8 Passengers: The Horrific Story of Ruby Franke

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, it's kJ here and I'm back and I am not frozen.

1:02 Can you believe it? It's South Louisiana and when we measured, we had eight inches of snow in our front yard. I cannot believe it. I know a lot of y'all are used to that. We're in your neck of the woods. Mama's not. We didn't know what to do, We didn't know what to wear. The only thing we need to do we knew to do was to put a damn gumbo on the stove. And that we slayed. But other than that, we had the time of our lives. And man, that was just crazy. It was a once in a lifetime I think event, and I'm just so thrilled to be able to talk to you, talk to you about it, and if you go on my Patreon, I put some photos up so se y'all can see. It's just absolute insanity. But I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be in the studio, been writing all week while we were all we called it snowed in, but y'all would laugh at us up north, But we were snowed in and they canceled school and we had a fireplace and it was wonderful. So before I get in this episode, though, I gotta give some shout outs. Y'all know that's going to happen, and so I'm going to start in. I think it's Kancho, Kancho Arizona, and it's Kathy Thompson, and Kathy, how are you doing over there in Arizona? I bet did you have any snow like we did? It was just absolute insanity. Thank you so much for joining the Patreon.

2:09 And then in Stockbridge, Georgia, Miranda man Hey, Miranda, I'm so thankful to have you as part of my crime family as well as Cheyenne. Fetch It Now, I'm not sure if this is on Lee Virginia or on Lee Virginia. You're gonna have to correct me if I have it wrong. But in Virginia, Cheyenne, how are you? How are you doing that way? So thankful to have you just like you know. It just blows my mind how much people support this show, not because I don't think I do a good job, but because people just are. They're liking the content, and it just it makes my heart just swell with pride. I feel like I'm just doing a good job. With all of the support that I'm that I'm getting, I'm also getting support from someone named Poppy.

2:50 I don't have an address, and I don't have any more of a name, but Poppy, wherever you are out there, thank you so much. I'm thankful to have you in my crime family. And then, but not least for today, right here in my home state of Louisiana and slaughter Louisiana, I've got miss Cindy Schwartz. Hey, Cindy, how is it going? And I know you got some snow? How was it? Girl? You gotta write me, you gotta tell me, send some pictures because I know that you're just as tickled as I am. Now, the episode today is one that's been big in the news, and I've had requests for this one, so I decided I'd go ahead and knock it out. It's kind of gonna go all over the place, but I think I've got some really good insight to what was going on in this Ruby Frank case. Now, before TikTok okay, and before Instagram and all these other major platforms that people use today, YouTube was the place to go for content. That was the go to check in, find the channels that you like, and follow those people and subscribe to those channels. It was super easy to create your own your own channel at first, and then to document everything on your channel, everything from your life to science, experience experiments to gaming, whatever you wanted to put out there, just like on TikTok but she did it on the tube. Now, YouTube was and continues to be a multi billion dollar business with reach. If you didn't know this, it has reached that surpasses a lot of the popular TV stations that are on TV today.

4:21 That's how widespread and we all know what YouTube is, but I just you know, it's impressive how many people it's able to reach, and this was also going to be the place that Ruby Frankie chose to document her family life. It was it was awesome for her vlogging right video blogging. Vlogging rose to popularity in the early two thousands, and she had the personality for it. But what was her purpose whenever she created this channel, Well, it was raising her family and sharing her tips on parenting, amongst many other you know, smaller topics that she would cover. Now. Ruby Frankie she was born on January eighteenth, in nineteen eighty two, born and raised in Utah, and she was raised as a conservative Mormon. In her household, she was one of five siblings, so you know, that's a big family where I come from. And obviously this upbringing of this stricter, you know, household influenced her parenting styles as well.

5:20 And the content that she uploaded for the world to see was really a reflection of how she was raised. And she decided on the name eight Passengers for her show. So she and her husband his name was Kevin, and their six children were the stars of the show and so the name reflected that perfectly because there was eight of them. Everyone was a passenger in the family they were hanging on for the fun filled ride in the lakeside suburb of Springville, Utah. And that show debuted in twenty fifteen. So the show quickly gained popularity and it got a massive following because people really seemed to appreciate her take on life and on family. Strict parenting, built on love and a desire to raise responsible children into successful and structured, structured adults. What could be bad about that?

6:12 Homeschooling They talked about that and all of the joys that that can bring by keeping your family close, minimizing the negative influences that are oftentimes unfortunately experienced in public schooling. So many influences that are different maybe from the household you're raised in when you go out to a public school setting, but you're able to be more controlled in a home environment, and those influences can be somewhat limited. Her family routines with chores and responsibilities, which also came with consequences when the kids didn't obey or didn't follow instructions. It really was a structure that a lot of people looked up to. Maybe they didn't grow up with that type of upbringing, and so to see how it's done to learn and to get new ideas from a family that seems to be doing it and doing it well.

6:57 It was a good thing, and religion was also involved. Usually their stories had some type of moral lesson and incorporated into it, and it was all introduced to the kids in this fun family type of way, and all in all, the content was wholesome and it made people feel like they knew they knew the family, and it also modeled for others what maybe they were lacking in their own homes, giving them ideas of how to improve their own family structures if they were needing some help. The kids on camera were joyful and energetic, They were fun to watch, and their daily shenanigans were documented right there for all of the world to see. So what was Ruby about. Well, Ruby was a stay at home mom and the show really gave her something to dive into in a way. She was not only needing something to focus on and something to be hers other than washing dishes and doing laundry, but not only not only did she get that focus, but then there was a really really upside to this, and that was that she was able to add to their family's income doing what she loved. She was a pretty woman, too, very pretty.

8:06 She's in her forties, she has blonde hair, a very thin build, she's got narrow facial features, a thousand watt smile, well put together, and she just has this I guess, elegance about her or this, I don't know what it is, something about her that just is lovely, A modest dresser, a woman of God, as she would always put out there. And so many people looked up to her influence as the mother of her household. And that's a lot of kids to be in charge of and to take care of daily, so she must be doing something right. He was also from Utah and a very involved husband in their household and in their life. His children were his world.

8:49 He adored his wife and he was a very good daddy. He was also educated and you know, a real catch. Honestly, if you look at him, he's got it going on. He was a geotechnical engineer by trade. He worked as an associate professor at Brigham Young University and his focus was civil engineering. And he seemed to be from all the videos and pictures and things I was able to find of him online, he seemed to be a very engaging instructor as well. He would go outdoors and do things with his students, like flying drones, and he would document it. He just seemed very engaged in what these kids are. These kids, these older students were learning in his classroom. And he's a handsome guy too. He matched Ruby on that level. He's also in his forties, often sporting a clean cut look. He was bald shaving his head in what I would say is that typical thing that men eventually go through when their hair starts thinning and they don't want to have the receiving or the balding look, so they just shave their head. But he looked nice in it. He sported that short beard that was well manicured. He had brown hair with the peakings of some gray showing through. A mature dad but not scared at all to flip that hat around backwards, throw on some aviator sunglasses and enjoy the great outdoors. So he was a fun guy and very mild mannered though.

10:13 Everything I saw and heard of him very mild mannered and calm. He doesn't get easily riled up. He's a thinker, you know, and more on the subdued side. But Ruby and Kevin's children. I am telling you what a beautiful, beautiful bunch of kids. Their names were Sherry, Chad, Abby, Julie Russell, and Eve. And by the way, I want to put this out there, their names and this story have been shared publicly on a plethora of platforms and in the news and everywhere. So there's nothing that I'm telling you right now or exposing about them that has not already been made public. So I'm not over here, you know, doxing children, as some people might would claim in a weird way, you know, against me. So all of the pictures that you see of these of this family smiling big huge grins and a perfect mix of their parents were all of these children when you look at them. Anyone who saw this family just knew they were living the American dream and they were killing it.

11:16 They were the people with the khaki pants and the white shirts and pictures on the beach type family. Everything coordinated and thought out and well planned. And the pictures that you see often reflected their strong bond and their love for one another. As they headed out to church events or other occasions that they would go out for, and the girls would be in these modest age appropriate dresses with braids and bows, and the boys in sport coats and belts, nice ties. Their hair would be gelled, very very well taken care of. Kids literally the image of what you would find I think on magazine covers, like parenting magazine covers. They're just beautiful and with their parents leading the way and setting the examples for their lives, these kids were destined to be the best of the best.

