There was a moment when Sarah Spirit loved her father almost as much as she loved her children.
In 2008, Spirit wrote to a Gilchrist County judge that her father, Don C. Spirit, was battling his own demons and she would rather stand in support than watch him go to jail for beating her up.

“He will die if he goes to prison and it will kill me inside to know I put him there,” Sarah Spirit wrote in a handwritten letter made available to The Sun by the Gilchrist County Clerk of Court.

The family of Sarah Spirit gathered at Wayfair Cemetery on Monday to bid farewell to the 28-year-old mother and her six children, who were tragically killed by Sarah's father just a few days earlier. The funeral was a private affair, in stark contrast to the public memorial service held on Sunday. The solemn event took place on a quiet country road, with five hearses parked before a line of graves covered by a large burial tent.

Sarah Spirit’s mother, Christine Jeffers, mentioned that her daughter may have made poor choices in life, but she cherished her children.

Jeffers stated, “These kids were her world and they loved her just as much.”
The murder-suicide investigation in Gilchrist County has been handed over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which has not yet disclosed many details.