Hi, guys, Welcome to a new episode of Legally Brunette.

I will be your host Emily Simpson with Shane with Shane, but I hope everybody had a good holiday.

We're back after the Christmas and New Year break, and before we get into we're going to talk about Jody Hildebrandt, who if you followed us along from the beginning, we did an earlier episode on Ruby Frankie, which is the mom influencer in Utah that was arrested I think it was twenty twenty three, maybe not too long ago, for four counts of child abuse and she is currently in prison.

But if you listen to our earlier episodes, you know that Jody hilda Brandt was the therapist that moved into the home and had a lot of influence over the family and ended up being arrested as well.

Criminal therapist.

The criminal therapist, Right, So there's a new Netflix show out that really focuses just on Jody hilda Brandt.

So that's what we're going to talk about today.

But before we get into that, let's just do a little update.

There's been information that has come out recently on Brian Coburger.

Again, if you remember Brian Coburger is the Idaho college murderer.

He's in prison.

Remember he did not go to trial.

He took a plea deal so he could avoid the death penalty.

Right, so he's part of his perfect crime strategy.

Yes that he's guilty.

He's guilty because he wants to avoid the death penalty.

So if you have not listened to that episode, it's a really good one.

I think we might have actually done two episodes on the Idaho murders, so you can always find those on our feed.

Legally Brunette So, Brian Coberger's sister has spoken publicly about the last holidays she's spent with him.

Just days before law enforcement and descended on her parents Pennsylvania home and arrested him in connection with the fatal stabbings of the four University of Idaho students.

You know, this is something I was thinking about when we talked about even Brian Coburger or Luigi MANNGIONI.

We haven't done one on him, but I always wondered.

Those are very infamous people that are in the news.

Everybody recognizes the face and the name.

It's very huge and true crime.

Even if you don't follow true crime I know what's going on, so.

And you know a little bit, but you don't really Like with Luigi Mangioni, you don't hear anything from like what his family.

You don't see what are they gonna do?

No, I'm just saying photos no, But I'm saying I feel like they take a step back and hide.

Out, because again, what would you expect him to do.

I would think that if they were out and about, like he's so huge, that paparazzi would be taking photos of them or trying to get statements from them or contacting them.

But you don't see anything the same with Brian Coberger, like he was such a I.

Don't know if people are really interested in finding out what extended family has to say about him.

I want to know what his parents think about him being a murderer of four college students, and so anyway, I am going to DM his sister.

So.

In an interview she did recently with The New York Times, mel Coburger said she became physically ill when she learned of her brother's arrest and assisted she had no prior knowledge of the crimes.

She said, I have always been a person who has spoken up for what was right.

If I ever had a reason to believe my brother did anything, I would have turned him in.

Weeks after the killings, in early December, Brian Coberger returned home to Pennsylvania and spent Christmas with his family.

According to his sister, Mel, nothing about the holiday raised alarms.

She recalled him participating in family games eating vegan cookies.

I'm glad they were vegan for him that their mother had made specifically for him, and she also said he appeared disturbed at the sight of blood when their mother accidentally cut herself while handling foil.

Well, that's the really, honestly, what I just read is just the characteristics of a psychopath, someone that can sneak into someone's home and brutally murder for college students in the middle of the night, and then go home and spend the holidays with your family and act like nothing happened.

Yeah right, Yeah, and you know, be more focused on your vegan cookies.

Exactly five days after Christmas, the FBI agents arrived at the family home and took Coburger into custody.

Mel, the sister, said she was no longer staying there at the time, and learned what had happened through her sister, Amanda mel who had been studying psychology herself, said her brother had struggled for years, including a period of heroin addiction that she attributed to severe bullying during high school.

She disclosed that he once took her phone and tried selling it eth a mall to pay for drugs.

The family feared for his life during that time, but believed he had recovered after treatment and academic success at the Sales University, followed by doctoral studies in criminology, which he was at Washington State University when the murders happened.

Let's move on to Jody hilda brand So.

The show on Netflix is called Evil Influencer The Jody Hildebrandt Story.

I watched it a couple times actually in ah.

First of all, I hesitated whether we talk about it or not, because I felt like maybe it was just again because we did the Ruby Frankie.

We watched the I watched the documentary on Ruby Frankie, so I didn't know if there was a lot of information.

But really I found this interesting because it didn't focus on Ruby so much.

Obviously, it goes into Jody and it goes into her past.

So you get a more I think three sixty view of how she ended up becoming as influential as she is, because I think the question in my mind the whole time I'm watching it is how was she able to influence so many people and so easily so.

Jody Hildebrant is a former Utah therapist and life coach who became closely involved with family vlogger Ruby Frankie.

It was a partnership that ultimately led to one of the most disturbing child abuse cases in recent years.

In August of twenty twenty three, Hildebrant and Frankie were arrested after Frankie's twelve year old son escaped from Hildebrand's home severely malnourished and injured, prompting police to uncover evidence of prolonged physical and emotional abuse which was inflicted on the two youngest children.

Those are Frankie's youngest children.

So the documentary actually starts out with that ring footage, and we did talk about it when we did the Ruby Frankie case.

But the ring footage, even though I had seen it before, and I had seen it multiple times before, even watching this new episode got no I wasn't desensitized.

I cried again when I saw it.

And you know what really made me, I think break down the most is when the child escapes.

Apparently this was the second time he escaped.

The first time they found him and brought him back to the house, but this was the second time.

I think he escaped through a window and he goes to the neighbor's home, and they have the ring footage so you can see it, and they also have the nine to one one call and all that, so you can hear everything that's going on.

But when the man opens or when he you know, he replies to the ring through the ring, he sounds like he's irritated, right, because it's like some young boys on his porch ring.

He might even not like the mom, so he might be thinking the crazy kids from next door, well, yeah, I don't bothering me again, not knowing the full length of what's going right.

So you can tell he's kind of irritated when he's like, what do you want?

