Join me for an eye-opening exploration of the chilling parallels between Lori Vallow Daybell and Ruby Franke, two women whose lives spiraled into true crime infamy. With expert insights from John Dehlin of "Mormon Stories," we examine where LDS teachings, narcissistic traits, and criminal actions collide.

In this episode, we dissect:

• Personality Traits: The narcissistic behaviors of Lori and Ruby and how they shaped their actions.
• Religious Beliefs: How their views on Mormon doctrine—family roles, discipline, and doomsday beliefs—drove radical choices.
• Crimes Committed: From Ruby’s child abuse to Lori’s conspiracy to murder, analyzing the impact of their beliefs and personalities.

John Dehlin’s psychological expertise reveals:

• The mechanisms behind their actions.
• How religious extremism can foster such behaviors.
• Mormon cultural and doctrinal elements that may amplify these tendencies.

Why Listen?

• Gain a unique perspective on faith, narcissism, and tragic outcomes.
• Understand the broader impact on the LDS community and true crime.
• Hear from an expert deeply engaged in Mormonism’s complexities.

Don’t forget to subscribe for more insights on religion, psychology, and crime. Share your thoughts on how these cases challenge views of faith and behavior!

Note: This episode discusses sensitive topics like child abuse, murder, and psychological disorders. Listener discretion is advised.

For info on my on-demand E-Course to learn how to identify and defend against manipulation and control, email: askmeegan@gmail.com

WEBVTT

Hello, beautiful humans.

Welcome to the Midlife Revolution.

I am your host, Megan Conner.

And today we're going to

explore a topic that I've

been wanting to address

ever since Sherry Franke's book came out.

in her book the house of my

mother sherry frankie

details the narcissistic

traits of her mother ruby

and later in the book she

compares ruby to my cousin

lori valo daybell and so i

wanted to explore that

comparison between the two women their

traits that are similar

between the two of them,

and also to talk about the

angle of their LDS beliefs

and how their beginnings in

Mormonism and the ideas of

Mormon culture contributed

to the things they believe

both about themselves and

about the world around them.

And who better to help me

unpack this discussion than

the revolutionary

host of Mormon Stories Podcast himself,

John DeLinn.

Welcome, John.

Okay, now wait,

if this isn't getting the

full band back together,

is this like a duet project?

What is the analogy here?

This is unplugged.

This is John Lennon and Paul

McCartney doing a duet

without Ringo and George.

Oh, I feel so dishonest now.

No, that's okay.

I feel like we're cheating on our friends.

No, no, no, no.

You know,

Phil Collins goes back and forth

in and out of Genesis.

I mean, it's fair.

It's, you know.

Yeah, the difference though, I think,

is that, you know, the Beatles,

they did their little groups or whatever,

but you didn't really see

them doing a whole lot of solo work,

you know,

but every single one of us does

our own solo work.

So, you know,

it's almost like a band of all soloists.

And when we come together,

it's like synergistic.

It's magic.

Anyway,

it's a treat to be on your channel.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thank you so much for coming.

My channel members know

you've been a great mentor to me.

I really appreciate all your

leadership and guidance in this space.

And, you know,

when I started my podcast back in April,

I had no clue that it was

going to come here.

I didn't even really think

of YouTube as it being the main thing,

but now it definitely is the main thing.

YouTube is the place.

Yeah, it's been a fun journey.

Yeah.

Well,

so my viewers know that we got the

band back together to do a

whole unpack on Sherry Franke's memoir.

It was four and a half hours long.

It was awesome.

I will link it in the show

notes down here.

It's got like two hundred

twenty thousand views.

It's crazy.

It is crazy.

That's a huge amount.

It's just, it's amazing.

I think there's this

intersection between former

eight passengers,

fans who really want to

know how Sherry's doing now

and how she came through that whole time.

And also your fans who know that, you know,

the Mormon connection in there.

So I think it's a space

where a lot of people are interested.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's fun.

I'll jump at any chance to

hang out with you and them.

Yeah, well,

we're talking about more stuff

coming up here as well.

So we definitely have plenty

we could talk about and deep dive on.

It's exciting.

Yeah, well, this is a fun topic.

yeah just to briefly

sort of recap uh sherry's

memoir the house of my

mother i have had it

sitting here on my desk

ever since we started

talking about that episode

i've got lots of little

tabs in here for different

topics it's just a wealth

of information not only

about the case but also

about the church and and

just so many different uh

avenues to explore in there

And one of the things I've

been talking a lot about on

my channel lately is

understanding people with

narcissistic traits,

understanding manipulation,

coercive control,

and helping people learn

how to identify those traits

and how to defend against them.

