The Therapist Behind Ruby Franke: Inside Netflix's "Evil Influencer" Documentary
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 23 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 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.4 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.8 | On August 30th at 2023, a 12-year-old boy climbed out of a window in Ivan's, Utah. |
| 0:14.2 | He walked to a neighbor's house. |
| 0:16.4 | He was emaciated. |
| 0:18.4 | He had duct tape wrapped around his ankles and his wrists underneath that tape |
| 0:22.6 | were open wounds, deep lacerations from being tied up with rope for extended periods of time. |
| 0:30.9 | He knocked on the door and asked for two things, food and water. Then he asked to be taken to the nearest police station. |
| 0:42.9 | The neighbor pulled up his sleeves and found more tape, more wounds. And this child, this starving, |
| 0:53.4 | injured child, |
| 0:54.6 | according to the neighbors who spoke with police, |
| 0:57.3 | looked at the adults around him and said, |
| 0:59.7 | I got these wounds because of me. |
| 1:05.8 | That statement alone tells you everything you need to know about |
| 1:08.6 | what was happening inside her house |
| 1:12.7 | Jody Hildebrands and Ruby Franke's the child had been psychologically broken to the point where |
| 1:21.3 | he believed he deserved what was being done to him that he earned it, that the torture was his fault. |
| 1:30.8 | And here's what really gets me. The women inside that house? The one who, according to search |
| 1:36.3 | warrants, put those ropes on their child's wrists and ankles, the one who mixed cayenne pepper |
| 1:41.3 | and honey into a paste and smeared it into his open wounds. |
| 1:46.9 | She wasn't some random abuser. |
| 1:49.1 | She was a licensed mental health counselor by the Mormon church. |
... |
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