Rotten Mango
Ruby Franke Wrote "Abuse Diary" While Posting A “Keeping Kid Safe In Predatory Society” Podcast
Sun, 23 Mar 2025
It was the most viewed home on realtor websites for weeks. It’s a curious looking house. As you swipe through the photos of the 15 foot tall ceilings, the grand glass windows, the $5M price tag starts to make sense. But what is that? There is an entire concrete bunker like structure underneath the house with its very own panic room. A bank vault door - leading to a room with a toilet and sink. To keep people out - and to keep people in. This is the home that Ruby Franke & Jodi Hildebrandt tortured Ruby’s 2 youngest children in. There are detailed diaries left behind by Ruby Franke describing how she tortured them with cactuses, pouring cayenne pepper and honey into their wounds, and all the unique punishments she came up with. All the while posting podcast episodes - giving advice to other moms. How to be a perfect mom. Just like her. Full show notes at rottenmangopodcast.com
Chapter 1: Why is Ruby Franke's $5M house infamous?
It looks like a bunch of square concrete blocks just jammed together to make this giant 10,000 square foot behemoth of a home. It's got 15 foot ceilings, views of the Red Rock Mountains from the living room. The primary bedroom even has its own fireplace in front of a giant soaking tub, giant walk-in closet with washer and dryer inside.
Side note, the primary bedroom, the windows are massive and they're seamless. They're unframed. So you just see the red mountains and it almost looks like an LED screen from the primary bedroom. But the real selling points are the beautiful pool, the hot tub, home theater, second kitchen, guest house, dog washing station. The blinds are all controlled by a remote.
It's an incredibly secluded, isolated on 1.4 acres of property. Your neighbors are all several blocks away. Ultimate privacy. But the more that you click on these pictures, it starts to get confusing. Why is there a doomsday bunker inside this house? I mean, what are the owners preparing for?
It feels like judging by the photos, a good chunk of the house is just unfinished concrete rooms in the basement. For storage, for survival, there's even a panic room with a giant door-sized safe vault door that you have to get through. And once you swing it open in the basement, it's equipped with its own fridge, sink, toilet.
The purpose would be, I guess, in case of doomsday, you could go in there and stay safe. Or if someone's breaking into the home, you want to protect yourself, you can rush in there. Or maybe you can lock someone inside from the outside. But why would you want to do that, right?
Kevin Franke, who has spent a lot of time in this now viral home with his wife, Ruby Franke, and the owner of the home, Jodi Hildebrandt, he says, while we were at that house, there were things that happened. I can't explain it. There was a tremendous crash in the basement that we heard directly beneath us, but when we went and checked, there was nothing. It's just small instances like this.
Below them, there would be an empty, completely empty concrete storage room. Nobody's down there, but they hear something like a table falling over, crashing over. They run downstairs. I mean, there's truly nothing. There's nothing that could have even fallen off the walls. What would that sound come from in a completely empty room? Or another time, Kevin says, the whole house is glass.
And he looks up one day and he sees a massive handprint high up on the glass. Like there's no way anybody could have gone up there. No human could have reached that high. And why would they? The hand is about three times longer than a normal person's hand. The fingers are just scraping down the window, it appears. I mean, what the hell is that?
It seems like everyone in that house is convinced that that is the presence of Satan. Maybe the house is haunted. Jody, the homeowner, would have a bishop come over performing exorcisms on a daily basis. It seems like whoever or whatever is in this house is targeting Jody Hildebrandt.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Ruby Franke's children?
But the house being allegedly haunted is not why the house is so famous on realtor.com. It's not because it's haunted. It's because August 30th, 2023, two children were rescued out of the basement of that home. They had been held captive, tortured, starved, and abused. This is the case of Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrandt.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Biz Parents Foundation. They're a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting professional child performers and their rights. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. We'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support.
As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. This is part three of the four-part Ruby, Frankie, and Jodi Hildebrandt case. Please watch part one and two before this episode. In part one, we go over Ruby Frankie's YouTube channel and her being quote-unquote canceled by concerned internet users, netizens, who believe that she was abusing her six children behind the scenes.
Which, side note, we will be referring to the eldest children by Sherry and Chad, by their names. They have publicly spoken out about what's happened. They're adults. Sherry actually has an incredible book that I think everyone would gain a lot of not just insight on the case, but insight on what it would mean to be the child of a family vlogger.
It's the type of book that gives you a lot of pause. It makes you think a lot. And she's a phenomenal writer. It's called House of My Mother. So go buy a copy. Go buy 22 copies. Share it with your friends to support Sherry Franke. The four youngest Frankie kids will be referred to by their first initial of their names or when feasible, just as one of the kids.
Regardless of if their names are publicly out there, we're going to just use their first initial. In part two, we went over Jodi Hildebrandt, the so-called porn therapist who made it her life's mission to just make married couples divorce. That appears to be her favorite thing in the world. She loves ruining marriages and even concocting plans to get patients admitted into prisons, allegedly.