So today we're not really

going to talk about

defending against them,

but we definitely can

identify some of those

traits in both Ruby and Laurie.

And also the other concept

that I've been developing

and talking about is the

idea that what we're taught

growing up in Mormonism

really lends us to the

possibility of becoming manipulators,

because we're taught some

of those tactics

growing up in the church.

And I want to explore that

angle just a little bit today too,

although we won't do a

whole deep dive on all of the things.

We'll have to save that for

a Mormon stories later.

Well, this is fun, important stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's important for

people to understand.

And I think it's interesting

to point out too,

a lot of people probably

don't know this about you, John,

that you have a PhD in psychology.

And that was one of the

reasons I thought your

insight might be valuable on this.

But you were telling me that

you weren't really trained

in personality disorders.

I was really surprised to

find that a lot of mental health experts,

even licensed clinicians,

don't know a lot about narcissism.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just, just so people know,

like I did a six year APA accredited, uh,

you know,

clinical and counseling psychology,

P PhD at Utah state university.

It was from.

Two thousand nine to two thousand, uh,

and not, not, not once, for example,

did I ever have any

coursework around marriages?

Oh, wow.

Or like healthy marriages.

Not once.

I didn't have a supervisor really

who was really skilled in

marriage counseling.

And similarly,

the focus was on anxiety disorders,

on mood disorders, on trauma,

on eating disorders,

things that are perceived as treatable,

things for which viable

you know empirically

supported treatments have

been found to be

efficacious because

obviously you want to train

on the stuff where you can

make the biggest difference

and so we got almost no

training on personality

disorders in terms of

education you know like we

would have had an entire

semester on the dsm the

diagnostic and statistics

manual and we would have

like had to memorize all of

the main diagnoses but

other than that that's

pretty much all of my

training on um major

personality disorders in

the six years of grad school and

Part of me feels like, oh,

I should be ashamed about that.

But the truth is,

that's just the way the training goes.

My focus was on obsessive

compulsive disorder and

specifically a subtype of

OCD called scrupulosity,

which is religious OCD.

And I do think that, you know,

we could talk about this,

that Ruby definitely and possibly

you know,

Jodi exhibited some scrupulosity traits.

But anyway,

my other expertise is sort of

on the nexus of religion

and mental health.

And if I've got anything

that comes to mind during

your presentation today,

I'll definitely jump in, but I'll be, I'm,

I'm sort of thinking of myself as, as,

as an audience member,

who's just going to bask in

your knowledge.

Cause you actually know more

about narcissistic

personality disorder than me by far.

So I'm just going to enjoy

learning from you and I'll

maybe throw in a question here or there,

or provide a little input when,

when necessary or when I feel prompted.

yeah when the spirit moves

you john yes when the

spirit moves me yeah i so

because i was surrounded by

narcissists my entire life

um after going through you

know several years of

therapy and emdr therapy

and group therapy i really

wanted to understand all of

these different

personalities in my life

and so i started

researching personality

disorders specifically narcissism um

And also just the

characteristics and traits

that are similar between

different personality

disorder types in an effort

to try to understand my

people so that I could then

learn how to interact with

them in ways that were not

going to hurt me or damage me.

And so by understanding

those disorders and those traits,

I've been able to sort of

come up with my own way of

different tactics and

techniques I can use to protect myself.

Because boundaries don't

work well with people with personalities.

They tend to not honor boundaries.

They tend to not really

understand the impact of

their actions and their

words on the people around them.

It can be harmful.

So I've dug pretty deep into

understanding all of that.

And I think we'll find some

common ground and some

common language for sure.

For sure.

As we're talking about this,

there's two books that come to mind.

I really like this idea that

you've helped propagate in our community,

which is that there's

probably some connection between

common narcissistic traits

and kind of narcissistic organizations.

There is such a thing as

organizations that exhibit

narcissistic traits.

And I think high demand

religions in general

can often meet criteria for narcissism.

And I think the Mormon Church,

depending on your interactions with it,

can definitely meet criteria.

So two books that come to

mind that I just want to

recommend to everybody.

One is the book Recovering

Agency by Luna Lindsay.

um it's called lifting the

veil of mormon mind control

and it is about undue

influence but i think this

idea of a narcissist

wielding undue influence is

very compatible with the

classic traits of high

demand religions or cults

yeah and so uh that's the

first thing that comes to

mind the other book

that I'm looking for back on

my shelf is Stephen

Hassan's combating cult

mind control those are two

books that I would refer

anyone to if they're trying

to sort of explore

narcissistic traits with uh

the potentiality of

narcissistic religions yeah

yeah definitely

Recovering Agency?

