Where Is Sarah Hartsfield Now? Inside Her Life Behind Bars After Murdering Her Fifth Husband with a Lethal Dose of Insulin By Emily Blackwood

Dateline took a fresh look at the shocking case of Sarah Hartsfield.

In January 2023, Joseph Hartsfield was rushed to a Texas hospital after his wife called 911 to report that her husband, a diabetic, was unresponsive. He died the following week due to what Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne described as a “suspicious illness” in a Facebook post, per NBC News.

Though Joseph’s manner of death was undetermined, complications from the toxic effects of insulin were listed as one of the causes on his autopsy report. Sarah — who prosecutors later argued had administered a fatal dose of the drug — was charged with his murder.

The former Army sergeant denied killing her husband, and her defense attorneys claimed that it was likely that he caused his own death as he was taking a medication that increased insulin sensitivity. But prosecutors pointed to other violent allegations from Sarah’s past, including a former fiancé she claimed to have killed in self-defense, as evidence of her capability.

“You can just look at her overall history and you can tell that there’s a very evil side to her,” Hawthorne told reporters after her trial began in October 2025, per NBC News. She was found guilty of murder and later sentenced to life in prison.

So where is Sarah Hartsfield now? Here’s everything to know about her life in prison after killing her fifth husband.

Sarah’s fifth husband died from “suspicious illness” in 2023

On Jan. 7, 2023, Sarah reported her husband as unresponsive to 911, per 6KFDM. According to a search warrant, Joseph was “brain dead” when he was hospitalized and was pronounced dead 11 days later, NBC News reported.

Sarah told investigators that she had gone to get him juice and jam, and when she returned to their bedroom, he had vomited on himself. A nurse who was treating him suspected foul play because Joseph’s blood sugar levels continued to drop precipitously even though he had been given glucose to raise them.

“The amount should have been enough to last for hours,” the affidavit read. “In Joseph’s case, his blood sugar kept crashing. This could be a sign of too much insulin in his system.”

According to the document, eight to 10 insulin beds were found on Joseph’s side of the bed. The same day that Joseph was hospitalized, the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office also received a call from the facility where he was being treated to check out a “suspicious illness,” per the department’s Facebook post.

Investigators later discovered that she had a questionable past involving multiple alleged murder plots

While investigating Joseph’s death, officers began to look into Sarah’s past — particularly her tumultuous romantic history that was rife with unsettling allegations. She had been married a total of five times, and Hawthorne alleged to Click2Houston in February 2023 that all of her former partners feared “for their life.”

Much of what they discovered was presented in court during her 2025 trial, NBC News reported.

Sarah’s brother, Cody Smith, testified that he believed his sister intentionally set fire to their grandmother’s home in 2014 after she died and the house was left to him. He and a nephew were asleep inside when the house went up in flames. Though they managed to get out, the residence and the family’s dog did not survive the fire.

Sarah was never charged with any crimes in connection with the fire and has denied any involvement. But her late fiancé’s mother, Doris Jean Swart, testified that Sarah confessed, saying she burned the house down so Cody wouldn’t have it.

In 2021, she allegedly asked her fourth husband, David George, to kill the new wife of her third husband, Christopher Donohue.

Sarah’s daughter, Hannah Donohue, testified that David had told her about the murder plot and that he had almost gone through with it. As planned, he drove from Texas to Arizona to deliver flowers to Christopher’s home, and the exchange was even captured on security video. He previously told Dateline that he did not have a gun on him when he met Christopher and had no intention of killing his wife.

However, when Sarah’s third husband learned of the plot from another daughter and called the FBI, David recanted his confession. Both he and Sarah denied that she had any role in the plan.

Prosecutors reopened a 2018 case involving the death of a former fiancé

On May 9, 2018, Sarah fatally shot her fiancé, David Bragg, in what she has claimed was self-defense, NBC News reported. According to her account, they got into a heated argument after Christopher saw their children outside his usual visitation time, and she claimed she only fired at David after he tried to shoot her.

At the time, a Douglas County attorney in Minnesota concluded that the shooting was justified because Sarah had “no reasonable possibility of retreating.” However, a detective who investigated the case testified during her 2025 murder trial that the shooting was “abnormal” because David’s gun, which was allegedly fired, had no clip.

After her indictment for Joseph’s murder, the Douglas County authorities reopened the case due to new information, per ABC13. Sarah has not since been charged with any crimes in connection with David’s death.

Sarah was convicted of murdering her fifth husband in 2025

In October 2025, Sarah was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, per NBC News. The jury deliberated for about one hour after the seven-day trial.

During her closing argument, Chambers County Assistant District Attorney Mallory Vargas told the jurors that Sarah had thought she had gotten away with Joseph’s murder “because it’s what she’s always done.”

The defense countered that the prosecution had no evidence that Sarah had committed murder and that the past allegations raised do not conclude that “she is a bad person” capable of doing so.

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In addition to the 2014 fire and the 2018 shooting death of David, prosecutors also laid out the evidence that pointed to Sarah. Joseph had allegedly planned on leaving her, and his sister, Jeannie Hartsfield, testified that he was worried his wife would “kill him in his sleep.”

Detective Skyler Rocz told the jury that in the hours before Joseph was hospitalized, Sarah sent messages from his phone to hers of his driver’s license, bank account details and information that would allow her to access his account after his death.

She also claimed that Sarah sent a video to her daughter an hour before Joseph died that showed him “gasping,” which she later deleted.

Where is Sarah Hartsfield now?

Sarah has been serving her life sentence at the William P. Hobby Unit in Marlin, Texas, since October 2025. A week after her trial, she filed an appeal of her conviction and a motion for a new trial. She was also appointed a new legal team for her appeal, after her attorneys were granted their motion to withdraw from the case, Click2Houston reported.

This isn’t the first time Sarah’s had a conflict with her defense. She filed a handwritten motion to the judge after her arrest in 2023, asking to remove her attorney, Keaton Kirkwood, who also filed a motion to withdraw, citing a conflict of interest that couldn’t be resolved, ABC13 reported.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, she’ll be eligible for parole in 2053, when she will be in her late 70s.