0:01

What can you really tell about someone from a picture?

0:04

Can you determine their ethnic background, whether

0:07

they're introverted or extroverted? Can

0:10

you tell if they're genuinely happy or just

0:12

playing the part? What if you zoom

0:14

in or out, can you infer things

0:16

like wealth or religion from the furniture or

0:18

personal objects in the background. What

0:21

about a tight shot of a presidential hopeful

0:23

on the campaign trail? What kind

0:26

of crowd would you want assembled around you to

0:28

communicate that you're the other guy, the

0:30

progressive, anti establishment choice,

0:33

and who could say those things for you simply

0:35

by being at your side?

0:48

Now you're seeing this little bird

0:51

doesn't know it? Oh,

1:01

I think, I think

1:04

that may be some symbolism here.

1:11

I know it doesn't look like it, but that

1:14

bird is really a dove asking

1:16

us for world peace, no

1:20

more wars. That's

1:25

Bernie Sanders at a two thousand sixteen

1:28

rally in Portland, Oregon. You

1:30

may remember this moment. He's going

1:32

on about the merits of public education

1:35

when a tiny finch lands on

1:37

his podium in the heart of the Pacific

1:39

Northwest. It's a moment straight

1:41

out of the show Portlandia, Irony

1:44

and Serendipity. All wrapped into one.

1:47

Sanders takes one look at the bird and

1:49

raises his fists like a magician who just conjured

1:52

a rabbit from a hat. It was

1:54

a whole thing. The Sanders campaign

1:56

started selling Bertie Sanders

1:59

merch. Of the more than

2:01

eleven thousand attendees who

2:03

was stationed directly behind Sanders,

2:06

Jen Sarah, Marcus

2:09

Davante, Abigail Jeremiah,

2:11

and Sierra Hart. There they

2:13

are on a Friday morning in March, jumping

2:16

up and down in matching royal blue Bernie

2:18

T shirts. I

2:20

saw them, and they're you know, they're right in the

2:23

direct head on. This is

2:25

Mark Levitt. He worked as Bernie's director

2:27

of scheduling in advance work during his presidential

2:30

campaign. He even helped create and popularize

2:33

Sanders a Future to Believe in branding efforts.

2:35

He remembers the bird moment, well, I

2:38

mean, jeez, best laid plans right, um,

2:40

you know, we we have no way of planning for that sort of

2:42

thing. I mean that was that was actually a level of serendipity

2:45

that in my entire time working

2:47

in scheduling in advance, I don't think I'd

2:49

ever encountered. It was said half

2:51

jokingly at the time, but you know, there was

2:53

some sense in which he had sort of performed a

2:55

miracle or whatever. I mean. This

2:57

is this is what people were saying online. And

3:00

this wasn't the first time the Heart Tribe had

3:02

gotten near the Senator. Earlier

3:04

that same week, Jen roused her

3:06

family at four thirty in the morning to

3:08

attend a rally in Vancouver, Washington.

3:12

She wrote on Facebook that she had the kids

3:14

stand for four hours in the rain to

3:16

ensure they wouldn't miss out on this opportunity.

3:19

She even made the blue shirts herself. Family

3:23

friend Machine baktr says members

3:25

of the Sanders campaign approached the

3:27

family and invited them to attend to the Portland

3:30

rally. Here's Lauren talking

3:32

to Machine about that day. They

3:34

went to the Washington rally and there it was

3:36

Bernie's campaign people that sort of

3:39

gave them tickets to come to the Oregan one. Yeah,

3:41

and they asked them and they put them they like wanted

3:43

them to sit right behind them.

3:46

That video of Bernie Sanders putting

3:49

a bird on it with the Heart family squarely in

3:51

the shot. It's been viewed over two point

3:53

three million times on YouTube. Part

3:56

of the reason that you, um, you

3:58

know you want to craft that shot

4:01

behind the candidate very carefully? Is

4:03

because uh and

4:05

then this happened with Obama on an handful

4:07

of occasions that the

4:10

people in that shot functionally sharing with

4:13

the candidate. From

4:16

Glamour and how stuff works, This

4:19

is Broken Hearts, I'm

4:31

Justine Harmon and I'm Liz Egan.

4:34

Crazy things like this, moments

4:36

of infamy, seemingly random or unsolicited

4:38

brushes with fame, like that vibral

4:40

photo of Davante crying and hugging the cop.

