Criminology - Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

Ruby Franke began making videos on YouTube and, over time, created a pretty large following. The videos on her channel, named 8 Passengers, focused on her family of eight as they navigated through life. However, the audience began to see some disturbing signs in the Franke's parenting. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt. Jodi was a licensed therapist who began working with the Franke family. But she bonded with Ruby to the point that she began following her advice and teachings. This relationship was combustible, and it caused irreparable harm to the Franke children. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 303 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford. How are you doing, man? I'm doing good. I'm just happy that I was able to get here at a reasonable time to get started because I got stuck behind one of the slow poaks here in southwest Florida. There's a lot of those down here, unfortunately. But how are you doing? I'm doing great and I did have to wait on you a little bit, but you explained the reason and I bought it.

I've actually had a very good week and I can't say that all the time, but yeah, so I hope it continues. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Renee Moore jump out at our highest level and also Minty B Queen. So great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks to everyone that goes out of their way to support the show. it really helps us out. And for anyone else that would like to, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up. So just a quick reminder, we're only about a month and a half away

from CrimeCon, 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee. That runs May 31st to June 2nd at the Gaylord Opry land. It's the biggest true crime convention in the world. Morph and I go every year. And we'll be on podcast row and we'd love to see you there. If you need last minute passes, Go to crimecon.com and use our promo code criminology to save 10% off your standard badge. And don't forget that we'll be holding our annual Joint Criminology T-Cat meet up with our friends and listeners. That'll be right on premises at CrimeCon. It's happening Saturday night, June 1st at 9 p.m. at the Gay Lord Opry land inside the fuse bar. So that should be a lot of fun.

All right. So now that we have all of that out of the way, let's jump into this week's case. and it's one that has been unfolding for a while, and it's made pretty big headlines. There are multiple factors involved here that cause people to have trouble ignoring this case. We're talking about the crimes committed by a big YouTube star named Ruby Frankie and her business partner Jody Hildebrain. By the end, these two women did not want the details of their actions to come to light at trial

because not only would it bring down their YouTube empire, but it would also cause them to be despised by just about everyone, whether they watch them on YouTube or not. The first time most of the world heard of Ruby Frankie, she was making videos on YouTube with her husband, Kevin, and their children after the birth of their last daughter, the Frankie's six child. They have two boys and four girls.

As we talk about the children, we won't be using the first names of the younger friends. for as they're still all minors. The family's YouTube channel name, Eight Passengers, referred to the family of eight navigating the wild ride of life together. At some point, that family ride derailed. And if Ruby gets out of prison at any point, it's unlikely that any of her children will be clamoring to rekindle their relationship after what she did to them. Ruby and Kevin weren't the first ones in their family to begin vlogging together. Many of their family members already had and still have their own channels today.

It was a fun hobby that they could all be involved in and kind of just a new way to keep in touch. The couple, mostly Ruby, documented the first days of school, things like their oldest daughter's first time making bread, family fun, the children's musical performances, getting ready for church, and just the rest of their daily lives. The kids made videos on their own sometimes, but again, the majority of the filming was done by Ruby. To viewers, the family seemed like an average family, one that they could identify with, and it became a pretty big hit.

In September 2015, the channel had half a million subscribers. As time went on, the videos got more polished with better editing and lighting. The channel began to focus more on parenting and homeschooling. But the subscriptions did not slow down. Somewhere around the end of 2018, Ruby Frankie began receiving therapy from a life coach named Jody Hildebrand. Their oldest son, Chad, also began to receive counseling from her. It was $900 a month for Chad,

and as a teenager, he was expected by his parents to pay for it himself. Jody Hildebrandt was a licensed therapist with a long resume. She had worked at the Cirque Lodge, a luxury addiction recovery center in Uttal. Celebrities rumored to have received treatment at the facility include Lindsay Lohen, Kirsten Dantz, Mary Kate Olson, and Richie Sambora. People paid big bucks for what people like Jody could offer them there. After leaving Cirque Lodge, Jody founded Connections Classroom, an online counseling and educational program.

She was so trusted that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would once refer its members to her for counseling. based on Jody Hildebrand's resume and reputation, it would seem that her work with the Frankie family would help them. In reality, it seemed to tear them apart. In 2012, Jody's license was suspended for 18 months. One man, a former patient of hers, explained to the Salt Lake Tribune. We came there for marriage counseling and she pulled us into her porn marathon. He also complained that she had been speaking about him to people at Brigham Young University and also to LDS leaders at his church.

It's unethical for a therapist to share details of the people who are trusting her with their most intimate secrets. The man also told the Salt Lake Tribune, she just lied wherever she went to further an agenda to destroy my life. Although this patient didn't have an addiction to pornography, this is what Jody singled out. And it was like she tried to force him to admit that he did. The patient said she would only threaten me that if I didn't take more sessions and have my wife take more sessions, the alleged addiction would destroy my life. And these sessions weren't cheap. They cost up to $2,000 a month.

It was the rumors of his addiction to pornography. and his deviant behaviors that cost him his privileges at church and got him kicked out of Brigham Young University. So, you know, here's a guy who wanted his marriage to be better, and instead, he essentially lost everything. There were multiple other men who feel that Jody came between them and their wives and tried to single them out as porn addicts, and Ruby Frankie's husband, Kevin Frankie, was one of them. Ruby was getting more and more involved in Jody's teachings as time went on. In 2019, Ruby talked in a vlog about listening to the Connections podcast. Sharp-eyed viewers noticed the word connections

and some of the key words from the program written on the white board used to homeschool the children. It was the beginning of a spiral into Ruby being controlled by this therapist. By June 2020, the Eight Passengers Channel had two and a half million subscribers, and it was really flourishing. While many of the videos stayed lighthearted, Ruby showed more and more of what is at worst a mean streak and at best a deep misunderstanding of development.

