FROM THE VAULT: Ruby Franke: Monster Momfluencer | #364

Summary

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RedHanded Podcast Episode #364

FROM THE VAULT: Ruby Franke: Monster Momfluencer
Release Date: January 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this chilling and highly requested episode, hosts Hannah and Esther unpack the disturbing case of Ruby Franke, the Mormon "momfluencer" behind the ultra-popular YouTube channel "8Passengers." What started as a wholesome family vlogging enterprise spiraled into a harrowing story of child abuse, cult-like indoctrination, and the dangers of unchecked online fame. The hosts examine how Franke, with the support of her collaborator Jodi Hildebrandt, concealed calculated torture and neglect of her six children—all in broad daylight and with millions watching.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Case’s Shocking Introduction

• Opening Narrative: Hannah recounts how 12-year-old Russell Franke showed up at a neighbor’s house, emaciated, dirty, shoeless, and with duct-taped wrists and ankles, begging for help.
  • “This little boy was Russell Frankie. And his voice trembled as he begged the man to ring the police.” (Hannah, 00:53)
• 911 Call Audio: Heart-wrenching audio underscores the severity of Russell’s state.
  • “He’s emaciated, he’s got tape around his legs. He’s hungry and he’s thirsty.” (911 Operator, 01:35)

Ruby Franke’s Public Persona vs. Private Horrors

• Ruby’s vlogging persona presented the family as the idyllic, disciplined Mormon household—an image consumed by millions.
• Esther and Hannah emphasise how the real story was far more sinister: evidence of torture, starvation, psychological and physical abuse, and religious fanaticism.
  • “She seemed like the beautiful, idealised picture of disciplined Mormon motherhood. But after police raided her house, they discovered… calculated torture, days of starvation and religious fanaticism.” (Esther, 04:05)

Rise of “8Passengers” and The Family Vlogging Industry

• Launched in 2015, "8Passengers" reached 2.5 million subscribers, posting hundreds of videos depicting family life, discipline, and schooling.
• Concerns were voiced early by viewers over consent, privacy for children, and increasing on-camera punishment.
  • “Some commentators were uncomfortable with issues around consent and parents profiting off shoving cameras in their kid’s faces…” (Hannah, 08:49)

The Slippery Slope of Family Vlogging:

• Discussion on psychological and social harms of family vlogging, including humiliation and exploitation for brands and ad dollars.
• Notable moment: Hannah draws parallels to “prank” family channels which inflict genuine trauma for entertainment.
  • “The humiliation of that on a young psyche. These people are just not thinking, yeah.” (Hannah, 10:54)

Ruby Franke’s Disturbing Parenting Tactics

• Documented “punishments” escalate through the years:
  • Withholding food as discipline.
    • “Eating is a basic human right, not a privilege. Because if you don’t eat, you quite literally die.” (Esther, 21:26)
  • Public shaming for bed-wetting (in sponsored content), invading privacy, isolating children.
  • Threats with violence toward favorite toys, cruel control over emotional development.

Viral Outrage & Community Pushback:

• The infamous “No Lunch for Eve” video: Ruby ignores her six-year-old’s forgotten lunch, hoping “nobody gives her food.”
  • “I hope you were in pain and discomfort all day and I hope no one gives you food so that you remember not to forget your lunch again.” (Hannah, 24:02)
• Outrage peaks with punishment like Chad losing his bed for 7 months over a harmless prank.
• Public petitions call for CPS involvement but laws lag behind:
  • “Sleeping on a beanbag and being treated horribly… isn’t legally classed as child abuse.” (Hannah, 29:20)

Escalation & Collapse of the Franke Household

• Increasingly severe punishments and isolations; younger children denied Christmas presents as “the gift of truth.”
• The “8Passengers” channel slows to inactivity amid blowback and legal scrutiny.
• Transition to “Connections Classroom”: Ruby remakes herself as a “mental fitness coach” with Jodi Hildebrandt, peddling extreme, cult-like advice.

The Role of Jodi Hildebrandt & Cult Tactics

• Jodi becomes Ruby's confidante, therapist, and business partner, wielding enormous influence.

• History of abuse and overreach as therapist emerges (e.g., accusations of “porn addiction,” emotional isolation, cultic interventions).

• Jodi manipulates Ruby’s family, separates her from husband Kevin and eldest children, and ultimately moves Ruby and her youngest to her desert compound.

  • “Jodi is like the laziest couple [therapist]. She just needs one couple at a time.” (Hannah, 44:16)

Parallels and Patterns in Abuse:

• Jodi’s niece and former clients describe eerily similar duct-taping, isolation, and accusations of evil across years.
  • “To them, this was all too familiar. Jessie has since described the harrowing abuse that they suffered when they went to live with their Aunt Jody.” (Esther, 56:19)

Rescue & Unveiling of the Full Horror

Timestamp: 48:12–54:29

• Police finally intervene after Russell's escape.

• Eve is found emaciated, traumatized, in a cupboard—evidence of systematic torture, starvation, and cult-like brainwashing.

• Discovery of a panic room stocked for intentional, repeated child abuse.

  • “The police turned down a corridor and in the middle of a dark cupboard, they found Eve. The nine year old girl is painfully thin. She was sitting alone in the middle of the space… It would take the police a total of four hours to get her to leave the room at all. And then she finally ate some pizza.” (Esther, 51:07)

Ruby’s Diary of Atrocities

• Authorities find Ruby’s diary, chronicling forced starvation, isolation, binding and punishment rationalized by claims of “demons” and “evil.”
  • “She writes about starving Eve and Russell… The short entries often reference Russell being possessed by the devil and Ruby justifies starving him by scrawling, ‘I will not feed a demon.’” (Hannah, 54:29)

Aftermath: Arrest, Conviction, and Sentencing

Timestamp: 57:40–65:27

• Ruby and Jodi arrested and charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse.
• Both continue to rationalize actions, portraying themselves as victims of a witch hunt.
  • “Your little boy’s bones are showing. But Ruby was having none of it. She called the whole thing a witch hunt and claimed the devil had been after her for years. You are the devil.” (Esther & Hannah, 58:22–58:51)

Legal Outcomes:

• Ruby and Jodi each sentenced to up to 30 years in Utah State prison.
• Kevin Franke divorced Ruby, seeks custody but remains under scrutiny.
• Franke children placed in state care; Shari and Chad build independent lives.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Family Vlogging:
  • “Anything and everything was content.” (Esther, 14:32)
  • “Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Like there are so many issues with this kind of thing.” (Hannah, 10:54)
• On Parenting as Abuse:
  • “Sometimes they are [monsters]. I feel increasingly… hard to defend the stance that somebody who starves her children to the point that they are at the brink of death is not a monster.” (Hannah, 04:48)
• On Collusion & Cult Dynamics:
  • “Jodi, meanwhile, goes on a charm offensive, claiming she’s nervous and she’s done nothing wrong… the pair see themselves as the victims here.” (Hannah, 57:37)
• On Public Blindness:
  • “It’s the fact of the public nature again, and the fact that she got away with it for so long and that nobody stepped in to save these children when red flags were apparent.” (Hannah, 63:37)
• On Broader Implications:
  • “Don’t take parenting advice from crazy people on the Internet. And if you don’t like kids, don’t have them.” (Hannah, 67:15)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:53: Discovery of Russell Franke and the 911 call
• 04:05: Introduction of Ruby Franke’s secret abuse
• 08:49: Ethical concerns around family vlogging
• 13:02–14:30: On-camera shaming and privacy violations
• 21:26: Food deprivation as “discipline”
• 24:23: Viral outrage over lunch deprivation
• 27:42: Chad’s removal from his room and the “beanbag punishment”
• 29:20: Petition for CPS intervention, legal limits
• 32:35: Hiatus of “8Passengers,” move to “Connections Classroom”
• 34:52–35:17: Cult-like principles, radical denial of children’s rights
• 38:02–41:40: Jodi’s prior abuses – cultic isolation tactics
• 43:12–44:16: Ruby completely isolated, family collapse
• 48:12–54:29: Russell’s escape, police rescue, discovery of abuse, panic room
• 54:29–56:04: Ruby’s diary and explicit records of torture
• 57:37: Ruby and Jodi’s arrests, final horror of their plans
• 62:13–64:36: Sentencing, lack of remorse, cycles of abuse

