Law&Crime Sidebar - 'Runs in the Family': Sons of ‘YouTube Mom’ Accused of Abusing Girls as Young as 5 Years Old

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Two sons of “YouTube mom” Machelle Hobson, who ran the now-defunct channel “Fantastic Adventures,” have been charged with sexual abuse for allegedly abusing girls as young as five years old. Hobson died in 2019 ahead of trial for allegations of abusing her adoptive children. Now, her sons, Logan and Ryan Hackney, face charges for their alleged sex crimes in Arizona. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber breaks down the case with Arizona-based criminal defense attorney Kurt Altman and ABC15 journalist Zach Crenshaw.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Join https://whiskeyraiders.com/bottle-of-... now! Subscribe before the end of May and you'll receive an early enrollment discount. LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&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 Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

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. You're aware of why we're here for the most part. Is this Ryan? Logan. Oh, okay. Okay. Crime may run in the family. The sons of the mother who allegedly abused and exploited children to appear in her YouTube videos are now themselves facing child molestation charges. Arizona criminal law attorney Kurt Altman and Emmy award-winning reporter and anchor Zach Crenshaw, who broke this story, both come on to discuss. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Hi there, everybody. If you're a whiskey lover and you want to be part of a club

where you're going to receive only highly rated bottles, then you definitely have to subscribe to Whiskey Raiders, all new bottle of the month club each month. The Whiskey Raiders team is going to handpick bottles of whiskey that are hard to find in most stores. I'm talking about bottles with a 90-plus rating score, and then you know what they're going to do? They're going to mail them to you right at your door. And at the end of the month, you'll be able to take part in a virtual tasting.

And this is where industry experts will provide insights and commentary on the bottle. You can check out Whiskey Raiders, R-A-I-D-E-R-S dot com for more information. Currently, limited slots are available, and of course, you have to be 21 or older to receive the bottles. We have a twisted story that we want to talk to you right now out of Maricopa County, Arizona. Two brothers, 31-year-old Logan Hackney and 29-year-old Ryan Hackney, have each been charged with child molestation. Now, you might be saying, why am I talking about them? Well, their mother was Michelle Hobson, who prior to her death in 2019, was facing her own criminal charges. In fact, 30 charges of abusing and kidnapping her adopted children and forcing them to appear in YouTube videos.

In fact, her channel, Fantastic Adventures, had up to 700,000 subscribers before it was taken down. And now her sons are each facing multiple counts of sexual misconduct with minors. It's an incredibly disturbing story. I want to talk about it right now. Let me bring in Arizona criminal law attorney Kurt Altman, as well as Emmy Award-winning reporter and anchor Zach Crenshaw. from ABC 15, Arizona, who actually broke this story. It's great to have you both here. Zach, I'll start with you.

You've been following this story from the very beginning. If you can, can you just give us a quick recap of the allegations that the mother here, Michelle Hobson, was facing. Yeah, well, that's why this story intrigued so many people and really horrified so many people. It got national attention because of the allegations that her own fostered, then adopted children made to police. So basically, when police finally went to her home and made the arrest in 2019 down in Maricopa, Arizona, in Pinell County, they found that she was, well, she was facing these charges before she passed away. But they accused her of pepper spraying her kids, of locking them in closets, turning off the lights and leaving them in there for days without food, water, having urinate and use the restroom in diapers.

She would beat them. She would starve them. I mean, just absolutely she would force them to take ice baths. She would have them stand in the corner of rooms with their hands above their heads for hours on end. Just truly psychologically damaging these physical, emotional harm to the nth degree. So it was, you know, I've had attorneys say this is one of the worst cases they have ever seen in their entire life that all of the allegations she was facing in large part because these were kids who were put in her care. by the state of Arizona. She fostered them, then adopted them. DCS was responsible for checking on these kids. They missed a lot of warning signs. And at the end of the day, the abuse went on for years, years and years. And unfortunately, we've covered cases before where there were warning signs and they are missed continually.