The COVID-19 pandemic meant a lot of quarantine videos and staying home. Around this time, the family was relatively isolated. Friends and family stopped coming over, even on big holidays, but it didn't seem odd because a lot of people were trying to be careful around that time, and there were even laws or guidelines in some areas about how large gatherings could be. A lot of people would just forego an event rather than go through getting a test. So there were a lot of absences in many areas of life. It turns out this may have been a sign of something to come.

aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, cousins and friends had all been cut off for supposedly living in distortion or in a state where someone's views of the world if they were at odds with rubies caused them to be ridiculed and cut off by her. But this was hard to really see since it was camouflaged by the COVID distancing. One of the channel's biggest controversies came around May 2020, after Ruby's oldest son, Chad, revealed that his bed had been taken away from him as punishment, and that he had been sleeping on a beanbag for seven months. He had pranked his younger brother, waking him up in the middle of the night and telling him to get ready for a trip to Disneyland. Chad returned from the Anasazi Foundation's Wilderness Therapy Program, a 10-week camp for troubled use, which people thought was an awful parenting decision. It seems that Rubin Kevin didn't announce that they had sent Chad to a wilderness camp

until people noticed he had been missing from every video they uploaded for a while. They didn't immediately reveal why they sent him, but in a later video, Ruby claimed he has always been a bit of a troublemaker and had actually broken one of his siblings' bones when he was younger, which we'll talk about later. While Chad was living on his own in the desert with vegan food rations, he didn't care for. He actually gained 10 pounds, and this was a red flag for many people.

Now aware of what the children, at least Chad, were going through, the public was outraged, people unsubscribed and signed petitions for CPS to investigate the family. Kevin Frankie told ABC News 4 Utah, it burned down the YouTube channel overnight. We lost 90% of our income. He went on to say that life during that period was hard for their family. The Frankies insisted that mental health professionals had backed up their. decisions and that they were all in the best interest of their children. I think it's clear that this is an instance that shows if you're in the public eye, how the public's perception of you can greatly affect what happens to you. And I think this has happened to a lot of people on

YouTube. You know, you can have a meteoric rise and many people have gaining millions of subscribers, the money starts to become astronomical for some. But you're really putting yourself out there. Not only your words, but you're also videoing yourself. There's pressure to put out videos as often as you can. And there are countless examples of people who have lost it all through their own action, whether it's begging people for, donations. I've seen that getting into, you know, beefs with other people and, you know, their audience

turns against them. There's all kinds of ways for it to happen, but it does quite frequently. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of cases of misconduct, somebody, you know, touching somebody inappropriately or saying inappropriate things that are, you know, not accepted. That can also cause a lot of problems. I think when you're in that spot, like some of those YouTube people are, it can create an all new set of potential problems and maybe highlight any problems that are already there in the first place. And I think there's an added element here with the Frankie family, because it is the entire family. So viewers are not just getting to hear from or learn about what the adults are doing, it's all the children as well. And if they feel as if the children are being

mistreated, which it sounds like is exactly what happened in this situation, I think it's going to be even worse. In the same video that Chad revealed he had lost his bed privileges, he and one of his younger sisters, who had both had their phones taken away, told Ruby that they didn't have any friends. She tried to specify that they met no friends nearby. And they both both insisted that no, they literally meant that they didn't have any friends at all, neither of them. With homeschooling and having no phone, Ruby was pretty much their only interaction each day that wasn't with other siblings. Many people noticed how the children seemed to accept this isolation and felt that it was a sign of Ruby's emotional abuse.

This public shaming brought Ruby and Jody closer as Ruby sought more help and counseling during what she considered a hard time. It seemed like she was on a perpetual quest for self-improvement. That year, Ruby and Kevin began to appear in videos together on Jody's Connections YouTube channel. As bad as things had been to that point, it seems like 2021 is when things really started going downhill. In March of that year, Jody began to tell the Frankies that shadow figures were haunting and chasing her. After a brief stay with friends, she claimed they had held her hostage and she escaped at Jody's home in Ivan's. Utah. Kevin witnessed strange things happening. Proof of the supernatural entities haunting Jody. He told ABC4 Utah there were crashes in the basement while we were talking upstairs and plates in the

kitchen just flying off by themselves, full speed smashing on the wall and falling to the floor. Kevin added, I can't explain it, but I saw it with my own eyes. I don't have any way to explain it other than there's some crazy shit going on. While all of this, if true, is certainly interesting and bizarre, it's really the catalyst that made things worse because not long after all of this happened, Ruby and reluctantly Kevin invited Jody to live in their house in Springville. Kevin would turn into what he called the Holmes resident exorcist. Due to Jody's troubles, he would have to perform.

nightly blessings after Jody would enter a trans-like state. It wasn't long before Jody was sleeping in Ruby's bed without Kevin. The two would have visions together. One of the visions we know Ruby had was riding a lion named Charles in Heaven. Another was a vision of herself walking on water with Jesus. Kevin told ABC4, Utah, they'd go and lock themselves in a room for four or five hours, and they'd come out and be on cloud nine. So if you're an adult like Kevin Frankie living in this situation,

number one, it has to be very strange. But then just imagine how strange it must have been for the kids. And I'm getting some vibes here more of like some, maybe some of the conjuring movies. I don't know if you've seen any of those. Yeah, they're pretty scary movies, some crazy stuff going on.

Yeah, they're all loosely based on, you know, Ed and Lorraine Warren and they're good movies. But anytime someone calls themselves the resident exorcist, I start to think, you know, all right, something strange is going on in the home. And then obviously, when you talk about Ruby and Jody, locking themselves in the bedroom together for four or five, five hours at a time. Most people are going to find that very odd. Yeah, when you start sleeping in the bed together and you kick your husband out of the bed, that's even more bizarre and not very common. So I think this whole situation from this alleged paranormal activity to these visions, it's just really setting up for a strange scenario with a lot of odd things going on that could make a dangerous environment.

