The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke | Enter Jodi Hildebrandt | 3
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This is a Law and Crime Network presentation. This podcast explores themes of child abuse and trauma. Please listen with care. ♪

She's very good at recognizing the loopholes in culture and the disempowerment in the systems that she's a part of. And she takes advantage of those things fully for her power. And I think it was at this point where she started to receive training or guidance from Jodi Hildebrandt. My first thought was, oh, this is a step in a direction that I didn't see this family going. ♪

And the fact that she was laughing about it in the video and then thought it was okay to post online just kind of goes to show there was seriously something wrong with her psyche there. And my kids are literally starving. I hesitate to say this because it's going to sound like I'm like a mean barbarian, but I told the kids, I said, I'm not even going to let you eat breakfast until you get your chores done. There were obvious concerns, not just in the comment section, but people that had real reason to believe there was potential abuse going on.

I'm Paula Barros, and this is The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke, presented by Law & Crime. When we left off with the Frankes, Chad, Ruby's oldest son, had recently returned from the wilderness therapy program on Assazi. The 10 weeks he spent in the Arizona desert sparked controversy amongst eight passenger subscribers.

In Chad's absence, fans of the family vlog hashed out debates in the comments section, weighing the pros and cons of extreme intervention for seemingly normal teenage rebellion. But followers' opinions fell on deaf ears. Ruby Frankie may have put her parenting style on the internet for the whole world to see, but not up for debate. What did you learn? Well, I learned about the three different types of pain.

And we can feel pain in ways of our own choices, other people's choices, and just like random events. And it's our way to choose to see things in truth. For Chad, therapy didn't begin and end in Arizona. When he returned home to Utah, he resumed counseling under the care of Jodi Hildebrandt.

A fellow Utah-based blonde-haired Mormon vlogger who runs a life coaching company by the same name as the podcast Ruby had name-dropped a few times on eight passengers. I've mentioned Jodi a few times. She has a podcast called Connections with an Ex.

KUTV's Brian Schnee has researched and reported on Connections and Jodi's business model. Connections offered one-on-one coaching sessions with Jodi or couples classes or specific classes for women and specific classes for men as it pertained to perhaps strengthening your relationship or getting the most out of your life. A lot of this was life coaching by definition and not really therapy.

Before founding Connections, Jodi worked for five years as a counselor at Cirque Lodge, a renowned luxury drug rehabilitation center in Orem, Utah. On the Connections website, Jodi describes herself as a mental fitness and relationship expert. On the webpage to sign up for her services, she claims to have spent 25 years working with people just like you to help facilitate positive and powerful change.

From the connections page, Jodi's reputation and approach looks impressive, thorough, and effective. But side by side with her personal website, JodiHildebrandt.com, there's one glaring disparity. A hyperlink hovers above the homepage that reads, quote, License on Probation.

Something where we've noticed here in a trend in the state of Utah, where people even are losing their licenses as a clinical mental health therapist. Sometimes they'll just turn the page and go up. I'm a life coach now because it's an unregulated industry.

In January 2012, Jodi's license to practice was put on probation by the Utah Clinical Mental Health Counselor Licensing Board for 18 months after allegedly discussing a patient's mental health concerns with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young University without her patient's permission.

In an April 2012 article in the Salt Lake Tribune, the same patient claimed that while receiving marriage counseling from Jodi to the tune of nearly $2,000 a month, his life only became more complicated. But the bad press and probation didn't put a damper on Jodi's career.

It's actually what catalyzed going out on her own and founding the Connections Classroom. They started really taking off, posting advice for parents, posting advice for couples is really where Jodi's root of all of this is, based on couples therapy and many other forms of therapy, depending on how you look at it. They started coming together, posting videos, working together in conferences, obviously setting up coaching and classes because it wasn't considered therapy.

therapy per se. It was more of that loosely termed coaching or guidance or help even. Not long after the Connections classroom launched in 2012, Jodi's offering saw demand and found an audience. Connections promised a program that would inspire feelings of change, wholeness, centeredness, empowerment, liberation, freedom, and lead to greater interpersonal connections.

