Serialously with Annie Elise
250: Kevin Franke: “This is A Story of Love” | Is He Still Protecting Ruby Franke?!
Mon, 10 Mar 2025
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Chapter 1: What sparked Ruby Franke's arrest?
Some days parenting requires uncomfortable conversations.
But a disturbing reality was revealed after Ruby's youngest son escaped in August of 2023. This chilling 911 call leading to her arrest.
I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help. He's emaciated, he's got tape around his legs.
My wife, Ruby's sole ambition was to be seen as the perfect mom.
Frankie's estranged husband, Kevin, and oldest son, Chad, now opening up in a new Hulu docuseries, Devil in the Family, The Fall of Ruby Frankie.
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Chapter 2: Who is Kevin Franke and why is he controversial?
Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serial Asleep. Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. Now, as I'm sure a lot of you probably already know, especially the ones who have been following this case for years now, a new three-part docuseries titled Devil in the Family, The Fall of Ruby Frankie, was recently released on Hulu.
I also did an episode a couple of weeks back where I did a deep dive into this, where we talked all about, you know, the documentary, still some things that the documentary didn't show, just the overall story of Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrandt. And I would say that this documentary wasn't necessarily a look into anything super new or anything revolutionary or groundbreaking.
Nothing that really wasn't already known before, but it was definitely now a new look into certain perspectives. And what I mean by that is certain perspectives that maybe we haven't heard much of up until this point. And although there were a few interviews in this documentary, such as interviews from neighbors, police officers, and so forth... The main focus was really on the children.
The main focus was on Sherry, Chad, Kevin, and Chad and Kevin, Chad the son and Kevin being the father, they really were at the forefront of this. Within the first few minutes of the very first episode, we hear a background voice stating that ever since the arrest, Kevin has been trying to clear his name.
And when he said that, that really got me thinking because Kevin Franke is an extremely polarizing topic. We all know this. I think we can all agree on this, especially if you've been following the case.
Most people either feel very sorry for him and their hearts are, you know, bleeding for him because they see him as a victim in all of this and they feel like he was just as much a victim as the children.
But then others can't stand him and others think that he should have been punished because not only was he an active participant in what I believe to be like the crescendo of all of the allegations and what they were convicted of, He stood, he enabled it. He stood right alongside his wife and he thought that those methods were okay. He co-signed them. He enabled her. He was right there.
So now that he's coming in after the fact, after Ruby and Jodi have been charged, it just doesn't really sit right with me. Because it's like, okay, now that they've been charged and convicted, you're sweeping in and saying, oh, I love Ruby, but I'm so glad she's not here anymore. The kids are laughing again. They're smiling again. I just want custody of them.
I'm going to fight for custody as though you're their savior. When, no bro, actually, you participated. You were a willing participant in this for years. And you co-signed her. You enabled her all the way up until when Ruby was arrested and one of the children went to go get
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Chapter 3: How did the '8 Passengers' YouTube channel start?
Now, although this episode is going to be strictly Kevin-based, I will bring up a couple of points regarding other family members and other dynamics just because it helps illustrate the story as a whole, just so that, you know, it's not super disjointed and you can understand where we're going. Now, of course, Kevin, he was his own person before ever meeting Ruby.
But for the purpose of this video, I really want to start with when he and Ruby first met, because truthfully, that's when all of this started. So let's jump right in. If you've read their daughter Sherry's book or even listened to the episode that I did covering this book, you know that Sherry had a lot to say about her parents' relationship.
She described that her mother, Ruby, in her opinion, was just way more hyper-focused on finding a man, a man who checked all of the right boxes, all of her personal boxes, rather than actually genuinely looking for true love. She literally had a checklist of all of these things that had to be checked off in order for her to find her potential partner, you know? Were they willing to get married?
Check. Would they be open to having as many children as she ever dreamed of? Check. Were they close to God? Were they in the LDS faith? Check, check, check. I mean, a literal checks and balances. Now Kevin himself really validated all of this in that documentary, but he also kind of had this whole new behind-the-scenes type look into it, if you will.
He claimed that when it came time to winning Ruby and then standing out against all of these other potential suitors, that he cheated, that he rigged the game, that he thought it was some type of board game or, I don't know, some kind of competition, and that he cheated so that he would come out on top.
See, apparently Ruby had this handwritten poster that was hidden in her closet, and this poster had columns of all of the different men that she was talking to or the people that she was dating, and their names were all written down horizontally at the top, and then vertically down the side she wrote everything that she was looking for in a husband, just again, all of her check boxes and checks and balances, and then as each man checked off those boxes, she would just fill them in, basically keeping track of who was doing what, which...
Look, everybody does their own methods, whether you're online dating, whether you're in-person dating, whether you want to have a freaking pros and cons list, a Venn diagram, whatever it is. This to me doesn't exactly read authentic love. But, you know, who am I to judge? Maybe I need to make a diorama or something. So as Kevin is talking about all of this,
He even claimed that somehow he saw this poster and that he studied it, that he memorized this poster like it was life or death, pretty much molding himself into this perfect person that Ruby had been looking for her whole life. Red flag, okay? First of all, mega red flag. Like, how about, what's that song? Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself.
