Hidden True Crime - "Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke" with Criminal Psychologist Dr. John Matthias

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

In this episode, Lauren and Dr. John discuss the new docu-series "Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke." About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias, a former television reporter, and her husband Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's a docu-series. And wow, we've been covering this case since the beginning. A never before seen home video, finally seen Jody in a trance for me personally. I don't know about anyone else out there, but that was my wildest moment. moment for me is actually seeing these alleged trances that we've heard about, heard about. And trances, I'll say trance with a, with a quote symbol, because I'll give you a little, I think they're complete manipulation. But we'll ask Dr. John, because we have a psychologist here with us, my co-host, Hidden True

Crimes co-host, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal and forensic psychologist. And you have been assessing Jody Hildebrandt and Ruby Frankie from the VIII. very beginning, helping us process how this happened, who is who, why this happened. And of course, because of the Frankie family, Kevin coming forward, the children, the adult children coming forward. And by adult children, I mean Sherry and Chad, we were able to get a deeper, more inside look on the dynamics going on inside the home before and after Jody entered their lives. And yes, There were a lot of new snippets. So we're going to get into a lot.

But in Hidden True Crime style, we're going to let John choose where he wants to start. We just want to dig deep because, like I said, we've got a psychologist with us here tonight. And what I do, and many of you don't know this, we've been doing this since we were dating because we're not just co-hosts for those new to Hidden True Crime. We're also married. And John, I'll have to be honest. This is when I knew I was sold on you. was when we were dating.

Sold like I was marketing you. I was marketing myself. Right. With like the checklist that Ruby had. John had a check. I had a checklist like Ruby in my closet. We'll get into that. Ruby didn't.

Let's clarify. Ruby didn't have a checklist. She had like a spreadsheet with colors. She had what I call the husband's spreadsheet. I mean it was. Yeah. Yeah. It was extensive.

Color coding and like, I don't know. There were at least, on the, on one axis, she had all these qualities. So she had like, I lost count. Like, they didn't show it that long, but she had like 30 plus qualities at least. And then on the horizontal axis, they had different boxes for all the suitors or all the boyfriends that she was dating. There were so many. That's what surprised me.

I thought maybe like three or four. No, there were like 20 plus. people, suitors that were interested in her. Like it was an, it's a, the husband spreadsheet. That wasn't, was an amazing part of the documentary. And they actually had it somehow, I don't know, Kevin or Ruby,

somebody filmed that at some point years ago. Yeah. I did not have a color coded spreadsheet hanging in my closet when I was, uh, dating you. But I had hopes and dreams. But,

but if I had a color coded spreadsheet on it, it would be psychological. Can psychoanalyze criminals with me? Can psychoanalyze reality television shows with me using the pause button and discussing and answering all my questions? And then I would have probably wanted you to have like a British accent, which you don't have, but here we are. It's okay. It's okay. I do like that British accent, but it's okay.

You can't get everything on that spreadsheet. I got a Chicago accent. Chicago accident said. Even Kevin recognized that there were limitations of the spreadsheet. But this is an interesting part. For those who watched it, Kevin found this spreadsheet and he studied it. He said he took pictures of it. You know, he studied it.

He said he worked harder on knowing the spreadsheet than he did at school. And obviously it paid off for him because he ended up marrying her in the year 2000. But how interesting is that? Like, do you want to, you know, if you're going to marry someone, do you want, do you try to conform to all the qualities they're looking for? Like that that says a lot about Kevin. That Kevin is very malleable and very passive, right? That's one question people have been asking me is Kevin brainwashed. One of the arguments for why Kevin wasn't as involved or when Ruby pushed him out of the home, I've heard for many people saying, well, doesn't Kevin have some culpably?

and the answer is, yeah, of course he does. But like, if you look at that spreadsheet and so many answers lie in that spreadsheet, by the way, you get a better understanding of Kevin. Kevin is someone who he wants to make Ruby happy. He's submissive. He's passive. He's trying to adopt all these qualities in the husband's spreadsheet

that he may or may not have just so that he can win her over. He even says that in the documentary. He says, I forget, he said something like, I had to play dirty. I mean, basically what he says is I manipulated her into falling in love with me and marrying me to some extent. And so this is someone, he says this in the documentary. This is someone who wants to stay married. He's submissive. He's going to do whatever he thinks he needs to do to appease Ruby.

And I think that goes a long way towards explaining why. he didn't stand up or take action or why he wasn't a little more aggressive in terms of challenging her and challenging Jody for the kids. And I don't want to put a value judgment on that. I mean, for me, there's a part of me that looks at it and says, well, you know, he might be passive, but these are your kids, right? Like, I don't care how submissive you are, how much you want to please Ruby. you need to take a stand here.

You need to protect your kids. And I think that's people's argument. It's more of a moral argument that no matter how submissive this guy is, from a moral standpoint, he needs to stand up to them and fight for his children. So I think that's where people are really having a hard time with him. But from a psychological standpoint, this is a guy who's very dependent upon her. He's very submissive. He seems like someone who he even says this,

that he tends to be somewhat submissive to more authoritarian figures. Certainly Jody and maybe Ruby to some extent, at least in that family, would fit that description. So we started with Kevin. I don't know if that was my intention, but like it or not, we started with Kevin. We started with Kevin. yeah, no, typically I would hope that, you know, if a young man that I, you know,

saw a spreadsheet like that in a female's closet, he would see that as a giant red flag, you know, do, do, too, where Kevin's like, I got to take a picture and memorize this. Whatever she wants, I will be. It did explain. It explained Kevin a lot and it explained Ruby a lot. And you were telling me that. That was a moment of pausing. You were like, rewind that, are you kidding?

