars as of March two, eighteen,
and Jen's was about two thousand dollars. According to a
report released after their death, not astronomical, but enough to
keep you up at night if you're supporting a family
of eight on forty five thousand a year and you're
about to lose your monthly stipends for adopting kids out
(26:36):
of foster care. Sarah made a payment to her Discover
card early on the morning of the crash, which suggests
she didn't know what was going to happen later. The
payment also could have been an automatic one. Some Facebook's
loose speculate that the Hearts decided to end it all
because of their debt, But while fourteen thousand dollars is
no joke, the bank wasn't foreclosing on their home, and
(26:58):
it doesn't seem so in surmountable that Jen would kill
the whole family. Another persistent theory that one of the
Heart moms was terminally ill. In a Facebook status update,
Jen vaguely blames health issues for a month long hiatus,
but nothing in our interviews and the Hearts emails and
paperwork points to any kind of physical illness. It doesn't
(27:19):
seem like such a big lead to say Jen suffered
from depression, she was isolated, she had removed herself from
real life. She didn't have a strong support network, no
family nearby or in the flesh friends she saw it regularly.
Seven months after the Hearts died, Lauren Smiley made a
trip to Mendocino County to talk with Sheriff Tom Allman,
(27:42):
who has been leading the investigation since day one. He
was at the scene of the crash hours after it
happened and has returned countless time since. Here's Lauren. I
stopped by the Mendocino County Sheriff's office on my drive
up from San Francisco to the cliff. The office is
on edge of the county seat town of Yukayah, right
(28:02):
next to the jail. Mendicino County is known for redwoods,
marijuana farms, and a inspiring coastline. Alman has been the
sheriff coroner here for more than a decade. He looks
like the sheriff from the movies, white fisherman, mustache, really
ruddy skin. A bust of George Washington sits behind his desk.
His start helmet from his time as a civilian peacekeeper
(28:24):
in late nineties. Kast of Oh sits on a shelf.
My name is Tom Almond, I'm the sheriff of Mendicino
County and I've been sheriff three terms. I'm about to
start my fourth term, and I've worked for the county. Listen,
I'm not going to downplay the super slouths because we've
gotten good information from people who have found good information,
and so law enforcement would be full party to say,
(28:48):
oh no, this is our job, go away. We're actually
sleuth too, you know. We can think of these things,
and we we work with chemists and the forensic labs
and the old fashioned police work of saying, you know,
who done it? How can we solve this crime. We
are following up leads and we're not putting out press
releases of of new shocking information that we find to
(29:12):
satisfy some sluice curiosity. Sheriff Allman told us something we
hadn't heard before, that there was a group of friends
and acquaintances of the Hearts who came from as far
away as Minnesota to help the search efforts. They used
the bluff where the family died as their home base.
There was a half dozen of them that were camped
at that pullout for three months, four months. They would
(29:32):
walk the beach. That's how the one gentleman from back
east was walking the beach each morning he found the
one body, and and then the people who found the
foot and pants leg hernded over to him, and he
turned over to High Patrol, and High Patrol gave it
to us. The body Sheriff Allman is referring to is
Sierra Hart, who was found two weeks after the accident.
You remember she was the twelve year old baby of
(29:54):
the family. She was small and spunky and loved music
and animals. The foot, Sheriff Allman mentions was Hannah's. She
was the one who jumped out of her bedroom window
in the middle of the night. One of the friends
who came out to help with the search was a
man named A J. He drove all the way from
Minnesota shortly after the family died and stayed until the
(30:14):
beginning of June. We weren't able to connect with a
J directly. He didn't respond to messages, but Lauren chatted
with thal Hale, a local resident who got to know
him pretty well. Here she is to set the scene.
As you drive through the tiny town of Westport on
Highway one, you'll see an all wood building with a
Pepsi sign and one gas pump that's VAL's store. The
(30:38):
highway sign of announcing the town says there's two residents,
but locals say only fifty actually live here full time,
and all seemed to know Val. People kept telling me
to go there. Inside there's a small delhi with the
menu written on chalkboards and rows of groceries like wine, cookine, oil,
and toilet paper to spare residents the half hour trip
(30:59):
so south to the bigger town Fort Brag. Locals pin
notices on an announcement board outside handyman for hire, a
support group for people with depression. Val has lived in
the Westport since he took over the store from his
mom last year. Everybody knows a j very nice man,
was super dedicated. Even law enforcement was worried about how
(31:21):
he was going above and beyond, and uh, you know,
he's just a real nice spell on And he gave
you a different perspective to all the rumors and all
the speculation and all the stuff. You know, because you
you basically have a tragic incident that looks almost like
a crime scene. No one's guilty until you're proven guilty.