4:43

They were nothing new to the Heart family, yet,

4:46

despite the relentless fascination from the outside

4:48

world, friends like Ian Spurling marveled

4:51

at Gen's ability to protect her children from

4:53

prying eyes. Our Field reporter

4:55

Lauren chatted with Ian over the phone back

4:58

in May You and

5:00

Spilling as a dad who often met up with the

5:02

Hearts that shows around Portland, Jen

5:05

would tell him that the kids were developmentally

5:07

delayed from their terrible lives before

5:09

they were adopted, and he had bought

5:11

it, so that was why the

5:13

kids acted a little differently. Maybe

5:16

that's why Davante smiled all the time

5:18

and seemed to act a little younger than his age,

5:21

or why Marcus and Jeremiah would look

5:23

listless and suddenly snap into smiles

5:26

and personality when he greeted them.

5:28

Jen also explained why the kids were so thin

5:31

they had a vegetarian organic diet.

5:34

She always had an answer for everything. I

5:38

mean when I say that Jen was good, she

5:40

was good, and

5:43

she made parenting look unbelievably easy

5:46

and awesome and there was no red

5:48

flags, zero, Like the way she respected

5:51

Davante's privacy when he was took the picture

5:53

with the cop, and the way she would talk to

5:55

us about that stuff in private. You know, it's

5:58

like we looked up to her,

6:00

like, Wow, she's the best parent in the world. Were horrible,

6:03

you know, kind of thing. Jen often

6:05

wrote about the importance of protecting her

6:08

kids privacy. Once, when

6:10

a Facebook follower asked if she'd ever considered

6:12

a reality TV show, she said, no, We've

6:15

had multiple offers in this area. She

6:18

wrote, no amount of money

6:20

would ever be worth the trials and tribulations

6:23

that would surely come from media

6:25

slash producers manipulating

6:28

our lives on a TV show. Ian

6:30

remembers hearing about the offers,

6:32

she was extremely stressed, doesn't know what to do with getting

6:35

offers from like Good Morning America or

6:37

the Today Show specifically, and a few others

6:39

to take him on there, and she declined to do that.

6:41

Now, that plays into what we're learning now

6:44

because obviously we

6:47

learned now that there was some abuse charges in

6:49

Minnesota there, you know, um

6:52

fleeing to Oregon for lack of a better term,

6:54

and so there's probably more of a reason why

6:57

she didn't want to go on national TV. At

7:00

the time, we're thinking, Wow, phenomenal

7:03

parenting. Nice work, you're not exploiting your children.

7:05

Perfect. That's just adds more to the legacy.

7:08

You know, Liz

7:10

and I have talked about this part of the story a lot.

7:13

How could one family, one seemingly

7:15

interested in maintaining a low profile and

7:17

living off the grid, consistently

7:19

find itself in the news.

7:21

How often, really do

7:23

people become famous, like virally famous

7:26

by accident? Mark Levitt

7:28

says, from his experience, not that often.

7:31

With respect to getting back and behind

7:33

Bernie at the Bernie rally,

7:36

I would say that if they had seen the

7:38

process at the rally that they had been to a few

7:40

days earlier, that would have given them

7:42

a hint that most people otherwise don't

7:44

have as to how to do it so

7:47

that you know, most people when they arrive at these

7:49

rallies, is that their first rally or their only rally

7:51

or whatever. It's not that common to have people go

7:53

to these rallies twice, in part because

7:55

they are pretty onerous affairs. You

7:58

know, you wait for a long time for the candidates, that sort

8:00

of thing, so you don't get a whole

8:02

ton of repeat customers. But if these were repeat

8:04

customers, that they could have very easily

8:07

seen how the

8:09

selection process goes forgetting people

8:12

in that shot in the head on shot.

