Law&Crime Sidebar - All Ruby Franke Evidence to Be Released in YouTube Mom's Child Abuse Case

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Law&Crime is anticipating a huge release of documents, body camera footage, and more from the investigation into former “momfluencer” Ruby Franke and her codefendant Jodi Hildebrandt in Utah. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber has a rundown of what to expect with KSLT-TV reporter Shelby Lofton. PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lcsidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. With my deepest regret and sorrow for my family and my children, guilty. She pled guilty and was sentenced to prison, but this isn't the last we're going to see of Ruby Frankie, no, the YouTube mom who went from doling out parenting advice online to actively abusing her children behind the scenes. This Friday, we expect the release of a treasure trove of documents, video files, and more from officials in Utah. We're breaking down what we can expect with local reporter from KSLTV Shelby Lofton. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm

Jesse Weber. We have been closely following the case. We have been closely following the case. of Ruby Frankie and her apparent business partner, Jody Hildebrandt, since August when the two were arrested for aggravated child abuse out in Utah. This should be no surprise for anybody who's been following us here on Sidebar. But of course, we're talking about how two of Frankie's youngest children were found in Hildebrand's home, suffering from serious injuries. Frankie's 12-year-old son was able to escape, run to a neighbor for help, who called 911. This kid has obviously been... I think he's been, he's been detained.

He's obviously covered in wounds. We need the cops as soon as possible. Police released some of the audio from their search of Hildebrand's home when first responders rushed in. Email does have duct tape around each ankle. He's not telling the RP why. And said that there's soars around his wrist and ankles he's becoming, or correction the He's becoming emotional regarding the child's health. And according to police records, Russell appeared to be emaciated, abnormally thin, weak abrasions on his body from being tied up.

Really sick stuff we're talking about here. And officers then find his younger sister. Russell's sister originally reported as 10-year-old Eve in a similar malnourished condition. The brother, sister, they were taken to a hospital. And while the kids were found at Hildebrand's home in Ivan's Utah, the Frankie family, home was actually in Springville, Utah, around 250 miles away. After the kids are found in Ivan, Springville police barged into the Frankie house. Police Department!

Now, Springville Police went to the home to make sure that none of the Frankie children were there, but according to them, the home was empty. But authorities end up tracking down Ruby's two middle daughters at the home of another Connections employee this time in American Fork, Utah. Now, Connections is the life skills, coaching, and therapy business once around. by Jody Hildebrand. Both Frankie and Hildebrandt appeared in dozens of connections videos, giving advice and everything from marriage to child care.

Hildebrandt was a mental health counselor. Frankie was listed as a mental fitness trainer. But back to that American Fork situation, the body cam footage was fascinating because it shows law enforcement questioning this woman that worked with Jody Hildebrand. Her name is Pam Botcher. Is Ruby Frankie's daughter? She's a friend of ours.

She comes over and helps me ever. wants to allow to be cleaning and stuff. Pam knows her because she knows her mom. She's a very good friend with her. He's known her for a long long time. So all the children were taken into state custody. We know Kevin Frankie. Ruby Frankie's now estranged husband.

He filed for divorce. He's fighting for custody back. But one of the things we brought you was the video of the women's guilty police in December, as well as their sentencing hearings in February. They both pled guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. And during her sentencing, Frankie seemed to own up to a lot of,

lot of her own failings, even pointing the finger at Jody Hildebrand for brainwashing her. For the past four years, I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion. My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me. 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. My choice to believe and behave this paranoia culminated into criminal activity, for which I stand before you today, ready to take accountability. Now, I should be clear that in Utah, the judge hands down, kind of like a range of the years that the person will serve in prison.

It's not a determined sentence. It's an indeterminate sentence because it's up to the Board of Pardon and Paroles to actually determine when a person will be released once the minimum is met. And that is why the judge passed this sentence. The sentence will be that Ms. Frankie serve four counts for one to 15-year sentences based on her convictions for four counts of aggravated child abuse. Now, during her own sentencing hearing, Jody Hildebrand also made a short statement. I sincerely love these children.