Like, this guy, he's crafting himself into who he thinks Ruby, not even who he thinks, but who Ruby wants as a partner. Now, not only is that a red flag because you're changing yourself, but it's a huge red flag because it's showing you are fixated on Ruby.
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Chapter 4: Did Kevin Franke regret his role in family vlogging?
Because Kevin claimed that when Ruby first started picking up the camera and documenting every single thing in their house, in their lives, and turning it into content, that he was really uncomfortable with it.
But what's crazy is he wasn't uncomfortable because she was documenting the private moments like a child getting their period or a child being punished or a child having their door ripped off their hinges. No, he wasn't uncomfortable with the children's faces being shown or all of their personal moments and thoughts and behaviors being exploited.
He was just uncomfortable because he said it was, quote, awkward for him. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry it was awkward for you, Kevin. I'm sorry that it was awkward for you. So Ruby could put on this mask, honestly kind of like a trained actress, where she knew the lines that she wanted everyone in her house to say. She knew where she wanted them to all be standing.
She knew how she wanted them to be dressed, how they should act. But Kevin, he said, you know, for me it was difficult because I'm not a natural at that. I'm not able to have that vision, at least not in the way that Ruby was.
He says that he would forget his lines, he would forget when he was supposed to interject in conversations and jump in the scene, and that he just couldn't quite figure it out. He says, even the times where I did remember that I needed to jump in the scene and say something, it just sounded too scripted. It sounded fake. It wasn't like a natural flow in the conversation.
Yet, he still sat next to Ruby, just smiling for the camera, trying to do whatever it was she wanted. Which again, this just ties back into that poster that was inside Ruby's closet. He knew what she wanted. He molded himself to fit it. No questions asked, he was going to do whatever Ruby wanted.
Now, interestingly enough, Kevin admitted during the first episode of this series that after he saw the paychecks that were coming in and that they were increasingly getting bigger and bigger, he just wanted more. He saw green. All he saw was money in his eyes. He just wanted more of that.
Now, their first check was only around $85, but month after month, those numbers just started doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling, and then I don't even know what the next word is, but you get what I mean, just snowballing and just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And he then says that sometimes they would bring in as much as six figures a month. Can you imagine six figures a month?
That is what some people don't even earn in a year, yet they were earning that monthly. So at this point, it's like greed just is tunnel vision. And it's like, we don't care about our kids. We don't care about anything. We need to keep churning out this content because now there's no glass ceiling and we can earn as much as we can possibly make by however much content we put out.
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Chapter 5: What are the allegations against Ruby and Kevin Franke?
I'm not in it.
So we're excited to have another live YouTube session. So we're going to just shout out and say hi to a few folks as you hop on. So hey, Lexi. Hey, Kendra Skinner. Welcome to the session. It's a lot of fun.
So just like that, he completely changed his tune.
And now that he saw the money and the amount of money that they had the potential to earn, he went from being, you know, slightly annoyed that Ruby had a camera out and was documenting every single moment, every single interaction, to now making sure that they always caught every single thing that they could on camera and that they could always interject it into their latest vlog.
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even if it's not what I'm craving, if it's not what I want. And I also am just so over the fast food. I'm over the delivery fees, all of that that comes with it.
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Chapter 6: How did Kevin Franke respond to public backlash?
Oh, anyone who knows Eve has got to hear this story.
Now, in an effort to be as unbiased as possible and give you the full story, you know, both aligned with what I think and not, after this documentary was filmed, Kevin did end up speaking up about his thoughts and opinions on the family vlogging space. And it seems he does have some regrets and also some negative feelings towards it. So that was most recently on February 18th, 2025.
I have three statements to read. One is my own, and two are statements that were prepared and written by two of my minor children at their request, and I will be reading them verbatim to you. I'd like to also clarify that these statements went through the process of approval in the juvenile court, and the judge agreed that these statements could and should be read to this committee.
My name is Kevin Franke. I am the father of Sherry Franke and the former husband of Ruby Franke. I am a former family vlogger who is intimately familiar with the world of family content creation on social media. I have my own story and journey to share when I'm ready, but obviously now is neither the time nor the place to do that. Today, I want to be direct and clear.
Vlogging my family, putting my children into public social media was wrong, and I regret it every day. Children cannot give informed consent to be filmed on social media, period. If we as adults cannot understand the emotional and psychological impacts of sharing our lives to millions of strangers online, how can we expect our children to understand them?
Few, if any, legal protections currently exist for those children, and I believe it's time to change that. I support Representative Owens' bill, and I believe it to be a great first step towards protecting child influencers here in the state of Utah. And there is much more to do in the future.
Now that video alone is probably going to have a lot of different opinions, and I'm honestly curious to know your thoughts on this. Do you feel like it was too little too late, or that he's only sorry because he's been caught? Do you think that he is now trying to save a face because he knows that the public probably is not going to receive what he was peddling before so warmly?
Or do you stand more on the side of better late than never, like I'm glad he finally figured it out, we're all capable of growing, we're all capable of educating ourselves on topics that maybe we once in the past felt strongly about. As a parent, I just don't really personally allow for that kind of grace. I think that you know when you are being a good parent or not from the get-go.
I don't think that that needs to necessarily be something you should be educated on over time, that you need to grow from being a parent who exploits your child and uses them for money, but maybe I'm too harsh. I don't know.
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