8:15

So be honest, what does

8:17

a photo of two moms and six black

8:19

kids say to you? Depending

8:22

on how you were raised, your background, and

8:24

your life experiences, it could mean any

8:26

number of things. For Zippy Lomax,

8:29

who first encountered the Heart Tribe back

8:31

in two thousand thirteen, the

8:33

family was the perfect visual symbol

8:35

for the kind of transformational, inclusive

8:38

music festivals she attended and often

8:40

photographed. They were very unique,

8:43

you know, and I know I'm

8:45

not the only person who could who It

8:48

was just sort of like a natural term

8:51

that would kind of come out when you would see them

8:53

showing up at places though there's a heart, there's a

8:55

hard time. Beloved is just one

8:58

of many many that have this

9:00

very similar kind of uh

9:03

the goal I guess of like, you

9:06

know, like experimental

9:09

community, different ways of

9:11

coming together and being supportive rather

9:13

than competitive. As

9:18

a photographer, Zippy observed how these festivals

9:20

could serve as a form of emotional release. Attendees

9:24

often dressed up in costumes, with hundreds

9:26

of people standing on a lawn, rocking and swaying

9:28

to the music. Footage

9:30

from the events look more like emotionally raw group

9:33

therapy than raucous jam sessions. In

9:36

a video posted to Jen's YouTube

9:38

page, Davante and Jeremiah are

9:40

at the two thousand twelve Project Earth Festival

9:42

in Minnesota. The boys, both

9:45

under ten at the time, have flowers

9:47

around their necks. Davante is

9:49

wearing his free Hug sign. They're

9:51

both dancing, and

9:53

around the second mark you hear

9:56

Jen's voice You're

9:58

going to give Naco a hug. Jeremiah

10:01

runs up to Jen's favorite musician, Nacobert,

10:04

who is dancing shirtless in the crowd,

10:07

the to embrace for a few seconds, while

10:09

Abigail, Sierra, and Hannah danced

10:11

nearby with Sarah,

10:14

it's one of the rare moments you get a glimpse behind

10:16

the curtain. Some might see it

10:18

as proof that Jen coerced the kids into

10:20

performing for the camera, but

10:22

if anything seemed off when the family was in

10:25

public, onlookers like Ian Spurling

10:27

didn't notice. In

10:30

ours these are superhuman people, like they're

10:32

living the perfect lives there, perfect people, we have perfect

10:34

kids. Zippy

10:58

noticed their infallibility too. She

11:00

started a friendship with Jen one mostly

11:02

maintained over Facebook Messenger, and

11:04

frequently took pictures of the family. All

11:07

of these events are opportunities

11:09

for people to kind of reinvent themselves

11:11

and experiment with what

11:15

it would be like to to be to

11:17

show up in a different kind of way, So

11:20

it's hard to say because people are maybe

11:25

not showing up at those events

11:27

in the same kind of wearing

11:30

the same persona or even the same kind

11:32

of clothes that they would wear in just everyday

11:34

life. Between shows,

11:37

the festival crowd kept taps on one another

11:39

on Facebook, where Jen racked up

11:41

the likes. Her feed was full

11:43

of well staged family photos and

11:46

long form captions. Opposed

11:48

from January sixteen

11:50

shows silhouettes of three of the Heart children at

11:52

sunset. The location is Malala

11:55

River State Park in Clackamas County, Oregon.

11:58

It reads him

12:00

sitting in the mud watching the sunset. Do

12:03

you ever think society overcomplicates

12:06

life? There's so much business,

12:08

technology obsession and worrying about

12:10

crossing things off a to do list, while forgetting

12:12

what it's like to be her,

12:16

be what him

12:18

alive. This

12:21

zest for life and jens seemingly

12:23

endless off for her children is something

12:25

Friends of the Hearts loved about her. In

12:28

fact, she's often described as the more gregarious

12:30

and social of the two women. Jen

12:33

and I were closer. She's also an amazing

12:35

photographer, and so we had another point

12:37

of connection there and um

12:40

mutual respect I guess for each other's craft.

12:42

But we were friends on Facebook and we

12:44

interacted in that way, and

12:46

so I think that, like in this

12:49

age of social media, it's

12:51

interesting because

12:53

we feel like we're more

12:55

um engaged

12:58

with people then maybe we actually are. I

13:01

was very much engaged,

13:05

like commenting and interacting

13:07

with Jen and the all the amazing

13:09

photos she was posting about the kids, and definitely

13:13

kind of aware of what was happening in their lives.

13:16

The last time Zippy saw the heart family

13:18

in person. Was at that same Bernie Sanders

13:20

rally in Portland where the bird landed

13:22

on the podium. She was there

13:25

once again to take pictures. Zib

13:27

read us a Facebook message Jen sent after

13:29

that memorable day. So she was

13:32

telling me how she was watching me instead

13:34

of Bernie Sanders, watching

13:37

you work your magic behind the lens was so special.