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Tone & Delivery

Hannah and Esther maintain their trademark mix of dark humor and unflinching examination. They oscillate between incredulity, horror, and frustration—often interjecting with acerbic asides, memorable one-liners, and reflections on wider cultural implications. Their style remains direct, conversational, and deeply empathetic to the victims.

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Takeaways

• The Ruby Franke case is a harrowing example of how abuse can be hidden in plain sight—amplified, not exposed, by social media.
• The episode serves as a cautionary tale against the unchecked dynamics of family vlogging, weak legal protections, and the seductive power of online influencers.
• Both hosts emphasize the need for vigilance, healthy skepticism towards “parenting experts,” and the importance of listening to children.

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Final Words:
“If you are a parent and you’re having a tough time, you’re probably doing a perfectly good job. Don’t go to anybody who says they can fix all your problems.” (Hannah, 67:47)

Transcript

[Hannah]

Foreign. I'm Hannah and welcome to Red Handed, where this week we're keeping it kind of current. Not as current as last weeks, but this is one that has been heavily, heavily also requested by you guys. And it's a weird one.

[Esther]

I feel like I saw so much coverage and sort of kept up with it, but I had no idea it was this bad.

[Hannah]

No, no, no, no. There's often a lot of criticism that befools YouTubers. Rightly, wrongly, whatever. I do feel like they do tend to get sucked into a lot more drama than podcasters, but this one definitely transcends, like a bit of YouTube drama. This is bonkers.

[Esther]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

It was a hot summer morning in the Utah desert when an elderly man answered the door to find a young boy looking back at him. The child appeared to be weeks from death. His tiny legs like matchsticks poking out from underneath an oversized, blood stained shirt. He was dirty, shoeless, and had duct tape wrapped around his wrists and ankles. This little boy was Russell Frankie. And his voice trembled as he begged the man to ring the police. Here is a 911 call. You can hear the man choking back tears.

[911 Operator]

I just had a 12 year old boy show up here at my front door asking for help and he says he just came from a neighbor's house. He's emaciated, he's got tape around his legs. He's hungry and he's thirsty.

[Esther]

Need someone immediately.

[911 Operator]

But he has duct taped around his.

[Hannah]

Big injuries.

[911 Operator]

There's swords around him. Yeah, there's sores around him. I think the good chance he's been.

[Hannah]

He also has.

[911 Operator]

Oh, and he has it around his ankle. I mean his wrists as well.

[Esther]

Okay.

[911 Operator]

This boy has been.

[Esther]

Needs immediate attention.

[911 Operator]

Oh, you are such a good kid, Joshua. This kid is lovely sleeping.

[Hannah]

Ugh. When you watch the YouTube video because there is like, I don't know, like ring doorbell. I'm sure there are other doorbells you can buy. We're not sponsored by them. Footage of this man, presumably his wife and the little boy on his front porch. And you can't really see Russell because it's quite like blown out because of the light and the way the sun is sitting. But you can see the man and just hearing the audio of him choking back tears. Even though you cannot see Russell, you have an understanding for just how bad a situation this little boy was in when he turned up there. And all I can say is, thank fuck. The person's house that he ran to was this man.

[Esther]

The police and ambulance were quick to the scene, although their body Cam footage is blurred, it's clear that Russell's injuries horrific. So much so that one female ambulance worker walked away with tears in her eyes. And though Russell's appearance was a shocking sight when he escaped on August 30, 2023, what the world would soon learn was even more shocking. Because the person responsible for torturing little Russell and all of his five siblings was the one person who was supposed to love and protect him the most. It was his own mother.

[Hannah]

And look, that is shocking enough if that paragraph just ended there. That is horrific and bizarre and shocking and disturbing enough even in the world of true crime. But it's the next bit that really takes this case to another level of just unbelievability.

[Esther]

Russell's mum was broadcasting her personal brand of tough parental love to millions of online fans. To them, she seemed like the beautiful, idealised picture of disciplined Mormon motherhood. But after police raided her house, they discovered evidence of exactly what had been going on behind the camera. They found evidence of calculated torture, days of starvation and religious fanaticism. This is the story of Ruby Franke, the Mormon momfluencer who became a monster. Which I used to have a problem with saying, but I think I'm over it.

[Hannah]

I think I'm over it. I feel like when we first started this podcast, we were like, oh, no, we shouldn't say people are monsters. And I'm like, sometimes they are. I feel increasingly, after seven years of doing this podcast, hard to defend the stance that somebody who starves her children to the point that they are at the brink of death is not a monster. She's still a human being, but she's monstrous. So let's get into Ruby Franke's backstory. After I wasn't really aware of her as, like a person, I was aware that she was like a big time, you know, family vlogger or whatever. But I even to the point that we'd been calling it Ruby Frank, hadn't we, in the office. And then we were like, oh, no, it's Ruby Frankie. So let's get into her background in case there are other people out there like us, who don't know too much about them. Ruby Griffith, as she was once known, met Kevin Franke when she was just 18 at a hot dog stand. And it doesn't get much more All American than that. It was love at first bite or something like that. Because not long after, in December 2000, the pair got married, which for Mormons is pretty normal.

[Esther]

Like, as you know, I'm obsessed with the Brigham Young University's TikTok. And they'll like go around and ask the students, be like, what is the quickest dating to marriage you've seen? And they're like two weeks.

[Hannah]

Yeah, it's part of the brand. And Ruby and Kevin go with it. They were both from large Mormon families in Utah. They got married and went on to have lots of Mormon babies. Kevin worked hard to become a professor of civil engineering at, where else? Brigham Young University. And by 2015, when this story starts, Ruby Franke had fulfilled her dream of being a stay at home mum to six gorgeous kids in a gorgeous home in Springville, Utah. The eldest of the brood was Shari, 11. Then came Chad, 9, Abby, 7 and Julie, 5. The youngest two were Russell, who was 3 and 1 year old Eve.

[Esther]

The Frankies were an attractive bunch. Mum Ruby was blonde, beautiful and bursting with energy, while bald and muscular Kevin was the handsome hands on dad. And their six kids looked like they'd been plucked straight from the pages of a Bowdoin catalogue.

[Hannah]

Bowdoin, what an interesting reference. I always get lured in by Bowdoin because they're like, oh, we have a petite range. We have a petite range. We have a petite range. I go there, I'm like, it's all so twee. It's like little cardigans with like fancy trim on them and stuff. So yeah, they do look, they look like Mormon Bowdoin people for sure.

[Esther]

And they seem to be the perfect family. They were popular, they were friendly, they were always at church on Sundays and they even had a golden retriever for God's sake. In 2015, the Franke family started their own YouTube account under the name 8Passengers. It was a fly on the wall style channel chronicling their day to day life. Got a clip for you here.

