Betsy Boss Podcast

First off, come join us to celebrate Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s freedom from prison! It’s December 28 (recording day) and gypsy has just been released from prison for conspiring to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. It was “kill or be killed” in this situation, and we are firm believers that Gypsy has earned her freedom. We speak for all of the Tipsy Hoes for Gypsy Rose when we say we hope our girl gets her wish to meet Taylor Swift. When we get into the subject of this episode, we unload the story of Jessi Hildebrandt, the niece of Jodi Hildebrandt who is thought to be one of Jodi’s initial victims roughly ten years before the abuse of the Franke children.

Here we are again with our forth installment of the wild tale of Ruby Franke and her 8 Passengers vlog. This time, though, we're focusing in on Jodi Hildebrandt, a top recommended therapist on the Mormon bishops' list of approved practitioners. But we'll all come to find out that Jodi's methods were anything but orthodox and that her couples therapy often centered around alienating wives from their husbands and coercing them to join Jodi's side. Listen in to learn how Jodi's behaviors were anything but new with the Franke family; in fact she had been committing the same forms of abuse over a decade earlier against none other than her own family members. This story is far from over and we're just peeling back the layers of the "onion with an octopus in the middle" in the words of Kevin Franke's all-too-vocal attorney.

Today, December 18, 2023, Ruby Franke entered a plea deal. In the interest of keeping everyone advised to the day, we're adding a bonus episode to Episode 79. Listener discretion is advised as the allegations in the Plea are incredibly disturbing and may be unsuitable for certain more sensitive audiences and situations.

Ok, ladies and germs, it's Round 3 of our most influencer case that ever influenced - the case of Jodi Hildebrandt, Ruby Franke, and the vlog 8 Passengers. This week, we're talking about why Flo Rida was such a hot topic at one Franke child's school, and why Kevin Franke felt the need to read the lyrics to "Low" out loud in front of administrators, teachers, and other parents. We start to look more at Jodi Hildebrandt and how she infiltrated the Franke family so easily and seamlessly. We also start to see the breakdown between Ruby and Kevin. But first, what's got Kevin in so much trouble that he's sleeping on a beanbag for 7 months? Why did Santa Claus NOT come to town for two Franke children one Christmas? And how does staying home from school to clean the floorboards build character? That is, unless you're too "numb" to get the message. All these answers and many, many more (plus a few more questions) are yours when you click the link to this episode on Spotify or iTunes!

This week, we dive deeper into the story of Ruby Franke and her family of 8 (passengers) and discover where it all went wrong. Where we left off last week, Ruby and her family were catapulted to social media fame through Ruby’s YouTube platform and the cash was rolling in! Ruby learned the art of influencing before it was called influencing - she was grabbing brand deals galore aimed at moms who identified with her, and to her audience and followers, everything looked great. However, something nasty was brewing under the surface, and the first manifestation of this rottenness was with Ruby’s oldest son, Chad. This week, we’ll talk about how Chad’s normal teenage behavior was brutally punished with a several months-long trip to the wilderness. We’ll talk about how the money from YouTube stardom was used and the difficulties the family had adjusting. Finally, and most importantly, we’ll introduce you to Jodi Hildebrandt, the Mormon-mandated therapist who used the Franke family’s trust to make sweeping change. But what was stronger to Jodi? The rules of being a moral and upstanding therapists, or the judgment of the Mormon church? We’ll leave it to you to figure it out!

Vlogging. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. And unfortunately, the people getting hurt in this story are all children. This week, we're going back in time to when "influencer" was still a term no one knew, and YouTube was a place to be creative online, not a place to make money. Ruby Franke got in on the cutting edge right as YouTube and online influencing were taking off in a huge way. She took to her computer to vlog her experience as a Mormon mom caring for 6 children (6 of the aptly titled vlog "8 Passengers," a title representing the whole Franke family). She never could have known that her personal stories about parenting would lead to the whole Internet realizing she was an unfit and even dangerous mother. Join in and listen to this cautionary tale about one of the all-time worst "oversharers," and how documenting your whole life can come back to bite you.

We’ve covered a lot of topics on Betsy Boss, spanning lots of time, but we never could have guessed that some of these topics would pop off roughly three years later! This episode, we’re harkening back to some of our favorite most fascinating topics: Jonbenet Ramsey, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Natalee Holloway and the Delphi Murder. We bet you never would have known that novel evidence and a reexamination of old evidence might be enough to exonerate Jonbenet’s family members, 27 years after the crime occurred! Also - someone’s getting off for good behavior and it’s our girl, Gypsy, who we were rooting for the whole time (not to endorse murder, but Dee Dee may have had it coming). We’ve also got a chilling confession that gives the Holloway family the closure they’ve sought for years. Finally, could a reconstructionist religious organization branding itself as “folkish” be the key to solving the Delphi murder? If you’ve been dying for conclusions to these true crime mysteries as much as we have, tune in and listen!

Today, we're going to "Na-Tell-Ya" about a case near and dear to our hearts - it's the curious case of Natalia Grace! What could a disabled little person adopted from the Ukraine be accused of, when her disabilities kept her from caring for herself? It turns out, just about everything up to and including attempted murder! The Barnetts seemed to have their hearts in the right place when they adopted 6-year-old Natalia from Ukraine, but when they began accusing her of poisoning them, standing over their bed with sharp objects, and pushing them into electrical wire, the tables turned. Who's at fault here? Natalia or her adoptive parents? Listen in to decide!

If you've got a fear or heights OR a fear of being abducted, run as fast as you can! This week's episode is about the Delphi/Snapchat murder! This week, Snapchat is the key to the crime and the suspect - we're going to the town of Delphi (which has a population less than 3,000!) to the top of a rickety old bridge for this story; that's where the Snapchat photos in question were taken. Brace yourself - as with so many of our cases, this one does not have a happy ending. However, we're blown away by the quick thinking of one teen victim who documented what would become the last moments of her life. In doing so, she left a trail of bread crumbs to her killer.

If you've got a fear or heights OR a fear of being abducted, run as fast as you can! This week's episode is about the Delphi/Snapchat murder! This week, Snapchat is the key to the crime and the suspect - we're going to the town of Delphi (which has a population less than 3,000!) to the top of a rickety old bridge for this story; that's where the Snapchat photos in question were taken. Brace yourself - as with so many of our cases, this one does not have a happy ending. However, we're blown away by the quick thinking of one teen victim who documented what would become the last moments of her life. In doing so, she left a trail of bread crumbs to her killer.