13:41

Seeing you just made that much more magical.

13:44

She saw me capture that bird moment, caught

13:47

a glimpse of you capturing the beyond amazing bird moment.

13:49

I love you um

13:51

and then the she

13:54

just said it made her heart. This

13:56

moment genuinely made my heart exploding the best

13:58

possible way. This is how

14:00

jan Hart spoke on her Facebook

14:03

page, a feat of countless posts that spanned

14:05

from two thousand seven, a year before

14:07

she and Sarah adopted their second set of biological

14:09

siblings, up until March eighteen,

14:13

four days before the crash. She

14:15

was effusive and passionate about everything

14:18

from her children, to her wife, to

14:20

the many animals the family rescued and rehabilitated.

14:24

In a post from June two

14:26

thirteen, she wrote, in what

14:28

reads like something from a children's book of

14:31

a red robin and a baby blackbird

14:33

she discovered in her yard. The young

14:35

blackbird hopped onto my knee and proceeded

14:38

to look me in the eye and go back and forth

14:40

between me and nuzzling the baby robin.

14:43

It was beyond clear that he was trying to communicate

14:45

a message. I lightly stroked

14:48

the back of the robin's neck and checked for injuries.

14:51

This has been my deeply connected purpose

14:54

for as long as I can remember. Take

14:56

care of all beings in need. Like

15:00

so many of her posts, it feels just a

15:02

little too good to be true. Along

15:05

with the post is an image of Jen wearing

15:07

a gray graphic tea and cuffed jeans,

15:10

several beaded bracelets lining her wrist,

15:12

clutching a small bird between her palms.

15:15

She added an inspirational quote from an

15:17

obscure science fiction author named

15:20

Lloyd Biggle Jr. Life

15:23

is life's greatest gift. Guard

15:26

the life of another creature as you would your

15:28

own. It was

15:30

a kind of slightly mythological story.

15:32

Ian Spurling knew well. I

15:36

think she was a master Facebook poaster, like

15:39

I've never seen anyone articulate so

15:41

well with photos. My wife

15:43

said something that made sense like after everything

15:45

was done, she says, there's

15:47

not even paint on the paintbrush,

15:50

you know. And

15:52

and that was, you know, like a Facebook picture and

15:56

uh, you know when you're like, whoa what

15:58

So it was like stage like stage photo maybe

16:01

because they're they're sitting in front of a canvas

16:03

a painting. Look what the kids are doing today, and

16:05

then you look on the paintbrush and there's no paint on it. Now had

16:07

idea as a mom or whatever, you're like, oh, shoot, we just

16:09

did that. We didn't give you pictures. Hey, you guys, let's grab

16:12

a picture real quick, you know, what have

16:14

you. But in hindsight,

16:17

that's probably a little bit of the case. You know, it

16:21

was almost too good to be true. Ian

16:23

tells one story about how the Heart

16:25

Children befriended a homeless man, and

16:28

his version has almost the same hyperbolic

16:30

language gen use. In April two,

16:32

thou post there

16:35

was a gentleman who was and

16:37

if I told you this already, I apologized. Um

16:40

they were. She took her kids down to the clack and Mr every

16:42

one night and they're playing around.

16:44

It was a hot, sunny summer day

16:46

and they're playing around down there and swimming, and

16:48

Devonte and two the other kids walked on

16:51

the way to what looked like a homeless

16:53

man, and

16:55

Jen in her the way she told it

16:57

was, I didn't know what to do, Uh

17:00

if I should let my kids talk to this homeless person

17:02

who looked extremely disheveled, um

17:06

and a bit suspect. But she's

17:08

taught her kids to not be afraid of strangers,

17:10

proceed with contion, but to spread love

17:12

in this world. And

17:15

they went down and talk to this guy blah blah blah. Then

17:17

she saw them hugging this guy. Okay,

17:20

and the kids walked back and

17:22

she's like, well was that all about? And they're like, oh, we just wanted

17:24

to brighten this guy's day, you know. Of course,

17:27

beautiful kids, and that's this is

17:29

an exaggeration of how they would be,

17:31

because I wanted at plenty. And

17:34

then the guy walks down to Jenny goes, it is are your kids,

17:36

I assume, and and she said yeah yeah,

17:38

And he says, well, I gotta tell you they

17:41

just changed my whole life. And

17:44

she goes, oh, how so, and he goes that hug I

17:46

got from him. I don't get that from anybody

17:48

here. See the problem is I have face cancer

17:51

and half of my face is gone, so I look really

17:53

scary and it's

17:55

terminal. And he goes, I don't have any hope. I

17:57

look like a homeless person. He goes, I'm not. I have

17:59

a all, I have money. I just looked scary and I've just

18:02

completely depressed about the end of my life.