[Kevin Franke]

Hi, guys, I'm Kevin.

[Hannah]

I'm Ruby.

[Kevin Franke]

We're the drivers of the eight passengers. We're mom and dad. We thought it would be fun to just say hi and introduce our family.

[Ruby Franke]

And if you're not good, I will turn this car around and we will go home.

[Esther]

Behave. Primarily run by Ruby, eight passengers shared everything from videos of the family eating meals to going on trips to getting the kids ready for school and attending church. And people fucking loved it. Absolutely lapped it up. In their first year, Ruby posted 120 videos of her and her family. And although she was the star, it was of course the kids that made it entertaining for the viewers.

[Hannah]

At this time, family vlogging was all the rage. But concern was already beginning to brew in the comments section. Some commentators were uncomfortable with issues around consent and parents profiting off shoving cameras in their kids faces all concerns I think that are perfectly valid. And look, there's obviously like one brand of it which is very much what the Frankies start off with, which is just like, oh, look at our perfect lives, we're so fun and like, these are my kids and like we go on trips and blah blah, blah. But there are ones where it's like the prank ones, right, where it's like families, but they incorporate this kind of comedy prank style. And I've seen some horrendous clips, like while we were researching this case, and I'm not attributing this to Ruby Frankie, but again, it shows you the problematic nature of what some of these people are doing. There's one where the parents make a total mess in the living room, like pen all over the sofas, all over the carpet, throw paint around, like a severe level of destruction to their own living space. And then they bring the kids in and they're like, right, who did this? And they know that none of them did it, but they berate them in front of the camera to basically get the children to react. And they, they hone in on one child saying, we know you did it, we know you're lying. Like fuzzy, how is this fucking funny? You're torturing this child psychologically. And the child is crying, begging, screaming, shouting, losing his temper, saying that he didn't do it, he didn't do it, he didn't do it. And then after like 10 minutes of this, they're like, haha, we're just kidding. And I'm like, the damage you've done to that child, was it worth it? Was it worth it? Like there are so many issues with this kind of thing. And the more validation that some of these vloggers were getting, the more attention they were getting the competition amongst themselves, they're just upping the ante. They're trying to push it further and further and further, be more outrageous, be more clickbaity. But again, that's fine if you're just an individual adult. The fact is these people were dragging their children into it. And not just the psychological harm it does for as a parent, you to act like that towards a child. It's the fact that it is now public and the world is laughing at your child. The humiliation of that on a young psyche. These people are just not thinking, yeah.

[Esther]

I think, yeah, it's definitely that like sort of dopamine mining thing of like just upping the ante, as he said. I've read a really interesting article about how children show the same symptoms if they're tickled a lot to if they're beaten because it's the out of control feeling. And like when you tickle anyone, they say stop. Like nobody is. That's the first thing. Like you don't want it to be happening but you look like you're laughing. So I thought that was really interesting.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So yeah. Coming back to eight passengers now. Although the channel captured many happy moments within the Frankies lives, some of the content that Ruby was choosing to show on this channel was undeniably private. For example, one video follows her preteen daughters picking out training bras in a shopping mall. Which like, if you are a woman and at some point you had to go and buy a training bra the first time you ever realized you needed one and you had to go and find one, it is an awkward experience to say the least. You don't know how they're feeling. And that is without your mum sticking it on YouTube for millions of people to see and comment upon. Like the inappropriateness of that just seems so glaringly obvious. In another video, Ruby is in the kitchen asking her son Chad about whether he's ready to date girls again. Cringe.

[Esther]

Hate, hate, hate, hate.

[Hannah]

And here Kevin spots Chad texting a girl under the table and then proceeds to read out the texts to the entire family while they all laugh along.

[Ruby Franke]

You check. No texting at the dinner table. No texting.

[Kevin Franke]

Let me see it, Let me see it.

[Esther]

I see it.

[Kevin Franke]

We should clarify that in our house, all our kids know that cell phones are free game for parents so we can monitor safety.

[Esther]

Yeah.

[Ruby Franke]

No kid ever said yay. I'm sorry. Glad my parents read my text messages. Said no.

[Kevin Franke]

What is this? I really like you. I. Hold on, I did not say that. How do you work this stupid phone?

[Ruby Franke]

Who are you texting?

[Hannah]

No one.

[Esther]

Any girlfriend?

[Kevin Franke]

Whoa, whoa. I really like I saw you in my dreams last night.

[Hannah]

But there were also clips of Ruby's kids when they had vomiting bugs and were confined to sleeping on the bathroom floor while spewing their guts out. Again, anyone who has ever had people come over to their house, a partner perhaps, and their parents think it's very funny to bring up embarrassing things that happened as a kid. Obviously as an adult you're well adjusted enough to laugh that off, but as a child, to have those most intimate moments exposed to the world. Ugh, my God, it is stomach churning.

[Esther]

And they can't consent either.

[Hannah]

Like no, they have no choice over this. And incredibly, Ruby once even shot a video after she nearly crashed the family's white sedan with her little ones in the back while they were shaken up. A normal reaction for children who have just been in a car accident. Ruby decides to put her influencer cap on and jump out of the vehicle to film the other motorists. As Nora Ephron once said, everything is copy. And for Ruby Franke, anything and everything was content.

[Esther]

While her tactics may have been unethical, they were certainly successful. At their peak, the Frankies had a whopping 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube. Who is watching this?

[Hannah]

It is huge. The family vlogging arena on YouTube I have discovered very recently is absolutely massive and also fits into very niche departments, right, because people run their families in very different ways. People have different religious backgrounds, different geolocations, different belief systems, etc, etc and so her being this attractive Mormon mum with so many kids in Utah, a good looking family is perfect. It's perfect fodder for this kind of thing. It's almost like they're a boy band YouTuber, like a fucking agent found them and put them together to make a family vlog. It is perfect. And people make big money off family vlogging, especially because children cost a lot of money and you're going to get a lot of ads when you've got kids because you got to buy them a lot of stuff.

[Esther]

Esther is exactly right. Having that many millions on YouTube means one thing and one thing only, and that is big money, big bucks. But for Ruby, her foolproof system of profiting off her kids private lives hit a wall four years in. Because in late 2019, YouTube removed personalised ads on kid content and this was a big blow for accounts like eight passengers. So as a way to get around this, many creators began doing more sponsored content. And not to be deterred, Ruby was no different. Eight passengers made brand deals with companies selling cleaning products, electrical goods, food, vacuum cleaners, rugs, etc, etc etc and really all it was was just another shade of exploitation. In one video, Ruby's kids had to speak to the camera about a specific brand of nappies and why they were handy when they wet the bed.

[Hannah]

That is so despicable. Because also look, yes, as a content creator you're putting a lot of time and effort into it. This was Ruby's full time job. She wants to make money, she's got a lot of kids, she's got a big house, sure, she wants to be successful, she's ambitious. My point is when you have 2.5 million YouTube followers. That is a big following. Even though they've taken away personalized ads and you want to pick up sponsorships, as a mother, you are already a prime target. You are already a key person that is going to sell to these people. Because women don't just make decisions about what they're buying for their kids. They also make most of the household purchase decisions, like consumer electrics, everything, consumer products, all of that stuff. So she didn't need to humiliate her children by taking nappy brand deals and then forcing them to do this. She could have been making as much money selling fucking toasters, but she chose to do this. And it shows how amoral or completely blinkered she was. If I'm being kind, the realities of the harm she was doing to her children.