You know, and the kids walking away, but you can see him come back and he's like it's personal business, and he's you know, the guy's kind of like, well, you know, what's going on, you know, why are you bothering me?

Kind of thing.

But then you can tell you can hear it.

Changed he saw that the child was in danger.

You can hear a shift.

He actually when he calls nine to one one, and you can hear it, he actually starts to sob when he's talking about the child because he talks about how his he has duct tape around his wrists and his ankles, and he's emaciated and he has scarring.

He weighed like fifty pounds.

Yeah, it's so it was really emotional to watch that.

Again.

No, I just wanted to say something because they say it was one of them horrific child abuse cases, disturbing, disturbing in recent years.

But I disagree with that.

I bet disturbing child abuse cases happen all the time.

Just this one surfaced on video camera so we got to see it.

But I don't want to overlook all the suffering that there's a lot of kids that have to go through.

It just doesn't get this level of attention.

No, And it got this level of attention because Ruby Frankie had her YouTube channel which was eight Passengers, and so she already had notoriety and I believe at the height of their YouTube channel, she had around two million subscribers, so it was huge.

People really knew who she was, especially in that Utah type of community.

And you know, everything was about posting about you know, not only the church and church teachings, but also just family life and how to raise six kids.

And you know, she put herself out there is like this amazing mother that does it all right, so people are following her, right.

So it was a fall of this eight passenger mony.

So Jody Hildebrandt was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and completed a mission after high school.

And Netflix's Evil Influencer, Jody's missionary partner recalls that she was once a beauty pageant contestant and star basketball player, and says she was particularly effective at persuading others to join the LDS Church.

It's been noted that Hildebrant has shared limited details about her personal life over the years.

In past talk, she has said that she married her husband in nineteen ninety three and had two children, but the marriage ended in divorce just three years later.

She has not publicly identified her former husband or children, and has acknowledged that she is estranged from her kids.

Now, this is interesting to me because this woman holds, how it starts, holds herself out to be a marriage therapist.

It'd be like me being an alcoholic like sponsor or whatever and being an alcoholic.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So she holds herself out to be a therapist of marriages and to be an expert on parenting children, even though she has two adult children that she's estranged from.

And I tried to find information on them.

You can't find anything.

Whoever these two kids are.

I feel like they've changed their name and they've scrubbed themselves from the internet, and they want nothing to do with her.

You can't find it.

Who knows.

They might have been adopted by the stepmother or something like that long ago, and I don't know.

She wouldn't care anyway, she didn't strange for them.

But this woman never remarried and never had more children.

But then she is an She holds herself out to be an expert on marriages and children.

So, following her divorce, Jody Hildebrant returned to academia, earning a degree in English from Brigham Young University before completing a master's degree in psychology at the University of Utah, and this is in two thousand and three.

While training as a counselor, she developed a professional focus on issues involving sexual behavior and addiction, as well as the intersection of sexuality, relationships and teachings within the LDS Church.

Now, what I thought was interesting is that they so, let's talk about the mission companion.

So they find her mission companion and they interview her, and she talks about how she was never comfortable around Well.

A former mission companage probably had a number of them.

Okay, well, why don't you explain that, because Shane has been on a mission, and I think your perspective of this is very interesting.

So when you go on a mission.

Well I just met you're you go in twos, so you're never alone, right, It's a safety thing.

It's also holding each other accountable, and it's also just you know, team building, right kind of thing.

So she probably had she served likely an eighteen month mission.

She probably had you know, five or six companions, and this is one of them.

So I was just saying it wasn't like for the entire mission, It was likely just a few months and it could be six months.

I don't know, but I'm just I just wanted to clarify that.

So it's one person that they found out of a number of people that interacted.

With right, they only managed her.

This is her experience.

With her, right, And I'm sure.

A lot of them didn't have a good experience.

With probably not, but they the one that they talk to is in the in the Netflix dock.

I always think like someone that probably knew me and then they might see us on TV and be like, oh, okay, that's cool.

But then they see her on TV and they're like, yeah, that sounds about right.

Yeah I saw this coming.

So when you have a mission companion, you get more than one.

Is there always more?

Are they that?

So you're not always stuck with the same person in case there's like a but there's.

No like sixty days.

You have a mission president who assigns everyone okay, and as they see fit and obviously logistically and how they find if they find, you know, some people might need to be together.

You know, he has inspiration and puts them together in certain places and things like that.

So where did you do your mission?

You don't know.

I do know, but I think it's interesting.

I don't know, I just think people might want to.

I went to Portugal for about a year, and then I went to the Cape Verdi in the Islands for about a year.

Shane has some really interesting mission stories of when, especially when you were in Cape verd the.

Third world country out in the middle of nowhere that no one's ever heard of.

Right, So, like a lot of your stories about just eating and being on the island and I don't know, like transportation and like your suitcase, and like all these stories you told me.

It's really it's really interesting.

I do struggles.

Mission stories, all right.

So back to back to jod.

So what her mission companion said was that she felt as if it wasn't even necessary for her to be there because Jody had such a forceful type of personality that she talks about a specific incident where there was a family that kept pushing back their baptismal date, and she said, you know, she was trying to persuade them, but didn't really get anyone.

So that's the problem.

You're not supposed to persuade anyone, Okay, you introduce them to it, you teach them as they seek to be taught, and then they choose if you persuade people, then they don't have their own conviction and that's a problem.

Well, I feel like that's where Jody was really.

Like, that's what I want and what I wanted to point out.

Right into her skills.

So the other emission companion talks about how she like wasn't really all that effective, which makes me think maybe they weren't ready right.

Right then exactly.

Then she sits, Then they sit down with Jody, and then they end up you know, converting or whatever it is.

And she said it's because of her personality and how persuasive.

There's no shame in resolving some concerns that people might have addressing them.

But it sounds like she probably was do things my way, you know, like she was steamrolling the situation and dictating the terms and probably pushy, right persuasive as you called it.