12:06 So while Kevin wasn't usually in the forefront of the eight Passenger videos, he was in there, but the kids really became the central content of the show over time. And as with anyone who's gonna gain any sort of following, there's always gonna be people who disagree with you. It just comes with the territory. You're never gonna be everyone's cup of tea, but the same people that disagree with you, I guess I'll say this, As much as people might agree with you, it's the people that disagree with you that are gonna be the loudest. Your haters are gonna be the ones that want to scream the loudest in your face and make sure that you know that you suck and you're terrible. And they don't like the way that you do things, and they're gonna do all of this behind the safety of that little clickity click keyboard, aren't they. It just always seems to go that way, and it just comes with the territory, guys. I mean, to be even doing a podcast like this, you have to have thick skin. And it's like a requirement. If you're gonna put yourself out there, you've got to learn to have thick skin because there's everyone's a buttthole every now and then, and they're gonna come after you. So Ruby wasn't immune to this either. Even though she was doing her best to put the best of her life out there and the best of her family out there, people still sometimes weren't happy with what they saw. People did begin to comment on how some of her tactics in discipline seemed a bit much, and I didn't want to glaze over this. I wanted to kind of give you some examples. So, for example, her son Chad, Chad's one of the older kids of the six. At one

13:36 point in the show, it was noticeable that he no longer was sleeping in a bedroom in a bed, he was actually sleeping on a bean bag. And this was for months, and whenever this was brought up, you know, why is they sleeping on a bean bag? Ruby was upfront and notice, look, it's punishment for behavior. He was pranking his siblings. But that pranking was she deemed it to be mean, not funny, ranking and it was so bad that she said, all right, well you're going to sleep on the bean bag. You're not going to go in the room with your with your sibling. You're going to continue to harass them over and over and over again. One time she also took away what she called the quote unquote privilege of eating dinner from her son two of her sons, Chad and Russell, whenever they were wrestling in the house. And in another instance, the youngest child, her name is Eve, she was sleeping on the bathroom floor after she wet the bed. And I don't agree with that type of thing. I mean, I can understand the kids sleeping on a big old bean bag. I mean, if they won't quit me in a butthole to their sibling, But I'm never going to take food away from my kids.

14:43 That's not to me a punishment tool that sounds more torturous than punishment and case in point. There is another time in an episode, Ruby was refusing to bring lunch to her six year old Eve, six year old Eve because she forgot it at home. And I mean I kind of was like, wait, what, she's six, like she's little, but she openly vlogged about it, and she would saying, look, the teacher even messaged me saying that she's uncomfortable with my child being hungry, but my daughter has to learn a lesson and I'm sorry if that makes the teacher uncomfortable. But if you're not gonna remember your lunch, then you're not gonna eat. But then she said something along the lines of I hope no one gives her anything to eat while she's there. And you know, I don't like that.

15:33 I'm just gonna say it. I don't like that at all. You need food. You can't learn if you're hungry. I don't think food again, I don't think food should ever be a punishment tool. Do you know on that note, do you know how many times I have shared my own lunch at school with teenagers, not six year olds. Teenagers they didn't bring food on purpose, they didn't feel like making a lunch that day, okay, But you know, food to me is a love language, it's not a punishment language. And so like every time I ever went to my grandmother's house, she's always trying to feed me, even if I wasn't hungry. You eat something, eat something, so I just don't. I could see why people would be upset about this, that you don't deny food. That's something you just don't do. And certainly these smaller instances don't equate to like beating a child or stabbing them or something, but it is absolutely something that was turning some heads because this is not how most of us would dole out punishment to our own children. And the show had been going strong for about five years, but the cracks and the veneers really began to show, and even devoted followers started to question some of the show's antics.

16:44 And let me tell you how successful the channel had nearly two million subscribers at one point two million, so she had to have been doing something right. But I'm telling you, with time and the more she posted, people really began to question how unfair these punishments had become. And the pushback wasn't something that Ruby wanted. Obviously, nobody wants pushback if they think what they're doing is right. And initially she defended her family aggressively on why they did what they did and gave explanations and this, that and the other. But by twenty twenty, Ruby just wasn't interested in fighting the fight anymore. She deleted her eight passengers channel and decided that she wanted to go a completely different route. Maybe call it like a rebrand of sorts, but her plan was to join up with a new and trusted friend named Jody Hildebrandt. Jody was about the same age as Ruby at this point. They're both in their late forties, and she is an educated woman. She definitely, though, gives off a Melissa Etheridge vibe, if you know who that is. And while I don't know this for sure, I'm being completely transparent with you. I don't know this for sure. I just got the feeling that Jody probably wears a lot of plaid shorts down to her knee and probably drove a Subaru. You know, That's kind of the vibe I got from Jody. If you're slipping in

18:17 what I'm dripping here, But again, that's just kind of how I took her whenever I was looking at her. So she was a licensed clinical mental health counselor in Utah. She got her associate's clinical mental health counselor license in May of two thousand and three, and then she became a clinical mental health counselor in July two thousand and five. So she had the education and she had the time in, and her credentials alone lend themselves to her ability to understand not only human thoughts and behaviors, but also their response to certain stimuli or certain triggers. And so she was doing well professionally, very well professionally, and she had founded a life coaching and counseling organization that she called Connections Classroom. But it wasn't connections like the typical spelling.

19:08 It was like co n n e x ions Connections Classroom. And the program really aligned with what Ruby felt was the appropriate teachings for her kids. So they really bonded in a sense over that type of content. And the premise of all of the Connections Classroom was that people should have a strict moral principle about them and it promoted extreme accountability for what you do. So Jody was working with couples and families as part of her practice, and so her focus was on helping these families with issues, and these issues were usually things like addiction, self improvement, and relationships and any struggles between them and their relationships.

19:54 So Ruby and Jody began working together to promote that Connections podcast as well as another social media show that they were doing called Moms of Truth and the Connections Program. I went and I looked it up because I wanted to get more insight to this and the Connections program as detailed on our website, it aims to core or to assert core teachings. Those core teachings of impeccable honesty, rigorous personal responsibility, and then humility. And to me, that's great. That sounds wonderful. To be as honest as possible, to be absolutely taking responsibility for your actions or your inactions, and then to be able to express humility and to show humility in times that you may not do right.

20:44 That sounds great. I'm right on board with that. Now, obviously, people are going to put their best foot forward online. It's it's we all know this, we should know this by now. Okay, people are only going to show their life highlight and people are only going to talk about the things that they are doing the best. Something that I read before that I made total sense is that when you're looking at social media, quit comparing your backstage to their front stage production, because you're not seeing all of everybody's struggles and problems and all of that. And it just makes so much sense. Most of us don't run to social media to put our behind the scenes out there, your dirty laundry, a messy kitchen and fighting all of that. It doesn't make for a good image and a home where being in control and parenting or you're claim to fame such as Ruby's work. I mean, hell, y'all, really, come on, now, we all friends here, We all got bs in our lives. Half of us have people in our families who are just absolutely dysfunctional. We know this, but we all pretend it's not. And it's really absurd if you think about it. All of us are dysfunctional on some level. And I don't know about you, but in the world we live in today, authenticity is something that I crave in people like, let's just be so real, you know, with one another. But we're not getting that.

22:02 Young people are not getting that, and sadly, if we don't teach this to them, that the Kardashians is fake, it's scripted, and that all of these quote unquote reality shows and all of these influencers. Come on, y'all, look around, walk outside, look at the life that you're living, and that's the reality you're in. Quit comparing yourself to these other people's, you know, lives and then the fakeness that's out there. Well why did I find this important to the story to explain all that to you? Well? What if I told you that there was more than just a little struggle that was going on behind closed doors in the Frankie household. What I mean is that Ruby and Kevin's marriage had begun having problems about the time that the two women started working together consistently on their Connections and Moms of Truth projects. Kevin he felt like the problems really began when Jody came into the picture.

22:57 But Ruby felt like, maybe that's not the case. It's that maybe we could actually really benefit from counseling. Maybe you and I need to work some stuff out together, and we could use her counseling to work these problems out. And so Jody did do some counseling with the Frankies, but things only seemed to just deteriorate more and more and more. Eventually it got so I guess bad You would say that Kevin left the home when Jody suggested it and said, hey, maybe it would help if there was some separation between you two, maybe you should leave. And then Ruby did also herself say hey, I think you should go. I think we do need this break between us. We need some space. And you know, maybe a separation was what they needed. Who knows, you know, I wasn't there in the house. They were just going off of what they knew from there behind the scenes.