Yeah, that was a moment of, you know, I always talk about this idea that sometimes these little things that don't seem that important initially really explain so much. And this is one of those moments in this documentary, this husband spreadsheet that it's one thing for someone like Ruby or anyone to list some qualities they like in someone just to kind of remind themselves, you know, I want someone who's kind, right? I want someone who's smart, whatever, you know, the, it's one thing to kind of have that list and kind of know that list. And I think maybe that's important. It's another thing to have 200 qualities and to start using different color coatings. And right, like, there's an obsessive quality to this spreadsheet.

And so one thing I took out of that is that if you're trying to understand, understand how this reflects upon Ruby, I think the short answer is that there's something formulaic about that spreadsheet, that this is someone, when you look at that, this is someone who wants easy answers. This is someone who wants a formula, that somehow she's going to put all this data in with all these color codes and it's going to spit out this answer. The answer is Kevin, right? It's sort of like the joke about, I forget the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there's a question in there about, they ask this computer, what's the meaning of life?

And the computer takes like 10,000 years to figure out the answer. And the answer is something like 31, right? It's a joke. It's absurd because the answer to what's the meaning of life is not going to be a number, right? But that's how Ruby sees the world, that the spreadsheet is going to spit out the correct answer for who her husband should be. It doesn't have anything to do with intuition or emotion, right? It's all formulaic and it's all clear cut.

And I think what I took away from this with Ruby at least, this is someone who wants the world to be a particular way. This is someone who, and you see this in her YouTube and eight passengers. This is someone who wants a very curated, perfectionistic, formulaic, reductive view of the world. And those very qualities you see in that spreadsheet. And trying to pick a husband, she's doing the very thing that she's doing on eight passengers.

Some are saying that that's what they learned to do in their LDS when women's growing up. I certainly recall also being taught to make a list, again, of all my hopes and dreams again, you do not have a British accent. I'm dealing with it. But I think, I think going to what you just said, though, the one thing, the one takeaway, as we continue talking about that and rewinding it is you said, it means that Ruby thinks there is a formula for everything, which is I know what you're saying now. But there are people that want a formula for everything, the right way to do something, that there is a formula and they can fix everything.

and she brought up obedience a lot too and that obedience is loved. I think that goes along with wanting a formula. We'll get into that. But yeah, thank you for bringing that up. We'll just start there. And so even before she's married to Kevin and even before eight passengers, you can start seeing some of these early influences.

And that spreadsheet is such a great metaphor for the way Ruby Frankie interprets the world, the way she sees the world, the way she acts in the world, the way she is in the world, what she, her expectations for the world, right. Everything in that spreadsheet becomes translated into her YouTube channel. And, you know, and that's one of the remarkable things about this documentary is you see that playing out behind the scenes. There's moments where she's really frustrated. She gets frustrated with Chad and she gets frustrated with Sherry a lot.

And she'll say to them, there's one moment in the documentary where she says to Chad, you know, fake it. If you're not happy, act happy. smile, act like this is important to you, act, right? Just fake it. Yes, she did. She's saying, I want you, Chad, to fit this formula of how the perfect family should work. And by the way, that is something that Kevin talked about a lot, that her ideal, more than anything else, her ideal was to be seen as the perfect mom.

This is a quote from Kevin. Quote, her ultimate role is apparent. Her ultimate ambition was to be seen as the perfect mom. And notice to, like, what's interesting about that statement, and again, this is picking up on kind of the minutia here, but this is important, right? What Kevin said, and this, again, the quote is, her goal wasn't to be the perfect mom. He says her goal was to be seen, right? Think about that. That's interesting.

Normally you'd say, you know, my goal is to be the perfect parent. You're not going to say, my goal is to be seen as the perfect parent, which when I, as a psychologist, when I read between the line, minds, that's an amazing statement because this idea of being seen in a certain way is often related to shame. Shame is about how you want people to see you. It's about controlling that image you have. And so is narcissism, by the way. So shame, many psychologists would argue in this research supporting this, that narcissism is a response to shame. That if shame is feeling vulnerable and imperfect and all the things Ruby's trying to avoid, insecure, right? If shame is that is imperfection, then the response to that is narcissism.

It's a way to cover up that shame or to repress that shame that if you can curate this image as being the perfect mom, but you don't feel that way. I think in many ways, Ruby doesn't feel like the perfect mom. She feels defective in some way. She doesn't. So all of this is about her trying to override that sense of imperfection with something that presents her as more perfect. And hence the YouTube channel.

