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It's not exactly where you want to spend a lot of your free time, especially if you don't have loved ones buried inside the cemetery. It is kind of odd when you think about these two middle-aged women sitting in their AC blasting car just staring out into this cemetery in Utah. Ruby thinks there's a plan for everything. This is to teach Ruby Frankie's two youngest children a lesson.
Go barefoot in the scorching hot heat pavement of the cemetery. Pick up every single bit of weed, brush, cactus, thorn, broken glass, trash inside the cemetery for five hours. No shade, no food, and definitely no water.
The youngest, the little nine-year-old girl, screams for another family, for water, for food, care, love. But Ruby and Jodi, they know this is all manipulation. That's the plan, okay? This is what they've been doing until one day a woman stops to watch them. This woman starts taking pictures of them. She's taking videos right now, right? Ruby turns to her kids and tells them to shield their faces from the picture while they continue to pull the weeds.
But after about 15 minutes of this woman just watching Ruby forcing her kids to pull weeds at the cemetery, the woman approaches them. "'What are you doing here? This isn't your land. This is a reservation and you are trespassing. How would you feel if I came around and started poking around your cemeteries? What are you stealing here?'
Who's talking? This is a random woman that comes by and Ruby writes in her journal, "Nothing. We're weeding. We're picking up trash, weeds and broken glass you can see for yourself. Leave. Get off our land." This is a reservation, meaning it's literally reserved for indigenous people. "It's not enough for you guys to come and take all of our land. Now you want more? Now you want our cemeteries too? What is wrong with you? You weren't raised right. So much disrespect. What are you doing in our cemetery?"
I mean no disrespect. We're honoring your people.
Ruby later states that it was not worth the fight. She collects her kids and gets in the car. This graveyard torture will have to stop for the time being. She and Jodi Hildebrandt will just have to think of a new way to get the devil out of Ruby's two youngest children. Ruby writes in her journal, I told E, the youngest daughter, I told her that she invited evil, that you created this evil. But the good news is because you created it, you can destroy this.
The truth is, E did not start this. She did not create this. She did not invite evil into their home. But August 30th, 2023, they will be sent away. This is the final part of Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrandt and how both of them were arrested and their new accusations from jail, a new lawsuit that's hit them in jail, and how there might be a third person, a third woman that people think that should be arrested along with them. ♪
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Biz Parents Foundation. They're a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting professional child performers and their rights. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. And we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support.
As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. This is the final part of the four-part Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrand series. Please watch the previous three parts before this episode. In part one, we went over Ruby Frankie's YouTube channel, her entire online, I want to say cancellation because they're not actual legal charges against her, but it was, I mean, the whole world believed that she was abusing her six children behind the scenes.
And then in part two, we went over Jodi Hildebrandt and the people that have accused her of ruining their lives. It seems like she has a tendency and a deep yearning to want to ruin people's marriages. In part three, we went over Jodi and Ruby joining forces to create the connections business.
Well, Ruby joins Connections, which is Jodi Hildebrand's life counseling business. And the two of them, they decide they're going to just dominate the podcast world with their ill-advised podcast.
ill-recorded not so great podcast giving other parents some of the most abusive parenting advice that you could probably find on the internet in this episode the final part we will be going over their arrests what they've said their plea agreements and then all of the internet conspiracies as well as all of the discourse surrounding kevin frankie the dad and a woman named pam whom a lot of people on the internet think both of them should be facing charges for this case
Now, with that being said, we will be referring to the eldest children, Sherry and Chad, by their names. They are adults and they have publicly spoken out about this case. Sherry also has a phenomenal book. It's called The House of My Mother. Please go buy a copy. Please go buy 30 copies. I think it is a book everyone should read, especially when it pertains to family vlogging. There is just so much in there that gives you a...
very vulnerable but also visceral look into what it would be like to be the child of a family vlogger. Now, the four youngest Frankie kids will be just referred to by their first initial of their names, regardless of if their names are publicly out there already. There are graphic descriptions of torture, food restrictions, CA/CSA, religious abuse, therapy abuse, neglect, and details of injuries. So with that being said, let's get started.
Clark and Debbie are not expecting anyone when the door rings. They're older. I mean, they don't move as quickly as they used to. And by the time that they get out there, they can barely make out this figure near the... It's a tiny figure. Near the door, whoever was knocking was almost walking all the way away. They swing the door open. They see a little 12-year-old boy. And within a minute or two, they are on the phone with 911. Tell me exactly what happened, sir.
I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help. And he just came from the neighbor's house. He's emaciated. He's got tape around his legs. He's hungry. He's thirsty. Clark's wife, Debbie, shouts in the background, we need someone immediately. Oh, and he has them around his ankles and his wrists as well. Okay. And this boy has been... Clark swivels in the patio chair so that the little boy can't see his face. He needs...
Clark starts choking on his words and he tries to take a deep breath to calm himself down. This is very different from when he first opened the door. When he first opened the door, he didn't understand the situation. And when the little boy asked for a favor, he had asked the little boy, well, what is it? But now seeing what's happened to him, he's getting emotional. He can't even talk on the phone to 911. And that's when his wife, Debra, leans down in front of the little boy and starts soothing him. Oh, you are such a good kid.
Clark says, I think there's been a chance that he's, um, he's obviously been detained. He's been covered in wounds. He says he left through the porch at the neighbor's house. Her name is Jody Hildebrandt. She lives two doors up the street. Uh, this boy has been, um, when Clark had asked the little boy about why he has duct tape around him, he said it was personal business, but it's my fault. He said it's his fault that the injuries underneath the duct tape, the
deep wounds. He said it was caused by rope, but again, it was his fault. The police rushed to the house, ambulances are meeting them there, and when they see this little boy, they offer to carry him from the driveway to the ambulance because he looks so incredibly frail. He's got injuries around his ankle, so undoubtedly it's probably hurting every time he takes a step. They want to carry him, but he is determined to walk by himself.
One of the first officers on the scene notices a few things about the little boy. I mean, there's obviously things that they can't ignore. He's just all skin and bones. But on the upper part of the ankle, the Achilles tendon, you could just see all the tendons. Like, that's how deep the injuries were. He had never seen anything like that before. The little boy turns to him and he says, "I have a younger sister in that house. When did you last see her?" "It's been over a month."
11:52 AM, the officer burst in through the closet door in Jodi Hildebrandt's home. And quickly, he uses his body to shield the closet from the view of his rifle, 'cause he's got this giant rifle just hanging by his side. And he tries to hide it as he reaches out his hand, and his voice suddenly becomes high-pitched, as high as he can make it go. "C-come out, baby, I'm a police officer, it's okay."
There is just this little girl sitting crisscross applesauce in the middle of this empty closet. She's not crouching, she's not hiding, she barely even reacts to the door being slammed open. And there's an officer with a rifle as tall as her walking in. We can't see her face, but her body language, she almost appears like she's disassociating. Now, side note, her hair is almost cut in a shaved pixie cut. Many officers actually thought she was a little boy.
"Are you okay? Is it just you in here? I'm Sergeant Tobler. What's your name?" No response. He squats down. "You doing okay? Don't want to talk to me? That's okay." He offers his hand. She still doesn't move. He's trying to be as calm as possible. The energy that he gives is like he's approaching a stray kitten that he doesn't want to run away in fear. "Can you come with me though? We got Jodi out here with us. You know Jodi, right? She's outside with us."
You take your time, though. I'm not in a hurry. I'm a police officer. Did you know that? So I'm not going to hurt you at all. You're okay. Do you need help? See, I'm going to show you. This is my badge. And I'm telling you, I don't hurt people. I'm just here to make sure you're okay. You're in no way in trouble. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you're okay. Okay? No response. I'm just going to sit down with you. That's okay. We don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I'm just going to sit here.
1.40 p.m., an hour and 50 minutes later, another officer walks in with a small personal-sized pizza and a Pepsi. I'm just going to put this here, okay, so you can eat. He places the food down and leaves so that she can have some space to eat. She's just as malnourished and emaciated as her brother that escaped to the neighbors. She looks like she hasn't had a proper meal in months. Two full minutes later, 120 seconds later, she touches the pizza box. She was just staring at it.
The officer tells her, "You're more than welcome to eat. You can eat all you want, sweetie. It's all you." She takes another 30 seconds before opening up the box, lifting it up, and taking a small bite. They sit with her for a while. She eats her entire pizza. They order her another one, and she eats another half of a large pizza. It's clear she's starving.
3:36 p.m., three hours and 40 minutes later, after finding her in the closet, she's barely said a few words, she's barely moved other than eat that pizza. She's just sitting there staring at the floor. Two female first responders join the closet with the little girl. "You don't want to talk? Okay. There's nothing at all you want to talk about? It's okay to talk to me. Are you scared?" You can barely make out what the little girl says, but it sounds like, "I'm nervous."
And so they promise her nothing's gonna happen to her. One of the female first responders says, "We helped your brother and we got him some help too. That's what we want to do for you. We want to get you some help too. We're safe, you're safe, we're not gonna hurt you, we're not gonna do anything to hurt you." After nearly four hours since finding her, they get the little girl to finally stand up. She's very cautious, she looks almost too careful, like she's trying her best not to touch anyone or anything.
And a full four hours later, she finally walks out of that closet.
August 30th, 2023. This is the day of the rescue. Officers are banging on the door to the $5 million estate. The mansion looks like it's in the middle of Mars. The door is 15 feet tall and they're banging. Police open the door, open the door. The door opens with no sense of urgency, okay? Jodi Hildebrand is standing right there with her phone in her hand. Her attorney is already on speakerphone. Jodi, I need you to step out. She points at her phone. I have my attorney on the phone. That's great. Step out of the house.
No, I'm not going to step out of the house. Step out of the house. They basically yank her, thankfully, and drag her out of the house. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. How do you come to my house? Do you have a search warrant? Just have a seat right here. They tell her, whether you like it or not, we're searching the house. We can just tell you what's in the house. Just have a seat right there. So the little boy is one of the reasons why we're here. We just need to clear the house and make sure everything's okay. But why are you coming in the house without a search warrant?
She's just staring at the officer. It's like unsettling the way she's able to look him in the eye. Is there anyone else in the house? Yeah, a little 10-year-old girl. I have Airbnb guests over in the guest house. They're probably getting scared to death. Which, side note, why are you not worried about the 10-year-old girl being scared to death?
The police say once they get in there, I mean, you're just looking through each door, closet. You go downstairs, there's a basement and it's just all concrete, concrete walls, concrete floors, concrete ceiling. We found what looked like a safe that could have been used for guns or a safe room. It's like a giant door vault. It has numbers and the whole wheel in the center. It looks like a bank vault, a giant bank vault.
