Law&Crime Sidebar - Lawyer for Ruby Franke’s Husband Tells All: 'He Wanted an Immediate Divorce'

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Kevin Franke’s attorney says divorce paperwork will soon be served to disgraced YouTube “momfluencer” Ruby Franke as she sits behind bars in Utah. The creator of the once-popular “8 Passengers” channel is facing six felony charges of child abuse. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber catches up with Randy Kester, Kevin Franke’s attorney, to find out what led to this point and where the family goes from here.SPONSORS: Save 10% on your entire POM Pepper Spray order by using code LAWCRIME10% at https://bit.ly/POM-SIDEBARIf you’ve used Incognito mode in Google’s Chrome internet browser, you can find out if you have a claim in only a few clicks by visiting www.forthepeople.com/LCGoogleHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. If you're married, you have a commitment between the two of you. You have made promises to each other. And you have made promises to God. We sit down once again with Kevin Frankie's attorney, Randy Kester. After his client just filed for divorce from Ruby Frankie, woman accused of abusing their children.

Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Okay, so we've been talking all about Ruby Frankie and how her husband, Kevin, has now filed for divorce. That is big news in this case, if you've been following it from the beginning. And just give everybody a recap, Ruby and her business partner, Jody Hildebrand, they're each charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse with respect to two of Ruby's children who were found in Hilldebrant.

Hilde-Brant's home. The children were reportedly found malnourished. The son in particular had lacerations indicating that he had been tied up. Ruby, Kevin, their six kids, they came to fame back in 2015 when they started a popular YouTube channel called eight passengers documenting their lives and parenting and homeschooling and marriage and so forth. And as we've discussed extensively, many of those videos were problematic. People were questioning the parenting techniques. So now, in the wake of her arrest, Kevin, who is denied having any knowledge of this abuse, he has not been criminally charged in any way. In fact, says he was separated from his wife, living away from her and the kids for 13 months at the time of her arrest.

He now files her divorce. Okay, so with that, I want to bring in right now a familiar face here on sidebar. Randy Kester, Kevin Frankie's attorney, he joins us once more to talk about this and the current overall situation. Randy, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. For the invite. I appreciate it. So I'm going to start with the big question. Why did your client file for divorce? Well, we've had reservations as we went along here and didn't want to complicate the custody issues in the juvenile court, but it's sort of been on Kevin's mind once he found out the full truth about how these children had been treated while they were in Ruby's care and some other things that have been going on behind the scenes.

He, you know, his gut reaction was he wanted an immediate divorce back down the road. And then in consideration of what he thought might be best for the kids, he didn't want to create these barriers between he and his still, his wife, who he loved very much and previously wanted to be back with and with his family. But just with all that's gone on and all that's been discovered, just thought it was it was the right time to do this. So to be clear, during the time he was separated from Ruby and the kids and he was living on his own, he hadn't thought about divorcing her?

Oh, he was still desperately trying to get his family back together and go back and live with Ruby and have a good life. They were very connected as a family and as a husband and a wife. And, I mean, that was his whole goal, even the objective of the therapy that he was this crazy therapy that he was being subjected to. His understanding of the objective of that therapy was that he would, that would reunite him with his family and reunite him with his wife once he was able to get around all the faults that they felt that he had that would otherwise poison the family if he was awful.

And just to clarify, you mean the therapy, the relationship between Ruby and Jody? The therapy that Kevin was receiving from Jody. So if you could expand upon that, just sort of people who don't know, what exactly happened that caused this issue? Fair question. Well, Jody and Ruby had become partners through this connections business. Ruby had spent the eight passengers thing in favor of this connections business that Jody was essentially, even though she wasn't president of it, this M. Deutsch was the president of connections, but Jody was the one doing all the therapy.

