Ruby Franke Believed Jodi Hildebrandt Was ‘Possessed,’ Pair Prepared for ‘End of Days’

After detailing their early years of fame in the first episode of Hulu’s 3-part documentary, Devil In the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, Part 2 dove into Hildebrandt’s entanglement with the family — a period of time marked with alleged possessions and exorcisms.

Hildebrandt first entered the picture to provide therapy for the oldest Franke son, Chad, who was expelled from school for acting out. Around that same time, the family’s YouTube channel plummeted, after he revealed in a video his parents took his bedroom away and made him sleep in the basement on a bean bag for seven months.

“We were basically canceled. Our views just tanked. We lost like 90% of our income,” said Chad, while Ruby’s husband Kevin said she refused to apologize for how they disciplined their children. It’s then the videos began to change in tone, leaning away from fun family content and into what Chad referred to as having more a “religious teacher” vibe.

As Ruby friendship with Jodi blossomed, she felt her marriage was in a decline — with Kevin saying that’s when she asked him to join a men’s group Jodi also ran. Per Kevin, most of the men were there to treat “an addiction for pornography,” adding that, initially, he was almost used by Jodi to point out what a model husband should look like.

For a while, things got better between Kevin and Ruby, as well as with their children. But Ruby’s relationship with Jodi only continued to deepen and it wasn’t long until the family’s 8 Passengers YouTube channel was turned into the Moms of Truth channel. As the type of content continued to change, getting more and more religious, Kevin said the couple started to believe the “end of days” and “second coming” were starting and Jodi was hand-picked by God to lead them through it.

“We were preparing for It. We weren’t alone. We genuinely believed that Jodi was inspired, called by God, representative of God. Chosen by God. And this belief all culminated in May of 2021,” Kevin claimed. “Jodi calls Ruby, she was wailing and sobbing. Apparently, she was being haunted by hooded shadow figures that would just appear, surrounding her bed at night. She said Satan had it out for her and we believed it. We wanted to believe it, because we were in a state of mind where we were ready for something big to happen. We were expecting it.”

The couple visited her home in the desert, with Kevin saying there were unexplained things going on while they were there — including a giant handprint on the glass that left him believing he was in the presence of something “otherworldly” or “supernatural.” Shortly after that, Jodi moved in with the Franke family, taking over Shari’s bedroom just as she was headed to college. Though Shari called out some red flags about Jodi to her parents, they didn’t listen.

Then “weird things started happening” in their own home, said Kevin, as home video showed Jodi in what he referred to as a “possessed trance” where she would “start speaking in other voices.” The footage showed one of those instances, where Jodi was seen hitting herself in the head, while saying in a creepy, deep voice, “She’s mine! I own her!”

Per Kevin, Ruby thought the two of them were “meant” to help Jodi by “casting the evil spirits out, exorcising them out.” He then detailed one alleged exorcism, saying he placed his hands over her head and “I would command the demons to depart” by saying all the names of Jesus Christ he could think of. “Those evil spirits were very reactive to those names,” he said, claiming Jodi “would thrash and hiss and wail and growl” and adding, “It was like she was being hurt every time I said one of those things.”

Her behavior didn’t improve, however, and eventually Ruby started checking in on Jodi in the middle of the night, before moving into the room herself. According to Kevin, they even slept in the same bed.

During a visit home, Shari recalled seeing candles and massage oils in what used to be her bedroom. “It felt really dark. At that moment, I kind of figured something was going on. I have my opinion. I do think that they were [lovers],” she claimed.

Kevin said he’s not sure what was going on, but felt it was “much more than a friendship” and “more more than a sisterhood.” Their relationship, he felt, “was uncomfortably intimate.”

“She immediately started putting her fingers into every aspect of our lives and I think she wanted Ruby to herself. But in order to do that, she needed me out of the picture,” he said, adding that Jodi also started talking down to him during their men’s groups meetings as well around the same time.

Chad, who was 17 then, said he was then kicked out of the house.

“I always felt like I had to confess to Jodi when it came to anything like pornography or making out with a girl … Jodi thought it would be a good idea for me, as part of my repentance process, to tell my mom,” he recalled. “I confessed to her that while Jodi was in the home, I was viewing pornography, I was making out with girls behind your back. I had never seen my mom more distraught, I had never seen her more red in the face. It wasn’t anger, it was a sadness.”

He claimed Ruby then blamed Jodi’s possession attacks on Chad’s behavior, using that as a reason for him to leave the home.

“I was 17 at this time. I really thought I was messing with the spirit in the house,” he claimed. “I think that was my mom and Jodi’s perfect chance to find something wrong with me and my dad at the same time and kick us out.”

Kevin said he was also kicked out for having “lustful thoughts” and was told by Ruby that he was holding Ruby and Jodi back. He claimed she also said he could have no contact with them or their children once he left — something he accepted, recalling the moment he said goodbye to his kids.

“One by one, I had the kids in, I sat them down and told them, ‘I’m going to go away for a time and I’m going to work on myself, so that I can come back to the family and be the dad that you deserve,'” he said. “One of my children, the look in her eyes, I cannot … it was a pleading.”

“Ruby was photographing it on her phone and she had this smirk or this smile on her face that she just, I don’t know what she was thinking,” he recalled. “It looked like this look of, ‘This is such good content.’ I wish there was a way to go back in time and to stop that madness.”

Shari was also basically booted from the family chat at the same time, claiming Ruby told her she was “causing chaos” and her behavior proved to them that she didn’t want to be part of the family anymore.

Hulu said neither Ruby Franke or Jodi Hildebrandt responded to requests for comment about new allegations made in the special.

With Shari at school and Kevin and Chad out of the house, things only got worse for the four children still there — which was explored in depth in the third episode of the series. Get a full recap of that and more documentary takeaways below.

If you are experiencing or witness child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 911.