Hidden True Crime - RUBY FRANKE/JODI HILDEBRANDT SENTENCED: Criminal Psychologist Dr John Matthias reacts to their sentencing statements

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Dr John Matthias, forensic psychologist, breaks down Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt's sentencing statements. Justice is served in a Utah courtroom on February 20th, 2024 in the case of YouTuber mom Ruby Franke and her therapist Jodi Hildebrandt. Hidden Host Lauren Matthias reported live from St George, Utah. Host and psychologist Dr John Matthias now weighs in on the statements. August 30, 2023--a brave 12-year-old boy escapes a house of torture in Southern Utah --rescuing himself and his 10-year-old sister. A neighbor feeds the emaciated boy and calls 911. The children's mother YouTube Celebrity Ruby Franke, and Ruby's therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, are arrested and charged with 6 counts of aggravated child abuse. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and consults on high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California. Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day. LAUREN MATTHIAS worked as an anchor in Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award and is a regular contributor on News Nation. She left the reporting world to produce the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves. SUPPORT: https://www.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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Quince uses premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, but they cut out the middleman. So everything is priced way lower than you'd expect. Refresh. your every day with luxury you can actually use. Head to quince.com slash hidden true crime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, quince, q-u-in-c-com slash hidden true crime for free shipping and 365 day of returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. Dr. John is my husband. It's a clinical and forensic psychologist, a criminal psychologist. I'm going to stop talking because we are all here to finally find out what you think, Dr. John. We should start with Ruby, Frankie, right?

She made the most detailed statement. She gave the most detailed statement. And there's a lot of questions about what I think what her statement meant. I think many people that I've seen provide feedback on this case feel like she was remorseful. But, you know, that's a question mark for me. and we'll talk about why. Hidden, a true crime podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes

while examining our deepest fears along the way. We are live. It's time for another hidden hour. It's so good to see you too. John, I'm happy to spend an evening with you and with our gems. I was out of town for quite a lot of last week and I'm glad to be home. and glad to finally be talking to you about such a big story, a story that you and I have been following from the very beginning, which is Ruby Frankie, the YouTube mother of the popular channel 8 passengers

that was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse, along with her therapist and mentor, Jody Hildebrandt. They were arrested in southern Utah, a place where I used to report Ivan's Utah. It used to be a reporter there. And it was a very shocking story. Again, a YouTube mother and a therapist who were charged with the most horrendous acts on a child. The sentencing, the judge, called it a concentration camp. Documents have called it torture. Some have said it's the worst case of child abuse they've ever seen. R.F. and E. F, the victims, a 10-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy, are in state custody still. They are, working on healing and something they'll probably do for the rest of their lives because of what was

inflicted on them. I was able to interview quite a few people that were there, including Adam Steed, who met up with me to do an in-person interview. He was a victim of Jody Hildebrand. And of course, though, I'm going to stop talking because we are all here to finally find out what you think, Dr. John. Dr. John is my husband. He's a forensic psychologist, a clinical and forensic psychologist, a criminal psychologist. And both women gave statements, two very different statements. And we are just dying to hear what you think about this. And just so all of our gems know, I do not know what he thinks. This is a surprise to read too. Okay. Well, you've come to the right place because I have plenty of thoughts. So we should start with Ruby, Frankie, right? She made the most detailed statement.

She gave the most detailed statement. And in some ways, there's a lot of questions about what I think what her statement meant. I think many people that I've seen provide feedback on this case feel like she was remorseful. But, you know, that's a question mark for me. and we'll talk about why. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting. I'll just say this. Two very different statements.

Ruby Frankie certainly gave a more remorseful statement, I would say, than did her therapist, a Jody Hildebrand. So that's an interesting start. What a start. Way to not bury the lead. Again, thank you. I think on the surface, it comes across as being very, very remorseful. But, you know, when she was giving her statement and I was watching and listening,

it just, there was something about it that just wasn't honest, you know, sort of like Gypsy Rose. I mean, there was something about Gypsy Rose that just, it was like a thorn in my side. I just, there was something bothering me about that whole case. So when I thought about it a little more and dug a little deeper, I think it became more obvious what was going on. And I think that's, there's some of that here too. So I think there's, there's different narrative. that are being floated here about what was going on with her and why she's remorseful now. And so we really need to dig into that to understand her statement and to understand Ruby Frankie, honestly, to get a deeper look at who Ruby Frankie is or might be.

Thank you. You know, for many weeks now, we've been waiting for you to do a bit of a deep dive into Ruby Frankie. We have certainly talked more about Jody Hildebrand, but we have yet to delve or you have yet to delve into the inner workings of who exactly, Ruby Frankie is and how this could possibly happen, which is why I think that this case really has grasped international attention is because it's just so hard to fathom a mother of six and someone who has put her entire family on display for the world to watch as an example of a family in motherhood end up doing such horrendous things to two of her very

own. So of course, we also cover Lori Valo. So, right, right. There's parallels with Lori Valo, by the way. I'll be raising the issue of Philicide a little bit too. So Philicide is when a parent kills a child. And this wasn't the case here, obviously, that there was an intervention before any of the children were killed. And so I think that was quite fortunate. But I mean, but I think there's, there's definitely some parallels between what happened here and potentially what someone, what the research shows around Philicide. So let's talk about Ruby first. So let's talk about her attorney first.

So I think it's, it's important to bring the attorneys into play because they, they floated different versions of motive here as well. The proceedings begin with Ruby Frankie's attorney. And he starts off by giving a little speech to the judge about how the, the cause, of Ruby's troubles and the cause of her malicious actions towards the children is that she had, quote, thinking errors. So the attorney is already kind of trying to set the stage by giving his version of events. He then says that she was, quote, indoctrinated into a philosophy that was destructive. He goes on and he says that there were layers and layers of deceit and deception foisted upon her by an unscrupulous

individual. So that's interesting because Ruby essentially is going to pick up that same thread and run with it. Clearly the lawyer is setting the stage and he's telling us that the narrative here is that Ruby Frankie was

this perfect mother and perfect YouTuber until she comes across Jody Hilda Brandt and then everything goes to hell in a hand basket. And you know, she's indoctrinated. She's quote, she's subject to layers and layers of deceit and deception. And so, and so apparently being in this, he doesn't say cult, but in this indoctrinated group,

it creates thinking errors. So he sees this is, which I should point out by the way that thinking errors is the basis for an entire school of thought in clinical psychology called cognitive behavioral therapy and the basic premise is that when people have faulty thoughts or faulty thinking, that if you correct those thoughts, then you essentially change their behaviors. And I don't want to get into that too much, but I just want to point out that he's referencing kind of a major school of thought in psychology. And I don't know if he's getting that from Ruby,

because Ruby got it from Jody. It kind of sounds like something that Jody would say. And so it's interesting that the attorney's saying that. because it has this kind of Jody-esque flavor to it. And so the basic premise that the attorney's floating here is that if we correct her thinking and get her out of this cult, then everything's going to be fine and dandy. And Ruby shouldn't serve that much time because she's not in the cold anymore

and she's working on her thinking errors. And we should just let her walk, you know, walk free and head back to the community as a perfectly normal human being capable of doing business with the world. which I'm going to dispute in a minute, by the way. But that's essentially what the attorney says. And then you go from the attorney to Ruby. And, you know, he hands the mic over to Ruby essentially.