18:05

And your kids just took all of

18:07

that aside, saw me for who I am

18:09

inside, and gave me a huge hug because

18:12

that meant the world to me. I can die a peaceful

18:14

person. You know something

18:16

along those lines. This

18:19

is Jen telling us the story. So

18:22

now do you take it as a grain of salt or what. But

18:25

I've watched the kids do this to people, so it didn't

18:28

surprise us one bit. You know. The

18:48

last time Ian saw the Hearts was in November

18:50

two, four months before

18:52

the crash, at a Knacko and Medicine

18:54

for the People concert in Portland. In

18:56

a quiet moment, Sperling told Sarah

18:59

that she seemed worn down. She

19:01

said, I'm just so tired. He

19:03

hugged her, said he was sorry she had to

19:05

put in so many hours at work to support the family

19:07

of eight, and Sarah answered, thanks,

19:10

I don't hear that very often, so

19:13

I think she was definitely a fan girl, like

19:15

following these bands like Nacho, Trevor

19:18

Hall, Xavier, read

19:20

some of these bands and like getting

19:22

to know them. And this was her backstage pass

19:25

as your kids, you know. And

19:27

the look on Sarah's face every time was cool,

19:29

I'm just taking along. I gotta work

19:31

in a few hours, and that was it was Sarah

19:34

constantly. That night

19:36

at the Naco concert at Last November,

19:38

Ian noticed that Sarah took most

19:40

of the kids home after sound check, while

19:43

Davante stayed on with Jen through the concert.

19:46

This was the only time he noticed anything

19:48

remotely strained, anything

19:50

other than synchronicity in the relationship.

19:53

And it wasn't even like they were fighting so much. It was just

19:55

Sarah's tired, she wanted to go home. She took the kids,

19:58

Jenn and Davante stayed dance Snia and

20:00

then left, and uh so

20:02

that was it, you know, and we just are like, oh cool, They're

20:04

normal. To say that Jen was

20:06

the fan girl while Sarah was the adult

20:09

with a job would be an oversimplification,

20:12

but Sarah did work a lot.

20:15

She was an assistant manager at the Coles

20:17

in Hazel Dell, Washington, where

20:19

she put in long hours, sometimes

20:21

six days a week. Her colleague

20:23

Cheryl Hart, the one who requested a

20:25

welfare check the same day they were found

20:27

dead. Remember Sarah as

20:30

super professional on the sales floor, but

20:32

relaxed and chatty in the back office.

20:35

One thing about Sarah is she was most

20:37

definitely a talker. It was always

20:40

a bit hard if you got caught

20:43

up in a conversation with her because

20:46

she would just rattle on sometimes.

20:49

And Sarah would often talk about her

20:51

home life with Jen and the kids. I

20:54

mean, she would definitely talk about her

20:56

family. One thing I would notice

20:58

so is that she would never she would

21:00

never mention like the kids'

21:03

names. She would always just you know, say

21:05

the kids, or you

21:07

know, like the girls or the boys. I

21:09

mean, when she first came on with us, she

21:12

let everybody know right off the bat that

21:15

her family was the

21:18

family with the hug heard

21:20

around the world. Basically, the

21:22

hug had gone viral and I

21:25

didn't know anything about it, so

21:28

I actually had to look it up and I was just like, oh,

21:30

okay, well that was pretty cool, and

21:33

you know, she said that it wasn't

21:35

cool. It caused a lot of stress in her family,

21:37

and and it had really changed

21:40

her wife, and not for

21:42

the good. Um that Jen had come

21:45

really closed in and really depressed,

21:47

and just it had just changed

21:50

her immendsly. But Cheryl,

21:52

a mother of two herself, understood

21:55

the pressures of co managing a household

21:57

as a new mom, especially

22:00

with so many kids. She

22:03

would talk about how the

22:05

the kids would stress her out. Um,

22:07

you know, I have two kids myself, so I

22:09

mean, obviously two

22:11

kids versus six kids, that's it's different.

