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In June 2020, CPS visited the Franke home after another report about 8 Passengers. They investigated. They closed the case.
Three years later, two Franke children were found bound and starving. Ruby is now serving four to thirty years for aggravated child abuse.
Part 4 of "The Good Mother" examines why systems designed to protect children fail — and what the Franke case reveals about the gap between warning signs and intervention.
The abuse wasn't hidden. Ruby documented her parenting for 2.5 million subscribers. A teenager sleeping on a beanbag for seven months was on camera. A six-year-old denied lunch was on camera. Public humiliation was content.
Viewers reported. A Change.org petition was launched. Ruby's own family — parents, siblings, husband — all tried to intervene after Jodi Hildebrandt entered the picture. All were cut off.
Shari Franke posted when her mother was arrested: "Finally."
She elaborated: "We've been trying to tell police and CPS for years."
For years.
CPS is overwhelmed. The threshold for intervention is physical evidence of severe harm. Patterns of escalation don't trigger action until someone ends up in a hospital.
The Frankes performed normalcy when investigators visited. Educated, affluent, religious. The children had been trained to perform too.
By the time CPS showed up, everything probably looked fine.
That's how children fall through cracks.
If you reported something and nothing happened, that doesn't mean you were wrong. Keep seeing. Keep reporting. Sometimes a report is the one that tips a case. You can't know in advance.
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Most coverage of the Kouri Richins trial has focused on the evidence. This series focuses on the behavior — and brings in two of the most credentialed voices in behavioral science to work through what the evidence actually describes.
Tony Brueski sits down with psychotherapist Shavaun Scott and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke for three complete conversations examining the psychological dimensions the courtroom record raises but can't fully answer on its own.
The first conversation examines the alleged pattern of exploitation across the full witness list — what it looks like to allegedly view every person in your life as a resource to be managed, how it sustains itself across years and relationships, and why the people inside it are almost always the last to see it. The second examines what it cost the Richins family to know something was wrong and spend years fighting to be taken seriously — the instinct, the helplessness, and the specific trauma of grief that is also confirmation. The third confronts the question nobody wants to sit with: where does someone like Kouri Richins come from, what does that history do to a person's decision-making and relationship with truth, and what are five children now inheriting from all of it?
Explicable isn't forgivable. But understanding how people end up here is the only tool anyone has for recognizing it before the damage is done.
Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Charles Vallow tried to get help. He reached out to Lori's family. He documented her threats. He told police he was afraid.
Nobody intervened. Five months later, he was dead.
This is Part 4 of "The Chosen Ones," our psychological examination of spiritual abuse and religious trauma through the Vallow-Daybell case. Today we analyze why people watch abuse unfold in high control religion and don't act — the psychology of complicity, loyalty, and the conviction that faithful people don't do terrible things.
Melanie Gibb was Lori's best friend. She was the last person to see JJ alive. She heard Chad Daybell's zombie doctrine, participated in castings, knew the children were missing — and accepted explanations until police called.
Alex Cox was Lori's brother. According to prosecutors, he killed Charles, killed Tylee, killed JJ, and was involved in Tammy's death — all because he believed Chad Daybell's doctrine that they were zombies who had to be destroyed.
Chad Daybell's children testified at his murder trial. They defended him.
Everyone around Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow saw something. Most saw too late. Some never saw at all.
This episode asks: When someone you love becomes dangerous, what do you do? And if you stay silent, are you protecting them — or complicit?
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This is the question the trial record forces but rarely gets answered: how does someone end up here? Not in terms of evidence or motive — but in terms of who they became and why. And what happens to the children now living in the wreckage of it?
Tony Brueski tackles both with psychotherapist Shavaun Scott and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke in the final part of this three-part psychological series on the Kouri Richins case. The panel examines how an upbringing built on chaos and instability becomes a template for adult behavior — not as an excuse, but as an explanation. What happens to a person's relationship with truth when lying is how they survived early in life. The painful irony of allegedly destroying your children's stability in an attempt to secure it. And what developmental psychology tells us about what five children are now absorbing from one of the most public criminal cases in recent Utah history.
Explicable isn't forgivable. But understanding how people end up here is the only way to recognize it before the damage is done.
Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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The Kouri Richins trial brings Detective Jeff O' Driscoll, Summit Co. Sheriff's Dept., 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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