Speaker 1: This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app At LA City Hall downtown, Kristin Crowley,
Speaker 1: the ousted LA Fire Chief, sitting amongst dozens of La
Speaker 1: City Fire Department workers. The union put out the call
Speaker 1: to show support, and that they did, streaming into City
Speaker 1: Hall this morning to be here as Kristin Crowley makes
Speaker 1: a I believe unprecedented appeal to get her job back
Speaker 1: as chief of LA Fire Department. Mayor Karen Bass took
Speaker 1: the unusual step of dismissing her. This all began. That
Speaker 1: was a couple of weeks ago, but this all began
Speaker 1: and may have begun before. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: relationship between Mayor Karen Bass and Fire Chief Kristin Crowley was,
Speaker 1: but from where we pick it up, where we learned
Speaker 1: about it was after these fires exploded back in early
Speaker 1: January in the Palisades and in altadinas the Palisades as
Speaker 1: it relates to Los Angeles. But Gary and I sat
Speaker 1: here a day before those fires broke out, and we
Speaker 1: had the weather reports same way that everybody else had
Speaker 1: the weather reports. The mayor did have those weather reports.
Speaker 1: That was one of the assertions that the fire chief
Speaker 1: failed to tell the mayor how bad the weather conditions
Speaker 1: were going to be. To what she got to call
Speaker 1: bs on the face of that one, because everybody knew
Speaker 1: how bad the weather was going to be, in the
Speaker 1: conditions and the fire danger, but it was the mayor
Speaker 1: who decided to continue with her plan trip to Africa
Speaker 1: despite knowing those weather conditions. She came back to a firestorm,
Speaker 1: a firestorm of people saying, where the hell were you
Speaker 1: while the city burned?
Speaker 2: Where the hell were you? Why were you.
Speaker 1: At that cocktail reception as people were grabbing their children
Speaker 1: and their livelihoods and escaping their burning homes.
Speaker 2: Where the hell were you?
Speaker 1: She came back as the fire chief. Kristen Crowley at
Speaker 1: the time, marched her ass, excuse me, marched herself before
Speaker 1: cameras and said, the cities let us down. We are
Speaker 1: an underfunded department. A reporter asked, did the city fail you?
Speaker 1: She said yes. The mayor comes back to town, has
Speaker 1: a closed door meeting with Kristin Crowley. They come out
Speaker 1: and they say we're going to work together in lockstep.
Speaker 1: B S you knew that that was beloney. I can't
Speaker 1: believe it took so long, but the mayor finally made
Speaker 1: that step in firing Kristin Crowley, who threw the mayor
Speaker 1: under the bus because of that trip.
Speaker 2: So here we are.
Speaker 1: The mayor had said that Kristin Crowley, while it was
Speaker 1: under her watch, that she didn't activate one thousand firefighters
Speaker 1: that wind event, for that wind event, that it was
Speaker 1: Kristin Crowley who did not make use of at least
Speaker 1: forty firetrucks or apparatus that week that the fires were burning. Well,
Speaker 1: Kristin Crowley has come out today to beg for her
Speaker 1: job back before this city council. She needs ten votes
Speaker 1: from the council's fifteen members to be reinstated as chief.
Speaker 1: She took to the seated podium and the little table
Speaker 1: there with the microphone before the semi circle of city
Speaker 1: council members today, hair in a bun Navy suit and
Speaker 1: she said that the mayor has made multiple false accusations
Speaker 1: against me.
Speaker 2: She denies she said it today.
Speaker 1: She denies that she refused to conduct that after action
Speaker 1: report on the Palisades fire. She says, in fact, I
Speaker 1: was looking to the state for help since they had
Speaker 1: the people to do the after action report, something to
Speaker 1: the effect of and on paarphrasing.
Speaker 2: Here, we had our hands full.
Speaker 1: Still we didn't have time or the people or the
Speaker 1: resources to get to an after action report. We're still
Speaker 1: picking up the pieces here. We're still trying to respond
Speaker 1: to nine to one one calls, is what she sang
Speaker 1: there today. That she did not send home the thousand
Speaker 1: firefighters on the day of the fire, saying that we
Speaker 1: didn't have enough trucks to put them on. She said
Speaker 1: the maintenance yards are filled with these broken down trucks
Speaker 1: and other apparatus that the city has not found the
Speaker 1: money to fix. She says it's a lack of funding
Speaker 1: that left more than one hundred trucks and other vehicles
Speaker 1: inoperable in those maintenance yards. She says, I absolutely told
Speaker 1: the mayor about the severe winds that were forecast, and
Speaker 1: that the mayor's office is itself issued multiple messages to
Speaker 1: the public warning about the wind conditions.
