0:02

We've talked about how Jenn and Sarah

0:04

Hart met each other and how they quickly

0:06

adopted six kids. We've

0:09

talked about how Jen curated an identity

0:11

for the family on social media and

0:14

at music festivals. And

0:16

we've talked about how the Hearts lived. Now

0:20

we're going to talk about how they died. This

0:23

is hard stuff, obviously, and

0:25

we've spent a lot of time thinking about it.

0:29

What happened in the week leading up to the hearts

0:31

five and sixty one mile trip from

0:34

Washington to California, and

0:36

when Jen arrived at the edge of the cliff,

0:39

what made her keep her foot on the gas

0:42

From Glamour and how stuff works. This

0:45

is Broken Hearts. I'm

0:49

Liz Egan and I'm Justine

0:51

Harmony. We're

1:05

going to check back in with Bruce and Danna decalb

1:07

who were the Hearts neighbors in Woodland, Washington.

1:10

You'll remember they're the ones who were woken up in the middle

1:13

of the night by Hannah Heart shortly

1:16

after the handa incident. They

1:19

bought blinds and never

1:21

ever opened up, never

1:24

closed. You

1:27

couldn't see in the house, you couldn't see in their

1:29

car. They would go from the house to

1:31

the car and from the car to

1:33

the house literally single file, and

1:35

it was like kind of at a fast

1:37

clip, almost like running. Jennifer

1:40

would get out and open the doors. Then

1:43

they would get out and single fowl

1:45

to the house. I was hoping to see

1:47

Anna again because I was hoping to

1:50

get it to her that you are

1:53

always welcome to my home, that

1:55

no matter what, feel free to come here,

1:58

or have her give me a signal all you

2:01

know that she needs

2:03

help. I wanted to let any of the kids

2:05

know that, you know, if they need help, just

2:07

give me the not because

2:09

I just never felt comfortable

2:12

about what I was observing.

2:15

That's Dana who still teared up when

2:17

talking about the hearts nearly two months after they

2:20

died. Even though the sheriff's

2:22

deputy had told Dana it wasn't illegal

2:24

to not let kids play outside, she

2:26

still had a bad gut feeling about the family.

2:29

In fact, she vowed to keep watch on

2:32

the comings and goings of their cars on

2:34

anything she could decipher from the house.

2:36

With the blinds drawn tightly shut. She

2:39

made sure to take notes of each new visit

2:41

Davante would make to their house. For

2:44

months, Dana had only gotten

2:46

tiny tidbits Davante's

2:48

clipped greetings when she tried to intersect him

2:50

in the driveway on garbage runs. But

2:54

now finally, little

2:56

by little, Davante was opening up.

2:59

We have to take our garbage cans to the street,

3:01

and it's a long ways, and so I would watch for the kids

3:04

because I wanted to try to have a conversation with

3:06

any of them, you know, But I could never get him

3:08

to talk to me, and I never saw

3:11

Hannah. One time,

3:13

Davante and I kind of waited

3:15

for him and caught up with him,

3:17

and I talked to him, but he wouldn't answer me.

3:20

Finally, right when we went to split and

3:23

I said, well, you know, I have a good day, and he goes,

3:25

yes, ma'am, and that was all I got

3:27

from the whole way up the driveway. He

3:30

got back up to the house and

3:33

I saw Jennifer scolding

3:35

him. She went inside

3:37

and left him standing out the rain.

3:41

And my first reaction, my gut was he just

3:43

got in trouble for talking to me. And

3:46

then from that day on we never

3:48

saw him take the garbage. They did

3:50

it in the night. I

3:55

thought, Okay, obviously there's

3:58

something going on that they've been instructed

4:00

not to speak with us from

4:03

that day forward. DeVante, he

4:05

was the only kid of the six

4:07

of them that was ever outside doing work. He

4:10

was raking leaves or

4:13

puling things. One

4:15

day, I sat watched he carried

4:18

ten bags of soil from the front

4:20

of the back, and I kept thinking, my god,

4:22

there's six of them. Even if Hannah's

4:25

too tiny, there's three boys, and

4:27

Marcus was way bigger than Dante, and

4:30

so it blew my mind and I sat

4:32

and watched that, thinking, eventually, I'm going to see another

4:35

kid. But it only was DeVante.

