Markis, she said, hit his head on a closet wall and, "in multiple voices," claimed to be possessed by demons. Investigators returned to the Harts’ home in Washington State the next day. Sometimes "the motive can be around loyalty. That evening Bruce and Dana noticed that the bright red kayak they'd always seen on top of the Yukon had been taken down. Sarah told that manager that Jennifer struggled with depression and mentioned to another co-worker that Jennifer “would stay in bed and cry all the time.” A close relative of Jennifer’s was said to have “concerns about Jennifer’s state of mind,” documents show. Dana DeKalb is an earthy 58-year-old who tracks her steps with a Samsung smartwatch when she's not chatting into it with her two grown children. Eventually the California Highway Patrol will gather all findings into a report that will determine whether crimes were committed—though they told Glamour in an email, “We have no survivors in this case and no one to prosecute.”. She said Hannah was 12, and that her mom had been bipolar. But the photo from March 26 would not be like the other pictures taken on countless family road trips. Bodies of Sarah and Jennifer Hart Were Unrecognizable After SUV Plummeted Off Cliff: Expert this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines. There was no other follow-up. Markis, Hannah and Abigail were placed with the Harts on March 4, 2006, and their adoption was completed six months later. The school also reported instances of the kids saying they hadn’t been fed or asking classmates for food. 17 records for Sarah Gengler. "Hello?" ", According to a Clark County sheriff's report, Sarah later told a Kohl's coworker that the event had changed Jen, who claimed she was getting death threats. When she mentioned that their oldest son, Markis, was 19, Bruce piped up, "You must be getting ready to leave the house, then? Investigators in Oregon began an inquiry and interviewed women who knew the family and described them as militant parents who imposed harsh disciplinary measures on their children. Around 1:30 a.m. one day in August 2017, Hannah rang the DeKalbs’ doorbell and ran inside their home, the DeKalbs said in interviews. (In April 2018, Oregon child welfare services issued a statement, saying they had made the records public in order “to prevent a similar incident from happening again in Oregon or any other state.”). This time, they never went back. "I don't know what's real or fake anymore," Sperling says. And what, if anything, can we learn from the fall? He confided that Sarah used to push back on Jen, but not anymore. Soon after, the new family was pictured on an adoption agency site, smiling and happy—this time seeking up to three more kids of “any” ethnicity up to eight years old. Empty picture frames hung on the walls, and the room where the kids slept on two small beds and a mattress on the floor had nothing to personalize it. Hart Family Parents Killed 6 Children in Murder-Suicide, Jury Determines . It has a green-edged bluff right off California's Highway 1, with a gravel strip leading straight to a dramatic 100-foot drop into the Pacific. Each post reaffirmed the same storyline: Here are two moms and their rehabilitated kids thriving against all odds. Two weeks later they greeted a man from South Dakota who identified himself as Sarah's dad, out with his son and wife to pick up some personal effects. She coauthored the only known study on female "family annihilators," or people who kill multiple members of their family. Six Black Kids. "There was nothing [in that call] that said I better go up there,” says County Sergeant Brent Waddell. Members of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California packed up their equipment after a search for the missing children in March 2018. The split-level had recently been renovated with new wooden floors and freshly painted walls (Jen had shared pictures of the kids working industriously). However, the investigators did find a pipe and a jar of Purple Widow cannabis—a strain thought to mellow depression—and a refrigerator stocked with lunch meat, fresh beef, hot dogs, and chicken. They appeared to be “scared to death of Jen.”). She noted that the boy's head seemed larger than his body, and that he claimed his parents withheld food, sometimes for days at a time. Law enforcement officials in California have issued only one statement on the case since May, though the investigation continues. "Once you're in the system, it's easier to go back to parents who are already proven." Jen, who worked in the juniors department, was the bigger personality of the two—confident, funny, "kind of abrasive—that would be the Minnesota term for it," recalls Jordan Smith, then a 19-year-old working at the store’s Clinique counter. Sarah said she’d been the one who hit Abigail in anger. The DeKalbs say everything changed on a Thursday in March when Devonte approached Bruce as he worked on his truck and asked for tortillas. Armchair sleuths convened in private Facebook forums to pore over each detail of the case and each seemingly idyllic image on Jen’s feed looking for answers and doling out pop psychology diagnoses. 1 talking about this. A note 16-year-old Hannah gave the DeKalbs after begging them to “protect” her in 2017. 3 Profile Searches. “She was so convincing,” Ms. DeKalb, 59, said of Jennifer. The women met in 1999 when they were 20, in Aberdeen as undergrads. "I'm like, 'Shit's getting real,'" Dana says. Bruce and Dana DeKalb lived in one of them. It reads: "I stopped this morning because I feel awful about disturbing your peace and worring [sic] you in the middle of the night. She had spotted something jarring: a brown sport-utility vehicle, upside down, in the Pacific Ocean. This brings the question of coercion to my mind. I was very frustrated with my brother and didn't handle things very maturely, and I'm sorry for telling lies to get attention. Says Sperling: "Everyone was envious. Jennifer and Sarah Hart adopted six children. As admirers fawned on social media, a different version of the Harts emerged in government files. The image went viral, and it was time to move again. (Jen later told a social worker this was a requirement of the adoption agency. "I guess I want to believe there were good times," she says. According to a police report, the girl said that after a penny fell out of her pocket—the moms thought she'd stolen it—Jen "took