But there's all these speculations so it's really hard, and
then you get a face to some leaked a friend
(31:41):
of the family, and that it helped put a normal
everyday thing for us, especially in this real small town.
And a J brought that to us. And he was
also very polite, very honest, and just really wanted to
get to the bottom of things. It wasn't really one
way or the other. It was just wanting to find
and he did. Now he did make a difference. Val
(32:02):
talked about how a J walked out on the cliffs
so far out the fire chief was concerned he wouldn't
make it back before dark. I can't even imagine how
many miles he walked on those beaches and bluffs and
drove around and sat on the cliff with his binoculars
day after day after day after day after day. I mean,
he was just a figure of our town for months.
And you know, once you become a part of a
(32:22):
little community like this, it's not like Fox News where
they come up and set up their stuff and then
you know, go home. This was a whole different thing,
and it was interesting. It was definitely nice to have,
like I said, a human connection to something that seemed
hard to put words with. Would he come into your
store about every day? Not every day in the beginning, yes,
(32:43):
every day and look for um, you know, have questions
on what might be the word out on the street,
so to speak. And then it came down to where
would be a few times a week towards the end,
and what sort of tips did you share with him?
Just the tips of the weather on what to look for.
The big tip for him was was when one of
(33:04):
my guys that I grew up with, it was on
the fire department, said, you know, there's a certain way
that the water, um, the currents work and even though
the winds blowing south um where that particular incident happened,
we need to look north in the bay north and
and he did, and he did, and he did, and
that he found stuff. He learned the tricks of the
(33:25):
trade very quickly. He adopted himself. He hadn't been to
the ocean, you know, he didn't know about the civic
and you know, he adopted and he stayed dedicated. And
that was the key to everything. I mean, that was
the key to making the difference. Maybe A j had
it right. The key to making a difference is about
actually showing up, lacing up a pair of boots and
(33:45):
walking along the cliffs rain or shine alone or with
other heart friends. A j did that he was at
the place where his friends died and looked for them
in real life. He didn't just click through pictures of
them or sit in front of a computer a thousand
miles away. He didn't try to piece together the clues
from afar then bounce ideas and hypotheses off strangers. Maybe
(34:07):
the key to real friendship is being there in the
flesh for better or worse, in sickness and in health.
As Val said, some people look for crowds and some
people look for lonely places. If we've learned one thing
from The Hearts, it's this there are lots of lonely
places in the world, too many, and once you've lost
(34:28):
yourself in one of them, or several, as we believe
Gen did, it's really hard to find your way back
next time. On Broken Hearts, we assume that people who
are abusive are abusive both in their private lives but
also in their public lives. And we know this now
not to be true. Because I was coming up here,
(34:50):
I felt like this sense of dread, a corner of inquest,
is going to, in my opinion, give evidence that will
shock the consciousness of people who are following this case.
This will be a water cooler conversation throughout our nation.
(35:23):
If you suspect a child as being abused, call one
eight hundred for a child that's one eight hundred numeral
four A C H I L D. Or visit child
help dot org to find out how to report your concerns.
For access to exclusive photos and videos and documents about
(35:46):
the case, visit glamour dot com slash Broken Hearts. Have
questions for us about this podcast, reach us on Twitter
at Glamour mag or at Broken Hearts Pod. If you
like what you heard, leave us a view. Broken Hearts
is a joint production between Glamour and How Stuff Works,
with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts is co
(36:09):
hosted and co written by Justine Harman and Elizabeth Egan
and edited by Wendy Nogal. Lauren Smiley is our field reporter,
Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief. Julie Sheen and
Dianna Buckman head up the business side of this partnership.
Joyce Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke Zeleski are a research team.
(36:31):
Jason Hope is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works,
along with producers Julian Weller, ben Kie Brick and Josh Sane.
Special thanks to Jen Lance
There were multiple times when the search parties came here
and scoured the bluffs with fancy helicopters and airplanes and
boats and everything else. But in the end, what really
was was the ocean stirring things up and calming down again,
and then diligent people looking. No one that I know
of witnessed the accident. That's that's the word. Every time
I go by there, I think of those poor kids.
(00:22):
It's the part about those kids losing their life that
I think of the most, because even though all of
it and all the search and rescue and all the
people who came here, what I remember is because I'm
a father, the most important thing is is that those
kids don't go home and they don't have a life.