It is a safe room with its own toilet and sink, and the officers demand her for the code because they have to search inside. She claims she doesn't know the code to her own panic room inside her $5 million mansion. She's like, I haven't used it.
One of the officers there just says, you know what? I'm just going to try. Let's go there and try a bunch of codes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And it clicks open. No way. By this point, they found R, the boy that escaped and basically saved him and his own sister. And then they found E, the nine-year-old little girl in the closet. But there are still two teenage girls unaccounted for.
Ruby's middle children. Yeah. Inside the safe room, the panic room, they find rope, handcuffs, gauze, medical dressings for wounds. They find this thick red paste in a bowl. It's honey and cayenne pepper, which was made to put on the wounds.
Ruby and Jodi had four kids under their care. The little boy went to the neighbor. The little girl was found in the closet. And that means the two daughters that are left, they still need to find them. And they are not in this safe room. This safe room is empty. And Ruby is not in the house either. No.
Purgatory is death suspended. It's where souls go after death to undergo purification before entering heaven. That's what purgatory is. It's supposed to be like a temporary state, a rest stop for those who are saved but just need to be purified. If someone you know is in purgatory, probably the last thing you want is to hear from them.
Kevin Frankie picks up the phone. "You have a call from inmate from Purgatory Correctional Facility. To accept the call, press 1. You will be responsible for the charges. Please note this call may be recorded." Kevin presses 1. Ruby's voice is relatively calm, almost stoic. She tells her husband and tries to almost reason with him because yeah, she was arrested for torturing their two youngest children, but she asks him, "Please see the truth. I know it's obscured."
Kevin responds, "Where I see the facts, I see the truth. That's what I'm gathering." You know my heart. What are they charging you with? Two charges of second-degree felony for child abuse. Two charges of second-degree felony? Child abuse? Yes.
Okay, wow, that's very serious. I think I was prepared for this. I do feel strong. I feel calm. And you know what? They may, adults have a really hard time understanding that children can be full of evil and what that takes to fight it. You've seen what it takes to fight evil. It's not the person you're fighting and it can look like something it's not. And you've been there, you know that. And so I don't know any adults who are going to see the truth. So I'm calm about this and I just pray that you'll hang in there.
Kevin informs Ruby that he got a text from someone who he doesn't talk to anymore, but they reached out after hearing the news about Ruby being arrested and Ruby is intrigued. Are we in the news? It sounds like at least you're in the news. I don't know about me. I'm wondering if they want to ask Sherry. If they went to Sherry to ask her questions? You know, these bookings are public. This is a witch hunt. Yeah, maybe this is a blessing, but this is a witch hunt. The devil's been after me for years and he's mad at her.
Have you shared that with the detectives, Ruby? I've not said a word till I have an attorney. Later, Kevin tells her that the kids are going to be in the hospital for three days. The two that they rescued, 11-year-old and 9-year-old. And she responds, so weird. It's just not necessary. They're trying to exaggerate this. In another call, Ruby tells Kevin, it was torturous last night. I was hearing the people screaming and banging. It's like...
Okay, it's upsetting. But the most upsetting thing is I'm completely misunderstood here. That is the most horrible feeling. Like my own family misunderstands me. They misinterpret me. And poor Jodi. They misinterpret her. They misunderstand her. She puts her neck out on the line for people. And I mean, they get mad at her. I mean, it's just horrendous. It's horrendous. And you know what? Even Joseph Smith, every wonderful man of God has had to be misunderstood. Were these call recorded? Yes. Yes.
What's the husband's attitude towards her? A lot of people take it in different ways. Some people listen to these jailhouse calls and they think that Kevin is just as guilty as Ruby. The way that he's able to listen to her say these things and like some of the verbiage that she uses, you know what it takes to fight evil. You know that. You've seen that. You've been there. It sounds like he partook...
in some of the abuse, which there is no evidence, otherwise he would have been arrested, right? And there's so much evidence in this case. However, other people take it as Kevin needs to do everything he can to try and get custody of his children, to try and amicably resolve this as best for his kids. So he's just letting Ruby talk and say these things. He doesn't want to get combative. He doesn't want to say, no, you're literally crazy. You're abusive, right?
So a lot of people have interpreted it differently. I mean, if you found out this is what happened, how can you keep it together, right? Yeah.
He just says, that's right. About every man of God has been misunderstood. Ruby says, I'm going to get out of this. Who knows? Maybe in 10 days, I'll get out of this. If the truth prevails right now, or who knows, like 20 years. I don't know. I don't know how long, but I'm going to step out. I'm going to say that I went through everything. I have seen God's children suffer. All the people here, my jail cellmates have been beautiful women, but they've been hurt.
They've been deceived into drugs and my heart just has so much compassion for them. I have compassion for the cons and I have compassion for myself. And then to be told that I want to self-exit, I mean, God told me that when I was driving,
So this is when she was driving back to Jodi Hildebrandt's house after finding out that her children were saved. She said, "I didn't have much information. I didn't know anything." And the Spirit said, "Your children are going to be removed." And I cried out loud. I'm like, "No! I'm not done! I'm not ready!" And God told me, "I'm done." And I just, Satan has taken everything away from me that I love. And I'm a good woman. I don't do naughty things. I don't do naughty things. I'm a really good girl.
Ruby, I'm going to do everything I can to keep truth in our family. I'm committed to our family. I'm committed to you and our marriage no matter what happens. I will be here to support you in any way that I can. That is crazy. Well, thank you for stepping up.
The jailhouse calls get released to the public and everyone is confused. Is this not the same case? The way Ruby and Kevin are talking about their children and about what Ruby and Jodi did, it doesn't even match the evidence and the severity of this case. The way that they're talking in these jailhouse calls, it almost makes you be like, wait, do they not know what's happening in their own world right now?
August 30th, 2023, the day that the little boy is rescued. There's a whole crowd of paramedics, fire rescue police, all surrounding the boy. And one officer who has his body cam on is standing off to the side, just observing. When a paramedic walks up to him and says, I'm crying. I know, that's why I got my sunglasses on. The paramedic wipes her face with her arm and later in an interview, she says,
It was the first I had ever been on any sort of call like that. I mean to see that little boy appear to be so okay when everything he's been through, it was like a punch in the face. One of the officers said you could actually smell the flesh. It was the most terrible thing they've ever seen.
Ruby and Jodi would enact prison war levels of torture, and I don't say that to be dramatic. I think prisoner of war torture can be very specific in the sense that sometimes they don't want to leave marks, so they find the most creative acts to torture people. Ruby and Jodi would enact poking torture on the kids. They would use what they called a cactus poker, which appears to just be a stick with a cactus spine on it,
and poke both of them, which is not only painful, it is almost invisible. One person online says after getting cactus needles stuck in their body, I had to lay across the bed on my stomach and endure the pain of having the needles taken out of me. It took a week and a half to get them all out as they were nearly invisible. You would need a magnifying glass to see them. Just leaving my hand all tingly.
I managed to get most of them out, but a few of them were still lingering under the skin. And I tried glue, masking tape, tweezers. You can't even see the ones that are under there. And it was burning. One person says the cactus fuzz is basically the equivalent of fiberglass. Thousands of tiny spines called glockens that just stick to you and irritate you. And it's the most visceral pain that you will ever feel.
Jodi admits that she would physically force Ruby's nine-year-old daughter to jump into a cactus multiple times. They would make the kids jump on trampolines, trampoline torture. R specifically had extensive injuries to his ankles. Remember, they said they could see his tendons. And considering how frail he was, to make him jump on a trampoline is...
Downright cruel. Ruby journals, Today I asked him to take off one sock by balancing on the opposite foot. Lift one foot up and remove the sock while staying balanced. He fell over, hit his nose on the ground, and began bleeding. I gave him a wet rag to wipe his face in toilet paper. He dabbed his face merely to smear the blood. Then he blew his nose so harshly through the toilet paper he got new blood on his face and all over his shirt. The easiest exercise he is asked to do, he refuses with...
The stature you would expect of a 90-year-old. He plays completely helpless. His body is full of evil, puffy infection, and he won't participate in the responsibility of pushing it out.
Based off the children's injuries, along with Ruby's journal, it appears that they would whip the kids with towels, pour cold water on them. R was forced to sleep out on the balcony, reminiscent of Jodi's niece, Jessie, from part two. They were forced to do hard labor, go to graveyards, stand outside in the sun, barefoot in 100 degree plus weather in Utah, forced to carry large boxes up and down the stairs. They were tied with rope.
handcuffs, they were hog-tied, which is an extremely stressful position. I mean, not only that, the ropes and the handcuffs would dig as deep into R's wrists and ankles that you could practically see his muscles.
They would cut through the tissues. Then Ruby and Jodi would pour cayenne pepper and honey inside the wounds. There's argument because a lot of people are like, what is the purpose of that? Is that just pure torture? There's argument that the honey is an olden day treatment for wounds that is probably medically ill-advised right now. But it seems more like it was for torture.
Because the cayenne pepper seems to hold no real purpose in this healing method. And to add it to honey, it feels like the main purpose is to make sure the cayenne pepper sticks to the open wound for maximum pain.
It's pretty clear that Ruby knows what this is doing to her kids. Ruby journal entries read, he is weak, infectious, hopeless, and never felt worse. A setup from the devil. It has been three months of consistent boundaries and putting up with his terrorizing to get his confessions out. Who would do this in the real world? I don't know of anyone who would feed their kids in America just rice, lentils, and chicken for meals for three months. And this is why Americans are full of sin and are ready for destruction. They won't repent. Wait, what?
She says that she's trying to get him to repent all of his sins. Again, very reminiscent of Jesse Helgebrand from part two where he's saying, why isn't more Americans doing this to their kids? Yeah, this is why Americans are full of sin. And we're going to be, I guess, ready for destruction.
The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment. This is a non-comprehensive list of all the physical torture that they had to endure. Carrying loaded boxes of books up and down the stairs. Doing wall sits, sitting up against the wall without anything for hours at a time. Forced to do manual labor outside in extreme summer heat without socks or shoes. Stand outside on the cement patio in the summer heat, sometimes for days.
Now, the UV index in Utah ranges from 8 to 10. They're probably getting sunburn blisters. According to court documents, it reads, these actions resulted in repeated and serious sunburns with blistered and sloughing skin. R was denied adequate water for several of the days he was required to remain in the summer heat, and he was punished when he secretly consumed water. So these
Kids were forced to run barefoot on dirt roads. They have a little section in their parenting book. Okay, Ruby and Jodi released a parenting book called Rings of Responsibility. And they have a whole quote in there that reads, "'Choosing to wear shoes prepares me for adventures in the world, just as choosing principles prepares me to connect with myself, God, and others.'" I mean, their teachings are clearly not advisable. They're like the worst teachings in the world, but also just so hypocritical. Is it this or is it that?
