Campside Media.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Infamous this week. We're kicking off a dark true crime story about the momfluencer Ruby Franky. She attracted millions of moms to her YouTube channel for years until it was revealed that her take on parenting was much more evil than anyone had been led to believe. This series, entitled The Truth Ruby Franke, will last for five episodes, and you may see all five of them in your feeds now. If you're paying for the Binge, which is our subscription platform, you can listen to them all now. For everyone else, you can listen for free each week, just like you listen to our regular show. So if you want to wait, it will all be free. We really thank you all for being infamous listeners. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, ads can't support the full production of this show, which requires quite a few people, so we have to rely on subscription revenue as well. But we thank you for supporting us however you can. Okay, let's start The Truth About Ruby Franky. You're about to hear a five-part series on momfluencer Ruby Franky and therapist Jody Hildebrand. This is a true crime story, and for mature audiences.

My name is Tammy Wright. I reside in Carroll, Georgia, a small town just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, with my husband, our four kids, and several animals. We're from the Intermountain West originally, from Utah, originally.

Tammy is in her late 40s with blonde hair and a warm smile. When we talk, she's sitting outside in her yard in Georgia.

So I met Ruby in the fall of 2008. We moved into some townhomes in Springville, Utah, right next door to the Franke family. We shared a wall with them.

Springville, Utah, is about an hour from Salt Lake City. It's a suburban sprawl full of familiar retail chains and surrounded by majestic snow-sprinkled mountains. It's the place where people know their neighbors. Tammy's neighbor was a woman named Ruby Franke.

She had already three kids, I think, by the the time we met. She seemed a little bit overwhelmed, but she was always outside with her kids. They played outside a lot, rode bikes up and down the sidewalk in front of our Brownstones. I was going through rehabilitation from a car accident where I had severely injured my spine. And she was a great neighbor and a great friend, and she would let my kids hang out with her kids outside, and she would keep an eye on all of them while I rested in our town house.

Ruby brought Tammy fresh home baked bread. They went to the same church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, or LDS. They were neighborly, friendly.

Our friendship evolved. I have a picture of us moms all together right before Halloween. We had a neighborhood chunker treat. She was pregnant, and I was pregnant around the same time. Unfortunately, I miscarried the baby that I was carrying, and then she carried her baby to term. And so she knew how much it hurt me to lose that baby. And so when her new baby was born, she invited me to bring our two girls with me to come and see her new baby. And we have pictures of each of the girls on the hospital bed holding Ruby's new baby with Ruby there on the hospital bed. And so she was very supportive. But there was one time where she actually watched the kids for a whole day, and I was actually resting in my bed, and I could hear a lot of yelling, and I could hear a lot of raised voices and crying, the little kids crying, and I got concerned. And so I went over and knocked on the door, and I was like, Is everything okay? And she's like, Well, the kids are struggling. And Chad was a little bit of a troublemaker.

She's like, So they're having a rough time. And I said, Well, if you need me to, I've had enough rest. I can take my girls home now. And I just that spidey sense, that motherly spidey sense. I just didn't want my kids in that environment because I was very concerned with the tone of the voices that I heard.

So Tammy went to get her kids and bring them home. When she did so, her daughter's reactions told her a lot.

When they came to the door, they ran up to the door, my girls did, but from behind Ruby and went around her legs and came up to me and wrapped their arms around my legs. And they were like, I want to go home, mommy. I want to go home. And so I was like, Okay, we're going home. You're coming home with me. So I just brought my girls home with me, and I never asked again if she could help, and she never offered again to help me out for a prolonged period of time. That way, my gut feelings were telling me something is very off, very wrong. But on the surface, what they presented was an okay presentation of a regular day-to-day family.

Police say this is the house a young child escaped from asking for food and water.

The arrest of a popular YouTube mom, known for her strict parenting style. There had been growing concerns about the mom'sfluencer and her partner, Jody Hildebrand. My very first thought was, was my daughter exposed to this? I was so disoriented that I believe dark was light and right was wrong. We're here for sentencing in the matter of State of Utah versus Ruby Franky.