Recovering Agency.

I haven't read that one yet.

It's on my list.

But I have read Stephen Hassan's book.

And I did also take his

course and your course,

the course the two of you

developed together about

deconstructing after Mormonism.

and combating the mind

control of Mormonism.

And I found it so incredibly

helpful because it gave me

some vocabulary to talk

about the things I was

experiencing in the church,

but I didn't really know

how to describe it or how to

you know, explain it to other people.

And so taking that course

and seeing especially the

audience participation,

some of the comments of

individuals who were there

at the course of their

experiences in Mormonism

and the things that were harmful to them,

that was really, really helpful to me.

And I definitely recommend

that to anybody.

And of course,

Stephen Hassan's BITE model

that he developed as a

means of identifying

organizations that could be

on the spectrum of harmful or culty.

And I've used that BITE

model in discussions with lots of people,

including the Jehovah's

Witnesses when they come to my door.

about, you know,

is the organization that

you're in healthy or unhealthy?

And you can even apply it to partnerships,

relationships, businesses, all of that.

And I found that really,

really helpful in my

understanding and talking

about these things.

time so this is uh

combating cult mind control

By Dr. Stephen Hassan,

America's leading cult expert.

This was kind of his first book.

This is the thirtieth anniversary edition,

so it's been out a long time.

Yeah.

And he has a second one

called Freedom of Mind,

which is how to help loved

ones leave controlling people, cults,

and beliefs.

Yeah, that's the one that I've read.

Yeah.

That's a great one.

Okay, well,

I have this silly little

acronym that I use when I

talk about these traits.

And if you think of somebody, you know,

who sort of puts on a veneer in public,

this public persona that is

just very sparkly.

So here's my little acronym, ungleamy.

Nice.

I love it.

Ungleamy.

Yeah.

How could I ever forget that?

I think it touches on each

one of the traits that are

really specific to

narcissistic personalities.

Now,

I just always have to start this

conversation by saying, of course,

I am not a licensed mental

health professional,

and I don't ever use this

information to try and diagnose anybody,

nor should you.

This is for informational purposes.

And understanding these traits

helps us to relate to these people.

But just because somebody

has some of these traits

doesn't mean they have a

personality disorder and it

doesn't mean they have a

specific personality disorder.

That's something we leave up

to a professional diagnostician,

but even they get it wrong sometimes.

So this is really just for

educational purposes.

But I think the number one

thing that I see throughout

the different types of

narcissism is an inability

to accept responsibility

for their actions.

And that's the kind of thing

that's sad about the disorder.

And one of the reasons why

most people who have these

traits don't go and seek

help is because they don't

really think there's

anything wrong with what

they're doing or how

they're acting towards others.

So and then a need for

constant external

validation or attention.

They tend to be grandiose.

In other words,

they talk about big ideas

and big plans and how important they are.

They lack empathy,

which is that inability to

understand how their words

and actions affect other people.

They tend to be entitled,

meaning like the rules

don't really apply to them.

They don't like to wait in line.

They don't think that they

should have to go through

the same things that normal

people go through.

It makes me think of my

Uncle Barry with the lower

ninety five concept.

They tend to be very arrogant.

In other words, thinking.

Is that Laurie's dad?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They tend to be very arrogant,

thinking that they know

better than other people.

For example,

Lori thinking that she has the

law acumen that she needs

to represent herself in court.

And they tend to be deeply insecure.

In fact, most of these traits

that they have,

all of these manipulations

are developed as a mask for

their deep insecurity and

for their desire to never

be discovered as being insecure.

They're terrified that

people are gonna find out

that they're actually very,

very insecure.

And then they tend to be exploitative,

which just means their

relationships are pretty transactional.

They will use people in

situations for what they

need them for and then

discard the person or leave

the situation without any

regard for how anybody else

feels about it.

So we'll come back and talk

about some of these.

So where's the M?

I'm just kidding.

Oh man, I did leave out the M, didn't I?

Is there an M?

Manipulative.

Oh, that's an important one.

It is important.

All right,

I was just making sure I wasn't

going crazy.

I have to redo my slide.

Yes, thank you.

I mean,

this is one of those ADHD things

that I'm like, am I done?

Yeah, I'm done.

No, let's do, yeah, cover manipulative.

That's important.