And nearly eight years later, Ruby Frankie was looking to buy what Connections was selling. After half a decade's worth of consistent family vlogging, Ruby Frankie's content on YouTube takes a pivot. By 2019, she'd met Jodi Hildebrandt. Jodi was teaching her to become a life coach.

While Ruby never made explicit how she and Jodi came to be in cahoots so quickly, 8 Passengers subscriber Alice Dawes remembers her videos certainly indicated that she was all in. So I think it's around that 2019 mark that we see a split in priorities from getting the views, from the popularity to, well, this is the right way to parent. I'm a mother. That's my job first and foremost. And under the influence of Jodi Hildebrandt, completely kind of took a different track.

Ruby's videos now had a clear angle beyond the family diary style fans had grown accustomed to. She purported to want to be able to coach other mothers and families through the issues they might be having with their teenagers and be able to point to her own family and say, hey, look how well I've done here. And Ruby wasn't just pushing anecdotal advice. It was clearly coming from a singular source.

"Connections peeps, how has 2020 been treating you?" Jodi Hildebrand and Connections were behind everything. And in a post from January 2020, while unloading groceries, Ruby urges her followers to buy in too. "Avoiding your problems."

and distracting are not going to help you bring that peace that you are looking for. I hope you will join me on January 15th and 16th in St. George, where you're going to learn tools and principles that will help actually bring peace into our lives. Jodi Hildebrandt has helped thousands of women just like you bring joy and peace back into their lives, back into their relationships.

Beyond extolling advice on eight passengers, behind the scenes, Ruby was rising in the ranks at Connections. She began publicly calling herself Jodi's business partner and even earned herself a place on the Connections website as a, quote, certified mental fitness trainer. According to their website, Ruby, quote, provides content on Connections social media platforms and podcasts that focus on empowering parents and children to live in truth, unquote.

You may have noticed that I am not vlogging near as much as I used to. And that is because I have been getting more involved in the mental health community. I've been working really close with Jodi over at Connections Classroom. By 2021, 8Passengers' YouTube channel had noticeably wider gaps in content.

And in a vlog from December, filmed in the front seat of her car, Ruby addressed them head on. A lot of people are like, how come you're not vlogging as much as you used to? This is why. I am so passionate, so passionate about what I'm learning. This is, that's where I've been wanting to spend my time. I hope those of you who watch me know that my whole motive for vlogging has been to create a support system for families.

for mothers to be an example of what a healthy mom looks like.

Ryan Schnee remembers this being when Ruby's change in course really solidified. It was in 2021 when Ruby Franke really started to segue towards Connections Classroom. Ruby at one point mentions, I just need a shift. I'm doing this for my family or in some way, and then starts to throw all her energy towards Jodi Hildebrand and Connections Classroom. I really think she got roped in pretty quickly with Jodi.

Something certainly seemed off to viewers. Ruby may have shown sides of herself in her five years of vlogging most people would choose to hide, but she seldom came off as impressionable. In fact, most of the time she stood out as impervious to others' advice and opinions, almost as if part of her brand was being defiant. But now, Ruby was in the palm of Jodi's hand.

And Jodi's niece, Jessie Hildebrandt, who uses they/them pronouns, says Jodi's path to the change and empowerment Connections had made its mission was far from paved with good intentions. Jodi is, in my experience, one of the most intelligent human beings I've ever come in contact with.

She knows exactly what she's doing. I don't know if she believes in her own delusions of grandeur or if she's just using that as a mode to control, but she knows exactly-- I mean, she is a trained therapist. She knows how humans work. And I think that this is both innate

I think it's nurture and nature. I think that she also just has a talent for it, but she is incredibly good at recognizing the raw material that's out of her disposal. She's very good at recognizing the loopholes in culture and the disempowerment in the systems that she's a part of. And she takes advantage of those things fully for her power.

On November 30, 2021, Ethan Crumbly opened fire on his classmates at Oxford High School, killing four students. In an unprecedented turn of events, his parents, Jennifer and James, were charged in connection with their son's acts of violence.

It's a case that raised questions about parenting, responsibility, and what could have been done to prevent the heartbreaking outcome. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of this landmark case, taking you behind the scenes of the trials of Jennifer and James Crumbly that has everyone asking, "What would I do if I were held responsible for my child's crimes?"