So I don't know what happened, but I know that
that's the end result of all of it. That's Valentine Hail,
(00:43):
also known as VOW. He's the owner of VAL's Towing
in the Westport Community Store, which is the social hub
of the town where the Hearts died. He had a
bird's eye view of what happened in the aftermath of
the crash. It turns out Justine and I weren't the
only ones who couldn't stop thinking about this case. People
(01:03):
from as far away as Italy and Australia wondered what
had happened to the hearts. And we're worried about Hannah
and Davante, whose whereabouts were still unknown. But in January
two th nineteen, almost ten months after the crash, officials
announced that a foot discovered near the crash site belonged
to Hannah. Davante's body has not been found. From Glamour
(01:28):
and How Stuff Works, this is Broken Hearts. I'm Liz
Egan and I'm Justine Harmon. Our focus was on finding
the kids because we mainstream media did not seem interested
and there wasn't a lot of articles about it, and
I thought, how can they just be a race? That's
(01:49):
Ami Atlas, who started a Facebook group called Finding the
Missing Heart Children and Honoring the Heart Children back in April.
The heart story piqued her interest, mostly because she felt
there was enough urgency to the search for the missing kids.
Amy's group now has two hundred and seventy four members.
There are other groups, so many others, Heart Family Case Discussion,
(02:11):
which has one thousand, four hundred and eleven members. Heart
Family Case discussion, this time in all caps, with one
hundred and seventy members, What happened to the Hearts, their history,
the Crash, the Kids four hundred and ninety members, Heart
Family Crash Theories on one members, and Let the Heart Shine,
(02:31):
a two three member closed group for people who quote loved, knew,
or were connected to the Heart Family in some way.
In order to get into this one, you have to
explain how you knew the Hearts. Lauren and Liz tried
and failed. Apparently it wasn't enough to have examined every photo,
read every article, and even taken a virtual tour of
(02:53):
their house via an old real estate listing, because no
matter how much we felt like we knew the Hearts,
we did and actually know them at all. Last Spring,
I joined to Facebook groups at the time they were
at peak activity, but conversation in both forums remains busy
to this day, with dozens of comments following each picture
(03:15):
or post. In both groups, there's a lot of discussion
about adoption, about Jen and Sarah's history of child abuse,
about whether or not they were racist, and about whether
or not the drive over the cliff was premeditated or spontaneous.
Did Sarah know what Jen was planning to do was
one of them. Terminally ill members even reached out to
(03:37):
the Decalves about organizing a search party. They debated about
the hearts financial situation, their clothing, their smiles, their sleeping arrangements,
the contents of their refrigerator, their decor, and even why
Jen and Sarah let their chickens roam free in the house.
For months, I read every post and all the comments
in both groups. I was the quintessential lurk, her never
(04:00):
contributing to the conversation myself, but still going numb while
I poured over pictures of the Hearts in happier times.
There are a lot of disagreements in the Heart Facebook groups.
Several women and they're almost all women as far as
I can tell. Are members in other groups too, and
tensions rise when a member of one group share secrets
(04:21):
with another group and word trickles back to the original group.
There's discussion about who's racist and classist and who's not,
and who's even entitled to level this charge in the
first place. The groups are pretty diverse, both racially and geographically.
The most incendiary debate arises again and again and again,
and the conversation goes on and on and on. When
(04:44):
someone suggests they might feel a shred of sympathy for
Jen and Sarah, these people are swiftly attacked, flamed to
the point of being char broiled. The prevailing senses the
Heart Moms were monsters, and if you don't agree, you
should go start your own discussion group for friends of
mass murderers. As much as I wonder why Jen kept
(05:07):
her foot on the gas, I also wonder what drives
someone to invest so much time interacting with complete strangers online.
Seven months after the accident, before Hannah's foot was positively identified,
I decided to check in with Amy Atlas to find out.
The group is called Finding the Missing Heart Children and
(05:30):
Honoring the Heart Children. The short term goal or to
find Sierra, Davonta, and Hannah now Davon, Dan, Hannas and
Sierra has been found, and also honoring all the children
for the abuse that they endored and though that they
did not die in vain through longer term solutions such as,
you know, homeschool regulations or adoption reform. I think that
(05:53):
at the maximum capacity we probably had, maybe it was
five people. We asked people what their skills were from
you know, being the grant writer, a lawyer, somebody who's
worked in the legislature, to somebody's who's worked in social services, community,
you name it. We asked like what people's skills were,
and according to that, we would assign people have different responsibilities.
(06:18):
At the peak level, I would absolutely say, you know,
myself and a few others who were working on this
twenty hours a day. So we were sleeping four hours
and we were doing this full time twenty hours a day.
That is a serious commitment for someone with a family,
a career, a life. Amy is a mom of two
(06:38):
and a cookbook author who happens to have a law degree.
