Hart family murders

• 1. Introduction

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  The Hart family murders, a murder-suicide in 2018, took the lives of two women and their six adopted children. Years before, one of those children became known across the country through a single photograph. In 2014, at a protest in Portland, Oregon, twelve-year-old Devonte was photographed crying as he hugged a police officer. The image became known as the "hug felt 'round the world." Viewers saw a boy being comforted. They did not see the home he returned to. This documentary asks how a family could look so affectionate in public while neighbors, teachers and investigators kept hearing a different story. It asks who raised the alarm, what each agency found, and why no warning led to lasting protection for the children.

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• 2. Roots and Relocations

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  Jennifer Jean Hart was born on the 4th of June 1979, and Sarah Margaret Hart was born on the 8th of April 1979. Both grew up in South Dakota. Jennifer came from Huron, while Sarah came from Big Stone City, though some sources place Sarah's hometown in neighboring Ortonville, Minnesota. Each was the eldest child in her family. Jennifer had two siblings and Sarah had three. Jennifer's father later said she had not been raised Lutheran but went looking for that church in college.

  The two met and began their relationship at Northern State University. Sarah had first spent one semester at the University of Minnesota, and Jennifer began at Augustana University before transferring in 1999. Both studied elementary education, and Sarah focused on special education. Sarah graduated in 2002, while Jennifer left without a degree. In 2005, Sarah asked a court to change her last name to match her partner's. In 2009 the couple traveled to Connecticut to marry, at a time when only Connecticut and Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage.

  On Facebook, Jennifer wrote that the couple had been closeted in South Dakota and lost friends when they came out. In 2004 they moved to Alexandria, Minnesota, where both worked at a Herberger's store. There they chose to live openly. Jennifer held a variety of jobs until she became a stay-at-home mother in 2006, and Sarah became a manager at the store. After a period in West Linn, Oregon, the family settled in an unincorporated area near Woodland, Washington. Sarah managed a Kohl's in Hazel Dell, and the household was still near Woodland when the murders took place.

  Money and distance shaped the household. Payments from the state of Texas for the six adopted children made up almost half of the family's income. Relatives on both sides said the women pulled away from them, even though both families accepted their sexual orientation. Jennifer cut off her father after 2001. State government reports said the couple ended contact with relatives because of criticism of their parenting.

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• 3. Six Adopted Children

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  A week before their first three children were due to arrive, the Harts dropped a 15-year-old foster girl at a therapist's appointment. The therapist then told the girl that the Harts would not be coming back for her. She had been in their care until that day.

  Hannah Jean, born in 2002, Abigail, born in 2003, and Markis, born in 1998, came from Colorado County, Texas. They were placed with the Harts on the 4th of March 2006 and adopted that September. In June 2008 the Harts adopted three more: Devonte Jordan, born in 2002, Jeremiah, born in 2004, and Ciera Maija, born in 2005. Those three came from Houston, and Ciera was sometimes called "Sierra."

  The second set of children had a painful path to the Harts. Their mother, Sherry Davis, lost custody in August 2006 because of substance abuse problems. The children went to their paternal aunt, Priscilla Celestine, on the condition that they have no contact with their mother. Celestine was required to work another shift and let Davis babysit, and a case worker saw it. The children were removed from Celestine's care, and a court barred her from gaining permanent custody. They entered foster care.

  All of the adopted children had Black African ancestry, and the birth mother of one set of siblings was white. The Harts did not adopt the children's older brother, Dontay, because of behavioral issues.

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• 4. Minnesota Warnings

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  In 2008, while the family lived in Minnesota, a teacher noticed bruises on Hannah's left arm. Hannah said that Jennifer had hit her with a belt. Within months, all six children had been pulled out of the public school system for a year.

  Two years later, Abigail told people she had "owies" on her back and stomach. She said she felt threatened by the Harts, who had beaten her and held her head in cold water over a penny they assumed she had stolen. When authorities became involved, all the children said they were constantly spanked and denied food. Sarah took responsibility, pleaded guilty to assault, and was sentenced to a year of community service.

  A year after that, Hannah reportedly told a school nurse that she had not eaten all day. Sarah brushed it off, saying Hannah was "playing the food card," and suggested she be given only water. Soon afterward, all six children left public school for good and were homeschooled from then on. Authorities in Oregon would hear about these Minnesota allegations in 2013.