There's a lot going on in there. And in part two, we end off with Jodi telling Ruby and Kevin that she's being haunted by demons, sent by Satan in this $5 million mansion. They fully believe it. And they invite Jodi to come stay in the Frankie household with them and their six kids. And Sherry realizes something's not right. Sherry, the eldest daughter.
It also seems like Ruby and Jodi are having intimate relations.
So to continue off that, was Jodi part of their vlogs?
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Chapter 3: How did Ruby Franke's YouTube career change?
In the next part, part four, we'll go over the arrest, the evidence, the jailhouse calls, and the conspiracies. So with that being said, there's going to be graphic descriptions of torture, food restrictions, CA, CSA, religious abuse, therapy abuse, neglect, and details of injuries. So with that being said, let's get started. There's a children's book series called Charlie Bumper.
It's about this little boy Charlie that just keeps getting himself into comical situations that probably a lot of kids can relate to, but dramatize to make a whole children's book series. It's wholesome. One book is about how much he loves candy and trick-or-treating and he loves Halloween, but then he's so terrified of, Charlie is so scared of scary movies.
which is what all of his friends want to watch during the sleepover. And the whole question in Charlie Bumper's mind is, how am I going to survive? They're cute books that nobody ever really talks about. Unless your family vlogger, YouTuber Ruby Frankie. She posts on Instagram a picture of her young son, R. And she captions it.
The caption reads, When school started, my son read the Charlie Bumper series, and I began noticing sassy words and entitled attitudes. So I read a few pages of the books and came across the exact behaviors in the book characters. In January, I did a thorough cleaning of books endorsing sassy, indignant behaviors and replaced them.
At this point, netizens, viewers of Ruby Frankie are not even surprised. Before this, like I said, Ruby Frankie was this successful family vlogger with a few million followers and people would stay tuned to watch her and her husband, Kevin, raise their six kids together. At that point, the family was known for being relatively strict because they are from a conservative LDS faith household.
But now she's just fully gone off the deep end. What do you mean you're trying to cancel Charlie Bumper? Like, this is crazy business you're talking about. What's happening? She would even give an interview with The Wrap. where she tells them because of the people on the internet, CPS had to come and investigate her household because her son didn't have a bed.
Her son was sleeping on a beanbag for nine months. And she says, quote, you get more of a negative reaction when you talk about holding children responsible than if you would if you talked about religion or politics. It's so triggering. People don't want to hear it. Why is that? I remember that morning very well when the CPS workers came to Ruby's home.
She said, those officers, you know, there were these two ladies. She said the CPS workers observed her for a few hours, interviewed all of the Frankie kids when they were done. Not only did they not file charges, but Ruby claims to the rap. They were so impressed with my parenting skills before leaving. They asked for child rearing tips.
They both said they were going to go home and make some changes on how they were parenting.
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Chapter 4: What is the Connections program by Jodi Hildebrandt?
If you're here to offer feedback that's not based in principle, but that is based in your own history being politically correct, you know, according to you as you interpret. If this is opinion, this is not the place for you. This is a place where you come to learn principles and then practice inserting principles into your conflicts, into your life and into your situation.
From there, Ruby's former YouTube followers are just watching her spiral. First, Ruby starts off by saying, there is no such thing as having a disorder that robs you of agency ever. She says anxiety is a choice. Depression is a choice. Then the video cuts to Jodi, and it's like a recorded Zoom meeting for connections.
And Jodi, for some godforsaken reason, is wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses
like she's coming to class hungover but she's loud and she's wearing a bright pink shirt that does not work in her color theory in my opinion and the computer camera angle is just like way too high i feel like i'm watching cctv footage so i don't know where she gets the confidence from but she says i just want to be very clear with you your child is not adhd which is like who is she talking to whoever i think she's like trying to give a teaching
They're just yapping. You know, they are a soul that needs to learn how to manage their physiology. Jodi then reads a question asked by a viewer during the video meeting. Somebody just asked a question. Does that include children with intellectual disabilities or who have physical brain damage? So I'm going to bring up the story that all of us know. Helen Keller.
The reason why we know of Helen Keller is because of a woman named Annie Sullivan who did not tolerate Helen Keller's distortions. Now, Helen Keller was disabled. Back then, she was very disabled. And the reason we don't know about other disabled people back then is probably because they were enabled to stay in their disabled.
And then she rambles on about how she does not care how disabled someone looks, which I don't even. Watching clips of Ruby, Kevin, and Jodi talk about connections has fried off about half of my brain cells, and I think I would like to wage a lawsuit. In one clip, Ruby is sitting there all mic'd up. Truth. They love the word truth with a capital T. Truth. Truth. Well, it's a term.
It's a phrase that everybody assumes they know what it means and it is used. I mean, I've heard from parenting magazines to blogs. You've seen it on all kinds of media. And what exactly is it? Ruby, it's a word that has a relatively simple definition if used correctly. In another clip, Ruby is answering a question from a viewer.