[Esther]

And that's the thing. Like her kids, obviously some of them are really young, but quite a lot of them are at school. So I can't imagine having to go into school and your whole class has seen you do a video about pissing the bed.

[Hannah]

I just think it is so unbelievable because I'm not a parent, but I would presume that after my children's health, their happiness is the key concern. The fact that you knowingly are doing this and it is going to culminate in your child being bullied at school. It's just shocking. It's like she's jumping over all of the biologically hardwired things in her brain to not harm her children for money. But of course, it wasn't just the momager mindset and her tendency to reach for a camera before helping her kids that garnered criticism. It was also Ruby Franke's parenting style. She was nothing if not a disciplinarian. But some of the treatment of her children went further than just being strict, and she began to cause alarm. I honestly also, I'm like parenting styles and the way people personally parent is one of the things for which you are going to get criticized the most, because everybody does it differently. Everybody has different opinions. I see it starting to happen among my friends who have had kids. They have very different opinions on what's right and what's wrong. And I wouldn't do it like that. So you're already setting yourself up for this kind of criticism by doing a mommy vlog like this. But on top of that, she's also nuts. Mm. So, yeah. This concern started to spill out in the comment sections. Other vloggers began making videos about Ruby's penchant for punishment. Classic. Classic. YouTube drama. But inevitably this drove yet more people to her account, because no publicity is bad publicity. And she attracted more than a billion views in total, earning the Frankies a reported $2 million million dollars. Ruby and Kevin tried to enforce what they called natural consequences to their kids behavior. But these were often very harsh. In one video, when little Russell commits the cardinal sin of leaving a sock in the garden, his mum shouts at him on camera. She then makes him get down and do press ups. In another video, Eve is caught using scissors to cut things at home. Apparently a big no no. So Ruby gets down on her level, holding her youngest child's favorite teddy bear and threatens to decapitate it. If you cut one more thing in.

[Ruby Franke]

My house, I'm going to take the scissors, look at me. And I'm going to cut its head off.

[Hannah]

Grandma will be so mad.

[Ruby Franke]

So what are you going to do?

[Hannah]

Are you gonna cut anything else?

[Esther]

No.

[Ruby Franke]

You promise?

[Hannah]

Look at Mama. That's Eve, barely past toddler age, bursting into tears to this momfluence. Her crying kids were camera fodder. And as time went on, she only got stricter.

[Esther]

Another element followers noticed was how Ruby would often withhold food as a form of punishment. And I'm not talking about like, you know, we've all been sent to bed with no tea. It's the extension of that, I think. Ruby would film herself threatening her kids with, quote, losing the privilege to eat dinner. And not that we need to say this, but eating is a basic human right, not a privilege. Because if you don't eat, you quite literally die. But Ruby was clearly quite weird about food. She once proudly told her followers how she made her kids eat dinner one at a time, which is nuts and very controlling.

[Hannah]

She's got six kids. How's she got time to feed them one at a time?

[Esther]

Yeah, and then she really took things too far when eve, who was 6 by then, had forgotten to pack her lunch for school as a six year old generally might do because they're six. And Ruby recorded this clip.

[Ruby Franke]

I just got a text message from Eve's teacher and she said that Eve did not pack a lunch today and can I bring a lunch over to the school. This happens quite often when you're having raising children because 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 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 and hopefully, hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch.

[Hannah]

It's so like easy for us to sit here and tell you, right, that this woman was bonkers. When you hear a clip like that, it's not coerced, it's not like a confession she's making after under a lot of stress and duress from the police, she is making this video. She's also not, by the way, saying it in secret to like her husband and they're both in on it together. She is so convinced that this is a correct way to parent her 6 year old child that she is bold as brass making a video with her face in it plain as day and uploading it onto her YouTube channel where she's getting millions and millions and millions of views.

[Esther]

And if you haven't seen Ruby Franke, just looking at that clip just now, I was reminded she is so thin, like that is not a person who has a healthy relationship with food, in my opinion.

[Hannah]

No, I mean it is all just so unbelievable because if you don't listen to the things she's saying, she's saying it in such a matter of fact way, she's saying it in such a reasonable way, it's like she's saying, well, you know, you lost your phone, you lost your very expensive phone. We bought you, we're not buying you a new one. Reasonable thing to say, you forgot to pack your lunch as a 6 year old. I hope you were in pain and discomfort all day and I hope no one gives you food so that you remember not to forget your lunch again.

[Esther]

And also like telling the teacher, like.

[Hannah]

No, if I was the teacher I would have called child protective services because there is a big problem here. But she doesn't even need to because this is all content on her incredibly popular YouTube channel. So yeah, ironically, this video, which is all about natural consequences, well, they led to a lot of natural consequences for Ruby Franke because the video went somewhat viral and people obviously naturally thought that Ruby was cruel and said as much online. But while much of the harsh parenting tactics were levelled at Russell and Eve, the two youngest, it was teenager Chad that was labelled as the problem child. Chad, who actually looks a bit like a young Chad. Michael Murray, which is curious, just seemed like a typical teenage boy. He was on his school's American football team. He's good looking, he's good humoured. But in 2019 he completely disappeared from the eight passengers channel and the followers noticed Cries of Where's Chad? Flooded the comments section. But by August, people had their answer. Ruby told viewers that she had sent her son to a wilderness camp for troubled teens for 10 weeks. Like Paris Hilton, this saw Chad going on daily long hikes wearing a heavy backpack with minimal food, water or sanitation. Now, many who have attended such programs in America describe the experience as traumatizing. Kids have even died in the past. But that's another story for another time. What we can tell you is a lot of these sort of camps do not have a stellar reputation for the welfare of the children that are there. And look, if you are the parent of a child, and again, not a parent, just guessing who is off the rails, totally wild. Drugs, drink, maybe driving without a license, stealing, acting completely nuts, and you are at the end of your tether and maybe you're like, this camp is our only option. We've got to try it. Maybe as we'll go on to see, that's not really what's going on with Chad at the start. So when we ask why Chad was sent to this camp, his father Kevin explained that it was due to an accumulation of things. Still, if things were so bad and your child needed help, why tell the world about it?

[Esther]

These bad kid camps, I think about them quite a lot. I think maybe there was a documentary series about it, but quite a lot of them will come in the middle of the night and seize your child and take them away.

[Hannah]

Yeah, there is a shitty horror movie starring, I think, Mila Kunis, who gets sent to one of these and it's like a government program and they're like, I don't know, sucking adrenochrome out of them or whatever. But yeah, it really feels like never a good idea, but a last stage. I'm at the end of my tether resort, but they get there very quickly.

[Esther]

The following year, Ruby shot an eight passengers video in which Chad let slip that until recently he had been sleeping on a bean bag in the living room. 15 year old Chad had lost his bed and bedroom for seven whole months as a punishment. And what was the crime? That meant he had no privacy or comfort whatsoever.

[Hannah]

For over half a year, he had.

[Esther]

Pranked his little brother by pretending that they were going to Disneyland, which, like I used to tell my sister she's adopted, like, it's not that bad.

[Hannah]

No, I mean, it's standard practice.

[Esther]

Absolutely. And you know, maybe grounding him for a weekend or like not letting him go to a football game, something like that.

[Hannah]

Yeah, they talk a lot about like natural Consequences which, sure, absolutely, if I'm ever a parent, believe your kid should understand the connection between their behavior and consequences. But the punishment never fits the crime with the Frankies.

