True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews

Ruby Franke's YouTube channel "8 Passengers" had 2.5 million subscribers watching her parent six children. She posted five days a week for eight years. The world saw a devoted Mormon mother with all the answers.
In August 2023, her twelve-year-old son escaped through a window — emaciated, bound with rope, wounds on his wrists and ankles. Police found his ten-year-old sister malnourished in a closet. Both had been tortured.
Ruby Franke is now serving four to thirty years for aggravated child abuse. Her case has spawned documentaries on Netflix, Hulu, and Investigation Discovery. Her eldest children are processing publicly. Her ex-husband is speaking out.
But Part 1 of "The Good Mother" goes beyond the headlines to examine the psychology underneath: What creates a performance parent? What does it do to children when love is conditional on maintaining the image? Why do systems fail to recognize abuse hiding behind a polished exterior?
The warning signs were visible on Ruby's channel for years. A teenager sleeping on a beanbag for seven months. A six-year-old denied lunch at school. Children humiliated on camera. Viewers reported her to CPS. A petition was launched. Nothing changed.
Narcissistic parenting doesn't always look like abuse. Sometimes it looks like high standards. Sometimes it looks like involvement. Sometimes it looks like a mother who documents everything because she cares so much.
This episode examines the emotional architecture of performance parenting — and why it resonates with anyone who grew up with a parent who was one person in public and another person at home.
Ruby Franke taught parenting to millions. Her children are still recovering from being raised by her.
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The Kouri Richins trial brings Todd Gabler, Private Investigator, to the stand in this segment.
The Kouri Richins murder trial continues in Utah as the state prosecutes the children's book author for allegedly poisoning her husband Eric Richins with fentanyl. Prosecutors allege she killed him for insurance money after secretly increasing his policy to $1.9 million. The defense maintains Eric died from accidental drug use.
True Crime Today delivers real-time trial coverage as it happens—key testimony, critical cross-examinations, and the moments that matter. No waiting for nightly recaps. Watch the case unfold live.
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True Crime Today covers the cases that matter most. Right now, these are two of the most closely watched in the country — and we brought in one of the sharpest analytical voices in the space to cover both in depth.
Retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer joins us for a three-part conversation spanning the Nancy Guthrie disappearance and the Kouri Richins murder trial. For Nancy Guthrie, she explains what investigators actually mean when they say the case is getting "closer," decodes the FBI's command center relocation from Tucson to Phoenix, walks through the task force scale-down and Annie Guthrie's vehicle return, and then pivots to the behavioral and psychological dimension: what the perpetrator is doing at the 30-day mark, what the pre-operational digital surveillance trail looks like from a forensics standpoint, and what creates the specific human pressure that eventually breaks a case wide open.
For Kouri Richins, Coffindaffer provides a full investigative analysis of a prosecution built on circumstantial evidence and currently navigating a damaging contradiction between its two key immunity witnesses. She examines the digital evidence, the cell tower data, the failed insurance beneficiary change, and the boyfriend's emotional courtroom testimony — and she is direct about where the prosecution is most exposed after nine days of building its case.
This is expert analysis that goes well beyond the coverage. This is True Crime Today.
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The Kouri Richins trial brings Jamye Woody, Police Detective, to the stand in this segment.
The Kouri Richins murder trial continues in Utah as the state prosecutes the children's book author for allegedly poisoning her husband Eric Richins with fentanyl. Prosecutors allege she killed him for insurance money after secretly increasing his policy to $1.9 million. The defense maintains Eric died from accidental drug use.
True Crime Today delivers real-time trial coverage as it happens—key testimony, critical cross-examinations, and the moments that matter. No waiting for nightly recaps. Watch the case unfold live.
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Before the murders. Before the backyard graves. Before the "zombie" labels and the doomsday beliefs — there was a conference room in Utah and a man who told Lori Vallow she was chosen.
This is Part 1 of "The Chosen Ones," a 5-part Hidden Killers series examining the psychology of spiritual abuse through the Vallow-Daybell case. We're not recapping the crime. We're dissecting the religious manipulation that made it possible.
If you've ever experienced religious trauma, you know how this starts. The warmth of being "seen." The intoxication of being chosen. The slow process of believing you're exempt from the rules that govern everyone else.
Chad Daybell told Lori they were married in a past life. He told her she was exalted. He told her that her husband Charles had been taken over by a demon.
Within months, Charles was dead. Within a year, so were Tylee and JJ.
This episode breaks down spiritual love bombing — the first stage of coercive control in high control religions. It's the same pattern used in toxic churches, manipulative faith communities, and cults worldwide. Understanding how it works is the first step in healing from religious trauma.
For anyone in a faith crisis. Anyone questioning a toxic church. Anyone who has watched a loved one transform under spiritual influence.
The devout aren't vulnerable because they're foolish. They're vulnerable because they've already decided to believe. All a predator has to do is redirect that belief.
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