You know, Kevin says that she started the channel because, quote, she was not getting enough praise and attention for being a mom. So she created a YouTube channel. Because, yeah, when you, you know, that's a typical parental response, right? Like, when you feel like you're not being good enough as a parent, let's go create a YouTube channel. Let's create a family vlog. Well, I also want to point out another aspect to that, that in the LDS faith, being a mother is a beautiful thing that is honored and respected,

but you don't get to go to an office every day and get alkylades and go to award shows, be a CEO. oh, much of it is hidden and thankless. And so it was, yeah, she wanted an audience to say, look at me, I am the best mom. And she didn't know where to get that. And so she got that on YouTube. Because I think that was part of it too is, you know, if you're supposed to do this and she's going to be the best and the best mom

and the grand is like, who cares? It's thankless. It's a thankless job behind the scenes, you know. But she needed that to. She needed that to cover this sense of defect or imperfection or vulnerability that she was feeling. Like, in the end, that's what she was trying to do. And so, yeah, you know, it's, I mean, so that, that's kind of the kernel. That's kind of the foundation that drives this narrative.

It drives the narrative all the way to the end, where she gets convicted of felony. child abuse. So, but if you're thinking about this in terms of like the criminal mind, that's, that's kind of where it starts. Or I could go back further and say that this idea of perfectionism starts in her family or maybe even several generations before. I don't know. But there's a therapist in this, this documentary. His name is Brannon Patrick. And he happened to work with Jody, actually, which is one of the reasons they brought him into the show. But he talks about this idea fairly early on in the first episode. I'm just going to, this is an exact quote, but it's close.

He says something to the effect of that people in the communities that Jody and Ruby are residing. And he says, they're very, they're happy. They're very happy, right? But he says, they're happy, but they're happy, but they're stuck in a box. They're stuck in a bubble. It's a culture of perfectionism and that people are wanting to look a certain way. They're wanting to be more perfect because the capital for the Mormon church is Salt Lake City,

and they're striving for perfection in order to advance the highest degree of glory for the church. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data

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first order at happy mammoth.com. That's happy H-A-P-P-Y mammoth, M-A-M-M-M-O-T-H-O-T-H.com. Just use the code hidden true crime at checkout. That's code hidden true crime. Use that with Happy Mammoth.com for 15% off today. That was a very, if it wasn't an exact quote, it was an almost exact quote. He did refer to that. That is what he said at the beginning. He goes,

he said, I need to be careful what I say. Right. And then I don't, I don't think he was careful enough, by the way. I'm sure he's getting some backlash for that. But I mean,

part of it's important to say what you say. And, you know, um, you know, in Springville, Utah, unfortunately,

because I have wonderful friends from Springville, and it is a beautiful, beautiful place to raise children. But there has been a lot of, you know, crime coming out of there recently with the Frankie's there. Chad Daybill is from there and others. So it was an interesting thing to know. You suggested that you don't know enough about Ruby and could this go back for generations. I will speak for myself from my opinion on the outside,

looking in at all of the Frankie sisters who have. put their lives online, you know, unfortunately that comes with many of us scrutinizing now that their sister is behind bars. But it certainly does seem like perfectionism runs in the family. I know that I was quite shocked that Bonnie was blanket training. And if anything, it does suggest that they value obedience, which Kevin said as much in this documentary that to Ruby obedience was love. Love was obedience. And blanket training does teach babies and young toddlers strict obedience from a very young age. And so I just want to point out that yes, if we're going to talk about her upbringing and who Ruby Frankie is, we do look at the Griffith family a little bit and

who they were. In perfectionism and obedience certainly is valued in their household. And I should say, it's not, I don't want to just pin this on the Mormon church either. I mean, I'm quoting Brandon Patrick, the therapist, who certainly suggests that Mormon culture is driven by some perfectionist tendencies. Of course, it's not just Mormonism. No, the, the doggars did blanket training. The duggers, I think, any strict, any strict or high-demand religion, and you can have families in a particular religion that create high-demand family structures and people that are in the same religion and don't. So I know what you're saying. not it's not even just religion it's it's it's part of you know it's western culture if you want to

expand it it's western culture it's advertising it's you know we how often are we bombarded with advertising that has people with perfect bodies and perfect homes and perfect everything right that's that's that's the image that it's it's not just Mormonism it's it's the image in western culture that we're told to follow and believe and right and they put that out as an ideal So, you know, it goes much further than, in this particular case, I think Mormonism is in play. But in particular, I think it's in play because the idea of God as kind of the perfect being, right? That idea comes into play not only with Ruby, but with Jody in particular. So Jody sees God as this ideal of perfection and moral perfection.

So in that sense, Jody sees sin as the ultimate. worst possible outcome for a human being. With a belief in perfectionism can come with judgment, a lot more judging, you know. Well, that's exactly why they brought in the, when they kept bringing in the neighbors, I kept thinking, why are they in this documentary? They don't really advance the narrative. And the answer is because they're showing you in real time the culture that's creating Ruby Frankie, right?

No house is big enough. no car is nice enough, right? You're in a game of status. And, you know, they say in the documentary that everything changed for the Frankies when they started getting these big checks, when they started making more money. Kevin acknowledges. They sold out. Kevin essentially says that. He said, I would do whatever we had to do to keep these checks coming in.

