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