Chambers County – When 48-year-old Sarah Hartsfield was indicted for murdering her fifth husband in February, stories from across the country about the mother of four’s past started surfacing and unraveling a twisted web.
From her little brother’s bizarre death in 1990 to a murder plot she allegedly concocted, and even the fatal shooting of a fiancé, KPRC 2 has been uncovering more about Hartsfield every step of the way.
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Sarah has not been arrested or charged in connection with the death of any person other than Joseph Hartsfield. Sarah is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
This in-depth, special look at the case comes as Hartsfield is indicted for murder, awaiting trial in Chambers County, and in jail on a $4.5 million bond.
Husband #3
“She would always come back, she’d always call, or we’d see each other and we still remained close. The kids considered us … grandparents,” said Barb Stuart, one of Sarah’s foster mothers.
The four kids came from husband number three, Christopher Donohue. He has declined to speak publicly about the case.
- Sarah and Chris met while stationed at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska
- The couple married in August 1999
- Chris spent more than two decades in the Army, ranked a master sergeant at the end of service, according to a U.S. Army spokesperson
“Every holiday was cool,” said Ryan Donohue, Sarah’s son. “Dinner was always nice … but you didn’t want to make her mad.”
Stuart saw that firsthand.
“She was very demanding of the kids. She expected them to be like little soldiers,” Stuart said. “There were some family services called in a few times, but nothing ever came of it.”
A 2015 Bell County, Texas, sheriff’s office report alleged abuse of the oldest daughter, Ashley, who allegedly had a black eye, whip/lacerations all over her back, and appeared to have broken fingers.
A parent of a friend of Ashley’s made the report to authorities, but when deputies investigated, the report said Ashley told them “She told her friend her mother slapped her and it was an accident.”
Investigators found no evidence of ongoing abuse, according to the report.
“We’d get like spanked by our parents. Our dad would do it sometimes, but never to the extent of what our mom would do,” Ryan Donohue said.
“It was more aggressive?” KPRC 2′s Bryce Newberry asked.
“Very … you didn’t really know when it was going to end,” Ryan Donohue said.
He shared an incident from fourth grade.
“I had stayed home for about a week because my face was all messed up and I had bruises all over my body,” he said. “When I came back, I just in a side conversation, told one of my friends, like, ‘yeah, man, I got to stay home, you know, because my face was messed up.’ And he’s like, ‘dude that’s child abuse.’ I’m like, ‘what’s that?’ and he’s like, ‘your parents can’t do that to you.’”
That was the first time he realized there was a problem.
“She would always be like,’ oh, well, you can tell people whatever you want, but no one’s going to believe you because of the position that I hold in society’,” Ryan Donohue said.
Ryan Donohue said she once admitted to “messing up” a lot as the kids’ mother.
“She was telling us like … ‘You know, I did this wrong. I did that wrong, I did this wrong.’ And you’re like, ‘wow, an apology.’ But then she’ll hit you with, ‘but I was with your dad at the time, and I was so sad being with him, like, it was so hard being married to him. I was just so unhappy. And that that affected me in a way which made me do this’,” Ryan Donohue said. “There is an apology, but … there’s no accountability.”
- Military assignments brought the family back to Fort Hood
- Bought a home in Belton along the Lampasas River
“We lived in a really nice house, really nice neighborhood in Belton.” Ryan Donohue said. “Nice cars out front, you know, so on the outside, everything’s nice, you know?”
But the kids were conditioned with a mindset growing up, he said.
“What happened in the house stays in the house,” Ryan Donohue said.
Their house wasn’t far from Sarah’s first ex-husband, Titus Knoernschild, who worried for years about Sarah popping up again.
“She kept trying to talk on the phone and just causing a lot of harassment and trouble … she would drive over by our house. She’d park outside the house,” Knoernschild said. “We had to let the children know about her and, you know, to be watch out for anything with her.”
But during her third marriage, between 2014 and 2016, extra-marital affairs crossed state lines.
Click on the graphic below to learn more about Sarah’s complicated past relationships.