There really were only about four of us that were
in the core group like standing up twenty hours a day. Yeah,
and then there was probably a group of you know,
fifteen people that had like a real interest in helping.
We were calling all of the counties every single day
(07:01):
to all the different county sheriffs to find out what
was happening with the search. That was all the counties
that Cannifer and Sarah drove through in Washington and Oregon
and California. From calling there to having correspondence with the FBI.
We also tried to organize peaceful protests and also create
(07:23):
media awareness of the story. Didn't die. We created flyers
for them and put them all over everywhere we could
on the web, from Facebook pages to emailing different inflorishers
and asking them to speak out. We'd also emailed their
flyers to a missing Christon organizations or authorities and kind
(07:43):
of like missing person investigations. Mostly it was an online effort.
We tried to make an effort where we would go
to the West Coast when there wasn't enough interest. Unfortunately,
I was ready to go out there. Even when we
gave it a tip to the FBI, they didn't reach
back out to us, and so we sent an email
to the press person for the FBI. I think it
(08:04):
was six days for somebody to get back to us,
which I thought was rather alarming since it was still
very much a case the same like they were looking into,
and it was a designated phone line for tips. The
FBI still has a site soliciting information about the heart crash,
and the messaging on there includes a warning that tips
(08:24):
may not be followed up on. But still Amy was
frustrated and when you're putting that kind of time in
it just was frankly disgusting because it felt like, Wow,
there are lives were erased when they were living, and
now it's so easy to erase them when they're not
a lot. How would you react if you found out
your sister or friend was investing twenty hours a day
(08:47):
in trying to solve a crime that happened in a
far away state involving strangers. I asked Amy what people
in her life had to say about it and how
she knew when it was time to dial back her
time in the group. The reaction from the people that
I spoke with that were offline was mick. First of all,
some people hadn't even heard about the case, and then
(09:08):
I sent them more information about it, and they couldn't
believe that it wasn't something that they had heard about
or they hadn't recalled seeing a headline of family drives
off of a cliff but didn't have all the information.
But then the people that did know about the case
a little more. It was a combination of Wow, this
is so wonderful that you're doing this, and then there
were a few people like, well, why are you doing this?
(09:30):
But I would say by a large more people thought, Wow,
it's so great that somebody is doing something. Sleuth groups
often pop up after an especially grizzly crime, possibly as
a receptacle for all the emotions sparked by tragedy. But
there's a certain poetic justice to the hearts immortalization on Facebook,
(09:50):
considering it was Jen's preferred mode of communication, and in
recent months we've uncovered another world where she was equally entrenched.
Jen was an a a video gamer. The name of
her game of choice, ironically enough, was Oz Broken Kingdom.
She played for hours on end while Sarah was at work.
That may explain why Davante told Dana Decalb that his
(10:13):
moms weren't really paying attention to what went on at home.
Jen was a guild leader, which is kind of like
being a team captain, and she kept meticulous handwritten notes
of her players moves. Investigators found pages and pages of
them when she died. We're about to hear from Drew,
(10:40):
who knew Jen through the gaming world. He asked us
not to use his last name. If my employer knew
the amount of hours I dedicated to gaming, I would
be fired. Drew met Jen when they were both playing
oz and ended up in the same clan. If you're
a gaming novice like us, you might be wondering what
in the world this means. Online gaming offers social components,
(11:04):
at least the best games do, and to foster this
social environment, they've created these entities called clans, and usually
clans consist of about fifty people, and you join a
clan and then you compete against everyone else, and enjoining
a clan, the benefit you gain, of course, is obviously
(11:24):
the social component. In order to keep you hooked, gaming
developers understand they have to foster that social environment. So
what they'll do is offer you rewards in game for
being part of a clan. And so to put it simply,
if you're highly competitives and you also happen to like
(11:45):
people on any level, then you will definitely join a
clan because it's the only way to really win. Jen
was a co leader of the clan that I happened upon,
and she was good, and by good, I mean she
developed relationships very quickly with people. With all clan members,
(12:06):
she got to know them on a personal level, talking
to people, making sure everyone's good and Jin really signed
when there was a newcomer if someone didn't know how
to conquer a particular part of the game. That was
her wheelhouse. She loved the the bird with a broken Wing.
(12:28):
I became part of the leadership board for for that
clan with Jin, and we would have conference calls on
a fairly regular basis where we would just touch upon
gaming concepts on a weekly basis, you know, we would strategize.