And especially when you factor in the kids, right? How dangerous is all of this going to be for them? Whatever was happening in the home was definitely attracting attention, both online and off. According to Kevin, when a social worker came for their unannounced welfare check, Ruby and her youngest daughter were baking together and doing a puzzle, almost as if they had been tipped off. But all of this activity put a strain on the Frankie marriage. And toward the end of July, 2022,

Ruby and Kevin Frankie separated. By this time, Ruby had begun deleting or removing videos from her YouTube channel, mostly ones where her parenting and her choices were criticized. We only have access to archive content now, but it looks like the final eight passengers video with Ruby in it was uploaded on January 3, 2022. This video documented one of the kids' baptisms. After this, Ruby's sister Julie posted a vlog of the children with the rest of the family,

but not their parents. Ruby was still on social media, but mostly spending time with Jody. They were now business partners with the YouTube channel connections and the eight passengers Instagram account, which had been changed to the Moms of Truth channel, offering parenting classes. After this, Ruby explained that because she was accused of exploiting her children, she wouldn't be sharing them with the world. This allowed the children.

children who were homeschooled to become much more isolated from the world. Ruby began spending even more time with Jody once her kids were out of sight from the public. By September 22, Sherry Frankie, who was now in college, was no longer speaking to her parents. It's unclear whether she decided to cut them off or if she somehow upset Ruby and was basically being shunned. She was in touch with the rest of her family, though, like Ruby's siblings and parents who had been cut off by Ruby around 2020. As bad as things were for the Frankie children in 2022, they would get even worse in 2023. By this time, Ruby was living in Ivan's with Jody.

She brought the two youngest children with her, and sometimes the youngest of the middle daughters, referred to as J. The oldest of the two middle daughters referred to as A seems to have been mostly left to fend for herself in Springville. She worked as a lifeguard there, even though Ruby and the other children were in Ivans with Jody. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.

A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. On August 30th, 2020, very early in the morning, Ruby left Jody's home with Jay, the youngest of the two middle daughters. They were headed back to Springville, where the children's doctors and dentists were. Jay had a dental appointment later in the day, and it was apparently just easier to drive there early. just before 11 a.m. on the same morning. Ruby's youngest son, referred to as R, had plans of his own. The 12-year-old's only goal was survival. With Ruby gone, R quietly unlocked the handcuffs he was bound with and slipped out the sliding glass door of the home. In socks, he limped through the hot dirt to a neighbor's home knocking on their door, but no one answered.

He went to another home and knocked weakly. Music could be heard from inside. but no one answered. He didn't give up. He made it to a third home where a man answered the door, somewhat hesitantly. R asked if he could do him a favor and take him to the nearest police station.

The interaction between R and this neighbor was recorded on ringing doorbell security video. The neighbor asked R, what was happening, and R responded, it's personal business. He then sat down on the man's porch. As the neighbor gets closer,

he realizes that R is in bad shape. As a woman comes outside and comforts her, the neighbor calls 911. This 911 call is released to the public, and we're going to play a portion of it now. I think it'll be pretty clear just how upset this neighbor was to have this young boy showing up at his door in such terrible shape. I'm on the address of your emergency. Okay, and the phone number you're calling from. Tell me exactly what's happened. I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help,

and he said he just came from a neighbor's house, and we know there's been problems at this neighbor's house. He's emaciated. He's got tape around his legs. He's hungry and he's thirsty. Okay. Is your door locked? No, I'm sitting outside with him on the front patio.

Okay. And he asked us to call the police. What's name? afraid. What's your last name? He's 12 years old. Yes. Okay. Can you ask him his date of birth? Can you tell me your birthday? Okay. And, um, is, are the neighbors out of their home or is anybody looking for them that you can see? Uh, no. We are homes far enough away. I'm not sure. How did you get out of the house? Uh, which. He went out to the

He said he just left through the porch at the neighbor's house. Her name is Jody Hildebrand. And she lives two doors up the street. Yeah, out and her Cyanne, and the houses are far apart. So he walked just under a block to get to our house. He rang my doorbell and asked me to call the police. Does he seem to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol? I don't think so, but he's very thirsty.

Do you need an ambulance? I don't think he needs to know any. Let's all let the cops decide that, but his ankles are taped up, and he won't tell us why. Okay. But he has duct tape around each ankle. Yeah, there's sores around him. I think the good chance he's been.

Oh, and he has been around his ankles. I mean, his wrists as well. Okay, this boy has been. He's, he's, he's, he's obviously been, I think he's been, he's been, he's been, he's obviously covered in wounds. Okay. Let's get the paramedics headed over that way, okay? Oh, that's a good idea, too. Let's see.

Um, has he told you where his mom or dad are? Haven't asked him that, hmm? Yeah. You know where you mom in? I really got me a good. Yeah, I'm sure that, that doesn't matter, son. Do you know where your mom and dad are? Well, actually, I don't know where my mom is, but I do know where my dad is.

He's not, not here. No, no way. No way here. Okay. No, he doesn't seem to him. He says he knows where his mom is, but. He doesn't know where his dad is. That's correct.

I think you know where my dad is. Is his mom home? He just says he doesn't live around here. Is his mom in the area? Is your mom around here? Have you seen her lately? He doesn't know where she is right now. Does he know his mom's name?