By the way, it was a little hard to hear. The audio I had to kind of go through it a few times. It's, you know, that's not anybody's fault. That's simply an issue with the court. Ruby then tells the story that she meets Jody in 2019. So she's with Jody for four years. Well, can you play parts of it? I was going to kind of summarize it, but...

Yeah, let's play parts of it. For the past four years, I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark dilution. I was led to believe that this world was an evil place, filled with cops who control hospitals that injure, government agencies that brainwash, church leaders who lie in lust, husbands who refuse to protect and children who need abused. Okay, that's good. That part is actually, I think, one of the most important parts. So she leads with that. Let's analyze what she just said a little bit.

So she says that she followed a, quote, dark delusion. She lived in an evil world where she felt like various agencies were controlling people. she believed that children needed to be abused. And this is probably the most interesting part. So within that dark delusion or that dark world, she says that paranoia, quote, paranoia led to criminal activities.

Her self-analysis of her crime is that it's driven by paranoia. Right? That's her version of events. And so what she's arguing is that she's in this, she follows this dark delusion. She's told that the world is evil and bad. She believes it. She becomes paranoid.

She apparently sees her children as evil and possessed or whatever, some version of that. So they need an undue amount of punishment or discipline. And so that leads paranoia, ultimately, according to her, leads to the criminal activities. She also says that, quote, the moment you handcuff me, meaning one of the police officers, the moment you handcuff me was the moment I, gained my freedom. She's talking about the detective who arrested her. So that's interesting. So she's actually trying to express gratitude. So this would be very atypical of most criminals, by the way, that most criminals, when you arrest them or handcuffed them, they're angry.

And, you know, so they're the complete opposite of what Ruby Frankie is portrayed here, which is that she's arguing that the only way she could get out of this dark delusion was to be handcuffed and therefore freed from her dark thoughts or her thinking errors or whatever. So the big question here, for me at least, is, is this an accurate representation of what happened? Is it the case that Ruby Frankie, she meets this person, let's call her a cult leader, Jody, and everything changes. She's completely under her influence and sway. she's led into this dark world with these dark impulses.

She acts on them. This is a paranoid world. She acts on them. And here she is. Now she's handcuffed. And she's led back into the light. That's sort of what she's trying to convey. That's what her lawyer tried to convey.

The problem I have with this scenario, so if you start thinking about it, number one, it's very simplistic, right? Like it's an overly simplistic analysis of a fairly complex situation. And the part that she's really leaving out here is everything that happens before Jody Hildebrand. And obviously, to me, that's the most important part. It's not to say that Jody Hildebrandt doesn't have an influence on Ruby Frankie.

She does. But what is it about Ruby Frankie that makes her so vulnerable to acting on these impulses, these dark impulses? What is it about Ruby Frankie that allows her to go along with it? I think this is where you start getting some parallels with Lori Debo. She didn't make this argument in her trial because she wouldn't allow it. But I know, we know that some of the attorneys have talked about making a similar argument. Lori Debo meets Chad Debo, Chad's this charismatic cult leader, I guess, according to her. She's deeply influenced by his writings.

And so she's swayed into engaging in behaviors that she would never engage in previously. And that's what you have here, I think. So you have also, by the way, I should mention that Chad and Jennifer Griffiths, who are the parents of Ruby Frankie, they send in a support letter, and they make the same argument. I'm going to read a little bit of that support letter that they wrote for Ruby sentencing to help her. So it's kind of a character letter. Quote, she was delusional. She was so deeply brainwashed.

we could not recognize her. So they're talking about, again, same thing. She meets Jody and then she becomes brainwash. She's unrecognizable. They said also in that letter, quote, she expressed gratitude for being incarcerated

and let the mighty wake-up call and felt the mighty wake-up call was a huge blessing. So again, getting arrested helped her. Since then, we have seen a return to the Ruby we once knew. But the problem with this, the problem with the scenario, and this is going to take us

into a little bit of discussion of philicide, is that they're forensic psychologists in general, not all the time, but hopefully most of us, we talk about what's called pre-morbid conditions, meaning I want to know, when I'm analyzing someone like Ruby Frankie,

I want to know what happened, what was she like before she met Jody Hildebrand? Right? And what was there anything there that might have somehow been exacerbated by Jody? Or, you know, is it possible that you can take someone like Ruby Frankie who is supposedly this wonderful YouTuber, this perfect parent who people love because she's got this Channel 8 passengers that shows us all how to be great parents and, right, that, you know, she's supposed to be a model parent, a perfect parent.

is it possible that you can go from that to then meeting this woman Jody Hildebrandt and all of a sudden changing course dramatically and becoming unrecognizable? That's the question. This is from a brilliant article that's very rarely referenced, but it's, I don't think you guys probably can't see it,

but it's called tortosychodynamic understanding of phylliside beyond psychosis and into the heart of darkness. It's by Daniel, Papa Pietro and Elizabeth Barbo. It's from the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, volume 33, 2005. I'm going to read from page 506 quickly here. So they're talking about cases of murder,

but I want our viewers to think of this case as something similar to like attempted murder. So they're also talking about that, by the way. So not just murder, but acts approaching murder, attempted murder. So as you pointed out, some of these injuries were life-threatening. So I'm going to see this as being potentially in that category. Quote, this is again 506, quote, The act of murder is at least in part the result of severe personality disorder deficits in which severe lapses in ego control made possible the open expression of primitive,

violence that has long been repressed from conscious awareness. I'm going to read that again really quickly. The act of murder is, at least in part, the result of severe personality disorder deficits in which severe lapses in ego control made possible the open expression of primitive violence that had long been repressed from conscious awareness. So in other words, what they're saying is that violence doesn't, Violence just doesn't erupt out of nowhere. Violence always has origins.

And in this particular case, in this article, they talk about how oftentimes in phylliside offenders, you have this repressed rage. So oftentimes in filicide offenders, you have childhood traumas or losses or adversities, which often leads to disrupted attachments, disrupted parental bonds, which creates a certain amount of anger and frustration in the child.

I'm oversimplifying, but let me just run through this. So you get this anger from these fractured parental bonds, and oftentimes that leads to a lot of frustration, which can quite often turn into rage. And then that rage tends to be repressed to some degree, that a normal way to deal with rage is, let's say, to transform it into guilt. So instead of having this rage towards your parents, a lot of times, normal people will repress it.

