Ruby Franke & Jodi Hildebrandt: The Cult of “Righteous” Abuse
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this searing Hidden Killers commentary, Tony Brueski unpacks the disturbing psychology behind Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt, the duo whose “spiritual discipline” of children became a criminal horror show.
Ruby’s journey from YouTube mom to convicted abuser isn’t just about narcissism — it’s about moral addiction. She craved righteousness the way others crave power, and Jodi knew exactly how to feed that need. Together they built a belief system where cruelty became holiness, obedience became worship, and children paid the price.
Tony explores the cult-like dynamic between leader and follower, the shared delusion (folie à deux) that turned ideology into torture, and the deeper question of why authoritarian faith systems flourish online.
This is the story of how conviction curdles into control — and how easily “doing good” becomes the justification for doing harm.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, True Crime Podcast fans. It's Patrick and Jillian from True Crime Obsessed. |
| 0:05.8 | Each week on TCO, we recap a true crime documentary everyone's talking about, and we do it with hearts, sass, and just the right amount of humor. |
| 0:13.0 | So if you like the kind of podcast where two good friends chat about a case in a thoughtful way that centers the victims, you really got to check us out. |
| 0:19.8 | Yeah, we cover the well-known cases that you hear about in the news and the underreported cases that desperately need more attention. For almost nine years, we've been one of the most popular true crime podcasts out there. We have over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, and our brand-new YouTube channel has over 50,000 subscribers watching our full length of video episodes too. |
| 0:38.2 | So find and subscribe True Crime Obsessed wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:45.6 | Hey there, True Crime Podcasts. It's Patrick and Jillian from True Crime Obsessed. |
| 0:50.0 | Each week on TCO, we recap a true crime documentary everyone's talking about, and we do it with hearts, sass, and just the right amount of humor. So if you like the kind of podcast where two good friends chat about a case in a thoughtful way that centers the victims, you really got to check us out. Yeah, we cover the well-known cases that you hear about in the news and the underreported cases that desperately need more attention. For almost nine years, we've been one of the most popular true crime podcasts out there. |
| 1:13.7 | We have over 30,000 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, |
| 1:16.7 | and our brand-new YouTube channel has over 50,000 subscribers watching our full length of video episodes, too. |
| 1:22.5 | So find and subscribe, True Crime Obsessed, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:28.6 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 1:31.9 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 1:35.5 | There's a certain kind of person who hides cruelty behind conviction. |
| 1:40.9 | They don't see themselves as cruel. |
| 1:42.3 | They see themselves as right. |
| 1:46.1 | Righteous. Even. That's even see themselves as cruel. They see themselves as right. Righteous, even. |
| 1:53.4 | That's even scarier. And that's where the story of Ruby Frankie begins, not in a YouTube vlog or a Utah courtroom, but in a quiet, obsessive certainty of a woman who needed to be so good, so badly, that she lost her humanity |
| 2:05.5 | trying to prove it. Was she a narcissist? Maybe partially. What I see in Ruby is something |
| 2:14.2 | deeper. A zealots mind in a mother's body. |
| 2:19.0 | A woman so desperate to feel righteous, so terrified of being wrong, that she surrendered |
| 2:25.3 | her conscience to someone who promised divine clarity. |
| 2:29.3 | That person? |
... |
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