I desire for them to heal physically and emotionally. One of the reasons I did not go to trial is that I did not want them to emotionally relive the experience which would have been detrimental to them. my hope and prayer is that they will heal and move forward to have beautiful lives I am willing to submit to what the state feels would be an appropriate amount of time served to make restribution as an outcome is Hilda Brandt this this circumstance is tragic it's largely of course of your making by any measure

your conduct in this case was disastrous for these children. Adults are supposed to protect children. Adults with specialized training in particular are supposed to protect children. You didn't do that in this case. In this case, you terrorized children, and the results have been tragic. What happened to these children, And your philosophy in dealing with them frankly seems detached from reality or any objective standard of decency or even common sense.

Both Jody Hildebrand and Ruby Frankie were given consecutive sentences, meaning the sentences for each charge run one after the other not together. Well, now that they're both locked away and the investigation is essentially over, now we have an important question to ask, what can we learn tomorrow? Because it is being reported that a major document dump will happen. What kind of information can we expect to learn from this upcoming evidence release? And for that I want to bring on a local reporter from KSLTV, Shelby Lofton. Shelby, thank you so much for coming on.

Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Now, before we even get into the evidence here, what might be released, what we can expect. Before we got on, you told me something fascinating about your background of perhaps watching the Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrand videos. Talk to us about it. Yeah, the Frankie family the Frankie family, there really no strangers to me. I grew up watching a lot of their YouTube videos, Ellie and Jared, Bonnie Holine, and then eight passengers. So I knew of them. I watched their day to day. I found it fascinating. These families in Utah who had several children and they filmed

their day to day life. I wanted to see what that looked like not originally being from Utah and coming from a smaller family. And then to move here and begin covering this, it was a strange full circle moment to say the least. Was it shocking to you when she was arrested or were you one of the people who said, you know what? This is not a surprise. I saw red flags from the way that she was parenting? What was your take when she was arrested? I don't think anyone expected how serious and severe the first accounts of abuse or the first accounts of arrest, what we were hearing. I don't think anyone expected anything to be that bad. When you watched, particularly with eight passengers, sometimes you had red flags with some of the parenting choices. She made seemed a little

off even for myself as a teenager watching it and then I kind of fell away from watching it but there was always that online conversation that was happening and people were wondering what is going on with Ruby Frankie's family and it kind of felt like something was inevitably going to happen but no one ever expected it to be this bad what does the Frankie story make clear it's that it is so important to know who you're surrounding yourself with right well that is is why I am thrilled to talk to you about our sponsor, TruthFinder.com. If you don't know about this, you really should because I really can't think of a better service that can provide actual safety for you guys.

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It's fascinating to study the people in your lives. And it's important to know what everyone is about and what their background is. And I'm able to easily do that with TruthFinder. Well, right now, you can get 50, 50% off of confidential background reports. Just go to truthfinder.com slash LC Sidebar. I'll never forget reading the course. documents about what happened to these kids. I've said it before. I will say it again. It is worse than I could have expected, listening to what they had to endure, what they suffered, how they were beaten, starved.

It was really, really disturbing stuff. But now we may get more information and a lot more detail about what happens. So talk to me, Shelby, about what we can expect from this document done. And just to add on to what you were saying, Eric Clark, who gave us some idea of what we might see tomorrow he said he's the DA he's the he's the local county he's the attorney in the area for Washington County yes he said that this is the worst child abuse he has seen and his entire office as seen so that puts that into perspective we talked to him immediately after the sentencing hearing for both Hilda Brandt and ruby frankie in February February 20th and he said

that he had mentioned that the 12 year old now 12 year old's wounds were particularly bad. And he said that they will be releasing pictures of those wounds. And he gave us more of a description of what that looked like. He said essentially this child was hogtied. And we knew that they were bad beginning in August based on what that 911 caller had reported. But Mr. Clark was able to describe it in further detail. And I think the pictures will be pretty gruesome, to say the least. Yeah. And I think that's why, A, one of the reasons I'm so happy a trial didn't happen