And sometimes that'll show up as like guilt, for example. So the question then becomes, in suicide cases, oftentimes their argument is that something will unrepress that rage. Something will allow for that rage to be released. That could be psychosis. It could be drugs. Could be depression. Could be mania, right?

It could be mental health issues. But the bottom line is that beneath these acts of violence, you have something deeper. You have this rage. The violence just doesn't, so you don't meet someone like Jody Hildebrand and all of a sudden go, oh, you know, I want to really harm my kids. I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly.

Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch.

That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminated. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

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Head to Acorns.com slash Hidden True Crime or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non-client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns, tier one compensation provided. Investing involves risk, Acorns Advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. A few important disclosures at acorns.com slash hidden true crime. I mean, it's possible that she might have some influence to point you in that direction. But in order to actually take those actions, typically you're going to have to have something else, like a personality disorder, narcissism, maybe psychosis.

But oftentimes, one of the underlying things you'll find is something like rage, repressed rage. I think you have a version of that here. In this article, what they're pointing towards. mothers that have most often postpartum depression or some type of psychosis following pregnancy that leads to what they call unrepressing their rage, which then leads to potentially murder. But, you know, when I think about Ruby Frankie, it's pretty clear to me. So her analysis is that she's under delusion. And I believe she talks to her parents about this too, because they use the same word.

in their support letter. They say, as I just read, they say she was delusional, right? So they're arguing for something like psychosis in the sense that they're arguing that, you know, whatever this rage was or whatever this craziness was that led to the abuse, that it was temporary, that it was caused by Jody. But I think that's, I don't think that's accurate. I think that when I think about this, Ruby, again, I don't know. I'm not diagnosing here because obviously I haven't met Ruby

Frankie, but when you look at Ruby Frankie, it doesn't appear to me that there's any psychotic features that are obvious. I mean, certainly in court, she's oriented. I don't see any psychoses. I don't necessarily see any delusions. I think that they're using those terms to kind of skew public opinion, right? She meets this person, she becomes delusional, she loses her mind. This is sort of what people said about Lori Daybell, too. It's true. Exactly what they said about her. Right.

So she's out of her mind. And so she does these things that she's not aware of. She has no responsibility for that she's arrested. She loses Jody Hildebrand. All of a sudden, she's restored to a normal state. The problem with that argument is that it neglects any type of pre-morbid issues in terms of, is there narcissism? Are there personality disorder issues here?

Are there mental health issues, maybe around depression? Are there, right, there's, it's negating all those. Is there some repressed rage here that she might be acting out in her behaviors towards these kids? And my response to that would be, I think there are. I don't know for sure. I haven't analyzed her. I can't prove it. But if you look at her family culture and you look at some of her behaviors leading up to her arrest,

some of those are occurring before she even knows, Joe, It's not exactly clear. So it's a little confusing about her YouTube channel gets taken down in early 2023 because of a lot of concerns about her parenting practices. But by that time, she's known Jody for four years. So cause and effect in here are a little confusing. But we do know that Ruby and her sister, at least one of her sisters, has subscribed to blanket trading,

which is a very abusive way to discipline children and to gain their compliance. Discipline babies, discipline infants, toddlers into strict obedience. And that was Bonnie on her channel that did blanket training. Right. We know from her YouTube channel that the kids were largely props, that they would set up these scenarios that were, facades. They weren't real.

And she would set these syn scenarios up to get views and to get subscribers. And so in many ways, she tweeted her children like props, like objects that she can monetize. So she never really saw her kids, at least not in the sense that a normal parent

would kind of express empathy and love to their kids. And I think some of their kids knew that. Some of their kids have been quite vocal about the fact that they resented the way that their mother treated them. So again, like, if I'm trying to build a case that Ruby Frankie has other mental health issues prior to Jody Hildebrand,

I think these are some of the elements that come into play. This is from a Patreon member tonight. M.V. says, I know Jody Hilda Brand abused the authority of her position, but I hope that Ruby and Kevin's abuse of the children prior to falling under her influence is not forgotten. You can watch this one. woman smile and wrinkle her nose, convinced. She is adorable while her children talk about having

no friends. She takes glee in starving them and making them cry on camera. She recorded the girls shaving for the first time for every predator on the internet to watch and then loses her mind claiming low by Flo Rida is taking their innocence. I know showing remorse is generally commendable, but I just don't believe her. Where was this remorse when her children were cut to the bone and left exposed in the desert heat. She's just much more manipulative and savvy than Jody at playing the system. I think that M is speaking for many people here and you're addressing this and I just want to say thank you. Go on, Dr. John, go on. But I have to hear that. That's a great comment. So I mean, part of what, so part of my argument here, and I'll just throw it out now, is that

that if you look at Ruby Frankie's statement, what you see is that she does that she, takes responsibility for being the victim of Jody Hildebrand. But she doesn't really take responsibility for being an offender of children. So she's a great victim of, let's call her, I don't know, whatever, of a cult leader, but she's not particularly good at taking full responsibility for what happened to the children, right? So she's hiding behind, she's hiding behind Jody, essentially.

and her parents and some of her siblings are all standing behind that. They're all buying this narrative of that she's fell under this dark delusion. She fell under this spell. They are. We have the letter from her brother. So this is the, this is, here's, so this is my insight. This is my, this is my reveal. I would argue, and again, this goes back to.

the idea that violence just doesn't appear out of nowhere. There's always some, it leaves traces. There's always some elements from our past, some part of our upbringings that, that leave footprints that lead us to something violent down the road. Okay. Yeah. It's not always cause and effect, but you just, you don't, you don't meet someone, you start having dark delusions, and then all of a sudden you, you, you, you, you, you, you, it's in these types of behaviors. That's just not. And that's what the article on Philicide argues as well, that you don't go from being this perfectly wonderful loving parent to having psychosis to murdering your kids. Right. Like there's something before the

psychosis. It could be rage. It could be, right, it could be somebody who's put, it could be generational trauma. Right. It could be a lot of things. Whatever that is for, Ruby. I don't know for sure. Here's the reveal. What Jody Hildebrandt does is she doesn't create a delusion for Ruby Frankie, although she does indoctrinate her to some degree. She doesn't force her to engage in these abusive behaviors. What she does for Ruby Franke is she gives her permission. Wow. And I think, and so having said this, I think it's really important. important for those involved in this case to examine what's going on here in more depth. Because the narrative, even the attorney, when the prosecuting attorney, the DA,

when he left that meeting and he held the press conference, he essentially said, Ruby Frankie is so remorseful, isn't she great? Her minimum sentence is four years. And I think he basically said this. I think she should get four years. She's so much remorse. She's so wonderful. Like, I mean, he didn't say that, but he said a version of that, right? But what they're not understanding here is they're buying this narrative. They're buying this narrative that this is as simple as somebody having thinking errors or being indoctrinated and all of a sudden, you know, entering these dark delusions

and then engaging in horrible behaviors, that's not accurate. What's accurate here is that she meets someone who gives her permission to act out all of those mental health issues or personality issues or rage that she's repressed. And that's what she does. Anna LaBaron is here with us. You can see Anna LeBaron's interviews with us. A hidden true crime. Anna says exactly. And if anyone would know, Anna would know

she comes from a history of abuse and you can see her full story and a cult leader, daughter of a cult leader, full story on daughters of a cult on Hulu. Thank you. And she says exactly. That hit me too, babe. She didn't create the delusions or create the acts.

