Search intensifying for victims of Mendocino Coast crash

Law enforcement authorities in three states continued their search for additional clues to the fate of a Washington state family who crashed on the north Mendocino Coast last month as reports emerged Monday from Oregon of a previously unpublicized child welfare investigation into the family.

Amid law enforcement's growing belief the driver in the deadly crash north of Westport, Jennifer Jean Hart, 38, deliberately drove her wife and their six children off a cliff to their deaths, Oregon media reported that West Linn, Oregon, police in 2013 handled a child welfare complaint involving at least one of the children. That is in addition to a recent inquiry by Child Protective Services at the address of Jennifer and Sarah Margaret Hart, also 38, in Woodland, Washington, launched just hours before they left town on their ill-fated trip 10 or 11 days ago. Sarah Hart was convicted in 2011 of domestic violence involving a 6-year-old daughter who was bruised during a spanking while the family still lived in Alexandria, Minnesota.

The CHP Monday highlighted physical evidence from the crash scene as the main support for its belief it was intentional, including data from the onboard computer of the family's 2003 GMC Yukon nine-seater indicating the car came to a dead stop about 70 feet from the edge of a wide pullout of Highway 1 before accelerating straight off the sheer cliff wall and plunging 100 feet to the rocky shoreline below.

The CHP also cited the absence of tire friction marks, dirt tire prints or skid marks as bolstering their suspicion that the fatal crash was no accident, CHP Officer Cal Robertson, a spokesman for the agency's northern division, said Monday.

Though the investigation is continuing, “we're leaning toward this was an intentional act,” Robertson said.

The Harts had six children they had adopted out of the foster care system in Texas - all of them products of neglect, abuse or even in utero drug exposure, that could have caused challenging behavioral issues, a close friend said. At least three of the couple's children had disclosed troubling information about the dynamics in their family and their mothers' parenting, however, including 15-year-old Devonte Hart. The boy's repeated requests for food from the family's next-door neighbors in Woodland triggered the most recent child welfare investigation.

But to many, the Harts presented a model of loving, nurturing, committed parenting, and their children a remarkable example of their parents' devotion.

“You cannot believe what the friends of this family have gone through with trying to assimilate what they know about this family and what the news is now having to present,” said Charlotte Price of Portland, whose two musician daughters were extremely close to the Harts and who knew them well herself.

That image collides now with media reports out of Portland citing a child welfare complaint filed in 2013 with police in the Portland suburb of West Linn, where the Harts lived until last May. Police reportedly generated a report and referred the matter to state Human Services. But the report has not yet been made public, and police representatives contacted Monday by The Press Democrat said they needed more time to produce the document. With three of six children still missing Monday, officers from multiple agencies were coordinating an investigation that includes searching alternate routes of travel between Woodland, the family's home since last May, and Westport, a distance of 550 miles.

Mendocino County Sheriff's Lt. Shannon Barney, who has been coordinating search and rescue on the coast, said he “trying to make one big push” on Wednesday, arranging for agencies to help search the area by air, water and ground before a significant rainstorm arrives Thursday and makes searching more difficult, if not impossible.

“It's going to churn up the ocean,” he said.

The Harts were last seen at home March 23, though they did not answer the door when a child protective service worker came in response to the neighbors' call earlier in the day concerning the children's welfare.

Neighbors Dana and Bruce DeKalb had been worried since one of the daughters, Hannah Hart, then about 15, came in the middle of one night last summer to beg for help escaping home, saying she had been abused by her parents. Her two front teeth were missing, Bruce DeKalb said.

Then about two weeks ago, Devonte began coming daily, sometimes multiple times a day, asking for food for himself and his siblings, saying they were denied food when they were punished and were hungry.

Following a week of Devonte's visits the DeKalbs called Child Protective Services. By the next morning, the Harts were gone.

When a German tourist discovered the wreckage of their car three days later at the base of the cliff near Westport, it was smashed and overturned on the rocks as the tide came in. Three of the siblings - Abigail Hart, and Jeremiah Hart, both 14, and Markis Hart, 19 - had been thrown from the car and were found along the shore, emergency responders said. Their parents were found in the wreckage.

Authorities say there has been no sign of the other siblings - Devonte, Hannah, 15, and Cierra Hart, 12 - despite a continuing search along the Mendocino Coast and potential travel routes, as well as efforts to account for them some other way, the CHP said.

“We don't know if they're in the ocean or if they're in another location, so we're certainly not ruling anything out at this point,” Robertson said.