23:52 So July twenty fourth of twenty twenty two is the day that he moved out of their marital home, which was just about their twenty second year of being married. And they had been happily married up until recently, twenty two years of getting along, twenty two years of devotion to one another, twenty two years of raising children together and figuring it out, but it just had there needed to be a break, and they didn't know, y'all. They had so much respect for one another at this time that they didn't go to the court route either. They didn't jump in like a lot of us do, and everyone gets an attorney and we're gonna fight over this, that and the other. No, they didn't do that. They wanted this to be more of a spiritual journey of healing during a separation than it was, like I don't like you, you don't like me. Let's not be around one another. So Ruby asked him, you know, will you work on yourself. And while you're working on yourself and I'm working on myself, let's have no contact. In the meantime.

24:53 This wasn't legal. I don't want you. I don't want to make you think that there was a legal order of no contact. No, it was just their agreement let's not talk or have contact. It was just a personal request that she had and he honored it. They called it their no contact boundary, is what Ruby called it, and he honored that. He said, sure, I'm willing to do that. I want to work this out. I want to repair our family and our problems that we're having. Kevin Frankie, though even though he agreed to that, he did continue to play a very important role in the family dynamic. At this point, he was the sole financial provider for his family and they had six kids. Don't forget that part. Whenever they stopped their really successful eight passenger show that resulted in them losing ninety percent of their income that they had been accustomed to for the past few years. And so, understanding this huge reduction in money, Kevin took his job now of providing financially very serious.

25:55 He went to work and he was making the money, but he backed off as far as the physical caretaking of the children. And it wasn't as if it he's a deadbeat dad. I don't want to look like that. It's just that this was their agreement and their marriage. She would physically take care of the children. He would financially take care of the children and the family, and they kind of worked together in that way, even though they didn't talk at all. He paid all of the bills because all of his money went into a shared bank account that Ruby had access to, and she would pay the bills and use the money and take care of the kids. But she didn't want him not only having no contact with her, Ruby also said, I don't want you having contact with the children. Now. This would go on for a whole year no contact, and I got to address this. While I know this sounds strange that he complied with that, because there's no way my husband's going to go a year without seeing his kids.

26:49 No way, I'm telling you, I know the man, there's no way. Even though he complied giving away his money to his wife who wants him gone, and not seeing his kids for a year, I think it wasn't that he didn't want to see them. I think Kevin was a religious man. I think he did have a good moral compass, but I feel like he may have been gravely manipulated in this situation. He's wanting to fight for his family and he's willing to do anything he can to fix what's going on in the family. But the manipulation to this point was big, and by this I mean like cult level big. Hear me out, Okay, let me explain some classic cult behavior to you if you're not familiar with it, so you'll get what where I'm coming from. So, at its core, a cult always uses coercive techniques to manipulate and then ultimately control its people.

27:49 And it's commonplace too that that technique is going to be disguised with some type of either religiousness or a spiritual enlightenment. Pathway that this person has to go through for them to achieve personal growth. So how is this growth going to be achieved? You would ask, Well, if they can take away a person's sense of individuality and steer them towards unwavering devotion to the leader of the cult for their guidance and all of that. If it's just unwavering devotion to the leader who has the answers, then they will achieve their growth by following what the leader tells them. And y'all, nobody joins a cult and says, hey, I'm off to join the cult. Nobody does that. That's not how it works. It's these tools of manipulation get people to buy in. I mean, think about all the people that drink the kool aid. Okay, this is not crazy.

28:47 It is crazy, but it's not so crazy that it doesn't happen I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So to understand what happened here and why I think this about what happened with Kevin, you have to care about power and manipulation in cult tactics because the number one thing that they do is the same thing that abusers and relationships do. It's love. Bombing. So this person or this leader is going to shower the person that they want to bring in with attention. They're going to praise them, you know, and tell them how great they're doing, how wonderful they are, and they're going to have this warm and welcoming response to the person that they're interested in having come into their cult. So once a person is drawn in, okay, because they've been love bombed, and they feel so accepted and understood, that's when the cult will begin to isolate them from any external influences. Those external influences would be family and friends and even news okay, even news sources or any any way that they could gradually cut you off from the outside world of where normalcy or generalize normalcy is going on, and what happens there when they when they can separate you and isolate you, is then that person feels entirely dependent on that group for not only information, but for emotional support because think about it, they've been isolated from everybody else. They've made everybody else tired of dealing with them, or they won't talk to them, or they've cut them off, and so this isolation serves a dual purpose. It prevents critical voices

30:20 or anyone who might look at what's going on and go, you know, I don't know if that's how that should go. It takes those people and it prevents them from being able to question what's going on number one, and then number two, it then reinforces the cults worldview as the only valid perspective that that individual would have, and so cults are often going to restrict access to outside information by labeling it as dangerous or impure. I know you've seen this before on television, or you've watched some type of documentary that explains this you have to have. If not, hey, let me be your guide. Okay, So now that we've got the isolation, and then we're trying to say that it's dangerous or impure for you to even be entertaining these other people's thoughts are questioning. That's when they start the behavior modification techniques, and through a system of basically reward and punishment, the cults are then going to be able to shape and manipulate their members' behaviors to align with what the group's expectations are. Remember that group that's off to the side, that has no external influences on it, and some are really subtle. Some of the tactics are super subtle, while other ones are going to be right in your face, super in your face forms of control.

31:33 And so those common examples I can give you of that is they'll do public shaming and deprivation of things that people need. So the public shaming, though, is done so that it instills a level of guilt or fear into its members. And I know you're like, Kelly, why are you going off on cults right now? Well, listen to me, because it's going to pay play a huge role in what's to come. Huge. Okay. If a person can be shamed and feel guilt and then they'll start feeling really inadequate, then they won't want to leave. Why wouldn't they want to leave? Because they need the group and the leader that they're devoted to to quote show them the way. It's the only way that they will be able to reach that enlightenment that they were trying to gain in the first place. And so they're often left with these people that are in a constant state of self doubt. They stop trusting their own judgment. Doesn't that sound also like abused spouses where they're like I don't know if I can make these decisions. I don't know if I can do this, And over time, the techniques can fundamentally alter and individual's personality and decision making where you don't even recognize who they are. Okay, So now that I've explained that to you on a really micro level, I mean, it's so much bigger than that.

32:49 But let's look at what Jodie's teachings and her therapy consisted of. Because remember I did tell you some of it which sounded good, just the humility and impeccable honesty and all of that. But Jody's teachings focused on the fact that a person cannot achieve a true quote unquote connection with another human being if they are in what she called distortion, and so distortion meant a ton of things in her teachings. It could be addiction, like to social media or hobbies or entertainment. It could be feeling like you're not enough, being codependent in your own relationships.

33:31 She even said that living in lust was distortion. Now to this point, I could say, yeah, you shouldn't lust, that's not a good thing. You don't want to lust after people. But what was weird about it to me was that Jody said being sexually attracted to your spouse was distortion. Well, baby, I'm gonna be distorted to the end of time because Blake Jennings is freaking my hunka burn and love. Call me distorted. Get me a T shirt with that on it, okay, because mama likes what she married. So I found that to be bizarre that that was the route she took. I understand strangers, but your spouse, sorry, don't marry a hunka burn in love if you don't want to be attracted to them. And then the other thing was that you're in distortion if you're trying to manipulate other people. So the thing though about these teachings, and there was more than that. I just pulled some of it out of her website. But the thing about that was that Jody then asserts that everyone is in distortion. So basically, we're all messed up if we don't go through her program. So she encouraged clients to invite their own family members to join the sessions whenever she was coaching them. And part of these sessions is that she would have weekly meetings and the program would require that clients would be required to call other clients, like all them out for being in distortion.

35:02 So like we're in a circle group and we have to call each other out and say, you're doing this wrong. Well, I think you're doing this wrong. Well I feel like you did this wrong. And you know, damn, I've seen doctor Phil and that doesn't sound like a good idea. IM I'm no expert, but damn, especially whenever it's not like your close friends and family, it's other people just trying to get counseling like shit. So but you would have to call everybody out, and to me, that would be public shaming. But to Jody, she didn't see it that way. Jody taught that her her teachings were absolute. The issue that becomes this though, when an untrained person who is not a mental health specialist or anything like that, when they call out someone else about their problems, and then these people aren't trained on how to mitigate issues.