You can listen to Sins of the Child exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Now in their 30s, Jessie was 16 when they moved in with Jodi. Their experience living with Jodi paints a glaringly different picture of the healer Ruby had been depicting in her vlogs.

She's one of the most convincing, powerful humans you will ever meet. And when you are in a state of vulnerability, she can convince you of anything. I mean, I worked out in her garden in the middle of the summer. We didn't live in southern Utah, so it was not as hot or as dry. But I was working out in her yard all summer. You know, she used, you know, withholding food, withholding water as a way of force,

What you just heard from Jesse is gut-wrenching. You may be asking, what kind of person does that to a child? Well, someone like Ruby Frankie, for one.

Remember the whole saga with six-year-old Eve forgetting her lunch and how Ruby refused to bring her one to teach her a lesson? I just got a text message from Eve's teacher and she said that Eve did not pack a lunch today and can I bring a lunch over to the school? This happens quite often when you're having raising children because

I know that her teacher is uncomfortable with her being hungry and not having a lunch. And it would ease her discomfort if I came to the school with a lunch. But I responded and just said, "Eve is responsible for making her lunches in the morning." And she actually told me she did pack a lunch. So the natural outcome is she's just going to need to be hungry.

And hopefully, hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch. Yeah, that video. While Ruby was under the guidance of the Connections curriculum and peddling Jodi's teachings on eight passengers, she published multiple vlogs where she clearly stated using withholding food as punishment. Eve, jump in. Massage my back. Get rubbing. Massage my back. Get scratching. Scratch my head.

Come on, you gotta earn your keep. You don't get breakfast if you don't massage my back. You're so mean. Okay. I guess you don't get food today. I'm only gonna say it one more time and then you're gonna lose the privilege to eat dinner. And my kids are literally starving. I hesitate to say this because it's gonna sound like I'm like a mean barbarian, but I told the kids, I said, I'm not even gonna let you eat breakfast until you get your chores done.

Food wasn't the only basic necessity Ruby documented withholding from her children. In a June 2020 video titled, What We Haven't Told You, a conversation between Ruby and Chad revealed something that shocked viewers. In our house, when we take something away, it's because they have shown that they are not hungry.

responsible enough to manage it. And so we don't just turn around and give it back as soon as they start acting good. It has to be consistent over a minimum, minimum of six months. And that's showing up consistent in every aspect of their life. That's a new rule. That's a new rule. A minimum of six months. Have I ever given something back less than six months?

And that was punishment for pranking his little brother, Russell.

Alexis Anderson recalls that this reveal really got her gears turning. When I heard that Chad had been sleeping on a beanbag for several months, it again was one of those things where the punishment just did not align with what he did to get in trouble about it. Like, they're siblings. Siblings play those type of jokes on each other. That's just what siblings do. I woke up my nephew on a snow day and told him we still had school. I made him get ready.

but I didn't get my bed taken away. Like it's ridiculous. And the saddest part about that is when they were talking about it on their YouTube channel, it almost sounded like that was normal.

And it made you wonder what else is going on behind closed doors. Like they're talking about him not sleeping in the bed for months and on a beanbag with smiles on their faces because they have no idea that that is not what goes on in a typical household. But Jesse mentioned these tactics are straight from Jodi's playbook.

And from Connection's perspective, they serve a purpose. If you find identity in something and you are struggling with management of yourself, those things need to be taken away from you so they can get to the root cause of what's going on. So anything that gives you a sense of self, anything that gives you a sense of identity is taken from you. And that's like a practice that she preaches. Children that are unmanageable

have to be all their, everything external has to be taken away from them because they need to first start with managing themselves.

These instances of extreme punishment rattled viewers like Julia. She deprived her child of that basic necessity when she had the means to get him 10 beds with all the money she was raking in from YouTube. So to me, that was just completely unacceptable. And the fact that she was laughing about it in the video and then thought it was okay to post online just kind of goes to show there was seriously something wrong with her psyche there.

And Julia wasn't the only subscriber catching on. Alice noticed the correlation between Ruby's increasingly punitive behavior and her prolonged involvement with Jodi. It's interesting because they had been positioned themselves as authorities on parenthood. They had six children, well-behaved, well-presented, well-spoken children. So when you see the flip side of this is

In their punishment methods, I don't think she had done something as serious as taking away her child's bed for seven months until this point. And I think it was at this point where she started to receive training or guidance from Jodie Hildebrandt. My first thought was, oh, this is a step in a direction that I didn't see this family going.