So they would deprive the kids of shoes, make them get blisters and sores on their feet while also talking about principles are the same as shoes. And they're talking about how they want their children to have principles, but they won't even give them shoes. It doesn't make sense.
They consistently deprive the children of shoes just for the sores and blisters it seems. They're constantly bound with duct tape on their wounds. I mean there's a heavy amount of residue that is incredibly difficult to get off of human skin from duct tape. This is not medical tape, this is duct tape. If you leave it on too long or additionally if you already have a small wound, if you rip duct tape off the wound it could completely rip it open. Skin stripping and tension blisters are associated with duct taping.
The prosecutors state both children had extensive physical injuries from the abuse that required hospitalization to treat. Emotionally, they were also tortured. I think that would be harder to heal. The prosecutors heartbreakingly state the children believe to some degree that they deserved what was being done to them.
According to court documents, R was told that everything that was being done to him were acts of love. As for E, the youngest, the court doc reads, Even the fact that it took the little girl four hours to trust officers enough to walk out of the closet
Jessie, Jodie's own niece, a victim of Jodie's, says, "I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone. If a church leader came and would ask me are you okay, I would just have to stare at them because Jodie had spies everywhere. She had people reporting back to her anything and everything that I did. So if I did talk to someone, she would find out somehow. Like the amount of paranoia and fear that I had, I was like, I can't talk to anyone."
The prosecutors state that it was like a concentration camp setting in their home. They state, "Child abuse to this degree is something that is super abnormal. Everyone who has worked on this case has gone home and cried."
Ruby and Jodi end up pleading guilty. They get a deal to plead guilty to four counts of aggravated CA. At first, Ruby seemed like she was going to stay loyal to Jodi, but eventually she realized she would get a lot more if she agreed to testify against Jodi and get less time, appear to be the victim, and not the heinous mother that she actually is. What's aggregated CA? Aggravated child abuse. That's it. Just four counts.
During Ruby's sentencing, I mean, of course she does everything to blame everything on Jodi. She makes a statement during her sentencing. Oh, she switched on Jodi. Yeah. Or at least in front of the judges. Huh. She said, the past four years, I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion. My distorted...
My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone that would challenge me. I was led to believe that this world was an evil place filled with cops who control hospitals, that injure government agencies, that brainwash church leaders who lie in lust, husbands who refuse to protect, and children who needed abuse.
She goes on to state that she never worked with Jodi. She was never Jodi's business partner. I mean, I guess she's trying to make herself seem less like a partner in crime, a partner in distortion, but rather a woman who was taken advantage of by someone who has this psychology degree, who has the power to manipulate her.
She says, Jodi was employed as my son's counselor in 2019, and in 2020, I paid her to be my mentor. It is important to me to demonstrate my remorse and regret without blame. I take full accountability for my choices, and it is my preference that I serve a prison sentence. Thank you to the officer.
Okay, your preference to serve a prison sentence? If I were a judge, that alone would make me throw the book at someone. She would do this very aggravating thing throughout all of this, where she lists all the officers' names, the ones that were called out to the house to rescue the kids, and she thanks them.
She says,
Obviously, why would the hospital be inflicting injuries? Were you not just complaining that three days in the hospital was three days too long for your kids? Also, did Ruby win some type of award? Like, what is this bizarre thank you tour? She goes on to, I kid you not, thank the DCFS, the Children's Justice Center, Judge Basil and other key adults. That's her quote.
I don't know what that means. She thanks her bishop. She thanks another church leader. She continues, thank you to the Washington County Prosecutor's Office, Ryan Sham, the legal assistants, the discovery clerics, Eric Clark. What the f***? Is this the first time you ever heard someone say that? Yeah.
I don't know what's happening right now. I fully wish that I was kidding, but she continues to thank her attorney, all of his staff, whoever Randy Kester is, and her friends, Pam and Roy. Hold on to Pam. Hold on to Pam. She brings up her in-laws, Kevin's family, her cousins, her aunts, her nieces, her uncles, nephews,
Just everything. At this point, wrap it up. You know, thank the mailman and let's move on because you don't seem remorseful at all. You're giving a statement and this is who you choose to thank? Like this is what you choose to do with this? She thanks her parents, her siblings, their spouses. She apologizes for publicly dragging them into this. And then she says, "Kevin, my husband of more than 23 years, you are the love of my life. I'm so sorry to leave you to finish what we both started together."
The ending of our marriage is a tragedy and you are wrapped around my heart in a knot I'll never be able to undo. What about her kids? Finally, she brings up the kids. This is after all of this needless yapping in the thank you tour. She finally brings up the kids. She doesn't list them by name. She doesn't even list the adult children by name. She just says to my babies, my six little chicks,
You are part of me. I was the mama duck who was consistently waddling you to safety. I can see now over the past four years, I was in a deep undercurrent that led us to danger. I would never have led you to darkness knowingly. I was so disoriented that I believed dark was light and right was wrong. I would do anything in this world for you.
I guess except not torture them. My willingness to sacrifice all for you is masterfully manipulated into something very ugly. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good. I took from you your mother, how terrifying this must have been for you. I'll never stop crying for hurting for your tender souls. You are so precious to me. I'm sorry.
Then she goes on to thank the judge and his staff for "facilitating my opportunity to take accountability and to answer for my charges. I am humbled and willing to serve a prison sentence." Which like, I don't think you have a choice!
What do you mean? A lot of people really question after that just how sorry and remorseful Ruby Frankie really is. Ruby in a jailhouse called her sister, one of her sisters. She says she hasn't spoken to Jodi since the day of the arrest, but that Jodi is mentally ill. So it's a very different tune from what she was telling Kevin. But she says, I think putting the pieces together and just seeing she knew she was lying the whole time. And it's embarrassing too, just repeating it. It's like, oh my gosh, how gullible I was.
Oh my gosh, how much power I gave this person and I didn't see it. When things kind of started turning, I was like, she's not being honest. I didn't know she wasn't honest. I didn't know she was lying. She would lie. And it's like, what else has she been lying about? What else have I been deceived about? What was that?
She says, this has been the strangest and most miraculous intervention. It put everybody where they needed to be. It separated me from Jodi. So I'm not hearing her. And I think just being gone and not hearing her has cleared up a lot of things for me.
A former cellmate of Ruby's has come forward to share her experience being in the same jail as Ruby. She says it was interesting to watch Ruby in jail. She only saw her for about three days, but it was interesting. She said Ruby was desperately playing mother hen in prison, okay, in jail in her cell block. Ruby thought the other cellmate was going through a drug withdrawal. So weirdly, she's doing this thing, putting the blanket over this random cellmate and then tucking it, going around tucking the blanket under her, mothering her, nurturing her. When she wasn't doing that, she would just...
Walk around with a Bible in her hands, carrying it at all times, glued to that thing. She says, Ruby just kept holding it to her chest and she would close her eyes. And the cellmate is like, uh, are you okay? What's wrong with you? Are you okay? Are you fine? I just, she starts sobbing. I just miss my kids.
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Something about it felt completely empty, like with no depth. The response was weird. Which there have been a few updates since the sentencing. Ruby has allegedly now accused one of her kids, yeah, well both of them, the youngest, of watching explicit material since they were three years old. Wait, so she apologized or thanked everyone non-stop?
saying that I love all my kids, blah blah blah and now she's accusing the kids again? She's basically just trying to justify what she did. She's like, "I'm not actually evil. The reason that I thought that there were demons in my kids is because
And a lot of her journal, there were redacted portions. And it is a lot of people's speculation that it was Ruby and Jodi forcing the kids to confess to things that they never did, which is a common theme that Jodi Hildebrandt is doing. Jodi Hildebrandt did that to her own niece, Jessie. She would force Jessie to claim and to confess to having...
Three dozen abortions. I mean, Jessie was 14, had no idea what an abortion was. Ruby allegedly claims that her underage children were assaulting their cousins and assaulting each other and they had abused 20 neighborhood kids because they're, I guess, essentially sex addicts, which by the way,
This is, I mean, it's a completely-- it's a lie. I don't know what else to say. We don't even know exactly how Ruby has levied these accusations. It's just a very messy situation. But it just goes to show how gross they are. - Yeah, so she's not-- hasn't changed at all. - No. No. And there is no truth to anything that she's saying. It's just like-- it's just extremely vile, especially because
By law, once an accusation like this is levied against a child, they will automatically have to be placed in a home without any other children until an investigation is done. A lot of netizens believe Ruby is still torturing her children from prison. Adam from part 2, do you remember Adam? He went to marriage counseling with Ruby, with his wife, and Ruby tried to put him in prison, accused him of essaying his one-year-old daughter. It was a mess.
Adam from part two, he says he wouldn't really be surprised if this is an accusation that they definitely uttered because he says this is exactly what Jodi does. And now Ruby is taking one out of her playbook, accusing people of being predators to hide their own crimes. That's what they do. They say, oh, my victim? No, no, no, they're not victims, they're predators.
He says, Jodi and Ruby are doing what Jodi normally does to full grown men, which is accuse them of heinous crimes and then torture them relentlessly while accusing them of being terrible people. But now the only problem is they're doing that to children.
To children that they tortured and abused. Not the only problem, but an even bigger problem. Now, a lot of people feel like whatever Ruby said during sentencing for the judge is not how she actually feels. She feels zero remorse. One of her calls to Kevin and her family sound not particularly remorseful. And one of Ruby's former cellmates did an interview. She says Ruby had this childlike smitten crush on Jodi in jail. Yeah.
What do you mean? They're like together in jail? Ruby is in jail with this cellmate. And this cellmate had seen Jodi around. So she knows both of them. She's seen both of them. And Ruby in the cell, all she's doing is fixating on Jodi. She's not asking about her kids. She's not wondering about her kids. She's not repenting. She's not remorseful. She's like, I'm complaining because why are Jodi and I separated? According to the cellmate.
She's confused why they're separated. Ruby apparently said, "God, how long are they gonna keep us in here? Why did they separate me and Jodi? I don't understand why they would separate me and my friend." The former cellmate says, quote, "Ruby was really, really concerned about Jodi. She said she wanted to talk to her, wanted to see her. And the cellmate was like, 'Oh, that's your friend?' I saw her briefly." She's like, "Oh, what did she say? How did she act? Did she say anything at all?"
uh she seemed pretty distraught she didn't want to talk about anything at all she was crying a lot her eyes were swollen really bad kind of like squinted you could hardly see her eyes she looked pretty distressed i said i asked jody why she was in jail jody looked at me not really with a smile not really with a frown but with a straight face and said i'd rather not say so i said okay okay i apologize i wasn't trying to invade your privacy and uh that was it
Ruby is like intently listening to her recount her experience meeting Jodi, to which Ruby says, "yeah, yeah, that's what I thought she would be like, yeah, that's what I thought." Nevertheless, I don't think Ruby's jail time is going particularly badly. There is a picture circulating that shows Ruby and other inmates sitting crisscross on the floor, holding their hands out, touching each other on the chest, like they're doing a bonding breathing yoga exercise.