Right. And his interpretation of that was that they were representatives for the church or for Christianity, whatever. He felt like he could justify everything they were doing and all the massive amounts of money they were making and the need to expand their, you know, to get better homes and cars or whatever they were doing because they were representing Christianity. Yeah, he admitted that, that he was of the belief that what they were doing was okay because he would put it in the perspective of God is blessing us with abundance because, we are demonstrating our religion and our faith and our belief in God and these paychecks that keep rolling up $100,000 a month are our blessings for being missionaries. And he did lay that out. Kevin laid that out. But that is why.

And they did bring up an example of a Church of Jesus Christ's Lauderday Saints speech that was given saying, you'll be missionaries online. You know, do good online. Show goodness and the family goodness that you have and what a good family is online. And so I believe that that sort of reaffirmed his position that they were almost being blessed because they were doing the Lord's work. Yeah. One thing I kept bringing up to you was this idea of authenticity. You know, it felt like no matter what Ruby said or did or Kevin to some degree, maybe to a lesser degree, it felt like every, everything they do was so shallow and so fake, right?

Like, I never had the sense that Ruby had, like, what I would call a true self or, like, an authentic self. Like, there was nothing there. It was, it was like she was hollow. And all she did was parrot back, you know, people would say online, oh, your family's this or your family's so beautiful or perfect. And she would feel that way. She would internalize that.

And so for me, you know, part of this is the fact that I think that Ruby and Kevin didn't really know who they were and what they wanted and what they valued, right? I don't think they ever really took a moment of self-reflection or developed any self-knowledge to really figure out what is it you people value. Because if you don't have that, then you're just going to spend your time chasing rainbows or trying to cultivate these images that are completely fabricated and false. And I'm not saying, by the way, this idea of cultivating authentic self is really difficult. And there's some debate about whether that's even possible. But it's certainly possible to cultivate a self that makes sense to someone and that's coherent and has values that we can kind of rely on or that a person can rely on. There's different conceptions philosophically of what a self is and all that.

So I don't want to get into that too much. But the point is, like, if you really listen to Ruby, there's nobody home. She doesn't ever really say anything that represents a set of values or principles or beliefs. I mean, beliefs maybe later with Jody, but she's almost like this empty vessel. And I think that's part of the problem here. When you start throwing money and praise and attention at someone like Ruby, she's just going to follow that trail forever.

You did say that throughout the entire documentary. Ruby is just so empty. She's just this empty vessels. There's just nothing there. Is that what you meant? Is that what you meant? Is that what you're cheering? Yeah.

I almost, I felt sorrow for, I felt some empathy and sadness that this person had no capacity for self-reflection and no self-awareness, right? It was just, you know, she would make these videos. She'd throw it out to her audience. They would praise her. She would eat it up. It just became this circular feedback loop of praise and behavior. and expectations.

And, you know, the only way she got out of that was that moment when Chad talked about sleeping on the beanbag chair, right? It was kind of this inadvertent moment. We had that moment, actually. Can we show that? This jumps into what you want to discuss. This was a moment that changed everything for the eight passengers YouTube channel. In our house, we.

when we take something away. It's because they have shown that they are not responsible enough to manage it. And so we don't just turn around and give it back as soon as they start acting good. It has to be consistent. It has to be consistent over a minimum, minimum of six months. And that's showing up consistent in every aspect of their life.

That's a new rule. That's a new rule. A minimum of six months. Have I ever given something? back more than six less than six months? Um, my bedroom was taken away for seven months and then you give it back like a couple weeks ago. I don't think our viewers know that.

I'm sleeping on a bean back until October. And they gave my room back like two weeks ago. Oh, yeah, I'll give you the reason why I lost my bedroom. I think so. I think this is the reason. At least this is the reason that's been in my head. It's pretty funny, but now I look back in this pretty depression. No, we never told our viewers.

That I woke up at 2 in the morning and told him that we're going to Disneyland and he has to pack. And you got up and made his bed all neatly and then packed all his clothes in the suitcase. And then he walked up the door and I'm like, he was like, what? He was like, what? And he's all happy. He has his sunglasses on. I was like, we're not going to divilent. He started crying and hitting me.

And then he went back to bed in tears and then. So there you go. That was, according to the documentary, a very very. pivotal moment in the eight passengers YouTube channel because for the first time ever, Ruby started getting more negative feedback than positive feedback. And they felt that they were being canceled. And rather than Kevin even explained it on this documentary, rather than taking responsibility or realizing maybe we did something wrong or this wasn't

right, they felt like the victims, that they had been wrong, that they couldn't look at, think, well, maybe people have a point. Instead, they were the victims. They were being canceled. And this moment started to show who Ruby really was, I think. So until that moment, so this is a fascinating moment to me because it changes everything, at least according to the documentary. I wasn't aware of how big this moment was until we watched this.

I knew it started shifting things a little bit. I didn't know that it was catastrophic. According to the documentary, that moment's catastrophic. And so what's fascinating to me about that is, number one, that she says, it's kind of an off-the-cuff comment. She doesn't see it coming, right? And she says, our viewers don't know this. And she starts, she laughs a little bit, right? Like, in other words, she sees this moment as being harmless because she could have, she could have,

easily edited that out. If she saw that as problematic, she should have taken it out. But she kept it in the video because she didn't see that as being anything that was problematic. She doubled down. She doubled down. And so, but, but so here's what's, so this goes back to everything I was talking about, about the lack, being hollow and the lack of self-reflection. She doesn't have the self-awareness to see how a moment like that could change. everything. In other words, she doesn't think it's a big deal that she had her kids sleep on a beanbag chair for seven months. What's the harm? Like, this is just what normal parents do, right?