[Esther]

And the Internet agreed. The beanbag video sparks outrageous. And this time, the comments section decided that they were going to do something about it. A week after the video was posted, a change.org petition appeared that gathered almost 20,000 signatures. It demanded that the CPS investigate eight passengers. But although police were aware of concerns, they said that there was no evidence of actual criminal conduct. Basically, sleeping on a beanbag and being treated horribly by the people who gave you life, although unpleasant, isn't legally classed as child abuse.

[Hannah]

Even so, criminal conduct or not, no brand wants bad pr. So many of eight passenger sponsors dashed for the door. Still, Ruby ignored the negativity. While she was putting her parenting style on show for all to see, she no longer wanted it to be up for debate. So in order to try and silence her critics, the Frankies disabled the comments sections on all of their pages. They even hired a lawyer to send cease and desist letters to vloggers who were highlighting their cruelty. Ruby and Kevin also did an interview with Insider in which Kevin claimed his aim had been to show Chad's, quote, victory over the challenges that he'd faced. Again, they say all the right things, like, you know, overcoming adversity, overcoming your challenges, natural consequences, discipline, responsibility, but they are nuts.

[Esther]

Yeah, and it's kind of like, you know, as a public figure, you are going to get hate. It's going to happen and you're sort of, you sort of accept it and it's, oh, ignore the haters, like, blah, blah, blah. But, like, at what point are you, like, maybe they're right, you know? And as you've probably gathered by now, Ruby's star was beginning to fade. But did she get any nicer? Absolutely not. In 2021, she and Kevin revealed that their two youngest kids had been showing long patterns of selfishness, so they wouldn't be getting any Christmas presents. Instead, eve, who was 8 by that stage, and Russell, who was 10, would get what Ruby called the gift of truth, which means a big fat nothing. So those two adorable little kids had to sit and watch their other siblings unwrapping toys. And it's heartbreaking.

[Hannah]

And again, look, this is a true crime podcast. Way worse things have happened to kids that we've talked about, but we are only. But at the start of our story, this is a slippery slope down which we're all going to fall.

[Esther]

Ruby claimed that she'd come to this no present for Christmas decision after methods such as keeping her children home from school to wipe the floorboards had failed. And that's the other thing about, like the lunch thing as well. It's like, do you not want your kids to do well at school?

[Hannah]

This is the same thing about the beanbag thing, right? They put an immense amount of pressure on these children to be perfect and follow the rules and do all of this. Surely schooling and education and their achievement in those arenas comes into that matter. If your 6 year old child doesn't have any food at lunch, how is she performing, like you said? And if your 15 year old son, who is entering the realm of school where now it really matters, because presumably you want him to go on and have higher education or have a career, how are you letting him sleep on a beanbag for six months? Because if I had to sleep on a beanbag for one night, I'm not sleeping.

[Esther]

But despite the escalation in punishments, the Frankies were posting to YouTube less and less. And then in January 2022, after Ruby posted a video of her youngest daughter's baptism, the 8Passengers YouTube page went quiet.

[Hannah]

Of course, people were surprised and the Internet was rife with speculation. Had their complaints finally got through to Ruby? Perhaps she'd finally changed her ways. Were the police involved? Or had the kids been removed from her care? No such luck. Four months later, Ruby was back online. But this time she was appearing on another channel called Connections Classroom. And what's more, Ruby had undergone a makeover. She'd swapped out the cottagecore cardigans and bowdoin look and soccer mum style for corporate suits and polished shoes. She was also now calling herself a mental fitness coach. Oh, alarm bells, red flags, all of it. Plagues. Plagues of frogs, everything. It's all bad signs. And she did this while preaching culty jargon about living in truth, not distortion.

[Esther]

Motivational speakers or mental health coaches or any thing like that just makes me run for the fucking hills. Oh, my God.

[Hannah]

Ruby's main focus on this account was giving strict parenting advice to Mormon mothers. But she wasn't doing it alone. She was sitting next to a woman called Jody Hildebrandt.

[Esther]

Thunderclap.

[Jodi Hildebrandt]

Hi. We are live in Mapleton, Utah, at a home of somebody who is learning how to be a man mental fitness trainer. And we have Ruby here, and Ruby is. Is a part of the original 10 women that are being trained to become mental fitness trainers. So, Ruby, you want to tell us about what a mental fitness trainer is?

[Ruby Franke]

Yes. So we are getting mentally fit the same way your body would get physically fit by running and lifting weights and working with a personal trainer. We are getting ready to, to be your mental fitness trainer. We're getting truth really easy to teach. We're, we're making it very simple, boiling it down to principles. That's how you're going to understand truth is really knowing principles, being able to put words to it and help you and you're going to feel so much better.

[Hannah]

Absolutely.

[Jodi Hildebrandt]

The truth is you're not entitled to education, you're not entitled to health care, you're not entitled to your heartbeat eating. You're not entitled actually to anything. Not to anything. And when you go and you engage in an experience, you're always responsible inside that experience. No one is responsible to take care of you except for you.

[Esther]

Jody was 13 whole years older than Ruby. She had shoulder length blonde hair and a soft spot for button down shirts. She had a very no nonsense sports teacher, geography teacher look about her. The type that would probably make you play hockey in the rain or the snow. Jodi was the founder of Connections, the channel that Ruby was now on. Connections, which made Jodi about $30,000 a month, was primarily a life coaching company. It offered individual and group sessions with Jodi herself as well as coaching for couples. Jodi came into the Frankie family around 2019 and she was hired as Chad's therapist to help him with his so called behavioral issues. He, he just looks like a perfect angel. Like he's just so normal.

[Hannah]

He's just a teenage boy. That's it. And none of it makes any sense for how it gets here with regards to Chad's behavior or any of the children's behavior. If you can't handle kids. I feel like she doesn't even like kids. Why are you having fucking six kids? It's just, it's got to be about power and control. That's all this is about. She just feels if any of the kids step even a centimeter out of line, do not follow her strict authoritarian style of parenting, she loses it because she feels like she's being disrespected. I don't know what it is the psychopathology here with Ruby, Frankie and now with this Jodi Hildebrandt, it's off the charts.

[Esther]

And Jodi didn't keep to Chad. She also provided therapy to Ruby and Kevin. And Jody must have been a pretty good therapist because in 2020 she moved in to the Franke family home in Springville, Utah.

[Hannah]

That sounds totally normal and not at all Completely mentioned.

[Esther]

Like the Frankies, Jodi was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And increasingly, Ruby had been mentioning Jodi's teachings on the 8 passengers channel. In fact, it was Jody who had recommended that Chad move out of his bedroom and onto the beanbag of shame. But while on the surface she appeared to be a woman of God working to help others, Jody had quite the checkered past. In 2012, her therapist license was temporarily revoked because she'd discussed a patient's mental health concerns with the Mormon Church and Brigham Young University without his permission, which is kind of therapist 101.

[Hannah]

I also feel like that's not the worst thing she's done. That's just what she got caught for.

[Esther]

Oh, big time.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Now, this patient was Adam Stead, who was well known for whistleblowing about child abuse in the Mormon community. He himself had been sexually abused when he was young at a Boy Scout camp in Idaho. But in 2008, life was on the up for Adam. He was a dad and studying at Brigham Young University. And finally it felt like time to deal with his trauma. So he and his wife booked in to Jody's sessions. At first, in one of Jody's mixed classes, the therapy seemed to be working. But then the couple were separated and put into single sex groups. This is when things started to go wrong. Slowly, Jody began convincing Adam's wife that there were real issues in the marriage and making her believe that Adam, a victim himself, had abused children. It's just like the utmost of quackery that we see time and time again this powerful ability for people like this who have perverse views or are misguided, as I'm sure you can argue with some of the satanic panic lot, but just how fucked up things can get, how quickly.