So, Hildebrandt practice as a therapist with a focus on what she described as quote porn addiction, and that concept, however, is not formally recognized as a diagnosable disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which guides mental health professionals in the United States, but within LDS culture.

Pornography is treated as a serious moral issue, and the church encourages members who struggle with it to seek support through church affiliated recovery programs.

So therefore, Jody Hildebrandt was put on a list of therapists that bishops could send members to, leading many LDS couples to follow her extreme teachings.

But she sounds like she had such an ego and probably thought she could save everyone, that she was just out there all the time recruiting people, you know, and persuading clients to seek her counseling, and she was probably just dictating all the terms as she did with these kids.

Yeah, but what is confusing for me is that because later on we'll talk about there, they interview several of her past clients that were all members of the church, and they all have such grievances about her and her methodology and how extreme she was.

And it makes me wonder why she was on this list for so long that people just like bishops kept referring her.

Well, probably it probably never came back to the bishop.

I mean, I imagine the bishops would only do so much.

It's voluntary service, so obviously they do the best they can.

There's probably a list and maybe some you know, when when people chose to go with whomever, there's probably no feedback of saying this lady did X, Y and Z was inappropriate or whatever she was doing to them.

I don't know, for them to take her off the list.

Critics argue that the religious framings surrounding pornography can be considered extreme.

John Dellan, a former therapist and the host of the podcast Mormon Stories, has said the Church often portrays pornography as a grave sin and, in some interpretations, a pathway to far more serious wrongdoing.

Delan has also stated that LDS teachings commonly frame men as sexual animals and women as the gatekeepers.

I don't know, I want to know your thoughts on that, on pornography, well, not pornography, but just do I do know, just from our time living in Utah and just my little experience with the church and things like that, that sometimes I felt as if the constant you know, no, pornography has the opposite effect.

Well maybe, but I mean, do you do you look at it that way?

With drugs?

Are you gonna tell your kids like do you want like if I say, hey, kids, don't do heroin or coke.

Are you gonna say, hey, that's gonna have an opposite effect, Let's go easy on them.

You know, I don't know.

There are some things that should be excluded.

Entirely, and I understand that so, but I feel as if from a very early start, it's a constant conversation around don't look at pornography, don't look at pornography.

I don't know who you're hanging out with, but I didn't experience that one up there.

No, But I it's a it's a thing that's always like addressed and talked about.

So I'm just saying, maybe.

Just like they also teach no cheating in your marriage and no drugs, no street drugs, hard drugs.

But also, do you think that it can be too extreme where it's like sometimes men who just have I'm just asking you, you're a man.

I'm saying, sometimes men who just have like a healthy appetite for.

Sex, then it ends up healthy.

I'm not talking about porn in general, because it also has to do with like sex addiction.

It's not just pornography.

It's a gateway drug.

Put it that way, So what.

You're saying it leads on to what, like, what does pornography leave onto more pornography?

Starring in pornography, You're cheating, you're saying, Oh, so you're saying it's a gateway drug to infidelity.

Yeah, and disconnecting with your spouse, not not valuing intimacy with your spouse the same, right, Well, those are good points.

In two thousand and seven, Jody started her own counseling business called Connections, and that's Connections with an X by the way.

Jody first gain prominence in Utah after launching Connections, a relationship focused counseling business aim largely at married couples.

According to the program's now defunct website, the service was intended to help you flourish in your relationships.

Former clients later alleged that Hildebrandt selectively applied teachings of the LDS Church to support her interpretations of relationship problems and to reinforce her authority in counseling sessions.

You know, I thought that was interesting because when they interviewed a lot of these past clients, they talked about how she ultimately ended up destroying their marriage because I feel like she had these tactics of first asserting this authority over them like she and using church teachings to make herself the authority.

Then I felt like her next step was isolation, and that was like a thing that she did.

And this is why I don't understand how she continued to do it over and over because to me, that's a huge red flag where she would have the husband's move out of the home and have no contact, no contact with the kids, no contact with the wife, like they needed to work with.

Her out anti male I came out of the house, out of the relationship, I think, so her husband.

I mean, well, I.

Think maybe she was a lesbian, and I think but it wasn't acceptable to be a lesbian in her family and religion, and so she suppressed that.

But then I think there was some anchor because of that, because there because we do know that she and Ruby did have an unconventional relationship.

Remember they they spent hours in the bedroom together.

She moved in with Ruby, then they ultimately ended up going to her home in Ivans, which is Saint George area.

And I think even Sherry, the oldest daughter, wrote in her book that she believed that there was some you know, intimacy intimacy, some sexual relationship between the two of them.

But then that makes me think that maybe she was she had some suppressed anger because she wasn't really fully allowed to be who she was, and then she took it out on her clients by using this extremism with them.

Who knows she was a nut.

Washington County attorney Eric Clark addressed this dynamic and Netflix's evil influencer, saying, Jody was so good at taking vulnerable people who were coming to her because they were not in a great place in their lives, and framing it in a religious context that kind of fit enough with other stuff they've been taught, and then pushing them to do things that I know a normal therapists wouldn't be encouraging people to do.

She found a niche.

Niche, she found a niche, and she marketed it.

Jody was very successful at getting people to give her money.

I mean, isn't it's the end of the day.

It's a power trip.

I think.

She knows what's right.

Yeah, we'll call it, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Jody's counseling license was suspended in twenty twelve for unprofessional conduct.

Hildebrandt faced professional discipline after Utah regulators determined she had violated client confidentiality, resulting in an eighteen months suspension of her license.

The document aligns with claims made by Adam Stead, who at the time was newly married, raising a young child, expecting another child, and enrolled at BYU as an international relations and pre med student.

He said that church leaders encouraged him and his wife to attend marriage counseling and referred them to Jody quote he says, I was sent to Jody Hildebrandt, me and my wife.

The bishop was saying it was for both of us together.

He now alleges that during the course of counseling, Hildebrandt shared private information with him without his consent, with LDS, church officials and with administrators at BYU.