Yeah, I mean,

all of these traits lead to

someone who's going to manipulate.

They want to manipulate the situation.

They want to manipulate the person.

And that's really the

harmful thing behind it is

the manipulation.

And all of these traits are

somewhat controlling.

Yeah, that's really good.

I love that acronym.

Nice work.

Thanks.

I'll fix my slide so it

doesn't look silly.

So if we were going to,

just as a case study in

organizational narcissism,

I'm going to just run

through this and look at it

from maybe a critical eye

towards the Mormon church,

just to sanity check.

look at that magic

all right so talking about these traits

in relation to the Mormon church?

Yeah,

so I just thought I'd sanity check

and see which of these

criteria can fairly be

applied to one's experience

with the church.

And of course,

people's experiences will

vary depending on who your

leadership is and where you live.

And so I don't even believe

there's one Mormon experience,

but I'll just apply my experience,

which I view as relatively positive.

Um,

with the exception of my communication

and my mission, I guess.

So Mormon church,

you unable to accept responsibility.

I mean,

there is the down a choke statement

that the church does not apologize.

Um, and, and in fact,

whether it's the priesthood ban or,

you know,

LGBT suicides or the mountain

mills massacre, you know,

the church has a hard time apologizing.

So definitely the church is a grade a.

Uh, you, as it comes to ungleamy.

Okay.

The second one is need for

constant external

validation and attention.

I mean, yeah,

I think what comes to mind is like the,

the helping hands,

yellow vests that they wear

whenever they do like a

disaster cleanup or whatever.

I do think the church loves

external validation and attention.

I think, I think we all do.

I think it's, uh,

I think every human's born, uh,

starving for attention.

That's probably the way we

help prevent our own neglect.

But I'd say the church is

definitely an A when it

comes to validation and attention.

of those.

Yeah,

so to just go back to the validation

and attention,

I agree with you that we

are kind of hardwired to

need validation and

attention for the survival, right?

And so from a baby,

we know how to call

attention to our needs,

and we constantly do that.

I feel like the problem is

within Mormonism that—

We need at some point to

learn how to self validate.

We need to learn how to

you know,

meet our own needs and to have

our own sense of self and

our own belief in our own, you know,

abilities to solve problems, et cetera.

And I think one of the

issues with Mormonism

growing up Mormon is that

we learn that we have to go

to our Bishop in order to

be declared worthy.

And,

and so that's a sort of external

validation.

And the other is like when

we are keeping commandments

in order to be acceptable to God,

that's another sense of

external validation and i

don't know about you but it

left me you know feeling

like i wasn't worthy unless

the bishop said i was yeah

for sure the mormon bishop

is the broker to someone's

relationship with god and

jesus and and to their own

self-worth a hundred

percent to the point of

they decide if you're

worthy to get baptized they

decide if you're worthy to

advance in young men's or young women's

They decide if you're worthy

to go to the temple.

Yeah.

They can pronounce you clean, really.

That's right.

That's right.

And they do that in the temple as well.

They pronounce you clean, right?

But you have to keep that.

You have to keep your

covenants in order for it to be valid.

The other point is,

I remember when they added

that final question onto

the temple recommend

interview where they asked

you if you believed you

were worthy to go to the temple.

Because before...

We didn't really have a say in it,

you know?

And I'm not sure that was

saying you're the final decision maker.

I think it was adding an

extra opportunity to exclude you.

Well, yes, I definitely saw it that way.

It was like, okay,

we've gone through all

these questions in the

interview and assuming that

you've answered everything truthfully,

which we know not everyone does, right?

Yeah.

So now we're going to give

you an opportunity to

confess to anything that we

might not have covered in

these other questions.

You know, do you consider yourself worthy?

Well, I do, except, you know,

there is this one other thing, you know,

so I didn't find that empowering.

And we all know that if the

stake president or bishop

don't think you're worthy,

but you think you're worthy, they win.

Yeah.

Yeah,

that's the other odd thing is that

I've been in recommend

interviews more than once

where it was very clear

that the person

interviewing me believed

that I needed to confess something.

And so they kept kind of

pushing on it and eventually relented.

Right.

But if if they really don't

think that I'm worthy, they can say,

you know what, sister,

I think you have some

things you need to repent

of and I'm going to

withhold your recommend for now.

You know,

never mind that your daughter's

wedding is next week or

that your son's going on a

mission or any of that stuff.

So, all right.

Well, I don't want to drag it down.

Grandiose.

I mean,

the church is nothing if not grandiose.

I mean,

it's the one true church on the

face of the earth led

directly by God and Jesus.