35:50 And we've got i'm gonna say broken people, but you know what I mean, No one's broken, but people with troubles calling each other out. I'm sure you can see how that could turn into a shit show really fast. Okay, it could turn sour. And when people outside of the sessions, like family members or people who weren't part of these these therapy sessions, when they would call into question her teachings and why were you calling other people out and why are they doing this? Jody would then turn to her clients and say, see, it's because those other people are in distortion. They're in distortion, and so the followers of the teachings are now going to be told that they're loved. Ones who are questioning the teachings are the ones that are emotionally abusive, verbally abusive. They're not humble, they're not honest. Do you see the cycle of how it's just manipulating people who are looking for help, and it's just manipulating what's going on here. So this implies that your spouse or your close friends or people who love you that they're calling into questioning the therapy that you are receiving makes them the problem in the relationship, not you them, And then Jody would impress upon you the need to set strict boundaries to keep that person at a distance because they are in distortion. Doesn't that sound really familiar with regard to the cult info that I shared earlier because understanding this really opened my eyes

37:21 to how what I'm about to tell you goes on came to be. Now, let me add in some more information about why Kevin left the house. After Jody's counseling of Ruby and Kevin, he was led to believe that he had mistreated his wife Ruby. Now this was not physical, I don't want to go that way. This was like they were led to believe that he was emotionally mistreating Ruby. And he also was led to believe that he likely had a pornography addiction and that he needed to fix this before his family could be put back together. I e. He was the main problem. Do you see how it's all lining up here? And it sure sounds to me, just an outsider looking in. It sure sounds to me like Kevin was convinced that he was in so called distortion although they had been happily married for twenty years before meeting Jody, and that he should feel ashamed. Ruby's exact wording to him was that they needed to have a no contact boundary. If you recall, I was very clear in her wording. So it sure fits the model of cult like teachings, and to question it would make Kevin go against the very teachings they were trying to gain enlightenment through together. So it was also interesting to me that Ruby would stop their eight passengers channel and team up with Jody, which rapidly reduced their income by ninety percent. This massive financial reduction. Do you think that maybe that was some type of control tactic on behalf

38:53 of Jody. It's sure food for thought, because you know, in cults, the first thing they do is strip you of all your quote unquote material need your money. Yeah, h but Jody was an expert in her field, and her teachings aligned with the spiritual desires of the Frankies to be enlightened. And knowing this, there's something else about cults that come to mind, and it's a charismatic leader. You have to have a charismatic leader because if not, people don't want to follow them. If you're charismatic, people want to follow you. So here's another case in point for that. Even after Kevin left the marital home and gave over all of his income to Ruby, it still wasn't enough. Ruby decided she would be leaving the marital home too, So she's got four of her six kids that live with her. The two older ones had already moved out, so where would she be going? Well, what do you know? Jody had plenty of room at her ten thousand square foot, multi million dollar house, and she welcomed Ruby and her children with open arms to live with her. So my gut tells me at this point we have cult like influences and I'm gonna go here.

40:11 But I also think that Jody may have looked at Ruby as a possible love interest. I'm just telling you what I'm seeing. Remember I told you Jody gives off a certain vibe. She had never been married before, and it seems a lot to take on just out of the goodness of your heart. What therapist do you know that wants their clients moving in with them. I understand being devoted to your job, but damn, I wouldn't want people I'm therapies and coming and living with me. I think most of us would probably agree with that. It just seems super convenient to me that the man of the house is wedged out and then to have the whole family move in with you, even though they have a perfectly good house where he is supporting them. I mean, come on, y'all seriously, come on, Come on. Either way, a year would pass with no reconciliation between the strained couple, and part of the agreement between the two was that if they had to communicate, which there shouldn't have been any communication, but if they had to, they would only communicate via text unless it was an emergency, and in an emergency then they would speak on the phone. So on the morning of August thirtieth, Kevin got up and he went to work like a normal day when he received a call that he needed to head to the police station to pick up his kids. Clearly, this alarmed him.

41:37 This must be an emergency, so he left work immediately when he was notified to go get the kids, and he figured, let me go get him. I'll be bringing them home with me. And although he wasn't given much information when he got the phone call as to what the circumstances were, he still was going to rush and go pick up the kids, even though he hadn't seen him in a year. Once he got there and started talking to the police, they verified, look, who has custody of your kids? You or your wife, and they were able to verify that there was no custodial paperwork in place, and that this was just an agreement between two people who were separated on their own and so they were like, okay, cool, so the children can be released to you, and he's like, yes, I'd like to take my kids. Well, after he says that, and he says I'd like my kids, that's whenever he said, can I just get a little bit more information though, about what's going on? And the police read him his rights.

42:32 Now they didn't arrest him, but they read him his rights, and as anyone would be, Kevin was feeling super alarmed about this, and so he became kind of cautious and hesitant to speak because he didn't know why he had just been read his rights, like I'm just here to get my kids. But the police started asking him basic questions and he would answer them. He wasn't not answering them, but you could tell he was super unsure about what was going on. The questions were like, when's the last time you saw your kids, and he explained it had been a year. When was the last time you talked or saw Ruby And he said, well, we've only spoken four times in twenty twenty three. We rarely speak he said, I did see her recently, but that's because all of the cars are in my name, and she wanted me to sign over the title to her vehicle, so I was willing to meet her to sign over the car to her. Important to note he never tried to take anything away from her, If anything, he was willing to give.

43:28 He wanted to fix his family. So you kind of get the feeling to this point, or I did that Kevin really didn't have a good grasp about what was going on in his family in this moment. So when asked why they separated, he says it's because of the ways he treated his wife and because he had an addiction to pornography. And the cops are very like, oh, thank you so much for being upfront and honest with us. It's making our job a lot easier. And he said that, you know, Jody saw for me to saw the need for me to go get help, and so I'm trying to face down my own demons and get support and she's trying to better herself too, and so we're just that's kind of what our plan is. But when asked about disciplining the kids and his thoughts on that, you can see his wheels start turning. It's total confusion though it's not calculated, but his wheels are just turning. And they mentioned to him, you know, we're kind of curious about the eight Passengers discipline methods and the pushback that you got on that channel that was very popular, and he kind of goes, oh, yeah, okay. He said, my son was being really cruel to his younger sibling. They shared a room, and so we basically told him, either you will apologize and you will stop doing this, or you're not going to share the room and you're not going to sleep in there. And so he chose that, or he was taken out of the room and we told him, you can sleep on the couch, you can sleep on the pull out bed, or you can sleep on the floor for all we care, but you're not going back in that room because you're mistreating your brother.

45:00 He chose a beanbag, he said. Now people got all upset about that, like we were forcing him to sleep on a bean bag. But that wasn't it, he said. Matter of fact, when we moved into the new house, he got you know, he had rectified his behavior and was behaving. There was no physical punishment or anything, and he got to move back into his own room as soon as he built the house. That made more sense, okay than what people thought it was online. So when asked about who Jody was to him, his answers were surprising to me as I watched the interrogation. He calls Jody a therapist and a life coach, and his feeling about her. He says that he respects her as an honest and a truthful person. He had nothing but good things to say about this woman, and it makes sense to me in that moment, I'm like, oh, well, no wonder he followed her suggestions. He respects her as the professional.

45:52 What he didn't know, though, and when it was said to him his eyes kind of opened up wide, was that his kids were living at Jody's. He's very surprised by this. Wait, what they're living there? I didn't know that. I had no clue. So by now Kevin's like, look, I want to know what's going on, and I want my kids. And that's when police break the news to him, Look, you're not going to be getting your kids, not only that they're in state custody right now. And Kevin's jaw drops and He's like, I'm sorry, what this has to be a mistake. No, no, no, no, no, something's wrong here. And he was right, something was very wrong here. On August twentieth of twenty twenty three, a man heard his doorbell ring. It was about ten forty five in the morning, and this gentleman suffered from mobility issues, so it took him a minute to get to the door after it rang, and when he opened his front door, he was startled to see that there was a young blondhaired boy kind of walking away from his door. So when he got to his door, he was startled to see a young blond haired boy kind of walking away from his door.

46:59 And he was because there weren't a lot of children in the community where he lived, and so it was really surprising to see this child at his doorstep. I mean, the closest house to his was one hundred yards away. They weren't right next to each other, and he knew that a single woman lived there. So where did this kid come from? And the man, his name was Danny. He comforted the child who was clearly in some sort of distress. And I say this because he was barefoot. I mean, he did have like black socks one, but he had duct taped tightly around his ankles and he had been walking on the asphalt and the long rock driveway that was scalding hot with no shoes on. And looking at this kid, he is very malnourished, extremely dehydrated, and he's emaciated, very bony looking, and very unhealthy looking.

