The Therapist Behind Ruby Franke: Inside Netflix's "Evil Influencer" Documentary-WEEK IN REVIEW
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jodi Hildebrandt wasn't just Ruby's business partner. She was a licensed mental health counselor with a documented history of ethical violations, a pattern of isolating clients from their families, and an ideology that former clients say destroyed marriages and lives for nearly two decades before she ever met Ruby Franke. In 2012, her license was put on probation for disclosing confidential patient information without consent. The LDS Church removed her from their referral list. And she just kept going — rebranding as a "life coach" and building ConneXions into an online empire targeting vulnerable people within the Mormon community.
Former clients described the same playbook over and over: separate spouses, pathologize normal behavior as addiction, cut off anyone who questions her, position herself as the only source of truth. One therapist who trained under her said publicly, "I believe she is evil. I don't say that lightly."
Then Ruby Franke entered the picture. And things escalated to levels that would shock even seasoned investigators — duct tape, rope, cayenne pepper in open wounds, children forced to believe they deserved the torture they were receiving.
Both women pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse. Both were sentenced to four to thirty years. But the only reason any of this came to light is because a twelve-year-old boy climbed out a window and asked a stranger for help. A child had to save himself because every system that should have protected him failed. That's the real story here.
#JodiHildebrandt #RubyFranke #EvilInfluencer #Netflix #TrueCrime #8Passengers #Documentary #ConneXions #MomsOfTruth #ChildAbuse
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be |
| 0:06.8 | wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain |
| 0:13.0 | that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching |
| 0:18.7 | their peak in the afternoon. |
| 0:23.0 | Not in the mood for miserable weather? |
| 0:25.8 | Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express. |
| 0:28.7 | Sun Express, non-stop sunshine. |
| 0:32.0 | This is Hidden Killers Week in review. |
| 0:34.7 | I look back at the most prolific stories of the week. |
| 0:38.1 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:40.5 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:48.5 | On August 30th of 2023, a 12-year-old boy climbed out of a window in Ivan's, Utah. |
| 0:50.9 | He walked to a neighbor's house. |
| 0:52.6 | He was emaciated. |
| 0:56.6 | He had duct tape wrapped around his ankles and his wrists underneath that tape were open wounds, deep lacerations from being tied up with rope for extended |
| 1:03.7 | periods of time. He knocked on the door and asked for two things, and water then he asked to be taken to the |
| 1:14.9 | nearest police station the neighbor pulled up his sleeves and found more tape more wounds |
| 1:25.2 | and this child this starving injured child according to the neighbors who spoke with |
| 1:31.4 | police looked at the adults around him and said i got these wounds because of me that statement |
| 1:41.9 | alone tells you everything you need to know about what was happening inside her house. |
| 1:48.9 | Jody Hildebrands and Ruby Frankies. |
| 1:52.8 | A child had been psychologically broken to the point where he believed he deserved what was being done to him, that he had earned it, that the torture was his fault. |
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