Ruby Franky will spend up to 30 years in prison. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robermet. And I'm Vanessa Gregoriades. So this week, we're beginning a news series about a woman named Ruby Franke, and what was going on with her on the other side of that wall. You may have heard about this, or you may not have, depending on how in touch with breaking true crime you are. But you have never heard this story the way that we're going to tell it to you. We've done a bunch of reporting, like we always do, but we also got our hands on a treasure trove of information from Ruby's diary that she was keeping, to jailhouse calls, to police interrogations. This is a twisty tale, much darker than what we usually talk about. It definitely is infamous. And it's a story with a very serious ending. But there's so much more to this tale. And over the next few episodes, we'll be diving deep into the world of Mormonism, parent parenting influencers, and a secret therapy group that ruined lives. This is part one, 8 Passengers. So this story takes place in the world of mommy meat blockers or vloggers.

Hey, guys. Hey, guys.

Hey, guys.

Hey, guys. Hey, guys. You know who I'm talking about, the sorts of bright-eye women who make inspirational and aspirational videos of their delightful lives with their kids. Now, in one particular corner of the Internet, there were a pair of Mormon sisters making a lot of said content.

Muck bang. My mouth was watering incredibly. A lot? A lot?

They had a third sister who sometimes popped up in their videos, and she had her own channel.

We're the drivers of the eight passengers. We're mom and Dad. And if you're not good, I will turn this car around and we will go home. Seriously?

Behave. Her channel was called 8 Passengers because her and her husband had six kids. So when they were going out somewhere, there'd be 8 passengers in the car. But the main character of the vlog, the driver, to continue the metaphor, was Ruby, a stay-at-home mom from Utah.

Good morning, fellow passengers. We are going to show you.

Ruby was slender with big blue eyes and lots and lots of progeny who were always running around in the background. She was religious, a proud member of the LDS Church, which is more widely known as the Norman Church.

All right, you guys, we're going to go check out another church. I'm really, really excited.

Most of Ruby's videos were filled with the mundaneity of domestic labor, like laundry.

And what I want you to do is separate all of these clothes, okay, into everyone's bucket. Can you do that for me? Thank you, Jared.

Making lunch.

I put together this little to school lunch catty.

Nagging the kids to practice their musical instruments. It was all the small stuff that usually gets lost in the spin cycle of life. The crumpled up grocery lists and stray socks and bobby pins under the couch cushion.

We are going to show you our morning routine. What do the passengers do in the morning? What time do we get up? Who does what? That is what we are going to show you today.

Ruby started uploading videos in 2015, and right from the beginning, they heavily featured her kids. There was Sherry, around 12 years old back then, who seemed pretty straight-laced and well-behaved. Chad was about 10 and a little more rowdy, the sporty and rambunctuous kid who's always scraping his knees or getting into fights with his siblings. Abby, 8, played the harp. Julie, 6, had these giant brown eyes. Then there was Russell, 4, a blonde-haired Sprout, and Eve, 2, a brown-haired toddler with a big smile. And of course, her husband, Kevin.

Hey, it's Friday night, and we're doing our favorite pastime, which is lay in bed and eat fast food.

So all across the country, people tuned in to Ruby and her kids.

Usually, I watch it in the evening. I have what's called a watch later list on my iPad. I just watched them when she would put up new videos.

Angie Wilson has short brown hair, cut in a bob, and wire-rimmed glasses that get lifted up by her cheeks when she smiles, which happens a lot because she smiles a lot. I live in Douglas, Massachusetts, which is a rural community about a half hour from the nearest major city. Angie watches YouTube the way a lot of people watch TV. Each evening, she loads up her iPad with videos from her favorite channels.

I came across the channel because I watched her sister's channels, Elian Jared and Bonnie Haleen, and I would watch them at night.