47:47 So Danny says, come here, come here, and asks him to sit down, and he says, okay, man, what's your name? You know, what's your age? How old are you? And the boy says, I'm Russell and I'm twelve years old. So when they're talking, he was like, what's the duct tape on your ankles about? And the little boy looks at him and says, look, it's a personal matter, but it's my fault. Can you just call or can you just get me actually to a police station. I'd like you to take me to a police station. Well, Danny chooses the latter and says, no, I'm gonna call nine one one, So he places the call. Now, while he's talking to nine one one, his wife, Debbie, she was home, but she had been in the bathroom at first. She comes outside and she tries to start helping the boy as well. She's very upset by the condition of this child, so she went and got him some water, and she got him like a stalk of pineapple, and she got him a banana, and the little boy gladly accepted it and he's eating it just as fast as he can.

48:44 And the nine one operator is kind of guiding mister Danny through some questions while they were getting the ambulance en route, and that included, you know, kind of explain what's going on. And so as Danny and Debbie are looking over the child, they realize that there's not only duct tape on his ankles, but it's also on his wrists. And when they kind of pull it back and look, there's like bloody saran wrap underneath the duct tape, and the wounds are open and oozing and very tender and painful all the way around his ankles and his wrists. He's wearing Russell was wearing shorts, and he had this light blue, long sleeve collared, you know, button up shirt on and when those long sleeves were pulled back, that's when they were shocked and they found the wounds around his wrists as well. And the more Danny talked to young Russell, the more he realized, you know, this child has been through a lot. But then he kind of looks at him and goes, wait a minute, I've seen you before, and he kind of in his mind was thinking, wait a minute, the previous Christmas, just some months before, this boy had come to the door with a woman, and Danny and his wife they didn't run recognized the child or the woman, but they had brought cookies, and he realized, wait a minute, y'all are friends with my neighbor Jody, aren't you. And Debbie realized in the moment that Danny's trying to figure out what's going on in his head, that Russell had eaten all of the snacks

50:15 and drank all the water she had given him, So she went back inside to mak him another bag of snacks to eat because he was just starving. And as she gave him the bag, the ambulance arrived, and during that call, mister Danny's voice cracks. You can hear him get very emotional about the condition of this child. It's just breaking his heart to see what's going on. So the EMTs come up and they start to look him over and they start to cut the duct tape off of the wounds, but then they realize, oh my god, these are like deep wounds. So they stop and they say, we got to get him into the ambulance before we go any further. And like I told you, Russell was bony, he was emaciated, and it was clear he had been through a lot, although he wasn't saying very much. Those ankles, like I told you, they were sticky. They were oozing blood from the wounds, and that saran wrap was kind of down into the wounds and they were having to pull that out. And although he was in clear medical distress and physical distress, the child just seemed to keep his wits about him and was very calm, almost stoic in a way. And something that an officer said on the body cam really struck with It stuck with me.

51:22 It struck me, and it stuck with me. But he was talking to another officer and he goes, man, whenever they took the tape off of the kid, you can smell the flesh. That'll tell you how bad these wounds were. They could smell it when they were unwrapping him. And so one officer at one point it even offered to carry him. He was like, man, this looks so painful. Let me carry you, buddy, but the child said no. Russell said no, I'm going to walk on my own. It was so painful to look at him that Miss Debbie even gave Russell her own shoes and said, here, baby, wear these so that his feet wouldn't hurt and be cut up anymore on the hot pavement or in the rocks. So when they got in that ambulance, they asked him what caused these wounds, and he shockingly replied, the rope.

52:06 And they look at the rope, and that's when he explains he had been tied up like a dog for so long that rope had burned wounds into his tiny little bony ankles and his wrists. And they said, what was going on while were you tied up? And he explained he had been tied up with rope before that, he had been hog tied his ankles and his wrists, hogtied with handcuffs on his stomach, forced to just lay their hog tie behind his back before he eventually had that removed and the ropes were put on and he was tied to weights so that he couldn't move around other than wherever the rope would move him. And they said, well, who was anyone taking care of you? Why were you tied down? What's going on? And Russell said, yeah, the wounds my bobos have been treated with cayenne, pepper and honey, so clearly there's something very very wrong here. He was loaded in the ambulance. The ambulance and the officer then is very gently talking to him, trying not to upset the child, and says, hey, man, where are your parents?

53:12 We need to talk to them. Who is your mom? And that's when Russell said, Ruby Frank is my mom, but I don't know where she is. And the cops like, wait, Ruby Frank. Ruby Frank is in the mom influencer and life coach personality, Yeah, that's her. The child's condition was I can't express you how heartbreaking, and the police wanted to find Ruby stat and that's when the child said something to them that was even more alarming. Russell said, look, my siblings, they're still in the house next door, and there said whose house is that? Jody Hildebrandt. He said, I have two sisters over there at ten and a fourteen year old sister. They're back over at Jody's house, and I don't know how they are. I couldn't even say what their condition was because he hadn't been with them, he hadn't seen them. So the police immediately jumped into action, and they made their way next door to the Hildebrandt residents to look for more children and try to figure out what the hell is going on. So multiple officers arrive at the home and they're in the back of the truck when they pull up. They're not even like formally in a car. They're in the back of a truck.

54:19 They have on their police vests and they have guns drawn. That'll tell you how bad it was whenever they looked at this kid. And it was supposed to be a bit of a surprise approach, and they just kind of jumped from the back of the truck as soon as it stopped up at the house. So they cautiously approached with their weapons and they go up to the home and they knock on this front door, and it's a large wooden door. It's about one and a half times the width of what a regular door looks like. It's got this horizontal glass kind of inlaid in it, and the home is mostly like a stucco exterior. It's a dark brown, very modern looking, but very clean, very orderly. It doesn't really match what the child is saying. You know, you would expect for him to have come from a multi million dollar home in a nicer community. That is not common for child abuse calls to come from that type of home, if you didn't know that. Almost immediately when the police knock on the door, a woman answers it, and she does identify herself as Jody Hildebrandt, and she is like this mix of surprise yet really really guarded, and she already has her phone in her hand whenever she opens the door, and she looks at them says, I have my lawyer on the phone. Okay, well, what the hell, let's just be for real right now. Have you ever answered the door and not been expecting anybody?

55:38 And first of all it's the police, And second of all, you say, I have my lawyer on the phone, who answers the door like that? That right there made me go, wait what you have your lawyer on the phone. Damn. So she was hesitant and didn't want to exit the house until they were like, no step out of the house, and she was a bit defiant until she realized she had to step out of the house or they were going to pull her out of the house. And so as she comes out of it, she's demanding, I want a warrant. Where is your warrant? But that's just not gonna happen and real quick. That's what's frustrating about people sometimes to me, is that people always claim to know their rights until it's time to know your rights and to know procedural law, okay, or to know how it's gonna work procedurally. There's a thing called exigent circumstances, and exigent circumstances are basically whenever we don't have to have a warrant to come in immediately, it's immediately necessary that we come in because there's a certain situation that's taking place that requires immediate remedy. And because of those exigent circumstances, we don't need a warrant, okay. And a child that's just been found bloodied and said, hey, I've been tied up and I have wounds and I haven't it looked like I haven't been fed in three years. That's going to be considered an exigent circumstance. So she's sitting here, you know, saying, demanding a warrant, and baby, we don't need one. How about this doesn't happen and we don't have a kid telling us that. Okay. So another example for you real quick, if if we hear a woman screaming in her backyard, help help, help, it wouldn't make sense for police to have to go get a warrant to go in the backyard and help the woman. We need to help now, help that person now, and failure

57:10 to act might result in possible further harm. And so that's the point of exigent circumstances. And that was the case here. The kid is severely injured, and it's telling us there's more kids in the home. We ain't waiting for a warrant. We're going to look for the other kids, okay. So no, we don't need a warrant for the kids that are we're being told her in this home. So Jody amazingly also doesn't say what kids or whose kids or what are you talking about? She just starts talking to the attorney on the phone, and Jody's attorney, who's now on speakerphone obviously understands the law, and he just says over speakerphone, Hey, can I have the circumstances for why y'all are in the home, And that's when the cop explained to him, Yeah, we got a kid over here who says he's come from this house. He's in horrible condition. And you could tell the attorney was like, oh god, you could just hear it in his voice, and then he says, I need to speak to my client off of speakerphone. Now, obviously I don't know what was said, but I'm sure it went a bit like this, shut the fuck up and don't say anything, Jody, don't say a word. Assuming that's the case, I guess it makes sense then that for the next thirty five minutes of body cam, which I personally watched for thirty five minutes, she stands outside of her front door staring at the police.

