In an audio interview with Utah State Police after Ruby Franke was arrested on child abuse charges in 2023, she said: her estranged husbandKevin Franke detailed his “butt to crazy” relationship with his wife and accomplice Jodi Hildebrandt.
Ruby is 41 years old and a mother of six children. Hildebrand, 54 years old, mother of two childrenran a collaborative parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel called ConneXions Classrooms. In December, both men pleaded guilty in a St. George courtroom to four of six counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse inflicted on two Franks children.
In February, Ruby and Hildebrandt were each sentenced to four consecutive terms of imprisonment ranging from one to 15 years.
The interview began with Kevin speaking to a Santa Clara Ivins police officer. About diary The gift he and his wife gave Hildebrand in 2022 is called “The Pen Papers,” and it includes the following text: “Ruby will be writing a letter from August 2021 to an unknown date. I took detailed notes of everything, including every interaction with Jody.”
“What she wrote in the Pen Papers was not something she would write in her diary. What she wrote in the Pen Papers was written by God as Scripture for the whole world. It was not intended for anyone to read it until I told them to do so,” Kevin told police. “It described all the visions and trances and everything that Jody and Ruby had experienced. …The documents that Ruby had were hundreds of pages long.”
“It’s something Jody doesn’t want to find, but she also doesn’t want it destroyed,” he added.
The interview also focused on Kevin’s account of his wife’s strange relationship with her former therapist, Hildebrandt, before and after the couple decided to start the ConneXions Classrooms vlog on YouTube and host conferences across the country. There is.
In 2023, the two friends and business partners were arrested for abusing Ruby’s two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. Some of the abuse occurred at Hildebrandt’s home. Suspicions about Ruby and Hildebrand only came to light later. Ruby’s son ran away from Ivin’s house in Hildebrand and ran to a neighbor.saw a malnourished boy with duct tape on his wrists and ankles and called 911.
Kevin said in a police interview that Ruby and Hildebrand first became close around 2019 because they had similar lifestyles and parenting views. Ms. Hildebrandt also encouraged Kevin to join a men’s group where men discuss their struggles with various addictions.
“There were probably about 10 guys there. It was on Zoom. They were all going through various stages of sex addiction, porn addiction, drug addiction. It’s common addiction. It was like a 12-step recovery group,” he told police.
In the video, Kevin told police that from around 2020 to 2022, Ruby, who was already a successful blogger by running a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers,” had a closer relationship with Hildebrand. He told police he was desperate for a relationship. So when Hildebrandt found himself in a cult-like situation with other women and ran away, Ruby jumped at the chance to help her girlfriend, Kevin said.
Ruby and Kevin both visited Hildebrandt’s $5.3 million modern mountain fortress in Ivins.
“I was shocked,” Kevin told police about his home, adding that he wondered “how a therapist could live like this.”
He went on to describe strange events that occurred in the house while Hildebrand was all together.
“I’m a smart guy. I’m an engineer. I’ve done designs and helped build really big things. I’m a college professor. Some of the things that happened while we were there. I can’t explain things, like the crash in the basement while we were talking upstairs, or the dishes in the kitchen that flew off by themselves and crashed through the wall at full speed and crashed down. We broke the floor ourselves,” he told police. “I can’t explain it, but I saw it with my own eyes and there’s no other way to explain it other than something crazy was happening.”
Ruby felt she could help Hildebrandt and eventually invited him to stay at her family’s Springville home.
“The moment she showed up at my house, strange things started happening. Lights turning on and off, sounds of people walking in the walls, footprints climbing up the walls and across the ceiling. “It was weird, and I hated it,” Kevin said. “They started sleeping in the same bed, and then she started experiencing trances and things like that…Maybe around September, she believed she was going to heaven and see God and Jesus.”
Kevin said that soon after inviting Hildebrandt to her home, Ruby requested “domestic separation.” This means Kevin can continue to live in the home, but will not act as a couple.