It's like putting on a comfort show or your favorite sitcom. Familiar characters, familiar cadence of events. There's something soothing about it. Seeing the parts of people's lives that you don't normally get to see. I mean, that voyeurism is probably part of why we like reality TV so much. But Even though Ruby seemed to share so much of her life with her viewers, there were lots of things those fads couldn't see. In fact, there was another side to Ruby, the side her neighbor heard through the wall. But nobody knew that yet. I'm Dr. Brian Goldman, host of the CBC podcast, The Dose. Each week we answer vital health questions that will help you thrive. Like, what does my mental health have to do with my gut? How can I prevent melanoma? How much sleep do I really need? And how can I manage my health without a family doctor? I chat with the top experts to bring you the latest evidence in plain language all in about 20 minutes. Find The Dose on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcast.

You know that feeling when you're like, why isn't more of this? The show is so good. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler that I think is just incredible. Yeah, it's coming back. It's coming back. I know. He's like, I'm on top of it. I got it. He got excited. After a 10-year hiatus. This is The anime Effect, the show that allows celebrities to nerd out over their favorite anime, manga, or pop culture. The Akashki theme song, you know what it is. I listen to that one all day. That thing go crazy. That thing get me. Being in the gym going, and they're like, What is he listening to? Oh, it's not even in the gym. I'd be on the field. I'm nick Friedmann. I'm Lia Alec-Murrie. And I'm Lia President. Find out which live-action anime Adaptation's David D'Osmolchen is praying he'll get to star in.

Or how Jamal Williams uses the mindset of Naruto for his NFL career. Listen to Crunchy Roll presents The anime Effect every Friday, wherever you get your podcast.

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about Ruby Franky is that she was Norman, and her faith explains a lot about her new passion, vlogging. My name is John DeLinn, and I'm the host of Norman Stories podcast. John DeLinn is an expert on the church and a former Norman himself. I'm a six-generation Norman. My ancestors go back as pioneers all the way to the founding of the church. I was raised a devout Roman did all the things, served a mission, married in the temple. In order to understand Ruby and the way her life worked, it's really important to place her in the context of Normanism. John explains the way he was raised as a Norman himself. What I was taught is the woman's place is in the home, that it's a sin for women to work outside the home, and that you shouldn't curtail the number of children that you have. You should have as many children as the Lord will bless you with that you feel like you can raise.

In Roman doctrine, there's a thing called the Proclamation on the Family, and it literally says in there, The husband's role is to provide, and the woman's role is to nurture the children.

So the woman is the nurture of the children, and the husband is the provider. That seems to be the model that Ruby and her husband followed. She was the keeper of the hearth working inside the home, and her husband, Kevin, was the breadwinner who worked outside the home. He was an assistant professor in the engineering Department at Brigham Young University. Bio is the Mormon place of higher education. It's even nicknamed the Lord's University. So even Kevin's work was related to the church. That's how involved they were. Now, Kevin traveled a fair amount for business, which Ruby mentioned in her vlogs.

I can't keep juggling all of these at this pace, especially with Kevin being gone a lot this summer.

Meanwhile, Ruby stayed at home with the kids. She didn't have a job of her own or much of a life outside of house and home. She'd met Kevin when she was really young, only 18.

Cradle robber. I had just finished high school and was going up to Utah State, and my mom dropped me off. She moved me into my apartment and everything, and she was like, 'Bye. ' So there was a meet and greet. Was it Hot Dogs? Yup. Yeah, for Hot Dogs. And I just went, and you were there. I saw her, and I thought, Well, she's pretty.

Kevin Franke is bald, with blue eyes and an easy smile. He seems like the guy who's always wearing a button down, even to a baseball game.

As I talked to her, she was flirty with me, and so I took that as a sign as she likes me.

I came to discover a little bit later that she's just flirty with all the boys.

She was the hottest hot dog at the social.

I mean, this is the corny humor that really worked for Kevin and Ruby. They liked making these kinds of jokes, but they were also pretty serious people. Even back then, Ruby was thinking about her future. Ruby kept a list on the back of her door.

So what this list had was all of the virtues and the qualities that Ruby Ruby was looking for and got.

In this YouTube video, so many years later, Ruby digs out her color-coded list of requirements and reads them off to the camera with Kevin and her kids joining in.