Speaker 2: And that's the case.
Speaker 1: I mean, we wouldn't be talking about it the way
Speaker 1: we were talking about it the day before the fires
Speaker 1: if it wasn't public knowledge. It's going to be an
Speaker 1: uphill climb for her as she continues to take questions
Speaker 1: from council members, because this is a council divided when
Speaker 1: it comes to Kristin Crowley. You've got council President Marquise
Speaker 1: Harris Dawson, who is acting mayor by the bye when
Speaker 1: the fires happened and was trying to get information from
Speaker 1: the fire chief repeatedly. Those text messages that ABA on
Speaker 1: earthed show us that we talked about it yesterday. Members
Speaker 1: current Price who goes, Sodo Martinez, and Adrian Nazarian all
Speaker 1: stand alongside Bass when she fired Kristin Crowley. A councilman,
Speaker 1: Bob Bloomfield, has also come out in favor of Bass's decision.
Speaker 1: It's a game of thrones essentially there at City Hall,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot more political capital I would believe
Speaker 1: to be gained from somebody who's been in the game
Speaker 1: for as long as Karen Bass has than to get
Speaker 1: into the camp of Kristin Crowley.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for her, there.
Speaker 1: Are a couple council members who have spoken out against
Speaker 1: the firing, Monica Rodriguez being one of them and Tracy
Speaker 1: Park being another. Those were two council members that encouraged
Speaker 1: her to appeal the decision, but again she needs ten
Speaker 1: votes out of fifteen. It's going to be probably a
Speaker 1: lengthy question and answer session. And again Michael Monks is
Speaker 1: there from KFI News and will be following all of
Speaker 1: it and break it down into what is palatable for
Speaker 1: us to gather from this bureaucratic process. But when we
Speaker 1: come back, it is Tuesday, and you know what that means.
Speaker 1: It's true crime Tuesday. So while we stay on top
Speaker 1: of this and all the news from Washington, we will
Speaker 1: tell you the story of Ruby Frankie. She's getting a
Speaker 1: lot of attention because of a documentary that just dropped
Speaker 1: on Hulu. It's called The Devil in the Family. It's
Speaker 1: a docuseries and it is gripping. I mean I started
Speaker 1: it yesterday and could not tear myself away. It's a
Speaker 1: three part series and this is a woman who, along
Speaker 1: with her husband and their six children, had a very
Speaker 1: successful YouTube channel and she chronicled for kids growing up
Speaker 1: and to the detriment of the children. In some cases,
Speaker 1: things that you didn't see on camera are on the
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. Well, this documentary got a hold of the
Speaker 1: unedited footage and it is like mommy Dearest comes to life.
Speaker 1: The woman deemed America's mom YouTube, even posting a picture
Speaker 1: of her in the family on Mother's Day on all
Speaker 1: their social channels, was a freaking monster. At the same time,
Speaker 1: she's collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from different brands
Speaker 1: that want her to use their products and show those
Speaker 1: kids on camera. It's all so gross and so very America.
Speaker 1: But it is Tuesday, and have we got a story
Speaker 1: for you. This one is all about the devil in
Speaker 1: the family.
Speaker 3: The story is true.
Speaker 2: Sound's true, No, it sounds made up. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Gary and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 1: Now, if you're like me, you've got a vague memory
Speaker 1: of this mom vlogger who was arrested a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago, something like that August twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Your name's Ruby, Frankie. And what happened in August is
Speaker 1: there was a little boy caught on a ring cam.
Speaker 1: And you can see in the video, this little boy
Speaker 1: go to a neighbor's house, ring the doorbell. No one answers.
Speaker 1: He walks away slowly. He looks real skinny, really thin.
