By Matt Stevens
April 27, 2018
>After Jennifer Hart drunkenly drove a sport utility vehicle straight off a 100-foot cliff on the Northern California coast late last month, taking her life and those of her wife and their adopted children, at least two searches began.
>One was for the missing bodies; another was for answers. How, those who knew the Harts wondered, could a family that looked so happy and normal in photos have hidden such a dark life from public view?
>Dozens of pages of reports released this week by child welfare officials offer some clues. Taken together they paint a portrait of a pair of mothers -- one dictatorial and eccentric, the other constantly working and seldom home -- who doled out cruel punishments and perennially withheld food from their six children.
>In the Hart household, any act of insubordination could be severely punished. The children knew this all too well.
>They are like trained robots," one worried caller told the authorities, according to the newly released documents, which describe the family's dynamics.
>"We called them like little soldiers," one former neighbor said of the children.
>In the weeks since the crash, searchers have fanned out along the Pacific coastline looking for the bodies. They have found those of the parents -- Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 38 -- and four of their six children: Markis, 19; Jeremiah, 14; Abigail, 14; and Ciera, 12. As of last week, Devonte Hart, 15, and Hannah Hart, 16, were still missing, but feared dead.