Jen's clan was called Dropping Houses and her screen name
(12:49):
was simply Heart. There were a bunch of different characters
you could choose from. Hers was the tin Man. Remember,
the tin Man was the one who went down the
Yellow Brick Road in search of a heart juice. As
it isn't unusual for a player to spend twelve to
fourteen hours a day building a character, there's opportunities in
these games where you could have hours, endless hours of
(13:10):
intense concentration. There would definitely be weeks where I mean,
just judging by her rank, it was clear that she
had spent a ridiculous number of hours. Drew describes Jen
as highly competitive. Another gamer we spoke to called her
a stone cold narcissist because she kept her clan members
(13:31):
on such a tight leash, bossing them around at all
hours of the day. It was common for Jen to
sit near the top of the rankings, not just the
clan rankings, but the individual ones, which is a bigger deal.
Team members teased her about how she was the first
to crack a really complex part of the game. Drew
told her she must have developed a diagram to figure
(13:51):
it out. In fact, she had. Sometime in the summer
of two thousand seventeen, Jen abruptly left the game, claiming
she wanted to spend more time with her kids. Drew
believes her hasty departure was because of a conflict with
a fellow gamer who she believed was cheating. Jen refused
to continue on if he stayed in the clan, and
(14:12):
when he didn't leave, she signed off the chat with
a picture of her kids at the beach. She would
consistently show photos of her with her kids you know
in the woods, are all at the beach or wherever
in clan chat and talk about these escapades that they've
gone on or that they are planning. She taught and
(14:35):
nauseam about the fact that they were adopted. But far
more than that, even just the amount of oppression that
she experiences because she is the mother of black children.
Jen and Drew spent hours chatting about everything, the game, politics,
(14:55):
their families, but he says there was one subject that
never came up. S Aaron. She never once and I'm
talking like six months of consistent talking. She never once
mentioned her wife Sarah in personal communication with me or
in the clan chat. She never mentioned her sexual orientation
(15:20):
to me um For whatever reason, Drew happened to check
in with Jen shortly before she died. We had both
left the game. I hadn't talked to her in several months,
and I just reached out to say, hey, see how
things were going. And in that conversation and we got
around to uh talking about our real life personas a
(15:40):
little more. She once again sided a scenario where she
was oppressed. She had been grocery shopping with the kids
and a person in Lyne, you know, gave her a
nasty look because of what she believes. She believes it
was because of the color of her kid's skin. Yeah,
she illustrated that in far more words, but that was
(16:03):
the basic gist of it. And I really did sympathize
with her like I wanted. It was clear that because
she talked about these scenarios so often, Like it was
pretty clear that she was being hyperbolic, but Jim was
just such a fun personality you couldn't help but give
(16:25):
her the benefit of a doubt. So I'm like, this
is absurd. I can't believe you're enduring this. Again. In retrospect,
I'm convinced that almost none of it actually happened, and
that I guess I should preface this by saying, I've
never met anyone like Jim. I think she became so
fixated on this persona that she really did become convinced
(16:48):
of it herself. And you know, when she's following these
statements up with these these photos of her precious children
like it, I mean, it just it pulls the dart strings.
Drew has five young kids, so he and Jen bonded
about the challenges of living in a crowded house. Her
(17:10):
message to him enjoy it while it lasts. He says
he got the impression that she missed being able to
control her kids. Who doesn't when they have teenagers. We wondered,
did she ever talk about her kids being delayed? The
way she communicated it to me was more focused on
the idea that they were developmentally delayed when she adopted them,
(17:35):
but thanks to her efforts, they've come so far. They're
different people, they're better people. Of course, the bird with
the broken wing, this sounds like the Jen we've come
to know. We wondered if Jen talked about the kids
futures Withdrew never never once to read now that she
(17:55):
was reportedly depriving them of food, like it is in oriating,
like not just to me, but to all of us
who spent so much time online with her, because we
can't help but think that the hours that she was
devoting to us and to our clan and to our game,
the money that she was devoting to the game, it
(18:17):
should have it should have gone to the children. When
I realized that she was a home school mom, I'm like,
there's no way in hell those kids are learning. I mean, really,
it's impossible with the amount of time she spending on
this game, and with the with the gaming community there,
it's impossible that six kids could be learning. Like many
people who thought they knew jenn Hart, Drew has really
(18:39):
struggled to figure out why she did what she did.