And she doesn't have the capacity or the self-awareness to understand why people would object to that. That's what, more than anything, that's what amazes me about this moment. Like, if she had that awareness, she would have edited it. And even if she didn't, even if she put it up there, it seems to me like the logical, emotional response to a moment like that is to apologize, is to take responsibility and say, we did this, I made a mistake, I've learned from it. This is not how parents should act, right? But she doesn't do any of that. In fact, she doubles down. She blames cancel culture.

And then she starts moving to this extreme with Jody Hildebrand. as Kevin describes it, she rejects kind of this happy go lucky facade that she's created with eight passengers, and she starts moving more towards the spiritual existence. It's not like a normal spiritual existence. It's like a punitive, ascetic spiritual existence that's filled with sin and demons, right? It's kind of a, she starts moving to this dark world. And again, that's because she doesn't have this. course that of values to fall back on. If she's in this endless feedback loop of, so basically the

feedback loop goes like this, she filmed something and in the, the message she's trying to get across is, look at how wonderful and perfect and happy we are. Look at how one, look at what a wonderful, perfect, happy Mormon family are, and I'm the perfect Mormon mom. And then she puts that video out, and the feedback is, look at how wonderful and happy and perfect you are. We want to be just like you, Ruby, you're wonderful and perfect and happy, right? And now, now that she gets caught, the narrative starts shifting to, this is all a facade. I can't believe I believed you. You're a horrible parent. And she doesn't know what to do with that. She can't integrate that because there's nobody home. So what does she do? She finds Jody. She denies it, number one,

because she doesn't have any self-awareness and she doesn't have any capacity for self-reflection She denies it. She blames cancel culture. She finds Jody because Jody was just coming to her life around that moment. And then she's so gullible at that point. Jody starts driving her towards a really dark spiritual place. But as I've said before, let me... Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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And Sherry, Frankie, does a great job of talking about this. You see that before she meets Jody, there's these aggressive, even kind of violent moments where when Ruby's narrative of the perfect happy Mormon family is not being met or not being filmed she's not happy she's angry, she's aggressive

there's a moment where she I don't know which child it was because they blurred the face she reached out and grabbed the face of one of her kids like hard like her mouth she grabs her mouth and she squeezes it Like don't talk. Don't say that.

And with Gabby Petito, I pointed out that, you know, Brian Laundry did the same thing with Gabby Petito. And I said, when you do that, the next logical step is strangulation. You go from- Yeah, I want to point out. You said this before Gabby Petito was found. While the world was still looking, you watched the Moabody Cam footage. And I remember you saying that.

We just actually re-released that recently. Go ahead. But I wanted to put this in context. He said, when you do that, go ahead. It's a similar behavior. Not only is she physically, literally and physically shutting down speech by closing her child's mouth, but she's sending the message, like, I can control the oxygen going into your body, which is exactly what strangulation is.

If you move your hand down three inches, you're on someone's neck. It's the same behavior, right? Like, it's not inconceivable. I mean, obviously, thankfully, this was stopped before it went too far. But it's not inconceivable that one of these kids could have easily been hurt in that manner. Because the next logical step would have or could have been, they bound these kids, right? The next logical step would have been something like strangulation. Yeah.

Yeah. So Ruby had this absolute need for control, this absolute need for power, this absolute need for perfection, and this absolute need for a tension and to be seen. This is starting to get very toxic, to say the least. We're seeing things hit a pinpoint where someone could become a criminal. And so when things start to go south and she's not getting the attention she craves, how does Jody come into this? How does Ruby all of a sudden decide that she's going to be this extra spiritual person? I mean, according to the documentary, they said that it was after this, that she was seeking something more.

But how did you see that? I think at the moment that Jody enters her life, especially after the beanbag incident, Ruby's particularly vulnerable. And I think in that moment, she's looking for answers. She's looking for direction. And as I said, she's sort of this empty vessel that really doesn't know. what to do. So if that moment doesn't happen, she probably just keeps on the same course. But given that moment and the kind of the collapse of their channel because of that moment that

people started seeing through the facade and the masks, Jody is kind of the perfect person to pick up the baton or to pick up the wreckage in the sense that I think Jody's sense that Ruby was vulnerable, that she was reeling from that incident, that her channel was falling apart. and I think Jody perceived an opportunity to take Ruby's audience and to essentially appropriate or steal whatever to take Ruby's audience for her own. And Jody was at that point trying to grow her own cult of sorts, connections. Right. And what better way to do that than to have an audience of two and a half, you know,

three million people that are just being handed to you. Right. And so by controlling Ruby, obviously, she's, I think it's obviously, hugely self-interested, but she's controlling her own capacity to build her own empire and her own channel. And she sees doing that. She's using Ruby as a vehicle to accomplish that goal. Those are the main points I think I wanted to cover up front. You know, I can't stress enough how important this idea of perfectionism is here. It's perfectionism, perfectionism without any foundation to support it.

you know it's a perfectionism that's if you if you lack a self or a true self or whatever authentic self which i believe ruby did yes then you have very little to build upon and this idea of perfectionism i think becomes particularly troubling in those circumstances because you're tasting illusions you're tasting rainbows like you don't really know she's defining perfectionism in the context of the church but i don't think she really understands what that means and so you know, I think this is where she gets lost. We have talked about this a lot about how this is essentially a copycat crime or a, you know, Lori Valo 2.0 crime.