58:26 But this was not just staring like what is going on? This isn't staring out of confusion. Her stare was weird. It was like she was trying to almost agitate the officers with her stare, so much so that an officer at one point goes, do you have a question for me? Or something because the way she was just like mugging him, and she just continues to stare. She doesn't say anything else. Really, her only concern in the moment was the fact that she says, I'm running an Airbnb out of this house, and I think y'all are going to be scaring my guests. The way that y'all are running up here. It was really inconvenient or her just mind blowing, mind blowing to me that that was her concern. So as the officers are searching the home, they're walking through this looks like a maze of a house. It's huge, and they're opening doors and rooms and cabinets and trying to search anywhere for kids, and they're not really finding anything. It's huge, and there's lots of places to check. Well. The neighbors who had found young Russell mentioned to the officer's look, there's a basement and a safe room in the house.

59:27 So the cops were like, dang, we need to go check that too, to make sure that we don't miss a child maybe being tied up in this safe room or something. So eventually, while they're making their way through the house, they open a closet door to a bathroom and there they find a young boy sitting Indian style on the floor, completely silent. It's surprising. The closet lights are off and it's completely empty in this closet other than like this little floor light, like a night light type thing, and there's a mirror hanging on the back of the closet. But the child doesn't move. He just stays there like a statue. And he's wearing blue jeans and a shirt, but he's barefoot. And the officers they say hello to him, and they kneel down to speak to him, but the child won't respond even after they introduce themselves. They're very gentle and very kind when they're talking to the kid. There's a male officer and even kneels down and he gets real low to the like really low, and you know, puts his gun away and he just says, look, you're okay, I'm not gonna hurt you. Look, here's my badge, and he shows the child my badge.

1:00:35 Very gentle, very slow in his actions, and the child just doesn't respond. He eventually sits down next to him and says, look, I'm just gonna sit. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Let's just sit now. I want you to know. The face is blurred in the in the camera, so all you can really gather is the clothing that I told you, and that there's eventually a little prepubescent voice that kind of speaks up very low at one point. The shirt's a short sleeve, collared polo, and the hair of the little boy is buzzed. And so the officers were just really confused because Russell said, look, you know, I have sisters back at the house, So they didn't know who this young boy was that they had just found in the closet. But they would eventually realize, as did I when I first watched it, that this was actually a female that they were talking to. It was nine year old Eve, but her head had been buzzed.

1:01:30 She did not have that hair, that long hair that you would expect her to have from those eight passenger videos. She looked like a little boy, and the voice you wouldn't be able to tell. Okay, So she remained absolutely silent. But I watched closely the body cam video and her little chest is just beating hard. You can see her shirt. Her breathing is really heavy too, But she doesn't move. You can tell she is absolutely terrified about what's going on, but rather than pull her from the closet, the officers decide to remain in there, and they even bring her some pizza to try to comfort her. There's music that's playing in the background. You could tell a cop had put on his phone kind of low with just some upbeat music. It was Maroon five that was playing in the video. But the child just remained quiet. It's very sad.

1:02:16 It's like watching a pound worker try to coax and befriend a terrified dog. It's just not normal in any way, shape or form. The child remains quiet. At one point, she even slides back to the back wall as far as she can away from the officer, up against the wall, and you know, they realize this isn't working, and so they decide to change tactics and they go get a female I believe it's a firefighter, it could be empt and she's just wearing a T shirt, a ponytail. She's got blonde hair, very unassuming, it's less formal looking, and they bring her in to see if the child will talk to her, and the tactic works because eventually, whenever the woman says Hey, are you scared? Are you okay?

1:02:58 She eventually looks up and says, I'm just nervous, And then, after some talking and coaxing, the child finally follows the woman from the closet. How conditioned must that child be to refuse to speak to adults and even be afraid to eat the food that they brought her. Because I want to be very clear about something, I don't want to leave it at that When I say after some time and after she ate the pizza she came out of the closet, I want you to know I mean four hours, four hours she sat in that closet before she was willing to move, four hours before. And I want to commend the officers for not just picking her up and pulling her out, and not trying to traumatize her anymore than she already was. So a closer look at her once she comes into the light shows that she too had been through a whole lot, just like her brother. There were healing wounds on her arms, she was extremely malnourished, the emotional abuse so severe that even communicating with her was almost near nonexistent. She was brought to the hospital for her condition. As the officers continued searching the compound, and just like the neighbors had said, the police came upon the basement and they did find that safe room. Now down in this basement, it's huge, but it's completely white, very sterile looking. The only difference you see is there's a dark black Liberty safe door with a large gold wheel on it that sticks out from the wall and you turn the wheel to open the safe. So unsure about what they're about to encounter,

1:04:31 there's two officers. They unholster their pistols and as they open the safe, the two officers make entry and sweep in opposite directions as they enter. But it turns out it's completely empty. Other than a refrigerator and some cabinets. There was also a drop down bed that came out of the wall and a toilet. So the officers, i mean, it looks completely empty, but they're very thorough and they're looking through all these cabinets and drawers. There's nothing really in there until they come upon some pretty damning evidence in just the very bottom drawer under the sink, and it's it's chilling when you see it. But they open up the drawer and you see the officer on his body. Camp pull out chains with handcuffs and a rope attached, and you can just see. I'm like, oh my god.

1:05:19 So they have these evidence bags and they're logging it into the evidence bags, and when you see the length of the rope, you almost can't help but imagine seeing one of these children on the other end of it. It just hurts your sickening to think a child was I wouldn't do that to an animal, and yet these were kids. They also found in the house and in the room, like I told you, they found some multiple handcuffs, there was a bowl with some red liquid in it with a metal spoon inside of it. They found the saran wrap, multiple ropes, absorbent bandages, and gauze, and all of this had obviously been used in the months leading up to the children being found in their abuse and what they had endured. So the police at this point swept the entire home and the only children they found were those two. They didn't see the other two Frankie children that were there, and they knew that they were miners.

1:06:12 So immediately a search broke out. Where are these other kids? Are? My god? Have they been killed or they buried? Out? In the desert. Nobody knew where they were, so police immediately went to the original marital home of the Frankies, but when they got there, nobody would open the door. When they knocked, the blinds were down, the curtains were pulled, and so they knocked and knocked and knocked, and nobody would come to the door. So eventually they were able to get an actual warrant signed by judge which allowed them to break in the front door. But once they got in, nobody was there. It was empty. But the oldest daughter, Sherry, the oldest Frankie daughter, she showed up at the house and she told the police, look, I think I know where my siblings might be. There's a recreational center near the house over there and they might be there. So the police called. But when they called to say, hey, are the Frankie kids there, they get told by the recreational center, no, they've just been picked up due to a family emergency. But no one knew who had picked them up. It wasn't Mom, it wasn't Jody, So who picked them up. It's not making sense. Their dad was at the station. He was already being questioned at this point and had no idea what was going on, and so they called the other oldest Frankie child. His name was Chad, but Chad didn't have them. So eventually police figure out that Ruby frank She had shown up at the house while they were doing the search. She called a woman named Pam Boucher, who was the president

1:07:43 of the Connections Academy, and she called her and said, hey, go pick up the other two kids, and so Pam did that. She brought the other two girls to her house, which was by the way, nearly four hours away from where their mom was. These miners, and she was completely unaware of the situation what was going on, but it wasn't abnormal for her to pick up the girls. That had happened before, and the girls did chores for her, so she took them out to lunch and got them some ice cream and had no idea that police were searching for them. So thank god they were found safe and unharmed. But the children were taken from Pam, who by the way, was not a suspectant anyway, and DCFS took control of the kids. But oddly, whenever they said look, we're gonna let you go, and your older sister Sherry can take you. Those two younger ones said no, and so wait what, you don't want to go with your sister?

1:08:35 And they said no, we'd rather go to foster care, which is bizarre if you ask me. So an officer who was there says, okay, we'll thank you to foster care if that's what you want to do. But he said, I got to check your bags for safety first, and the child, one of the children who had a bag, became extremely defiant and started screaming, where's your warrant? Where's your warrant? And that's when it makes sense. Were they coached much? You know what I'm saying Sherry? Just so you know, Sherry was kind of estranged from the family, and I think where I know Sherry didn't really like some of the teachings that were going on the house, and she was older and she was able to leave.