because you didn't have to put these children on the stand and have to relive what they went through. You didn't have to have a jury see these photos in its graphic nature. But it also tends to show, I imagine when the photos come out, you know, how difficult it would have been for Jody, Hildebrandt, Ruby Frankie to defend their actions, right, and seeing this. And there was also that talk about putting cayenne pepper in the wounds as a form of alleviating the pain. It's going to be really difficult to see. And I'm glad you mentioned that. What about in terms of body cams? Because I think that would be really

interesting to see. Yes, I think so too. There's still a lot we don't know about the day of those arrest when Ruby Frankie wasn't at the home and we haven't seen body cam footage of those officers coming in and finding the younger child. We know the older one, he was the one who escaped, essentially saved them both, but we don't know what that looked like. We only heard audio of that 911 call. And I think seeing the body cam might tell, paint a better picture of what that looked like the home in Ivins, this is an interesting neighborhood. It's really only about 10, 15 minutes away from the courthouse where all of these hearings have been going down.

A lot of people think, just based on what it looks like, that it's this remote area in southern Utah. It's really not. It's kind of the suburbs of St. George, Ivins. And there is this community, Kayanta, where a lot of the homes are built to kind of match the aesthetic of the mountains that surround them. And Jody Hilda Brand's home is quite beautiful. It's quite large.

It's listed for sale now. And downstairs, it was reported that these children were being held in a room in the basement and that it was behind a safe lock. And so I think we might get a better idea visually of the conditions these children were living in. And I know that it was initially reported that the youngest was, hesitant to go to officers. She wasn't ready. She had some issues and then was taken to the hospital. So you can only imagine how severe those circumstances were. Yeah. So if there are photos inside of Hildebrand's home, particularly of where the kids were, I mean, that's definitely

going to be very compelling. But I'm also very curious to see the reactions, right? The reactions of Jody Hildebrand, Ruby Frankie, Eve, right, the young daughter. when police come in and how people respond in those situations is also very telling. We have very limited information in terms of that, right? Because I go back to originally the first court documents that were filed in this case when we learned. I think that's when we learned about that, you know, the circumstances surrounding the 911 phone call. We learned that one of the reasons they were both arrested is because Jody Hilda Brandt and Ruby Frankie, they had filmed the video together in that home.

What was like the day before the arrest? And I think that's when we kind of learned that Eve maybe wasn't, or subsequent documents, as you say, Eve wasn't entirely forthcoming, which is understandable, given somebody in that position. But I'm really curious to see the reactions of these people. Yes, that'll be interesting. And we know that Ruby was away. She was striving. And also, Utah, it takes some time to get from Springville to Ivins.

It's like four plus hours. So that should be telling to see what was going on. And also telling because Ruby, Frankie's attorney, had said on her sentencing hearing date that for a while, Ruby was defensive. She was still defensive of her actions. And she believed that she was doing the right thing. And then he says she had this change of heart. So it'll be interesting to see what her reactions were that first day when she was arrested. if she didn't believe she had done anything wrong.

I have to imagine there's also going to be police interviews and interrogations. I say that because going back to the detail of what was listed and what happened to the kids and who specifically did what to whom, yes, you can get that from the children. And I don't know if those would be interviews that would be released. But it seems I would imagine maybe some information came out from Ruby Frankie herself, right? she might have provided an interview to police. I mean, do we know if anything like that is going to be part of this document on interviews with either the victims or the defendants?

I don't know for sure if any of those interviews will be included. I do know that Eric Clark said that we would be hearing some of the jailhouse calls from Jody Hildebrand. Talk to us about that. He said usually those are kept private. He said they're usually kept private unless that individual talks about their criminal activity. he says she did he says that she's never expressed any sort of remorse and if you go back and listen to her statement the day of the hearing she never apologizes no she never says um and so i think hearing the the jailhouse phone calls and also who is she talking to that would be interesting to know and what is she saying does she truly believe that she was just in how she treated these children and did she truly manipulate Ruby Frankie. That's the narrative that has come out of this. And a lot of people have

said, how could Ruby Frankie have such a 180 turnaround? A lot of people didn't buy what she said on her sentencing day. Is she truly another victim of Jody Hildebrands? I think tomorrow's document stump will be enlightening and perhaps we'll see a change of mindset for movie Frankie, or perhaps not. Maybe people will still be questioning her motives there and we might learn more about Jody Hildebrand because we know so much about Ruby Frankie because she's documented her life for so long online.

