SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story.
When content creator Ruby Franke met family counselor Jodi Hildebrandt through their church community in Utah, their friendship seemed inevitable. Hildebrandt, founder of the life-coaching company ConneXions, was a powerful voice within the Mormon church, as was Franke: The mom and wife vlogged about her life raising six children with her then-husband, Kevin Franke, on the YouTube channel 8 Passengers.
Hildebrandt soon became a constant presence in Ruby’s life. But the religious influencer’s focus on “fixing” the vlogger’s family led to both women being arrested on suspicion of child abuse against two of Ruby’s children. The documentary Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, from director Skye Borgman (Unknown Number: The High School Catfish), traces Hildebrandt’s unimpeded rise within her community, the events that led to the heartbreaking discovery of abuse — and the eventual rescue of — two of the Franke children from Hildebrandt’s Utah home.
To discuss the documentary, Borgman spoke with Tudum about what it was like to delve into Hildebrandt’s story, and what she knows about the current statuses of Hildebrandt and the Frankes.
What happens in Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story?
The documentary begins with security camera footage that shows a timid boy asking a neighbor for food and water, and to take him to the police. The neighbor begins to understand the severity of the situation when he notices wounds on the boy’s wrists and ankles, along with his emaciated state. Police would learn that the boy who’d escaped Jodi Hildebrandt’s home, where he was being held captive alongside his 9-year-old sister, was the 12-year-old son of Ruby Franke: an internet influencer known for her controversial parenting content featuring her then-husband, Kevin Franke, and their six children on the since-removed YouTube channel 8 Passengers.
“If that young boy hadn’t escaped that day,” Borgman reflects, “I think those kids probably wouldn’t be with us today.”
Both Ruby and Hildebrandt were subsequently arrested — but it was Ruby’s name, not Hildebrandt’s, that seemed to dominate the headlines.
“I’d heard about this story, and it was really just ‘Ruby Franke, Ruby Franke, Ruby Franke,’” Borgman tells Tudum. But as she prepared for the documentary, she realized Hildebrandt was at the core of these events. “Just the simple fact that this little boy escapes from Jodi Hildebrandt’s house, where the abuse is happening — not from his mom’s house,” Borgman says, was the snowball at the top of the hill. “That, to me, was the simplest and the most diabolical part of the story.”
The film is an examination of how harm can hide not only in plain sight, but in the spotlight, Borgman says. “All of these things were happening in full view and broadcast to the world. This kind of manipulative behavior and coercive control can happen right in front of your eyes. It’s essential to understand that if we want to prevent this from happening again.”
Where is Jodi Hildebrandt now?
Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to, and was convicted of, four counts of aggravated child abuse. She was sentenced to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years in February 2024. She is now serving time at Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City. Her first parole hearing is set for December 2026. According to Borgman, Hildebrandt has continued her patterns of behavior while in prison: “[Jodi] was creating these little groups of women and talking to them about addiction, and seeking out people who have drug addictions or alcohol addictions. She’s looking for people who have vulnerabilities and trying to coach them or counsel them within this prison structure. So, it seems like she’s continuing to do what she was doing outside.”
From making the documentary, Borgman says she walked away with a greater understanding of the steps Hildebrandt went through to tear families like the Frankes apart. “It’s like the 101 of how to get somebody to fall in line,” she says. “She uses threats and all these cult-y techniques, and she isolates them. It really is just the methodology that she incorporates that really works to separate these people from anything that is positive in their lives.”
ConneXions is no longer in operation, but Hildebrandt’s impact on her clients from the LDS community, a few of whom were featured in the documentary, is still deeply felt. Borgman says that some of the counselor’s former clients have been looking forward to the film’s release, to have their stories told.
“The participants that I spoke to who were seeing Jodi for some kind of therapy are happy that the film is coming out,” she says. “They wanted to tell their story of how Jodi manipulated them, how she used sort of this intersection of trust and power and harm to really obscure their own sense of self and family and religion, and how it can happen to pretty much anybody.”
What was key to Hildebrandt’s manipulation, Borgman says, is the way she weaponized language against her clients. “Jodi was a master at using these words and twisting their meaning” in order to get her clients to do “really, really, really harmful things to people they loved.”
Where is Ruby Franke now?
Ruby also pleaded guilty, and her sentence was the same as Hildebrandt’s. She is also serving time in the same prison, but is held in a separate section, away from Hildebrandt. Like Hildebrandt, Ruby’s first parole hearing is set for December 2026.
In the documentary, audio recordings from prison illustrate that Ruby had begun to distance herself from Hildebrandt. Borgman doesn’t have concrete confirmation if that separation has lasted — but she suspects it has. “I think this separation helps Ruby recognize where she was and what Jodi was doing,” Borgman says. “I also think it’s a form of self-preservation. She’s looking at the potential time that she could be spending in prison. I think that she’s kind of going, ‘Wait a minute, if I separate myself, maybe I won’t get judged as harshly.’”
Where is Kevin Franke now?
Since his wife’s conviction, Kevin has advocated for stricter legislation regarding child welfare laws. In July 2024, he addressed Utah’s Child Welfare Legislative Oversight Panel, urging them to close the loopholes that inhibit authority intervention.
Kevin’s divorce from Ruby was finalized in March 2025. In late 2025, he married a woman named Becca Bevan, who he proposed to in September of that year. Kevin’s daughter Shari posted a picture of herself standing with the newlyweds alongside her brother Chad. In the caption, Shari wrote, “I could always see [my dad] wasn’t happy, and I prayed that one day he’d find someone that made him happy like he deserved.… He is a wonderful man, and I’m so happy for the new addition to the family!”
Where are the Franke children now?
The identities of both children who’d been kept at Hildebrandt’s home — as well as two of their siblings, who are also minors — have been withheld from court documentation and reporting.
Shari, now 22, published a memoir in January 2025 about her life with Ruby, called The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom. Chad, now 20, is a realtor and got married in 2025, according to his Instagram.
Shari and Chad were adults at the time of Hildebrandt’s and their mother’s arrests in 2023. Their four younger siblings, who’d been in protective custody since then, are now under their father’s care. Kevin was granted full custody as part of the divorce proceedings in early 2025.
“I think they’re moving on and trying to find some form of normal,” Borgman says about the Franke children. “When Ruby’s released from prison, it’ll be really interesting what kind of relationship — if any relationship — happens.”
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