“Basically, they put all these rules on me, like I can leave whenever I want, but I can’t come back until Ruby lets me. I can’t go into the kitchen and eat until Ruby lets me.” “And the second floor, where Jody was roaming around, was completely off limits. You couldn’t go upstairs in your own house,” Kevin explained.
Ruby, Hildebrand, and their friends met to discuss their vision.
“She had these visions. … One of them, she was walking along the shore with Jesus, and Jesus challenged her to walk on water, and it was It was a whole lesson about walking on water,” Kevin said. “When she went into possession mode, there were a lot of demonic things where she would speak in different voices. It was really creepy. But the voices would say, ‘She’s ours.’ we won’t let go. She is the bride of Satan. she is mine I’m going to marry her. ”
Ruby eventually told Kevin that she wanted to work with Hildebrandt “in a job that I felt God had for them,” she told police. Kevin explained that Hildebrandt wanted to partner with Ruby, but Ruby was going to abandon 8 Passengers to pursue Hildebrandt and his new lifestyle blog.
“I thought it was crazy. I thought it was just a bat, but it’s not crazy. Ruby, you have a reputation. You run a multi-million dollar business. You have a brand.” You have it. And you’re just handing it out,” he told police. “She wanted to work with Jodi’s attorney legally to basically give Jodi eight passengers and make her an employee of Connections.”
Ruby apparently told Kevin that it wasn’t “for the money” but “to do God’s work.”
In July 2022, Ruby asked Kevin to leave her house.
“I cannot explain how tortured and hellish it was to live over a month in complete isolation, believing myself to be evil, manipulative, lying, and selfish. “He abandoned his family and I am more interested in my own selfishness than in my family,” he said of the domestic separation before his departure.
Kevin told police in a separate videotaped interview that he had not seen the children in more than a year before police arrested Ruby and Hildebrandt.
“There was no communication whatsoever regarding the children. There is no reason to believe or think anything happened,” he told police on August 30, 2023, the day he was arrested. “No matter how you look at it, I woke up this morning, looked at a picture of my family, and decided to live a life of honesty, integrity, and responsibility towards my family, as I do every day. It feels like an absolutely terrible punch.”
Ruby’s diary from May 2023, released by the Washington County Attorney’s Office, details the mother of six’s disturbing thoughts about her children.
On June 9, 2023, Ruby wrote:[R] I will be 12 years old tomorrow. I never imagined he would still be pooping and peeing on his own at 12 years old.Demonic choices lead even the wealthiest people to extreme poverty [sic] House. ”
The next day she wrote: [R’s] It’s his birthday, but he doesn’t even know what month it is. [E & R] There are so many deviant behaviors that you can no longer even control your bodily functions. Both are furious that their selfish sinful actions are being interfered with.I said [R] He imitates a snake. He sneaks around, looks for opportunities, and runs around when no one is looking. If he wants to emulate the Savior, he must be 100% obedient. ”
In July 2023, Ruby detailed a moment between her and her youngest son, “R,” when she “ordered” his inner “devil friend” to “get out.”
“‘R’ instantly smiled, cried, crouched, and softened.” [sic]. ‘He’s gone! He left! ” is written in the diary.
In the same entry, Ruby talked about the time she told her 9-year-old daughter that she was not innocent, but that she could be exonerated by repenting. She repeatedly described her own daughter as “manipulative.”
“These selfish children who want nothing more than to rob, lie and attack have no idea of God’s love for them,” Ruby wrote just a month before her arrest. .
The abuse inflicted on Ruby’s children included forced manual labor, dietary restrictions, binding of one child’s hands and feet, and psychological harm. Ruby and Hildebrand told Ruby’s children that they were evil and needed to be punished.
After rescuing the Franke family’s youngest children from Hildebrandt’s home on August 30, Springfield police and other local authorities began searching for four other children who were not with Hildebrandt at the time. . They contacted the two older boys, Chad Franke and Shari Franke (both of whom were living away from home at the time of the incident), to locate the other two boys.
Authorities eventually found two children at another adult’s residence nearby. American folk.