But there's still this mysterious air around Jody Hildebrand. There's only so much we know about her personally. So I think we might get some more information on her and her motives and her mindset with all of this in the document dump? Well, first of all, we remember that Eric Clark in court addressed these jailhouse phone calls, and that was big because that was the first time I had ever heard about this, but the idea that she never showed remorse.

She never thought that she did anything wrong, that she thought the kids were in the wrong and that she was the victim. That's apparently what these jailhouse phone calls will show. One of the reasons why I think the judge has really had such strong words for Jody Hill. But remember, after she made that statement, we had an opportunity to interview Jesse Hildebrand about this. We had an opportunity to interview Adam Steed. And these are people who said they don't believe anything that Jody has to say, that she shows no kinds of remorse, that it's just a manipulation. So I would agree with you, the jailhouse phone calls from Jody Hildebrand could be some of the most fascinating aspects of this.

And by the way, could be one of the reasons, Shelby, why she may serve more time in prison than Ruby Frankie. It's possible. And we pressed Eric Clark about that. We said, do you think Jody Hildebrandt should serve more time? He said, absolutely. And my colleague, Garnamehia, said, why do you think that? The mother of these children who did such heinous things,

why should she serve less time? And he said that he believes Ruby Frankie was, manipulated by Jody Helda Brandt. She was taken under her control, brainwashed. That was a word that was used. And he believes that Jody Heldabrant should serve a longer sentence. By the way, real quick, before we wrap up, why did you get any understanding about why there's going to be this release?

Why Eric Clark is allowing this to happen and for the public to see all this information? I think this case clearly has gotten so. much attention. And there's so many, as I call them, online detectives where there's this huge followership of Ruby Frankie and her entire family. And a lot of people are wondering if this is not the end. Clearly, we don't know how long they will both be serving. But we asked Eric Clark, will you pursue any charges against anyone else? And he was careful to answer that question. and he said, not here, not in Washington County. And as you opened this interview, this is a full state.

This is a statewide investigation. We have Utah County in the mix where American Fork and Springville are located. So a lot of people are wondering, is there more to come from this? Will more people be held accountable? Of course, the big name a lot of people say is Kevin Frankie. What's going to happen to him? So I think that Eric Clark is just in the spirit of transparency, wanting us to see everything that they, that they collected and gathered and the extent of this. A lot of people have said, how could a father not know the condition his two youngest children are in for 13 months?

Even if he was forced out of the home, how could he not know what was going on with them? So I think that this will provide some clarity. And again, I want to reinforce that he's not going to be charged in any way through Washington County. Mr. Clark made that clear. But I think there's still a lot of unanswered questions. And in the spirit of transparency, they're going to release all of these documents so we know exactly what happened and when it happened.

And just to add a little bit more context there, I mean, we interviewed Randy Kester, who is the attorney for Kevin Frankie, and he basically suggested that, look, Kevin stepped away, as you said, Kevin stepped away from the family. It was on the advice of Ruby, thought it was best. I pressed him on that. I mean, even if that's the case, how did he not know what was happening in the kids?

And basically said he was following Ruby's wishes to not speak with the children. But a lot of people have questions about that a lot of people thought it was strange. But as you mentioned, he has not been charged with any crime. He is not, we don't know, under any kind of investigation, and he has not been actually directly accused of any wrongdoing or having any knowledge about what happened to these kids.

But I tell you what, Shelby Lofton, really appreciate you coming on talking about this, giving us a preview of what to expect. I know you'll probably have a very busy day tomorrow at KSLTV. Just real quick, if anybody wants to find more of your reporting, find information, where should they check you up? Sure, I'm on Instagram, news with Shelby, same with X. and Shelby Lofton on Facebook, and I keep everyone updated on most of my reporting there. So thanks for having me on. Awesome.

Shelby, thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you on this episode of Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.

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