I'm all for adequate programs to rehabilitate inmates so that when they do reenter society, they have a fighting chance at being a positively contributing member of society. But it rubs people a lot in the wrong ways. On top of that, people have taken to zooming in on the whiteboard behind the inmates, and it's filled with random quotes like, teach to learn. But also one phrase in particular stands out to people, see and speak truth.
Is Ruby out here teaching everyone principles right now in prison? It's also stated that she's training in jail to be a yoga teacher and there were only 20 inmates selected for this program and she was one of the 20. To which one person comments, calling it now, she is going to get way too into yoga and start an underground yoga wellness cult in her prison. Another person says, I hate that she looks calm and clean. Yuck.
But others say, "Well, Sherry wrote in her book about Ruby. I don't have a desire to see her destitute. My hope is that she can use this time to educate herself so that upon release she can find a way to survive. Have a small house and a quiet life far away from me." One person comments, "I think that's how I feel about Ruby too. Ruby is facing 4 to 30 years in prison." What do you mean 4 to 30 years? In 4 years, she could get probation and get released.
Jodi has also pled guilty to the same charges. But again, does she feel remorse? In a recorded jailhouse call, Jodi rants. She's like sobbing, by the way, that she's the victim. Nobody wants the truth because these kids, the spirit told me it's all the devil. I mean, you've seen him. I mean, I'm I.
I've known you for what, five years? You've watched him come at me, come at me, come at me, come at me. So now it's abusive to make kids sleep on the floor? It's abusive? It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. You can't even raise your kids anymore. They're not even our kids.
About the actual evidence, the evidence photos of the abuse, Jodi says, and I'm like, we didn't do that. We didn't do that. Those pictures we did not do. He did that to himself. Yes. If we put that on him and then he rubbed it around and cut himself. Yes. But we didn't do that. We were begging God, please help me and understand why I'm in this. She also says her going to prison is part of the Lord's work.
yeah thank the lord lock her up right but she claims that the lord says before the second coming that they shall lay their hands on you they shall prosecute you she says she cried because it felt like god was telling her this is her purpose and that she will be saved she says but when i get out of here i have a story to tell and i'm going to try to do everything i can to protect the children because that's what's happening it's you know like the kids are being horribly abused
But when it comes down to her pleading guilty and her sentencing, she has the audacity to stand in front of the judge and say, "I sincerely love these children. I desire for them to heal physically and emotionally. One of the reasons I did not go to trial is that I did not want them to emotionally relive the experience, which would have been detrimental to them."
My hope and prayer is that they will heal and move forward to have a beautiful life. I'm willing to submit to what the state feels would be an appropriate amount of time served to make retribution as an outcome. Which one, as in points out, I didn't go to trial because I didn't want to make the children relive what happened to them. It's a really funny way of saying, I don't feel like listening to my victims explain what I did to them. The judge states politely, okay, Ms. Hildebrandt, the circumstances are tragic.
And it's largely, of course, of your making. By any measure, your conduct in this case was disastrous for these children. Adults are supposed to protect children. Adults with specialized training in particular are supposed to protect children. You did not do that in this case. In this case, you terrorized the children and the results have been tragic.
Side note, even since both of them were arrested, Jodi has been a manipulative sleazeball. I mean, there's no eloquent way of putting it. When Jodi is first brought into the police station, she does this thing where she tries to act like the cop's friends, but also lets them know that her attorney is just super annoying. She says, so I trust my attorney. He said, don't say anything. And I said, I have nothing to hide. And he's like, I know that, but just let me be there with you when we talk.
So you guys seem nice. You guys seem nice people. I'm not anything, you know, I'm not trying to be difficult. This is really, if you knew all the pieces, I think you'd have a lot of empathy for what's going on. The officer responds, you're an adult. And the thing about our interview is if we ask you any questions that you don't want to answer, you can just tell us.
I'd like to just tell you, but I don't know who you are. I don't know if you're going to flip my words, but I don't know. And that's the good thing, Ms. Hildebrandt, about the cameras, everything. It's pretty much double recorded audio video and it's for the safety for you and for us. We don't want to flip your words. My attorney can just be so insistent. He's an honest, good man. He goes to church. I trust him. You know, why would he say that to me then? I don't know your attorney, to be honest.
Well, I'm just saying he's an honest good man. Yeah, I'm an honest person as well, so we get along great. And he just said, do not say anything. And I'd love to tell you, you know, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with what I say. I'm a psychologist. I've watched people flip things all the time, so I get it. You know, I sit on your side. I get it. I wish people didn't do that, but they do.
The officer would later say, she was clearly trying to manipulate us in that moment. I'm a therapist. I'm with you guys on this. I would love to share, but my attorney told me not to. But I want to. I want to be forthcoming. Meanwhile, Ruby doesn't say anything at all during the whole arrest. So she drives back to Jodi's home, gets arrested.
She doesn't look scared. She doesn't look sad or mad. She looks completely blank, indifferent, stoic. I think I would have to put in more effort to make my face so devoid of any and all emotions. She doesn't even respond to a single thing they ask. Do you want water? Are you okay? Do you want a snack? She just stares and blinks. What's your home address? How many kids do you have? Nothing.
She came back voluntarily or she came back to get arrested? Yes. Now, the officer says it was creepy. It was awkward. The officer later says, I mean, she just really seemed like she was looking through me. I would ask her a question and she would just stare and give me three really long blinks. It was more like Morse code. The only phrase that she would utter after arrest is, I'll wait till I have a lawyer and kind of smirks. That's it.
So both of them are sentenced to 30 years. Technically, both of them could be out in a few years. In a previous podcast episode, Ruby says, I strongly disapprove of attacking. I strongly disapprove of abuse. I think all of us could get on board with, yeah, I have righteous anger towards adults abusing children.
She's basically saying attacking and abusing is bad, but you can have righteous anger against adults abusing children. Well, guess who also likely has anger towards adults abusing children? Likely fellow inmates.
So now that Ruby and Jodi have been arrested and sentenced, there are a lot of people online questioning whether or not Kevin should also be arrested, at least for negligence. In an interview, Kevin's attorney states that he was completely taken off guard by these allegations online. As for why Kevin wasn't seeing or checking up on the kids, his attorney states, I totally understand the confusion. That was the big question in my mind. He states that people don't understand...
that Kevin was desperately trying to keep the family together. Ruby was the one calling the shots. She's the one that asked him to leave and not contact the children. As for Jodi, Kevin sees her as the spearhead towards essentially destroying his entire life and family. There is this really awkward moment where Kevin's attorney is asked, one of the allegations is that Chad wasn't allowed to sleep in a bed for seven months. Why did he think that was okay?
I can't comment on that. I have a duty to my client, to the court, not to comment on that question.
But even Sherry, Kevin's own daughter, tried harder than Kevin to protect the kids. She's one of the kids that needs protecting. I mean, what's kind of wild is that Kevin is also advocating for CPS to have better procedures to catch abuse earlier on, which I do think is a noble cause. But a lot of netizens are upset that it's coming from Kevin. He explains, quote,
You know, they were standing on the front porch and they could see the children and they could see my former wife through the window ignoring them. And they said, even with all the reports, all the red flags that were given to them by our oldest daughter, Sherry, and by our neighbors, they still could not intervene.
Eventually, they had to leave because the judge would not sign off on them forcing entry into the home. Kevin also goes on to express frustration and he said the police never called him. But he does say DCFS, Department of Children and Family Services, aka CPS, called him repeatedly. But because he was brainwashed by Jodi and Ruby, he did not pick up the phone.
To which one of the top liked comments reads: "When you haven't seen your kids in a year and CPS calls you, you don't ignore it. He was complicit and needs to take accountability. What a narcissist." Another comment reads: "The police checked on his children more than he did." But he claims he was so lost in the sauce that he believed in Jodi as much as Ruby did. The Hulu documentary producers ask him: "Did you really believe this was the end of the world that Christ was returning?" "Oh, absolutely."
But if the world was ending, did it occur to you that maybe you wouldn't go to heaven? Maybe you'd go to hell? Never. It never crossed my mind because we were preparing for it and we weren't alone. Which a lot of people are split about this. Some people believe that Kevin and Ruby both failed their kids, but because Ruby helped physically torment and abuse their children, whereas Kevin just left and stayed brainwashed, allegedly, they
They think that Kevin is less culpable. But others say, no, think back at everything that's happened before Jodi even came into the Frankie's life. Remember the first internet cancellation of Ruby Frankie? And I say internet cancellation when personally it just feels like abuse, but for the sake of keeping the charges separate from the internet warning signs.
But when Chad revealed that he hadn't slept on a bed in nine months, he was sleeping on a beanbag, Kevin was one of the first people to defend the situation in a vlog by stating, the things that we show and share and the things that many of you are criticizing and calling abusive are actually things that mental health professionals have counseled us to do. So he was very firm. He believed in all of this.
Even later, he tells authorities that he supported his wife through helping Chad, quote, choose honest and responsible choices. He also says that was what the internet uproar was, right? Indicating he does not side with the internet and the public's view even a year, few years down the line, but rather he sides with Ruby.
he argues later in people magazine: "a lot of the physical violence that was described was hidden and kept from me. i didn't even know those things happened. and i think ruby was really careful to hide a lot of that from me. as far as the things like sleeping on the beanbag, removing chad from sports, teams, and things, all of those directives came from jodi, the licensed mental health counselor.
I definitely voiced my opposition and concern and it was always flipped back onto me saying, well, this is why your children are disobedient. This is why you're having problems with your children because you just enable them all the time. You are the problem, Kevin. But Kevin is also there recording when Ruby is yanking their youngest daughter off the table and screaming at her for interrupting the vlog. He's the one that laughs and says, cut in front of the camera lens with his two fingers.
So is it all Ruby and Jodi hiding the escalating abuse from Kevin? Or did Kevin have a pretty good idea that this was happening? August 30th, 2023, when the two youngest are rescued, Kevin is in the interview room with detectives answering questions.
Was that tape out? Yes. When they rescued the kid, they brought him in immediately. Kevin came to the police station. When he heard about it. Oh, this is crazy. Okay, so Ruby and Jodi both know that R, the young boy, had escaped. So they're going around the neighborhood looking for R. And that's when Jodi realizes the police are at the neighbor's house. A bunch of ambulance are coming. She's like, that's why she's on the phone with her attorney when the police come to search her home.