There's a lot of trauma here, he said.

So, yeah, I did read this article where he claims, and I think she probably did it to other people, not just him, But I think she was, you know, getting people into this therapy type of situation.

She was getting personal information from them, then without their consent, She's going and telling the bishop and then telling you know, administrators at BYU.

Like what she was dealing with with this guy, and I am sure she did it to other people as well, which clearly is a breach of confidentiality.

Which that's well as we know when you go talk to a therapist, because we talked about that with Menendez, remember he, like the Menindaz brothers, admitted to killing their parents with their therapist.

You talking your sleep, Yeah, that's how you get around it.

Oh is that how?

Yeah?

Another therapist didn't like, Oh yeah, that's what the I thought you were like the Menendez fan.

I didn't know what you were referring to.

Yeah, yeah, he said he because it was his mistress that went and told the police.

And then he said he didn't really tell her that he was just talking in his sleep and she heard him.

Right.

Yeah, that's an old moonlighting episode, is it?

Yeah?

You do like sleeping with this guy and he was a hitman, and every night he would basically say who he was going to kill the next day or whatever.

So she finally reported it to Was.

She a therapist?

Was she a therapist?

She was a prostitute.

That's why I was in his sleep.

So he fell asleep after the deed.

No, I think he was confessing like like he was saying who he was going to kill, yeah, and who he had killed, so he was then she I don't know why she doesn't go to the police, right, but she goes to you know, the detective agency, which is uh okay.

But where is the where is the confidentiality with the prostitute and the hit man.

I'm just saying, can be dangerous if you're a criminal or a therapist.

Okay, because I was like, I don't think there's any level of confidentiality between processes.

It's like moonlighting.

I just wanted to bring that in, all right.

Other male clients have come forward and spoken out.

Also, can we just talk about Jody.

If we remember back with Ruby Frankie, she was she was treating Ruby Frankie, but she was also treating the husband, and then she was also treating the kids, which is total violation of not confidentiality, but just ethics.

It's not it's not ethical to treat everyone you know in a household.

Well, even if she's just not ethical period, she doesn't have any ethics.

She's a nut.

So if she was treating one person that family, that's a problem.

Exactly.

Other male clients have come forward and spoken out.

So five men told NBC News that Jodie Hildebrandt diagnosed them with porn or sex addictions, even though they said they did not experience any unusual issues.

They describe being placed in men's counseling groups that focused on porn, sex and lust, which included weekly hour long meetings and daily support calls to discuss therapy goals.

See.

I think this was another way.

Not only did she exhibit such control over them, but this, I mean this house that she when they searched the house, you know where they found the two kids, it was a five million dollar home in Saint George.

So I think she had we were talking about a power of persuasion, but she was also very good at saying, okay, you need to be in this group class which costs this much, but you also have to talk to me daily at probably two hundred and fifty dollars an hour or something, and you know we have to have you know, a session every day for an hour.

And you know also I probably need to talk to your kids and your wife, and so you know, these people are spending thousands and thousands of dollars to fix themselves, when really this woman is just on a power Trip one.

Former participant Spencer Tibbitts described his upbringing as extremely sheltered with limited access to technology.

At sixteen, after getting in trouble for using a secret phone to play video games, he was sent to Hildebrand for two months.

She moved him from her children's group into the men's group so he could have more focused discussions about his treatment.

The men's group was intended for those being treated for porn addiction.

Tibbets, now twenty one, said, I had a secret phone, but I didn't even know what porn was.

So he ends up getting moved into this group of men.

Well, I bet you this Hildebrand lady can't even be content with anyone.

Everyone's got major issues and she has to get involved and everything's dramatic, you know, like if a kid looked at a picture of a naked person, That's what I'm saying.

She probably took it to the extreme.

He said, you have a porn addiction, right, right, That's what I'm saying.

I guess that was my point in the whole porn addiction was exactly what you pointed out, where it's like, is it an actual poornography addiction that they need therapy for or was it just curiosity that is normal?

Like, how do you distinguish between the two?

Where does it become a level of.

She probably thinks everyone has problems but her.

Jody Hildebrant's professional relationship with Ruby Frankie began back in twenty nineteen after Ruby and her husband, Kevin Frankie, sought her help for marital and family issues.

By then, the Frankies were already well known through their YouTube channel eight Passengers.

As the counseling continued, Ruby became increasingly involved in Connections, appearing regularly in its classes, talks, and online content.

The two women grew close and began collaborating across their platforms.

On the Connection's website, under the Meat the Business Team section, Ruby Frankie was identified as a certified mental fitness trainer.

I don't know what that is or how you get certified.

It mental fitness trainer.

Certified mental fitness trainer.

Is this is made up?

Right?

Yeah?

But certified?

So there's there some.

Organizing that means by a certified.

But I feel like you could just get on a computer and create your certification and front it out and hang it up on the wall.

Her role included producing material for Connections, social media accounts and podcasts, which were promoted as being focused on empowering parents and children to live in truth.

Their relationship deepened in twenty twenty two when Jody moved into the Frankie home.

Later that year, Kevin Frankie was forced out of the residence and he and Ruby separated, which was largely influenced by Jody's teachings.

Now, when we did the Ruby Frankie episode, we did talk about this because Kevin Frankie, even though he this is the dad, even though he can't so so many people ask me, why was he not legally charged with something because those kids were being abused?

And we talked about I believe that there was no It wasn't a criminal.

Act the Federal with the mom's care.

Well, I'm just saying the fact that this guy their father, and he was completely negligent, and that he did willfully remove himself from the home and the children and had no interaction with them and was not checking on them and was not being forceful at all to be a part of their lives.

There's no criminal act in that, correct.

However, you might have opinions on it.

I do think that he is a weak, weak man who allowed Jody Hildebrandt to move into his house and to basically take over his life.

And I don't know why any.

Maybe he was convinced that he was no good, that they would the kids would be better with them too, I don't know.