What's your mom's name? Ruby Frankie. Ruby Frankie is his mom's name. So no doubt, I mean, that's kind of heartbreaking 9-1-1. one call. And we've talked about this before more of, you know, someone showing up at your house, ringing the doorbell, let's say, you answer it and it's a person in distress. Now, in this case, it's a, it's a child. With adults, at least from my point of view, there's always a little bit of suspicion. You know, is this a trap? What's going on here? I think that is obviously much less when

when you see a child in this situation? What are the odds that a child's going to be trying to con you and want to hurt you? And I definitely don't think this man took it that way. When we mentioned that he was hesitant to open the door, I'm hesitant to open the door for anyone, to be honest with you, because if I don't know them, then I don't know what's going on. But it had to be such a shock for he and his why. Yeah, it's not every day that somebody shows up at your house, you know, with bindings on or handcuffs, whatever the situation he could, you know, he's describing this 911 call. You can tell he's affected and it sounds like he's on the verge of tears just describing what this kid looks like to the dispatcher. So it had to be quite, quite shocking for him to, to be experiencing this. Needless to say

that after such a disturbing 911 call, police quickly were dispatched. to the neighbor's house to see what exactly had happened to this little boy. Before officers made it to the neighbor's house, Jody flagged them down. She was looking for a little boy who was missing. Officers found it quite a coincidence that they were responding to a call about a little boy, but Jody didn't follow them to the neighbor's house. She headed straight home and went inside and called Ruby. Maybe she tried to clean up the house a bit, but we'll never know.

does seem that no matter what she knew, she knew that things might be turning bad for her. In the ambulance, R told officers two of his sisters were still in the home. He had no idea that Ruby had taken Jay to the city with her earlier that morning. He also revealed that he hadn't seen E in over a month, even though they were both living in the same home. R had no idea that E was also being tortured, and she was constantly told she was bad. Back at Jody's house, officers strategically surrounded the property and banged on the front door. Jody answered pretty shyly, trying not to open the door all the way. She had her cell phone in one hand up near her face and told officers that she was on the phone

with her attorney. One of the officers heard on his body cam audio saying, that's great. Step aside. After a careful sweep of the home, police found 10-year-old eating, sitting silently and motionlessly in a closet hiding. Her head had been shaved. and she was wearing jeans and a polo-type shirt. Officers first thought she was a boy and continued to try to find the little sister,

R had told them about. They tried to convince her to come out of the closet or to let them carry her out, but she wouldn't move. She wouldn't say much other than that she was nervous. They brought her a personal pizza and a milkshake. After she finished the whole pizza, they brought her a large pizza, and she ate two slices. Finally, after four hours, she stood and agreed to walk out with the EMTs.

Once E was safe and in an ambulance, Ruby, Frankie, and Jody Hildebrand were both taken into custody and arrested. They were each charged with six counts of child abuse. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Washington County Attorney Eric Clark called Jody's home a concentration camp-like setting. He said Ruby sat motions. blanking at detectives as they asked her questions. The only time she talked was to ask for a lawyer.

Jody claimed to want to cooperate, but felt that she couldn't talk on the advice of her lawyer. And I'm going to go back to what, you know, police encountered when they entered this home. You know, here's a 10-year-old girl, E, with a shaved head, obviously scared, to the point where she's hiding in the closet won't even come out. And my thought, Morph, is that this girl must have been starving.

You know, anyone who's had a 10-year-olds, most 10-year-olds eat a certain way. Many of them can be picky, but they don't normally eat a lot. This girl ate a personal pizza, drank a milkshake, and then ate two slices of a large pizza. So that tells me she must have been starving. Yeah, you really can visualize a lot of this going on, this scene unfolding to where you've got a starved child who's eating a pizza and a half, stuck in the closet, afraid to come out, head shaved, and the boy that escaped, he's handcuffed. And then you have the summary of it was a concentration camp like setting, it just really paints an awful picture of what life for these kids in that home must have been like. At the hospital,

officers discovered that E was R's little sister. They still couldn't find Jay, who R had thought was there with them at the house. Officers went to the Frankie's home in Springville, but no one was there. The house was locked and the windows were all covered by blinds. Authorities finally found both of the middle daughters with Jody and Ruby's friend, Pam Boddster, an American Fork, Utah. Ruby had called Pam, probably after receiving a frantic call from Jody about our escaping, and asked Pam to take them to her home due to a family emergency. The oldest of the middle daughters, A, left for work early due to a family emergency. It was Pam who picked her up from work. Pam, who was also president of the Connections Foundation,

acted like it was normal for them to be there. They were usually supposed to clean her. her house while they were there. The girls eventually went to live with the oldest Frankie sibling, Sherry. So now we have someone else in the mix, Pam, who was also, you know, part of this connections foundation. But the point that struck me was that she was pretty nonchalant, right? She acted like, yeah, it was pretty normal what was going on. And that these girls were supposed to clean her house while they were there. I mean, Morph, what is going on? Yeah, it almost sounds like some kind of forced child labor or something. And Pam is higher up in this company. We don't know what was said to her, but she seemed to want to be involved here. And maybe it was fear that she

would lose her position and decided to help Ruby and Jody. But it definitely doesn't look a good situation. And I think we need to point out, too, she hasn't been charged with any crimes or any wrongdoing. But the one thing you would have to say is that it seems as though this was a nightmarish scenario for these kids who were living there. The more police learned about the entire situation, the more disturbing the details were. And had it not been for our escaping, these details might still not be known. This was not ours first attempt. but escape either. In July, he had run away from the home unsuccessfully one morning at 2.30 a.m. Ruby woke up and noticed that R. was gone. She woke Jody, and they rushed to the car to search for him

after driving for quite a while. They found R walking down the road, which they later called a miracle. He had been headed to town to go for help. They took him back home, and after this, his punishments increased. His shoes were taken from him. And at bedtime, he was actually tied to Ruby so that he could not escape at night. According to a journal Ruby kept, she decided after the first attempted escape that her two youngest children, quote, were never going home. After this, Jody and Ruby began looking for even more secluded land in Arizona. She added a journal entry that read, we will drop them like high. potatoes out in the desert, their new home. While there is not an overt threat here against the

children, dropping the kids off in the Arizona desert can clearly be taken as a threat against them. R likely saved the lives of all four minor siblings when he escaped. Who knows what may have happened to him in a secluded desert area in Arizona with no neighbors around. In November December 2023, Kevin Frankie filed for divorce. One month later on December 18th, Ruby Frankie entered a guilty plea to four charges of second-degree child abuse. The plea agreement revealed even more abuse. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, by pleading guilty, Ruby acknowledged that she had forced her son's head underwater, cut off his oxygen by smothering him with her hands, and kicked him while wearing boots. This was without a doubt proof of severe abuse on Ruby's

part. Her deal also required her to testify against Jody at her eventual trial. But just over a week later, two days after Christmas on December 27, 2003, Jody Hilderbrandt officially entered her own guilty plea to the four charges of second-degree aggravated child abuse. Two counts each were dropped in exchange for Ruby's and Jody's pleas. And all of this morph is just very hard to hear and extremely hard to picture, although it's almost impossible not to try to picture it in your head. It's enough to make you sick. In January 2024, Kevin Frankie asked the court to order Jody Hildebring to pay restitution to his children, ENR, so that they could afford the therapy and medical care.

