Frightening red flags in Ruby Franke’s ‘8 Passengers’ YouTube clips of threatening to ‘starve’ daughter in her son’s bedroom
A CRIMINAL defense lawyer has explained how Ruby Franke’s YouTube channel could be used in her trial after videos showed warning signs of suspected abuse.
Franke, a mother of six from Springville, Utah, nearly an hour’s drive from Salt Lake City, was arrested on August 30, 2023, on six counts of child abuse.
3
3
3
The disgraced family vlogger and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt were accused of abuse after two of Franke’s children were found to be malnourished.
Franke’s 12-year-old son escaped out a window of Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins and asked a neighbor for food and water, according to police documents.
The boy was described as emaciated and suffered injuries from his ankles being wrapped in tape.
Later, Franke’s 10-year-old daughter was also found malnourished in Hildebrandt’s house.
Franke ran a YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, documenting the lives of her, her husband Kevin and their children until the channel was mysteriously deleted about eight months ago.
Before last year, Franke’s neighbor described the clan as a “sweet little family” and noted that their community was “shocked and devastated” to learn of the alleged abuse.
Now a lawyer is considering how Franke’s previous YouTube videos could be used against her in court.
In some clips, the mother takes away her son’s bedroom after he pranks his brother, and Franke refuses to bring her 6-year-old daughter lunch.
“Normally this wouldn’t be relevant because it’s just previous bad acts that aren’t really relevant to the discussion of what happened here,” said Natalie Whittingham-Burrell, a criminal defense lawyer and legal commentator insider.
“But if they have this theory of child-rearing that involves a pattern of abuse, I think that could become relevant.”
Whittingham-Burrell added that Franke’s previous YouTube content could be particularly relevant if the clips show the mother “didn’t make any mistakes.”
“So if she has a pattern of abusing her, she can’t say, ‘Oh, it was an accident, I didn’t know it was abuse,'” the attorney explained.
“It could reveal the modus operandi of how to commit a crime.”
Prosecutors could also find motives in the videos that prove the abuse was intentional, the lawyer added.
“It could be the bizarre beliefs that came from fraternity classes,” Whittingham-Burrell said.
She added: “It wasn’t accidental, it wasn’t just careless, it was deliberate and knowing abuse of the children.”