She was the one recommending to almost a majority of her clients that in order to repair their families and repair their marriages, they needed to be separated. They needed to live apart because in her view, Kevin had, Kevin was lustful and Kevin was greedy and Kevin was self-absorbed. None of what was true. But through her therapeutic manipulation, she convinced him that he's characteristics

and that if he stayed at home, he was going to poison the family. So that's a little bit, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's a little bit different than our prior conversation, because my understanding was it was Ruby's decision that Kevin lived separately. Now it sounds like it was Jody's decision, or is it Ruby through Jody, just so I understand? It was, it was Ruby through Jody because Jody was giving Ruby advice also that was not helpful. Hey, everybody, this is a Morgan and Morgan. legal alert. Evidence shows that Google has allegedly violated the privacy of millions of Americans

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have a claim. Let me ask you this. He filed for divorce. It signals to me, and I wonder if it signals to a lot of people, that if, and I don't know if Ruby's defending herself yet, I mean, it's so early, but it seems to me he believes all the allegations against her, that this isn't a misunderstanding that he

believe she abused the kids? He believes that their children were abused by Ruby and Jody, acting in a consort with one another. Did he speak to her about this? I mean, let's first start off with the idea of did he, did this divorce come out of nowhere? Was Ruby taken completely by surprise by this? I think, I think she's expected it from day. The last time she and Kevin spoke directly between one another was when, on the day of her arrest, she called Kevin and asked for his help with the kids. And they hadn't spoken for even months before that. I mean, over the course of the year of their separation, they spoke directly maybe three or four times in an entire year. And then that's why when he got this call just out of the blue, it really kind of took him by

surprised. But I think, I'm sorry, I kind of went around your question. But no, no. But I, I think she's been expecting this for quite some time. I can't speak for her, but I can't imagine that she wasn't expecting. So you don't know what her response has been, or reaction has been to this divorce filing? Haven't heard anything back. Haven't actually even served her. I don't even know if she has an attorney to represent her in the divorce case. I know she has a criminal defense lawyer, but not sure if he's going to undertake her representation in the divorce case or if she'll end up with someone else.

but we haven't even served her yet. So it's interesting that you say that he wanted to, or he was hopeful that he was going to get back together with her and be back with the family, but he wasn't talking to Ruby. How did he think that he could, you know, save their marriage if he wasn't even communicating with her? Because Jody had convinced him that was part of the therapy program

that he needed not to speak to Ruby. He needed not to speak to kids. She even had him abandon his relationships with him, his siblings and other family. He was essentially living like a, like a pauper, away from his family, barely kept enough money for himself to get by, pretty much just going to work, coming home, engaging in therapy sessions. That was his social life.

That was his lifeline. And she had him completely, she had him completely wrapped up in this program. I wanted to ask you about the kids. First, how are they doing? and B, what is their reaction to the fact that their parents are going to get divorced? I don't know what their reaction is. Don't even know if they know about it because they're not in Kevin's custody yet, and they're not in Ruby's custody, obviously.

So to the extent they know about any of these filings, I don't know. I haven't talked to Sherry or Chad. They're the two adults, but I'm sure the state's probably keeping the kids insulated from this. Well, those are the adult children. So you're saying Kevin never even spoke to them about the fact that he was going to file for divorce. I don't know. I haven't had a conversation with him about if he advised the older kids or not. My conversations have just been with him.

So I don't know if he's advised the older kids or not. As part of the, well, let me just go as far as you can tell. So there's a lot we don't know about this divorce filing. Is there any, can you give us any insight into what the ground is. are for the filing. I mean, why he filed for divorce. There's always a number of different reasons and legal reasons, but there's a lot of it we don't know. Sure. Well, in Utah, there are a number of alternatives that you can file under, you can file under mental cruelty, or the primary one that almost everyone uses is just simply to state there's irreconcilable differences. And clearly,

in this case, the way that Ruby's treated the kids and treated the marriage and treated Kevin, And certainly at the very least constitutes irreconcilable differences. That wouldn't foster a marriage in anyone's life. So we just filed it under the generic term of irreconcilable differences in that they certainly have differences of opinion about how to raise their kids and some other issues. And those other issues, could you expand upon those? I probably shouldn't at this point. I don't want to poison well in terms of our divorce.