She gave Ruby permission. Right. Right. She gave permission. Jody gave Ruby permission to indulge her deepest, darkest fantasies of violence and rage and whatever those are. I mean, we all have those to some degree. I'm not saying this is unique to Ruby. We all have some of that to some degree.

The issue is that we don't act out on it, right? And most of us understand that it's not socially permissible to have a fantasy. about killing one of our neighbors and then doing it. But Jody, when you meet someone like Jody, Jody essentially tells her, I think, look, kids are horrible, kids are evil. I know you have these dark fantasies about your kids and wanting to hurt them.

Why don't just go ahead and do it? Right? So that's what she does. And so I think, I hope that when the parole board meets to talk about this case, that they're not duped into thinking that this is as simple as, and I'm afraid they might be, by the way, because parole boards aren't going to dig too deep into the psychological motives,

but I think they need to consider the fact that there were mental health issues here before, maybe personality issues, and this will take us, let's get into the personality issues. This will take us deeper into her statement. So those of you who have watched Ruby's sentencing statement know that she started thanking people left and right. I'm so glad you're bringing this up. She wasn't just saying I'm sorry. She was thanking people. She was thanking individual people one by one.

Right. She started thanking people. And I mean, I didn't know what to, I've never seen a sentencing hearing quite like it. Like, I mean, to me, I was like, oh, my, what, what is going on here? Like, I went to grad school in L.A. He's a grad school at USC downtown in Los Angeles. I remember every year when I was in grad school in the mid-90s that the Academy Awards would be held, oftentimes at the USC campus.

And I remember more than a few times I'd be going to class and these limos would pull up. I remember walking by some stars. I don't remember who they were at the moment. But, like, I remember thinking, oh, yeah, it's the academy. Right. So, you know, so when she was doing that, I thought, this sounds like she just won an award. She's giving an academy of speech to like, you know, thank you law enforcement. Thank you judges. Thank you everyone for arresting me so that I could shed my delusions. And I can see the light, right? I'm so validated. That was exactly what I thought. When I was watching it, I was like, this is an acceptance speech. She actually says, so to that effect, she says during her statement, she says, quote, I believe dark was light and light was wrong.

Doon, do, do. Light and dark, too. I caught that. Right. That actually, by the way, that reminded me of Macbath. The whole fair is fall and fall is fair. Like, that's right out of Macbeth. I'm pretty sure she hasn't read Macbath, but, but like, I mean, and I don't want to get into that

because it's a lot. that quote in Macbeth is a lot deeper than what Joe, I'm sorry, what Ruby Frankie is saying here, but she's creating some confusion around the fact that she was misled and now she's not, now she's seen the light, everything's good. Like she's trying to create that impression. And so in her Academy Award, she's, there's this reversal, right, where she's, she's thinking, I've never heard a criminal that I've worked with,

thank law enforcement for arresting them, but that's what she's doing here. Let's step back from that and think about what that means, right? You'd have to say, and I want to be really clear, I'm not diagnosing here, I would argue that there have to be some narcissistic features there, right? In terms of she really believe, I mean, first of all, let's go back to YouTube, right? She's got this YouTube channel where she's an actress of sorts for sure. clearly like she's on this channel all the time every week multiple times a week she's staging these performances with their kids she's using their kids as like props to make money i mean this

felt like an award speech from an actress at the academy she happens to be on youtube but you've got like you know i have this i mean first okay so it felt manipulative to me right it's like by by creating this reversal by telling me that she's so grateful that she was arrested, she's like trying to skew reality. She's telling us, look, I was deluded, I got arrested, now I'm great. So I'm so grateful that I was arrested. Like, it's divorced from reality. It's manipulative. And it's narcissistic because she thinks she's going to, she thinks she's pulled one over the eyes of the entire courtroom. and which, by the way, she has. Like the prosecutors out in the parking lot

giving a press conference essentially saying Ruby Frankie is so remorseful, she's so great. You know, four years makes sense to me. Jody, I don't know, that evil Jody, let's get her longer. But right, like, in many ways it worked. It did work. I mean, we'll see what happens. But holy cow.

So let's think about this idea of premed. morbid functioning, right? Like she's starting to show us a little bit about some of that here. When she's giving... I like what Dazling Zebra says. She needed to thank her son for escaping. Of all the people she thanked.

Well, in her mind, her son would get an... Her son would get her, you know, academy for like supporting actor or something the way she sees it. Right. A prop. He's a prop. Right, he's a prop. In her world.

She's the one taking home best actress. Her son is just in a supporting role. But I agree. That's the point. So if you look at that speech and you start really looking at it more closely, I think you start to see these elements where there might be personality disorder issues. Okay. Where there might be mental health issues, like depression,

where there might be issues around rage that's totally repressed. that someone who's very zealous in terms of religion. And by the way, her parents' letter was all about that. That when Jody's true self emerges again, she's going to see the light, she's going to come back to God. She's going to be this perfectly,

perfect saintly religious person and all will be well. That's what they say. Right. So you've got in that type of environment where anger is not allowed, where it's repressed and it's denied, you're going to get, almost certainly you're going to get some type of anger, some type of rage that's going to be repressed.

In many of these cases with criminals, they think they're smarter than everyone else. But if you pay really close attention, they often betray what they're trying to convey to us. She's doing that here. She's betraying herself by giving this Academy Award speech. She thinks it's really clever and smart. But if you look at it,

it doesn't make any sense. I don't think this is a true expression of remorse. I think this is an attempt to minimize her sentence. It's an attempt to manipulate the public, to manipulate the district attorney, right? And I don't, that's not to say, I do think she's had some remorse. I do think she's seen some of the errors of her ways.

Do I think she's done that fully, not even close. Well, I want to point out what you already said, just how manipulative the thanking and her entire statement is. But let's talk specifics about thanking people and not just thanking people or groups of people, individuals. How manipulative is it to thank individual people and put that expectation on them to then be an advocate for you for forever? I'd like to thank officer so-and-so. Did she think the Board of Paroles? I'd like to thank this person on the Board of Paroles. I mean, talk about the pressure and the manipulation and the expectation that puts on individual people to always be her advocate.

I just want to point out just how specific that is. 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 sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web.