Ruby was out looking for R. So she's driving around the road. She gets a call from Jodi. Like, hey, the police, like, it's over. It's done. She calls Kevin and is like, I need you to go to the police station and pick up the kids.
tell them that they're fine everything's fine the kids are lying blah blah blah she's like bring him home i trust you kevin thinks this is my time to shine i'm gonna get ruby back this is my time to step up and be the husband she needs me to be he shows up at the police station the police are asking who told you to come here he's like i'd rather not say still trying to protect ruby
So are we going to see when he actually find out what happened in that moment? Yes. So his whole reaction and all of that. Okay. Now, you know, he says there was a no contact boundary. Did you have a no contact order in place? Order? No, this was between me and my wife. AKA, he's saying he did not have a legal requirement to stay away. It's just kind of shitty that he didn't do anything for his kids. So they ask, did she ask you not to contact the kids? Yes.
Ruby invited me to leave the home while I thought about the choices that I've made in my life in the way that I've treated her. So I left. Is there custodial paperwork that denies you of your rights to the kids? No, no custodial paperwork at all. This was just a verbal agreement between my wife and I.
I'm curious, when you guys had the previous 8 Passengers YouTube channel, you guys got a lot of heat for neglect and child abuse. A lot of people commented those things on there. Why were they commenting those things? This is happening on that day? It was that night that the kids were rescued. I mean, it had been pretty much the whole day, it seems. Oh, so they already picked up all these information. Yes. Like, 8 Passenger, you guys did this, you guys had controversies, whatever.
I mean, by that point, if you Google eight passengers is probably the first few articles that come up. They were known mainly for their controversy rather than for being YouTubers. I see. Now they're asking a lot of people commented those things on there. Why were they commenting those things?
That's a good question. I mean, we had a son who was acting out in a very selfish behavior. He chose to sleep on a beanbag. So nine months later, he made a lot of changes in his life. He was ready to move into his own bedroom, made a video about it. In the video, he mentioned something to the effect of, I've been sleeping for nine months on a beanbag. That is what the uproar was about.
Who is this female Jodi that your wife lives with? She is a therapist and a life coach. Do you respect her? Yeah, I think she's a very honest and truthful person. I know her to be an honest and very trustworthy individual. He's also asked, during your marriage, how was disciplining your kids? How would you discipline your kids? Yeah, I'm not going to answer that question. Are you aware of the physical condition of your children? No, no. I've chosen to trust my wife with my children. That was part of the agreement of our separation. My job is to financially provide.
The police start filling him in on what's happening. They say, so I don't recall the exact time, but we received a phone call from our dispatch that a 12-year-old boy was knocking on doors asking for food and water. He was severely emaciated. Kevin, university professor of civil engineering says, what is emaciated? Which a lot of netizens think that he's playing innocent and dumb, like who knows? But the cops continue, skinny, scrawny, malnutrition, not enough food and water to sustain life.
I'm sorry, what? He had duct tape on his extremities, on his hands, on his ankles. There were rope burns that were used to tie him down. Take a second and think about what I just said. That's the condition of your son. Given that information, your son was taken to the hospital. A warrant has been applied and granted by the Department of Child and Family Services to remove them from your wife's care. So no, no one right now is going to have access to these two children based on their physical condition. Do you understand that? I understand.
Would you condone that behavior? Would I condone that behavior? No. Again, I don't know the details. I don't know what's going on. But as you described that, that sounds horrible. Does he sound like he was worried for the kids in that moment? Not extensively. Maybe it's shock. Maybe it's... I mean, there are some reports that Jodi convinced the whole Ruby and Kevin, Frankie, that police were evil and they were going to be bad people.
players in the second coming. He's not crying. He's not emotional. Again, maybe he's in shock, but one of the first things he asks after this line of questioning, after being told that his son and his daughter were emaciated, he says, what's going to happen to my wife? I love my wife. Will there be charges against my wife? Possibly. I think given the circumstances, that's highly appropriate.
He tells the authorities that again, after they tell him that his kids have to be hospitalized because they did not have enough food or water to sustain life, he says, I trust her. I love my wife and I trust my wife.
If he didn't leave the house, if he was at the house, it sounded like he would still carry on this energy of, I trust her, I trust her, this is why. Devils, we need to discipline the kids, we need to do this. You know what I mean? He's been this way for so long. It's like, when would he have put his foot down? I guess we would never know, right? I would expect this is the moment he realized, oh, sh**.
He says, I mean, this feels like getting run over by a steam truck. What you're sharing with me today. I'm interested in all the facts. But you understand our facts are that you have a child that is emaciated, malnutrition, that has marks. I don't know what to do. I...
You know, you realize that I have a picture of my family on my wall and I look at it every day and I work and I work. He slams his hand down on the table. I work every day so I can get back to my family and save my family and everything. And you're sharing what you're sharing with me just sounds like a made up story. I have no idea what you're talking about. It sounds like a horror movie.
This point, it does sound like he's genuinely lost. Like he doesn't understand that this is actually happening. He puts his hands up to cover his face and he starts sobbing. But then he says, and I get that you're all doing your jobs. I get it. I understand. But this is my wife. I just want my kids. I just want my kids. I don't know what's going on. I don't know why these things you described happened. I don't know.
It's almost like I just want to say, I'm sorry, you must have somebody else because it's like, am I in the right conference room right now? I'm having a hard time accepting this and dealing with this. You're telling me you're taking my kids from me? Over the past year, we've had zero communications regarding the kids. I've had no reason to believe or think that there was anything going on for all intents and purposes. I've had no reason to believe or think that there was anything going on for all intents
I woke up this morning looking at the picture of my family and making my commitment today as I do every day that I'm willing to live an honest and virtuous and responsible life today. And what you're sharing with me just feels like a sucker punch. I don't know if I still have a family. I don't know how I plan to go to God and figure this out. I'm just heartbroken with what you're sharing with me. And I feel I'm responsible and it hurts. And I wish I had been a better husband. So you have six kids. Be a better dad.
He says, "I just want my family back. I just want my wife back." He later admits in the documentary that during the interrogation, he quote, "I was afraid to do anything that would point them towards Ruby." Why? Because I was trying to protect her.
And one part of this whole story that some netizens who really do not like Kevin keep pointing out and with valid reason is first of all, the interview with the police he does does not seem like he's that concerned about his kids at all. And later he tries to sue Sherry, the eldest daughter, the one that tried the hardest to protect the two youngest.
Kevin is in the parking lot of the local police station. There's body cam footage of this. The officers hand over two bins, like laundry bins filled with notebooks, journals, a MacBook. He's got his trunk open. He's surveying everything inside of each bin almost a little too slowly. Like he's taking inventory of every single journal that's in there. And it prompts the officers to ask him, is it all there? Yes. Explain to me again why this was not robbery. Okay.
Basically, Sherry went into the family home with a few officers to collect some of her belongings. She collected a few journals and the passports of her parents, which, by the way, I think you can draw your own conclusions from that, but it feels like she's trying to prevent them from fleeing almost.
I don't know why she would need their passports. She collects their passports and a few other things from the home under police surveillance. She leaves the house. Kevin goes into the house. He freaks out because he's missing those things. He calls the police. They're like, oh, maybe your daughter took them. We escorted her to the house to pick up a few things. He's like, this is robbery. She's not allowed in the house.
She willingly just returns it all to the police station. She's like, okay, I mean, if he wants it back, it's fine. Gives it to them. They give it back to him. And he's like, how is this not robbery? That's crazy. So it's very clear that he still placed Ruby in front of his child. Yeah.
Right. Very clear. He's protecting Ruby's interest because that's my wife and I's passport. Yeah. And the police tell him because it's a civil issue. You guys are a family. She's been in the house before. You haven't been in the house in a year. She had interest in those items. She didn't take them with the intention to deprive you of them. So that's the theft code. We have to prove intent to deprive you of the items. And this wasn't her intent in having them. So the detective sergeant said we're not going to charge her with anything.
Kevin is standing there shutting his eyes closed like he's infuriated by all of this. Okay, I'll have to do some more research on that. You're welcome to do that if you want to follow up with the detective yourself.
Kevin had this whole little blip in the timeline where he is married to the idea of suing his own daughter, Sherry, for burglary, which is just so strange considering the police are like, "You have no grounds to press charges! What are you saying right now?" - And this is, like, a while later. This is not the first day, right? - Yeah, it's like a few days-- I would-- maybe like a week or two later. - Yeah, so it's not-- no longer in the shock of "I just want to protect my wife." - Yes. Yeah, it is very bizarre. Very bizarre.
So a lot of netizens think it's just very telling that Kevin is wanting to wage lawsuits against his firstborn child. Now, Sherry specifically took her parents' passports, which again, very interesting. More interesting when you hear from Jesse Hildebrand, Jodi's niece, that when...
Jodi was going through everything, her issues in court with Adam. She fled the country briefly. - Oh, Jodi did? - Mm-hmm. Just seems like maybe there was an idea, maybe there was a thought, maybe there was a suspicion, an inkling, a gut feeling, intuition. Speaking of the journals that were taken from the home and subsequently returned to Kevin, there is an aspect of this case that hasn't been uncovered quite yet, and those are the pen papers.
Apparently, Jodi instructed Ruby to write down all of her visions in a leather-bound journal that they called the penpapers. Nobody else was allowed to read these penpapers. This is separate from the journal that was discovered and was entered into evidence, which was Ruby's documentation of the torture that happened. This is separate. In a separate police interview, Kevin asks, "'Have you found the penpapers?' The police tell him, "'We have Ruby's journal.'"
No, so she wouldn't write that stuff she wrote in the pen papers. She would not write that in her journal. The stuff she wrote in the pen papers was not intended to be read by anybody until God would decree them to be written into scripture for the whole world to read. So it described all the visions and trances and everything that Jodi and Ruby went into. If you're wondering what kind of visions Jodi would have, Kevin says that one of her visions is Jodi walking along the beach with someone next to her, Jesus.
He stops and he turns to her, walk on the water. Jodi would have these visions of her walking on the water with the heavenly father and the heavenly mother. And she learned that in heaven, she had this massive pet lion named Charles. She would ride around this pet lion and Charles is the giant pet. She would ride on it.
I don't even... Yeah. I don't know. Are we sure she's not on drugs? A lot of people believe whatever is in those pen papers would provide much more information on how much Kevin was involved exactly. But other netizens disagree. They say if he was involved, then finding those pen papers would probably incriminate him.