The question is, well, that they have a transgender nephew and this is a demented question, but the question is, should we continue to spend time with my sister and her family? Because she now has a transgender son. Should we see them less or even completely cut them out of our lives?
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Chapter 5: How did Ruby Franke's family dynamics evolve?
Maybe someone was just walking down a parking lot. What do you mean? In connections, mental illness does not exist, which is crazy coming from two of the more mentally ill people I've researched recently. But according to Jodi, You can be addicted to mirrors. So maybe they're scared of mirrors. Maybe that's why there's no self-reflection being done here.
Ruby talks about how one of her kids she believes has ADHD, but she says there is no such thing as ADHD. She says there's no ADHD, just extreme irresponsibility. And she was choosing to be extremely irresponsible, super manipulative. And I didn't see it because she was very sweet. She doesn't yell. She doesn't pinch or hit. She's not destructive.
On the outward side, when I call her, she comes running, always with a smile. And so it was very hidden from me for a very long time. And it's just, she learned how to manipulate. And as we've been holding her accountable, it became very apparent to us. There's no attention deficit. She has agency to choose to be attentive if she wants to. There is no power. There is no deficit.
There's no personality. There's no disorder. No, that you cannot take agency from you. There's no such thing as having a disorder that robs you of your agency ever. Netizens from pretty much everywhere that have been following the Frankie family for a while are freaking out because Ruby has finally got off the deep end. They're commenting, the things these women are saying are nonsensical.
They throw around buzzwords like truth and distortion in a rambling word salad and they never really end up saying anything at all. It's all very strange and a bit creepy. Definitely stay far away from these people. Another reads, if you listen to their advice, you will likely lose relationships with family members.
And when your kids are on their own, they will likely stop talking to you because Ruby and Jodi are controlling and mean spirited. People start getting worried for Ruby Frankie's six kids, but even more so now. Neighbors, they see Ruby outside in her front yard. Most likely they've seen the alarming connections videos or 10 of them. And they're waving, hi, hey, Ruby, did Kevin and Chad leave?
Where did they go? We never see them. We never see their cars anymore. The neighbor says Ruby just turns to them and bluntly states, every marriage should have a separation. Could be a year, could be five years. The neighbor said it was very weird. Everything begins to spiral after Jodi moves in to help with her haunted possessions.
Quickly after, Sherry moves out, the eldest daughter moves out, also the author of the book that you should get. She moves to college, BYU. Chad is kicked out for viewing explicit materials. He's 17 when he's kicked out. He's kicked out with no support. He has to fend for himself, he has to get a job, he has to walk a mile to school.
A neighbor even offered to purchase him a car because they felt so bad. And he said, no, because it's all about learning discipline. He's 17 when they kick him out, no support. And Ruby was so mad at Chad for viewing explicit material. She believed that Chad was the reason that Jodi kept having demonic possessions because he was inviting evil into their home by watching explicit videos.
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Chapter 6: What controversies surround Ruby Franke's parenting advice?
Okay.
Whatever that means. Here's what I would do. Confrontation is necessary and you can do it in a loving way. You don't have to do it in a finger pointing way, but you can have your family over, get some baked potatoes going, grab everyone, you know, a cup of grape juice in their cups and you pull up your phone and you say, I see you posted this on Facebook.
Will you help me understand why you posted this? Everyone wants connection.
everyone wants to know they have a friend everyone wants to have family everyone wants to have a safe space where they can go everyone wants someone who is understanding of their choice everyone wants someone who is understanding of their hurt everybody this is universal i don't care where you live i don't care how much money you make i don't care how um distorted you are or how truthful you are everybody wants this it is a universal need we are humans we are vulnerable this is a need
But you have to stand up and say, this isn't a relationship and I'm not going to pretend like it's being preserved. Do you like what you're hearing so far? Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to our show. I'm your host, Ruby Frankie, and thanks for listening. Sherry thinks this whole thing is getting out of control.
Why is everyone in the family getting kicked out of the family home while Jodi gets to march in here, take Sherry's room, make all the decisions? Sherry says, I remember looking up Jodi just to see, you know, who she was. And I learned that she's not a psychologist, even though she's always claimed to be one. Just from reviews online, I read that she had destroyed families.
She was on probation with her license. She wasn't even married. Her kids didn't even talk to her. And I remember being like, why are we working with this woman? Side note, Ruby forced Sherry to do sessions with Jodi before Sherry moved out. The sessions were insane.
Sherry would talk to Jodi about how she struggles with low self-esteem and self-hatred, but Jodi would tell her, no, you struggle with thinking you're better than everyone. And Sherry's like, actually, that's the opposite of how I feel. And then Jodi's like, no, nope. She forces Sherry to write down any minute time that she feels superior to anyone.
Things like, quote, felt proud of my extensive vocabulary during a presentation. Does this not remind you of Jesse Hildebrandt from part two? Write down every sin.
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