The news of Chad losing his bedroom for over six months traveled beyond 8 Passengers fandom. There were obvious concerns, not just in the comment section, but people that had real reason to believe there was potential abuse going on within the Frankie family and within the 8 Passengers platform itself on YouTube, on the videos, in the content.

As we mentioned back in episode one, less than a week after Ruby posted the video where Chad revealed he'd been sleeping on a beanbag, a Change.org petition for the Division of Child and Family Services in Utah to investigate the Frankies received 18,000 signatures. Brian says CPS did pay a visit to the Frankies.

but the details of their investigation are limited. A lot of those are private records, I mean, that you can't get, and we never get them from CPS. What we did see is Springville Police assisting, you know, Child Protective Services at the house. And all we see is an agency assist on the report. There's no details of what they found. There's no details of how they proceeded.

But just four weeks after the controversial video was posted, Ruby and Kevin give an interview to Business Insider in hopes of clearing the air. Kevin said the decision came amid, quote, years of physical and emotionally damaging behavior that Chad was participating in with his siblings and classmates. Then the couple went on to explain that a therapist, Jody Hildebrandt, recommended separating Chad and Russell from the same bedroom.

Ruby told Business Insider, Again, Jesse says this sort of psychology Ruby alluded to in the Business Insider interview was textbook Jodi.

The thing about Jodi that makes her so dangerous and convincing is that she uses a lot of truth. And so a lot of what she's doing, a lot of things that she is saying are methodologies and modalities in modern psychology. There's a lot of truth behind her obsession with shame.

We know that shame is a driving force for a lot of unhealthy and maladaptive behaviors. But the thing that she does is that she starts with that, ropes people in, and then she becomes the cure. So she perpetrates more shame, and then she becomes the only source for the cure in a very similar way that a lot of high demand religions do. So she's using a format that

that's kind of already built into the culture that she is predominantly seeing and the one that she's predominantly familiar with. She ropes you in with some pretty evidence-based psychological ideas and then just twists and warps them so you can't tell what's true and what's not true.

There were obvious crossovers between Jesse's experience living with Jodi and the parenting methodologies Ruby began practicing with her own children. I think a lot of the alarm bells started going off about three, three and a half years ago now when some of those videos started surfacing of withholding food from your children or not bringing the food to school when somebody forgets it or forcing somebody to sleep on the ground.

It sounds like a lot of the same things a la Jesse Hildebrand when they talk to me about their own circumstances of living with Jodi Hildebrand, of being forced to live outside and the withholding. You just got to look closely at some of those episodes. And I think there are ones that people really keyed in on. For those who looked close enough, the proof was in the pudding.

You get the sense that there was some crossover somewhere where Ruby was learning these tactics from Jodi and then putting some of it on her children for the world to see. But Ruby's relationship with her children wasn't the only one to experience a shift. Her marriage to Kevin saw changes too. Utah attorney Randy Kester says that just like the parenting,

Kevin and Ruby's relationship was subjected to Jody's influence too. Kevin was attending men's groups that were facilitated by Jody. And during those groups, he was being downgraded and diminished and told how bad he was and that he needed to repent. And the best way to repent was to not infect his family with his problems. And that's why you need to stay away.

From his reporting at KUTV on Jodi and connections, Brian Schnee gleaned alienation was another familiar Jodi tactic. There was a process of isolation that Ruby underwent. And initially it was from her extended family. That could be sisters, that could be parents, that could be cousins.

And it went further. Then it went from extended family to the husband inside the home. Separation. I would imagine that meant sleeping in different rooms, right? And really isolating yourself from the other, maybe in a way to strengthen the relationship. When in reality, in this situation, it likely ripped it apart.

To Brian, it was crystal clear who was behind Ruby and Kevin drifting apart almost overnight. So as far as we understand it, the relationship that Ruby and Kevin had early on was relatively normal. Married couple. They were in videos together. And then as far as Ruby meeting Jodi, that's when things separated. In 2022, Ruby returned from a trip with Jodi, reiterating to Kevin that his attitude was harmful to their family.

