Month: February 2025

But how did they find it? Especially when the body of Thutmose II had long since been removed from the temple that it was laid to rest in?

Well, archaeologists looking into the site in Egypt have revealed it was the remains of an ancient calf that first led them to thinking they may have found something special in the area.

It was an opportunity they explored with haste, given what we already know about burying pharaohs and, in particular, what is buried with them.

Dr Judith Bunbury, a Fellow and Senior Tutor at Wolfson College, explained: “When a tomb is created, all materials imbued with the magic of the pharaohs have to stay with it. These are placed at a respectful distance in guardian pits or foundation deposits. There are usually two deposits – one on each side of the tomb.

“We unearthed a foundation deposit with a whole sacrificed calf, which seemed lavish. We were looking for the other pit when we found an entrance buried by a metre and a half of rockfall, with a step going down. Then another step, and another… well, that’s not a foundation deposit!”

Bunbury was leading the project that found the tomb of Thutmose II in the Theban Mountain area under the New Kingdom Research Foundation, working closely with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities which looks to find and preserve ancient Egypt.

Thutmose II’s burial chamber is the last missing tomb of the 18th Dynasty kings of Ancient Egypt. It is also the first royal tomb to be found since the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb more than 100 years ago in 1922.

“Getting hard hatted up and exploring the tomb chamber is a long adrenaline burn,” said Bunbury, a geo-archaeologist who has taught at Cambridge for decades, and is a member of the Department of Earth Sciences.

She said that the team had been ‘down in the darkness and the dust’ of the tomb ‘scraping all the debris into buckets’ as they did their best to spot fragments of broken artefacts in the derelict tomb.

And it didn’t help that the entrance to the tomb, along with the corridors, had been damaged significantly by flood water time and time again since Thutmose II died in 1479 BC; more than 3,500 years ago. After navigating collapsed ceilings and debris that over time had set in place to feel like concrete, the team made it into a chamber with evidence of decoration: a patch of ceiling painted blue with yellow stars.

Over on the north wall of the chamber, excavators found scenes from something known as the Amduat; a funerary text similar to the Book of the Dead that was reserved for royalty.

“Initially we thought we might have found the tomb of a royal wife, but the wide staircase and the large doorway suggested something more important,” said Piers Litherland, Director of the NKRF and Honorary Research Associate at Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

With no remains in the chamber, it was left to look for more clues as to who it the tomb belong to. The team found an initial inscription beginning: “Son of Re, of his body, Thut[…….].”

Then another reading: “The perfect god the Lord of the Two Lands Aakheper[…]re…”. This suggested the king was either Thutmose I or Thutmose II.

Finally, a further fragment was found in a separate chamber which read: “…great chief wife his beloved… Hatshepsut, may she live…”, which indicated that the king was married to a still living Hatshepsut and so could only be Thutmose II.

A close ally of President Trump and executive of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk has become one of the most powerful people in politics – and, perhaps, the world – through his support for the MAGA frontman.

He has caused controversy since becoming part of Trump’s central team, with a salute he gave at the inauguration still causing headlines around the world.

It was during the inauguration that Musk placed his right hand over his heart before enthusiastically thrusting it in to the air, extending his right arm out at an upward angle.

Critics said it was a Nazi salute; something Musk himself has denied and said is people playing politics.

“The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired,” he said in a post to X, previously known as Twitter before his takeover of the platform.

Musk’s father, a well-known South African politician and businessman, has now responded to the attack while appearing on Arab news network, Al Arabiya, where he gave a rather unique response to the situation and said his son made the gesture to show ‘he meant no harm’.

Asked about the ‘fury’ surrounding Musk’s salute on the stage, Musk Snr said: “Nonsense. Elon is a terrible public speaker, he has a lot to learn. I struggled with it at the beginning of my career when I was elected to the city council.

“You have to stand up and talk to a bunch of very wise people all starring at you. Your nerve goes, it doesn’t matter if you’ve written your notes down. Your eyes don’t read… you become blurred.

“Knowing him as well as I do… I could see he was struggling to get through his speech as fast as possible and to try and look as charming as possible, as he could. But he struggles. He hasn’t reached the incredibly smooth level of people like yourself [the interviewer] who have years of experience.”

On the salute, Musk Snr said: “It was an international salute we have had for the last 10,000 years, perhaps more. The old German hail Caesar, of course, emanated from, no doubt, the Persians, the Sumerians, and so on.