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• 5. The Oregon Investigation

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  In 2013, one allegation of child abuse took aim at Jennifer's Facebook page. It said that "the kids pose and are made to look like one big happy family, but after the photo event, they go back to looking lifeless." Jennifer was very active on social media. She used it to present a loving, happy family while sharing her views on race and politics and photos from family trips. That picture helped hide the problems inside the household.

  Oregon authorities investigated after being notified of the Minnesota allegations. They interviewed each family member separately, along with people who knew the family. Two family friends said the children had to raise their hands before speaking, could not wish each other a happy birthday, and could not laugh at the dinner table. Other reports said the children were poorly fed and looked small for their ages.

  One friend described a pizza that Jennifer ordered for the children, with each child allowed only a small slice. When Jennifer found the pizza gone, she punished them by skipping breakfast and making them lie on their beds for five hours. Friends said the children seemed "scared to death of Jen" and compared them to "trained robots."

  The children's own interviews told a different story. They revealed no new incidents and made no mention of Minnesota. Jennifer told investigators that any family troubles came from other people's intolerance of two lesbian mothers raising six African-American children. The investigation could not decide whether the Harts were guilty of anything or whether there was a "safety threat." The next alarm would come in August 2017, from a neighbor in Washington.

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• 6. A Neighbor's Report

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  At around 1:30 a.m. in August 2017, Hannah jumped out of her second-story bedroom window and went to the house next door, where the DeKalb family lived. She pleaded, "Don't make me go back! They're racists and they abuse us!" The Harts soon found her and took her home. The following day, Jennifer tried to explain the episode by saying that Hannah was lying, that the children sometimes acted out because they were "drug babies," and that Hannah's biological mother was bipolar.

  Afterward, the DeKalbs came to know Devonte. He constantly begged them for food and asked them not to tell Jennifer. In later conversations he told them that his adoptive mothers withheld food as punishment and that the children were sometimes abused.

  Taken together with Hannah's flight, his words led the DeKalbs to report the Harts to the police and to the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Case workers from that agency tried to reach the Harts twice. The first attempt came on the 23rd of March 2018, three days before the murders. The second came on the day of the murders themselves.

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• 7. The Cliff

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  On the 26th of March 2018, a GMC Yukon XL went over a 100-foot cliff on California State Route 1, near Westport in Mendocino County. Jennifer was in the driver's seat and Sarah was in the front passenger seat. The children in the vehicle were Ciera, aged 12, Abigail and Jeremiah, both 14, Devonte, 15, Hannah, 16, and Markis, 19. The SUV landed upside down on the beach below. The bodies of five children were found in or near it.

  Devonte's body has never been found. In 2019 a superior court judge ruled that he was in the vehicle at the time of the crash, and a death certificate was signed on the 3rd of April that year.

  Experts read the data stored in the SUV's air bag computer. It showed that the Yukon was driven off the edge on purpose, starting from a standing stop and reaching 20 mph in 3 seconds with the throttle fully open.

  Toxicology results showed that Jennifer's blood alcohol level was over the legal limit. She rarely drank, which led to speculation that she did so to ease her inhibitions. Sarah and two of the children had diphenhydramine in their systems. Sarah's internet searches before the crash pointed to planning, and one was for no-kill shelters for dogs. The family's two dogs were later found inside the Hart home.

  An incident report written after the deaths recorded something Sarah had told a co-worker. She wished someone had told her it was fine not to have a big family, because then she and Jennifer would never have adopted the children.

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• 8. Verdict and Echoes

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  A fourteen-member coroner's jury unanimously ruled the deaths a murder-suicide. The inquest existed to establish cause of death, not to assign responsibility in civil or criminal terms. The California Highway Patrol said prosecution was impossible because everyone responsible had died. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Department closed the case and released declassified records in 2019.

  The case drew commentary about how child protection agencies treat different families. Rachelle Hampton, writing in Slate magazine, argued that authorities are harsher on African-American parents and guardians than on white ones. She pointed to the way officials left the Hart case unresolved.

  Fiction has returned to the story as well. An episode of the television series Atlanta, titled "Three Slaps," was inspired by the case and features Loquareeous, a character inspired by Devonte. In the 2024 novella collection American Spirits, author Russell Banks included a story called "Homeschooling" that fictionalizes the Hart family murders.

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