Her life had become wrapped up in this image that
she so carefully crafted this image of her as this
doting mom and champion of racial reconciliation. Her life had
(19:00):
become so identified, she had identified herself by this cause,
if you will, that when she came to grips with
the fact that it was all going to fall apart,
strangely enough, I think she took the same approach that
she took with that guy in the game. It was like, Okay,
it's either him or me, but in this case it's
(19:21):
it's all of us. Either I get to maintain my image,
my my preferred image, or none of us get to
maintain anything at all. Drew also points a finger at
video games which give players a quick hit of dopamine
they come to crave. He describes this phenomenon as quote
(19:43):
an endless rewards based experience. I think about the Vegas shooter,
and his motive has been so elusive. He was spending
even more absurd hours and money pulling this random number generator,
seeking these flashing lights, this dopamine it. And I think
in my experience, the more I played, the less impressive
(20:06):
real the real world proved to be. I have been described,
I hope, in some sense justifiably as of like a
pretty great dad, like a very involved dad, like I
really do take my kids. Uh, my wife and I
both are very active with our children. We love to
go high team, we love to play sports. We I mean,
the list goes on and on. But it's strange, Like
(20:29):
the more I played, the more in depth I got
into the game, the gaming experience, the less interested I
was in playing catch with my son, the less interested
I was in spending time with my wife. And I
really like her, like I really do, She's great. But
it's just I was addicted, truly addicted to these the
(20:51):
highs that the game provided. And then on top of that,
I didn't want to let my clanmates down, and like
I wanted to win, and I didn't want to let
gen down. When real life gets more stressful is when
the temptation to escape and to this alternative life becomes stronger.
The game is not the cause. I think the game
(21:13):
just creates conditions that perhaps contribute to acts like the
heart crash or the Vegas shooting. So maybe Jen was
(21:36):
running away from her real life, from her six growing kids,
who had little to no education and uncertain futures, into
the arms of Facebook and video games. It's sad if
you think about it. Of course you wish someone had
heeded the cause of the kids, but you also wish
Jen had gotten some help, let someone come into the
house and keep her company, taking a walk with a friend,
(21:58):
talked to a therapist, joined to support group for adoptive parents.
Would any of this have made a difference. The source
close to the family agrees that Jen needed help. This
person says, I think that this whole thing comes down
to she was always trying to fix everybody else and
make herself look good, when in fact she was the
(22:18):
one who needed the help. Of course, all of this
begs the question where was Sarah. Of all the people
we've spoken to, her coals colleague Cheryl Hart is the
one who knew Sarah best. She had said that they
used to just always go out and go to concerts.
They would go to shows and and Jen was always
(22:39):
really happy all the time and stuff, and and now
Jen was just really closed off, and she was tired
all the time when she had migraines. When Cheryl would
press for details about medications Jen might try, or whether
or not she was seeing a doctor, Sarah shut down
the conversation. She'd get personal, but only to an extent.
(22:59):
And while Sarah was willing to acknowledge that Jen might
be suffering from depression, she definitely didn't want to get
into specifics other details sharel remembers. The Hearts had a
family library, but the kids were only allowed to check
out two books at a time. Jen never slept in
a bed. She always fell asleep on the couch in
front of the TV. She also wouldn't let Sarah wear
(23:21):
her hair in a ponytail. None of this paints and
portrait of the happiest marriage. Jen had some sort of
online game that she ran through Facebook. That was her
escape ever since, kind of like the whole thing went
viral with Davante. Yeah, she didn't want to do the
trips or the concerts or any of that stuff, so
(23:43):
she kind of did the virtual world. Because she did
call the store one morning. It was before we had opened,
so the call came to my desk, so I had
answered the phone and it was a woman on the
other end, and they had asked to speak with Sarah
Hart and my place her on hold, and I told
Sarah was for her, and Sarah had gone into a
(24:04):
complete panic, and she had gone into an office and
shut the door, and she came out about her about
ten to twelve minutes later, and she had told us
that it was Jen that was on the phone and
she was upset with her because Sarah had not done
her part of that game for the day, setting up something.
(24:29):
And Jen was really upset because it was really important
that Sarah do whatever it was that she was supposed
to do for that game. She was really upset. She
had told Sarah that that was her only out, that
was her only reason for living, and there was no
If she wasn't gonna help her through that, then there
was no reason for her to exist anymore. He just
(24:51):
kind of gave me this look like of kind of
like fear. And I remember making this comment like you're
like an abused wife, and she just kind of gave
me this look like no kidding, and it just kind
of kind of like the whole tone kind of changed
after that. It was just like, Okay, something's not right.