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the AfD, said Musk personally called her after their result to ‘personally congratulate her’.

The 61-year-old made a stunning impression on warehouse worker Tara Jones after she filed a direct complaint to him via email five years ago.

Hailing from Oklahoma, Tara issued the main man a personal message after realising she’d been underpaid by $90 (£71.30) while on medical leave.

What happened next with Bezos has to be read to be believed.

In the email obtained by The New York Times, Tara wrote to Bezos in 2020: “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up. I’m crying as I write this email.”

Left out in the cold, the Amazon staff member kickstarted an investigation by the publication after it was discovered that she wasn’t the only employee suffering the same treatment.

It was found that 179 fellow warehouse operatives were in similarly frustrating circumstances, with their doctors’ notes apparently ‘vanishing’ from the system over a period of 18 months.

Some revealed they were even dismissed from Amazon after its administrative software reported medical leave as absences.

In the aftermath, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told The Independent: “We’re disappointed when any of our employees experience an issue with their leave.

“The New York Times article suggested these issues are widespread and ongoing. They are not.

“We went back and audited the period in question to make sure employees received their pay, and to our knowledge, there are no outstanding issues.

“The controls we’ve implemented over the last 18 months have resulted in less than 1 percent of people experiencing an issue while being on paid leave. Certainly, the unprecedented nature of Covid did put a strain on our system’s ability to keep pace with demand and we’ve been hard at work investing and inventing to do better every day.”

Although he could do with sharpening his email skills, Bezos hasn’t been afraid to test his trillion-dollar baby’s customer service system.

In one ‘uncomfortable’ stunt he pulled during the early days of Amazon, the businessman phoned its customer service line after data showed users were waiting just 60 seconds before being connected.

“I have a saying which is: when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right,” Bezos told the Lex Fridman Podcast.

“It doesn’t mean you just slavishly follow the anecdotes then, it means you go examine the data. It’s usually not that the data is being mis-collected, it’s usually that you’re not measuring the right thing.”

In the end, Bezos was on hold for 10 minutes during his experiment.

“It dramatically made my point that something was wrong with the data collection. That set off a whole chain of events where we started measuring it right. That is an example of truth telling.

“That is an uncomfortable thing to do but you have to seek the truth even when it is uncomfortable,” he said.

Located in Saudi Arabia, the £800 billion city is planned to span 170km (105 miles) by the time of its completion, while having a width of just 200 metres.

It’s unique to say the least, and while developers Neom planned to have it completed by 2030, it looks like they’ve quickly back-tracked after realising the scale of the task at hand.

Neom executives have admitted that it could take up to 100 years to complete and fill the line, which seems a bit far off the original goal of five years’ time.

However, following Saudi Arabia’s successful World Cup bid, it looks like there’s a date to aim for to get something significant done.

The project has been described by Neom’s social media accounts as a place that will ‘transform how we live’ as it will ‘redefine liveability’, and while it will fall short of having nine million residents by 2030, it is well on its way to making significant progress in a short amount of time.

New satellite images of the city have now been released, via Business Insider.

Work on The Line has progressed significantly, despite officials close to Neom admitting that just 1.5 miles of the project would be complete by 2030.

Hundreds of trucks can be seen travelling to and from the project in the Saudi desert, shifting tonnes of dirt.

First announced in 2021, the area is being constructed in the Tabuk province of the country, with a number of futuristic aspects headlining the project, such as a mirror skyscraper and buildings floating over the private Neom Marina.

And the Marina, of course, is for residents of The Line to park their superyachts, before heading to the private beach, the luxury golf resort on site, or up to the sports stadium.

A lot of the technology being used for the project has been kept secret, while many experts have questioned Neom’s capabilities and the tech’s existence.

The idea for the city came from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanting to move the country’s economy away from its reliance on oil, which is finite, leading to his significant investment into the project.

It has also been suggested that the final cost of the whole project may be closer to £2 trillion if they build everything as planned.

There’s almost nothing worse than being alone in the deep blue sea.

Considering we have only explored a tiny percentage of the ocean; practically anything could be swimming down there.

And the creatures we do know about don’t look too pretty either – take a look at this lovely fella known as the ‘demon fish’ for example.

With so many scary possibilities, only the toughest people are happy to risk venturing into its depths.