Now, side note, it does seem like the police did find a leather-bound notebook, but it was revealed to have been empty. And there are speculations that a third party, Pam, a woman named Pam, went in and allegedly tossed out the pen papers. We don't know for sure. That is the speculation. That is the netizen argument. That is the conspiracy.
And I don't think that with Ruby and Jodi being behind bars, things are over. A recent civil lawsuit was filed by a man named Michael who states that his ex-wife, the mother of his children, is still a devoted follower of Ruby and Jodi. She refuses to acknowledge their arrest and their guilty pleas. She is on board with connections still to this day.
Who is this? This is a couple that went into marriage counseling with Jodi. This is not Pam. No, this is not Pam. But he's saying like, my wife fully believes this stuff still to this day. So now netizens are divided on who to mainly blame. Everyone's to blame, but who is the most to blame has been a conversation.
There's a huge group of people that are concerned that Jodi might get away with less time and repercussions than Ruby because of a huge focus of this case has been Ruby for obvious reasons. These are her children that she has the duty to protect that she failed. But additionally, she has the YouTube audience. A lot of people are terrified that if Jodi gets out, she's going to go straight back into counseling. One Redditor explains that her husband was in the group counseling for seven years. They spent over $100,000 on Jodi's counseling programs and
And over the years, it just taught them, brainwashed them into thinking that the husband was this perverse monster that needed to be watched out for. Jodi would also just do some really odd things. She said, one week, one especially odd week, my husband attended, one man was struggling with looking at gay porn and they decided this man wasn't actually gay.
but just hadn't received enough healthy touch from his father growing up. So Jodi said the cure to this healthy masculine touch, they made my husband lay down and cuddle him, spooning him the whole meeting. It was just strange. Men would switch off every week who were supposed to cuddle him. So every week they had a different person cuddling him. So a lot of people think that Jodi is doing all of this because she is...
very upset at the world that she grew up in a conservative household that did not allow her to be who she is which is not an excuse it just seems like this is a reoccurring theme that keeps happening and she keeps taking her anger out on people sherry writes in her book a part of me pitied her a repressed self-loathing deeply damaged woman trapped in an environment in which she felt compelled to conceal her true nature
surrounded by women who she couldn't have, women who were married to men she resented. In her mind, this was her only path to justice. Crush the sperm donors and liberate the females.
Other people think Jodi's bad, but it's still Ruby and Kevin's duty to protect their own kids. A lot of netizens say that you can brainwash each other. Yeah, you can all you want, but nobody could brainwash them into harming their kids. That's what netizens with children feel. One person comments, when the little boy was asked who put the duct tape on him, who poured pepper and honey into his wounds, he told authorities it was his mom.
Another netizen writes, she was happy for the kids to be abused until she was caught. Then it was someone else's fault and she was controlled by Jodi. I think she's worse than Jodi. She allowed her own children to be abused and that's gross. Or another reading, does she not realize she's worse than Jodi? These are her kids. She tortured her kids for years and enjoyed it.
One netizen comment says: "Crazy that when Jodi was possessed, she invited her into their home and Ruby slept in the bed with her comforting her. But when her kids are 'possessed', she chained them up and almost took their lives." I would say that most netizens believe that both Jodi and Ruby are equally at fault. And yes, Jodi has been wanting to do this to people. She had been doing this to people like her own niece, Jessie Hildebrandt. But Ruby clearly had something deep inside of her that let this happen.
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Adam, another victim of Jodi's from part two says, now here's what I do want to say. I don't like Ruby Frankie, but I don't know her. I just think that you have to be a selfish person to fall for Jodi's stuff. She's got a certain kind of carrot that gets a certain kind of people. But Ruby Frankie would have never done any of this stuff if Jodi Hildebrandt hadn't been the mastermind and just completely created this.
Cherie, Ruby's own daughter, states in the new documentary: "Looking back on it, I don't think Ruby's a good person. I think she was already an abusive mother before, and then obviously it escalated dramatically in the last couple of years. And the fact that Ruby went as far as she did, I wouldn't blame that on Jodi. She just set off things in Ruby that were already in her heart."
But one person that does not get talked about as much is a woman named Pam Botcher. Pam is the president of Connections Foundation, who also happens to be a mother of seven and a grandmother of 14. If you go on the Connections website, it's all about Jodi, Pam, and Ruby. They were known as the Three Musketeers. Now, not that Kevin is...
arguably the most credible person according to the internet in this case. But in one police interview, he mentions, again, if they find the pen papers, quote, if you're interested in Pam Botcher, that's going to tie Pam Botcher to all of this. What's in those documents? What's in the pen papers? And Pam is accused by netizens of going in and getting rid of the pen papers before the police get access to them.
The two teenage daughters were found not in the Frankie house. So the two youngest kids were found in Jodi Hildebrandt's house, which was like 300 miles away from the Frankie home. The Frankie house was empty. Police knocked down the doors. They searched the entire place, cleared it. The kids are not in there. The kids are eventually found in Pam Botcher's house.
They track them down. They find the two middle children, the two teenage daughters. And they're asking, Pam, why do you have these children with you? And she says, well, I'm having guests coming. And she came and she did some cleaning for me. Talking about the teenage girls.
That is crazy. Pam and her husband are standing in the doorway, not letting the officers in, but also not leaving the house, which the officers are instructing. The officers do have a warrant for Pam's home, but it's in his car and he doesn't want to risk anything happening to the girls who are right there in the living room behind Pam and her husband. So they're demanding, like, we just need to see that the girls are okay. Like, we have a warrant. It's in the car. Like, we gotta...
And again, maybe some people are rude, but I would be concerned. I would not be annoyed or ticked off if the police were making sure two children in my home were okay. However, the part that really gets me about Pam is the officer is trying to explain that she's just detained. She's not under arrest. They simply have to make sure the children are okay. They say, as long as she's not tied up and bound because, and Pam responds, I did make her scrub the floor.
And they vacuumed and stuff. And I have company coming tonight out from Costa Rica, but she did do this on her own free will. Pam claims Ruby called her earlier to ask her to pick up the girls because she had a family emergency. Didn't go into detail on what it was, according to Pam. Pam continues. She said, would you mind watching the girls while I'm gone? She was leaving. I said, yeah, I did that because I need some help cleaning. I just have houseguests coming tonight. So I said, yeah, that'd be great. Could they come clean? And she said, yeah, they'd love to do that.
Do you remember in part one, Ruby was obsessed with them cleaning? And like they would clean the baseboards that would be punishment for them. Yeah, it's crazy. Also, Pam's husband has the energy of a potato that has all of those green sprouts and is probably poisonous. He is told that Ruby Frankie, the mother of the two teenage girls that he likely just watched scrub his floors was arrested for child abuse. He says, the biggest thing that bugs me is
that my wife is sitting in a patrol car. That's the thing that gets me. I feel bad for my wife. She's sitting there and this is the first time in the world that I've ever had a police car sitting in my driveway. I got all the neighbors driving by. Does nobody in this entire town have their head screwed on straight? Who cares about what John from down the street thinks? Get a grip, everyone.
Your friend was arrested for child abuse and you have two of her kids in your home. He also goes on a whole unsolicited rant about drug testing. He comments that there's so many officers at his house now. This is like what happens when there's some big drug bust or something. You can run a background check on me.
We're not too concerned with that right now, sir. Been drug tested. I've been everything, you know? Is that the only way to detain someone though is to put them in handcuffs? Again, concerned about his wife. Pam is fine. Pam's a grown up. It's fine. Is there not one single adult in this case that cares about children more than themselves and fellow adults? I'm so perplexed.
Pam's gonna be fine. She's in the back of a cop car, AC blasting. They probably have the radio on for her. She's fine. And then he goes back to, "At least you guys don't have the lights flashing, right? That would be even worse. I never had a police car in my driveway." Later, when more officers arrive to question Pam, she says confidently that the kids were here to clean her house. She also stops mid-sentence, mouth agape, just staring at the road, and she says, "Oh, I was gonna say, if that was one of my neighbors, that would be embarrassing."
She complains, I know you were just here trying to do your jobs, but these girls come to clean my house and pretty soon I'm in the back of a police car and I'm like, oh my gosh. I mean, I know it's not your fault. You're just trying to do your job, but I don't even watch scary police shows or anything. I'm such a scaredy cat. Okay, pick me, Pam. Annette is in comments and all these interviews, not one person who is detained or questioned asked if the children were okay. Not one.
Another comment: Jodi's niece, Jessie, says that they remember Pam.
back in the day when they were held captive in Jodi's home. They state, when I was living with Jodi, Pam Botcher was around. She was Jodi's best friend. And I didn't realize that she was connected in this. I mean, I have very strong feelings towards Pam because of not what she was directly applying. She wasn't actually involved, but she was one of the people that was constantly surveilling the surveillance of reporting back to Jodi.
Sherry states in her book about Jodi, Ruby, and Pam, and not in like an accusatory way, but she just states, "They were the three musketeers of the apocalypse, ready to follow each other literally to the ends of the earth." Again, any and all allegations against Pam Botcher are completely just netizen speculations. She has not been charged of any crime, nor has she been considered a public suspect of any case, but it's just something that has made people think.
Which brings us to Kevin. Now, I do want to mention one thing about Kevin. I think Kevin is very complicated. I know a lot of people online seem to have very strong opinions about Kevin, especially with this new documentary coming out. I don't think it's doing him any favors. And I'm hoping to summarize both sides. But it seems like Kevin is trying to be a part of his children's lives. But more importantly, his children are working on rebuilding their relationship with Kevin. And I think for that alone, I don't think it's my place to have an opinion.
In defense of Kevin, one Reddit post reads, please help. Connection solitude program. Has anyone heard of the solitude thing? I have a friend who is in the connections group for over a year, and I've seen the extreme negative effects that it's had on his self-esteem and overall happiness levels. And it seems to be destroying his marriage. But recently, things went up 10 notches when he sent out texts telling his family and friends that he will no longer be communicating with
at all and he wouldn't be communicating with his own wife either it has been about two months since anyone has heard from him he didn't even call or text his mom for mother's day he says he's doing his time of solitude until his connection with god has improved we're all extremely worried about him
Any advice would help greatly, especially if anyone has information on this solitude program. Thanks in advance. One person comments, I'm so sorry. I also drink the Kool-Aid for about 10 minutes. I think the individuals who are doing this, they're trying to set boundaries. So I get the feeling the more you pry and try to have contact, the more they see this as control.
So they're saying this is a thing that Jodi does consistently. She forces men out of their families and refuses to let them have contact with any of their family members. So people think she was trying to do this with Adam, Adam Paul Steed from part two. Maybe she did this with Kevin Franke as well. Kevin was asked by authorities why he and Ruby had separated and he said, "The reasons are because of the way that I treated my wife and some of my own addictions that I was working through and seeking help on with like pornography."