[Esther]

Jodi also claimed that Adam had an addiction to pornography. Because of this and her aforementioned child abuse accusations, she said that he should be isolated from his family. So he was turfed out of his home. And Jodi even convinced his ex wife to send a message saying that he had to keep doing therapy with her for thousands of dollars a month. Jody went round telling other therapists bad things about him as well, so he could only work with her. As Adam put it, recently, I went from a pre med, pre law student in an honours program, married with two little babies to being put behind bars, being thrown out of university and being accused of the worst things imaginable when.

[Hannah]

He was just doing the thing that all of society is constantly telling you to do. Go get therapy. Deal with your trauma. He's doing the right thing. He's become a dad. I'm guessing he wants to be a better father for them than any experiences he had had as a child. And this is what ends up happening. This Jodi Hildebrandt is. Ruby, Frankie is fucked up.

[Esther]

But Jodi Hildebrandt, oh, yeah, she's a different level.

[Hannah]

She is. I don't know what the word for her is.

[Esther]

And that's kind of all we know. That's about as much detail as Adam has gone into on exactly what those accusations were. But at the time, he was eventually granted a subpoena on Jodi's records on him, and there was only half a page of notes. There was nothing about any supposed child abuse. And with nothing to support her case whatsoever, Jodi backed off. But the damage was done. Adam's relationship and faith were destroyed, and he and his wife did get divorced quite soon after.

[Hannah]

Yet this wasn't the only time Jodi had done this. Trey Warner, a former Connections client, was in one of her men's groups. He recalled that another man in his group, a successful businessman, was made to believe that he was a danger to society because he would sometimes look twice when he saw a pretty woman. The man had to move away from his family on account of his dangerous behavior. Trey also revealed that Jody's modus operandi was to make people feel evil and like they needed a lot of help.

[Esther]

That's a classic Catholic move, that.

[Hannah]

And presumably when she did, she'd be the only one with the solution. Look how that worked out. This pattern of separating husbands from their families left a trail of devastated and in some cases, suicidal men. But of course, Kevin and Ruby weren't to know this when she moved in. It's also classic cult tactics. And this is the thing, right? I'm not saying don't get therapy. I'm not saying therapy's bad. But I'm saying is if something has such a force for positivity and good in somebody's life, if that person is fucked up, like Jodi Hildebrandt and all the quacks we've seen before refer to satanic panic, etcetera, it can also be a massive force for evil, which is what she's doing. And she's getting away with it because she has the COVID of being a person who can help you.

[Esther]

Kevin would later claim that once Jodi was under their roof, the Frankie roof, strange things started to happen in the house. And this is where it gets a bit amateurville.

[Hannah]

This Story just keeps giving in the most horrendous way.

[Esther]

Apparently the lights would flicker and there'd be random loud noises and sometimes even floating objects. Jody also started having weird episodes where she appeared to be possessed and claimed that the devil wanted her as his bride.

[Hannah]

Oh, my God.

[Esther]

How obsessed with yourself do you have to be to be like, it's me, I am the bride of Satan.

[Hannah]

On a scale of zero to Jodi Hildebrand.

[Esther]

But apparently when these possessions happened, it was Ruby who would take care of Jodi. And they started to happen more and more, to the point that Ruby said she had no choice but to start sleeping in bed with Jodie.

[Hannah]

What is going on? This woman, who doesn't give a Fuck if her 6 year old child had lunch or not, needs to sleep in the bed with Jodi Hildebrandt to take care of her because she's being possessed by the devil who wants her as his bride.

[Esther]

Okay, so because Jodie's sleeping with Ruby now, Kevin was confined to a room downstairs. And I'm sure you can see where this is going. After he was banished to the downstairs room, he also eventually stopped being able to speak to his wife at all. He was only allowed to communicate with Ruby through Jodi. And by summer 2022, Jodi asked Kevin to move out of their home altogether because of his supposed pornography addiction, which sounds quite familiar.

[Hannah]

Jody is like the laziest couple. She's like, I can't be bothered with a big group for them. She just needs one couple at a time. Do you think she.

[Esther]

Obviously she does it so many times and it's so similar every time she does it. Do you think she's going into these situations and it's all just laid out like chess, like she knows exactly what she's doing, like what she's going to do, or is it on the wing?

[Hannah]

I mean, I think people like her are beasts of instinct. I think anytime we come across predators, we always marvel at the fact that it's like they're following a playbook, especially when we look at cult leaders. And I'm not saying Jodi Hildebrandt is that, but I'm saying she's not far off. But it's not because they actually literally have the playbook, but it's because they're acting on instinct. And she knows, I think she goes with her gut. She goes into the house, she goes into this relationship, she makes an assessment and she just plays it day by day. But she's very good at it because she ends with the Result she always wants. So by this point, the Frankie's son Chad had also been kicked out of the family home for having a girl over. But he was still having to pay $900 a month to Jody for therapy. Shari, the eldest daughter, was studying at university and lived with her friends. Ruby was becoming more and more isolated because now Kevin's gone, Shari's gone, Chad's gone, and she's also increasingly shut off from her friends and family. And although the youngest kids were apparently now being homeschooled, Ruby was spending a lot of time 200 miles away from Springville at Jody Hildebrandt's $5 million house in Ivins.

[Esther]

I'm sorry, a five million dollar house in Utah, that's gotta be a fucking mansion.

[Hannah]

I think it is. And it's because she's charging £900amonth in therapy to a teenage boy. So, yeah, I mean, call it what you will. If you actually Google images this place, you'll see what the $5 million bought her, because it is actually more of a sprawling compound out in the desert and it looks more like the home of a Bond villain than some sort of parenting guru.

[Esther]

Bring back the cult. Wind chimes from sinister societies.

[Hannah]

I know, right? Ruby was now Jody's business partner at Connections, but many online wondered, as you may well have done yourself, whether they also had a sexual relationship. After all, the two are very tactile in their videos, hands on laps and flirtatious glances, not to mention the fact that they're sharing a bed. And, yeah, just to be clear, all this conjecture about the two of them being in a relationship was hitting the Internet before people even knew they were sharing a bed. Now, while neither have ever confirmed whether there was some sort of intimate relationship between them, we think it's probably true. And so does Chad, who recently said as much on TikTok.

[Esther]

And here is where it all starts to fall apart. Shari Franke, still away at uni, had been contacted by concerned neighbours and told that her four siblings were being left at home alone for days, days on end, whilst Ruby was away. So Shari rang the police. When officers visited the home, they could see the kids inside, but they wouldn't answer the door. Police went back four or five times to try and get in, and the same thing kept happening. They couldn't get any access, but again, being home alone is not criminal conduct, so the police couldn't get a search warrant. Which seems unbelievable, but Utah is one of 37 US states where there's no law about leaving Your kids at home, on their own. In the uk we have a law that children have to be supervised under the age of 12.

[Hannah]

I thought it was older, actually.

[Esther]

I thought it was older too.