22:14

But you know there's three times

22:16

where you know, parents

22:18

get times where it's like, you know, my two girls are be

22:20

like, oh my gosh, my kids are driving me insane,

22:24

you know. And she

22:26

would say the same thing like, oh yeah, when I get home,

22:28

you know, I have to take over and deal with the kids because

22:30

you know Jen's had them all day. You

22:32

know, when I get home, I got to deal with them.

22:35

Tensions plagued the family, according to newly

22:37

released emails made public in October two

22:40

eighteen, in the months following

22:42

the adoption of Davante, Jeremiah,

22:44

and Sierra, Their days appear

22:46

to be a chaotic jumble of post office runs,

22:49

paperwork, and dentist appointments,

22:52

six dentist appointments. Sarah

22:55

wrote to Jen in April two nine,

22:58

I will take my lunch hower from one to two to help

23:00

out with the kids during that time waiting there. Sorry,

23:03

I made such a mess of everything. That

23:05

same spring, Sarah tried to get pregnant

23:08

with donated sperm and later suffered

23:10

a miscarriage. Jen wrote in July

23:12

two tho nine to an administrator at the agency

23:15

that facilitated the adoptions, I

23:17

don't know what else to say really now,

23:19

we just take it one day at a time, true

23:23

to form. If there was anything stressing

23:25

the family, overwhelming schedules,

23:27

infertility or mental health issues, even

23:30

racist stalkers, you would never

23:32

know it from Jen's Facebook. But

23:34

back in June of two thousand seventeen, gent

23:37

old family friend neu Sheen baktr that

23:39

someone had left upsetting racist

23:41

notes in their mailbox. The

23:47

first time Neuchen baked are encountered the

23:49

Hart family was at an event Machine put

23:51

on called Portland's for the Philippines. It

23:54

was a concert series for charity hosted

23:57

in New Sheen's dad's place, a Mediterranean

23:59

restaurant called blew Olive. She noticed

24:01

that all the hard kids were sitting at a table and had

24:03

incredible posture. Sheen had

24:06

Jen in her phone as Je double

24:08

in because she says Jen dropped

24:10

F bombs all the time, so Jen

24:12

was her favorite four letter word. The

24:15

first show was at my dad's place. It

24:17

was all ages, and they brought

24:20

Jen and Sarah both came and they brought all

24:22

six of their children. And at first

24:24

they were sitting at a table right in front

24:26

of the stage, and um, they were

24:29

just eating food and they were super polite

24:31

and they were all sitting really

24:34

like, um, it was just the best posture

24:36

that I had ever seen like kids have. And

24:39

then to see like all the kids have that great posture,

24:41

it was like, holy crap. So that's actually I think

24:44

what I commented on and

24:46

how I started talking to Jen and

24:48

Sarah and then um,

24:51

yeah, I was like, oh my god, what is

24:53

up with your kids? How are they so well

24:55

behaved? And she's like, oh, you don't know. That's just because

24:58

there's not a dance floor. That's how it happened.

25:00

So we moved the tables and we

25:02

moved their table. They were done eating and we made a dance

25:04

floor. And that was like my first connection with

25:06

the children. We spent the rest of the night, you know, dancing

25:10

and having fun and all those like pictures.