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You know, she's not thinking police officers. She's thinking these individuals, it is manipulative to do that. It sort of reminds me. So as someone who's done a lot of clinical work too, as a therapist, if I'm in therapist mode, oftentimes when I'm starting to get near issues or material that's hard to hear painful or hurtful to a client, they'll try to push me back. And sometimes a common response to dealing with very difficult stuff is to say, oh, you're the best therapist I've ever had, John.

and you're so wonderful. You're amazing. Like, I can't believe you're doing this, right? And so they're doing that. They're not doing that because it's true. Like any self-respecting therapist knows that a client's telling you that because they're trying to convey something to you. They're not flattering you because they really think that.

They're flattering you because they want you to back away. They want something from you. Right. What they want is they don't want me to get near painful material. And that's what's going on here. She's flattering these people because she thinks they're, like, if she flatters the detective who arrested her, she's thinking, oh, he's going to now, he's going to now like me.

He's going to, he's not going to look as closely at what I'm saying. He's going to, right? He's going to be on my bandwagon. He's going to go to the, he's going to call the parole board directly. And he's going to say, Ruby Frankie gave such a wonderful. statement. She even thanked me for arresting her. I think this woman's ready to see the light. Right. Like she's doing it. She's engaging in a type of flattery because she doesn't want these people to look deeper. I'm loving this. You're helping me make sense of this. You know, I stayed busy,

John, for so long, just doing interviews right and left, reporting right and left. I couldn't even process it. Thank you. It's tricky. It's a little tricky. You know, when you see someone apparently expressing remorse and in tears, you know, it's, there's an emotional pull there. You want to believe them, right? You take them at face value. You want to believe them. You want to think it's sincere.

You want to buy this narrative that she was in the darkness, now she's been arrested, and now she's found the light, right? That's a classic narrative. That's sort of the hero's journey, you know? So that's a narrative we all love. Disney uses it in every one of their stories. Well, let me ask you about this, because you mentioned, that she only said sorry for being a victim of Jody's,

but she never said sorry for the actual crime and sorry to her children. What about the mother duck analogy? Marlene says the mother duck analogy turned her stomach, as have other people said similarly. I mean, she said that she wasn't there for her babies, though. She said baby chicks, but chicks are chickens. So I think she meant duckling. She got those two birds mixed up.

But was that not saying she was sorry for what she did to her children to play devil's advocate here? She indirectly expresses some remorse for what she did to the children. But most of it is hidden beneath being a victim of Jody's cult. a victim of Jody. The gist of it, the majority of this, there's a little bit of culpability for what she did to the children, but most of it is about how Jody did this. The more honest expression to me, I was looking for something along the lines of, you know, I wasn't a perfect parent before Jody, there were some issues, but I did my best, right? I had some struggles as a parent. you know, I didn't always do the best things for my kids.

But then when I met Jody, it became a lot worse. And I really, you know, I crossed the line, right? Like the narrative, that narrative makes more sense to me because there's more continuity. It's not, I was the perfect mother. I met Jody. I, you know, I fell out of grace. And then I got arrested and now I'm the perfect mother again, right? It's the real expression of Morse here would be, I had a lot of,

flaws before I met Jody. Those were hard for me. But then when I met Jody, those flaws became amplified. They became worse, right? Like, that's remorse. That's not like, right? It's just, it's not realistic to say, I'm the perfect mother,

met Jody, got arrested, now I'm the perfect mother again. Like it's, so when I, I guess, so I think I need to say that because because her expression of remorse doesn't include any flaws pre Jody. And to make, to have a, to have a genuine authentic statement of remorse, I think,

you've got to have some flaws before Jody. She has flaws. She has flaws. She has plenty of flaws before Jody. But she's not acknowledging them. That's the problem here. That makes sense. In other words, was she that mother duck before Jody?

She also, you know who? else she apologized too. She apologized. I jumped to this because I was just asking myself if she was any sort of mother duck with her ducklings before Jody. And then I jumped to thinking, wait, she also apologized to Pam,

who was the woman that had Ruby's children scrubbing floors while the other children were in the house being abused. I also thought that was interesting. She was apologizing to Pam, a woman who put her, kids to work. So as far as being a mother duck, yeah, I'm not seeing much. But that was another weird moment to me when she was apologizing to the president of Connections LLC. Yeah. Someone who owns the house and might be funneling money for Jody, according to Kevin Frankie's request for restitution.

He said, I'm afraid that the money of the house is going to go to Pam. And yet, here she is apologizing to Pam. That was another odd thing I want to point out. Jesse Hildebrandt says Pam is Jody's best friend and has been for years. But Ruby made sure to really apologize to Pam. Right. I mean, there were a lot of weird moments. The whole thing was, but again, it's, it's, it's all dependent upon buying this narrative that they're trying to sell us about how she's perfect, became imperfect because of Jody and is perfect again. So don't give her that many years because she really wanted to be perfect. She just met Jody and became imperfect, right? So I mean, It's not believable and it's not real to me.

Do we move on to Jodys? Yeah, let's move on to Jodys because I think I'll have to be honest. Another reason Ruby's statement to me seemed so much better was because you were comparing it to Jodys. Rubies left me a bit confused. I needed you to help me make sense of it. Jodys just left me your. So I want to hear what you have to say, but I'm going to now calm my feelings down, lean back, and let you tell me how you felt about Jody's statement. Well, I think most of my observations of Jody are going to be, you know, we did two shows on Jody.

We've talked a lot about Jody's issues and upbringing and, you know, mental health issues. And my short response to Jody is nothing's changed. Not only is she not remorseful, but, you know, she's, well, first of all, let's start with her body language. You know, she's, she, she just, please. She just looks angry all the time, you know, which is, which is fine. You know, I get, I mean, if she's, she's an angry person, it's, if you're an angry person, I guess you can't hide it, but she's just angry all the time.

You know, I think behind the anger, I, I definitely think there was a little bit of fear. I think that you saw kind of a combination of anger and fear when she was in court. I think the anger masks the fear, by the way, to some degree. But there's fear. There's definitely fear there. And there's this defiance. Jody Hillibrand, and we've talked about this before, but there's just this very oppositional, defiant quality to her.

And, you know, even the judge pointed that out. I think when you're sensing hearing and the judge says, says, so I'm going to quote the judge here. The judge says, quote, she terrorized children and it's tragic. That's one thing the judge said. Another thing the judge said is she adopted a philosophy that is, quote, detached from reality. When the judge that you're sentencing hearing is sensing that you're oppositional and is telling you that you're terrorizing children and you're not expressing remorse, things probably aren't going to go well for you. You know, unfortunately they set this up, though that and Ruby's

defense team was brilliant at this. They set this up so that Ruby looks like the hero. And Ruby's probably going to get much less time because she's compared to Jody. You know, she looks like a star, she looks like the hero here. Can I say something about you

saying that Jody looks angry all the time? I concur. Couldn't agree more. You're always talking about nonverbales and people's affects and I'll say that Jody's is very clear cut. She is always angry. Just watch her talk about Google reviews and you'll see her absolutely furious. But I want to push back on her looking afraid because I have never,

ever, ever once seen Jody looking afraid until the sentencing. And I agree that that is what she looked like. But can I suggest that it is a total. act that she always is the victim. The judge states as much. He states, even when you're being recorded on jailhouse calls and you know you're being recorded, you are still the victim. And I think, in my opinion, it was manipulative. I have never once seen her ever look afraid in any video I've ever seen until she's in front of the courtroom and I don't buy it. I think it's an act, my opinion.

