A Utah woman who wrote a children’s book about coping with grief after her husband’s death was convicted of aggravated murder in his death by poisoning him with fentanyl.
Jurors on Monday also found Kouri Richins guilty of fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after the death of Eric Richins in March 2022 at their home outside the ski town of Park City.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail that he drank. They say Richins was $4.5 million US in debt and falsely believed that when her husband died, she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million US. They also say she was planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.
After her husband’s death, Richins self-published a children’s book about grief to help her sons and other kids cope with the loss of a parent.
She was also convicted of other felony charges, including an attempted murder charge in what authorities alleged was another effort to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him break out in hives and black out.
Richins stared at the floor and took deep breaths as the judge read the verdict.
Family members on both sides of the case left the courtroom hugging and crying.
Richins’ defence attorney said Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and had asked his wife to procure opioids for him. Kouri Richins, however, told police earlier in a video that her husband had no history of illicit drug use.
“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” said Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth.
Richins had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The most serious charge — aggravated murder — carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
What was scheduled to be a five-week trial was cut short last week when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Richins’ attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.
“They haven’t done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence. They want you to do their job for them. Tell them, ‘No,'” defence attorney Wendy Lewis urged the jury on Monday.
Jurors reached a unanimous verdict.
‘Becoming a black widow’
Prosecutors said Richins, a real estate agent focused on flipping houses, was deep in debt and planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side. She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million US, prosecutors alleged.
They showed the jury text messages between Richins and Robert Josh Grossman, the man with whom she was allegedly having an affair, in which she fantasized about leaving her husband, gaining millions in a divorce and marrying Grossman.
The internet search history from Richins’ phone included “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “luxury prisons for the rich America” and “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as,” a digital forensic analyst testified.
Bloodworth replayed for the jury a clip of Richins’ 911 call from the night of her husband’s death. That’s “not ‘the sound of a wife becoming a widow,'” he said, quoting the defence’s opening statement. “It’s the sound of a wife becoming a black widow.”
Lewis responded that the prosecution “looks at facts one way and sees a witch, but if you look at those facts another way, you see a widow.”
Richins listened to the prosecution’s presentation with a furrowed brow and whispered with her attorneys.
‘Give us the details’
The defence focused on trying to discredit the prosecution’s star witness, Carmen Lauber, a housekeeper for the family who claimed to have sold Richins fentanyl on multiple occasions.
Lewis argued Lauber did not deal fentanyl and was motivated to lie for legal protection. Lauber said in early interviews that she never dealt the synthetic opioid, but later said she did after investigators informed her that Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, the defence noted.
Richins had asked Lauber for “the Michael Jackson stuff,” which Bloodworth said likely refers to the drug combination that killed the singer.
“She knows she wants it because it is lethal,” he argued.
The housekeeper was already in a drug court program as an alternative to incarceration on other charges when authorities arrested her in connection with the Richins case, investigators said. She had also violated some conditions of drug court.
The defence showed a video of law enforcement warning Lauber that they could pull her drug court deal and that she could face a lengthy prison sentence.
“Give us the details that will ensure Kouri gets convicted of murder,” a man in the video said.
Lauber was granted immunity for her co-operation in the case. She testified that she felt a need to “step up and take accountability of my part in this.”
Book becomes tool for prosecutors
Shortly before her arrest in May 2023, Richins self-published the book Are You with Me? She promoted it on local TV and radio stations, which prosecutors have pointed to in arguing that Richins planned the killing and tried to cover it up.
Summit County Sheriff’s detective Jeff O’Driscoll, the lead investigator on the case, testified that Richins paid a ghostwriting company to write the book for her.
O’Driscoll said the sheriff’s office received an anonymous package shortly after Richins’ arrest that contained the book and a note: “There are two sides to every story. This is a true Kouri, a devoted wife and adoring mother. Thought you should know.”
Investigators later learned from Amazon that Richins’ mother sent the package.
Jury hears letter found in jail cell
Prosecutors showed the jury excerpts of a letter found in Richins’ jail cell that they said appears to outline testimony for her mother and brother. In the six-page letter, Richins instructs her brother to tell her former attorney that Eric Richins confided in him about getting fentanyl from Mexico and “gets high every night.”
Defence attorneys have said the letter contains a fictional story Richins had been working on. They have argued that Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and asked his wife to procure opioids for him.
However, Richins told police on the night of her husband’s death that he had no history of illicit drug use, according to body camera footage shown in court.