25:12

A lot of those pictures are literally from the

25:14

first night, and like we're all holding each other

25:16

and there was just like this really great connection. I've

25:18

always thought that that's because I

25:22

think other people tell me it's because I'm a person of

25:24

color, But I always forget that I'm a person

25:26

of color. So like people who are young

25:29

who are like that, who are pocs, need

25:32

other pocs to look up to, but I never

25:35

I always forget. I didn't even know what POC meant

25:37

until somebody applied for a job

25:39

last year and they're like, hey, saying, as you're a POC

25:42

and I'm a POC, I think we could get along. And I

25:44

was like, what, that's not how that works. We're

25:46

all just humorous. Now, she remembers

25:48

the good times they had and the collective

25:50

effortvescent she experienced when the family

25:53

was all together. She even

25:55

talks about Jen and Sarah like they're still

25:57

alive. Jen loves

25:59

Sarah Uh to an insane

26:02

degree, and she always has, and she

26:05

says the most beautiful things about her. Have you

26:07

seen Jen's Facebook In fact,

26:09

even though Jen would text Machine about

26:12

her growing anxiety about being stalked,

26:14

harassed and threatened on social media

26:17

about the Trump election or the never ending

26:19

racist, bigoted feedback from that photo

26:22

of Davante at the rally, she

26:24

was convinced the family was adjusting well

26:26

to life in Washington. The

26:28

last year of my friendship

26:31

with John was pretty much me

26:33

reaching out. We talked, she

26:36

confided in me, but me reaching

26:38

out, asking her to

26:40

come around, asking her if I can come up there,

26:43

her sending me photos and videos of upgrades

26:45

of the house, and then

26:48

um, and they were happy. They actually

26:50

were really really happy. I

26:52

thought, when it comes down to it,

26:55

isn't that the weirdest part of social media? Aren't

26:58

we all guilty of looking at a picture of a smiling

27:00

person and just taking it at face value?

27:03

Who among us hasn't looked at someone we don't

27:05

know all that well and thought, damn, those

27:07

people are pretty perfect. You may remember

27:10

a similar story Madison Holleran,

27:12

the upen track star who jumped off a parking

27:14

garage in two thousand fifteen and whose

27:16

sunny Instagram feed didn't betray her own

27:18

struggle with mental illness, Much

27:21

like what happened there. Machine believes

27:23

these social media platforms come with deadly

27:25

side effects. I think if

27:27

it were not for social media that they'd still be alive.

27:30

Absolutely one. I

27:32

just feel like because of that second persona,

27:35

you know what I mean. I feel like if that second persona wasn't

27:37

there, and she didn't dedicate so much time to

27:40

focusing only on the good and only being

27:42

comfortable and only being you know,

27:44

only being vulnerable when it came to the

27:46

good, and not just learning to be vulnerable vulnerable,

27:49

then then she could have actually sought

27:51

help and her experiences in this life would have been

27:54

more real and meaningful. I don't think social media

27:56

is a real or meaningful thing. I think it

27:58

can bring about real and meaning will change.

28:01

But I also think that when we're lying

28:03

to ourselves and then we are

28:06

posting that lie about

28:08

ourselves that we want to believe, and

28:10

then we're getting this fake feedback

28:13

of of you know, acceptance

28:16

and all this type of stuff, then then

28:18

we're literally causing

28:21

harm. We were crushed by this

28:23

idea. So we invited Dr Amy

28:25

Service, a psychologist for the online

28:27

therapy site talk Space, to discuss

28:30

the psychological effects of social media.

28:33

She says, the medium can trick of your into

28:35

thinking they have more information than they

28:38

actually do. That sort

28:40

of two dimensional or even one dimensional, flat

28:42

perception of what's going out there or

28:45

going on with somebody's somebody's life,

28:47

and so you might that

28:49

sort of lack of compassion or even curiosity

28:52

because you already know it's like a full complete

28:54

picture out there. If they are then revealing

28:57

that this is what's going on, we might not really

29:00

be invested to reach out or to care to

29:02

connect because those pictures tell

29:04

a different story. One of the things that really

29:06

stuck out to me is that when they're

29:09

quote unquote friends that they saw

29:11

and interacted with were interviewed,

29:14

they kind of were like, maybe

29:16

we didn't know them as well. And I

29:18

think that begs the question what were their

29:20

interactions Like were they not sustained

29:23

and why weren't they sustained? Were they rely

29:26

on social media as opposed to picking up

29:28

the phone or continuing

29:30

a more in depth relationship. But

29:33

we become lazy and we kind of rely like,

29:35

oh, I'll just catch up with them because I'll see these posts on Facebook

29:37

as opposed to a real conversation,

29:40

And those are that sort of question and bigger

29:42

concept of relationships and how

29:44

we sustain them in the meaningfulness of relationships

29:47

that really stuck out that really wasn't present for them.

29:50

Zippy refers to the process of looking

29:52

at pictures and only seeing what we want

29:54

to see as confirmation bias.