And this documentary to me shook me to the core in a way that I thought, not only is this like a Chad Dable, Lori Valo 2.0, but it almost fills as a. Jody was following the case and literally copying it. Because let me, let me share a few things we learned. So we know that there was a trance that happened. And we saw the trance where she was saying that there was a demonic possession inside of her. And then they did these castings to try to get rid of it.

And then she got rid of Kevin. I don't know. So there's that. Then she refers to the kids as zombies at one point. And then I do believe that these children. because of Jody were on their way to being killed, that that was next. And we just have to talk about this.

It blew my mind. It blew my mind. Like to me, there's no doubt this is absolutely the Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell case 2.0. But to explain for those that haven't followed the Davell cases clearly, Chad Daybilt would be Jody Hildebrand and Ruby would be Lori. So can we talk about this? Because Yeah.

Yeah, there's so many parallels. I mean, last night, when we were talking about it, you actually believed that it was possible that Jody was influenced by Chad Daybell. The Jody took elements of the Daybell case and refined them and put them into practice with connections and with Ruby. Yes. I don't know. I really do think that now. I almost feel like Jody was inspired by Chad Debao. They were preppers. They were prepping for the apocalypse. They both read visions of glory. Yeah, I know. Which, I mean, we don't have any direct evidence of that. I think that the commonality is that Chad Debao was this aspiring author that was starting to get some measure of attention. And I don't want to say fame. I got maybe a little bit of fame in the Mormon, in Mormon.

in circles for his books. His books started becoming much more popular, certainly by the time that he and Lori committed the crimes. And Jody, Jody started connections, and, you know, she was growing quite a following, and she had this YouTube channel that was starting to get attention like Chad. I think there were some parallels.

They were both, you can't really say they were aspiring cult leaders, because I don't think they would see it that way, but they were aspiring celebrities or pseudo-celebrities. That's how they saw themselves. And so I think there is that commonality. They're both driven by similar issues. Yes, yes. They definitely were driven by similar issues.

It was shocking. One question we've always asked in the Lori Valo-Chad-Dabell case is, who was the ringleader, you know, Lori, too. There were problems with Lori before she met Chad, clearly, to say the least. Who was the more culpable person, Ruby or Jody? Jody's, this is Jody's cold, just like it was Chad Daybell's cold. I think without Jody and if we're making the analogy with Daybell, without Chad Daybell, I believe the kids are still alive.

Without Jody, these kids are. probably not going to be abused at the level that they were. Before Jody, there were already hints of abuse. As I mentioned, like the grabbing the mouth, you know, I mean, Ruby's definitely culpable. And if for those who saw Ruby's sentencing hearing, you know, Ruby basically argued that Jody created, that Jody was a monster that influenced her and she had nothing to do with it,

that she blamed it all on Jody. And that's, that's not accurate either. that Jody enabled Ruby's worst tendencies. Yeah. Dr. John, why does control obedience equate to love? I want to say, I don't think it does. But according to Ruby, it does. I think she's using the love in a particular context.

She's basically saying that if she considers love to be, following orders and, you know, following her directives. In other words, love is pleasing her. And so in that sense, I think that's why she equates obedience with love. Because if you defy her, then you're not showing the appropriate amount of respect or love. Dr. John, what does Ruby's commitment to obedience say about her own childhood? I don't know a huge amount of details about her childhood, but I would speculate. Again, I talked briefly at the beginning about possible,

you know, intergenerational transmission of parenting practices or maybe trauma. I don't know the details, but certainly you'd have to think that Ruby probably grew up in a family culture that was fairly strict. And, you know, there was kind of an underlying disciplinary stance in her family. So I don't know for sure. We have talked about the idea that there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of empathy. If you look at some of the other YouTube channels that Ruby's sisters have done, right? You know, we've talked about this before.

I don't think I'm going to mention names here, but one of the sisters, after the whole Ruby story broke, one of the sisters basically came on and said, Ruby doesn't have anything to do with us, right? I don't want this to affect our channel. Basically, she came on and said some stuff that was very self-serving. So I can infer, I can, I don't know for sure, but I would guess that Ruby's family of origin probably stressed obedience. They probably stressed discipline, right? Many of the things that Ruby is reenacting with her kids, that would be my guess.

Yeah. After watching this documentary, I started to actually feel like Jody was influenced by Chad that she thought. Because I'm going to say it. And I want to ask you, did you think her trance was real in any amount or was in manipulation? So this is the way I would describe the trance. I think her trance was what I would call a self-induced hypnotic state, meaning that there was no demon. There was no possession. They don't show a lot of the video of the trance, the so-called trance. Was it a trance of sorts, I guess, but it was self-induced. It was, you can self-induced. So it would be like a snake handler that starts speaking in tongues, right?