By the way, little old me. If you want to assess someone for a personality disorder, convict them of a serious crime and put them in front of a judge and see how they respond. If you take someone and you essentially say to them, hey, look, you pled guilty this. and you're going to get sentenced, let's see how you react to it, right?

Like a normal human being is going to respond in a way that's appropriate to the situation, right? They're going to, hopefully they'd show remorse and they'd probably do a little soul searching, right? They'd try to figure out what they did wrong, how they can improve. A personality disorder is going to remain defiant and oppositional until the end, because even if their life is on the line, they're not going to change and they're not going to budge one iota. And so, and again, I'm not diagnosing here,

but if you want to look and see whether Jolie Hildebrand has a personality disorder, that would be the litmus test that I would apply. So she's coming into court looking at potentially, what, it's 15 years per count, right? So 60 years. 60 years, she gives a really terse statement that really has no, adds no value to anyone or expresses no remorse and has no problem doing it, right? Like she, I mean, she remains defiant doing it.

I like that Anna is even saying, didn't Jody used to tell women how to act when dealing with law enforcement? Absolutely. she told Adam Steed's ex-wife, according to emails that were read on Mormon stories that we've all heard, how to act when dealing with law enforcement. Jody did do that. Great point. Anna, great point. And yet she can't do it herself. Or she was.

Right. Well, generally. Acting innocent, acting afraid. I don't know. Yeah. Well, yeah. Maybe it's not fear. I felt like she was looking meek.

She was trying to look meek, you know, afraid. I think generally speaking, an oppositional attitude towards law enforcement is not conducive to someone's well-being. It's not, it's, it usually doesn't turn out well. But, but yeah, so do you want to, should we talk about what she actually said? So basically she just says, I love these children. I desire for them to heal. I hope and pray they will heal. And she says she didn't go to trial because she doesn't want them to relive their traumatic experiences.

So that's essentially what she said in a nutshell. I mean, I'm not saying it the way she said it, obviously. But when you think about what she said. No, I think you got it pretty good, by the way. I do think you nailed it. That's exactly what she said. I love these children. I want them to heal.

And I took a plea deal so they don't have to testify. against me. Go ahead. So, you know, what's interesting about her statement is, I thought, you know what, she does believe this. Like, I mean, it doesn't express any remorse for what she did, clearly, for her egregious behaviors. But in her own way, she probably does love these children. And the way she expresses love is precisely in the way she did. Since she doesn't really have any particular love for herself, and I think she had a difficult childhood. She has a lot of internalized self-hatred, I think, that her version of love is to harm children. And so in an interesting way,

I think that her statement is what she believes, that she did love them in her own way. She does want them to heal, even if she thinks healing involves restraints. And she hopes and praise that they will heal. And what she means heal, I think she's talking about healing in a spiritual sense. Heal from distortion, not her abuse. Well, she sees these children as being evil and possessed. And when she says heal, she means, in a literal way, I think she means like dispossessing them of evil spirits or exercising evil spirits. So, you know, it's interesting because her statement was consistent with something that she believes. And, you know, she didn't have to say anything that she didn't believe or didn't think. So I think if you dig a

little deeper into what she said, this is her version of what she did was her version of love. and that she does hope and pray that they heal, just not in the way that most of us would think, that the way they heal is you beat them senseless and then hope that the evil spirits leave their bodies or something like that, I guess. I don't know. Kathleen said something similar earlier

that Jody was exactly who she was. She said exactly how she felt. Right, exactly. And so if we critique what she said, that's my interpretation. that she's very consistent. Like, I mean, for a normal person, when you say, I love these children, you'd think, oh, you're, you know,

you have empathy, you want to nurture them, you want to take, right, you want to represent their best interests. But that's not necessarily, that's probably not what Jolie Hilda Brandt means when she makes that statement. The other thing that was telling was that her lawyer basically said that she, he didn't say that she's remorseful. What he said was essentially that she, She recognizes that she made bad decisions.

She made decisions that were wrong with respect to the discipline of the children. There's a big difference between making bad decisions and expressing remorse for really egregious and traumatic behaviors towards other people. I noticed that too because the judge, before anything, the judge came out to say, this woman has not shown remorse. I listened to the jailhouse calls. And even when she knows she's been recorded, she's the victim of these kids. So if the attorney, her attorney had come forward and said, oh, no, she has so much remorse.

It would almost be, I think, pushing back against the judge a bit too, which would not be okay. And that's not exactly what he did. He said, she feels bad. She made some mistakes. Or my translation, she's really upset that RF escaped. and she has regrets that she got caught. Right.

Well, no, I think when you say you met, I mean, when you say you made some bad decisions, you're not taking responsibility. I mean, we all make bad decisions. It's just that. It's just that decisions of this nature are a lot more egregious than, you know, a decision to, I don't know, eat dessert or something, right?

Like, it's, she's lumping them. all together. She's seen this type of traumatic behavior inflicted on children. By framing it in terms of making bad decisions, she's acting as if it's just a normal everyday occurrence. She's minimizing it. She's trying to normalize it. She's saying, yeah, I made a bad decision. But I mean, you know, we all make bad decisions. So no biggie. You know, I made a bad decision because I decided to take the back roads to work or something. So I was late for work, right? Like that's a different decision.

That's a different bad decision than harming other people. But I guess, I don't know, maybe her lawyer should explain that to her. Yeah, someone is mentioning, what is your take on her unkempt appearance, long greasyy hair, etc.? Scared greasy look in her face? Yeah, she wasn't looking too hot. I agree. Ruby was looking better.

I don't know exactly what they were both supplied with. She didn't have street clothes on. So I don't know. 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 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. ORA gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service.

Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. If they were given a hairdyer, you know, which would probably have helped her or any makeup, maybe that's just who she is or do you think, yeah, there was something going on, John? Yeah, that's not really my, that's not really my departure. heartment. But I mean, I will say this. She, she wasn't as concerned about her appearance as Lori Valo-Dabell typically would be. So she clearly didn't think it would have any influence on the judge, whereas Lori Dayball obviously seems to think that her appearance does impact the judge.