29:57

You might remember that term from psych one oh

29:59

one. Here's zippy. We

30:02

had our own confirmation bias that we were looking

30:04

at them through this lens of

30:07

compassionate understanding or who we

30:09

thought we knew them to be, and of love

30:12

and care. And of course can you blame

30:14

us for not being so quick to

30:16

to believe that our these

30:19

people we loved and cared about were capable of something

30:21

like this. We were looking at them with

30:23

a lot more willingness to imagine

30:26

that this was a horrible accident,

30:29

and so the details

30:31

looked very different to all of us. Ultimately,

30:34

the inability to sess out the truth about who

30:36

her friends really were and the inability

30:39

to see past her own confirmation bias

30:41

is why is it be got off Facebook? So

30:43

much of my um

30:46

engagement with John

30:48

in particular was via Facebook,

30:52

so I only saw

30:54

what was represented there, but it

30:56

it basically

30:58

corroborated. I had experienced

31:01

when I witnessed them in person. So

31:03

there was like there was nothing about

31:05

the way that that Jen was presenting

31:07

their life that seemed um

31:10

at all at odds with with my

31:14

understanding of who they were. It

31:16

is in a different place now than she was when

31:18

she knew the Hearts. She's gotten to

31:20

a point where she can picture Jen doing something

31:23

like this. I'm imagining Jen

31:25

having a moment of just feeling

31:27

like she'd

31:31

kind of dug herself into some hole she

31:33

would never be able to get out of that.

31:36

I mean, I just feel like I can see her

31:38

having kind of a moment of desperation. I'm imagining

31:41

Sarah being maybe

31:43

sleeping, maybe other kids

31:45

being asleep too, and her driving and her

31:48

just like, you

31:50

know, the only this is the only

31:52

answer, and they're never going

31:54

to leave us alone, and the only answer, the

31:56

only way I can protect them,

31:59

or like, the only we answer is to

32:02

to this awful thing. I'm going to drive

32:04

off the cliff. No matter what happened

32:06

in the moments leading up to that crash back in

32:08

March, Zippy thinks, at the core

32:11

of this tragedy is Jen a

32:13

woman who had reached her breaking point. I

32:15

feel like One of the things that has been totally

32:19

um there has been no acknowledgement

32:21

here is like, this was somebody who was desperate

32:23

enough to kill herself and

32:26

to take the lives of all the people she cared about

32:28

in the same breadth. And

32:30

what I want to know is what

32:34

led to that? What happened

32:36

to jen Next time on

32:39

Broken Hearts, you know when you say

32:41

specifically cured meats, it

32:43

was like, is he gonna run

32:45

away? I saw Jennifer

32:48

scolding it. She went

32:51

inside and left him standing

32:53

out in the rain. Wow, they

32:55

knocked that rock wall down. That's

32:58

what we said. They're rock it. They're

33:00

gone. And it was just like,

33:03

oh God, actually bought

33:05

into it, and I was just like,

33:07

oh God, yeah, just

33:10

kill me. So I finally

33:12

got the okay to call it in

33:15

and I made the call and then here

33:18

I sit tonight. Broken

33:27

Hearts will be off next Tuesday, which

33:30

is Christmas Day, but look for a new

33:32

episode on January one. For

33:35

access to exclusive photos and videos

33:37

and documents about the case, visit

33:39

glamour dot com slash Broken

33:42

Hearts. Have questions for us about

33:44

this podcast, reach us on Twitter

33:46

at Glamour mag or at Broken

33:48

Hearts pot If you like what you heard,

33:51

leave us a review. Broken Hearts

33:53

is a joint production between Glamour and

33:55

How Stuff Works, with new episodes

33:57

dropping every Tuesday. Broken

34:00

Hearts is co hosted and co written

34:02

by Justine Harman and Elizabeth Egan

34:04

and edited by Wendy Noagle. Lauren

34:07

Smiley is our field reporter. Samantha

34:10

Barry is Glamour's editor in chief.

34:13

Julie Sheen and Dianna Buckman head

34:15

up the business side of this partnership. Joyce

34:18

Pandola, Pat Singer and Luke

34:20

Zeleski are a research team.

34:23

Jason Hoke is executive producer on

34:25

behalf of How Stuff Works, along

34:27

with producers Julian Weller, ben Kie

34:29

Brick and Josh Thine. Special

34:31

thanks to Jen Lance