Kouri Richins, pictured throughout an August 2024 courtroom listening to, was discovered responsible of the aggravated homicide of her husband and 4 different fees, together with forgery and fraud.
Rick Bowmer/Pool AP
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Rick Bowmer/Pool AP
A 12 months after her husband’s sudden 2022 demise, Utah mother-of-three Kouri Richins self-published a youngsters’s e book about dealing with grief, referred to as Are You With Me?
In promotional interviews with native media, Richins stated she had written the e book together with her youngsters, the oldest of whom was 10. She advised NPR member station KPCW in April 2023 that the method “introduced a little bit peace to me and my boys.”
“It was a very good distraction from this final 12 months and going via the primary holidays with out my husband, his birthday, like our anniversary, all this stuff, and it gave us one thing to work in the direction of,” she added.
Weeks later, Richins was charged with killing her husband, Eric. And on Monday, a jury in Summit County, Utah, convicted her of his homicide.
Prosecutors alleged that Kouri Richins spiked Eric Richins’ cocktail with fentanyl in March 2022, after a number of earlier makes an attempt, as a result of she was thousands and thousands of {dollars} in debt and believed she would inherit his property. She didn’t know that Eric had quietly minimize her out of his will years earlier after discovering that a few of that debt had been racked up in his identify.
Prosecutors additionally stated she had taken out a number of life insurance coverage insurance policies on her husband whereas having an affair.
“She needed to go away Eric Richins, however she didn’t need to go away his cash,” Summit County chief prosecutor Brad Bloodworth stated in his closing argument on Monday.
Kouri Richins has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not responsible to the 5 fees in opposition to her on this case. She declined to testify throughout the trial, which lasted three weeks and featured testimony from some 40 witnesses.
Her protection legal professional, Wendy Lewis, stated Eric had Lyme illness and was hooked on painkillers, and referred to as the investigation into his demise “nothing however sloppy” and “pushed by bias.”
After three hours of deliberation, the jury discovered Richins responsible of aggravated homicide — punishable by 25 years to life in jail — and the 4 different fees, which embrace forgery and fraud associated to the opening of almost $2 million in life insurance coverage insurance policies for Eric with out his information. Richins bowed her head because the verdict was learn.
Richins is scheduled to return to courtroom for sentencing on Might 13, which might have been Eric’s forty fourth birthday.
That won’t spell the tip of Richins’ authorized troubles. She is dealing with 26 different felony fees of alleged monetary wrongdoing within the years main as much as Eric’s homicide — together with mortgage fraud, cash laundering and issuing dangerous checks — in a separate case that prosecutors filed final 12 months. She can also be litigating property points with Eric’s household in civil courtroom, KPCW stories.
Kouri Richins listens to closing arguments in Third District Court docket in Park Metropolis, Utah, on Monday.
David Jackson/Pool Park File
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David Jackson/Pool Park File
The case in opposition to Kouri Richins
Kouri Richins referred to as 911 simply after 3 a.m. on March 4, 2022, to report that she had discovered her husband, Eric, unresponsive, in keeping with prosecutors’ authorized transient. Responders declared him lifeless on the scene — their dwelling in Kamas, a mountain city about 40 miles southeast of Salt Lake Metropolis.
The health worker discovered 5 instances the deadly stage of fentanyl in Eric’s blood and dominated his demise an overdose. The health worker additionally decided the drug was illicit (versus medical-grade) and ingested orally. The one folks dwelling on the time have been the Richins and their three younger youngsters.
In response to her arrest warrant, Kouri advised investigators that she had made Eric a Moscow mule the earlier evening to rejoice closing on a property for her house-flipping enterprise. She stated he drank the cocktail in mattress, and she or he went to sleep with one in all their youngsters who was having a nightmare — solely to return a number of hours later and discover her husband chilly to the contact in mattress.
Legislation enforcement officers say they shortly discovered holes in Kouri’s story. For instance, she advised them she had left her telephone charging in her room whereas she went to consolation her son, however telephone information confirmed it had been opened — and messages despatched and deleted — throughout that point.
That prompted a search of the Richins’ home, and the eventual seizure of Kouri’s digital units — together with a second iPhone present in her bedside drawer.