So, but that, that's about as far as I can go with that. Or maybe, or maybe after her months behind Barr, she still hasn't tackled how to do the, like, nightly braids to if you don't have a hair dryer there are ways right maybe she hasn't met any friends behind bars that have helped her out with some tips like uh hey you know use us use you know a skittles for lipstick or something i don't know who knows i don't think it's a high priority for her let's just say that i think she's she's she believes she's her view of the world is correct and her parents doesn't matter she's right and i don't know i mean I mean, so the prosecutor, and the prosecutor's statement before Jody spoke, he essentially said that she still believes she's the victim, that the children are responsible, that they're the perpetrators.

And he said, this is the most interesting part. He said that she believes the court proceedings are full of lies. So, in other words, he said she still has this worldview of distortion. And she believes, she still believes, in spite of all of this. that the courts and the judge and presumably the prosecutor and everybody that is watching us and us, that we all have a distorted view in the world. We're all operating in distortion.

But she has the truth. So she should be angry because how can you hold a profit like her accountable when she has the truth and we don't? us mere mortals who don't have the truth, how could we hold someone like her accountable? She has, in her view, she has every right to be angry. That's how she sees it.

In her book, you are not enough. She, she's laughing, but that really is the name of her book. That is the name of her book. I'm just being honest. So in her book, you are not,

not enough. she pretty much kind of lays that out that she definitely has the truth and she refers to it with truth as a capital T. So anything that goes against what she believes is distortion. So you're right. She just went forward and said, look, I love these children. She doesn't know what love is either, but she thinks she loves them, right? Yeah, it's her version of love.

Which is a really terrible version. let's let's never use jody hildebrand's version of love but you know since she doesn't know what love is she thinks it's that and that she wants them to heal even though not from her not from her abuse notice that she never says i want them to heal from what i did to them or for me she just wants them to heal because they're in distortion and she took a plea deal because she didn't want them to testify and then she left off against her and let the world know the terrible things that she did because her version is truth that she could not hear it. That's my takeaway, armchair psychologist.

Jody's responses was fairly predictable and straightforward. I mean, nothing's really changed for her. The other interesting thing was that the prosecutor said that he believes that there's still all these risk factors for Jody. And I agree with that. I mean, I don't know if a forensic psychologist assessed her for her pre-sentence investigation report, but he identified three risk factors. He identified one.

The prosecutor did. Number one was the severity of the abuse. Number two was her attitude that she believes she's been wrongful. She's being wrongfully imprisoned. So that's interesting. So sort of this oppositional attitude, which by the way, oppositional attitudes may or may not be a trait of antisocial personality disorder or psychopaths. They could be oftentimes those types of attitudes.

you'll see associated with personality disorders, specifically like antisocial personality disorder. Again, I'm not saying Jody is that, but I'm just throwing that out there. And the third risk factor, according to the prosecutor, this was the most interesting one to me, and it was probably overlooked. But the third one is that she has therapist training that creates undue influence upon others. Right? I thought that was really interesting. I mean, because in a way he's saying because she's a therapist, she should know about that.

Like we talked about this in our episode on Jody, how most therapists kind of abide by the idea of doing no harm, that first our job is to do no harm. So in other words, we operate under the assumption that we're trying to help our clients. And clearly, she's not doing that. She's creating harm. And the other thing is, I think there was the, I'm reading into it here, but this idea of using her training to influence other people. people. My first thought was she's going to love prison because she's just going to create her own little cult in prison. She's going to, you know, she's going to run around prison and talk about distortion and she's going to love it. I mean, she'll have no freedom and the meals are going to be

really bad, but, you know, she'll, and her wardrobe will be very limited. But I mean, she's going to have a lot of control. And she might have, you know, aside from the fact that her crimes are not going to be popular in prison. She will have a lot of influence. And I think it's interesting to think that the same qualities that got her there are qualities that are going to probably work really well for her in prison. Yeah. I mean, she stays steadfast in what she believes.

She's very convincing. According to Jessie Hildebrandt, Jody's niece, they said that Jody's own daughter stayed away from Jody because if Jody told her that the sky was orange, she would believe her or yellow or, you know, anything that she'd convince her. There's this convincing nature about Jody Hildebrand. There are some good questions that have come down. Could I ask you a few questions? Are we not taking questions tonight?

We can take a few questions. We need to take a few questions. People have been very generous tonight, and they have left us some great questions. Okay. Okay. All right. Let me pull up. I don't know.

I'm a little afraid to hear them, but okay, let's do it. Well, they're not personal questions. Dr. John. I thought you're making, the way you're framing this, it sounds like they're going to be really intense, but okay. No, no, not at all. I'm just trying to convince you. I know, I know.

It's been a long night. I know you're hungry. and but we have to ask these. And then we have some announcements to make too. Some exciting things going on and we might even have next week plan. Okay, so I just want your thoughts on this. This is actually a statement by Lemisa, but I would like to make it a question.

Why did Ruby make it such a point to say that she was not Jody's business partner? Lemisa says, you know what the state said, not once but twice, that Ruby was Jody's business partner, even after Ruby and her lawyer tried to say she never, was and that she never got paid. And that was a big emphasis by Ruby to say, I was not her business partner. Thoughts Dr. John. The state, the state wants to show that they were close and Ruby's trying to show that they weren't as close as the state is presuming. So the reason that was an issue is because Ruby is trying to create distance from Jody. Ruby, Ruby's narrative works better if she's

more distant from Jody. So I think that, yeah, I think that was an attempt to really negate probably the closeness of their relationship, which you and I talked about in some of our previous episodes. I think that they, yeah, I, you know, I don't, whether they were or not, they think they were very close. They lived together. Bobby's pointing out a really great comparison or similarity between Lori and Jody that at their sentencing statements, they both espouse so much love for their victims,

both of them. Any point you want to make to that, it's a solid comparison. I have to say, yeah, it's true. Lori just sat there's, I loved my children because I loved them. I think they're both minimizing the magnitude of their behaviors. So I think it's a way of trying to really, you know, lessen the severity of their actions. It helps them feel better.

Let's say that. It's a rationalization that I think allows them to feel better about what they did. another Bobby question which I can comment on a bit. Dr. John, do you think that Jody and Lori Valo truly believe they are being persecuted by unbelievers? And they will be freed from prison once the tribulations start. I do want to point out that I have learned what we've all suspected that Jody was indeed a very extreme prepper. That again, Jesse, her niece, told us that Jody believed that she was called to usher in the second coming of Christ in that Jody had

numerous basement rooms in her house purely for prepping. And I have heard from an inside source that she was, she pretty much had the entire Costco in her home. So, you know, there are some similar beliefs here. So in looking at who they are, do you believe that Jody might feel like, you know, she's being persecuted or freed from prison once the tribulations start? I think Lori Debel definitely does probably more so than Jody, but I think that's possible. I think Jody does feel like she's being persecuted for sure, unfairly.