Maybe she really got him.

So Jody moves into the house and moves into the daughter's bedroom.

And then this is when Ruby and Jody are spending all their time together, like locked in the bedroom all the time.

So I know, so how much could he have done with people like that?

I don't know.

I'm just saying this is the part that I don't understand.

I get that maybe she was like, Okay, you need to move out, and he's like, fine, all right, I'll move So Ruby Frankie kicks him out of the house.

Then she tells him he can't have any contact with the children.

I'm just saying, yeah, I know, I know it's messed up.

I'm just saying, we just don't know the whole story.

She's psycho.

They're both psycho.

No, I get it.

But I'm saying, the dad bugs me that he allowed it to happen, And I understand there's nothing you can do criminally, he's not criminally liable for anything.

But his children were abused, and he did not even know that they were located in Saint George.

He knew nothing, and he was a good dad and he had a good relationship with the kids.

I'm saying when he walked away and was like, Okay, fine, this therapist moved into our house and thinks this is best.

When do you push back and say, no, these are my children and I'm not going to disassociate with them and not know anything about them and not see them.

And that's the part where I don't understand how she has that much power to do that to people.

I don't get that part.

He also wasn't allowed to go upstairs because that was like JODI's dwelling was upstairs.

And he also wasn't allowed to go in the kitchen unless Ruby Frankie allowed him to go into the kitchen.

So they're just like they made They've just berated this man into just nothing.

I guess, I guess that's how you what do you do?

Isn't that like in the military when they beat you down, you know, until you're nothing, and then they build you back up until into what they want you to be.

But they forget.

They didn't build him up.

They just beat the man down and kicked him out.

Jody and Ruby's personal and professional lives became further intertwined when they launched Moms of Truth, which was a rebranded channel that took over Ruby's large Instagram following.

Through the account, they promoted rigid parenting philosophies centered on discipline and boundaries.

In May of twenty twenty three, the partnership took a more drastic turn when Hildebrand and Ruby relocated to of Frankie's youngest children roughly three hundred miles away to Hildebrand's residence in Ivan's, Utah.

At that point, Kevin Frankie had no contact with the children.

So I guess it gets to the point where these two youngest children, I think they're aged ten and twelve.

It's a boy and a girl.

They end up in this house in Saint George.

Yeah, and this is where these two young kids are tortured.

Now there's two middle children too, two girls.

And I was always interested because even when we talked about Ruby Frankie before, it was hard to understand where the two middle kids were because it said something about them being at a family friend's house.

But then I think, oh, yeah, that's right, I remember that.

But now, you know, I've read things that said that they weren't actually with a family friend, that they were actually living in that Springville home.

You remember when they did the eight Passengers YouTube channel and they were making money, they built they bought that nice house in Springville, and I think the two middle kids that were still in school, their miners, were left there alone to take care of themselves.

And I think that Ruby and Jody took the two youngest kids because they could have influence over the young gid.

Yeah.

As funny as those two girls, if they stayed back, they probably were better off, oh y, on their own, taking care of themselves without any real adult care, which they should have had.

Exactly know why did was she attracted to this family like she had Well, apparently a lot of clients didn't give a crap about anyone.

She's spilling the beans on all of them.

I think that she was attracted to Ruby.

I think she was in love with her, That's my thing.

Why I don't I don't know.

I mean, maybe her personality, she's attract she has all these YouTube followers.

I think she used that.

The thought that was a platform like this lady is yeah, somebody.

Because when they start making their podcasts and they're doing content together, they start doing it on Ruby's with all her followers.

Did they have eight kids?

Should six?

That's why it was called eight passengers?

Yeah, but then who's the driver, the mom and the dad.

Then there should be six passengers, seven passengers and one driver.

I don't know, I didn't really, I just there's eight people total.

There's a mom and a dad, Ruby, Frankie and Kevin Frankie.

And then they had six kids.

They have the two older kids, Chad and Sherry, that were adults.

That are adults.

Now we agree with drivers, not a passenger, okay.

Yeah, okay, all right, well then it should be seven passengers and a driver.

That's right, yes, all right, I'm glad that you figured that out.

On August thirty of a two thousand and three, Ruby's twelve year old son escaped and sought help from a neighbor, which prompted police intervention.

Once the twelve year old was with paramedics, he told investigators that his younger sister was still at Hildebrandt's home.

Police acted quickly, entering Hildebrandt's home without a warrant and securing the ten year old girl that same.

Day body that too.

Yeah, so police entered her home under the legal principle of exigent circumstances.

You know, it's interesting because the police immediately go to her house because I think the I think the boy when he's in the pair and when he's you know, picked up by the paramedics and you know, they're talking to him and he I think he says he was at Jody Hildebrandt's home.

I think even in the nine to one one called, the man that called said it was Jody Hildebrant.

So they immediately go to the house and she is on the phone.

She says, I'm on my phone with my attorney.

You can't you can't come in, and they're like move out the way.

They basically like pull her out of the house, and she's like, you don't have a search warrant, Like where's your search warrant?

But as we know, there is a Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

However, there are always exceptions, and because this boy was found in the.

State, there's no time to get a warrant.

There's no time to get a warrant, and it's called.

Out without irrele harm, right.

And it's called exigent circumstances.

And when the boy says that his sister is still in the home and he has not seen.

Me duct tape on him, no alnutrition, he abuse.

Right, and there is still a child in the home.

Yeah, they're going to bust down the walls.

They're going in the house, save.

The kid exactly.

So Hildebrandt objects to them coming in the house.

But body camera body camera footage shows Hildebrant asking police if they have a search warrant and stating, you, you can't just come into my house without a search warrant.

She's a little more a little more fourth amend and exceptions research first.

He also can't kidnap children and secure them in a room and not feed them and abuse them.

So once the police enter and they do a sweep of the house.

Also, this is interesting, they can't really collect evidence when they're doing that because it's under exigent circumstance.