Prosecutors stated it contained a slew of incriminating on-line searches, together with: “what’s a deadly.does.of.fetanayl,” “can cops.uncover deleted.messages iphone,” “ladies utah jail,” “if somebody is poisned what does it go down on the demise certificates as,” “demise certificates says pending, will life insurance coverage nonetheless pay?” and “luxurious prisons for the wealthy in america.”
A few of Kouri Richins’ recovered on-line searches are displayed onscreen throughout her homicide trial in late February.
Spenser Heaps/AP
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Spenser Heaps/AP
Kouri’s different telephone revealed a collection of messages during which she requested somebody recognized as C.L. for assist acquiring prescription ache remedy, which she stated was “for an investor who had a again harm.”
C.L. is the household’s occasional housekeeper, Carmen Lauber, who testified at trial — underneath immunity for her cooperation — that she had offered illicit medication to Kouri on 4 events between December 2021 and March 2022.
The third time, in early February 2022, prosecutors say Kouri requested particularly for fentanyl: she “stated that her investor needed one thing stronger and requested for ‘a number of the Michael Jackson stuff.'” The singer’s 2009 demise was formally attributed to the authorized anesthetic propofol.
“Kouri Richins was a suburban mother-real-estate-agent: She doesn’t know loads in regards to the illicit road drug world, however she is aware of Michael Jackson died from taking medication,” Bloodworth, the prosecutor, stated in courtroom. “She is aware of she needs it as a result of it’s deadly, it’s deadly, it kills.”
A number of courtroom filings point out Eric received sick after consuming a sandwich that Kouri had left him — alongside a “love word” — days in a while Valentine’s Day, saying he broke out in hives and had hassle respiratory instantly. He self-administered his son’s EpiPen and slept it off, however later “advised a good friend that he thought his spouse was making an attempt to poison him.”
Kouri requested Lauber for extra fentanyl tablets about two weeks after that incident, prosecutors say, and picked them up from the drop-off location on Feb. 26. Eric died six days later.
The monetary image
Prosecutors painted Kouri as an “intensely bold” however “incompetent” enterprise proprietor who projected affluence at the same time as she fell deeper and deeper into debt.
Kouri was Eric’s second spouse, and when the 2 married in 2013, they signed a prenuptial settlement establishing that they’d not have rights to one another’s property with one exception: if Eric died whereas the 2 have been lawfully married.
“Their prenuptial settlement meant that if she left him, she would additionally go away most of his cash,” Bloodworth stated. “So Kouri Richens took 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} in fairness out of Eric Richins’ dwelling, with out him figuring out it, in order that she might begin her personal enterprise and earn sufficient cash to go away Eric Richins.”
Kouri began a small enterprise flipping homes in 2019, shopping for an increasing number of of them amid mounting debt.
That very same 12 months, prosecutors say, she used energy of legal professional to execute a $250,000 dwelling fairness line of credit score on their household dwelling, unbeknownst to Eric despite the fact that it was his pre-marital property. She additionally “started misappropriating monies distributed from Eric Richin’s enterprise that have been meant for his quarterly tax funds.”
This got here to Eric’s consideration in September 2020, by which level Kouri had charged greater than $30,000 on his credit score and withdrawn at the very least $100,000 from his financial institution accounts. When confronted, she promised to repay him.
Within the meantime, Eric quietly consulted each a divorce lawyer and an property planning lawyer, altering his will in 2020 to position his property underneath the management of his sister for the good thing about his youngsters.
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth presents the state’s closing arguments in courtroom on Monday.
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David Jackson/Park File/AP/Pool Park File
Prosecutors say by the tip of 2021, Kouri’s enterprise checking account was overdrawn by $22,520, and she or he was “paying hundreds of {dollars} each day to service her debt” and overdraft charges. She had seven telephone calls with a cash lender on the day of Eric’s demise, by which level Bloodworth stated her internet value was “destructive $1.6 million.”
However she was named because the beneficiary on a number of life insurance coverage insurance policies belonging to Eric.
In response to prosecutors, on the time of Eric’s demise, he was insured by at the very least six completely different insurance policies. At the least 4 of these — totaling $1.9 million — have been, unbeknownst to him, bought by Kouri between 2015 and 2017. She additionally made herself the beneficiary of one other coverage held collectively with Eric and his enterprise associate simply months earlier than his demise, although he modified it as soon as his insurance coverage firm alerted him.
Kouri came upon that she had been faraway from Eric’s property plan days after his demise. Court docket filings say she realized from his sister, whom she then punched “within the neck and face.”