Speaker 1: You can kind of see the bones in his legs
Speaker 1: as he's walking. Away, and then an older gentleman says yes,
Speaker 1: and the boy says to him, and he helped me
Speaker 1: with two favors. Number one, can you take me to
Speaker 1: a police station? And the elderly man says, you know,
Speaker 1: why don't you sit down a little bit, and him
Speaker 1: and whoever the female is inside proceed to feed the
Speaker 1: boy as they're calling for help because he's clearly malnourished,
Speaker 1: and the elderly gentleman, who looks very sturdy, does say
Speaker 1: to the nine to one one dispatcher at the time, Well,
Speaker 1: he doesn't say it. He just breaks down, this grown
Speaker 1: man breaking down over the condition that this twelve year
Speaker 1: old boy is in.
Speaker 2: And then you learned.
Speaker 1: About the whole story, or at least if you were
Speaker 1: paying attention, you did. I did not until I stumbled
Speaker 1: upon this documentary last night on Hulu. It's called Devil
Speaker 1: in the Family. The fall of they're voting.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're voting now. Oh, let's let's go there a
Speaker 2: city council. That was quick.
Speaker 1: They are going to vote now again. She needs ten
Speaker 1: people on the council to agree that she should be reinstated.
Speaker 1: Ten out of fifteen city clerk now calling for the
Speaker 1: vote we will take you there live, or will we?
Speaker 1: Oh Jacob's not there, All right, well I can, I
Speaker 1: can bring I'm going to bring it up right now.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, I'm not hearing anything either.
Speaker 2: They took the chiron down.
Speaker 1: They did have kind of like a oh okay, so
Speaker 1: we've got is the is this the correct U?
Speaker 2: Is that the correct vote?
Speaker 3: Okay, here we go, now we can hear all right,
Speaker 3: what's before, missus clerk President?
Speaker 2: The council now vote on items one through eighty. Okay, no,
Speaker 2: this is not that twenty nine. They're going to vote
Speaker 2: on a number of things.
Speaker 1: We don't know if they're voting specifically on this agenda item,
Speaker 1: so let's bring it down there.
Speaker 2: I know they vote on a number of things.
Speaker 1: I've wasted enough hours of my life sitting through city
Speaker 1: council meetings. So just because they're voting on something doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's the thing that we're all paying attention to
Speaker 1: it for.
Speaker 2: So we we'll obviously stay on top of that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, So The Devil in the Family, The
Speaker 1: Fall of Ruby Frankie talks about the career and the
Speaker 1: downfall of this mom vlogger. This was a woman who
Speaker 1: kind of like got into YouTube and her YouTube channel
Speaker 1: when things were taking off. She started filming her kids
Speaker 1: around the house and started seeing all the views that
Speaker 1: she was getting on this on this channel, and she's thinking, well,
Speaker 1: there's something here, so she started taking more and more
Speaker 1: and more videos, and they started their YouTube channel, and
Speaker 1: it's called eight Passengers. It's now defunct, so if you
Speaker 1: go looking for it, you're not going to find it.
Speaker 1: But all the footage is really in this documentary, the
Speaker 1: footage that people didn't see as well, and that's the
Speaker 1: mommy dearest stuff, because all seems super copathetic when you're
Speaker 1: watching the videos of the cute kids growing up and
Speaker 1: the Mormon mother doing everything right and all the things.
Speaker 1: Because as they get into in the documentary and the
Speaker 1: Mormon faith, the best thing that can happen to you,
Speaker 1: the biggest calling, the biggest gift that you can get
Speaker 1: is to be a parent, to be a mom, and
Speaker 1: specific specifically, and her channel is all about that and
Speaker 1: her joy of being a mom and parenting these six children.
Speaker 1: She started posting these unfiltered vlogs about caring for the
Speaker 1: kids and it's not all sunshine and roses. Are our
Speaker 1: pressures of mom life as well, but they were getting
Speaker 1: thousands of scribers every month. People were commenting to see
Speaker 1: certain kids more Chad was her oldest son, and more
Speaker 1: Chad please, because he was a goofball, and right there.
Speaker 2: Kind of should give you a red flag.
Speaker 1: When people are demanding which of your children they want
Speaker 1: to see more of in their own home when they're
Speaker 1: under eighteen, that should be a problem, right, that should
Speaker 1: be the first red flag, I mean one of the first.
Speaker 2: But she would give the people what they asked for.
Speaker 1: At the height of their YouTube fame, this family was
Speaker 1: taking in anywhere between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in extra income each month, which incentivized her to keep posting.
