The shocking case of Ruby Franke, the YouTuber convicted of aggravated child abuse, has taken a disturbing new turn with the release of her private diary entries.
Warning: This article contains descriptions of child abuse that some readers may find upsetting.
For those unfamiliar with the case, Franke was a popular family vlogger known for her now-deleted YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, where she showcased her life with her husband and six children.
However, in August 2023, the internet personality made headlines for disturbing reasons when she was arrested on six counts of aggravated child abuse. She later pleaded guilty to four of those counts, receiving up to 30 years in prison.
Now, the shocking case is the focus of a new three-part Hulu docuseries, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which premiered on February 27.
The series features a police investigator reading aloud chilling diary entries, exposing the twisted beliefs that drove Franke to starve and torture her children.
According to a detective featured in the documentary, Franke justified her abuse by claiming her children were satanic and needed to endure painful punishments in order to be "saved".
One particularly horrific entry, cited by PEOPLE, reads: "Sleep outside, shaved her head, doused her with water, over his nose and mouth, head in the toilet, needs to be painful. Blood on his face, scream and scream."
Another passage exposed her twisted ideology, as she compared one of her children to a snake and justified her brutal punishments: "I told the boy, he emulates a snake. If he wants to emulate the Savior, he needs to be a hundred percent obedient with exactness. The body must engage in good work, and the good works need to be painful. I have the power of God, and he must obey."
The journal entries, which surfaced during Franke’s 2023 trial, also detailed her belief that her children were possessed. The names of her children were redacted, replaced with letters like "R" and "E".
One disturbing entry read: "I told [R] that he needs to find God. I invited him to fast and pray. [R] is in and out of possession," per Metro.
A second entry referenced Franke’s daughter, implying she cut off her hair as a form of punishment: "[E] is better behaved with Jodi [Hildebrandt]" - her business partner who aided in her child abuse.
"She likes to think she can manipulate me. I gave her a pixie haircut. All her long hair is gone. No more distracting [with] hair," she added.
Franke's horrific treatment of her children only came to light when one of them managed to escape.
In late August 2023, a worryingly thin boy, covered in wounds with duct tape patching over them, fled the house and ran to a neighbor for help.
At first, no one answered the door, and the boy nearly walked away - until a voice came through the Ring doorbell camera. He asked: "I was just wondering if you could do two favors? If you could take me to the nearest police station?"
That plea for help set off a chain of events that led to Franke’s arrest and the exposure of years of abuse.
Among the many allegations, Franke’s daughter Shari recalled a particularly brutal beating, where she helped her brother Chad "clean" blood off the walls after he was beaten so badly.
“I did always feel bad when he got in trouble,” Shari says of Chad in the docuseries, per PEOPLE. “He'd get a bloody nose, and I'd bring him toilet paper and didn't really know what to do."
Franke and Hildebrandt are incarcerated at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The women are housed in different sections of the prison's Dell housing unit, which is the facility's only unit for women and currently houses 367 female inmates.
For those wanting to dive deeper into the horrific case, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke is now streaming on Disney+ in the UK.