In this instance, it was Garrett Reisman, an engineer and former astronaut who lived down in the deep blue for two whole weeks with a crew.

Speaking about his experience in 2020 interview with Joe Rogan, Reisman revealed the most terrifying encounter he had while living in the deep blue.

Recalling an experience while visiting the underwater toilet chamber, he came face to face with a goliath grouper – a fish that’s 8ft long on average and weighs up to 800 pounds.

“I went down [into the water], opened my eyes and in the darkness with my flashlight and I saw like right in front of me this huge eyeball like about the size I don’t know of a saucer,” he said.

“This big staring unblinking great at me.”

Naturally, the encounter left Reisman feeling pretty spooked, leading him to take off back to the main base in a fright.

“My crew come running with a guy like I’ve been bit by a shark or something and I’m like giant fish,” he added. “It was a goliath grouper.”

This wasn’t the only bizarre encounter for Reisman either, as he also had to deal with deep-sea fish thinking his bowel movement was their dinner.

In order to take a dump, Reisman would have to pop on an oxygen mask, exit the base and swim to a nearby ‘gazebo’ toilet.

“The fish get accustomed to this,” he continued. “As soon as you drop in the water at night it’s like the dinner bell going off. Because this is feeding time.”

That’s right, just picture dozens of fish flapping around your bare backside in order to get a bite of dinner.

Speaking to Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast on Monday (24 February), the Boiling Point actor opened up about his early days, where his passion for acting came from, along with what it was like to work with the likes of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese.

The 51-year-old said he was stunned when he was flown out to New York to meet with Scorsese – not to mention at his house – for a role in 2019 crime drama The Irishman.

Then when he got there, Graham couldn’t believe he was sat opposite his ‘all-time’ hero in De Niro, who was an executive on the film.

Thankfully for Liverpudlian, the audition landed him the role of Anthony ‘Tony Pro’ Provenzano, a powerful mobster and labor union leader who had conflicts with Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino in the film.

However, as fans listened to the actor telling his stories, some noticed how it said ‘Hannah’s iPad’ on his video link.

A couple of viewers found it hilarious, assuming the device belonged to his wife, Hannah Walters.

One commented: “Kudos to Hannah Walters from Time (with another Jodie) for lending her iPad to her spouse ;).”

“Hannah’s iPad lol! Great interview as I always expect from the legendary Josh!” a second penned.

Elsewhere in the interview, Graham spoke about a new four-part crime drama he’s starring in, called Adolescence.

The Netflix series follows 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is arrested after a teenage girl from his school is murdered.

Graham plays his father Eddie Miller, as Top Boy star Ashley Walters takes on the role of detective inspector Luke Bascombe.

“I don’t want to sound pretentious in any way shape or form, but it’s possibly the most beautiful, wonderful way of working ever for any actor,” Graham said.

“Because what it does, it combines both disciplines, I think, uniquely, which I have never had the experience of being able to do that.

“So it captures and encompasses that truth and reality, and that instantaneous kind of in-the-moment response of theatre.

“Do you know what I mean? Because it’s live, we’re there, we’re in it right there, but it also has that beauty of filmmaking because [of] that minimalistic naturalism.”

Franke had started a YouTube channel called 8 Passengers, filming and posting content about her family which accumulated over a billion views.

Her estranged husband, Kevin Franke, recently denied any knowledge of her abuse of their children, admitting that he ‘still’ loves her.

A Utah law on capping consecutive sentences means Franke will spend a maximum of 30 years behind bars.

Now, in previously unseen footage, the mother can be seen verbally berating her children.

The clips are part of the trailer for an upcoming Hulu documentary series around the mum’s case, titled Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.

Premiering on Hulu on 27 February, it ‘marks the first time Shari and Chad, the Frankes’ two eldest adult children, and Kevin, Ruby’s husband, will share their story in depth on camera’.

Hulu adds: “With exclusive access to the Frankes, their friends and neighbors, and over a thousand hours of their YouTube channel’s unseen footage, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke cuts through the social media reaction to explore the untold story behind the Ruby Franke case: part family tragedy, part coming-of-age narrative, part tale of our times about the perils of life lived online.”

In an interview with People, Kevin that he was ‘not ashamed’ to say he still loved his wife, but explained: “But that doesn’t excuse what she did, and it doesn’t excuse how she hurt our children and how she hurt me.