4:37

When you tell me that the kids chose to live out

4:40

in the country, you want to become self sufficient, then

4:42

I would expect to see kids out in the

4:44

yard planting

4:46

or enjoying the property.

4:49

You know, if you want to live like this, you enjoy

4:51

it. And so it wasn't adding up

4:55

my gut instinct still at me on alert.

4:59

She talked about it, for I was

5:01

obsessed with She was obsessed with it. I

5:04

watched their comings and goings. I

5:06

mean, I knew when Sarah had a day off. Um

5:10

I stopped him essentially because

5:13

I just couldn't let it go.

5:18

Aside from a few brief conversations

5:20

in the driveway, the decalbs

5:23

felt the Hearts were avoiding them,

5:26

but that changed on Thursday, March

5:28

two, eighteen, when Davante

5:31

approached Bruce, who was working on his

5:33

truck, and asked for tortillas.

5:36

It was a simple request, like asking

5:38

for a cup of sugar or a stick of butter, and

5:41

Bruce was happy to help. That

5:43

same day, over on Facebook, Jen

5:46

was celebrating the ninth anniversary of Davante,

5:49

Sierra and Jeremiah's official adoption

5:51

date. She posted six black

5:53

and white pictures of the kids grinning and wearing

5:55

cute hats. We won't read the

5:57

whole status update, it's a long one

5:59

too, but the lions are about to

6:01

hear are pretty poignant. Considering what

6:04

was about to happen, and considering

6:06

that DeVante might have been asking Bruce for

6:08

food at the very moment, Jen type

6:10

these words, I

6:13

am a better human in every

6:15

possible way for knowing these children.

6:18

They have been my greatest teachers. Contrary

6:21

to the common notion that we can't choose

6:23

our family, we absolutely

6:25

can. We choose by

6:28

loving, and that's worth

6:30

celebrating every damn day.

6:34

Dana and Bruce weren't friends with jan on Facebook.

6:37

In fact, they had no idea she was active on

6:39

social media until after she died. On

6:42

Friday, March six eighteen,

6:45

around nine am, they answered

6:47

a knock on their door. There was Davante

6:49

again asking for bread. This

6:52

time Dana was the one who gave him the food. She

6:55

didn't have bread, so she gave him tortillas

6:57

instead. The first night, I didn't think

7:00

anything when he came back, I was like, m that's

7:02

weird, okay. He would

7:04

kind of watch down the road, watch down the road,

7:07

and you know, but he was the only here

7:10

as long as he needed to be. He would never

7:12

come in the house, never came in that not

7:15

in the rain, no, no, never came in the house. Would

7:17

not step but I'd say come in and it's raining,

7:19

Nope, And he'd be like he

7:21

was always really in a hurt. But

7:24

then when he came back Friday night, It's like, wait

7:26

a minute, I just gave you like thirty tortillas

7:30

A specifically put I gotta take

7:32

a step back and just you know, size

7:34

him up. He

7:37

was always dressed in baggy or clothes, rubber

7:40

boots and longer sleeves, you

7:42

know, I mean in March when he started coming over here,

7:44

it's still wet and cold. His

7:47

shoulders were super small and

7:49

comparison to his head, I have little

7:51

shoulders. He was smaller than me. He

7:55

was really thin, you know, like his

7:57

arms rose because of my wrists. That's

7:59

all? Are you? By four? Was he

8:02

taller than you? Around

8:05

my height? The

8:08

next day, around five pm, Davante

8:11

was back. He

8:13

wanted more food. Bruce and Dana

8:15

tried to get him to stay and talk. Dana

8:18

was determined to collect information she

8:21

could share. When she called Child Protective

8:23

Services again. Remember

8:25

the first time she spoke to them after

8:28

her dad reported the hearts, she

8:30

was told there was nothing they could do to help.

8:33

That's when it was like, okay, we gotta get details.