They needed to try to get through this nightmare that they had suffered. at the time her Ivan's home was listed for sale at over $5 million. After this, a judge ordered that Jody take her home off the market until after sentencing. On February 20th, 20th, 204, Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrand were both sentenced to at least one, but up to 15 years in prison for each charge to be served consecutively. On paper, this is a minimum of four years. and a maximum of 60.

Their actual time behind bars is limited to 30 years by law because the charges they were convicted of are second degree felonies, which have a 30 year maximum. There's no way for them to serve more than the maximum for two of the charges. Ultimately, the length of their actual sentence will be determined by the members of the Utah board of pardons and parole. part of the plea deal Ruby took included testifying truthfully against Jody if her case went to trial, which was an agreement by the Washington County Attorney's Office to remain neutral. If Ruby agreed to plead guilty and serve time in prison,

they would agree not to argue against parole at her future hearing. Jody didn't make the same deal as Ruby. Prosecutors can and likely will argue that she's stays behind bars for longer. First, it could be argued that none of this would have happened if it weren't for her. Sure, Kevin seemed to have let Ruby do as she pleased, and she had a more authoritarian parenting style, but none of the videos before 2018 come close to what we see happening after Jody came into the picture. Second, Jody is a licensed therapist as a mandated reporter, where Ruby, an overwhelmed mother with a high school education, may not have understood the full

extent of abuse were the law. Jody certainly did. She was educated, trained, and licensed. She had a duty to report abuse, and instead she decided to inflict it. In court, Judge John Walton said to Jody before sentencing, adults with specialized training, in particular, are supposed to protect children. You didn't do that in this case. And finally, Jody likely only agreed to plead guilty because the writing was on the wall. A drawn-out, public trial, that would reveal all the details with Ruby, her co-conspirator, closest confidant, spilling everything, or a quick and quiet plea would both likely see her end up in the same place. So obviously, you know, what both Ruby and Jody did was horrific.

But I did think it was interesting that the judge kind of made a distinction, especially when it came to Jody, because she, She did have the training. She was a licensed therapist, basically saying she had a duty to report this abuse and instead she inflicted it. I mean, I don't think he was letting Ruby off the hook by any means, but there was definitely an emphasis on his part that Jody should have known better. Yeah, I think they're both depleting for sure.

Jody was a trained expert and should have known. what constituted abuse just from her profession. But as a parent, as a mom, Ruby should have known that the stuff she was doing to her own children was just against the law. I mean, it's common sense as a parent. You can't handcuff your children and starve them and do the kinds of things that she did. So for her to allow that to happen, ultimately, you know, it's her job to protect her children. and she participated in abusing them. Yeah, I think it's a great point.

While the judge did make a distinction, I can't see any way how Ruby would have thought all of these things that she was doing was not child abuse or was not wrong. Ruby and her family placed most of the blame on Jody and felt that Ruby was simply misguided and manipulated. According to Fox 13 now, a statement released by Ruby's attorneys offered the explanation that Jody systematically isolated Ruby from her extended family, older children, and her husband Kevin. This prolonged isolation resulted in Ruby being subjected to a distorted sense of morality shaped by Jody's influence.

according to ABC4, Kevin Frankie has called Jody Hildebrand a cult leader. And I'll be honest with you, Morve, you know, as we went through this case, as we, you know, went through the research, that was always kind of in the back of my mind. Whether this was a quote unquote cult, I don't know, but it did seem as though Jody Hildebrand exhibited some of the things you see from cult leaders. Yeah, I think when you look at cult leaders, they have a personality and a controlling way about them that influences a lot of people.

And often those people that follow these cult leaders, it's almost like they're brainwashed. And they start doing things that to most people are out of the norm. And we definitely see that here with Ruby. And the other thing that you often see when everything comes out about some type of cult is that there's a systematic approach to separate the members from their family. You see that in a lot of instances. It's almost like there's a handbook. Many people watching this case unfold place a lot of blame on Kevin for what happened to the children, even at the hands.

hands of Ruby and Jody. The argument is that as their father, he should have protected them. Kevin shouldn't have allowed Jody to come between him and his wife, and certainly not allowed Jody to start influencing Ruby's parenting. By the time Ruby and Jody were arrested, Kevin had been out of the lives of his children for over a year. Many people feel that Kevin abandoned his children. But Kevin said to ABC News 4, I was completely cut off. And I think the pushback to that would be, well, if you're being cut off from your children, that's when you get the police involved, you get the courts involved because you have a right to see your children. So I think people fault him for not taking those steps and trying to be with his children.

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Growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. There are some events in Jody's past that make it seem that most of this was Jody's pattern, not rubies. In 2010, the American Fork Police Department dealt with Jody when a teenager who was her nephew reported that she was abusing him. The teen described Jody forcing him to sleep outside and putting duct tape over his mouth. Authorities were unable to make contact with Jody for an investigation into her nephew's allegations. Two weeks later, Jody reported the teen as a runaway. This was the third time.

the teen had run away. When officers found him, he refused to go back to her and claim that Jody tried to make him confess his sins and that Jody had tried to break him down. All of this is almost exactly what happened with the two youngest Frankie children. And again, it's almost as if Jody had some type of playbook. Even if most of what happened to the Frankie kids was because of Jody, it really didn't take much to push Ruby to abuse her children. Long before she met Jody, Ruby had a history of ignoring the children's very serious medical problems.

