The father, mother, police, doctors, and hospital records all tell different stories about that night. Does anyone know the truth?

By Elizabeth Weil
Photographs by Talia Herman

Jennie and Kristian Aspelin have five sons — Lukas, who is six; Johan, who would be four but is dead; and the triplets, Peter, Rudy, and Tommy, who just turned one. Last spring, when the triplets were nearly 113 days old, Johan’s age when he died, Jennie told me about the letter from the donor agency. It arrived around Christmas 2010. At that time, Jennie’s husband, Kristian, wasn’t living at home, as he couldn’t legally share a residence with Lukas, then their only living son. In the letter, the California Transplant Donor Network thanked Jennie and Kristian for Johan’s heart, liver, pancreas, and small bowel and told them the ages of the children whose lives those organs had saved. After reading, Jennie called the California Transplant Donor Network. As she recalled, Johan’s lungs were requested soon after she’d signed the donation papers. Why was no small child breathing with them? The donor network promised Jennie they’d look into the matter, and several weeks later they gave her an…