8:36

So every time he came over, I would ask him

8:39

a little more and a little more. You know. First

8:41

it was just about playing outside,

8:43

you know where you are allowed to play outside at your

8:45

other house? And then it was what about school?

8:48

Meanwhile, Jen continued to post about

8:50

Davante on Facebook. He was

8:52

one of her favorite subjects. We know that. Already

8:56

four days after his first visit

8:58

to the Decalbs, she shared a pick sure

9:00

where you can only see his eyes brown

9:02

and smiling. The bottom of

9:04

his face is obscured by a tray full

9:06

of dirt and seedlings. The

9:09

post reads, we currently

9:11

have six hundred flowers slash vegetables

9:13

growing in the living room before theyre moved to

9:15

the little greenhouse. She

9:18

goes on to say that the kids are quote

9:20

reading their environmental biology books

9:22

out loud to each other and to the

9:24

plants. It sounds like a

9:26

cozy scene. On

9:36

Tuesday, March, Davante

9:39

returned to the Decalbs house twice.

9:42

Although he still wouldn't come inside, he

9:44

was at least more forthcoming than he'd been

9:46

on previous visits. I

9:49

asked him how he was able to sneak over here.

9:51

He told me they weren't very observant. Now

9:53

I've learned that Jennifer was a gamer,

9:56

a video gamer on computers,

9:58

and so he came over when

10:01

she was probably gaming, or

10:04

he would come over late at night when they were probably

10:06

asleep. Sarah was never home.

10:09

I don't think when he made his trips over here, she

10:12

was either gone to work or it was late enough

10:14

that she would probably be in bed. This

10:16

made sense while Sarah was working

10:19

long hours at Cole's Jen was running

10:21

a guild of video game enthusiasts,

10:24

sometimes dominating group chats to the point

10:26

where one dubbed her a stone

10:28

cold narcissist. So

10:30

it seems like there wasn't a whole lot of supervision

10:32

happening in the hearthouse and

10:34

the family life, DeVante described to the Decalbs

10:36

bore little resemblance to the rosy utopia

10:39

Jen described to her fans they

10:41

were withholding food as punished.

10:45

He would say, well, we're teenagers and we act

10:47

out, and so we get punished

10:49

in that way. And Danis

10:51

said, well, there's nothing you could ever

10:54

do that would warrant someone taking

10:56

food away from you. I don't care what

10:58

it is. So to a degree

11:00

he did say, we're teenagers

11:03

and act out, like trying to claim there was some

11:05

sort of cause, yeah, or that maybe

11:08

that they thought that

11:10

there was a cause, you know, trying

11:12

to make it like it was normal somewhat,

11:15

but obviously it wasn't. Just

11:18

to recap Davante showed up

11:20

at the Decalps on March and

11:26

one. He showed up

11:29

for the last time on March

11:31

twenty two. He started asking

11:33

for cured meat and

11:37

six stars of peanut butter and six

11:39

packages or tortillas and apples,

11:41

and then he he goes

11:44

and donuts and he kind of looked and I

11:46

said, no, I'm not doing no junk food.

11:48

He goes, okay, you

11:50

know when you say specifically cured meats,

11:53

and he told us non perishables. He even

11:55

said non perishables. You can't have

11:57

anything that's frozen or needs to be fagerating

12:00

it. It was like, is

12:02

he going to run away? Was

12:07

there like a moment that you felt the

12:09

pitch change of just like I'm

12:11

not gonna be guarded about this anymore. I'm just telling

12:13

you we're being abused. Yeah.

12:15

That was on Wednesday, when

12:18

he first started telling us a

12:20

little more about abuse. Um

12:23

and then asking as please don't call the

12:25

cops. Told us that everything

12:27

Hannah told you was true,

12:30

the things my mom told you were just to make you happy,

12:34

and it was just like, oh god, I totally

12:37

bought into it. And I was

12:39

just like, oh God, yeah,

12:42

just kill me. I

12:45

said, okay, so why did she run

12:47

away that night? Because my

12:50

mom was abusing her? It

12:53

was just like too

12:55

much had

12:57

started out just as you know, a meal air

13:00

or there, but now it was long periods of time, and

13:02

then he said, Sarah used to not go along with it,

13:04

but she is now. You

13:09

know. I just felt like, Okay, now

13:11

I have enough to get somebody's attention.