[Hannah]

Now, if only there had been this law in Utah, because the following year, on the 30th of August, 2023, the police would have been contacted again when Russell turned up at Jody's neighbour's door. Ruby had brought her two youngest, Russell and Eve, with her to Jody's. As we said at the top of the show, the emaciated Russell had bravely escaped that house of horror and walked across the hot desert sand barefoot to get help. At the start of the show, you heard how shocked the man had been to see that Russell's ankles and wrists were wrapped in duct tape. Well, he'd also told police that they were covered in blood. But when the ambulance arrived and started treating wounds, they learned that this red liquid wasn't blood at all. In fact, it was possibly even worse.

[Esther]

This fucks me up so much, man.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Little Russell's lesions had been smeared with a mixture of cayenne pepper and honey. They were then wrapped in cling film, gauze and duct tape.

[Esther]

It's like. Was it the ancient Egyptians that used to cover people in honey and bury them?

[Hannah]

Yeah. Russell told authorities that Jody and Ruby had tied him up and the wounds, which went almost to the bone, had been caused by the rope that he had been tied with. And then they had put this concoction onto his wounds. And as if that is not as horrific as it gets, I think the most gut wrenching part of all of this is the fact that Russell, when he explained all of this to the police, said that it had all been his fault.

[Esther]

Thankfully, this time the police acted fast and descended upon Jodi's home. Within moments, she answered the door, already on the phone to her lawyer. An armed police dragged her out to begin searching the house for the other kids. The body cam footage of Jody's home revealed it to be a sprawling concrete maze with very little natural light. The police turned down a corridor and in the middle of a dark cupboard, they found Eve. The nine year old girl is painfully thin. She was sitting alone in the middle of the space. You can see in the footage that her head is shaved and she's just staring at the floor. Officers tried to ask her questions and coaxed her to come out of the cupboard, but she wouldn't give them any eye contact. So clearly she's traumatised and terrified. A shadow of the smiley YouTube star that she once was. It would take the police a total of four hours to get her to leave the room at all. And then she finally ate some pizza.

[Hannah]

The middle two teens, Abby and Julie Frankie, were tracked down to a house belonging to connections employee Pam Bodger. They had been there cleaning. They appeared nervous, but otherwise in good health. Eve and Russell were rushed off to hospital, and Ruby finally returned home to be arrested. Three years after she was first reported to the police, Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrandt were charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse. In the van driving to prison, they barely spoke, instead humming hymns like total fucking mental creepers.

[Esther]

I cannot stand that.

[Hannah]

I mean, just, just. No, it's like a horror movie. It's unbelievable.

[Esther]

The police also managed to find Kevin Frankie, who told them that he hadn't seen his kids in over a year.

[Hannah]

You weak loser, Kevin. What the fuck are you doing? I know he goes along with it all with Ruby Frankie, but she very much seems to be the instigator. She kicked you out and took your children away, and you must have woken up then and known what Jodi Hildebrandt was and that your wife had totally lost it and you just lost. Left your kids in that situation. Prison. Prison.

[Esther]

And perhaps you might be thinking that Kevin should have fought to see his kids more, but watching the footage of his first police interview makes it quite clear that he didn't really know what was happening. But I do agree, like, why didn't.

[Hannah]

You fight to see them?

[Esther]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

If you didn't know that they were being abused, you didn't see them for a year. And look, I'm not saying that Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrandt together wouldn't have made it very difficult for him to do that. But Kevin, what the hell?

[Esther]

Kevin said that he had to leave his family because he had to work on fixing his made up pornography addiction. He also said that he loved his wife. Even though he was kicked out of his own house and his kids were taken away, Kevin still attended remote weekly sessions with Jodi.

[Hannah]

My God.

[Esther]

Kevin said that the description of what had happened to Russell and Eve sounded like a horror movie, just like Saru said. And items found in Jody's house would certainly fit that description. Police discovered a panic room, and inside was evidence that it was used for torture.

[Hannah]

What is happening? Because when this was all going on, right. I didn't really follow the case with much knowledge as it was unfolding, but I would constantly get like, YouTube videos from other YouTubers being like, oh my God, Ruby. Frankie. Ruby. Frankie. Ruby. Frankie. I did. Did not realise it was this bad.

[Esther]

I didn't either.

[Hannah]

I just thought at first, honestly, that people were just up in arms about her parenting style, which was probably pretty shitty and horrible. That's what I thought. This is deranged.

[Esther]

So this panic room was a tiny little vault which had a fold down bed in it, a small toilet, rope, dressings, adult diapers and Tupperwares full of the cayenne pepper and honey concoction. And as if that wasn't all damning enough, officers also found Ruby Frankie's diary, which detailed abuse more extreme than they could possibly have imagined.

[Hannah]

In this diary, Ruby logged the details of months of daily torture and religious fanaticism. She writes about starving Eve and Russell of both food and water, forcing them to work for hours in the heat and isolating them from the outside world. Ruby made them sleep on hard floors outside or sometimes locked in a bunker. The short entries often reference Russell being possessed by the devil and Ruby justifies starving him by scrawling, I will not feed a demon. In July 2023, Russell had tried to escape, so Ruby took to binding his ankles and wrists together. One entry is titled Big Day of Evil and in it Ruby explains how she held Russell's head underwater, covering his nose and mouth to stop him breathing. She claims she did it to try and save him. Then the following day, Ruby describes cutting Eve's hair and spraying her with water from the dog wash because she wanted to eat. After two days of starvation. According to the diary, the children had a selfish, sinful lifestyle, suffering from deviant behaviour and gripped by satanic chaos. In reality, the only transgression they seemed to make was sneaking sips of water or falling to the floor in exhaustion.

[Esther]

It's so even if just one of these things happened to you as a child, it would be incredibly traumatic.

[Hannah]

Yeah. They've certainly given their children a lot of adversity to overcome as they seem so obsessed with talking about.

[Esther]

For most of us, being put through torture like we've just described is completely unimaginable. But it wasn't for Jody's niece, whose name is Jessie Hildebrandt. To them, this was all too familiar. Jessie has since described the harrowing abuse that they suffered when they went to live with their aunt Jody. At 16, Jessie, now a successful tattoo artist, recalls being tied up, duct taped, blindfolded and isolated for up to 12 hours a day. They said that they were also forced to sleep outside in the snow and told they were so dangerous that they shouldn't be around people. It got to a point where Jessie even became afraid of themselves. Jodi also accused Jessie of being a porn addict, proving that this repeat pattern has been going on for years, despite many people speaking out about her. Jodi has had a lot of backing from the Mormon Church over the years, which doesn't surprise me at all. Jessie said this. We have a culture of not believing children and not trusting children. Children trust their parents and the parents trust the church. Nobody came to save Jessie. So years later, Jody was free to do it all over again.

[Hannah]

But finally, on the 30th of August last year, so 2023, Jody and Ruby were brought into police custody. And it was just in the nick of time, as Jody and Ruby had been hatching a plan to run away to Arizona with the two youngest kids. In her first police interview, Ruby says nothing and just stares at officers almost without blinking. She seems defiant, verging on arrogant. Jody, meanwhile, goes on a charm offensive, claiming she's nervous and she's done nothing wrong. And the recording of their phone calls from jail do make it seem as though the pair see themselves as the victims here.

[Esther]

In Ruby's first call with Kevin, he tells her that the children are in hospital. She says, so weird. It's just not necessary.

[Hannah]

Oh, my God, I can't. Yeah, I can't cope.

[Esther]

Your little boy's bones are showing. But Ruby was having none of it. She called the whole thing a witch hunt and claimed the devil had been after her for years. You are the devil. Sorry, like, no. No one's after you.