So a lot of people in support and in defense of Kevin think that the same thing that happened to Adam is now happening to Kevin. The same process. Sherry does write in her book that Kevin even noticing an attractive woman at the gym was evidence of his astronomical level of distortion. And even speaking to a female coworker would be an unspeakable crime.
Kevin later states, "I think it's relatively easy for somebody out here who's armchairing this and looking at this experience going, 'Well, why didn't he just do that? I would have done that if it was day one and Jodi came to me and said, 'Yeah, you're selfish. You need to go into separation and repent.' I would have told her to take a hike." But he's saying the indoctrination was slow. He's asked, "Why didn't you stand up to say no to this nonsense?" He says, "I know. And I know. And if I dwell on that question, it eats me alive."
So some netizens think that he's just a weak man, but likely not vicious. They think that he sounds remorseful and he's probably in a lot of pain that, I mean, we as netizens cannot really relate to. He says, "I'm incredibly grateful for the heroics of my son in saving his life, his sister's life, and probably his other sisters in our family as well.
He was truly a hero. It's a lot to deal with every day. The questions of what if, what could have been, what should have happened, what I should have done, what others should have done. It haunts you. And it's my struggle and others to learn how to deal with that and to do what we can to make the best of our lives moving forward.
Sherry would state, which I'm not saying I think she's forgiving him or defending him, because he can be a weak man and still be a horrendous parent and could face legal repercussions. I'm just saying. She writes, "Kevin had as much autonomy as a wet noodle in a hurricane." But many more netizens think the main difference between Kevin and Adam is that Adam actually fought for his kids. Kevin did not.
Which brings us to the big group of netizens who are not fans of Kevin, which it does get worse by the documentary's release. A lot of netizens are hung up on the fact that he talks about Ruby as if she is God's gift to Earth and he will always put her before his six children. He says, a lot of people will look at me and say, how could he ever do that? I would never do that. But for those who respectfully ask me about that and say, how could you? My response is that, well,
Who do you love more than anybody? And sometimes it's a child, sometimes it's a spouse. They say, and I say, well, what would happen if that individual that you love more than anybody started to go a different way and was inviting you and encouraging you? Would you just easily be able to let them go out of your life and say goodbye?
Kevin has asked, "Do you still love her?" He says, "Definitely. I've always loved her." "Even though she abused the kids, you still love her?" "Oh yeah. The actions that she did are atrocious, but I still feel a longing. I miss her. All the delivery rooms, all the moments holding our children. It's easy for the world to hate that woman. And so many people want me to join in on that chorus. But I cannot turn off all those other memories." "How do you make sense of all of this?"
This really is a story of love, of hope, of family, but this is also a story of deception, of control, and ultimately, it's a story of faith. If you put your faith in the wrong hands, you could lose everything.
Many netizens just can't get over the fact that sure, call it faith, call it love, call it the devil, call it whatever your heart pleases, but how can you find out from the officers that your children are emaciated, have been taken to the hospital, and instead of asking how they are, demanding to see them, asking what you can do to support them, how do you just sit there and tell the police that you trust your wife?
Some netizens, for lack of better words, they just find Kevin a little bit hypocritical. In a recent interview, Kevin says, "Another thing that I hope that people think about after watching this is the role that social media and the internet plays in our lives today and how it really fanned the flames of the story and spread it like wildfire. The truths, the falsities of it, the dangers that can come when you place yourself or your family or your children into the public spotlight on social media
which is completely valid, but a lot of netizens are confused. Like, weren't you the man that wanted to sell your soul to the YouTube overlords for $85? He says, there's a lot of incentives out there today to do that, but I hope that people realize and really stop and recognize, is this really what's best for my kids? Not just financially, but emotionally and psychologically.
Now, Kevin has said that he regrets putting his children online and the whole family vlogging era of his life. But people think, I mean, yeah, you could try to be an advocate against family vlogging. But I think the way that he talks about it, people are saying you don't show enough remorse yet. You just kind of go into like advocacy mode. It feels weird.
Many netizens also think it's strange that Kevin is just acting like vlogging was just Ruby's thing when she was the one primarily vlogging, yes. But it seemed like he reaped the financial benefits of putting their children out there. And the worst part is, in a recent interview with People magazine, he said, the things you see that are concerning in the documentary, such as the sternness, the yelling at the kids to get them to comply in the filming, and those kinds of things. I think a lot of people that aren't familiar with family content creation would look at that and go, that's horrible, that's abusive. And it is abusive.
But what I want people to understand is that that was not unique to our family. I don't know a single family content creator that did not have interactions like that with their children. With one outraged netizen writing, sir, it is abusive, but we weren't the only ones doing it. Is that you're also raising your voice is not the same as grabbing your child's face out of anger as he saw her do while recording it.
Others comment: "I didn't know it was that bad. Sir, you were recording! Make it make sense, please." Another comment reads: "A gentle reminder that Kevin Frankie ordered a cease and desist to anyone who raised concerns about the children's safety and tried to have his oldest daughter arrested."
Kevin's attorney would argue for Kevin that Jodi was the one that made sure he never saw the kids because quote, "She knew how much he valued their marriage and valued their family and it was his desire to be able to get back with the family and preserve the marriage." The attorney continues, "He's a very gentle guy and no one's ever made any allegations that he's ever physically abused those kids or anyone else. He just wants to do what's best for his kids and get them back. Get them under his tutelage and his fathership to protect them."
Many netizens feel, I don't buy these excuses. You left for a year and completely cut your kids off. Your therapist tricked you into child neglect and abandonment. Yeah, okay, no one's buying it. A lot of netizens are conflicted, writing, I always had the impression that Kevin was pretty weak and just let Ruby take the lead. It's obvious now. It's still hard to imagine how he saw everything that was coming out of Jodi and he still allowed her access to the kids with him totally out of the picture. He was both victim and perpetrator to some degree.
I think it is the belief of many that Kevin's true saving grace are his kids, that they are somewhat in his lives. Otherwise, I think the internet would rip him apart. I think the fact that Chad is trying to have a relationship with him, Sherry, I think while more wary, perhaps she seems to be open to the idea of one day having a relationship with him, though she still calls him Kevin. It seems like that is his only saving grace.
The fact that Chad even said, "For my dad, I understand that in order to get his family back and not run into problems with my mom and our therapist, he had to obey her rules and follow each step."
But one comment just reads:
Others think that Ruby's siblings and parents are also at fault to some degree. Some netizens have expressed frustration stating that the siblings have known, must have known something and could have done something to protect the kids. Bonnie, Ruby's sister, has publicly come out to condemn Kevin saying, "...the one person that could have done something and had the legal right was Kevin. It was Kevin's job to check in on things and he did not."
She also posted a video titled, I am not my sister. I am not my sister's crimes, which a lot of netizens didn't really like the title of that video. I mean, I get it. A lot of people were coming on to the siblings saying, how did you not protect your nieces and nephews? But at the same time, I think as an aunt myself, it's unhinged.
Ruby siblings explained that for the past few years, Ruby and Kevin have pushed them out of their lives because they all hated connections. Bonnie says, my thoughts towards Ruby, Kevin and Jodi and connections is that all of it was bullcrap. It was complete indoctrination of this thing that they created. I don't agree with how extreme they were on everything. I knew they were weird. I knew that they were off.
Those are the things that we kept quiet about because what was I going to say? What was I going to do? What was I? I was not going to come out and publicly say, I don't like my sister. I don't like what she's doing. And I think she's weird. That is what we kept quiet about.
Julie, another one of Ruby's sisters says, "We saw it. We all saw it. We all felt weird about this Jodi lady. We weren't comfortable with it. We didn't like the teachings. Ruby was bringing it to the family functions and we were this close to telling her, 'If you come to our family events anymore, we do not want to hear what you're learning through connections because we don't like it.' We never did say that to her, but we thought about it." So three years ago, Ruby and I hung out bottling tomatoes and then a few weeks later, crap hit the fan. She left the family and didn't even call me and say anything.
Literally nothing. She did call my mom, yelled at my mom on the phone for 45 minutes and accused her of things that were not true. Basically, I'm here to say that I have no idea what was happening. Like Bonnie mentioned in her video, we are not going to let Ruby destroy another thing in our lives. We have platforms where we try to bring brightness and positivity into each other's lives. That's why we didn't talk about Ruby in our content for the past three years.
Sherry writes in her book, it took around two to three years before Ruby would cut ties entirely with her family. And as I watched Ruby delete contact after contact from her phone, I couldn't help but wonder, was this healing? I will say...
I don't think it's right for people to blame Ruby's siblings and parents for things that they would not have known because we don't know what they knew. We don't know how much Ruby was telling them, how much their nieces and nephews were disclosing with him. Probably not much. But I do think a lot of netizens didn't like their reactions. It came off very angry and it came off a little bizarre, right?
It just felt like there was -- they wanted more sympathy for the process that they as a family unit were going through rather than just feeling protective over their nieces and nephews. Making things even more complicated is that most of Ruby's siblings are family vloggers. Some of them are more aggressively family vloggers, and some of them are more vloggers that show their families, which Sherri has been an incredible advocate for passing laws for family vlogging and child influencers.
She recently got a bill passed in Utah legislature and they are waiting for the governor to just sign it to become law. It's a bill aimed at protecting children of family vloggers. It would require parents to set aside a portion of their earnings into a trust fund for their children. Kind of like if you had a child that was in Hollywood, you have to set aside money for them for when they turn 18 if they're working as a child.
And there's another part of that bill that is when that child turns 18, they have the right to request the removal of any and all content that they are featured in. Utah is one of the biggest states for family vlogging. So this is monumental. And again, please read Sherry's book. I think even if it's like, yeah, family vlogging is bad by reading her book, it does provide such a visceral perspective that honestly, I think it changed my brain chemistry on pretty much everything that has to do with family vlogging.
Sherry stated before, "I would tell myself it doesn't matter what they say. I know how I feel about myself. I think I believed that for a while, but I would always find myself just checking comments on Instagram, on YouTube, just to see what people had to say about whether it was good or bad. It's like, okay, I just want to be aware of what people are saying, I guess."
And personally speaking, I could probably work myself into a full-blown panic attack just by going and seeking out negative comments on the internet. And I'm an adult with a whole support system. Sherry, I mean, this was when she was a child.
I read through old snark forums, not on Reddit, like a different website that should never be named and should not even exist. These are comments from 2016, before Ruby Frankie was cancelled. The comments that people are leaving about Ruby Frankie's children, about literal 7-year-olds, were some of the most disgusting things I've ever read. You would think that these children committed grave crimes against humanity.