13:15

On March two, eighteen,

13:18

Jen made her final Facebook post. It

13:21

was a thirty second video of a pair of ducklings,

13:24

one yellow, one black. We

13:27

see the ducks splashing together in a bowl

13:29

of water, cuddling in someone's

13:32

arms, someone who is white and

13:34

wearing a gray sweatshirt. Then

13:36

the ducks are balancing on the back of a rabbit

13:39

and a cat, and finally climbing

13:41

over a bowl filled with geode starfish

13:43

and shells. In the background,

13:46

we see a woman with long brown hair wearing

13:48

a blazer and a T shirt, probably

13:51

Sarah, on her way to work. It's

13:53

a peaceful, domestic scene, and

13:55

the last frame says happy Spring

13:58

in a jaunty font. The caption

14:01

cuteness overload Alert. These

14:04

spring equinox babies have waddled

14:06

right into our hearts. So much

14:09

joy in New life.

14:12

Two likes comments,

14:15

many of which were posted after the

14:17

Hearts died. On

14:21

Friday morning of March Danna

14:23

de Cau called Child Protective Services

14:25

to report all of the information she had collected

14:28

about jen and Sarah Hart. Officials

14:30

showed up within a couple hours, but

14:33

by then Dana thought every

14:35

second counted CPS

14:37

had been contacted and gone

14:39

out to see them.

14:42

When she coming back, I'm here, but

14:45

I can't find you. There's

14:48

wild I'm I'm up where there across

14:50

the street is a bank of mailboxes. I

14:53

said, okay, well turn around and I'll

14:55

watch for you, you you know, and then I'll tell you

14:57

turn now. So I'm literally standing

15:00

you're watching for her to go by, and

15:02

I see Jennifer coming

15:05

down the hill and

15:07

I was thinking, a crap,

15:10

maybe the kids were home, you know alone,

15:14

CPS could have been here by now. So

15:17

I watched Jennifer coming up the driveway and

15:19

I'm like, well, their whole So

15:24

I told the lady turn in when you come up the driveway,

15:26

go to the right. She came to my house,

15:29

so she pulled up. I might, you

15:31

know, given a signal to go back. I

15:34

just motioned because I didn't want to yelp next

15:36

door, you need to go next door, because I

15:38

thought, well, I could be out in the driveway, and

15:40

so she got back in her car and went next

15:42

door. She

15:47

wasn't there very long, and I watched her leave

15:50

and I'm like, crap, nothing

15:53

came of this. But

15:57

they never asked it to door. Even

16:00

if you do answer the door, you

16:02

can say I'm sorry, you didn't have to come back another

16:05

time. What

16:08

were your feelings when you actually made the call

16:10

and reported in. I think I

16:12

was nervous,

16:16

You know, I was

16:18

glad I did it because I got the feeling it

16:20

had to happen. I mean, I knew it had to

16:22

happen. Were you worried that

16:24

they then they would get abused more? I

16:27

was. That was my biggest fair But

16:31

what actually happened was worse. Dana

16:43

saw Sarah's car speeding into the driveway

16:45

and then at some point during the night, the

16:48

car disappeared. As far as

16:50

Dana could tell, the house next door

16:52

was completely empty. You just put it

16:54

together that they had gone on the run. You didn't

16:57

see them blaze out. Well,

16:59

the rock wall was knocked on the end of

17:01

it was clipped left

17:05

so fast that they backed over that rock wall

17:07

and knocked it down. This, you know, that

17:09

was Saturday morning, then Sunday when the

17:11

car was gone Sunday morning, that's

17:13

when we said they're running they're

17:15

gone at that moment.

17:18

What did you think would be the outcome of this?

17:21

I guess I just figured they were trying

17:23

to hide long enough to sort

17:26

it out. Yeah, figure out their story.

