Juan Creek Bridge, Mendocino, CA 95488
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Author: Jewls Krueger
On the morning of March 26, 2018, a 2003 GMC Yukon was found at the bottom of a roughly 100 foot cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway in Mendocino County, California, near the small community of Westport. Inside and around the wreck were the bodies of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, a married couple, and three of their six adopted children.
Investigators eventually determined that Jennifer Hart had driven the family off the cliff deliberately, in what the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office officially ruled a murder-suicide.
Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Hart, both 38 at the time of their deaths, met in college at Northern State University in South Dakota and married in 2009. Between 2006 and 2009, they adopted two sets of three biological siblings from Texas through the foster care system: Markis, Hannah, and Abigail in 2006, and Devonte, Jeremiah, and Ciera in 2009.
The Hart Family - Public Domain
The family lived first in Minnesota, then Oregon, and finally moved to Woodland, Washington in 2017. Outwardly, the Harts cultivated a carefully curated public image, sharing photos of the children at music festivals and family road trips. Devonte Hart had become briefly viral in 2014 after a photograph of him tearfully hugging a police officer at a Portland protest was widely shared online.
Behind that image, however, the family was the subject of multiple abuse and neglect investigations across three states dating back to 2008. In 2010, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to a domestic assault charge in Minnesota after one of the children showed up to school with bruises. Investigations in Oregon similarly closed without removing the children from the home.
By March 2018, neighbors of the Harts in Woodland, Washington had grown alarmed. The family next door reported that 15 year old Hannah had recently come to their home and begged for help, saying her parents were "racist" and were withholding food as punishment. Washington's Department of Social and Health Services opened a new investigation and attempted contact with the Harts on March 23, 2018.
Further Reading
The family was not home. Records later showed they had already left the state. On March 26, 2018, the GMC Yukon was discovered upside down on the rocks just off Highway 1, near a turnout north of Westport, California.
Found at the scene were the bodies of Jennifer and Sarah, along with Markis (19), Jeremiah (14), and Abigail (14). The bodies of Ciera (12), Hannah (16), and Devonte (15) were recovered separately over the following weeks and years along the same stretch of coastline.
A multi agency investigation concluded that Jennifer Hart, with a blood alcohol content of 0.102, had driven the SUV deliberately through a dirt turnout and over the edge of the cliff at full throttle. Sarah Hart and the children had toxic levels of the antihistamine diphenhydramine in their systems. A search of cell phone records showed that Sarah had searched online for fatal medication doses and questions about hypothermia and drowning in the days before.
In April 2019, after a multi day inquest, a Mendocino County jury formally ruled all the children's deaths homicides at the hands of Jennifer Hart. They also ruled that Jennifer and Sarah Hart died by suicide.
The crash site sits along a remote, windswept stretch of California Highway 1 about four miles north of the town of Westport. There is no permanent memorial at the site. Please be respectful of the surrounding area and exercise extreme caution along the cliffs, which are unstable and dangerous.
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