When Sherry was an infant, she suffered a very severe abdominal issue, which could have been fatal if it was untreated. Ruby didn't want to take her to the emergency room, but Kevin insisted. An emergency surgery to fix a folded intestine saved Sherry's life. She was in the hospital for a week after the surgery. Ruby later claimed that she didn't want to take her in because she thought she would be laughed at for overreacting like all first time parents do. When R was about eight months old, Ruby refused for an entire week to seek medical treatment for a hurt leg. It turned out that he had a broken femur. The official story is that R fell off of the couch, but it's pretty suspicious for such a small fall to break such a strong bone.

Many think it may have been caused by abuse from either Ruby or Kevin, but it seems like Ruby may have been setting up to reveal that it had been Chad who caused it. But no matter how it happened, a broken femur should have been addressed by a doctor much sooner. Sherry needed another emergency room trip. This time when she was a teenager, she had been suffering from chronic headaches, ringing in her ears. she once mentioned standing up and getting so dizzy that she fell into a wall. And finally, she began to have vision issues. Ruby filmed herself admitting that she was stalling and took an hour long shower, cleaned the bathroom, and then did her hair and makeup so that she didn't have to take Sherry to the hospital.

So I think there's no doubt. There was a pattern on the part of Ruby of not wanting. to get her children help when they needed it. More of imagine breaking your femur. That has a very large bone in the body. How bad would that hurt? And you can't get your mom to take you to the hospital. Yeah, and the one instance,

she mentioned not wanting to overreact. And I sort of get that. I think with your first child, you're so paranoid about every little thing that happens that you're like, should I take them to the hospital? Are they sick? Are they going to be okay? And you just don't know that as a first time parent. But then after you've had a couple kids, a lot more stuff, you know, you don't take it seriously. So with older kids when they get older, I could see her maybe

knowing when it's really important to take them to doctor when it's not. But to take a shower and stall and admit to stall when, you know, her daughter's having all these serious issues, most parents are going to go out of their way to get them to the ER when they see how serious it is. And here she's admittedly stalling and doing everything she can not to take her to the hospital. And not only that, but she's doing it on camera and then uploading it for the world to see. You know, back to your point of, you know, kind of being a new parent. For me, that, that even went into you know, when the kids were older, there were times where we would go to the, hospital, the emergency room. And it would turn out to not be really anything. But my thought was always,

what's the worst that's going to happen? They're going to tell us that it's not that big a deal. Well, that's actually a good thing. But I'm not going to sit around here and, you know, let my child feel terrible, feel like they're suffering without doing everything I can do. Yeah, and one key difference too. At a young age, a child can't tell you what's wrong with them. If they fall down, you don't know if they hit their head or, you know, they can't tell you what their symptoms are or how bad they're feeling. But as an older child, Sherry was complaining about all of these different things that were going on. So she's telling her mom that she needs to go to the hospital.

And that's where Sherry really failed when her own daughter saying, I need to go to the hospital. She's not doing anything about it. As recently as 2022, there was a call for a welfare check on the Frankie children. This is one of more than a dozen calls regarding the Frankie since 2019. School resource officers attempted to check on the children and speak to them at school, but weren't able to make contact. Interestingly, for at least 10 of the calls, officers and not CPS or an ambulance responded. The two middle daughters ended up getting suspended from school because they weren't up to date on their vaccinations.

Sherry and Chad obviously had their vaccinations, but for some reason the two middle daughters weren't up to date. And then eventually, E and R believe that vaccines would kill them. Interestingly, Ruby had no issues taking them to orthodontist appointments or to get prescriptions for acne medication, both being more cosmetic and not medical type of appointments. And I think that's an interesting thing to take note up. It doesn't sound as though it was about the money, right? She's taking them to the orthodontist.

She's getting prescriptions for acne medication, but doesn't want to take them when something, you know, fairly seriously is wrong with them medically. I don't get it. To me, I wonder if it's because she wanted them to look good for their YouTube channel. And the cosmetic stuff was important to her, but not their medical condition.

Oh, man, that's a great point. that I actually had not thought of. You know, was it that everything was so wrapped up into this YouTube channel and really the appearance of the family? But not so much how the family was in reality, right? Because you can make people look a certain way in a video. You can force everyone to smile and act like everything's going great.

when in reality the opposite is true. What's so shocking about the abuse of the Frankie children is not just what happened to them. It's that one of the people doing it was their own mother, the person who is probably most counted on or most expected to protect their kids. When exactly did she go from maybe, you know, being mean or obsessed with perfection to cruel and abusive. Looking through old eight passenger videos is hard. Ruby stopped vlogging and deleted a lot of their videos, especially the ones that showcase the issues people had with her parenting. So it's really hard to kind of see that shift. You don't see happy children turn into abused and isolated children. This was

done strategically and in private. They ended up moving to a new town. The kids were homeschooled. they were punished for various things and had their phones taken away. And then for E&R, eventually they were moved to Ivan, Utah, where they didn't even see each other under the same roof. There was an obvious shift in Ruby's mindset, though, at least publicly. In 2018, she filmed herself saying, my job as a parent is not to force them to do anything. She was referring to whether she made her kids go to church with her, adding, I can't make them have the same values and principles I do. Something she never wanted to happen to her own family was to stop talking to each other because they disagreed on a value. Her tone in 2018 was soft and reflective.

In 2022, she again filmed herself this time, angrily asserting, not calmly vlogging. She said, living in this home, which I provide, this is my home. And we get a church on Sundays to give thanks for that. And if you choose not to abide by the expectations of this household, then you are in effect saying, I don't want to be part of this household. And that would be your choice. And you're a welcome to leave. This video is posted on the connections page. Some of the themes that would come up later, like punishing the children for stealing water and food, the kids being made to do difficult chores and age inappropriate expectations of the children were always there in the eight passengers videos, but they were just much more subtle.