You hand someone a snake in the Baptist church. And I know this, by the way, because my grandfather was a snake handler. I never went to see him do that, but he talked about. it. Not much. I think even he thought it was strange. Yeah, I know, right? But he talked about, you know, the people that would

handle the snakes were, and they would go into these trances and they would speak in tongues. And, you know, one of the tells with Jody's so-called trance is that when she's supposedly speaking in tongues, she's speaking perfect English.

She's mine. For those who haven't seen, go watch this trance and tell me if this is supposed to be speaking in tongues and speaking like, I don't know. I want to bring up too that we had heard about this is another question for you, John. So another question I'm asking people like,

what about Kevin saying that he's seeing things being thrown back and forth? Then he has a picture of a handprint on a mirror. And they're like, do you have the picture? He's like, yeah, here it is. And we see it. And I was like, eh, I'll have to be on. us. I was like, it wasn't, first of all, yeah. Right. I love that the documentary guy says, do you have a picture of the handprint?

And he's like, yeah, here it is. That's not a handprint. He's like got it right here. That's what I would call a smudge. Like that was, that was like somebody cleaning the window that like missed a spot or like put their hand there by accident. Like that was not a handprint left by the devil. Yeah. It didn't even look like a hand. I mean, so the answer to answer your question, why does Kevin think all this stuff? Belief. He wants to believe it. He wants to believe it. There you go.

He wants to believe it. Confirmation. He actually said that he wants to believe it. He wants to believe it. That was a moment in the documentary too. Was what he said, the facts that I was seeing in front of my eyes

did not equate to what I believed in my brain. And he was refusing to see it. And so you make a valid point. He wanted to believe it because he was in this cult. he was in. If it wasn't, you know, it's like this denial mechanism. So yeah, he wanted to believe it.

Just like Lori wanted to believe it. And Ruby wanted to believe it. And Chad, well, that's another story. We'll get into a lot later. There's a quote I often referenced. There's a guy he's now deceased, but the brilliant social psychologist who used to teach at Harvard,

his name's Carl White. Carl White was fond of saying that, you know, the usual the usual cliche is seen as believing, right? That you get evidence, you evaluate it, and you formulate beliefs on that, right? Carl Weik used to always say, no, that's all wrong. The way it should be with human beings is believing is seen.

Human beings, we adopt beliefs, and then we see evidence or we see the world based on those beliefs. I love Carl Weik's statement, because for the most part, I think there's a lot of truth to that. to say that people, there are people that evaluate evidence and, you know, change their beliefs accordingly, but it's not easy to do that. And so this is the case of believing is seen. He's all in on the cult. He believes in Jody's authenticity. He believes in this idea of demonic possession. So he's seen this handprint that he thinks is a devil. He's seen, he's hearing noises that are,

that are supposedly demons or ghosts. It's all that. I'm going to go back. So let's go back to this trance situation because it's so important. Okay, please. I could talk about the trans forever. I was like, oh my gosh.

That was like the thing where I've been wanting to see that. I was like, show me Jody's trans. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. This is it. So. I was like, I was like, Look, my grandpa was a snake handler. She's not speaking in tongues.

That's not real. That's the key to understanding that trance. That's the key. Because this is a moment in this story, this is a moment when Jody senses that Ruby is vulnerable and Jody wants to hijack Ruby's life completely. And in order to do that, she has to get Kevin out of her life

and she has to get some of the kids out of her life. And she does, that's exactly by going into this trance. She also creates this inversion of roles, this shift in roles where Jody is supposedly the therapist. And then Ruby becomes the therapist. So, I mean, anybody, you know, since I'm a licensed psychologist, like, I think any licensed mental health would be pretression will tell you, that's a massive red flag. Like if the therapist is acting sick or possessed in order to have their. client now become the therapist and to supposedly heal them or whatever she was doing, not only is that unethical, that's like the ultimate manipulation, right? And so

by by inverting those roles, what's going on is Jody is trying to take control of everything in Ruby's life. She's trying to take control of her YouTube channel. She's trying to take control of her personal relationships, her romantic relationships, her children. This trance is the beginning of that process of hijacking Ruby's life. And she, by way, she does it. She's successful. She gets Kevin kicked out of the house. And now, and Ruby moves in with Jody.

Right. To her bedroom. She gets the two, she gets the two older children to leave. So the younger minors stay, but the older children, the two older children, Sherry and Chad leave. She gets Ruby to show up on her YouTube channel every day. And it all begins with that trance. She gives her her YouTube channel. She hands it over.

Mom's the truth. She gives it. Mom's for truth. She gives it. This was our entire livelihood for years and years and years and years. And here you go. Take it. Mom's the truth.

That's all you got to know. I have a couple more questions. What is up with? refusing children food anyway. Why that? Just something they need to survive and control? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think there can be a lot of different levels to that, to answering that question. But I think my immediate response would be that for most kids, food is the one thing they can control. So as someone who has worked with a lot of therapists that have worked with eating disorders, I haven't really done much with eating disorders, by the way.