17:28

They owned the house. Where are they gonna what are they

17:31

gonna do? They gotta come back, even they

17:33

had chicken still here in the animals

17:35

are all up there, and Sarah's cars. I mean,

17:37

it just didn't occur to me that

17:40

this was going to be the outcome. You know, you

17:42

don't really think about I didn't

17:44

think they killed in

17:47

my wildest imagination. Sarah

17:51

was scheduled to open coals at six

17:53

am on Saturday morning. At

17:56

three am, she texted co workers,

17:59

I'm so sorry. I

18:01

thought I would be able to go to work, but I'm

18:03

too sick to come in. Sarah's

18:06

colleague, Cheryl Hart, had worked with her

18:08

the day before on that Friday.

18:10

She says she didn't notice anything unusual about

18:12

Sarah, at least not then. Her

18:16

mood that day I felt was fine.

18:20

I had just found out that I

18:23

was getting promoted, and

18:25

she had actually known before me, so

18:29

she was like, oh, I'm so glad that now you

18:31

know. Now I could tell you congratulations

18:34

and everything, and so she was excited for me, and

18:36

so we were um,

18:39

laughing and stuff. On

18:41

Saturday, March, the

18:44

Hearts phones pinged off cell towers

18:46

along the Oregon coast into California,

18:49

and as you know, on Sunday,

18:53

Jen showed up in Fort Bragg on a

18:55

Safeway surveillance video. She

18:58

was alone and about twenty five

19:00

pounds heavier than friends had ever seen her,

19:03

wearing a gray sweatshirt, possibly

19:06

the same one we caught a glimpse of in the video

19:08

with the Ducklings. By

19:12

Monday afternoon, Cheryl Hert was getting

19:14

concerned. Sarah

19:17

hadn't shown up for work all weekend and wasn't

19:19

responding to texts, So Cheryl

19:21

decided to call. When

19:23

she said she was sick, did she say what was going on? Or

19:26

she just said that she just is unable

19:28

to to come out and we're

19:31

being able to go to work and

19:33

thought she was gonna go to the doctor. Um.

19:36

I've checked the hospitals. They didn't come any records

19:38

of her, and I think

19:40

her phone is now dead. We

19:44

were curious about why Cheryl made

19:46

this call. Jessine

19:48

and I worked pretty closely together and we definitely

19:50

talked about our families and what we did over the

19:53

weekend. But I'm not sure

19:55

I would call if she didn't

19:57

show up for work for a few days. Can

20:00

talked through just why you made the call. Well,

20:03

so it started because Sarah

20:06

was stick and because

20:09

Sarah wasn't answering her phone. So

20:12

they had asked me how to pull up the

20:14

emergency contact list because

20:17

they thought that maybe they

20:19

could contact Jen. So

20:21

I pulled it up. They

20:23

called Jen and left

20:26

a message. I

20:28

sent a text message to the coworker like Sunday

20:30

night, and I said, you know, saying by her from Sara

20:32

yet And she said, no, she does. It's really kind

20:34

of weird. And I said, that is really weird.

20:36

I said, she would not miss, you know,

20:38

two days of work without checking

20:40

in or anything like that. I'm like, it's so bizarre because

20:44

everything that was going on, she

20:47

still did her job. She

20:50

still showed up every day, she

20:52

wasn't late, she still took initiative

20:55

to get her projects done. She still had

20:57

great ideas. I mean, she did everything.

21:01

If you were just to walk in and

21:04

not know her history

21:06

or her family, or her home life or whatever,

21:09

you would never have any idea because

21:12

done bits showed when she was out on that sales

21:14

floor. She had that hatlog,

21:16

you know, all of her

21:18

stuff. Aside, she did her jobs.