Well, if they're there to find a child, then that is their focus, to find a child.

They're not going to search drawers right in computers and hard drives.

They're going to search where a child can be right, So it's limited, yes, So they happen to see something in the meantime.

Right in the plain sight.

So during a protective sweep of the house, officers found the youngest of Ruby Frankie's children in a closet with her head shaved.

That is sad too, I tell you, every time I see that, that breaks my heart too well.

Because there's only one reason you shave a kid's head, to torture them and control them and break them down.

Very skinny, and she's sitting in a closet on the floor alone, and I do believe that.

I think.

I think it took about four hours for them to coax her out of the closet.

I remember seeing a little bit because I didn't You're right, I didn't watch it, but I didn't watch it for a reason.

But I remember coming into the room and you're watching it, and it looked like they were gently trying to put her at ease.

Yeah, and I think they ordered pizza for her.

I do believe she finally comes out so that she can have some pizza.

She's very thin.

The severity of the children's condition, which was severe malnourishment and open wounds treated with cayenne pepper and honey.

I don't know how that's considered a treatment.

I guess they got wounds from being tied up and then they would put this cayenne pepper, honey like salve or something on top of it.

I don't know if that was supposed to heal the wounds.

But how putting cayenne pepper anything on top of open wounds makes me think that was torture and not trying to heal anything supported the police's use of the exigent circumstances exception.

Later on in the investigation, search warrants were obtained to seize further evidence from the home and electronic devices.

You know.

Also, she has this, Jodie Hildebrant had this safe room in her house, like a panic room because his house is huge.

Who probably to I don't know, to torture kids, I don't know.

But anyway, the cops go to her and say what the code, and she's like, I don't know, I don't know the code.

Nobody uses it.

We haven't been in there for years.

Nobody touches it, nobody goes in there and you see the cop he goes up to you.

That's a flag, right.

He goes up to the safe room.

You know, it's got one of those whe you know, like you put a code in, and then he turned the wheel like like on right, Yeah, like one of those safe yes, And he goes up to it and he goes one, two, three, four, five, six, and then he turns it and it clicks and opens, and so I was anyway, what was inside, Well, they did find evidence of that.

I think that's where the kids were being held because the boy had to skate before, so they were they.

Were evidence that they used it to keep kids in there.

Yeah, so they found rope and handcuffs, So I think what they were doing with the sun because he had to escape before, and in order to keep him from escaping again, they had like hog tied him.

So they his hands together, his ankles together, and then tied those together like while he was on his stomach, and like left him in.

That hog tie.

And then so did they take our license away for another eighteen months?

Yeah?

Well, I mean she's in jail, So.

What's your sentencing?

Do we remember?

Yeah?

She So each of them got four counts of child abuse, and I realize it's four counts.

We want, how long are they going to be in jail?

Well, it's one to fifteen for like each count, with like a max of thirty concurrent.

Yeah, and they're both in prison right now.

But they it's basically I read it's at the discretion of the parole board.

So it's up to fifteen years.

Yeah, it's up to fifteen years.

And they I think they have they're eligible for parole in like four years or something.

So you know times like this where it's like the sensing should be they go in that little safe room and they get hog tied.

Oh yeah, and then we put Kaya and Pepper on their wings.

Well you know what else I think this is?

So here were some other things that you probably don't know this because you and watch the documentary, but I will tell you to hear some other things that they did.

They would make him jump on the trampoline in the hot sun.

Yeah, I don't want to hear that.

You don't want to hear it.

No, Shane has a real problem whenever we talked about kids.

He doesn't like kid cases.

But let me just so at first, you know, even the I think it was the DA that they interviewed that said Ruby's parenting it was very it fringed upon being extreme, but not criminal because.

Remember she got kill.

It's like spanking.

Yeah, you can spank a child.

It's not abuse, but you can sure get a close, get really close to it being considered so violent and abuse.

If you remember, Ruby Frankie and her YouTube channel basically got canceled because remember she made that video talking about how her son Chad, she made him sleep on it.

She took his away and made him sleep on his bag.

You said, on a ball or something something.

Slept on a bean bag.

Oh yeah, for seven months in like the basement or something.

She bragged about it.

She did, she bragged about it on it, and she got backlash, so much backlash as should like, she got canceled good.

And then I think there's another video where one of the daughters, the younger ones, she cut like the teddy bear, the head off of a Teddy bear with scissors or something.

So what they were saying, which made sense to me, was that she was pretty extreme in her parenting already before Jody Hildebrant came into the picture.

Thing before this is all before.

So this is why in the mix right the fire exactly.

So what I'm saying is she already was on the fringe of this not criminal but extreme parenting style that was getting a lot of backlash, and she ended up, I believe, canceling her whole YouTube page because of so much backlash.

Yeah, and then she probably blamed the kids for that probably.

But then when you introduce someone like Jody Hildebrant into your life and you're already living, you know, like on that line of extreme parenting anyway.

I mean, if she would have stayed with her husband, who seems to be to me to be like a normal, kind rational guy, even though I think he's a woosp but besides that, she probably would have gone the other way, back to like being a good parent and probably caring for her children.

But instead she meets Jody Hildebrant, and this woman comes into her life and takes her the exact opposite way, where now the extremism is now become abusive and becomes more abusive and more abusive.

I think it started out with like, okay, you're going to carry boxes up and down these stairs as punishment to get the devil out of you.

Everything has to do with the devil, do you know what I mean?

That was like Jody Hildebrandt's I think that's how she got her crass was the pornography with the men, but with the children, it was the devil.

They have the devil in them, so in order for them mats No, we're going to talk about that.

Oh well just a little, but yeah, we talk about that because I think someone like that just they can't ever stop.

It's just who they are, right, So she uses the devil as her way of like these kids need the devil, you know, punished out of them.

Which you can't pinpoint right because you just constantly say it's the devil, it's the devil.

More punishment, more punishment, and you just kind of throw that superlative out there.

You know, right.