(25:11):
Would Cheryl have responded differently if Sarah had described this
kind of controlling behavior coming from a man. Now, it's like, oh, well,
you're lesbians. You guys can do whatever you want, and
then you try not to delve into their personal relationship,
and you don't know what boundaries you can cross. Cheryl says,
Sarah was very open about her marriage to Jen. She
(25:34):
didn't try to hide the fact that she was married
to a woman. In fact, she says, Sarah probably used
the word wife a hundred times a day, to the
point where other colleagues teased her about it. She could
never say Jen. It was always my wife, my wife,
my wife, and it was like she rarely ever called
her by name. We just always thought it was funny
(25:54):
because it's like I didn't go around saying, well, my
husband and my husband that Cheryl says, Sarah talked about
what it was like to work long hours and then
go home and take over from Jen, who had been
alone with the kids all day. Cheryl got the impression
that Sarah did most of the cooking. Sarah was also
open about the pressure of being the breadwinner. She carried
most of the credit card debt, which Cheryl says was
(26:16):
the result of everyday expenses and home renovations. Sarah's unpaid
balance was over fourteen thousand dollars as of March two, eighteen,
and Jen's was about two thousand dollars. According to a
report released after their death, not astronomical, but enough to
keep you up at night if you're supporting a family
of eight on forty five thousand a year and you're
about to lose your monthly stipends for adopting kids out
(26:36):
of foster care. Sarah made a payment to her Discover
card early on the morning of the crash, which suggests
she didn't know what was going to happen later. The
payment also could have been an automatic one. Some Facebook's
loose speculate that the Hearts decided to end it all
because of their debt, But while fourteen thousand dollars is
no joke, the bank wasn't foreclosing on their home, and
(26:58):
it doesn't seem so in surmountable that Jen would kill
the whole family. Another persistent theory that one of the
Heart moms was terminally ill. In a Facebook status update,
Jen vaguely blames health issues for a month long hiatus,
but nothing in our interviews and the Hearts emails and
paperwork points to any kind of physical illness. It doesn't
(27:19):
seem like such a big lead to say Jen suffered
from depression, she was isolated, she had removed herself from
real life. She didn't have a strong support network, no
family nearby or in the flesh friends she saw it regularly.
Seven months after the Hearts died, Lauren Smiley made a
trip to Mendocino County to talk with Sheriff Tom Allman,
(27:42):
who has been leading the investigation since day one. He
was at the scene of the crash hours after it
happened and has returned countless time since. Here's Lauren. I
stopped by the Mendocino County Sheriff's office on my drive
up from San Francisco to the cliff. The office is
on edge of the county seat town of Yukayah, right
(28:02):
next to the jail. Mendicino County is known for redwoods,
marijuana farms, and a inspiring coastline. Alman has been the
sheriff coroner here for more than a decade. He looks
like the sheriff from the movies, white fisherman, mustache, really
ruddy skin. A bust of George Washington sits behind his desk.
His start helmet from his time as a civilian peacekeeper
(28:24):
in late nineties. Kast of Oh sits on a shelf.
My name is Tom Almond, I'm the sheriff of Mendicino
County and I've been sheriff three terms. I'm about to
start my fourth term, and I've worked for the county. Listen,
I'm not going to downplay the super slouths because we've
gotten good information from people who have found good information,
and so law enforcement would be full party to say,
(28:48):
oh no, this is our job, go away. We're actually
sleuth too, you know. We can think of these things,
and we we work with chemists and the forensic labs
and the old fashioned police work of saying, you know,
who done it? How can we solve this crime. We
are following up leads and we're not putting out press
releases of of new shocking information that we find to
(29:12):
satisfy some sluice curiosity. Sheriff Allman told us something we
hadn't heard before, that there was a group of friends
and acquaintances of the Hearts who came from as far
away as Minnesota to help the search efforts. They used
the bluff where the family died as their home base.
There was a half dozen of them that were camped
at that pullout for three months, four months. They would
(29:32):
walk the beach. That's how the one gentleman from back
east was walking the beach each morning he found the
one body, and and then the people who found the
foot and pants leg hernded over to him, and he
turned over to High Patrol, and High Patrol gave it
to us. The body Sheriff Allman is referring to is
Sierra Hart, who was found two weeks after the accident.
You remember she was the twelve year old baby of
(29:54):
the family. She was small and spunky and loved music
and animals. The foot, Sheriff Allman mentions was Hannah's. She
was the one who jumped out of her bedroom window
in the middle of the night. One of the friends
who came out to help with the search was a
man named A J. He drove all the way from
Minnesota shortly after the family died and stayed until the
(30:14):
beginning of June. We weren't able to connect with a
J directly. He didn't respond to messages, but Lauren chatted
with thal Hale, a local resident who got to know
him pretty well. Here she is to set the scene.
