Recently, a documentary was uploaded to Hulu that shocked the internet, accumulating numerous views and controversies. Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.
The 8 Passengers was a YouTube channel that was made up of a Mormon family of eight in Utah. Six kids, and the two parents, Ruby and Kevin. They vlogged about their everyday life beginning in the mid 2010s before the youngest son was born. They seemed like one big happy family with their wonderful mother Ruby who tries to spread positivity and happiness. However, something always seemed off. Ruby would slip up and say things that made it seem like their family was in danger, or sometimes she slipped about her cruel and unusual punishments. At one point, the older children Chad and Shari, as well as their father Kevin disappeared from the videos. Their videos started to get increasingly more concerning as we heard less about the kids and their lives and more about the devil, Satan and Jodi Hildebrandt, who ultimately aided her in her downfall.
On August 30, 2023, a global shock hit as it came out that popular YouTube mom Ruby Franke was arrested on six felony counts of child abuse. In February 2025, a documentary was released in which Kevin, Chad, and Shari speak about the horrors that overtook their house.
Ruby was an extreme Mormon, and she believed that the devil was inside her home and children. Jodi Hildebrandt, a therapist, aided her in these out of touch views, in which she convinced Ruby to disown Chad and Shari, as well as kick Kevin out of the house. Ruby inflicted unusual punishments such as making Chad sleep on a bean bag and go to a wilderness reform camp, giving up Shari’s room to Jodi, hitting her kids, malnourishing them, the list goes on. Franke was arrested when her youngest son escaped her household and ran to a neighbor and begged them to call the police.
Ruby and Jodi had held the two youngest captive in the home in which they were physically abused, extremely malnourished and had rope and duct tape burns and cuts on their wrists and ankles. In addition, Jodi would put a Cayan pepper mixture onto the wounds to inflict further punishment. On top of all of this, the children were forced to run for hours without stopping in the dry, desert, Utah heat.
Ruby and Jodi believed the devil was in her children, and they had to cleanse it out of them. In reality she inflicted so much more harm and trauma than good. Here is what Bethpage senior Lauren Kachadourian has to say, “Ruby Franke deserves the jail time she is getting, if not more. She is an awful woman.”
One major controversy is whether or not Kevin was innocent. He claims to have “no idea” about the abuse that went on in his household, which many don’t believe, with reason.
Here is what senior Julia Baumbach had to say on this controversy after watching the documentary: “I think he is playing an act and he knew what was going on. He just wanted to look like the good guy.”
Go watch the documentary and leave your thoughts on Ruby and Kevin!
