Ruby Franke’s husband tells police bizarre tale of how Jodi Hildebrandt upended his life, pushed him out of his family
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The husband of Ruby Franke, the disgraced parenting vlogger convicted of child abuse, told investigators that his wife’s business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, was a religious “cult leader” who emotionally manipulated people under the guise of therapy and ultimately separated him from his wife and children.
“I was completely cut off,” Kevin Franke told police, describing his life of isolation roughly a year leading up to the arrests of his wife and Hildebrandt. Last month, both women were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for torturing two of Franke’s children.
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In a nearly hour-long interview released Friday morning in a trove of documents connected to the case, Kevin Franke detailed how his life was thrown into turmoil after Hildebrandt became connected to his family, especially in the wake of a major controversy involving the 8Passengers YouTube page in 2020.
The details of Kevin Franke’s story veer into the bizarre, with religious visions, secret papers and unexplainable phenomena, such as plates flying across the room and breaking themselves against the wall. Kevin Franke, an engineer and college professor, told police he couldn’t make sense of some of the things he experienced.
“I can’t explain it, but I saw it with my own eyes,” he said. “I don’t have any way to explain it other than that there’s some crazy s— going on.”
How it started, then changed
Per Kevin Franke’s account, his wife first started speaking with Hildebrandt toward the end of 2018. Soon after, Hildebrandt became Ruby Franke’s “therapist ” and started to speak with at least one of the family’s six children.
Kevin Franke said his first impressions of Hildebrandt’s business, Connexion Classrooms, was that it was a bunch of “men-hating women looking to tear down their husbands.” But he reluctantly began attending a Zoom-based men’s group and found it led to improvements in his marriage.
WATCH: Police enter Franke, Hildebrandt home, find child in closet
Then came the 2020 controversy that left the 8Passengers YouTube page reeling. This happened after Ruby Franke forced one of her children, a son, to sleep on a beanbag. Prior to this, the page was a lucrative source of income with millions of global followers. The page offered parenting and lifestyle tips, although critics said the Franke parents exploited their children for views.
“It burned down the YouTube channel overnight. We lost 90% of our income,” Kevin Franke told police. “It was hard.”
Kevin Franke told police that Hildebrandt influenced what his wife did to their son in the beanbag video. He added that after this humiliating episode regarding the YouTube page his distraught wife turned to Hildebrandt for emotional support.
‘Crazy s–t’
In the spring of March 2021, Hildebrandt told the Franke family that she was being haunted by “shadow figures,” Kevin Franke told police. Both the Frankes and Hildebrandt are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
To help with her spiritual affliction, Hildebrandt went to live with friends for several weeks, but later claimed she was being held hostage. Kevin Franke suspected in the interview that Hildebrandt fell out with her friends after they tried to introduce her to another cult leader.
“From where I stand now, these were cults,” Kevin Franke told police, describing Hildebrandt as a cult figure.
Not long after Hildebrandt returned to her own home in southern Utah, Kevin Franke and his wife visited Hildebrandt’s home for the first time. He told investigators it didn’t make sense how a therapist could afford a mansion in the red rock desert outside St. George.
This house is where allegedly unexplainable things happened as Kevin Franke, his wife and a local LDS bishop tried to help Hildebrandt with her spiritual troubles.
“Like, crashes in the basement while we were talking upstairs,” Kevin Franke told police. “Plates in the kitchen just flying off by themselves, full speed, smashing on the wall and falling to the floor by themselves.”
Similar kinds of occurrences allegedly happened when the Frankes invited Hildebrandt to live in their suburban Springville home on the Wasatch Front. The move was something Kevin Franke said he initially pushed back on but later acquiesced.
Resident exorcist
Kevin Franke told police he gave himself the title of “resident exorcist,” because he would have to perform blessings on Hildebrandt when she would go into nightly trances.
The trances increasingly got worse and eventually led to Ruby Franke and Hildebrandt sleeping in the same bed, where they’d have spiritual visions together. The two became more and more inseparable.
“They’d go and lock themselves in a room for four or five hours and they’d come out and be on cloud nine,” Kevin Franke said, adding that Ruby would share her visions with him and also write them down.
One of the visions had Ruby Franke walking on water with Jesus. Another had her riding a large lion in heaven named Charles.
WATCH: Videos show moments Franke child goes to neighbors for help in gripping child abuse case
Kevin Franke told police there’s a large leather binder called the “pen papers” full of such documented visions. He said Hildebrandt kept the papers, adding that she believed that no one could read them but God, who would at some point decree them holy scripture.
He told investigators that Hildebrandt wouldn’t want these “pen papers” found. It’s not yet clear if they were part of the documents obtained by authorities.
While Hildebrandt was living at the Franke home, Kevin Franke’s relationship with his wife deteriorated. By October of 2021, he told police everything he did was dictated by his wife, who was devoting herself to spiritual work with Hildebrandt.
“I couldn’t come into the kitchen to eat until Ruby gave me permission,” he said. “The upstairs where Jodi roamed was completely off limits. I couldn’t go upstairs any more in my own house.”
Completely cut off
After taking a trip with Hildebrandt in July of 2022, Ruby Franke asked her husband to stop living at the house, Kevin Franke told police.
Following this, his life spiraled into a routine of work, sleep and doing Connexion Classrooms work under Hildebrandt. He did not see his children again for roughly a year, until after authorities took them from Hildebrandt’s home.
In the meantime, he was working to prove to Hildebrandt that he was a good husband. Kevin Franke said she lorded over him on the Connexion Classrooms Zoom calls, turning the other men against him.
INTERROGATION FOOTAGE: Police release video of Franke, Hildebrandt questioning
“I knew that the only way into my house was to get Jodi’s approval,” Kevin Franke told police. “It felt like an impossible task. No matter what I did … I started to question my sanity. That continued for an entire year. I became more and more isolated.’
During this separation, his wife would occasionally meet with him in parking lots, asking him if he’d sign documents and trust her with investments. Kevin Franke told police that although he didn’t sign anything, he would have likely gone so far as to sign over his house just for a chance to return to his wife’s good graces.
“That’s how messed up I was,” he said to investigators. “I cannot describe to you what torture and hell it was to live… in complete isolation.”
Divorce, restitution
Last November, after his wife and Hildebrandt were arrested and charged with child abuse, Kevin Franke filed for divorce.
Earlier this year, he asked a judge for restitution from Hildebrandt on behalf of his children as she was trying to sell her multi-million dollar home. In February, the judge ordered that Hildebrandt can sell her home but stipulated that money must be set aside for the two abused children.
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