negotiations. That's, that's understandable. As part of the filing, there was also this domestic relations injunction that was filed. Why was this filed? That's, uh, the court, the court issues that in every case. That's a court issued injunction. It's not, it's not initiated by the parties or the attorneys. That's just an automatic, automatically generated injunction that comes out from the court once a petition is filed. Purposes to preserve the estate so that you don't have people transferring money, away, hiding assets, going out and doing damage to the marital estate or the family during the penancy of the divorce case. So it's a good, it's a good tool. I think it's a good thing. There's a lot of, there's a lot in there that seems kind of, you know, pro forma. Some of it I

want to go through. There's a part that, you know, they can't harass one another. They can't physically harm one another. Obviously, you know, she's in jail. I mean, that wouldn't happen. But it did make me wonder, has there ever been allegations of domestic. violence in the relationship between each other? Has she ever harmed him? Not a single time, nor has he her. Okay. There's never been an instance of any kind of until these allegations came forward. There's never been any allegation of corporal punishment to these children, physical punishment. There's never been any allegation. And Kevin, Kevin has been adamant about that. He neither physically touched or wrongfully touched Ruby.

nor did she ever physically or wrongfully touch him. Hey there, everybody. I want to talk to you right now about POM, which is the next generation of pepper spray. You see, POM's formula provides you with the necessary range and capacity that can give you and your loved ones some peace of mind. Now, if you're like, look,

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And I'll tell you what, my wife carries Palm and absolutely loves it. You can learn more at Palmpeperspray.com and use code law crime 10% for 10% off. There's another part of this that says there's a no disparagement clause. They can't talk bad about one another to the kids. How does he plan to do that? because, you know, his wife is locked up and she's for very serious allegations. I mean, how does he plan to not talk bad about her during the course of this? Well, you hit right on it.

You can't do that in the presence of the children. You can have all the dialogue you want, adverse dialogue you want between one another, maybe even in public, but you can't say any of those things in the presence of the children or in a venue that you have absolute knowledge that they're going to access. It's just a preservation. Kids, no matter what, the circumstance, it seems like kids are resilient and sustain that love for their parents for both of them. And I think the literature supports the proposition that whenever you tear down a parent in

front of a child, it takes a piece of that kid away because they're bonded to their parents. So that's the purpose of that, you know, the order. You had mentioned that Kevin hasn't gotten custody of the kids back. Can you tell us what the latest status of that is, where it is, how he's doing and trying to get the kids back? Well, there's a process that the court sets up. It's sort of one step at a time in terms of getting the kids back

and in terms of helping them become rehabilitated from the trauma they've been through with Ruby and Jody. And I think that's the state's subjective. is to work them through that, you know, professionally, therapeutically, as is Kevin. And so it's just a step-by-step process through the juvenile court with the objective of returning the children to Kevin. Do you know what the kids want? I can't speak with that. I'm sorry.

That's okay. What about Shari and Chad? Oh, they're getting along great with their dad. They've spent a lot of time together. They were all together, actually, over the thing. holiday and spent some time together as a family and sherry and chat are in constant contact with that given that's not that's good because that's good to hear because we did see reporting that there was tension between sherry and kevin with respect to her coming to the house you know he was

curious if not a police report could be filed against her criminal charges been filed against her for coming into the home so how did they work through their differences just by discussing with adults to one another, father to daughter, and they weren't through all that. A lot of it was circumstantial. There were tensions and feelings were running pretty hot after that arrest of Ruby and finding out how Russell and, well, how their children had been treated in Ruby's custody. I think even the older children were upset about that. Kevin was certainly upset about it.

And tensions were just running pretty high. some finger pointing going on and and uh but they've resolved all that heaven was particularly upset that is that is uh the front door of his home had been kicked in and things had been gone through and the house was a mess and uh um there were even he'd even been told that third parties who weren't even family members had been able to get into the house and and take things or rifle through things or just walked through and so when he found out some of his personal electronic materials have been taken. He was upset with Sherry,

but they've resolved on that. They're best friends now. That's good to hear. It's good to hear. I was curious when I found, when the news broke that he filed for divorce, it made me think of Ruby's criminal case. And I was curious if the decision to file for divorce

was motivated at all by what role he could potentially play in her criminal charge. No, we didn't talk about that. He wasn't a witness to any of this. If the state decides to call him as some kind of collateral witness free crime, I guess he'd have to go and testify. But that hasn't even crossed my mind that he might be called as a witness in the criminal case. He was, his deliberations with me have been with regard to what's best for the family, what's best moving forward. And Ruby, to some degree, is already sort of parsed out. You know, she's, I don't know what if any jail time she's going to face, but I suspect there will be some, you know, during which she can't have custody of the kids. So he hasn't had, like, follow-up conversations with prosecutors or law enforcement,

to your knowledge? Not to my knowledge. I did want to ask you about this other development, because we were actually doing a story on this when the news broke of the divorce filing. And it concerns Ruby because, as you said, she was working with Jodia Connections. And she was titled a certified mental fitness trainer. And KUTV reported that Kevin had asked Utah Senator David Hinkins to review the state qualifications to becoming a life coach. Apparently, there really aren't any qualifications.