her into the bathroom and put her head in cold water" and struck her with a fist. One whistleblower mentioned that Jen had allowed each kid only a single slice of pizza for dinner, and when it turned out that someone had eaten more during the night, she punished all six children by making them wear sleeping masks and lie on an air mattress for five hours. "There's no part of me, with all of my looking back, with all of my observations of them, that is capable of seeing that it was just a charade," she says. Hannah and Devonte had already spoken up. "It seems obvious that we didn't know Jen and Sarah Hart as well as we thought we knew them," he wrote. ", Jen answered for him: "We certainly hope he's not leaving.". Devonte is still missing and presumed dead. In response to questions from The Appeal about how the Harts were allowed to adopt Devonte, Jermiah, and Ciera after an allegation of child abuse had already been made against them, he pointed to the lack of criminal charges in Minnesota. Lawsuits, Liens or Bankruptcies found on Sarah's Background Report View Details. The assistant manager told the authorities about a conversation with Sarah that stood out: Sarah once said she wished that someone had “told her it was O.K. The cliff is exactly the kind of place Jennifer Hart loved to photograph her kids for Facebook. In other circumstances, on other trips, Jen and her wife, Sarah, might have pulled to the side of the road and lined up their brood as they often did: backs to the camera, hands raised in peace signs, a Technicolor sunset framing their silhouettes. Once, at the Beloved Festival in the coastal woods, Devonte stole the show when he hugged a musician onstage. It’s kind of nervewracking.”, But by July, she wrote to someone else, the doctor “couldn’t find the baby’s heart beat.”, She updated the person six days later: “The baby did not make it.”, In an August 2010 email to another woman, Jennifer complained about Sarah, who she said had “said some hurtful things.”, “For quite some time I have felt very under appreciated, and taken for granted in our relationship...and at times unloved,” she wrote. Tracks led away from the edge of the cliff that the Harts’ vehicle went over in March 2018. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Your California Privacy Rights. "They didn't let people IN, looking back." “Can you take me to Seattle?” Mr. DeKalb, 63, recalled her asking. she wrote. Ian Sperling’s wife went through Jen’s Facebook posts, spotting one of the kids posing in front of their artwork, and noticed that there isn't any paint on the kids' brushes. Maybe, they said, it was the result of a fall down eight steps a few days before. She was alone and maybe 25 pounds heavier than friends had ever seen her. The Hart children, clockwise from center, Markis, Abigail, Sierra, Hannah, Jeremiah and Devonte smile in November 2009, months after the adoption of three of the children became final. "When love is your guide," Jen wrote on Facebook, where she openly discussed the "immense challenges" of being a gay couple in middle America, "anything is possible.". As this story went to press, Devonte's body was still missing, and investigators were still trying to find Hannah's biological relatives to try to match the DNA of a foot that had washed up onshore near the crash site. "And you need to explain you just had a really bad week.". “Please let someone know...we are all freaking out here.”. Each time, Devonte would nervously glance back down the driveway and plead with Bruce and Dana not to tell his parents. Eventually, Ms. DeKalb gave Jennifer time to speak with her daughter alone. They had. was gone; a German tourist would spot it a few hours later, upside down on a rocky shoreline, more than 500 miles down the Pacific Coast. And maybe, when they got to California, the ledge no longer looked like a photo op. (There was one single bed found in an adjacent room.) Back in Minnesota, Jen stayed home with the kids while Sarah kept working in retail, eventually becoming a sales area manager at Herberger's. ", In 2016 Jen wrote to her followers, “We’ve come to realize that some think our lives are next to perfect. In one episode, Sarah admitted to having physically harmed Abigail. "We all feel guilty, because it's the professionals' fault." "But I assume the one who says, 'I actually did the spanking,' was the one who did the spanking.". In December 2014, after a Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury refused to indict a white police officer who had killed a black teen, the family appeared at a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland. "They were a little guarded. Or maybe they balked at the forthcoming financial strain: In the past decade the Harts had collected roughly $270,000 from the state of Texas to help care for the children, but all six were growing up; at 19, Markis was no longer eligible for a subsidy, and the others were close on his heels. Check Reputation Score for Sarah Gengler in Seattle, WA - View Criminal & Court Records | Photos | Address, Email & Phone Number | Personal Review | Income & Net Worth "There was nothing about the way Jen was presenting their life that seemed at all at odds with my understanding of who they were," says Zippy Lomax, a festival friend who took pictures of the family. Alvin Jornada/The Press Democrat, via Associated Press. Join Facebook to connect with Sarah Gengler and others you may know. Jennifer and Sarah Hart, along with three children, were killed. There were pictures of the kids hugging a redwood and playing Twister on the beach. But then the 15-year-old returned Friday morning, and again Saturday evening just before the DeKalbs were going out of town. Her status updates wove a years-running narrative, starring herself as the world's most progressive parent. Her front teeth were missing. One woman messaged Dana DeKalb asking if Dana would look for bodies in the forest behind her house. It was not unusual that he was always hungry or not hungry at all." But at a 2014 demonstration in Portland, Ore., to protest police violence, Devonte was photographed with a pained expression hugging a white police sergeant. The coroner found diphenhydramine, an ingredient commonly found in allergy medicines like Benadryl, in the bodies of Sarah and two of the kids; Jen's blood alcohol content was over the legal limit.

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