For example, in 2015, Chad had one cavity and needed a filling. While in the dentist's waiting room, Ruby told Chad he would need to do extra chores to pay for his filling. Now, I understand teaching your children responsibility and consequences, but making them pay for their own health care when they're still a child. seems over the top to me, and I'm sure it does to a lot of people. In other videos, Ruby warned her children that they would go to bed without the privilege of eating dinner. So this is clearly not a kind and supportive mom. Most moms would go hungry themselves without dinner so that their kids wouldn't have to. And in this situation, she threatened her own children with the opposite

scenario. And I understand that everyone has a little bit of a different parenting style. I wouldn't call eating dinner a privilege, especially, you know, when you're a child. You need to provide dinner as a parent for your children. That's, that's kind of part of being a parent, a big part. Yeah. And sometimes if you're like my kids, you have to have your your own separate meal and my wife is constantly cooking my son noodles and chicken nuggets because that's all who'll eat. So, you know, he, she goes out of her way to make sure he eats and I'm sure a lot of other parents do the same thing. So, you know, to see her threatening their child not have any food for dinner is just, it's very sad. It is sad. And, you know,

it's not like you have to feed them filet mignon or lobster tails. I'm not saying that, but It's pretty tough to threaten your children with not eating, not being able to eat dinner. Yeah, I think most parents that you ask would be heartbroken if they knew that their children had to go to bed hungry at night and would do anything they could to not have that happen. So for her to use that as a threat, that seems really, really low. It always seemed to be Sherry, Frankie, the oldest child comforting her younger siblings, encouraging them or being on. understanding. There's a video where five-year-old R has ripped his big toe now on half, and Ruby asked him why he didn't tell her, and he kept it a secret from her. R is basically sitting there hyperventilating and maybe trying to come up with an answer, and Sherry answers

saying that Ruby would probably give him candy if he was brave and let her trim it. A lot of the time, Sherry the older sister was much more motherly than Ruby was. Sherry mothered the younger children often. In early 2020, Ruby and Kevin traveled to another country for vacation. And Sherry was tasked with caring for the other five children while they were gone. When R was 10 and E was 8, they were made to sit with the rest of the family on Christmas while everyone except them received presents. This was supposedly to make them think about their selfish behavior. This was really just some of their earliest isolation and emotional abuse. There were many more videos that people had an issue with. But when most, it was a lot of,

if not all of these events happened, Jody Hildebrandt was already in the family's lives. So it's clear to many people that once Jody came into Ruby's life, the negative treatment of her own children got stronger. When E was just six years old, her kindergarten teacher called and asked Ruby to bring a lunch to the school for her. Ruby's response was, E is responsible for making her lunches in the morning. And she actually told me she did pack a lunch. so the natural outcome is she's just going to need to be hungry. In a TikTok video, she went on to say, I know that her teacher's uncomfortable with her being hungry and not having a lunch.

Ruby didn't bring E lunch that day. What people were most upset by was that Ruby also said, hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her lunch. When this choice came under fire on the channel, Kevin and Frankie backed Ruby up, explaining that E came home two hours later and had a wonderful, fulfilling snack. And he added, and you know what? She never forgot her lunch again. To me, it sounds like Ruby and even Kevin thought that they were administering some type of

tough love scenario to the kids, trying to teach them responsibility. And I get that. Some of that stuff is important. It just seems like the way they went about it was so. extreme. And I can tell you for sure with my wife being a teacher, if she was in this scenario, she'd get that kid lunch if she had to, you know, pay for it herself. I just know that for a fact. And I think there's a lot of teachers out there who do that type of stuff on a daily basis and never get recognized for it. Yeah, and I agree, you want to try and teach your kids to remind. remember things and to have a routine and to be disciplined. But at the same time, they're kids. They're going to make mistakes. They're going to forget stuff. I mean, as adults, we do,

we do that. Nobody's perfect. So to hold that against your children is just, you know, really despicable. And to not bring lunch to her and, and not just that, but to hope nobody else gives her food, it just really, really, really low. And I think you can see why so many people who were watching this stuff online began to have serious problems with it. In one video, Ruby admits that her kids are literally starving because she told them she wouldn't let them eat breakfast until all of their chores were done. This is something she herself says she hesitates to say out loud because it makes her sound like a mean barbarian. Yet it's the choice she thought was right for her children. long before she met Jody.

She had developmentally inappropriate expectations for the children. So it's clear that while Jody may have brought these bad qualities and choices out in Ruby, Ruby may have had them inside of her all along. When their youngest child, E was just three years old, Ruby recorded herself talking about her conscious decision to let her miss preschool because E was notorious for sleeping in. Ruby went on to say, I thought, you know what? I'm not going to wake her up because every time I wake her up, she gets super grumpy and upset, and I have to literally drag her into her dress. She explained that E is old enough for this responsibility and explained to her, you need to get up and get ready if you're to go to preschool. In this video, Shuri, their oldest daughter, who was getting E dressed for the day, protested, saying she's too young to control when she wakes up. Ruby denied this and said, E being awake and getting ready now is proof that she can control this.

But Sherry revealed that she woke E up and got her out of bed. Ruby seemed completely unaware of this. We're talking about a preschool aged child. More of you and I have both been there. And so many people listening have been there. Yeah. It's mind-boggling because I can't get my 13-year-old out of bed as it is. And she has an alarm.

and we yell into her. And so to expect a three-year-old to get themselves up and get going, I just, it's so strange that she would even consider that's something that could be normal. Or consider that she should be punished because at three years old, she's not able to regulate everything in her life. What three-year-old can? I can barely do it now at 50.

Yeah, and I think maybe this just hints that she's not, you know, wasn't living in full reality when she thinks some of these things that are just not normal. It makes you wonder if she was completely living in reality. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Something to keep in mind as we wrap up. There's also possible financial abuse in this case as well. Sherry's college savings, which she had been collecting since she was five years old, was transferred out of her bank account via wire transfer.