Speaker 1: But as the documentary shows, as the kids grow older,
Speaker 1: they start getting a little bit not cool with all
Speaker 1: of this. As you can imagine, they don't want to
Speaker 1: film everything. Suddenly, everything the family was doing was for
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel. Let's go do let's go to the
Speaker 1: park today, and then everything of the park would be filmed.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just to hang out with the family. It
Speaker 1: was all for content for the YouTube channel. And the
Speaker 1: kids started to see right through that, and the kids
Speaker 1: started to get a little jaded as well, and mom
Speaker 1: was more concerned about content than she was about them.
Speaker 1: And as you see in the documentary, she's screaming at
Speaker 1: the kids. She's using well you don't see it, but
Speaker 1: the kids say that she would use a belt on them,
Speaker 1: that she would whip them all so that they would
Speaker 1: appear to be happy on the videos because they were
Speaker 1: making so much money. And the dad in this story
Speaker 1: is along for the whole ride. Now, he does a
Speaker 1: number of interviews, extensive interviews in this documentary. What a
Speaker 1: likable guy. He seems to be a great kid. Dad,
Speaker 1: loves his kids, a nice guy, self confessed. Nerd obviously
Speaker 1: wanted to make his wife happy. Went along with Shannon.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but CNN not CNN. The
Speaker 3: CNS has just reported that the the La City Council
Speaker 3: voted thirteen to two to deny former Chief Crowley's appeal.
Speaker 1: So, okay, excellent, I mean, not excellent for her, but
Speaker 1: good that we can put a bow on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of thought that's the way that that cookie
Speaker 1: was going to crumble, because.
Speaker 2: Wait, you said she had thirteen.
Speaker 3: Votes, thirteen to two, So thirteen to two to deny herself.
Speaker 2: To nineteen people.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, council members are against her.
Speaker 2: Got it? Got it? Go?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, so she has not been reinstated.
Speaker 2: Got it. For a second, I had it reverse in
Speaker 2: my head. I'm like, wait a minute, what'd you say?
Speaker 1: So she needed ten yes, is And as we were
Speaker 1: kind of doing the math internally here, she had two
Speaker 1: that we knew of. So it was going to obviously
Speaker 1: be an uphill climb for her to get eight more.
Speaker 1: And they did ask for a number of things to
Speaker 1: be clarified from the Controller's office in terms of her
Speaker 1: claims about her budget concerns and what happened. But at
Speaker 1: this level, it's it's going to be more about who
Speaker 1: gets you further politically. Is it Kristin Crowley, the ousted
Speaker 1: police chief, or is it the sitting mayor of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: Karen Bass And being a friend of Karen Vass despite
Speaker 1: the hits she has taken, at this juncture, it's going
Speaker 1: to get you further. It's going to move you further
Speaker 1: up the political ladder. And I wish that wasn't the
Speaker 1: only currency that was used for decisions like this, but
Speaker 1: it certainly is, so there you have it. It was
Speaker 1: an emotional, contentious hearing there at La City Council as
Speaker 1: Kristin Crowley pleaded for her job back. But as you
Speaker 1: heard Deborah break the news, the council voted thirteen to
Speaker 1: two to deny her. That's she needed ten for yes,
Speaker 1: she only got two. So they have voted in support
Speaker 1: of Karen Bass's decision to terminate her. It's going to
Speaker 1: be interesting to see what happens with Kristin Crowley where
Speaker 1: she ends up.
Speaker 2: Now. I don't think you're going to hear her name again,
Speaker 2: that is my guess.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that that is going to portend
Speaker 1: a bright political future. Unfortunately, there needed to be a scapegoat.
Speaker 1: Like I said at the beginning of the segment, these
Speaker 1: fires were big. The scope was too large. It seemed
Speaker 1: like as we are covering them in real time, it
Speaker 1: was impossible to get on top of these in time
Speaker 1: the way the wind worked that day. But unfortunately, there
Speaker 1: was a scapegoat and Kristian Crowley lost her job because
Speaker 1: of it. Karen Bass again not without her hits. She
Speaker 1: did suffer a number of political hits in this one.