1:09:18 I think that they were coached and told Sherry was like a bad, you know, person in distortion, so they didn't want to go with her. And then to be a young child under the age of fifteen to be demanding a warrant isn't normative child behavior That had to have been coached into them. In another really odd chain of events, Kevin Frankie the dad, when he found out Sherry was at the house with the police looking for his two middle set of kids, he starts demanding that she be arrested for burglary because she wasn't allowed to be in the house. Again, I think that Kevin was of the mindset that she was in distortion, because I remember, I think he was manipulated too. But he's amand that his daughter be arrested, and the police are like, what the fuck, what are you talking about, dude, Like, what is going on here? Well, he's like, she took stuff from the house. Well, when they asked her, she said, yeah, I mean I took the family's passports and I took some journals, but I didn't that's what all I took.

1:10:15 When this was explained to him, he was adamant that no, she wasn't supposed to be at the house and she's got to be arrested. Well, I mean, I see why this was all turning into a complete shit show in the moment, But really, the kids' welfare is all that mattered, and I think she took the passports because she didn't want her parents to somehow get the littles back, the little kids, and then skip the country with their siblings. That's just my opinion. I don't know if that's true, but I have a sneaking suspicion that's what it was. And the police were like, no, we're not going to arrest her, and she's like, look, I'll return the shit. I don't care, and so she gave it back to him, and so obviously she wasn't arrested for anything, but considering what was found back at Jodie's house, and well, I guess it would Ruby and Jody in the family where they were staying at Jodie's house. Considering what was found back at Jody's house, already police were able to obtain a warrant so that they could get further search rights.

1:11:06 I guess, if you want to call it that, for the of that home for more evidence. And this would prove so eye opening once this happening happened, because what was happening in the moment to the children was terrible what was being found. But a journal that was found that was Ruby's. She kept this journal and it really exposed the reality of what her children had been experiencing. For almost a year, and she logged it all in her own handwriting. And something to me that's scary, really scary, is when people take religion and they manipulate it and then they turn it into something that it was never intended to be. Because what started out as a strict parenting plan I guess to grow moral and responsible children had taken a dark turn, a turn into extremism where the children would be tortured as victim or tortured into victims rather than enlightened youth, which is what I guess the goal was here. And it is nice to know that there is a higher power that we can turn to for guidance in life, but when that belief is then weaponized, it becomes a whole different animal. And in this case, once the move was made to Jody's home, the youngest two children of the Frankies were subjected to a life nothing like what they knew before. It turned into a work camp style slavery situation for these kids,

1:12:37 and they had nowhere to go and nowhere to turn to. So while Jody had the luxury of calling her lawyer to defend her, in the moment, she opened the door and while Ruby was nowhere to be found to face what was happening in the exact moment when it happened. These children, these babies weren't so lucky. There was no one to defend them. Over the last year. There was no way that they could escape what they were being forced to endure. And interestingly to me is that Ruby arrived at the home, like I told you, during the search warrant that was being executed, and she was told to wait outside with Jody. Neither woman asked about the children. Neither one of them said a word, not where are they?

1:13:20 What's going on? Are my babies hurt? Where are my babies? What's going on? Nothing? They didn't ask one question. What they hid behind was silence. But it was going to be really, really hard for either of the women to deny, considering Ruby had documented everything in her journal. And so look, while a majority of the fifty pages of writings that I've had, and I've read all of them, I've got them right here. I'm gonna put them on Patreon and you can look at them. Or her handwriting is hard to read, and she kind of babbles on and on in this incoherent just nonsense, but a lot of it. It's been redactive. I've read every single page of it, and the writing's detail just how mean and hateful this woman is towards her own kids. First of all, they weren't allowed any electronics, nothing, zero, type of entertainment. And they were there so long with no sense of any information or outside source or gaming or any fun or entertainment that they didn't even know what month or day it was. Matter of fact, when it was Russell's birthday, she wrote in here, and I'm not again, I'm not gonna read it. I'm just gonna shorthand it for you and you'll get the gist. But she wrote in there that how he was. Basically she mocked him and said, he doesn't even know what day it is. He doesn't even know it's about to be his birthday. I didn't expect he'd still be pooping his pee and his pants at this age, you know, blah blah blah blah blah.

1:14:35 But the reason he's pooping and pe in his pantschall is because he's in such gastro intestinal distress from lack of eating that when he does eat, it's giving him just massive troubles in his bowels. And then she mocks this child for it and what he's going through with these terrible stomach aches. It's it's terrible. They would regularly deny them the food and water, and then they would put them outside, and in other sections, she makes the baby stand outside in the sun for hours on end to the point of just heat exhaustion, and if he would try to step back into the shade, she went out there with a cactus poker and she would poke him, poke him in the back, she poked him in the neck. He became so despondent at one point that Jody goes out there and starts slapping the baby on the cheeks to try to wake him up from the from the trance that he was in, just just dying from the heat exhaustion. She called it inviting them to fast. Whenever she wouldn't give them food, they would eve. She documents multiple times about how the baby would lay in the closet and just scream and say, my mom thinks she's a good mom, but she won't feed me. All she does is lay there and eat brownies, which means she was eating in front of the kids and terrorizing them that way. They took joy in some of the writings about cleansing the children dumping old mop water on top of Russell outside in the heat cooking. She dumped old dog water. I guess they bathed the dog. I don't know, but dump that on Eve. They didn't get a bed.

1:16:01 They slept on the floor. They were forced to do physical labor. They would fill boxes full of heavy stuff and then make the kids go up and down, carrying the boxes up and down. Because she wanted them to get what she called natural outcomes, which means exhaustion to the point of collapsing and pain and hurt. They would get forced to do wall sits. I don't know if you've ever done those before, but I used to do them whenever I played sports as a kid. And basically you're sitting up against the wall, but there's no chair or stool underneath you. And they would make them do it for hours at a time, and then if they complained, or if they fell or their legs gave out, then they got punishments for that. They would trick them and make them think that they were gonna feed them and then take the food away from them. But they were supposed to be learning from this. They would take their shoes and socks and then have them go and perform outdoor labor in the sweltering heat with no shoes one the scalding terrain which would cook their feet and cut up their feet. And there's a video of this too.

1:17:01 I'll put it on Patreon too. There's a short snippet of a video of of of Eve and she's got a trash bag out in the middle of the freaking desert in a cemetery and they're forcing her to to weed and pick up broken glass yards and all of that out of the cemetery with no shoes or any sun protection or anything, while whoever's filming it is sitting in a car listening to rock music in the shade, while these kids are just being tortured day in and day out, beaten and bound. Russell wants, this is so pitiful, y'all. It hurts my heart to even tell it. Russell once tried to run away, and when he did so, he had written he was outside for so long that he had written. He took pebbles and he wrote in in on the ground, in the pedal, in the pebbles jail.

1:17:53 I'll call you something to the effect of I'll call you whenever I get there. And there's so much more to this in what it sounds like. Okay, they did end up going and finding him. They went out driving and they found him. When they brought him back, they hog tied him and made him lay hog tied with ropes and chains and all this kind of shit for running away. But little Russell was asked at the hospital, why did you want to go to jail? And his answer is a gut punch from a little twelve year old boy. He was convinced, through the abuse and the mental anguish that he had endured, that he was in fact evil, And the reason he had asked the neighbors to bring him to a police station for help instead of calling to literally get help. The reason he said please bring me to a police station was because he was ready, in his own words, to pay for his sins, because the women had drilled into his head that after you're done repenting, you're gonna have to go to jail for your sins. And he just wanted to go to jail because he thought if he went there it would absolve him of his sins and he could stop, hopefully, the torture that he was going through. They held him underwater, smothered him underwater in the pool, held his mouth and his nose closed. In some of the writings, whenever she would bound up Russell and handcuff him, she kicked him, and she didn't like the results she got, so she went and she put them boots and then went back to kick him some more to make sure that really hurt.

1:19:22 She convinced them that they were evil and that they were possessed, and the only way that they could ever avoid any punishment for their possessions was by obeying her and Hildebrant Jody Hildebrant forced that nine year old little Eve to run and jump into a cactus. I mean, it's just this is just so horrible. And the emotional abuse that they suffered was beyond anything that you could comprehend someone doing to their own children. And they told the kids that they were doing it as acts of love, so brainwashed by these women, just like a cult would do to convince them they deserved the abuse. And this was evidenced whenever Russell talked to the neighbor and when he asked him, what's up with the duct tape, and he said, it's my own fault. Do you remember that from the beginning, all of this done over a year, and their dad the whole time, Kevin was thinking that he had done something to cause his family to separate from him and trying to better himself so that he deserved his family, with no clue as to what was going on behind closed doors to his kids this entire time, and during the questioning going back to Kevin, he was adamant, if you want to know how much he didn't know.