This is one of those cases where she was doing it for YouTube views. She was taking the kids out of school so that they could peer on film. And I remember reading that when these kids were actually fed, it was. And one kid, was drinking a water bottle, just downed it because they were so malnourished. And now we see the brothers here and this kind of family connection. You broke this story as well, right? That's my understanding. What do we know about the brothers? Yeah, so I want to be careful of what I say because obviously there are victims of child

sex abuse here. And as journalists, one of the things is we never want to do more harm there. But, you know, there have been multiple disclosures of child sex abuse regarding Logan and Ryan Hackney, dating back to 2019. when their mom was arrested for the first time. And actually, those brothers were arrested as well, you know, at the time that DCS and police finally went into 2019, they were arrested for failure to a report. And then those charges were dropped.

So Logan and Ryan Hackney have been out living free for the past, you know, four years now. And there were actually, there were actually disclosures of sex abuse happening years prior to 2019 in Mesa era. Maricopa PD learned about those allegations. back in 2019 and then they failed to report them over to Mesa PD to do the investigation because it happened in a different jurisdiction, a different county. They were the ones, they weren't the ones to do that investigation. I actually found that in my reporting when I was reviewing all the documents. I said, hey, whatever happened to the disclosures in Mesa, Arizona that were

made by victims? And they said, oh, shoot. So they did an internal investigation. They set a third party media report, which was us, brought this to their attention. They sent it over to Mesa. Mesa PD did their investigation over the past, you know, year and a half, two years. And now here we are with both the brothers facing multiple felony charges for child sex abuse. And we're talking about victims five years old, nine years old, six to nine years old. That's what we're dealing with here. Kurt, I want to bring you into the conversation. Obviously, these brothers are innocent until proven guilty, right? But what I find so interesting in your experience, does it come as a surprise that if you have a family where a mother or a father

allegedly engaging in abuse, not necessarily of like her own children, but was engaging in this conduct that you would see the children of this family also eventually be engaging in this kind of conduct. In your experience, do you see those kinds of cases? Jesse, I mean, it happens all the time, right? I mean, it runs in the family. That's saying didn't come from nowhere. They've learned nothing except what their mother did. They've learned from her. They've been in a poor household. She's been an abuser. Of course, they're going to learn from that behavior. and it's not a shock at all. We see it all the time

that this just gets passed from generation to generation and they learn how to victimize people and it sounds like that's what was going on here. At least that's what the investigation shows. How tough is it to defend these kinds of cases? Well, one, it's tough just from the stigma,

right? When you walk into a jury room or you walk into a courtroom where they're picking a jury, just the allegations, of course, turn a lot of people off and people immediately think that somebody's guilty. But they are defensible. It sounds like, these allegations took place in 2009 to 2011 to 2012 and moving forward, evidence is hard

to come by. I'm sure that they've done interviews with these victims, forensic interviews, even had them dig back into the recesses of their minds when they were children, and these allegations came up. But beyond those allegations, there might not be a lot of other evidence. And that makes it difficult to prosecute, quite frankly, and a little bit easier to defend. don't want to attack victims. You don't want to re-victimize them. But if it's just their word from when they were five, six, seven, eight years old, it might not be as easy as it sounds on paper. Zach, what do we know about the relationship between the brothers themselves and with their mother? I was not familiar with the videos, whether or not they participate in the videos,

but what was that family dynamic? Yeah, so we only know so much, right, particularly because Michelle passed away in 2019, you know, months after being arrested, her health deteriorated quickly to the point where the jail actually sent her basically to a hospice facility where she died. But we know that the brothers were actually integral in those YouTube videos. Not only is their footage of them actually acting in the videos, but they were the editors and the photographers of those videos. And in the hundreds of photos I got as part of my records requests for this story, Michelle Hobson, she was making tons of money because a lot of these videos were monetized. She had sponsors for these videos. And she would write checks to Logan and

Ryan. One check I think I have, you know, a photo of was to the tune of like $8.00. And the line of the check said editing. So, you know, they were part of this business that Michelle ran and the, you know, the workforce of that business was these fostered, then adopted kids who, you know, were really, you know, who knows if Michelle had, you know, what we don't know is if Michelle had this plan in place when she first chose to foster these kids or if it was an idea that came after that fact. It was never altruistic, but we do know that those kids became the cash cow for the family. And no one on YouTube knew what was happening behind those closed doors. And as I said, YouTube quickly took that channel down once it became apparent what was happening.