As you drive through the tiny town of Westport on
Highway one, you'll see an all wood building with a
Pepsi sign and one gas pump that's VAL's store. The
(30:38):
highway sign of announcing the town says there's two residents,
but locals say only fifty actually live here full time,
and all seemed to know Val. People kept telling me
to go there. Inside there's a small delhi with the
menu written on chalkboards and rows of groceries like wine, cookine, oil,
and toilet paper to spare residents the half hour trip
(30:59):
so south to the bigger town Fort Brag. Locals pin
notices on an announcement board outside handyman for hire, a
support group for people with depression. Val has lived in
the Westport since he took over the store from his
mom last year. Everybody knows a j very nice man,
was super dedicated. Even law enforcement was worried about how
(31:21):
he was going above and beyond, and uh, you know,
he's just a real nice spell on And he gave
you a different perspective to all the rumors and all
the speculation and all the stuff. You know, because you
you basically have a tragic incident that looks almost like
a crime scene. No one's guilty until you're proven guilty.
But there's all these speculations so it's really hard, and
then you get a face to some leaked a friend
(31:41):
of the family, and that it helped put a normal
everyday thing for us, especially in this real small town.
And a J brought that to us. And he was
also very polite, very honest, and just really wanted to
get to the bottom of things. It wasn't really one
way or the other. It was just wanting to find
and he did. Now he did make a difference. Val
(32:02):
talked about how a J walked out on the cliffs
so far out the fire chief was concerned he wouldn't
make it back before dark. I can't even imagine how
many miles he walked on those beaches and bluffs and
drove around and sat on the cliff with his binoculars
day after day after day after day after day. I mean,
he was just a figure of our town for months.
And you know, once you become a part of a
(32:22):
little community like this, it's not like Fox News where
they come up and set up their stuff and then
you know, go home. This was a whole different thing,
and it was interesting. It was definitely nice to have,
like I said, a human connection to something that seemed
hard to put words with. Would he come into your
store about every day? Not every day in the beginning, yes,
(32:43):
every day and look for um, you know, have questions
on what might be the word out on the street,
so to speak. And then it came down to where
would be a few times a week towards the end,
and what sort of tips did you share with him?
Just the tips of the weather on what to look for.
The big tip for him was was when one of
(33:04):
my guys that I grew up with, it was on
the fire department, said, you know, there's a certain way
that the water, um, the currents work and even though
the winds blowing south um where that particular incident happened,
we need to look north in the bay north and
and he did, and he did, and he did, and
that he found stuff. He learned the tricks of the
(33:25):
trade very quickly. He adopted himself. He hadn't been to
the ocean, you know, he didn't know about the civic
and you know, he adopted and he stayed dedicated. And
that was the key to everything. I mean, that was
the key to making the difference. Maybe A j had
it right. The key to making a difference is about
actually showing up, lacing up a pair of boots and
(33:45):
walking along the cliffs rain or shine alone or with
other heart friends. A j did that he was at
the place where his friends died and looked for them
in real life. He didn't just click through pictures of
them or sit in front of a computer a thousand
miles away. He didn't try to piece together the clues
from afar then bounce ideas and hypotheses off strangers. Maybe
(34:07):
the key to real friendship is being there in the
flesh for better or worse, in sickness and in health.
As Val said, some people look for crowds and some
people look for lonely places. If we've learned one thing
from The Hearts, it's this there are lots of lonely
places in the world, too many, and once you've lost
(34:28):
yourself in one of them, or several, as we believe
Gen did, it's really hard to find your way back
next time. On Broken Hearts, we assume that people who
are abusive are abusive both in their private lives but
also in their public lives. And we know this now
not to be true. Because I was coming up here,
(34:50):
I felt like this sense of dread, a corner of inquest,
is going to, in my opinion, give evidence that will
shock the consciousness of people who are following this case.
This will be a water cooler conversation throughout our nation.
(35:23):
If you suspect a child as being abused, call one
eight hundred for a child that's one eight hundred numeral
four A C H I L D. Or visit child
help dot org to find out how to report your concerns.
For access to exclusive photos and videos and documents about
(35:46):
the case, visit glamour dot com slash Broken Hearts. Have
questions for us about this podcast, reach us on Twitter
at Glamour mag or at Broken Hearts Pod. If you
like what you heard, leave us a view. Broken Hearts
is a joint production between Glamour and How Stuff Works,
with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Broken Hearts is co
(36:09):
hosted and co written by Justine Harman and Elizabeth Egan
and edited by Wendy Nogal. Lauren Smiley is our field reporter,
Samantha Barry is Glamour's editor in chief. Julie Sheen and
Dianna Buckman head up the business side of this partnership.
Joyce Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke Zeleski are a research team.
(36:31):
Jason Hope is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works,
along with producers Julian Weller, ben Kie Brick and Josh Sane.
Special thanks to Jen Lance
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