So anyway she gets she gets Ruby Frankie on board that her these youngest children are you know, possessed by the devil, and that in order to get the devil out of them, I guess you have to sweat it out or work it out or punish it out or something like that.

You have to jump on a trampoline.

So it was always like these extreme things of like carrying boxes up and downstairs, that.

She doesn't really know how to parent, Like there's no compassion, there's no love, there's no teaching by example or you know, teaching opportunities is just punishment, punishment, punishment.

Yeah.

And then also I don't know if you remember this, but Joe, but Ruby Frankie kept a journal of everything, like explicit detailing, because I think that's something that's in the LDS faith.

Isn't that encouraged to journal?

Yeah, diaries right now?

Well, but not in not this crap.

You want a diary, I know, like your experiences you're learning, you know, I mean, how much would you love?

Wouldn't you love if your grandma had kept a journal?

Or do not read that up and down?

Yeah, that's exactly what.

It is, right, and I agree with that type of journaling.

But I guess Ruby Frankie was journaling like every day, like the devil and the children and what they did to them and how they were like trying to get the devil out of the kids and everything they made them do and like the extreme.

It's it's just all written in a journal, which obviously the police confiscated when they came back later with search warrants.

So it's alleged that when Ruby moved to Hildebrand's home, which is about three hundred miles away from her Springville home, the two middle teenage daughters were left to stay at the Springville home without adult supervision for weeks at a time.

All four minor children were eventually placed into protective custody and are now under the soul care of their father, Kevin Frankie.

So I do love even though we don't know what these kids are dealing with, trauma wise or therapy wise.

But all four minor children are now with their father.

And he also recently got married.

That was in the news.

So he met someone.

Else and he married a therapist.

He didn't know.

He did not marry a therapist, I don't know.

I forget her name.

But he married another woman and then sherried the oldest daughter, the one that's an adult that wrote the book.

She posted on her Instagram that she was happy for her dad and it was like the first time she'd seen him happy in a long time.

So it seems that there is a good ending.

They're on the right path right.

So in February of twenty twenty four, a judge sentence, Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrandt to prison terms of four to thirty years, the maximum for their convictions.

Under Utah law governing consecutive sentences.

Neither woman will serve more than thirty At sentencing, Frankie acknowledged her actions, apologizing to her children for the abuse she committed.

Hildebrandt, however, offered my bad no apology, claiming that her actions were done out of love.

Now, I think Ruby Frankie because I've listened to some of the calls that she had with her husband, because there were some jail time calls that were recorded that I listened to.

The father of her children, Yeah, he remember he former.

Husband, right, But it took a while for him to divorce her.

Even when they interview him at the police station, he still says he loves her, even when he finds out about this abuse, and he's still I feel like it takes a long time for it to click in his head that this woman is not a good woman.

But so Ruby, Actually, I think she was smarter because I think she realized that if she apologized and repented and removed herself from Jody and didn't have contact with Jody that it was better for her for right because she's gonna come up for paroles.

So she's thinking, what do I I gotta you know what I mean, I need to apologize and say I was wrong and that you know, I'm separating myself from this woman and she has no control over me anymore if.

She stays in jail.

Yeah, well, we'll see.

It'll be interesting to see how long her sentence actually turns out.

Hildebrant is currently serving her sentence at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Dell and the General Population, according to inmate records.

There was also an interview so Jody Hildebrandt has a niece that has since come out with claims against her aunt.

Jesse Hildebrant, Jody Hildebrandt's niece, who uses they them pronouns, says that they live with their aunt as a teenager and experience what they described as brutal abuse.

She would lock me in this room and write out my sins on paper.

She made me sleep outside in the snow.

She duct taped me.

I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone.

That's a lot of parenting.

Like that's a lot of like you have to really work hard at being like that.

Yeah, Like that's harder than just being a good parent, right, is what you're saying, right, Like, it takes more time and energy to torture kids and to be this horrible than if you just tried to be compassionate and speak to them and communicate it be a good parent, right, Right, That's why I'm saying, there's something innate, Like, there's something.

No, this is the path they choose.

Right.

Reflecting on the arrests of their aunt and Ruby, Frankie Jesse said they were not surprised.

We knew that Jody does this.

We knew fourteen almost fifteen years ago that she's already done this to me and people saw and people witnessed and did nothing.

Just because you reframe it as tough love or tough parenting, that's not love.

That is abuse.

And that's actually a really good statement.

I Mean, you can call it tough love all day long, but I mean she's right or they're right.

Right, you're just rebranding it and trying to make it into something else when really you're just abusing children.

So director sky Borgman lends her thoughts on Jody Hildebrand.

Now Sky Borgmann is the same director who also did The Catfish Mom, which I thought was interesting.

If that young boy had not escaped that day, Borgmann reflects, I think those kids probably wouldn't be with us today.

Now that's a profound statement.

I mean, do you think if the police had not intervened and he had not escaped, Like what was there?

What was their ultimate plan with these kids?

Like when would it have surfaced right or right at all?

Or when would they have stopped, or when would it have been or not.

I think it would have just carried on until it somehow surface a death or medical care or a neighbor saw something.

I mean, that's the only way it had a surface somehow, But it may not have been for maybe more years.

I felt as if Jody was pushing the limits as much as she could, just to see how much she could control ruby, Like it came down to a control thing, like how far can I get this woman to just go along with all these things?

Like you know what I mean?

First it's like, well, let's make them carry boxes up and down the stairs.

Think of it this way.

If she, if she truly in her mind, thinks it's the devil, it's the devil.

It's the devil.

You have to carry these boxes, jump on a trampoline to get the devil out, or however she operated.

That's never going to happen.

Kids are always going to make mistakes, but they're not going to learn by jumping on the trampoline, right, I mean, they'll be fearful of her and all that, but they're not going to like magically be this kind one her full angelic person, because you're putting all this trauma on them.

And I would side with the kids on not being any better because of the way they're treated.

