Jennifer Hart/Facebook

Jennifer Hart shared this portrait of her six children in November 2009, months after she and her wife adopted their final three children. From left: Devonte, Jeremiah, Hannah, Abigail, Seirra and Markis.

BY MOLLY YOUNG

As young parents raising six newly adopted children, Jennifer and Sarah Hart tried to conceive a biological child and showed signs they had grown apart, according to records released Wednesday by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

Jennifer Hart felt as if Sarah Hart was so checked out that she was raising their kids on her own, she confessed to a friend in an August 2010 email.

The family died in March when their SUV tumbled off a coastal cliff in Northern California. Authorities have said Jennifer Hart was at the wheel, and they are investigating the crash as a crime. Seven months later, it still has not concluded. The bodies of two of the children have never been recovered.

The cache of newly released emails offers insight into the couple's first years as parents in Minnesota. A forensic analysis company retrieved the messages from electronic devices found at the family's Woodland, Washington home in the days after the crash. The messages are mostly from 2006 to 2010, a period during which Jennifer and Sarah Hart adopted their six children from Texas foster care.

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Jennifer Hart/Facebook/2009

Abigail, left, Jeremiah, Devonte, Hannah and Sierra Hart lived with their parents and brother Markis in Alexandria, Minnesota, until the family moved to West Linn in 2013.

The couple lived in Minnesota before moving to West Linn in 2013. They settled in Washington last year.

They were known for embracing an alternative lifestyle that Jennifer Hart documented on social media.

When an Oregon child welfare investigator went to investigate reports of neglect at the family home in August 2013, Jennifer and Sarah Hart said they embraced natural medicine and shunned traditional doctors and clinics.

But the emails show the family frequently ferried their young children to doctor and dentists appointments in Minnesota. They also relied on modern medicine to conceive a child with a donor’s sperm. Jennifer Hart made an eye doctor appointment for herself in Washington.

They pursued adoption first. They adopted three siblings from southeast Texas in 2006. Even before any of the children moved into their home, they lined up the “best” psychiatrist for the oldest child, Markis, and early-intervention screening for his younger sisters, Abigail and Hannah, who were toddlers.

Jennifer Hart wrote to her Minnesota social worker in January 2006 that they had already registered Markis as a patient at the mental health clinic so that there would not be a wait period by the time he moved in.

Some of the appointments were required by law to finalize their adoptions.

By February 2007, she bragged about the progress he made. She frequently used ellipses rather than periods in her emails.

“Markis just came back from his FINAL Dr. Spaulding visit today... since he has been off meds completely since Nov…” Jennifer Hart wrote to Texas adoption officials in 2007. “Dr. said he didn’t need to come back because he is doing so well.”

The official replied, “That is great!”

Sarah Hart worked at a local department store as Jennifer Hart took care of their growing brood. They couple adopted a second set of Texas siblings, Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra, in 2009.

Jennifer Hart said they had adjusted incredibly well in an email to a friend in March 2009. “You wouldn’t know they are the same kids that came to our home 9 months ago,” she wrote.

She said she had been a “ball of anxiety” before their adoption became final that February. She wrote that a maternal aunt who had been “trying to get them back.”

“Long story… Happy ending -- or beginning moresover.”

In the same message, she detailed another beginning. Sarah had been trying to become pregnant using a donor’s sperm, 10 years after they started discussing the possibility, she said.

“It’s kind of nervewracking… those dang little frozen swimmers sure are expensive too!”

The tensions surfaced in an email weeks earlier between Sarah and Jennifer Hart. Sarah Hart apologized for leaving a doctor’s office in the middle of an appointment as they discussed her pregnancy plans.

“And please don’t be mad that I left, I was just trying to let you have that conversation without any interruptions,” she wrote in February 2009 from her work email account. “I am sorry I didn’t say good-bye.”

Sarah Hart’s belly started to grow, Jennifer Hart wrote to their social worker that July, but a doctor could not find the baby’s heartbeat. The pregnancy had ended, the doctor determined.

“Now we just take it one day at a time,” Jennifer Hart wrote.

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Jennifer Hart/Facebook

Devonte Hart smiles in a screenshot of a video posted by his mother, Jennifer Hart. The pair took a trip together apart from his siblings in summer 2010.

Their relationship became “rollercoasterish,” Jennifer Hart told a friend in August 2010.

“I’m trying to get her to understand the concept of needing space and that I need a ‘break.’”

The break, she wrote, was a trip with Devonte, leaving Sarah Hart to care for the other five children. Friends later told Oregon child welfare investigators that they believed Jennifer Hart favored Devonte and sometimes targeted his siblings for punishment.

Jennifer Hart documented the trip on her Facebook page, saying it was prompted by Devonte asking her to take him to Chicago. They went to the Land of Lincoln, she wrote, then to Green Bay. In a video from the trip, Devonte smiles up at her in a Green Bay Packers hat and jersey as they ride together in a ferris wheel.

Jennifer Hart told her friend in the August 2010 email that she soaked up “every dang moment with that boy.”

“It was difficult coming back,” she wrote. “Not gonna lie. I really loved just being free from the stress and pain of everything.”

She said Sarah Hart had said some hurtful things to her. “For quite some time I have felt very under appreciated, and taken for granted in our relationship… And at times unloved.”

It extended to her children, she wrote. “As a mom, I have felt that I have been raising the kids on my own. (She)admits this too. While she loves them with all her heart, she has not been fully present with me or the kids.”

Investigators discovered few other personal emails after the August 2010 message.

In November 2010, Abigail Hart disclosed to her teacher that her mom, Jennifer Hart, had hit her. Sarah Hart later told police that she had spanked her and pleaded guilty to criminal abuse.

The most recent emails they discovered were mass messages sent to Jennifer’s account. The final email investigators found, sent in December 2017, came from an arthritis foundation. It carried the subject line, “Mind, Body, Spirit - 3 New Year’s resolutions that are easy to keep.”

-- Molly Young

myoung@oregonian.com

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Jennifer Hart/Facebook/2009

Sarah Hart plays a Wii game with her son, Devonte, as siblings Sierra, Jeremiah and Abigail watch.