“What if Ruby hadn’t felt like motherhood wasn’t the only path to fulfillment?” On February 27th, 2025, a documentary titled “The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke” was released on Hulu. It provided additional information about the most renowned YouTubers, the “8 Passengers.” How did the most popular mother on YouTube become the most hated?
The YouTube channel “8 Passengers” launched in 2015 to capture her family life in Utah with her spouse and six children. The channel posted every day, five days a week, at a fixed hour: 6:00 a.m. The channel gradually expanded throughout the years. When 2020 arrived, it had grown to 2.5 million subscribers. This marked the beginning of her infatuation with fame and wealth.
The first case occurred in 2020, when her oldest son, who was 16 at the time, was blocked from his bedroom and made to sleep on a bean bag for seven months because he no longer wanted to be a part of the channel. Then, her youngest kid went to school without a packed lunch. Ruby assumed she was mature enough to prepare her lunch, yet she was only six. The school was concerned about why she hadn’t had lunch, but Ruby said she refused to give her food. Several viewers expressed worry over Ruby’s methods of disciplining her children.
The sanctions gradually worsened. She threatens her older son, Chad, that she will send him to a boot camp for troubled teens, then informs her two children that Santa Claus won’t be bringing them any gifts because of their responses to their punishments. As all the abuse kept going for years, her oldest daughter, Sheri, left the house. The channel was reported many times for child abuse. As Ruby Franke showed more of her true colors, the channel began to decrease in viewers and subscribers once 2021 arrived. This made Ruby furious, and she separated from her husband Kevin in 2022, leading to him leaving the house and the kids. As of that year, “8 passengers” was deleted from YouTube. This led to Ruby joining in on this mental health channel run by a “therapist” named Jodi Hildebrandt at her home, leaving her children home alone. As they ran the channel together, they created an Instagram account called “Moms of Truth,” which offers parenting classes. They were advised on how to quit using coping strategies to distract themselves from the pain of reality. When Sheri and her neighbors discovered Rubi had abandoned her younger siblings, they called the police to check on them. However, the police could not intervene because they lacked a search warrant. 
The charges:
Rubi Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were ultimately captured in Utah on August 30th, 2023, when Rubi’s kid fled and was subsequently discovered to be emaciated. Two days following their arrest, they were each charged with six counts of child abuse. Her daughter, Sheri, said on Instagram that justice had finally been delivered after years of suffering and difficulty at the hands of her mother. According to her sisters, the children are now secure and need time to recuperate from their ordeal.