I wanted a man who would pray daily, who had an Eagle Scout. I wanted someone who was good with siblings and someone who would push for family home evening. He had to be very handsome and well-groomed. He had to smell good. He had to enjoy the outdoors, not skinny. It's not in debt because he owns his own car, keeps his car clean. One of them was on your own car and you were driving around in your parents' car. But I thought, Well, that's okay because at least it doesn't have a car payment. So that was nice. And where's the full head of hair? There's a full head of hair on here somewhere that he didn't get you there.

Ruby overlooked the receding hairline and parents car. And just two weeks after meeting Kevin, she got engaged.

Can you imagine my mom, two weeks after she drops me off at school and tells me to have a good time, I'm calling her and I'm like, Mom, remember that guy I was telling you about, that Kevin kid? Yeah. Well, we're going to get married in a couple of months when the semester is over. Two weeks. Two weeks from the day we met to the day we got engaged. And set a date was two weeks.

Imagine being 18, meeting a guy, and getting engaged two weeks later. Having your first kid at 21, having five more children in quick succession. Your whole life becomes your family, raising these little humans, keeping the house clean. And then you see that your siblings are recording YouTube videos. Ruby's sister, Ellie, starts uploading videos with her husband in 2012. Her other sister, Bonnie, starts vlogging in 2014. Maybe Ruby thinks, I should try doing that. She's clearly driven. Just look at the list she had for finding a husband. And uploading videos is work, yes, but it's work inside the home. It's about her children and family, so it still fits with the more victims. Plus, all of her extended family is doing it, so it must be okay. John DeLinn says the relationship between vloggers, influencers, and the Morgan Church runs deep.

I think Roman mommy vlogging is a way for Roman women to entertain themselves. It's a way for them to gain some power, to gain some influence, to gain some status.

Roman moms have been huge in this space, and before it, the blogging space, talking about domestic life and recording it for posterity. Some people called them the blogger knackle. You have to remember, devoted Roman life is so insular. It revolves around your family, your church, and your ward, that is, your local LDS congregation. But posting online gets your life out to the world. It's a way to gain power and spread the word of God, like going on Mission, but on YouTube.

The church was encouraging many of these influencers to project the most positive image possible of Roman family life to the world. The church started this whole I'm a Roman campaign, and they would feature influencers as a part of their video campaigns.

Here's the lead singer of the Killers, doing one such video for the church back in 2011. My name is Brandon flowers. I'm a father, I'm a husband, and I'm a Roman.

These influencers get special privileges from the church.

So there's all sorts of ways, indirect compensation, the publishing and promoting of books, and just promoting their websites with links and so forth. All sorts of influencers were being encouraged by the Roman Church, and I think that still continues to this day.

So all of these families were influencers, and some of them had millions of followers.

References to church and religion were seamlessly interwoven into Ruby's videos, as was parenting advice.

We are going to church. We got up and Kevin made us a wonderful Waffle breakfast. Thank you, honey. And now we're going to go to church.

Remember, Ruby's sisters were uploading YouTube videos, too. It's almost like making videos about family life was the family business. And it wasn't just the Frankies. Back in the 2010s, logging was becoming big business for lots of families across America.

When I first started reporting on the momfluencing industry, the estimates that I was hearing about were that it was a $13 billion industry. That was three years ago, and now it's something like a $20 billion industry.

Joe Piazza is a journalist who has just put out a novel and podcast entitled The Sicilian Inheritance, all about a disputed family history. She's followed the parenting influence space closely on her other podcast, Under the Influence.

There's hundreds of thousands of them, and there's newly minted ones every single day.

Joe says there's an algorithmic reason for that. The Instagram algorithm loves family content.

It favors kids. It loves pregnant bellies. I think part of it is collecting data on children starting in utero. I think it's also they know their audience, and their audience does tend to like those kinds of things. The brands that advertise with Metta are advertising mostly to women. They are a lot of packaged goods brands and brands that you want to be able to advertise to mothers.