So she's going to keep doubling down and to work harder because that's what she believes is how it should be done.

So she's going to be cracking down on them, and it's bad.

It's never going to get better.

How far would she have pushed it if he would not have escaped and they would have just been in this huge house in Saint George with these two young children, Like, where where would it have ended if he didn't escape?

I mean, would Jody have just continued to push and push and push until these kids were on the verge of.

We probably said it, But why did Why did the child at this point in time seek help.

I think he escaped, he was able to get out.

Yeah, he went, he got he somehow got out through a window.

So he probably always or maybe for a long time, was looking for opportunities to seek help and get out.

And then because he had, he had escaped one time prior.

That's right, you said that Ruby had found him.

They had driven around until they found him walking down the road and they picked him up and took him back.

And I in her journal she had journaled, please God protect me, protect Jody, protect us, because I think because she knew that if this kid is found like they were going to be in trouble.

So she was literally writing in her journal asking for protection while he was out and they had not found him yet, which shows me that she knew what she was doing was wrong all along.

Well, yeah, she knew, or at least optically she knew it was like not good.

Even if she believed in what she was doing, she knew it wasn't going to be accepted by society or authorities.

So director sky Borgmann told Tutem I'd heard about this story and it was really just Ruby, Frankie Ruby, Frankie Ruby, Frankie.

But as she worked on the documentary, she realized that Jody Hildebrandt was central to the abuse.

Just the simple fact that this little boy escapes from Jody Hildebrant's home where the abuse is happening, not from his mom's hown house.

That to me was the simplest and the most diabolical part of the story.

Borgmann says.

The film explorers how harm can exist both in plain sight and in the spotlight.

All of these things were happening in full view and broadcast to the world.

This kind of manipulative behavior and coercive control can happen right in front of your eyes.

It's essential to understand that if we want to prevent this from happening again.

She adds up making the documentary gave her insight into Hildebrand's methods for controlling families like the Frankies.

It's like the one oh one of how to get somebody to fall in line.

She uses threats and all these culty techniques and she isolates them.

It really is just the methodology that she incorporates that really works to separate these people from anything that is positive in their lives.

And you know, I was thinking about this because when you talk about abuse and relationships, especially with men that are abusive towards women, a lot of times their tactic is isolating them from friends and family.

So that is a real tap and controlling people.

And that's what Jody really focuses on.

And this is how she controlled people was by the isolation, you know, was taking these men and removing them from their families, because really, at the end of the day, doesn't isn't the man supposed to be the head of household, the protector.

You know, if you want to talk about a hierarchy and a family, you have the the man is the protector, and you remove him from the family and you you separate the parents.

You isolate him out by telling him he has some sex addiction or poor an addiction, and that he needs to go work on himself and he needs to be away from his family.

And it's horrible.

You have Ruby who's like, yeah, yeah, don't treat me like that.

Yeah, you're right, Like she's it's in her head now that he's the problem.

He's the problem, right, And then she convinces you that your children are possessed by the devil and that you need to do all these torture type of things to get the devil out of them, and then I think, at the end of the day, that's that power she needs in order to feel alive or something.

That's how she, you know, feels valid in some way, which is sick and demented, but that's what it is.

Although Connections is no longer operating, Hildebrand's influence on clients from the LDS community remains significant.

Sky Borgmann said some former clients were eager for the film to share their experiences.

The participants that I spoke to who were seeing Jody for some kind of therapy are very happy that the film is coming out.

They wanted to tell their story of how Jody manipulated them, how she used sort of this intersection of trust and power and harm to really obscure their own sense of self and family and religion, and how it can happen to pretty much anybody.

So wow, that's it's interesting because to me, I felt I felt as if when I was watching it that that could never happen to me, and I feel like it could never happen to you.

But then maybe I'm maybe I'm naive, Maybe someone like that whis with such a power full influence, maybe she can't infiltrate and control.

I just don't see that.

Ever.

I think she takes people at their lowest and she she I mean, look.

At her clients.

Who are her clients, People that are troubled, right, people that are looking for guidance, people that are needing answers, and then she's there to give it to them.

So they're already vulnerable.

Exactly when they approach her.

What about her cellmates?

Oh well, I read, Okay, this was interesting.

So at the end of the of the documentary, I don't know if it was in the documentary or I read in an article, but I did read that she is now basically setting up groups within you know, the prison system and.

Like counseling people.

Yeah, she's like got her groups and she's you know.

So I was like, basically, she's still doing certifying other people and mental health whatever it was.

So she's still doing that in prison.

But I thought, at least.

There's no men in prison for her, right, So yeah, so.

They're already isolated.

She doesn't have to do that.

Part's already done for her, right.

So also at the end, I think it was a phone call maybe that I heard where you know that because they record their conversations, and I believe and I thought this was like very telling of what type of person that these people have been dealing with.

Was.

I believe she was comparing herself to Jesus Christ because she was talking about how she is unjustly in prison, like she's being persecuted, right, and she's being.

So she's bringing good to the world trying to suppress her.

So she's being unjustly persecuted and she's in prison and she shouldn't be.

And so she's like Jesus Christ who was persecuted.

And so basically she's like, I'm fine being in prison because this is like my calling, you know what I mean, because I am you know, this amazing being.

It's what the devil does.

They tried to break me down, and I'm.

Going to make it through this, and you know, I'm going to help all these people and I'm just being persecuted because I'm such a clean soul.

So I was like, wow, that.

Was well, I hope that clean soul can stay in prison for a very long time.

Well, let's hope.

So we'll see.

We'll definitely follow their parole.

Here maybe we'll still be around for her parole hearing to do an update to us in thirty years.

Well, no, they're up.

They're up for parole in four in four years.

Yeah, yeah, it's a max of thirty total.

So can we go to the parole hearing and try to would you like to go to the pearole Yeah?

Like, don't let her out, let her out?

Yeah, I like, watch this documentary then tell me she shouldn't.

Be out exactly.

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