And, you know,

its members become gods and

goddesses someday.

Like,

is there literally anything more

grandiose?

Well,

I think the only thing more grandiose

than that is claiming to be

the one true religion on

the earth and all the other

religions are wrong.

And, you know, so it does.

I've often thought about

this as someone who grew up

outside of Utah.

I remember when I would go

to Utah and visit my cousins,

I remember having this

conversation with my sister at one point,

like, man,

sometimes Utah Mormons seem

really arrogant because

they seem like they're very

superior to everyone.

I think that grandiosity and

arrogance that we're going

to get to in a second,

they go together because it's like, well,

I have the truth and you don't.

And so I don't consider you as an equal.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

As far as empathy goes, um, I mean,

I think I wouldn't want to say Mormon,

the Mormon church doesn't have empathy,

but when it comes to like

women being second-class citizens, racism,

people of color, the LGBTQ community.

Each time they were forced

into developing empathy for

those groups by critics and by the media.

And it's hard to trust that

they really care.

And I think that's

exemplified by how much

progress the church was

making on LGBTQ issues only after the

They were bludgeoned over

the head with the suicide

epidemic in the.

Two thousand tens only to

sort of backtrack and

become even more severe

against the trans community.

Once the public perceptions

kind of moved back the other way, I,

I think the church does lack empathy,

especially for marginalized groups.

Definitely, definitely.

And they've been shamed into empathy,

you know, forced empathy,

as you're saying, you know,

like Sam Young, you know, advocating for,

for parents to be present

in the interviews with their children,

then they excommunicated him,

but then they implemented

that policy anyway.

So it was like,

they had to be forced to do

the right thing.

They got rid of the person

who forced them to do the right thing,

then they did the right thing.

So is that really empathy?

No, I don't think so.

It's kind of image management, I think.

Exactly, exactly.

Image control.

Which I think probably fits

into your acronym, image control.

Yeah.

Somewhere.

Yeah,

like manipulation includes

manipulating your image or

people's perception of you.

In order to hide, you know,

your shadow traits,

the things about you that you don't like.

Yeah.

So I,

my grandfather said at least one good

thing.

He said a man convinced

against his will is of the

same opinion still.

So I don't think that the

church being forced to make

social changes,

changes their actual

opinion or their actual

ability to understand the

experiences of their members.

Yeah.

that's kind of been my

argument you know for for

quite a while that they the

fifteen sitting in their

ivory tower literal ivory

tower in salt lake i really

don't think they have any

clue what their individual

members go through on a

day-to-day basis yeah so

it's kind of hard to

empathize with them when

you don't you don't know

that about them yeah so um

i'll just quickly say

You know, entitled, yes.

Arrogant.

Yes.

Manipulative kind of insecure.

I don't know.

I guess you could probably

dig for insecurity.

Um,

I don't think the church necessarily

comes off in its public

image as insecure.

Um,

but you could definitely argue it's

exploitative, uh,

of its members of its missionaries,

of its women, you know?

Definitely exploitative.

I didn't mean to just speed through it,

but I don't want to get us

off track for the main topics for today.

Yeah,

but firing all of your janitors and

then forcing members to

clean the bathrooms because it's cheaper,

that's pretty exploitative.

It's like the missionaries

pay to be the church's salesman.

How crazy is that?

Exactly.

Yeah,

their marketing team is the

missionary force,

and the missionaries pay

for the privilege to be on

the marketing team.

That's pretty exploitative

bishops aren't paid, you know?

Yeah.

Not only that,

but they boast about the

fact that they're unpaid.

But, you know,

the top hundred and thirty

seven leaders of the church, all men,

by the way, they're all paid a salary.

You know, they're stipend.

They've got a housing stipend,

a car stipend.

They've got a nice little

pharmacy situation that

they can get whatever

sundries they need for free.

Probably they get lots of

free meals in the Salt Lake area.

And they get that million

dollar bonus when they sign on.

And what I think is interesting about that,

too,

is that the nine women who are in

charge of the primary,

the young women's in the Relief Society,

none of them are paid.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So it's only the men.

But yeah,

to just to just go back really

quickly to the insecurity piece,

because I would argue that

the Mormon church is deeply

insecure about.

And they are terrified that

their members are going to

find out the truth about

their truth claims,

about the history of the church,

the true history of the church.

That's the reason why they

hide these things and lie

about it is because of their insecurity.

Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's nothing more

arrogant than believing

you're God's one true

church on the earth and

that only you and your

leaders speak to God and

only your ordinances count.