21:24

So then we went in Monday and

21:27

we waited until about nine o'clock and

21:29

she still hadn't shown up. By

21:32

this time, the storm manager had come in and

21:34

I had filled him in on everything that had happened

21:36

over the weekend, which was like, you

21:38

know, something's going on, you know,

21:41

what do we do? And he's like, well,

21:43

I don't know. I don't know if we can get involved

21:45

or anything. And I was like, it's kind of

21:47

course to me, and she like, I

21:49

think we have to get involved in the stuffing that's going

21:51

on. He had talked to his

21:54

manager and they said we'll like

21:56

give it another hour or so. And I

21:59

was like, oh my gosh, you guys are being

22:01

men. This is ridiculous. Something

22:04

needs to be done. So

22:07

then I figured out that Jen's

22:09

emergency contact number was actually

22:11

Sarah's phone number, so

22:14

we didn't have an emergency contact number

22:16

for Sarah. So I finally got

22:19

the okay to call it in and

22:22

I made the call and then here

22:25

I sit today. About

22:31

two hours after Cheryl hung up the phone, a

22:33

German tourist spotted the Hearts Tan two

22:36

thou three Yukon Xcel upside

22:38

down at the bottom of the cliff in Mendocino

22:41

County. The police report includes

22:43

a photo of the car from above, and it

22:45

looks like it's flat to the ground with

22:47

its brown and gray machinery camouflaged

22:49

by the rocks, sand and water. When

22:52

you look at aerial shots of the scene, the car

22:55

blends in so well it's hard to see.

22:58

The bodies of Marcus, Abigail, and

23:00

Jeremiah were found nearby.

23:03

Sierra's body washed ashore. About two weeks

23:05

later. A

23:07

foot presumed to be Hannah's was found

23:09

nearby as well, but at the time of this

23:12

recording, investigators were still trying

23:14

to match it with DNA from a woman claiming

23:16

to be Hannah's biological mom.

23:18

Davante's body is still missing. The

23:22

car's computer showed that moments before the

23:24

crash, Jen had stopped on a gravel

23:26

pull out seventy ft from the edge of the cliff

23:28

and then accelerated. You

23:31

might wonder if the brakes malfunctioned, but

23:33

according to a Carfax report, the

23:35

pads have been replaced the previous July. Her

23:38

industry experts The average brake pads

23:40

last for around forty miles, so

23:43

unless the Hearts had driven back and forth across

23:45

the country six times, the

23:47

brake pads should have been in perfect working order.

23:51

Meanwhile, remember all that lush Greenerygen

23:54

wrote about. When the police showed

23:56

up to search the Heart's house, they found

23:58

no plants inside. But

24:00

over on Jen's Facebook, the ducklings

24:03

continue to splash in their bowl of water,

24:05

one yellow, one black. The

24:08

most recent comment comes from a loyal

24:10

friend wishing Jen a happy birthday months

24:13

after she died. Next

24:18

time on Broken Hearts, the

24:21

kids are skinny. Well, we just thought they were eating

24:23

organic food. We thought they were all the

24:25

same age. They were small, so we thought

24:27

they had to be in kindergarten. Looking back on

24:30

it, it doesn't look like they were normal kids. They didn't

24:32

really have friends. Abigail had bruising

24:34

on her stomach area from her stern um to waistband,

24:37

and bruising on her back from mid back

24:39

to upper buttocks, reportedly

24:42

caused by Jen Hart. For

24:48

access to exclusive photos and videos

24:50

and documents about the case, visit

24:53

glamour dot com. Slash Broken

24:55

Hearts have questions for us about

24:57

this podcast reach us on Twitter

24:59

at almermag or at Broken

25:01

Hearts Pod. If you like what you heard,

25:04

leave us a review. Broken Hearts

25:06

is a joint production between Glamour and

25:08

How Stuff Works, with new episodes

25:10

dropping every Tuesday. Broken

25:13

Hearts is co hosted and co written

25:15

by Justine Harman and Elizabeth Egan

25:18

and edited by Wendy k Nockle. Lauren

25:20

Smiley is our field reporter. Samantha

25:23

Barry is Glamour's editor in chief. Julie

25:26

Sheen and Dianna Buckman head up the

25:28

business side of this partnership. Joyce

25:31

Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke

25:33

Zeleski are a research team.

25:36

Jason Hoke is executive producer on

25:38

behalf of How Stuff Works, along

25:40

with producers Julian Weller, ben Ky

25:42

Brick and Josh Thine. Special

25:44

thanks to Jen Lance