And Kevin wants to change that. What can you tell us about that? Well, because of the way that things went down in his case and others that he's, other people that he's talked to, the process, the capacity that Ruby was serving in was sort of on its face, a professional capacity, when in fact she had no qualifications to be acting as a life coach or, you know, mental health counselor. She doesn't have any of those qualifications other than just a common experience that most people have. So, yeah, there are some concerns about that. I have concerns about it. I would hope that a lot of citizens would

have concerns about receiving mental health advice or family counseling advice from people who have no qualifications. So I think Kevin did the right thing. What's the status of that? Yeah, like what's going to happen with what's his conversations with Hinkins? Don't know. Well, I think it's going to be between Hinkins and the legislature and the division of professional licensing they're the ones who sort of impose these restrictions on professionals who have to be licensed through them and in this case Ruby didn't have to have any kind of license. I guess the question is, is like, you know, there's one thing where he definitely believe, you know, he definitely faults Jody for what role she played.

But in terms of Ruby's qualifications or lack thereof, what is he particularly troubled by with respect to Ruby. You know, I would understand if it was about Jody's qualifications. Why is he bothered so much about what Ruby's qualifications and what she was telling people? Well, that's a good question. So to some degree, Ruby had previously, as through the eight passengers' website or YouTube, had been sort of giving out, I don't know, just personal advice. But then when she hooked up with Jody through connections, then it became Ruby sort of being Jody's mouthpiece in some instances, and Ruby was convinced that the advice that Jody was giving her was good professional advice, and I think sort of started parroting it to other people.

So in that respect, I think people were taking Ruby's advice as the advice of a professional because of her history with eight passengers, and now her role in connections, actually sort of had some official capacity in connections with Jody. and I just think it creates a perfect storm or you've got someone who in public has this public face of being able to give good advice about raising families and maybe, in fact, even personal situations, one-on-one.

And yet she was sort of mixing up her historical involvement in that and giving advice. Then you combine that with this bad attitude. advice that Jody was giving out, Ruby's parroting it, the people in it, including Kevin, saying, you know, this is what Jody's telling you in the men's meetings, this is what I'm telling you from my own perspective and dealing with Jody, you know, you've got to stay away. The family's just in a blissful form without you. You've got to stay away. You can't contact him. You can't contact me. You'll poison us. That was coming from Jody, but nonetheless was coming

from Ruby's lips. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. And look, Randy, before I let you go. I just wanted to wrap this up with understanding what is Kevin looking for in this divorce? You know, you talked about there's going to be possible negotiations with her side if she ultimately, you know, it was when she's represented by counsel here. But what is the goal? What is he ultimately want in terms of assets or property or his life with respect to this divorce of Ruby Frankie? Well, under Utah law, it has to be an equitable division. including an equitable division of the debts, equitable division of any real estate they have, financial accounts, personal property, and income.

It's just a state where it's a 50-50. It's a 50-50 deal. So we've got to plug in all the other factors that sort of come into this because it's sort of a catch-22. There's a lot of kids involved. If Ruby were working, there would otherwise be probably child support involved, but she's in jail. So the financial burden of raising the kids is going to fall completely on Kevin. He can't be looking to her for any kind of financial support. So we got to sort through that in terms of the kids' economic well-being and then sort through trying to figure out what's an equitable division of their assets.

And real quick, the money that was earned during the course of the, Eight Passengers Channel, I don't know what kind of money was earned, if what money was earned, but how does that play into this? Wherever that went, if it went to the purchase of assets or if it got socked away, it's a marital asset. It's a 50-50 division. Randy Kester, always appreciate you coming on, giving us a little perspective about what is happening with your client, and we look forward to talking more as this case continues

more. Randy Kester, thank you so much. Thanks for the invite. I enjoy being on your show. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. As always, thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. We very much appreciate it. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.