Page 59 - Marie Claire Australia (January 2020)

CRIME
he cliff is
exactly the
kind of place
where Jennifer
Hart loved to
photograph
T her kids for
Facebook. It has a green-edged
bluff right off California’s
Highway 1, with a gravel
strip leading straight to a
dramatic 30-metre drop
into the Pacific. 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
technicolour sunset framing
their silhouettes. They were
Markis, 19, Hannah, 16, Devonte,
15, Abigail, 14, Jeremiah, 14, and
Sierra, 12 – two sets of black
biological siblings adopted by
two white mums – a beautiful
family, by most accounts. Friends
called them “the Hart Tribe”.
But the photo from March 26
would not be like the other pictures
taken on countless family road trips.
The photo the world saw from that day
was of the family’s SUV belly up on
the rocks below the scenic overpass.
After rescue workers abseiled down
the cliff, they lifted the dead bodies of
three children and spotted two more
corpses: 38-year-old Sarah in the back
and Jen, also 38, in the driver’s seat.
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. No-one had been
wearing a seatbelt. The car’s computer
revealed that Jen had stopped on a
gravel pullout some 21 metres from
the cliff moments before the free fall,
and then accelerated. “I’m to the point
where I no longer am calling this as an
accident,” the county sheriff declared
10 days later. “I’m calling it a crime.”
Back near the Harts’ home in
Woodland, Washington, approximately
900 kilometres to the north, Dana
DeKalb, 58, had yet to hear any of the
gruesome details. But when she saw
the pictures of the overturned vehicle
on TV, she immediately said to her
husband, Bruce, “That’s our neighbours.”
The couple moved from a
California cul-de-sac to this spot in
the foothills of the Cascade mountain
range two decades ago. Their days
usually include some beating back
of the Washington wild, then a
venture on a jet ski or kayak.
But at the end of last summer, their
retirement idyll was interrupted when
a small, frightened girl wrapped in a
fleece blanket rang their doorbell at
1:30 in the morning. There were twigs
in her hair, Bruce noticed as he opened
the door. Her front teeth were missing.
Frantically, the girl explained that she
lived next door and had jumped out of
her second-floor window. “Hide me,”
she pleaded. “They whip us with a belt.”
Torches soon strobed over the front
yard, followed by voices calling,
“Hannah!” Several kids and two
women stood at the DeKalbs’ door.
Without asking permission, Sarah and
Jen entered the house, looking all over
before jetting upstairs to the bedroom,
where Hannah was balled up between
Each social media
post reaffirmed the
same storyline: here
are two mums and
their rehabilitated
kids thriving
against all odds
FROM TOP
A typical Facebook
image of the six
Hart kids; from
left: Sierra, Hannah,
Abigail, Markis (at
back), Devonte
and Jeremiah
with their adoptive
parents Sarah (on
left) and Jen Hart.
the bed and dressing table.
There, Jen took charge and
Dana agreed to leave mother
and daughter in the room
alone. When Hannah came
back down the stairs a minute
later, she stared straight ahead.
“You need to tell these
people you’re sorry,” Jen said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you need to explain
you just had a really bad week.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Dana planned to call
Child Protective Services (CPS)
in the morning. But at 6:30am, the
doorbell rang. They ignored it. An
hour later it sounded again.
This time the DeKalbs relented and
opened the door to see the entire Hart
family standing in a row. Both mothers
were there, but it was Jen who talked for
nearly an hour. She said the kids were
adopted and had been “drug babies”.
She said Hannah was 12, and that
her mum had been bipolar. (Twelve?
Dana thought, looking at Hannah,
the shortest member of the bunch. She
looked much younger.) Hannah’s teeth
were missing, Jen continued, because
she’d knocked them out in a fall and
didn’t want them replaced. The kids
were homeschooled because one of
the boys, Devonte, had been bullied.
“Why?” the DeKalbs asked.
“Hello?” Jen said. “We’re two
lesbian mums with six black kids.”
Dana asked if she could have a
moment alone with Hannah, but
Jen declined, saying, “We do
everything as a family.”
Then Hannah handed over a note
she had scrawled in green letters:
“I’m sorry for telling lies to get
attention. I’m working on being
more honest and finding better ways
to communicate my frustrations.”
Dana didn’t think the note sounded
like something a child would write –
the language smacked of parental
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