So you're sucking in that content to be able to place those brands next to this content because these companies are just advertising companies.

But the algorithm definitely loves cute babies.

It definitely loves pregnant bellies.

It loves multiples, families with lots and lots of kids.

And Ruby definitely had lots and lots of kids. When she starts posting, her account quickly takes off. Before long, she's uploading a new video five days a week, usually at 6:00 AM. By 2016, she had 32,000 subscribers. She starts to do sponsored videos, like this vlog for JCPenney.

Our biggest back to school shopping day ever.

You've been dressing myself- Joe says these kinds of small deals, which probably included Ruby and her kids getting freebies, are pretty common.

I would say the majority of women who are out there creating content are not making a very large salary. A lot of them are getting a lot of things for free. And by things, I mean they could be getting everything from their kids' entire wardrobes, their houses decorated, their family vacations.

Ruby probably wasn't making a whole lot of money, but she definitely approached it very diligently. This was her job, and she was good at it. She'd eventually build her channel to more than 2 million subscribers. No small feed. So she was successful. And it really seems like being seen as successful and being seen as a good Mormon are inherently intertwined. Just listen to this clip from the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

The culture here in Salt Lake City is designed to be perfect.

If you follow all the Commandments, you'll be not only wealthy, you will be blessed. But the lengths Ruby would go to to follow those Commandments, to be perfect, were further than anyone ever could have imagined.

In France, in the 13th century, a teenager ascends the throne.

He seems calm, collected, and as it happens, drop dead gorgeous.

But looks can be deceiving, and no one is ready for the death, destruction, and chaos that lie ahead. Step inside the reign of one of the Middle Ages's most cold-blooded rulers on This is History presents The Iron King, available wherever you get your podcast. Cast. I had an experience once with somebody who wanted to role play with relative stuff. No.

Yes. No. That's a hard task. I said, They first said, Dad, Daddy.

And I said- That's not so bad.

So I suggested maybe... I said maybe the most I could do is uncle. Okay, so that was just a snippet of an episode with actor and podcaster Justin Long.

I'm Jesse Tyler-Ferguson, and I'm telling you, you need to listen to the full episode on my podcast, Dinners on Me.

Over a meal at Pine and Crane in downtown LA, we get into his love story with Kate Bosworth, his career, and so much more.

To listen, just search Dinners on Me wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Infamous from Campside Media.

So I told you what was going on in front of the cameras in Ruby and Kevin's house. But we heard from Tammy Wright about what was happening behind the scenes.

Sherry was a year older than my oldest, Chandra. And then her daughter or her son Chad, was a year older than my second, Marissa. They all played frequently together.

Tammy remembers what she thought of Ruby when she first met her.

She seemed really a little bit shy, I would say, actually. She seemed a little bit closed, private, but she was... She seemed just congenial enough, genuine enough. She did seem like she was a little bit overwhelmed.

Ruby was a good neighbor to her when Tammy was recovering from an accident. But after she heard Ray's voices when Ruby was watching her kids, Tammy started to notice that there were other things that were off about Ruby.

I would hear her outside. She would frequently get upset at Chad. Chad was a little bit of a bully to the other kids in the neighborhood. And he was just a typical little boy, right? But he had a hard time with boundaries. And so she would get really frustrated with him. And I watched her a couple of times raise her voice, go over and grab him off his tricycle and yank him by the arm, pull him off, and take him in the house, and he'd be crying. And then I could hear her spanking him, and he was crying, and stuff like that.

Tammy says she thought she knew why Ruby might be losing her cool more than other moms. And it had to do with her husband, Kevin, who back then was not yet a professor.

I genuinely thought it was from the stress of her husband having clinical depression.

According to Tamey, Kevin was having some serious issues that were really impacting his life.

He was just really withdrawn and distant from social situations interacting as neighbors and stuff like that. And it turned out that in 2010, he had to be hospitalized for depression. I mean, he was in the middle of his PhD studies, and he had to take a break from that. And that was going to be the source of their income. And so the possibility of losing out on that after spending all that money for all that education and sacrificing all that time and him not being able to complete it. I was trying to put myself in her shoes, and I could imagine that that would be a tremendous amount of stress and uncertainty and could lead to a lot of the behavior that I saw. But it was definitely behavior that I didn't want my kids to be around.