“There’s some bridges that you just can’t cross and then cross back. She burned the bridges, and so I’m moving on.”

The mum was arrested after her 12-year-old son escaped the property, asking a neighbour for water and telling them what was happening.

Police said he had duct tape around his ankles and wrists and was covered in wounds, with another child found in a similar condition.

But now, in previously unseen footage of Franke, she can be seen shouting at her kids.

She can be heard shouting at one of her children in the trailer: “Sit her down right here. Sit her down on the flipping couch!”

In narration for the trailer, Kevin can be heard explaining that his wife, who he is in the process of divorcing, wanted to portray the image of a perfect mother through the channel.

In another clip, Franke could be heard screaming: “I’m still recording!”

She could then be seen holding markers while scowling, in front of the camera.

In a different video, she can be heard instructing one of her sons to ‘be excited’ about telling viewers where his name came from, ‘even if you have to fake it’.

Franke could even be seen grabbing her daughter’s face in another clip, but as eldest son Chad revealed on Good Morning America, things became ‘chaotic’ as they became successful.

“Companies started coming to us, offering big money for scripts,” he admitted, adding: “It was a chaotic, chaotic experience, lots of yelling, lots of snapping, and lots of time outs in the corner.”

Chad admitted that he had nicer memories growing up, and pinned the turning point on the introduction of mental health counsellor Jodi Hildebrandt, who was also sentenced to four counts of one to 15 years in prison for child abuse.

Kevin told GMA: “The bottom line is that I was choosing to trust a licensed mental health counsellor and my wife, and they gave some terrible counsel.

“I have regrets, and I wish I hadn’t done those things.”

Full timeline of the Ruby Franke case

Starting a YouTube channel and initial suspicions

Franke started her parenting YouTube channel 8 Passengers with now ex-husband Kevin, amassing over 2.5 million subscribers before it was deleted in 2023 following the arrest.

Several subscribers became suspicious of child abuse, with a petition being signed for the police to investigate the family, citing the numerous questionable videos uploaded.

Franke joins ConneXions with Jodi Hildebrandt

The mum told critics in a 2021 interview for The Wrap that she was showing everyone ‘what a responsible mother looks like’.

She stopped uploading videos to the channel in 2022, joining Mormon therapist Hildebrandt’s ConneXions podcast.

Their divisive opinions on subjects such as eating disorders, blaming rape victims, and criticising immigrants drew the wrong kind of attention.

Franke and Hildebrandt’s arrest

Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested on child abuse charges in August 2023.

The Santa Clara Public Safety Department were called to the Ivins neighbourhood in Utah after a neighbour was alerted by Franke’s ’emaciated’ 12-year-old son, who escaped to knock on their door to ask for help.

He had visible marks and wounds from duct tape put around his ankles, and asked for some food and water.

Police found his 10-year-old sister in a ‘similar physical condition of malnourishment’ in Hildebrandt’s house.

Family members speak out

Franke’s oldest daughter, Shari, wrote on Instagram on the day of the arrests: “Today has been a big day.”

She continued: “Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up.”

In November, Kevin also officially filed for divorce from Franke, and called her actions to their children ‘horrific and inhumane’.

Franke and Hildebrandt are charged with six counts of child abuse

Just one week after their arrests, the pair were charged with six counts of felony child abuse.

YouTube banned Franke, deleting both 8 Passengers and ConneXions channels and blocking her from the social media platform.

Franke blames the abuse on Hildebrandt

Her attorneys released a statement that said: “Initially, Ms. Franke believed that Jodi Hildebrandt had the insight to offer a path to continual improvement. Ms. Hildebrandt took advantage of this quest and twisted it into something heinous,” according to Fox13.

It blamed Hildebrandt solely for isolating Franke from her family completely, distorting her morality.

Franke pleads guilty

Just three days after the statement was released, Franke pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. A court had heard how she had tried to convince her youngest children they were ‘evil and possessed’.

Franke and Hildebrandt are sentenced to prison for child abuse

On 20 February 2024, Franke and Hildebrandt were convicted and given four separate prison sentences for one to 15 years, with the length of each sentence decided by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

During sentencing Franke apologised to her children and said she would ‘never stop crying for hurting their tender souls’.

She said: “My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly.

“I took from you all that was soft and safe and good.”