Only your baptism counts,

only your marriages count.

Like there's,

it's hard to imagine a more

offensive and arrogant

position than pure exclusivity.

Yeah.

Not only that, but I think these,

the harmful traits manifest

in Mormonism when the Mormon church

does things that are maybe

unethical or maybe you know

borderline illegal like the

the ensign pink fund

deception fraud which was

was illegal i think they do

those things because of

their entitlement they

believe they're above the

law but they also believe

that they're doing the best

thing for mankind at all

times because when jesus

comes everyone's going to find out

that the mormons were right

and it's okay if we for

example do baptisms for

holocaust victims because

we justify that by saying

you know in the end

mormonism is gonna win so

it's okay if we do things

now that are unethical just

because it's for the

greater good in the long run yeah

Yeah.

Well,

let's do a Mormon Stories episode

where we flesh this out.

Does the Mormon Church meet

criteria for narcissism?

Let's do that.

Absolutely.

I will.

Sorry,

I hope I didn't derail today's episode.

No, not at all.

I was just thinking, you know,

I could clip that section

out and it could be its own thing,

you know.

So just real quick,

I want to play a little snippet, um,

from a newsreel about Ruby and her arrest,

just in case there are

people from my audience who

don't know Ruby's case quite as well.

So here's Sherry Frankie,

whose book was published.

And this is a clip from Good

Morning America that we'll

just play a portion of so

that people can get a real

quick review of Ruby and who she is.

She was the Utah mommy in

her no nonsense parenting

one more time and then yo

the privilege to eat din

sharing her life at home

her more than two million

Today we are starting off

But Ruby's social media

empire quickly unraveled

when her youngest son

escaped in August of twenty twenty three.

This chilling nine one one

call leading to her arrest.

I just had a twelve year old

boy show up here at my

front door asking for help.

And he's said he just came

from a neighbor's house.

Yeah.

So I didn't want to, um,

rehash the entire thing, but essentially,

um, Ruby and her partner, Jody Hildebrand,

who are running the

connections classroom were both arrested.

They both pled guilty.

Sorry,

they're now serving prison time for

child abuse, aggravated child abuse.

And unfortunately,

their sentence was only

thirty years or so.

John, do you remember

grown.

Well,

I thought it was between four and

thirty years and they

haven't decided yet.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So I was thinking if they do

go to thirty years.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The seventies or eighties, right?

Right.

So I guess the parole board

is the one that decides after four years,

right, if they get to stay.

Yeah.

I think that's how that works.

So I'm hopeful that Sherry's

book and some of the larger

community discussion about

this is going to help them

stay in prison longer.

Also,

I did an episode yesterday where Jodi

Hildebrandt is being sued

again by another one of her clients.

And it details a lot of the

horrible things that those two are doing,

which we'll touch on a

little bit of that today as

we're talking about the

comparison between Lori and Ruby.

So I think the first thing I

want to talk about is,

in light of the

narcissistic traits that we

just went over,

in the

context of Lori and Ruby's crimes

just talking about the

different ways that these

personality traits

manifested in the

commission of their crimes.

So maybe just to go back and

look at it and specifically

the inability to accept responsibility.

I wanted to play a little

bit from Ruby's sentencing

statements and a little bit

from Lori's just to compare the two.

It's pretty...

It's pretty interesting to

see how similar they are in so many ways.

I'm not going to play the

whole things again,

but just enough to give us an idea.

So far,

she has used her time in jail to

unwrap the layers upon

layers of deceit and

deception forced upon her

over the last four years by

an unscrupulous individual.

Ruby realizes that she still

has work to do in shedding

those thinking errors and

to reestablish a better and

correct pattern of thinking and behavior.

Ruby realizes that changing your thinking,

reestablishing

relationships and healing

are not simple or easy tasks.

However,

she is committed to doing that work.

I would like the court to

know that Ruby Franke is a delightful,

respectful and responsible person.

Yeah,

so I started with that statement by

her attorney because I just wanted to say,

it's so interesting to me when

someone like Ruby can fool

people into thinking that

she's a delightful, respectful person.

You know,

it's that charming nature that a

lot of people with

narcissistic traits have to

portray one personality in

public or in front of

people they want to impress.

But in private,

they're actually doing

terrible things to the

people they care about.

Yeah, almost like code switching.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So now let's go to just a

brief portion of what she actually says.

precedented.

So sorry to leave to you to

finish what we both started together.

enough.

The ending of our marriage is a tragedy.

And you're a ratchet on my heart.

