Who is Jodi Hildebrandt and where is she now?

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story is on Netflix now and it is just one of many harrowing true crime titles on the streaming platform. The series is about content creator Ruby Franke, and how she met family counselor Jodi Hildebrandt through their church community in Utah.

Hildebrandt, founder of the life-coaching company ConneXions, was highly influential within the Mormon church and became a constant presence in Franke’s life. Ruby, a wife and mother, had six children with her former husband, Kevin and vlogged about her life on the YouTube channel 8 Passengers.

While Franke was known for her controversial parenting techniques, Hildebrandt became transfixed on 'fixing' the vlogger’s family, which led to both women being arrested on suspicion of child abuse against two of Franke’s children. The true crime documentary shows harrowing evidence of one of Franke's sons escaping Hildebrandt’s home, where he was being held captive alongside his younger sister.

He is seen in security camera footage asking a neighbour for food and water, and to take him to the police. According to a statement from the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department, he had "open wounds and duct tape around the extremities".

Both Franke and Hildebrandt were subsequently arrested, but it was Franke’s name that initially dominated headlines back in 2023. Documentary director Skye Borgman told Tudum: "Just the simple fact that this little boy escapes from Jodi Hildebrandt’s house, where the abuse is happening — not from his mom’s house. That, to me, was the simplest and the most diabolical part of the story.”

Hildebrandt was convicted of four counts of aggravated child abuse and was sentenced to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years in February 2024. She is currently serving time at Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City. Her first parole hearing is set for December 2026.

Her YouTube channel, ConneXions, is no longer in operation but the impact on her clients from the LDS community is still deeply felt, and a number of them feature in the documentary, keen to tell their story.

Borgman added: "All of these things were happening in full view and broadcast to the world. This kind of manipulative behavior and coercive control can happen right in front of your eyes. It’s essential to understand that if we want to prevent this from happening again.”

“The participants that I spoke to who were seeing Jodi for some kind of therapy are happy that the film is coming out,” she added. “They wanted to tell their story of how Jodi manipulated them, how she used sort of this intersection of trust and power and harm to really obscure their own sense of self and family and religion, and how it can happen to pretty much anybody.”

As a result of Hildebrandt's criminal convictions, the Utah Department of Commerce's Division of Professional Licensing revoked her clinical mental health counseling license in 2024.

Hildebrandt's story has been shown in the media in various forms, as she was portrayed by Heather Locklear in the Lifetime film Mormon Mom Gone Wrong: The Ruby Franke Story. Her case was also featured in the true crime television series The Curious Case Of..., in which her career as a self-help counselor, the allegations of abuse, and the legal proceedings that followed were all examined.

In September 2025, the Investigation Discovery documentary series Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence explored the relationship between Franke and Hildebrandt.

As for Franke, she received the same sentence as Hildebrandt and is serving time in the same prison, but is held in a separate section, away from Hildebrandt. Like Hildebrandt, Ruby’s first parole hearing is set for December 2026.

The documentary explores how Ruby had begun to distance herself from Hildebrandt following their arrests. “I think this separation helps Ruby recognize where she was and what Jodi was doing,” Borgman said. “I also think it’s a form of self-preservation. She’s looking at the potential time that she could be spending in prison. I think that she’s kind of going, ‘Wait a minute, if I separate myself, maybe I won’t get judged as harshly.’”

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story is on Netflix now.

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