The two women will not serve more than 30 years in a Federal Penitentiary because of a Utah law about consecutive sentences.

And they think there is concrete hope for that fabled ‘trailer two’ to land in the coming months following a recent announcement for another video game being produced by joint parent company, Take-Two Interactive.

As it stands, Take-Two has twice confirmed that GTA 6 will be released to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in the autumn of this year with some industry experts estimating it could cost up to $100. After this, a port to PC isn’t expected to be too far way in a welcome change to previous franchise instalments.

Take-Two made the announcements in the autumn of 2024 and then earlier this month in what was a huge relief for those following the game closely as countless fans beg for updates on the project.

Now, it is all eyes on when it could be released in the autumn, with September thought to be ruled out due to another huge Take-Two release in Borderlands 4.

And now, another decision taken in relation to Borderlands 4 has been taken, with a trailer for that Take-Two game released last week.

And with GTA fans being GTA fans, they’ve taken that as a reason to mean something about the Rockstar game.

One popular GTA 6 fan account over on X (formerly Twitter) is @GameRollGTA which explained the new theory.

Posting about the Borderlands 4 trailer, they explained why it is potentially good news for a second trailer for GTA 6.

“Borderlands 4 recently got its second trailer and it launches in seven months,” they wrote.

“If GTA 6 was to follow this same pattern, then we can expect Rockstar to drop Trailer 2 towards the end of March.

“We have no reason to worry.

“Take-Two just utilises shorter marketing cycles these days.”

Responding to the theory, a fellow fan said: “My guess is that if the game does release this year, the next trailer should be released near or around the next conference call in May.”

Another trolled: “Second trailer next month. Previews early April. Delay to 2026 in May.”

Responding to this, @GameRollGTA said that if a second trailer does land, and it reconfirms the autumn, they are ‘almost certain it wont be delayed’. We can only live in hope.

James Blake (no, not that one) was a successful marketing executive. However, his life changed when he began noticing a number of fake social media accounts being set up using pictures of him.

This ultimately led to Blake receiving scores of messages, with many suggesting someone using his identity had been dating them, or in some cases had taken as much as £50,000 from them.

The Belfast-born entrepreneur decided to track them down, with this becoming the focus of 2023’s BBC doc Hunting the Catfish Crime Gang.

This search ultimately led Blake face-to-face with the scammers who had stolen his identity, and now he is on an even more wild search as he is the presenter for a brand new BBC documentary Hunting the Online Sex Predators.

Hunting the Online Sex Predators follows Blake investigating a dark side of the internet – cybersex crimes.

In an exclusive interview with LADbible, Blake revealed that he was shocked to find parts of the internet he ‘never knew existed’, and that the internet’s problems with sexual exploitation is far more worrying than many know.

The presenter spoke about how they were part of a generation who grew up on the internet, having gained 100,000 followers on Bebo as a young person.

He went on to say: “I like to think I have a very good understanding of the online world, you know, it’s a big part of my life.

“But going out there to the Philippines and seeing the effect that the internet is having on people’s lives out there, meeting survivors of trafficking that have been abused online, specifically via live streaming into the UK, which, again, was really shocking to see that.”

As part of the documentary, Blake joins a Filipino police raid and speaks to victims of trafficking, but also discovered in the Phillipines that the UK is one of the biggest consumers of online content that exploits children.

He went on to say: “It really opened my eyes to go ‘Wow. Hold on a second. There’s a whole side to the internet’.

“You forget that there’s this whole other world outside of the UK and when you actually see that, and you meet people, and you’re talking to them, and you hear the stories and how it’s completely changed their lives for the worse and the horrible things that have happened – it’s really shocking.”

He finally added: “One of the things that really stood out to me when we were on that journey of making the film is the fact that at any given time you can be two clicks away from exploitive child content, which is just crazy.

“I mean, I never knew that was a thing and then also the fact that UK men are one of the biggest consumers of online streaming of children, like that is just, again, horrendous.

“It’s something that, you know, I had no idea about at all. I did not know this was a thing. Didn’t know how difficult it was to stop. Didn’t know what was going on. So it’s really made me cautious.”

Hunting the Online Sex Predators airs on BBC One at 10.40pm tonight, February 25.

The former YouTuber, 43, and family therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, 55, were arrested at Hildebrandt’s house in Utah in August 2023.