And she has some other shocking news for him too. Ruby felt like there were differences in their marriage. And at one point, in conjunction with Jodi Hildebrand, it was sort of like, we have to separate to save our marriage. Ruby told Kevin their separation had firm conditions. You know, we'll keep working on our marriage, but for now...

If we're going to repair our marriage and be back together as a family, you have to be awake and you have to work on yourself and don't have contact with the kids. Don't have contact with me unless I initiate it.

Kevin, according to his attorney Randy Kester, reluctantly agreed and continued participating in the Connections classroom on Zoom. He was being led to believe they were working toward reconciliation. He wanted to be back with his family. He wanted to be back with his wife, but was being told by Jodi and by Ruby that in order to repair all this, you need to stay away. And was being told that, hey, with you away, everything's blissful. The kids are doing well. Everything's just great.

But Brian Schnee says he found that Kevin's circumstances weren't actually so unique. Ruby Frankie's separation from Kevin Frankie is textbook from what we've heard from other people about Jodi Hildebrand. It is very similar to what other couples have gone through, as far as we understand from the teachings of Jodi Hildebrand over the years. There were people that came to us and say, Jodi ripped apart my marriage.

Jodi's niece, Jesse, recalled that just like when Jodi planted the idea that Kevin was infecting his family, Jodi made Jesse believe that they possessed harmful qualities and isolated them from friends and family too.

She strips you of identity, and then she strips you of credibility and isolates you. So I'm isolated from everyone I know. And then she's telling all of these people, "Jessie is a compulsive liar. "Jessie is a masterful manipulator." That is her favorite term. Anyone that has worked with Jodi, I'm certain when I say that, it's like, "Ugh, triggering." Masterful manipulator. Everything that came out of my mouth was considered a lie. I wasn't allowed to be around people because I was so full of evil that it wasn't safe for me to be around people.

Jodi's agenda, as described by Jesse, gets progressively more calculating. She recognizes the raw material at hand. She sees the areas that she can exploit. So she strips you of identity, she strips you of credibility, and she isolates you. And so she's saying everything that you say is a lie. Everything that you say is manipulation. You're manipulating everyone around you. You're lying and destroying everyone's life.

Under the impression the two would reconcile, Kevin moved out of their large family home in Springville and into a small apartment. Under the direction of both Jodi and Ruby, communication between Kevin and his children was cut off completely, and his communication with Ruby was only on her terms. In just two years, the Frankie family experienced a complete upheaval, and there was one common thread tying it all together—

While the family may have had some struggles prior to Jody coming into their lives, it just kind of seems like that once she got involved in their lives, it just destroyed his family. It did. Jody Hildebrandt was just getting started with the Frankies. There's a lot to be told. There's a lot of chapters in this book and stories.

The more I dig into it, the more I've said this before and I'll say it again, I think that Jodi is in the middle of all this. And I describe her as an onion with an octopus inside. The more layers you peel back about Jodi's life and connections, every time you peel back a layer, an octopus tentacle comes springing out.

We would say somebody is going to get hurt or worse, and it's just a matter of time, and they're so full of themselves, and that essentially, I mean, it's a train barreling toward a bridge that's out, and there's nothing that's going to stop it until that thing happens.

She sets the scene with the psychological and spiritual abuse to then justify the physical abuse. I think that we certainly see parts of her personality that tend toward, you know, this kind of cult-like figure. I think in reality, Ruby was the only one who really saw or looked up to or believed in the message that she was purveying. Can you have a cult of two?

I think that Ruby and Jodi demonstrate and show the world a pattern of that pressure cooker and that dynamic that's going to manifest in other ways. There needs to be eyes on this because this is frightening and something's going to happen if more people don't start paying attention. And unfortunately, like it's a horrible thing to be right about, but that's exactly what happened.

That's all coming up on the rise and fall of Ruby Frankie. This has been a Law & Crime production. I'm your host, Paula Barrows. Our executive producer is Jessica Lowther. Our producer and writer is Cooper Maul. Our editor is Brad Mabee. Our bookers are Alyssa Fisher and Diane Kay. And special thanks to Sean Panzera for designing our key art. ♪