And I'll never be able to undo.

She's talking about Kevin.

To my babies.

My six little chicks.

You were a part of me.

I was the mama duck who was

consistently running you to safety.

I can still remember that.

Over the past four years,

I was in a deep

undercurrent that led us to danger.

I was in a world launched

into darkness knowingly.

I was so disoriented that I

believed dark was light and

light was wrong.

I would do anything in this world for you.

My role was to sacrifice all

things masterfully

manipulated into something very ugly.

I took from you all that was

soft and safe and good.

I took from you your mother.

How terrible this must have been for you.

And I will never stop crying

for her and her tender souls.

You are so precious to me.

I'm sorry.

So John,

when you and I watched this the

first time, I mean, not,

we didn't watch it at the same time,

I don't think, but,

but we commented on our

episode about Sherry's book.

You and I both wanted to

believe that Ruby was

really sincere in her apology.

And for me reading Sherry's

book completely changed my

opinion on that.

How was it for you?

Well, yeah, I mean, honestly,

if a mom's talking to her kids,

apologizing and the kids

don't accept the apology

and the kids are the victims,

I'm going to believe the kids every time.

Right.

And if, and if you read Sherry's book,

there's zero sort of like, uh, buying it.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Sherry's just like, ah, I'm like, whoa.

So that, that is, um, that is shocking.

and yeah that does that does

uh push me in a different

direction for sure yeah i

think when you start to

recognize the ways in which

ruby manipulated situations

people and her own children

And you see it detailed in

the book so well,

the different tactics that she uses.

It then is easy to see this

statement in a new light

where she really is not sorry.

She's very upset about being caught.

She's very upset that she's

facing consequences.

But I don't think that she

regrets any of her parenting choices.

Yeah,

when she talked about the end of her

marriage being a tragedy, I thought,

where did you show that at

any point in the timeline

prior to that testimony?

Like,

is there any indication that she's like,

oh, Kevin, I miss you.

Oh, Kevin, this is terrible.

Oh, Kevin, I miss you.

This is so sad.

It's like she was partying

up on jet skis in St.

George with

with Jodi and the other person,

like massage candle lit

evenings in freaking Sherry's bedroom.

You know what I mean?

Like where was there any,

any hint that she was viewing her,

you know,

separation from Kevin is a tragedy.

The other thing I never

thought is before the

language she uses is

as a mom is being in a deep undercurrent.

And that, that feels,

that feels like a lack of, you know,

I think she was half the undercurrent,

right?

Like she wasn't,

she wasn't in an undercurrent.

Yes.

Yes.

Her, she blames,

she blames Jody for everything.

And that,

that was the point that I wanted

to get to over here is that, um,

She, you know, when they got arrested,

she was already cutting off

communication with Jodi.

She was already in

self-preservation mode where she was like,

okay,

I'm going to say Jodi's the one that

made me do all of this

stuff that I never would have done it.

She totally throws Jodi and

Jodi's teachings under the bus.

However, in the book,

I just want to quote what

Sherry says here.

This is so, so important.

Okay.

Connections is the company

that Jodi and Ruby formed

together to perpetuate

these ideas about mental

health and parenting.

And Sherry says in her book,

this is on page one oh seven,

connections wasn't

introducing Ruby to a new

way of thinking.

It was giving her the

vocabulary and

pseudoscientific backing to

justify what she'd been doing all along.

Jodi's system had simply

slapped a fancy label on

this emotional starvation

diet and called it therapy.

In the end,

connections didn't change Ruby's tactics.

It just gave her a manual to refine them.

So absolutely Ruby was already here before,

you know, she got in, into Jody.

Jody just again, gave her some,

gave her some new vocabulary.

They did create their own in

speak and connections.

And after reading the

chapter about Sherry going through,

she details her therapy with Jody.

And at the end of that chapter,

my note says,

Jody gets her clients to

engage in self-betrayal and

self-sabotage to not trust

their own instincts.

They're taught not to

self-validate or self-soothe,

but to look only to Jody for validation.

And Kevin bought it a hundred percent.

Unfortunately,

he really believed what Jody

taught him about himself.

And that's why when he shows

up to the police station to

pick up the kids, he says, you know,

he hasn't seen his kids in, you know,

or his wife hasn't spoken

to any of them in over a year.

and he says that he was

invited to be he was

invited to leave and he

absolutely believes that it

was his behavior that

caused the breakdown of

their marriage yeah so

super harmful and then you

know getting back to

talking about how this um

lack of accountability shows up for lori

will be a new call for John,

so hold on to your hat there, John.