[Hannah]

Oh, my God. It's just this, like, she can pull it in multiple different ways, right? She'll be like, people are jealous I'm making this money. It's also, people are persecuting me because I'm a Mormon. She can pick and choose any collection of things she wants to say. Also, with Ruby Frankie, there is a distinction, right in my mind, and, you know, we can talk about some more at the end between Ruby Frankie and Jodie Hildebrandt. They are equally culpable, but I think Ruby Frankie is out of her tree. Jodi Hildebrandt knows exactly what she's doing. I completely agree because the level of delusion that Ruby Frankie shows throughout the entire thing, not just once she meets Jodie, the posting of that video clip that we played you earlier where she's talking about Eve being hungry at school, the fact that she has no understanding of how other normal people are going to react to that, shows you that she is Just not there. She's nuts.

[Esther]

Yeah, she. She truly is nuts. She even had this to say. Adults have a really hard time understanding that children can be full of evil and what that takes to fight it. Ruby even compares herself to the big man himself, Joseph Smith. She claimed that every wonderful man of God has to be misunderstood.

[Hannah]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Esther]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Okay.

[Esther]

Jody, too, is recorded on the phone sounding incredulous that she was being charged with abuse. She said, so now it's abusive to make a kid sleep on the floor. It's ridiculous. You can't even raise your kids anymore.

[Hannah]

Okay. Yeah. So they're pulling again, the line that a lot of people do say, now, you know, where they'll be like, oh, what's smacking your kids? Illegal. Like, I got smacked when I was a kid. A smack across the bum's not gonna do anything. You were torturing your children. My God. The level of delusion is. I don't know why I'm shocked. We've been doing this job for long enough, but it's the public nature with which this played out.

[Esther]

I also think the, like, Ruby, Frankie being completely nuts point is backed up by the fact that she's posting so much of this stuff. Like, she doesn't see why people are going to be like that is absolutely abhorrent.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So at first, Ruby stood by Jodi, claiming that she was misunderstood. But by December, probably following some salient advice from some lawyers, she had changed her tune entirely. It also probably didn't hurt that she heard Jodi denying any and all involvement in the abuse. Ruby pinpoints this moment as when she realized that Jody was lying and the wool fell from her eyes. Ruby took a plea deal and agreed to testify against Jodi, who promptly pleaded guilty instead. At their sentencing on 20th February, 2024, Jodi claimed that she loved the children and prayed that, quote, they will heal and move forward to have beautiful lives. Meanwhile, Ruby, who's now 42, offered hollow apologies and placed the blame solely on Jody, saying, for the past four years, I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me to a dark delusion. My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked, as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me.

[Esther]

In fact, Ruby Franke didn't take any accountability at all. Even if you believe that she was totally brainwashed, she was probably attracted to Jodi's teachings because they both sanctioned and spurred on her own strictness.

[Hannah]

Yeah. I also just don't buy this idea of, like, anybody having total and utter control over another person. It just removes any agency from that human being of having any ability to be like, huh, is this going well? And yeah, all right, maybe people make the argument that Ruby Frankie wasn't very well, but I'm sorry, I just. I have no sympathy for her whatsoever.

[Esther]

It is really hard to imagine any mother wanting to treat their kids so heinously. But it could also be that torture was something that Ruby was always familiar with. An anonymous cousin of Ruby's told a news outlet that the allegations against Ruby were eerily similar to her own experiences as a victim of child abuse. This cousin claimed that her grandparents had handcuffed her mother, who went on to handcuff that cousin's siblings as well. She also claimed that this abuse was multi generational. The whole family tree had been blighted by it. And I think this, you know, Ruby Frankie is horrendous. Nobody gets that way by accident.

[Hannah]

No, no. And I think the thing that's shocking with the Ruby Frankie case is not that it happened, this kind of thing happens. It's the fact of the public nature again, and the fact that she got away with it for so long and that nobody stepped in to save these children when red flags were apparent. Look, I'm not putting the blame on that teacher, but I'm just saying there were signs she wasn't hiding this and nothing happened. Why did it get to the point that Russell Frankie is at death's door from starvation and begging a neighbor for help with duct tape around wounds that are covered in cayenne pepper? How did it get to that point? So, yeah, while we may never know what drove Jodi Hildebrandt or Ruby Franke to do the things they did, what we do know is that they received identical sentences of up to 30 years in prison. Both were convicted on four counts of aggravated child abuse, each carrying a one to 15 year sentence.

[Esther]

In what universe is aggravated child abuse carrying one year?

[Hannah]

I don't know, but Utah law mandates that consecutive sentences can't exceed 30 years. Kevin divorced Ruby in 2023 and is still fighting for custody of his kids. Whether he will get it or not is another matter. And look, I would always say that children being with their parents is going to be the best option. I don't know. I think Kevin needs a lot of assessment before that conclusion can be made here. And currently, those children that are still under the age of 18, so that includes Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve are in the care of the Department of Child and Family Services. When their mum was arrested, Shari took to Instagram to share what she had been trying to tell the police and CPS for years. And she also said that the youngest two were safe but had a long road ahead. Shari is now studying social policy at uni, hoping to one day go into politics. And Chad is a social media influencer who often posts with his girlfriend. They do seem happy. As for Ruby Franke, she once said on eight Passengers that her biggest fear was waking up to find her kids staring at the wall or day and there being nothing to film. That's her biggest fear. What? But whatever the hell she means by that, there is certainly a hell of a lot of wall to stare at in Utah State Correctional Facility for Ruby and certainly no cameras for her to film with. But she shouldn't worry, because Ruby Frankie has the gift of truth should she wish to unwrap it. Are they in the same prison? Let's find out. Who's Jodi Hildebrandt? Yeah.

[Esther]

Wow. That's nuts.

[Hannah]

Ruby, Frankie and her business partner. Okay. Jody Hildebrandt, were transferred to the Utah State Correctional Facility.

[Esther]

Jesus.

[Hannah]

Yep. That seems like a bad idea.

[Esther]

I mean, the marmother was sharing a bed already. So gay for the stay. Doesn't really apply, does it?

[Hannah]

Yep.

[Esther]

Wow.

[Hannah]

Yeah, that is so much. I think, you know, sometimes online drama, YouTube drama, overblown, exploited by other creators in order to, like, get clicks, whatever. Everybody likes talking about people that they know online. This is nuts. I had no idea of the extent of this.

[Esther]

No, I didn't either. It was like one of those ones that you sort of, like, peripherally are aware of. And then I was like, fucking hell. Absolutely horrific.

[Hannah]

Children.

[Esther]

It's like the terp in 13.

[Hannah]

Yeah, absolutely. But playing out in front of the world. So, yeah, that's it, guys. Don't take parenting advice from crazy people on the Internet. And if you don't like kids, don't have them. That's. Those are my top two takeaways from this. And if you think you might have children and end up torturing them, also don't have them.

[Esther]

Yeah, yeah. That's the Smash it parenting podcast.

[Hannah]

Yeah, don't. But also, if you are a parent and you're having a tough time, you're probably doing a perfectly good job.

[Esther]

Exactly.

[Hannah]

Don't go to anybody who says they can fix all your problems.

[Esther]

I also think just anyone who is a motivational speaker who has achieved nothing, stay away.

[Hannah]

So, yeah, that's it, guys. And we'll be back next week with something else.

[Esther]

Goodbye.

[Hannah]

Bye. Sa.