Real quick, Zach, they were charged sort of, right, in connection with what was going on, the brothers initially. Yeah, yeah, they were charged with failure to report. But then those charges were dropped because, you know, I think as was alluded to earlier, there was question about, you know, how manipulated and Michelle had those brothers. Michelle made a lot of threats to the younger kids and potentially to Logan and Ryan of if you tell police X, I will do Y to you, right? So I think there was some, you know, reticence on prosecutors and to move forward with those charges. So they dropped those.

And, you know, it's been years since they've been in jail. I wonder, Kurt, in terms of, you know, the scheduling here. So Ryan Hackney is scheduled to go to trial August 7th. Logan Hackney, scheduled to go to trial August 31st, can the trial of one affect the other? Well, presumably no, right? The system's designed so it would not, but of course it will. You know, if those trials go in August, I'd be surprised because they were just arrested, and trials like this usually don't happen for a year or more.

But when they do go, if they don't go at the same time, which they won't, I think there'll be a significant effect. Of course, if I'm representing a defendant that has essentially a co-defendant, but in a different case being tried before me, depending on how that goes, I'm gonna watch every piece of evidence, I'm gonna watch everything that happens and every witness, every police officer, and then that's gonna inform me

on how I'm gonna defend my client, maybe try to resolve my client, maybe think twice about going to trial. So certainly, although they're not designed to have an effect on each other, each trial, and the evidence presented in each will relate to the other one and cause them to make some decisions that they might not otherwise.

How much do you think Kurt and Zach, if after, you know, you feel free to jump in on this, but Kurt, I was going to ask you, how much do you think their mother's going to play a role in this trial? A part of me wonders, could they even mount some sort of defense based on what, you know, they grew up with and who she was, but also saying, hey, listen, you know, this is, we don't want to be convicted because of what she did and who she was and what she was and what she was accused of, although I doubt, I don't even know if that would even come into this trial.

What's your take on that, Kurt? No, I think that's a really good point. You know, based on what I know, there's probably two ways to defend these cases. Number one, these victims were alleged victims were young kids at the time. Their memories are not good. You don't have any physical evidence of it. If there is evidence, then maybe the other way to go is like, listen, we had no choice. It's some sort of psychological defense.

Look who our mother was. Look what she did to us. Look how she raised us. We may have done some things, but we're not criminally responsible because of of what she did. And the beauty of that really for them now is she's gone. They can't bring her in. Nobody can say that she can't come in and say that and do that wasn't my fault. She's gone. So they can blame her. And that may be the route that they take. And Zach, I'll give you the final word. We got about a minute left if you want to address, you know, what her role might be

in their case. But also I just wanted to ask you, what has been the feeling in the community to hear this case about these individuals? Yeah, I think there's been a lot of I actually got an email yesterday after we reported the story. And somebody said, you know, I'm glad to see, you know, some justice finally. But as you mentioned, these brothers are innocent until proven guilty. So it will be very interesting. A lot of people, myself included, are going to be watching how this plays out. But, you know, I think there was a sense that, you know, these were adults at the time that these fostered and adopted kids were removed from the home. And there was a question of what did they know back then? And, you know, did they get let off the hook?

for the abuse that was inside that home now they're facing completely different charges in a different county but i think there there may be in the community as a you know sense that you know hopefully if if these crimes are proven in a court of law then that will be some justice for the kids because as we know michel hopson never heard you know guilty right she passed away before doing a day in prison unbelievable such a sad case zach wrenshaw kurt altman appreciate you both taking the time thank you so much thank you jesse All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next time. Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.