I don't know if Jody would think that the second coming is imminent as Lori Daybell probably believes. Okay. I want to say, by the way, as I read through all these questions, I've been starring, you've already answered a lot of them. So way to go. Way to be ahead of the questions. I just thought this was someone. Someone said, as someone who grew up with Adam Steed, I am so proud of him for telling the truth, no matter how hard it is. These people deserve life in prison.

That's something, John, did you see, you know, John and I both interviewed Adam Steed together. Did you see his, when he took the mic, the long crime mic, and he stood up there? Yeah, that was, I didn't, you know, right, I didn't expect that. I thought that was an amazing moment. He took over the press conference. He's like, I don't know what's going to happen to her, but I'm going to get justice for myself one way or the other. So hear me out.

Yeah. They did both get consecutive. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that, John? Yeah. So, right. So the outcome was that Ruby and Jody. both got consecutive sentences. That means that the minimum amount of time they'll spend will be four years in prison.

The maximum time would be 60 years each. So typically the way that works in state prisons, in federal prisons, it's different, by the way, but in state prisons, usually with what's called good time, meaning that if you're a model inmate and you behave well and you're kind and you you attend educational seminars and programs and do what you expected of you, typically you will reduce your sentence by up to 50%, 50%, 60%. So let's say, let's take Ruby. Let's say she gets four years, which is the minimum,

and she's a model inmate. That means essentially she could serve two, or maybe a little over two. A concurrent sentence means that you serve your sentences at the same time. So in other words, if you have four concurrent sentences, which they didn't get, but if they were concurrent, the minimum would be one to 15 because you could, depending on how it worked out, the math. If all four were concurrent, that means you would serve them altogether.

So in that case, the minimum would be one, the max would be 15. A.K.A. The Cat Lady asks, what do you think about Jody not participating in the pre-sentencing report? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. That's, uh, so I see that as defiance. You know, again,

this, this is that oppositional attitude. And, uh, even the, um, even the judge recognize that. So when I go in to do forensic evaluations,

often for sentencing, sometimes for sentencing, sometimes I do get people that refuse to participate. And oftentimes it has to do with, either their attorneys will advise them not to participate or they just simply won't do it. And it's purely because they're angry. They tend to be antisocial. They're oppositional.

And they just they don't want to be a part of it. And they refuse to make a statement. And that, by the way, is how the judge took it. The judge sawers being noncompliant. I love this question from Catherine. Do you think Lori Vallow or Jody Hildebrand will ever recover from their deliards? or delusions of grandeur and return to the real world? Well, Lori Debeau is not going to return to the real world.

I don't think in any sense. She's obviously going to spend life in prison, but in terms of returning to something we would call reality, probably not. Jody Hildebrand, I don't know. At the moment, she's pretty angry, but I think there's a greater chance that Jody might reform, if that's the right term, that she might somehow change her views at some point if she spends enough time in prison.

But she's pretty angry. She's pretty defiant. So I wouldn't hold my breath. I have a question to further that. I think that Lori certainly, Lori Vallett certainly has some delusions. Would you put Jody Hildebrand in the same category as delusional or just a strong, I know you can't say a personality disorder or just kind of who she is, you know, a refusal. to see anybody else's truth, a worldview, maybe.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know how delusional she is. I mean, maybe, I don't know. Yeah, it's an interesting question. She's certainly oppositional, and she's certainly convinced that she has the truth. She certainly believes that she knows more than the rest of us.

So maybe that's more arrogance than delusional. hubris. You know, it's, yeah, it's hard to tell with her. Susan asks, Dr. John, can you comment on Ruby saying once she was arrested?

She was removed from a situation that she did not know how to get out of. To take that further, she said that many people tried to get her out of it, that her parents and siblings and she wouldn't hear them.

Any thoughts on the comment of Ruby saying, she was arrested, she was removed finally from a situation she did not know how to get out of. Get out. Well, getting back to our early discussion, I don't think she wanted to get out of it. I think she was perfectly content to me in that situation. So I think I don't, her statement, it lacks authenticity. I don't think it's an honest statement because I don't think she, I mean, now that she's been

arrested and held accountable and there's major repercussions, yeah, she can say that. She can say she didn't know how to get out of it and she wanted to. But the reality is I don't think she didn't want to get out of it. I think she was perfectly content doing what she was doing. And as I said earlier, kind of indulged some of her darker impulses. I think there was definitely a part of her that wanted to engage and, you know, that wanted to express some of her anger and her rage. And she did.

As far as danger zones question goes, do you think Ruby and Jody were a couple? we did discuss this in detail. We did not ignore this elephant in the room. We went down that rabbit hole and we actually answered this in detail in a episode in September. It's recently been posted on our podcast on Apple, Spotify. Anything you want to say to that, John? Or would you just say refer someone to the podcast? I should say, please go back and listen to our.

I should try to do some self-promotion or, you know, promotion for a podcast. But since I'm not very good at that, I'll say that we definitely speculate. There seems to be a lot of evidence that they were a couple. There you go. That's a good way to say it. Yes, we see the evidence. Also, I did want to mention that our book club is going to be held this Wednesday. You mean your book club?

My book club, yeah. Sorry, my book club. Right, my book club will be meeting. We will be discussing, actually we'll be discussing two shows, season four of True Detective Night Country, which concluded last weekend. And we will also be discussing the truth about Jim, which is a documentary that we talked about last week.

So I was going to, I was initially going to just talk about True Detective season four, but that didn't seem to be a hugely popular, popular choice. So I switched it to the truth about Jim, but I think we're going to end up talking about both. So if you've only watched one or the other, that's fine. It's going to be a hybrid discussion. Because I made the initial commitment to True Detective Knight Country, I think I do want to have some discussion about that. So the book club moved to the second tier in Patreon. Thanks Dr. John for helping us clarify everything. I just want to end with a quote from the article I referenced earlier

toward a psychodynamic understanding of philicide beyond psychosis and into the heart of darkness. The quote is, quote, only by looking deeply into the psyche of the individual into his or her heart of darkness, will we be able to explain and comprehend how a parent could contemplate taking the life of his or her child? And I think that kind of summarizes the jimilar, the gist of our discussion tonight in the sense that I feel like both Jody and Ruby Frankie really didn't have the capacity to look into their psyches and in particular they really failed to look into the into kind of their heart of darkness if that's the right term and I think that the result was this tragedy it's unfortunate that this event happened

and that these these victims were harmed so severely but to me it really begins with this idea that this failure of self-knowledge and insight and empathy and compassion and understanding and this inability to really see these dark impulses that they had and to manage them in a healthy way. And to me that would be a failure, this failure to look into the heart of darkness. Thank you. As you always say, a better understanding of crime is a better understanding of yourself. All right, gems.

Thank you. Hello, Hidden Gems. It's Lauren with Hidden a True Crime podcast. As a TV reporter, I learned the art of visual storytelling. So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime, to watch these interviews. Hit the subscribe button for surprise lives and breaking news. And for exclusive content, things Dr. John and I only dare say behind a paywall become a

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