1:20:33 He was adamant that his wife was a good mother and that he trusted her and that she would do best for their kids. You know, while ever, while he was absent and he had no clue that those kids were suffering. So basically, what the investigation found was that Jody and Ruby believed that the abuse that they were inflicting was necessary for repentance for the children's sins, and that they were going to cast out evil spirits from their bodies. And this is where the importance of a police report comes in, because the riding had been on the wall the whole time. You know, what they found in their investigation about this, so much slipped through the cracks. It should have never gotten to this point, and this is why I always encourage people please file police reports, even if you think something as small. Filed the damn police reports. Because it turns out the police had been to the original Frankie home numerous times over the three years after the couple had been separated. During that time, two of those times it was regarding the children of the welfare and on April sixteenth of twenty twenty two, a case worker from DCFS called the police to report that there were two unsupervised children running in the street, and an officer did go to check on them, but he didn't see any kids in the street whenever he got there. Then, on September eighteenth of twenty twenty two, the oldest Frankie child, Sherry, she had called and requested a welfare check because she said her younger siblings were left at home alone for five days. Their mother wasn't there and she was afraid that they didn't have any food.

1:21:59 But when the cops got there, the kids wouldn't answer the door, so the police left after about an hour or two of trying to get them to answer the door. But the police did talk to neighbors who confirmed their suspicions. They wrote a report, but there was no outcome that came from it because they never saw the children. And I want to tell you something. This is why the laws matter and why I preached this over and over again. Amazingly, the neighbor, a neighbor that called to report herself that she saw these kids and they were unsupervised. Do you know what she was told by DCFS when she called to tell them about these children who were not had no parents at home. She was told that Utah's free arrange parenting law was an effect and that basically, if if kids basic needs were being met, if they had food on had food, and they were clothed, and they looked they looked mature enough to be playing independently, then it's not considered neglect and there's nothing that anyone could do about it. Free Arrange Parenting law, Get it together, Utah. Basically, if the kids weren't injured, then DCFS wasn't an authority to do anything. There was also a report against Jody Hildebrandt Okay, and this was in twenty ten. Check this out.

1:23:12 Her own niece, her name was Jesse by the way, lived with her and said she was forced to sleep outside in a sleeping bag. She had her mouth duct taped shut, and similarly to the Frankie children, she wasn't enrolled in school when she was with her aunt, and she was forced through humiliation tactics like wearing the same dirty clothes for weeks at a time. A report was made on this, and her niece even said that there was such severe emotional and spiritual and psychological abuse going on that Jody convinced her that she was a porn addict and that she was addicted to masturbation. Like this is so perverted, that distortion that Jody talks about. It sounds a whole lot about what was going on with Kevin, if not identical to what it's like paint by numbers with this woman, Jesse said or her niece. Jesse said that Jody's goal was to make life so uncomfortable that it would force sin out of her. If someone spoke to her, she was told that she was not to respond and she was just to stare. And doesn't that sound just like what Ruby did? By the way, if you didn't know this. When Ruby was finally arrested, she wouldn't talk to the cops. She just stared at them that defiant mean mug stare that Jody gave whenever her house was being searched. So everyone's being told not to speak, they're not speaking, they're afraid to speak, and they're just staring.

1:24:36 That's what Eve did when she was found and sat in the closet for four hours, and a further look into it would show that Jody had been chastised professionally because she was placed on probation in twenty twelve. Whenever the so called Counselor of Morality and Righteousness violated a patient privacy law and discussed a patient she was seeing's record with an elder at the Church of Jesus Christ in Latter day Saints. Well, according to Utah law, though this might be interesting to you, like how is this not being seen or over any oversight? Well, according to Utah law, the state websites that have public access to disciplinary records of professionals, they have to remove anything after ten years. But on top of that, if Jody petitioned to have it removed, it could have been removed after five years. Is how are these laws helping people? If anything, it looks like it's aiding Whenever there's someone that could easily be victimized, people who need counseling and children. I don't understand this. I don't understand how any of this could have been done. Where was the moral superiority, Jody?

1:25:40 Whenever you were talking of outside of hippo laws about your clients with the church. It sure seems like what doesn't that things don't apply to you. That's what a cult leader would say too. Think about it. It sure seems that way. After uncovering all of this evidence and the additional information that I've just exposed to you from the investigation, the police arrested both Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrant for child abuse and Jodie, like I told you, she doesn't say much. Ruby won't say anything. She just stares at them. She stares so much an officer even asks if something's wrong with her, does she need medical attention? And when her estranged husband, Kevin was eventually all of this information was revealed to him about the horrific details of his child's treatment or his children's treatment over the last year, he flat out threat like he throws his head, his hands in his head, and he's like, I don't know what to do. And then he starts crying and he says, you know, I look at my wall every day, the picture of my family that I've been doing everything to try to get back, and this just sounds like a horror movie. I'm having just a really hard time accepting what's going on. I just want my kids. Ruby's own sisters, who by the way, were also parenting influencers, they released a joint statement saying they were relieve their own sister had been arrested. So Kevin frank Frankie from that point, once he realized every that was going on, he moved back into the marital home and his focus became to get his children back, who were all now in state custody except for the oldest two. He did go ahead and he filed for divorce from Ruby. I

1:27:11 guess once he saw the light, he realized what was going on. So on September nineteenth of twenty twenty three, Jody Hildebrandt surrendered a counseling license thanks Jody. A month later, they both pled guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse, and on February twentieth of twenty twenty four, Judge John Walton sentenced both of them to serve four to thirty years in Utah State Prison, which I didn't write this in here, but by the way, Utah law also says that if you sentence someone to consecutive sentences, it can't exceed thirty years. So like, what's the point in consecutively, you know, sentencing somebody because they're only going to max out at thirty years for what they do to people? Ridiculous.

1:27:56 But if you want to know how the oldest children are doing, the oldest two Frankie kids, they're doing well. Sherry is reportedly a student at BYU and she's become a front runner fighting for law changes for vlogging and child influencers who she feels are just hurt in the process of their parents trying to gain fame or money. Chad he started a real estate school and he's really moving on trying to accomplish all of his goals. The four youngest Frankie children, including Russell and Eve, they continue to be cared for both medically and in terms of their mental health since their mother's arrest and their current custody status. I'm just going to tell you is kind of unknown because it's sealed from the public, but Kevin, their father's attorney, did release a statement that says that he is doing everything he can to ensure that he gets his children back in his care. And something interesting too it I want to tell you. Sherry, the oldest daughter, also wrote a book about her ordeal. It's called The House of My Mother and I went and I found it on Amazon. It's like twenty bucks, so you might want to check that out. But hurting children in the name of God, I can tell you that's something that we can never accept nor can we ever rationalize, because what these kids did, or what these women did to these kids like they're helpless children, And to me, it's just unconscionable. And to make kids think that abuse is somehow synonymous with love and action is corrupt and it's evil what these women did. To anyone listening who's ever been hurt by so called religion in the name of love, and I know there's a lot of people out there

1:29:26 that have experienced things like this. There's only one truth about love that you need to know, and it's the fact that love is patient and that love is kind. Love doesn't envy, it doesn't boast, it's not proud, it doesn't dishonor others. It's not self seeking, it's not easily angered, and love keeps no record of wrongs. Love doesn't delight in evil. It only rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, it always trusts, it always hopes, and it also all perseveres. And I want you to know that real love never fails. I guess Jody and Ruby missed that part when they were picking and choosing their so called truths. And this is why being an influencer means nothing to me in this world. I don't want to influence people. I want to lead by example. And to me, the hero of this story, it's a malnourished and beaten twelve year old child who was brave enough to break free from an abusive and sick household in the name of looking for better for himself and to achieve healing. He is the hero of the story to me, because true influencing it's not a camera and makeup and words. True influencing is a dedication to being the best you and treating people with respect at all times. And the facade put on for likes and follows and the sales of workbooks is

1:30:58 a joke. And those women men should be out just they should just be ashamed of their behavior. The children in this story have more integrity and strength in their wounds than you two women will ever have. And as far as spiritual depth goes, y'all are sorely lacking ladies. And I've stepped in puddles deeper than you