The family chalked it up to fraud and theft. But it's likely that someone in the family with the information took it, especially because Sherry said they would sometimes put money back in to disguise the theft. There were also definite elements of abuse via forced exercise that Ruby chose to film and put online like it was no big deal. R was made to do 10 pushups because he left his socks in the yard. And I think, you know, listeners will vary maybe on a point like this. Is it really abuse?

Some will think, yeah, it is. You shouldn't be making, you know, young children do pushups. Others may say, well, that's not as big a deal as some of the other stuff that we've talked about. But, you know, it's these kinds of things that make people doubt that Jody truly caused Ruby's behavior. Many believe she was headed this direction either way. But we don't know that Kevin would have moved out of the home for over a year if Jody hadn't caused the house to be such an extremely unlivable place. Jody getting close with Ruby certainly seems to have pushed him away faster. In March

2004, evidence from the case was released. Body cam, incident reports, photos and a journal that Ruby wrote documenting the torture she and Jody inflicted on E&R. Despite how much evidence was released, Ruby's sister Bonnie spoke

out publicly saying, you only know a fraction of what happened. If that's true, the thought of that is chilling. The photos released depict the extent of R's wounds. They're awful and will likely cause him issues walking for a long time, if not the rest of his life. The bindings around his ankles had torn deeply into his flesh. Ruby's own journal details making the kids stand outside in the sun for hours,

with no food, water, sunscreen, or socks. Desert rocks and dirt get so hot in the daytime. Both R&E had blisters on their feet. The children, normally very fair-skinned, had dark tans. They were punished for stealing water, even from the toilet. They were desperate and terrified. They were made to carry heavy boxes of books up and downstairs all day with no breaks and prodded with cactus when they disobeyed or failed. One of the most horrific parts of the punishment was her supposed treatment of ours wounds. They mixed cayenne pepper, lots of it, into honey, and slathered it on his injuries, and covered that in plastic wrap, and then covered the plastic wrap in duct tape.

Ruby's Journal blamed Arr's infections on how evil he was. And I think this is at least the second time that, that this has come up, punishing the kids for stealing water. Who steals water? Water just is there. Comes out of the sink or comes out of the fridge. You know, we're all taught you're supposed to drink a lot of water. And here these kids must have been so dehydrated that at one point they were trying to drink

from the toilet because they were even punished for that. And I think the more we talk about it, the more of, the more of, upset I'm getting, and I'm sure the more upset listeners are getting, you think about the treatment. And I'm using that word treatment very loosely of ours wounds. Okay, you've got some kind of homemade salve that you're then covering in plastic wrap and then you're wrapping duct tape around it. In what world does that constitute treatment? Yeah, the more we talk about this and the more of these horrible details come out, the more it's, it's easy to understand why Ruby was so despised, you know, Jody too, but Ruby at the end of the day, this is her kids. It's her own children.

She's doing this too. So I think there's an especially extra disdain for her. And let's not forget that she wrote down that she blamed ours infections on how evil he was. So, you know, you mentioned it more. What reality is? she living in. I think there's a real question there of just exactly what her grasp was on reality. As we wrap up, it's really hard to fathom. The things that were done to the Frankie children, even more difficult to fathom that their mom, Ruby, was responsible, aided by Jody and that perhaps they brought out the worst in one another and that it was the children who paid the price. As we mentioned, some people also blame Kevin and say that he is the father, should have stepped in, but whoever gets the

blame here, whatever you can think of that was the catalyst for these events, at the end of the day, it's important not to forget the victim, the Frankie children. They've suffered greatly, and their family has imploded. And you really have to wonder, how will all of this affect them long term. And I do think this is an extremely fascinating story. It's a tough one because we are talking about the abuse of children. You know, you look at Ruby Frankie having this YouTube channel kind of dedicated to parenting. And obviously she had a very distinct style of parenting. It sounds to me that in the beginning, it was this kind of tough love. you know, you're on your own, you're responsible for yourself type of deal. But there's no doubt

that it got more extreme as the years went on to the point where, you know, even her own subscribers started to be appalled at what they were seeing on their screens to the point where, you know, they were calling child protection services and things like that. But then it's this introduction, this association with Jody Hildebrand that really seems to have taken all of this to a much worse level. Some people have described her as some sort of cult leader. Maybe there's some truth there. But whatever the relationship was, and it does seem to be a strange one, it resulted in these children being harmed. Yeah, I think this is proof that when two people get together and they both have,

you know, either bad intentions or they're not living in reality, they get together and, you know, it's combustible. It's like, you know, it's something blows up and a line gets crossed and all of a sudden it goes from tough love to kids being handcuffed and starved and things like that. So we definitely see some kind of line being crossed here and going into a territory that as a parent, none of us can imagine our children being in and being treated the way these kids were. And I think it's a miracle that none of them died because I could easily see this being really

tragic where eventually one of these children dies. Well, yeah, based on what we talked. about. If you're being punished for stealing water, how much water are you getting? Is it possible that one of these kids could have been so dehydrated that they die? Or, you know, some of these bad infections that weren't treated medically, could that have caused the death of one of these children? And I think you can make the case that the possibility exists. And going back to, you know, something you were just talking about, two people getting together and it being combustible. You know, we've seen that with serial killers, duos, where, you know, it's possible that, you know,

one person was not on a great path, but maybe it wasn't a path where they were going to become a killer. But the association with another person led them down that path. And I don't know if that's kind of what we're looking at here with with jody and ruby yeah it clearly seems there's evidence that they each on their own had things in the background that were troubling but once they got together it was just a recipe for disaster yeah yeah absolutely but that's it for our episode on ruby frankie and jody hildebrandt if you love the show but haven't done so yet take a minute go out give us a five-star rating. You can also leave a review.

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