This is something I've gone

through in my channel before, but Colby,

who is Lori's only living child,

he's about the same age as

my oldest daughter.

He's got a YouTube channel

called The Scar Wars Podcast,

and he's doing some great things.

But one of the things he

posted was a call with his mom

And this is after Lori's

been convicted and Colby confronts her.

And, you know,

in Lori's allocution statement, she says,

you know, there were no murders here.

In fact,

I'm going to play just a little

bit of that as well to

remind people who may not have seen it.

Jesus knows me and Jesus understands me.

I mourn with all of you who

mourn my children and Tammy.

Jesus Christ knows the truth

of what happened here.

Jesus Christ knows that no

one was murdered in this case.

Accidental deaths happen.

Suicides happen.

Fatal side effects from

medications happen.

I don't know about you, John,

but I remember exactly how

I felt when I first heard

that statement read.

I was just completely filled with rage.

So like kids just

spontaneously burn up like.

I think that's what went

through the minds of every

single person when we first

heard that statement.

It was like, okay,

if there were no murders,

then what happened?

How in the world could you

possibly explain this?

And that's exactly what

Colby wanted to know.

Bullets just randomly fly into people?

Yeah.

Wild.

I mean, even with...

with the tammy like what

which of those things would

fit tammy i think she maybe

maybe lori thinks that um

what was it fatal side

effects from medication i

think maybe that's what

lori was trying to allege

in that case is there any

autopsy that like what was she

I mean,

were her vitamins laced with

peanuts and she had a peanut allergy?

I mean, what accident happened?

Yeah.

I mean,

the thing is that Tammy did take

some supplements and things,

but those were all immediately ruled out.

Even the first time her

death was attributed to...

I believe a pulmonary embolism at first,

and then she later had to be exhumed.

And the second finding by

the medical examiner was

asphyxia at the hands of another.

So

And the fact that Chad

wanted no autopsy and to

ram the funeral through in like a week,

right?

Do I have that right?

It was just a few days.

It was six days after she died.

It screams to me,

I don't want any evidence to be gathered,

right?

Right, right.

Like they were in Rexburg.

Her family was in

Springville and he was

giving them no time to travel.

Their son was on a mission,

didn't get to come home.

So yeah,

they rushed it through to try to

cover that up.

So I think it's just, you know,

part of Lori's delusion is

that if she accepts one

fact about the case,

then the whole house of cards comes down.

And I think that would be psychologically,

you know, devastating for her.

And if you show that acronym

again really quickly...

I'm thinking about just this

invocation of Jesus Christ

all over the place.

It's an unwillingness to

accept responsibility.

It's also attention grabbing.

It's also very grandiose.

I mean,

what's more grandiose than invoking

the Savior of mankind into

this murder trial?

And she could sound like any

Mormon church primary

teacher in her testimony of Jesus, right?

Jesus knows me.

Jesus loves me.

And about lack of empathy,

how does she think—

The surviving family members

of the victims feel,

where's her empathy for

them when she's just, like,

denying any responsibility

and saying Jesus has these

people in their arms?

And, you know, like,

it completely lacks empathy

for not just the victims,

but the surviving family members.

you know,

it's very manipulative and she's

exploiting the public media, religion,

people's beliefs.

Yeah.

You know, yeah,

it's very exploitative and manipulative,

I think.

Yeah.

And this is also,

it's important to point out

that manipulative people

know how to feign empathy.

And so when you hear Lori say,

I mourn with all of you who mourn and,

you know,

Did you think that was sincere, John,

or could you tell that she

was fake crying?

I mean,

Ruby did a better job of crying than,

than, uh, than Lori for sure.

yeah yeah absolutely but

yeah the the feigned

empathy is i know how to

say this thing but i don't

know how to actually feel

it and you know i can i can

attest to the fact that

there is more than one

narcissist in my life or

person with narcissistic

traits who did such a good

job of feigning empathy

that i really believed that

they cared about me and so

that's why it's so

important to watch when

people's words and actions don't match

So when they say, I mourn with you,

but there's no actual sign

of mourning or any sorrow or contrition,

obviously that's a place

where their words and

actions don't match.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So now just going back and

we're going to listen to

this phone call between Lori and Colby.

And this call was it was relatively long.

I want to say it was around

fifty minutes or so.

And, you know,

Colby starts with a simple

question of asking, you know,

what happened to the kids?

And it takes Lori around

thirty minutes or so to get

there because she's doing

all this double speak, backpedaling,

explaining, over explaining.