It was really deplorable. I mean, I genuinely had a crisis in the middle of the night one night where I'm like, who are these people? Are these adults doing this? Because that's crazy. Who seeks out these forums and goes on to have lengthy discussions about how much they hate, first of all, a seven-year-old child, and second of all, a seven-year-old child that they had never even met before.
Sherry details one comment stuck with her, which was, "Sherry is such a kiss ass. She's always riding out her siblings and trying to be Ruby's favorite. So smug." Sherry remembers thinking, and she writes in her book, "I'm not sucking up. I'm surviving. There's a difference." She says, "Family vlogging ruined my innocence long before Ruby committed a crime. I promise you that my experiences are not unique and are happening to child influencers all over Utah and the country."
So this makes everything kind of trickier considering Ruby's siblings, many of them are still making family vlogging content with Sherry's cousins. And some of them have pivoted so they show way less of their kids now after everything that's happened, but some of them have not.
One of Ruby's sisters would even state that her vlogging is very different from 8 Passengers because her kids have a choice. They have a voice and they have a retirement fund growing for them when they turn into adults, which of course, netizens have very mixed feelings about. As for Jessie, Jodi's niece, they say one of the worst parts of Jodi's abuse is that she makes you believe that you deserve it.
They say, I was in it. I believed it real, real strong. Even when all this stuff was going on with Jodi, what made it so much worse is that I kept on internalizing it. I fully believed it. I fully believed that this was God's will. And if I had just put myself over to the Lord, if I just prayed more, if I was more faithful, that all of this would end up being for good. That I truly needed everything that Jodi was doing. I deserved it and I needed it. In this case, it was really extreme where the abuse was so extreme, but
then if you bear it, then you would get these moments of immense reward from her. And it's just such a psychological fuckery. They continue, the prerequisites of this is already instilled in the Mormon church of having to earn love. This has affected my life forever. For the rest of my life, it's this whole thought of if I try a little harder, if I do a little bit more, maybe they'll love me. Maybe they'll accept me. It took me over a decade to get to a point where I didn't think that I was actually evil.
Even their parents did not want to face the truth. They basically told them along the lines of, whenever Jesse would display anger and pain at what they went through with Jodi, they would just tell them along the lines of, get over yourself. It must be so hard for you to carry around such toxic emotions all the time. They say, it doesn't stop. This nearly killed me. This has affected every aspect of my life, every single part. My ability to have friends, my ability to have partners, my ability to hold down jobs. I mean, I have complex PTSD from this.
Remember how in part one we went over how Ruby decided that the two youngest kids were not going to have Christmas presents because they were getting the gift of love and boundaries. Same thing happened to Jesse under Jodi. Jesse says,
Adam Paul Steed from part two, his marriage and life was ruined because he went to Jodi for therapy on the recommendation of his church bishop. He went to Jodi's sentencing and he said, when I saw Ruby Frankie, I saw my ex-wife sitting there saying the same exact thing. My ex-wife would have said the exact same thing Ruby Frankie said today.
Which was what? Was it a thank you note or? And just like all of the Jodi made me do this. And a lot of other women would have said the same thing. You have no idea how many victims are out there. Their minds have been messed up so much with this. The prosecutor said that he was
That he said the children thought it was their fault. All of the adult men think it's their fault. All of the women think it's their fault. Jodi Hildebrandt grows off people's pain and destruction. And when she sat there and said she loved the children, I almost fell out of my chair. The only thing, I mean, look at her version of loving children is finding a way to make them hurt. And more than anything possible, it's like an energy she feeds off of. Jodi doesn't love children. Jodi is like Ted Bundy.
Chad, the eldest son, was in the documentary and has been very transparent about how he's healing and dealing with everything. He's very active on his social media accounts. I think that you guys should go and show support if you'd like. He went viral recently for his TikToks about Ruby. He has one where he says he got a tattoo for his mom. He wipes his arm and there's no tattoo. Or another one where he shows Mr. Beast making contestants sleep on a beanbag as a challenge and he said he would have killed it.
A lot of netizens are glad that he's able to find ways to cope and heal and using humor seems to be a good method, hopefully. He's also a realtor, so if you guys have realtor needs, you know, you know where to go. Chad says, I definitely hate the things Ruby did. I have no contact with her right now and I don't plan to anytime soon. But then again, she's still blood. She's still my mom and maybe down the road eventually I'll have a conversation with her.
Chad has asked, "Do you miss her?" He said, "I miss the mother figure. I miss how she was when I was very young, but I think what she's going through is deserved. I don't think that she should get out till the kids, all the kids turn 18 years old, but that doesn't mean that I don't have love for her." "Sherry attended Ruby's sentencing," she said. "I said I was not gonna look at Ruby. Like, I don't care to see her, so I just stared at the judge the entire time. I personally have seen so many, too many crocodile tears from her, so I can't say whether she's sorry."
Sherry is asked by the documentary, "Where are you right now with Ruby? Like where are you at with Ruby?" "I will never talk to her again. Like whether she's the most apologetic person in the world or not, like that doesn't change anything for me. We have one childhood and one mom and that was mine." Sherry says, "I'm still angry about what she did, of course, that's never gonna go away, but I'm living my life and I'm not letting her take any more of that from me than she's already taken."
As for how she feels about Kevin, she states, I would never forget the pain that he caused, ignored and enabled. He has not been absolved, but I have chosen to release the burden of resentment that I held against him. By doing that, I was granting myself the freedom to heal.
She has since announced that she is engaged and she is closing the public chapter of her life. She will no longer be sharing details about her future husband, her future children, but she will be posting about all the work that she's doing to protect children influencers and children that are used for family vlogging content creation.
and hopefully she'll write more books even if they're fiction. I know that she's a huge history buff. I would read every single thing that she writes. She's an incredible writer. She has such a witty yet vulnerable voice. The way that she's able to balance it even when she's talking about such personal heavy topics I think is a skill that most people don't have. So again, go get her book.
Kevin has since filed for divorce. He states that he requested that Ruby stop reaching out to him. He says in an interview, "The last letter that I received from her from prison was maybe in March or April of last year, and then I requested the Department of Corrections to ask her to stop writing me. I didn't want to hear anymore. I didn't like what she was saying, and I'm not going to share that. That's between her and me, but it just didn't feel right, and it didn't feel good, and I'm very angry.
I'm still very angry and I need space and I need time. I'm not ashamed to say that after being married over 20 years to that woman, I truly did and still do love her, but that doesn't excuse what she did and it doesn't excuse how she hurt our children and how she hurt me and there's some things, you know, there's some bridges that you just can't cross and then cross back. She burned the bridges. As of today, I'm still working through the divorce. We're trying to reach a settlement. It's been a long process.
It appears that he has moved back into the family home and is currently seeking custody of the four underage children. Jesse Hildebrandt, Jodie's niece that was tortured prior to Jodie and Ruby teaming up to inflict maximum amount of pain on children,
They are now a tattoo artist in Seattle. They say they're kind of like a grandma. Honestly, they just like to stay home, make sourdough bread. They say it's an uphill battle of becoming happy and successful in the wake of no familial support and severe abuse. It's just inexplicable to describe. In a lot of ways, I do feel really lucky that I have been able to create the life that I have and to have the friends that I have, the chosen family that I have. I feel very fortunate.
As for Adam, Jodi called him the most threatening, scary person that she had ever dealt with. Adam says, I guess that's my new claim to fame. The most threatening person in Jodi's life. I will be along with Jesse because I have the truth. And because of that, so many people will come forward.
As for the case, Adam says about Jodi and Ruby, how dare you think you could do this and get away with it? Jodi is far worse than someone that physically abuses kids. She got into their heads and makes them feel helpless and hopeless. I'm up at night. I can't even explain what it's been like to have to wait 15 years for Jodi Hildebrand to go to prison. Life is short and this lady stole more innocence from my life than any abuser did."
He's remarried to an Egyptian Syrian doctor. He says, "She's got her feet on the ground. She grounds me whenever I have trauma just in two seconds. She means the world to me." Now we have this beautiful little baby boy. I took a bath with my baby boy this morning and with my wife and it was intimate and beautiful. And so to the long line of predators in my life who thought they could steal that from me, well, they can't and nor can they. Victims feel like they have no innocence.
find your innocence again find good friends good people find love and find meeting i promise every victim out there that you will go through a lot of negative feelings and trauma and a lot of people will just try to push it out the window embrace it pull your trigger so much that they no longer work stand up with your chin high knowing it'll cause a hurricane for a while but afterwards
you're going to live in the free world, not in bars or cages with triggers everywhere. Have a complete different philosophy that truth leads us to freedom, not to complete and utter control. And don't feel sorry for me. I'm going home to the cutest, most beautiful, fun wife and baby and life that's going in the right direction. So don't feel sorry for me. And don't ever think that Jodi is a super powerful lady. She's not. These abusers, they're not. The ones that have chosen to abandon love are not powerful people.
About Adam Paulstead, one netizen comments: "It's chilling how they turned a true victim into a make-believe predator. Shocked at how easily Jodi exploited Adam's trauma and how stupidly the wife accepted it. Jodi is clearly a sick sadist, but the wife sounds like an insensitive fool. Stupid or not, I hope she's haunted for life about what she's done." Another reads: "Adam's story was heartbreaking and extremely enlightening. I feel for him and his family and hearing everything that he's went through was so hard."
About his ex-wife, netizens are divided on how to feel but most agree. I think she was victimized and controlled by Jodi, but her behavior was unforgivable. The system failed Adam and she and her parents and Jodi tortured an innocent man. As for Ruby, one netizen just puts bluntly, "She has about as much empathy as a doorknob."
For Jodi, one person writes, regardless of how much prison time she ends up serving, one day she's going to die alone and no one will be at her funeral unless it's to piss on her grave. She's incapable of being loved or loving anyone in return. And I love that for her.
Others were just shocked at Jodi Hildebrandt's actions. Even her niece has stated that some aspects of Jodi, if it weren't so evil, so depraved, and so vile, it would almost be funny at how ridiculous Jodi Hildebrandt is. Netizens are having a bit of a field day with the footage of her pretending to be possessed, with comments reading, "She's the girl at sleepovers that pretends to talk in her sleep." Others speculate, "I think she was pretending to do that so that Kevin wouldn't question the weird noises coming out of her bedroom."
Or another, the secondhand embarrassment I felt knowing she was so committed to the bit. Or another reading, girl, you are too grown for this. And that is the case of Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrand. What are your thoughts on this? When do you think that they're going to get out? Let me know in the comments. Go buy Sherry's book and I will see you in the next one. Stay safe. Ever walk into a room and forget why you're there? Or misplace your keys more than you'd like to admit? As we get older, our brain slows down. We need to protect it.
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