Franke’s 12-year-old son escaped the property and informed a neighbour of what had been going on.

The child had duct tape around his ankles and wrists, and was covered in several wounds. Another child was later found in a similar condition.

Later that year, the pair – who accumulated over one billion views on controversial YouTube channel 8 Passengers – were convicted after pleading guilty to aggravated child abuse.

Franke was given four counts of one to 15 years in prison. But she will only serve a maximum of 30 years due to an Utah law on capping consecutive sentences.

Kevin Franke, who fell in love with Ruby as soon as he met her in 2000, wasn’t aware that she would later go on to abuse two of their six children.

“I’m not ashamed to say that after being married over 20 years to that woman, I truly did and still do love her,” the 46-year-old told People.

“But that doesn’t excuse what she did, and it doesn’t excuse how she hurt our children and how she hurt me.

“There’s some bridges that you just can’t cross and then cross back. She burned the bridges, and so I’m moving on.

“And I’m going to do what’s best for my children, for my family, and for myself, and that’s not going to include her.”

Kevin said he is currently in the process of divorcing Ruby and that the pair are ‘close’ to a settlement.

“The last letter that I received from her from prison was maybe in March or April of last year,” he added.

“And then I requested the Department of Corrections to ask her to stop writing me.

“I didn’t want to hear anymore. I didn’t like what she was saying.”

The father-of-six, who works as an engineering consultant, said he was ‘not going to share’ what was in the letters.

For the first time, Kevin and his oldest son Chad, 20, are speaking about what happened in Hulu’s three-part docuseries, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which will be available to stream on Hulu from 27 February.

Full timeline of the Ruby Franke case

Starting a YouTube channel and initial suspicions

Franke started her parenting YouTube channel 8 Passengers with now ex-husband Kevin, amassing over 2.5 million subscribers before it was deleted in 2023 following the arrest.

Several subscribers became suspicious of child abuse, with a petition being signed for the police to investigate the family, citing the numerous questionable videos uploaded.

Franke joins ConneXions with Jodi Hildebrandt

The mum told critics in a 2021 interview for The Wrap that she was showing everyone ‘what a responsible mother looks like’.

She stopped uploading videos to the channel in 2022, joining Mormon therapist Hildebrandt’s ConneXions podcast.

Their divisive opinions on subjects such as eating disorders, blaming rape victims, and criticising immigrants drew the wrong kind of attention.

Franke and Hildebrandt’s arrest

Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested on child abuse charges in August 2023.

The Santa Clara Public Safety Department were called to the Ivins neighbourhood in Utah after a neighbour was alerted by Franke’s ’emaciated’ 12-year-old son, who escaped to knock on their door to ask for help.

He had visible marks and wounds from duct tape put around his ankles, and asked for some food and water.

Police found his 10-year-old sister in a ‘similar physical condition of malnourishment’ in Hildebrandt’s house.

Family members speak out

Franke’s oldest daughter, Shari, wrote on Instagram on the day of the arrests: “Today has been a big day.”

She continued: “Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up.”

In November, Kevin also officially filed for divorce from Franke, and called her actions to their children ‘horrific and inhumane’.

Franke and Hildebrandt are charged with six counts of child abuse

Just one week after their arrests, the pair were charged with six counts of felony child abuse.

YouTube banned Franke, deleting both 8 Passengers and ConneXions channels and blocking her from the social media platform.

Franke blames the abuse on Hildebrandt

Her attorneys released a statement that said: “Initially, Ms. Franke believed that Jodi Hildebrandt had the insight to offer a path to continual improvement. Ms. Hildebrandt took advantage of this quest and twisted it into something heinous,” according to Fox13.

It blamed Hildebrandt solely for isolating Franke from her family completely, distorting her morality.

Franke pleads guilty

Just three days after the statement was released, Franke pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. A court had heard how she had tried to convince her youngest children they were ‘evil and possessed’.

Franke and Hildebrandt are sentenced to prison for child abuse

On 20 February 2024, Franke and Hildebrandt were convicted and given four separate prison sentences for one to 15 years, with the length of each sentence decided by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

During sentencing Franke apologised to her children and said she would ‘never stop crying for hurting their tender souls’.

She said: “My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly.

“I took from you all that was soft and safe and good.”

The two women will not serve more than 30 years in a Federal Penitentiary because of a Utah law about consecutive sentences.