Speaker 1: We will continue with the story of the awful monster
Speaker 1: that is Ruby Frankie and the documentation of this on
Speaker 1: the Hulu document series Devil and the Family where we
Speaker 1: last left off. The kids are getting older, they're starting
Speaker 1: to say, I don't want to play anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do this YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: And that's when things take a turn into criminality for
Speaker 1: the self confessed or the self crowned mom of America.
Speaker 1: We'll get into it.
Speaker 2: Keep it right here. John Cobelt coming up.
Speaker 1: He's already listening to audio from the city council chambers
Speaker 1: and at the speakers out there in the hallway, so
Speaker 1: he will stay on top of this. It was contentious.
Speaker 1: It was an emotionalle hearing downtown La City Hall as
Speaker 1: the ousted fire chief Kristen Crowley begged for her job back.
Speaker 1: Said that the mayor lied essentially about her performance post
Speaker 1: and during the fire event in the Palisades, but she
Speaker 1: needed ten votes to get her job back, and she
Speaker 1: only got two, which shows where the city council lies.
Speaker 1: But I mean that will be a conversation probably that
Speaker 1: continues in terms of funding for the La Fire Department
Speaker 1: and something that we want funded. Right she said, it's
Speaker 1: not even halfway there, so we'll probably hear more about that.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Devil in the Family for true Crame Tuesday,
Speaker 1: The Fall of Ruby Frankie. This was a mom who
Speaker 1: had this eight passengers YouTube channel known for vlogging about
Speaker 1: her Mormon faith, raising her six children, and she got
Speaker 1: addicted to the fame and the checks that would come
Speaker 1: in from different brands. And her kids started to get older,
Speaker 1: the older ones, and they started to think it wasn't
Speaker 1: so much fun. Mom only cared about the YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: They felt used, like Mom was only using them for
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel. I think the thing about this documentary
Speaker 1: that makes it so compelling is that it does have
Speaker 1: all of that footage that you did not see if
Speaker 1: you paid attention to her channel, where it was all
Speaker 1: about how great of a mom she was. This is
Speaker 1: the uncut footage where she is yelling at her kids.
Speaker 1: She's telling them to pretend that they're happy. It's child
Speaker 1: abuse in the form of a vlog. They say it's
Speaker 1: one of the most notorious recent depictions of child abuse,
Speaker 1: and it is stunning. Things went to hell when she
Speaker 1: got hooked up with another bad person in the form
Speaker 1: of Jody Hildebrant, who was a therapist in the Mormon
Speaker 1: community at the time, and she would have these different
Speaker 1: cult like classes, one for women, one for men about
Speaker 1: how to be a good wife, for how to be
Speaker 1: a good husband. You can kind of see how those
Speaker 1: played out. And the mom, the bad mom here, Ruby Frankie,
Speaker 1: seems to have been completely manipulated by this woman and
Speaker 1: brings her into the home and has her therapies her children,
Speaker 1: and this woman just is able to get into the
Speaker 1: brains of the family, the husband, the wife, the kids,
Speaker 1: the whole bit, and it ends with extreme punishment for
Speaker 1: the kids that remained. The two older kids were out
Speaker 1: of the house and basically excommunicated from the family for
Speaker 1: just growing older, not wanting to play along, calling out
Speaker 1: questions maybe of what was going on in that home.
Speaker 1: And so these four younger kids were left with this
Speaker 1: crazy mom and her crazy friend. They may have been
Speaker 1: in a relationship too, but it ended with these kids
Speaker 1: being malnourished and left in dark rooms and not taken
Speaker 1: care of. And it just was even made worse by
Speaker 1: COVID where they fell into their religion more believed it
Speaker 1: was the second Coming End of Days type stuff they're hoarding. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It is a ride if you want to check it out,
Speaker 1: The Devil and the Family, The Fall of Ruby Frankie.
Speaker 1: It is a true crime juggernaut there on Hulu. We
Speaker 1: are not sponsoring Hulu, but hell, that is a good
Speaker 1: docu series. Three parts. We will see you tomorrow again,
Speaker 1: John Cobalt coming up next. You will have everything all
Speaker 1: the details on La City Council. Remember kfi's Michael Monks
Speaker 1: has been in the room since it began and can
Speaker 1: break down all of the drama right here on KFI.
Speaker 1: We'll see Manyana, stay dry and blessings.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 1: You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
Speaker 1: forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: and anytime on demand the iHeartRadio app.