Utah mommy blogger's neighbors complained before child abuse arrest: 'very concerned'
Police reports from YouTube parenting blogger Ruby Franke's arrest reveal neighbor's complaints about alleged child neglect about a year before her arrest.
Police reports made from Ruby Franke's home address in Utah detail various troubles at the parenting blogger's home since 2020 — three years before she and her business partner were each arrested on six counts of child abuse.
Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt, who ran a joint parenting advice YouTube page called ConneXions Classroom, were charged after Santa Clara-Ivins police located two of Franke's six children, who were malnourished and emaciated, at Hildebrandt's home on Aug. 30 after receiving a disturbing 911 call from a neighbor.
"I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help, and he said he just came from a neighbor’s house, and we know there's been problems at this neighbor's house," a man said in the 911 call obtained by Fox News Digital. "He's emaciated. He's got tape around his legs. He's hungry, and he's thirsty."
The boy apparently told the neighbor that even though he came from Hildebrandt's house, his mother is Ruby Franke, who lives in a different town. Police would later locate Franke's four other children at different locations, according to police report.
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Prior to Franke's and Hildebrandt's arrests, Springfield police were called to Franke's home multiple times between 2020 and 2023, according to police reports obtained by Fox News Digital.
"[They] went on walks together, filmed a lot together, attended church all together. Then, gradually we saw less and less of the family together, dad and oldest son out of the house," a neighbor told Fox News Digital. "After dad and oldest son were out of the house, we rarely saw the remaining children outside."
Eventually, they attended church less frequently, and the kids were pulled out of school. "We stopped seeing anyone in and out of the house," the neighbor said.
In April 2020, police responded to a call from Franke saying she was receiving "threatening messages" from an unknown number. Franke ran a parenting video blog, or "vlog," called 8Passengers on YouTube for years before she stopped posting on the channel following backlash stemming from several of her videos and teamed up with Hildebrandt.
Franke told the officer in April 2020 that she had a popular YouTube page, and she believed the threatening caller knew about her vlog.
"Franke stated that she received a message from somebody stating they were going to take her family down and there will be riot[s] at their door when the world finds out the truth," the Springfield officer wrote in a police report.
Two months later, police received a similar call about Franke being harassed — this time via Instagram.
Franke again told police that she has a YouTube channel called 8Passengers, and she received a threatening message from an account called "8passengerscancalled," according to police.
The account apparently sent a message to Franke with her address and the message, "[A]lrightly y'all grab your pitchforks, we goin looting [sic] at the place that actually deserves it."
Police set up extra patrol at Franke's address for the next three days after her call.
Most families in the area were aware that Franke had a YouTube channel called 8Passengers, her neighbor told Fox News Digital. When she started another vlog called "Moms of Truth"/ ConneXions on Facebook with Hildebrandt, "a few" neighbors became "very concerned" with the content, the neighbor said.
"The videos posted on that [Facebook page] had in our opinion unhealthy parenting and marriage advice/strategies," she said. "We wondered if this is why we saw less of the children. We wondered if they were using the strategies from ConneXions (very harsh parenting tips) so that would explain why we never saw the kids."
In April 2022, a Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) worker contacted police and said she saw two kids running in the middle of the road unsupervised from outside Franke's address. The caseworker asked police to drive by the area to see if they noticed any children in the street, which they did not, according to the police report.
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In September 2022, police were again called to Franke's address for a welfare check after her eldest daughter, Shari Franke, told police that "multiple children" had been "left at home alone for days," police said in the report.
Shari told police that a neighbor contacted her to say the children — Shari's brothers and sisters — had been left alone for five days while Ruby Franke was in St. George with a friend. Shari called police to ask if they would check on the children and make sure they had enough food.
Officers tried to make contact with the children inside, who ran upstairs when police knocked on the front door. Neighbors in the area gathered around the house, curious about the police presence outside the Franke house, the police report said.
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Police asked the neighbors about Franke, and they "immediately started telling about how the mother of the house, Ruby Franke, will leave her children home for extended periods of time and go to St. George to spend time with her friend Jodi Hildebrandt," the report stated. One neighbor apparently provided an alibi to show police that Ruby Franke's vehicle had been in St. George for several days while her children were home.
One month later, police responded to a child abuse and neglect report stating that Ruby Franke would leave her children home alone for extended periods of time without means of transportation or an emergency contact while visiting St. George. She also apparently gave them "strict rules not to go anywhere or do anything."
A caseworker assigned to an investigation into the Franke household had apparently made visits to their home but had no luck getting in contact with Franke or her children. They also apparently would not pick up phone calls from DCFS, the police report stated.
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The caseworker apparently told police she was working on obtaining a warrant, and in December 2022, when the officer contacted the caseworker for an update, she said the warrant had not been approved and no further action was being taken against Franke.
On the same day police rescued two of Franke's children from Hildebrandt's address, Springfield police worked with other law enforcement agencies to locate her four other children. They made contact with the two eldest children, Chad and Shari Franke — both living away from home at the time of the incident — in an effort to find the other two juveniles.
Authorities eventually located the two children at another adult's house in American Fork, Utah.
The woman who was watching Franke's two children told police "that around noon that day she received a call from Ruby Franke who told her that she had a family emergency and asked if [the woman] could pick up" the two juveniles from their respective jobs and bring them to her house for the afternoon.
The woman told police it was "not an odd request" from Franke because she had had the two juveniles over to her house before to do "house work and other chores for her."
Police informed the two children that they were now in state custody and transported them to their sister Shari's residence.
Both Franke and Hildebrandt were initially charged with two counts of child abuse, but authorities later added four additional child abuse charges to each suspect. Franke's husband, Kevin Franke, is not mentioned in any of the unredacted portions of the police reports.
"Kevin was a great neighbor and loving father," the neighbor told Fox News Digital. "He was always seen outside with his kids, walking the dog, or chatting with neighbors. For a short time, he was a ‘moderator’ in the ConneXions Facebook group, then that ‘job’ was removed and he was also removed from the house. Once he was gone, it went downhill."
