Were Jodi Hildebrandt & Ruby Franke in a Relationship?

Jodi Hildebrandt and Ruby Franke are both currently serving prison sentences of four to 30 years after pleading guilty to charges of aggravated child abuse in 2023. They were arrested after Ruby’s son escaped Jodi’s house and asked a neighbor for help. He was severely malnourished, with duct tape around his extremities.

Officials launched an investigation into Jodi’s home, where they discovered the young boy’s little sister in a similar condition. A search of the home unleashed more horrors about how the children were treated.

Jodi’s influence over Ruby, a YouTube vlogger, is explored in the new Netflix doc Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story. The women developed a close relationship after Ruby and her husband, Kevin, joined Jodi’s ConneXions program in Utah. Jodi even moved into Ruby’s home, sparking speculation that things may have turned romantic between the ladies at one point.

Scroll down for everything we know about the nature of their relationship.

Were Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt in a relationship?

Ruby and Jodi have never discussed whether their relationship became romantic, but Evil Influencer explored the speculation. Kevin recalled that Jodi would go into “possession mode,” which prompted his wife to start sleeping in the same room as her to handle the night terrors.

“They started sleeping in the same bed,” he shared. “Basically, there were all these rules now placed on me. I couldn’t come into the kitchen to eat until Ruby gave me permission. The upstairs where Jodi roamed was completely off limits. They’d just go up and lock themselves in the room for four or five hours. Then they’d come out and they’d just be on cloud nine. Then Ruby would share with me, like, ‘She had this amazing vision!'”

Jodi even convinced Ruby that she and Kevin needed to separate in order to save their marriage, which is when he moved out of the house.

In the doc, one of Jodi’s former clients explained, “There’s been some talk that she might be lesbian, but then some of the comments she made were [about] if you were LGBTQ then that was an addiction. It could be recovered from, but that’s a shameful thing.” Another pointed out that Jodi posted “several” anti-LGBT videos online.

In the January 2025 memoir The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, Ruby’s oldest daughter, Shari Franke, recalled her mom’s relationship with Jodi, which she referred to as “strange.” She said she found messages on Ruby’s laptop after her arrest. Those messages “confirmed for me the truth about the nature of her relationship with Jodi and how it had spilled over into the physical,” Shari wrote. “Ruby, expressing her frustration about having to cater to Jodi’s needs for physical affection without getting anything in return.”

While promoting the book on Good Morning America, Shari admitted she could not confirm whether Jodi and Ruby were ever more than friends. “I never saw anything specific about that,” she said, regarding rumors about a romantic relationship.

However, Shari also added, “Ruby tried to be secretive about it, and so I don’t know all the details. The vibes I was getting was that something was strange between them.”

Are Ruby Franke and her husband still together?

No, Ruby and Kevin, who got married in 2000 and share six children, are no longer together. He filed for divorce from Ruby in November 2023, less than three months after her arrest.

Moms of Truth/Instagram

The divorce was finalized in March 2025. Kevin was awarded full custody of the former couple’s four minor children.

Where do Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt stand now?

Ruby and Jodi are currently serving their respective prison sentences at the Utah State Correctional Facility. Ruby revealed in a December 2023 phone call from prison, which was released publicly the following year, that she’s distanced herself from her former friend.

“This has been the strangest and the most miraculous intervention,” she said, per the Salt Lake Tribune. “It put everyone where they needed to be. It separated me from Jodi so I am not hearing her. I think not hearing her has cleared a lot of things up for me.”

In another call a few days later (the day Jodi entered her guilty plea), Ruby revealed that she hadn’t spoken to the former counselor since their August 2023 arrests. “We didn’t say a whole lot,” Ruby revealed. “We hummed a couple of hymns. She was still justifying the whole time. She was, like, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll have our day in court.'”

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The women were put in separate prison cells and have “been in separate cells ever since,” Ruby shared.

Ruby said that Jodi pleading guilty helped her realize that Jodi knew “all along” that what she was doing was wrong. “What else has she been lying about? Where else have I been deceived?” she added. “It was the little string that started pulling apart this fabric.”

All of this was a much different tune than what she said on other phone calls shortly after the arrest. “Poor Jodi, they misinterpret her, they misunderstand her,” Ruby had previously said in an August 31 conversation. “She puts her neck out on the line for people, and they get mad at her. It is horrendous.”

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, Streaming Now, Netflix

If you or someone you know is the victim of child abuse, contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.