A coroner's jury Thursday unanimously ruled that Jennifer and Sarah Hart intended for their six adopted children to die along with them when Jennifer Hart drove her family off a California cliff in 2018.
In the days after the Hart family's SUV was discovered at the bottom of a California cliff, investigators visited their Washington state home and were surprised to find almost no evidence that six children, ranging in age from 12 to 19, lived in the house.
Authorities have recovered skeletal remains near the site where the Hart family's SUV went off the road in Mendocino County, California, in March.
They presented as the ultimate Oregon hippie moms. But peel back the homeschooling, organic food and music festivals, and Jennifer and Sarah Hart appeared to embrace a twisted philosophy on child rearing, according to two tipsters' accounts to authorities in 2013.
A sixth member of the Hart family has been confirmed dead after the clan's SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff last month.
The Hart family packed up and left their home in Washington state shortly after a worker from child protective services visited, a neighbor told the department, according to a case report released Friday.
Jennifer Hart, the mother who drove her family off an oceanside cliff in a fatal crash, had a blood alcohol level that was over the state's legal limit, Capt. Bruce Carpenter of the California Highway Patrol said Friday.
In photos, the Hart family was all smiles, projecting an image of a diverse, modern family with two white mothers and six adopted children.
An autopsy is scheduled Tuesday for a body found near the Northern California site where an SUV plunged off a cliff last month, killing at least five members of a family in what investigators suspect may have been an intentional crash.
Authorities recovered a body near the Northern California site where an SUV plunged off a cliff last month, killing at least five members of a family and leaving three siblings missing.
The mysterious California seaside crash in which at least five members of a family were killed is being labeled a crime by the man heading up the investigation.