So even though she could empathize with Ruby, Tammy started to put some safeguards in place to protect her own kids.

I just felt guarded with her. And if she started acting like that, I would call my kids. If my kids were out there playing, I would call them in to come inside because inevitably, they would see what was happening. It would be really upsetting to them. And so I would go and corral around them and gather them up and bring them inside so they didn't have to be so upset and disturbed by that. My second oldest who was at the time two or three years old, she was crying after she saw one of those interactions. And as I picked her up to bring her in, she just burrowed her face on my shoulder. She's like, Is Chad going to be okay? Is Chad going to be okay? And I was like, He'll be okay. I was trying to believe the best about them, and they're going to do what they feel is right for Chad. But she's like, But it scared me. And I was like, Well, I'm going to protect you, and you're going to be safe with me.

So Tammy did just that, even when she had other people looking after her kids.

My nannies would be out there watching the kids with Ruby out there. And And when I would observe or hear any raised voices or Ruby getting upset, I would open the door and I would say to the nanny, Just bring the kids in. Just bring the kids in. And sometimes they were a little bit confused because I just sent them out there because I was trying to get work done and I couldn't focus. But I just be like, Just bring them in. It's okay.

But it wasn't just how Ruby treated her kids when she was on the street with them. It seemed like there was other behavior, other strange stuff happening behind closed doors on the other side of Tammy and Ruby's shared wall.

Our living room wall border was the wall that was to their stairs, going up to the second floor. And I would be in the living room a lot, recovering and rehabilitating and resting. And so I could hear a lot of what was going on. And there was several times where our couch was up against that wall that we shared with them. And I'd be sitting on the couch and I'd My thumb would hit right by where I was sitting, and it would make me jump. It would frighten me so bad. I just didn't know what to make of it because of my feelings inside and hearing the thumbs against the wall, and then a kid crying right after. I started to get really concerned. The mother's spidey sense was like, I maybe should step away or step back from this friendship a little bit.

Tammy tried to chalk it up to Kevin and his apparent health issues.

My association with his depression and him having to be hospitalized was, well, maybe he was the reason why I heard those noises. Maybe he was struggling to contain his sadness, and it was coming out as rage or anger. And so I pointed the finger at him a little bit. Part of me was like, I really should talk to her and find out what's going on. But then after seeing how my girls reacted when I went to get them, I just didn't want to open that worm. I just didn't want to get sucked into whatever was happening there. I just wanted to stay away and keep my distance.

Even though they shared a wall, the distance between Tammy and Ruby grew bigger.

She pulled away from me as well. It was almost simultaneous that we both started to pull away from one another. We We just didn't have as much that it seemed like we connected on anymore. And like I said, I just felt leery. Part of me has wanted to reach out to Sherry and just tell her that I'm sorry that I didn't intervene. That I didn't follow my gut to actually step in as an adult. I really regret that I didn't intervene.

What Tammy didn't know is that Ruby would build a reputation on mine for being a disciplinarian parent, someone who dealt out strict punishments to teach her kids right from wrong. And so it wasn't Kevin doing anything behind the wall. It was Ruby. Next time on Infamous.

I'm only going to say it one more time, and then you're going to lose the privilege to eat dinner. And we told them that this year, they are not going to be visited by Santa. Christmas morning, their four older siblings will be getting Christmas presents to open because we want them to really have a visceral experience that hits them. You want to take a completely normal, healthy person who viewed pornography one time, in the year that we were married, and turn them into a sex addict, Jody's program did an amazing job at that. Lust was a huge point of emphasis, and that was defined like any time I had any thought, regardless of how I acted on that thought. I approached my then-wife at the time and told her, you know, confessed to her that I had watched a film.

She was almost like catatonic for a couple of days.

She remember she just sat in this rocking chair and just cried for like three days straight away..