But I've been in agencies where I've worked with therapists that were really excellent with eating disorders. And that's the one commonality they would talk about. A lot of times children with eating disorders, they might be in abusive and traumatic homes, or at the very least dysfunctional homes. And food is part of the process of how. having a voice of controlling what's going on. So kids can control what they put in their mouth. Even if you force a child to eat, they can still, to some degree, decide.

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for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. Whether they're going to eat it. And so in some ways, taking away food is like the ultimate form of control

because now you're taking away a child's... You're taking away any capacity for that child to make a decision or to choose. They can't even choose whether they're going to eat. So you're literally stripping it would be think of it as No it makes sense Children rely on adults to take care of them Except for when it comes to eating

This is something they can do themselves And so you're taking away the one thing That they can do themselves to take care of themselves It's very cultish in that sense Yeah Kevin is saying that there were things flying around the room How do you explain that? Again, he wanted to believe it Same same same

Yeah well first of all there weren't things flying around the room. That was his imagination. I mean, it was, it's sort of like, let's say you're going to go into a haunted house for Halloween, right? The best thing that how a house can do is kind of market how scary it is and how things are going to be flying around the haunted house. And it's going to be this other world experience, right? It's a lot of it's marketing. If you get people to believe that when they step into a haunted house, that all these paranormal things will happen, they're much more likely to see those things. And I think, so Kevin was primed.

He was, he had this set of beliefs. He developed these expectations that Jody have these paranormal powers. And so I think, I think that's what he wanted to see. Whether he actually saw that, you know, it's interesting in the documentary. He doesn't talk about the flying dishes. He talks about the noise in the basement. And he talks about the handprint. But he doesn't bring up the dishes flying around the kitchen.

Like apparently the dish is flying out of the cabinets or whatever. I mean, picks or it didn't happen, Kevin. Picks or it didn't happen. I want to see. You've got picked at the handprint. I need to see the dishes flying. Is it fair to assume that narcissists are susceptible to adopting extreme and problematic ideologies

due to their need for validation? Or I'm just ask, why in the world is every cult leader a narcissist is, I think, a great ask. It depends on the narcissist. So there's probably a wide, there's a wide array of narcissists. And yes, if a narcissist wants to run a cult and take control of people's lives, you know, it probably benefits them to adopt extreme beliefs because that way they can weed out people that have less extreme beliefs.

And they can focus only on the people with extreme beliefs. So I think it really depends on the narcissist. Some narcissists are or psychopaths are purely transactional. You know, they don't really care about the beliefs. They just care about getting what they can and whether that's money, whether that's attention, whatever it is. It depends on the needs. It depends on the context and the needs of the narcissist. Yeah.

Yeah. If Jody can stage prophecy, why not stage dish throwing? Right. I mean, we live in Vegas, so, you know, we, maybe Jody was set up some type of like Pennant Tower or Chris Angel type, you know, illusions or David Copperfield. I don't know, right? Maybe she had something in her cabinets that pushed the dishes out. Anything's possible. It seems like that would be an elaborate.

Paige Anna was behind the kitchen island going, she was like, I got this. Sorry. Okay. Bad joke. Um, let's talk about this. We do know now that the children now are back in his custody. We learned this. I, we actually put out a video and, um, E, the youngest victim that found at Jody Hildebrandt's house has actually spoken out to Utah legislatures. And we have her message in what she's shared. And we did learn that they are now back in Kevin Frankie's care. And then I also want to show. share that John and I were featured at the Columbia Journalism Review, a paper we both have loved and admired for so long. We're so grateful. That was fun for us. Yeah. And what else? What else? We posted a Patreon episode yesterday as well. We do exclusive weekly episodes on

Patreon. We've been doing it all 2025. I'm really proud of us. John, you're looking down, but I just want you to know. Way to go. Us. every week we have had exclusive episodes over on patreon.com slash into crime and this last week we discussed Delphi, Indiana, and the case of Abby and Libby yet again. So a little behind the scenes. Thank you everyone. Anything else you would like to say?

Yes. Just a couple of quick thoughts to end here. I always try to wrap something up with episodes up with some food for thought. So just, you know, I just want to point out that this whole idea of this quest for perfection, It's a losing battle. I mean, it leads to so many blind alleys, not least of which I think is just this narcissistic self-focused. You know, when you're so focused on the perfect, you really, I think, tend to lose sight. You create this fictional world like Ruby did.

And I think you really lose sight of the real world. You lose sight of what is inevitably in my mind an imperfect world. and I live in an imperfect world. So I think it's important, or I try to anyway, it's important to recognize that this idea, this constant quest for perfectionism like Jody and Ruby undertook is kind of a losing battle. And so I think that wasn't going to have a good outcome.

And then my second thought is, one of my favorite quotes is Socrates, the unexamined life is a life not worth living. And what he met essentially was, if you don't reflect on your life, if you don't think about your life, it's really hard to know who you are and what you stand for and what your values are and what your principles are. And I think that both Jody and Ruby are like quintessential examples

of human beings who led unexamined lives. And that's part of the tragedy here too. If you don't examine your life, you can really end up going down a malicious or destructive path. and that's what happened here. So just a couple of final thoughts. Thanks, everyone. Have a great night. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you. everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker's sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection.

With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. Again, Aura gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove.