Law&Crime Sidebar - Ruby Franke Judge Drops Charge to Focus on Child Abuse Case as New Bodycam Surfaces

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Disgraced YouTube mom Ruby Franke appeared in front of judge this week in connection to a traffic stop just days before her arrest for felony child abuse. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber breaks down the latest developments with KUTVNews reporter Brian Schnee.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST: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.

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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. I know that her teacher is uncomfortable with her being hungry and not having a lunch and it would ease her discomfort if I came to the school with a lunch. But I responded and just said Eve is responsible for making her lunches in the morning and she actually told me she did pack a lunch. So the natural outcome is she's just going to need to be hungry. Accused child abuser Ruby Frankie was back in court for a different legal issue. We'll get into the latest with KUTV 2 News is Brian Schnee. Welcome to

Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. We haven't talked about the latest in the Ruby Frankie case in a bit, and we got an interesting update for you. Frankie, of course, the former YouTuber who doled out parenting advice on her eight passengers' channel. In our house, when we take something away, it's because they have shown that they are not responsible enough to manage it.

And so we don't just turn around and give a bag as soon as they start acting good. It has to be consistent. It has to be consistent over a minimum, minimum of six months. Only now she is charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse with respect to two of her young children. This happened after her children were found in the home of her business partner and now co-defendant Jody Hildebrandt in Ivan's Utah. the son who actually escaped the home and ran to a neighbor who called 911. He was found malnourished with wounds and evidence he had been tied up. The daughter reportedly found in similar condition.

She was taken to the hospital to be treated for malnourishment as well. By the way, we talked so much about Ruby Frankie. Just a little reminder. Here is what Jody Hildebrand's niece, Jesse Hildebrandt, had to say, about the torture they received at the hands of their aunt when I had the opportunity to speak with them. And she would tell me all the time, if you just confess, I will stop. You confess, I will stop, which is torture.

She strips you of identity. She strips you of credibility and she isolates. And so she's saying everything that you say is a lie. Everything that you say is manipulation. You're manipulating everyone around you. You're lying and destroying everyone's life. So for the sake of everyone else's safety, we're duct-taping you. Well, as Frankie and Hildebrand face these charges,

Frankie actually appeared back in court, but for a different case. For that, let me bring in right now, anchor and reporter for KUTV2 Newses, Brian Schnee, he's been following this case. Brian, good to see you. So why was Ruby Frankie back in court? Thanks for having me back on. I think there's the case within the case involving the children, right? And everything going on in that.

Five days before Ruby and Jody were arrested in the Ivan's area of Utah, Ruby was actually pulled over for speeding in the city of Ivins at the very morning, early hours of August 25th. And we've known about this for a while. We weren't really sure where this was going to fall into line in terms of the proceedings and whatnot. But she did appear in court earlier this week, and we were watching here at KUTV2 News. So we watched everything unfold. It was very anticlimactic. but you did see Ruby for the first time in weeks, months, right, on video.

And I can tell you what was happening in that video. She was talking to somebody off camera, was clearly inside of the facility there at purgatory correctional facility in Hurricane, Utah, which is a good distance away from Ivans, but in the same county. She didn't see more. All she said was yes when the judge asked if she could hear her and then things went from there. How did she appear to you?

I mean, again, you mentioned. that's like the first time. We've seen her so much has been written about her. How did she appear to you? Same Ruby that I feel like we saw the first time in court, which was a long time ago in September. I mean, not much changed. It's the same exact backdrop, clearly the same room where they hold these in custody hearings. She seemed fine.

I mean, there may have been a grin or a smirk, but mostly just kind of a straight face, all business at this point, right, trying to figure out what's next. the larger proceedings and the larger case, which has to do with child abuse, her demeanor was pretty basic, right? I mean, as you would expect, just kind of staring into the camera and watching the maybe five or six minutes unfold where they dismissed her charge for speeding. Okay, so we want to thank Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring this video. I think it's pretty clear from the stories that we cover that it's not always safe out there. When you're hurt, it can be pretty confusing. It can be scary. You don't know where to turn. Well,

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And in terms of price, you only pay them if you, you win. There's no upfront fee. So if you're injured, you want to join the over 3 million people that call them every year, you can submit a claim at www. for the people.com slash law and crime or by dialing pound law, that's pound 529 on your phone. So the charge was dismissed, right, because I guess in the larger scheme of things with what she's facing, right, is that what did the court say and what did the attorney say? Well, you're right. And it was the of Ivan's attorney that said, hey, we moved to dismiss this charge, given everything else going on. Now, that's not verbatim, but that's almost the exact sentence. Given the other charges and

in the other case, I got the feeling maybe they just saw this as a distraction, right? And they wanted to move forward with it. What we do know is Ruby was charged for speeding. They knocked down the offense for a 50 and a 35 zone. She was clocked at 57 miles an hour shortly after 4 a.m. And what I can tell you is that she wasn't alone in the car. Okay. So my understanding is that you've observed the body camp, right, of this stop. Walk us through what it is. I mean, first of all, I didn't know, 4 a.m. is when she's speeding.

That's an unusual time. I mean, do we have an idea of where she was going, where she was coming from? I mean, walk us through what we learned from that body cam or what you learned from that body cam. body camera video is relatively straightforward in this situation the officer pulls her over gets her out you can see you know gets out of the car i should say you can see ruby at kind of the bottom of the screen she pulls she she lowers her window maybe this much just hands license and registration over he asks you know do you know how fast you were going that typical question she said no um he said hold on a second he goes back and obviously checks for warrants and checks for

license validation um everything clears out just fine at that point of course He writes her a ticket. As he mentions to her, he knocks it down 57 and a 35, hands it to her. He explains a few things. You've got 14 days to respond to the court. She just kind of glazes through the document. Don't really hear an exchange of conversation. Otherwise, there is maybe a minute where he's standing by the car after handing her that citation. And then it just goes away and she's on with her day. But we have observed the body camera video. The clip that we have is about seven and a half minutes long. It wasn't a long traffic stop. There is no backup officer there. It's very dark and Ivan's at 4.30 in the morning or 415. She was right near kind of the main

drag of town and Jody's home is not far from there. Ivins isn't a massive community, but there are a lot of homes that are currently being built. Jody's home, for example, is in one of those really picturesque locations right up against the red rocks there in southern Utah with all of these really kind of pricey homes, tucked away off the beaten path. But during this situation, she was kind of basically in normal city limits, if you will, which isn't saying much for Ivan's Utah, because it's a relatively small town. What you do see in the body camera video, there's two other people in the car. And you can't see them per se that easily because it's dark. And you're looking through an axon body camera video. But you can tell, even through the redactions, they appear to be minors or

children, maybe not minors per se, but at least two of her children. were thinking it's one of those things that we don't know it's not in the report it was just a citation that we were given to a copy of it so it doesn't describe the the names or the ages of the other occupants there was no criminal activity but we do know that she's not alone there was one person in the back seat and also one in her passenger seat during the stop see now that's very interesting to me if any indication that it's the two children who were found at jody's residence because if that is the case, Brian, that knowledge element of, you know, it's not like if they have to prove that she knew and was, you know, basically signing off on this abuse and

five days before that she's arrested, if she's with the kids that are ultimately in that residence and she can observe injuries on them, I mean, I would think that's big, but do we know if those are the kids from the residence? We don't, and it's hard to tell because obviously Ruby has the four passengers, right? the four passengers that are in question, the four children that we've been talking about, the two and Ivins and the two that were found at Pambotcher's House in American Fork, five days after this speeding citation was issued. It looked to me just by the naked eye that these may have been older children, not the 12

and the 10-year-old that we were thinking. Again, it's really hard to see because it's dark, and there's not a whole lot of, I mean, there's no streetlights on this stretch, for example. So it's really grainy video, already slain. lightly redacted any way to protect their identities. But you do see Ruby in the front seat. She goes through the paperwork, a pretty stoic face, no smiles, not a lot of pleasantries to the officer exchanged or anything like that. And by the way, I think we should be clear here. So the city, as you mentioned, in the speeding ticket case, they said they thought the charge

should be dropped because, quote, given the nature of the charges that she's currently facing in district court, they should be dropped. Ruby's attorney said we agree. The judge dropped the speeding violation, but that video could potentially be used as a form of evidence, maybe in her overall larger case, right? And you know, we've been wanting this video since the early days of when we learned about everything else that unfolded. I mean, I remember the first day looking into our court logs here in Utah, which you have to have a login for, you have to go through and you have to pay per page and all that thing.

And we find that there's something on August 25th to coincide with the early September, late August situation that obviously we're talking about. So I immediately said, hey, Santa Clara Ivins Police Department, here's my formal request of a records request for this video, to which they turned me over to the attorney's office, which made me feel like this was going to be evidence in the larger scale case. And when I checked back in the other day, because they dismissed the charge, the attorney's office referred me back to the city, and that's how we got the video. No questions asked. They send me the citation as I asked for in the initial. request and also the body camera video and there are a lot of inferences and things i think you can

take away from the video the time of day obviously the location in the city of ivens the two other people in the car i think it is really interesting and it's just another nuance in this case yeah no i agree with you and by the way just to let everybody know brian and i were talking before we came on and i wanted to know what the latest is right so we're always trying to understand what's the latest in the ruby Frankie case. And you told me something interesting about the information we have right now and maybe why there's not more coming out. So first let's start. Is there any other update in her overall larger case? And if not, if you can explain to our viewers why we might not have that information. Well, right now, both Ruby and Jody Hildebrand are still in custody in Hurricane, Utah, in the

purgatory correctional facility. And there's been no other court date set. And a lot of people on social media, of course, you're saying, well, why? How is that possible? There are amounts evidence that in the discovery process that we knew would take a while, obviously you know from that in your background and your expertise. I think a lot of people weren't expecting it to take this long, but there's no future date set just yet. It could come after the holidays, could come early next year. I think we were expecting something by now based on the tone of the attorneys and the court from the last time that they were in court for this specific child abuse allegation and the charges against. And that wasn't, you know, that was almost.

two months ago now. So there's no real update in that stance. But again, there's also the custody battle over the children right now that's playing out. That is sealed by the court in Utah County, which keep in mind, this really spans the entire state of Utah, which is not a small state by any means. I do think they're letting some of those things play out, which we're not actively covering here at KUTV2 News because of the court sealing and the request of the court to kind of leave these children alone, which we've really tried to be respectful of. I get the sense we're waiting for that to kind of move forward before some of the other things are taking place here. I don't have that in any confirmation, but that's just my gut feeling

watching this thing play out very slowly at this point in mid-November. And nothing from Kevin Frankie or his team are Shari, Frankie, their couple's daughter? No, other than what we've seen with Sherry coming back out on social media, which you and I have discussed. We've seen a couple other videos posted by Ruby Frankie's sisters. There was one last week, Ellie, you know, for the first time in a long time, had said something other than her initial Instagram post, which was kind of with in unison, if you will, with the other sisters. We know that Bonnie has already put out other videos, but Ellie just kind of laid it all out there saying, obviously, this has been tough. She talked about eating and parenting and all these other

things and how it's impacted her life. Other than that, it's been. pretty quiet. And I definitely will be checking back in with Randy Kester here in the coming days. And we will be checking back in with you as you check in with him. I mean, we had an opportunity to interview him as well. And I think it was an illuminating conversation to say the least. Brian, you know, I've also been just going back to our prior conversation. We talked about the body cam footage when Pam Botcher, police arrived at her home to retrieve two of Ruby Frankie's children. I was going back. I was looking at that. And, you know, I think I was struck by Obviously, this is a woman who had a connection to Ruby through the Connections organization,

but the level of trust, it seemed from what Pam was saying and her husband was saying, that they seemed almost reluctant to give information to authorities when they showed up, that they were protecting the children on behalf of Ruby. That sense of trust is just something I've been thinking about since our last conversation. You're right. There's definitely that sense of trust there and sense of concern from Pam's husband. It seemed like there was a disconnect there between the information and even the relationship level with Ruby. I got the sense that Pam's husband didn't know to what extent really their connection is.

And I think a lot of people were really interested when the DCFS worker comes over to Pam as she's just sitting there in the back of the patrol car leaning up against it after they took the cuffs back off her from being detained. And they asked her, what is connections? And she didn't really give clear answers. And I think a lot of people were really interested as to why there wasn't more elaboration onto what really connections classroom is. Ruby's involvement, Jody's involvement. And it's hard to tell if Pam, obviously, in that situation, I think she handled herself with a lot of grace given the situation, but at the same time, wasn't very forthcoming with

any information as it pertained to their relationships other than she said there was a family emergency. She asked me to go get the kids. You get the sense. It's obviously not the first time. those two have been in her house and they talked about all of their activities they drove all over utah county that day before arriving back at their home not a small county by any means so it's one of those things that there's a lot from those hours of body camera video in american fork that is i think really

telling about the relationships between ruby pam and jody and even pam and her husband as far as the involvement there we're trying to make sense of it ourselves and like i said you know in that case eventually happens. I'm sure a lot of this will be important evidence in that case. Brian Schnee, thank you so much. Excellent reporting, as always on this case, and we look forward to talking next time, sir. Let's do it. Thank you. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series

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