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A Utah woman who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in his death after poisoning him with fentanyl, prosecutors said.
Kouri Richins, 35, slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail that her husband Eric Richins drank in March 2022 at their home outside the ski town of Park City, according to prosecutors. They said she was US$4.5 million in debt and falsely believed that when her husband died, she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million, according to legal documents.
Richins sentencing took place on May 13, the day her husband would have turned 44.
“No parent should ever have to bury their child,” Gene Richins, Eric’s father, said in court Wednesday as he read his victim impact statement. “It’s a loss that changes you forever. Eric was taken from us way too soon, and his loss has left a permanent hole in our family that will never be filled. Ever.”
Richins read an over 30-minute statement at the end of her sentencing hearing on Wednesday, telling her three sons to “be like your dad.”
“The one thing I need you boys to know is that I did not abandon you,” Richins said. “”Regardless of what anyone tells you, I would never ever leave you boys. And I am so sorry that even for one second you think that I did.”
“Still to this day I can’t believe this is real. That this is our life. This is my life,” Richins continued. “I’m still in shock. I’m still in disbelief. Accused and now convicted of such a heinous crime. Potentially costing me to never see you boys again.”
In a memo filed by prosecutors ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Richins’ sons told the judge they would feel unsafe if their mother was ever released from prison.
One of her three sons, referred to as C.R., wanted the court to know that “my dad was a good person and very thoughtful and kind and helped whoever needed help,” according to the memo.
“I’m afraid if she gets out, she will come after me and my brothers, my whole family. I think she would come and take us and not do good things to us, like hurt us… I miss my dada, but I do not miss how my life used to be. I don’t miss Kouri, I will tell you that,” 13-year-old C.R. added in the legal docs.
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Another son, referred to as W.R., said in the filing that they wanted the court to know that “when someone talks about Kouri it makes me feel hateful and ashamed. She took away my dad.”
He added that once Richins receives her sentence, he “will feel happy and I will feel safer and relaxed and trust people more,” the filing stated.
The three boys are now in the care of one of Eric Richins’ sister, Katie Richins-Benson, and her husband, according to the legal docs.
In March, jurors deliberated for just over three hours on Monday before finding Richins guilty of first-degree aggravated murder, forgery and insurance fraud in the death of her husband after claiming insurance benefits following his death.
Richins, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, stared at the floor and took deep breaths as the judge read the verdict.
“We the jury unanimously agree that the prosecution has proved the following circumstance … beyond reasonable doubt: The homicide was committed for pecuniary gain and the homicide was committed by means of the administration of any substance administered in any lethal amount, dosage or quantity,” Judge Richard Mrazik read on behalf of jurors in March.
Richins was also convicted of other felonies, including attempted murder, for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him black out.
What happened during the trial?
The scheduled five-week trial was cut short after Richins waived her right to testify and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Her lawyers said they were confident that prosecutors, who called more than 40 witnesses, did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.
The prosecution alleged that Richins, who worked as a real estate agent focused on flipping houses, was in debt and planning a future with another man.
She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million, prosecutors said.
Richins also faces 26 other money-related criminal charges in a separate case that has not yet gone to trial.
In March, prosecutors showed the jury text messages between Richins and Robert Josh Grossman, the man with whom she was allegedly having an affair. The text messages showed Richins fantasizing about leaving her husband, gaining millions of dollars in a divorce and marrying Grossman.
A digital forensic analyst also testified that internet search history from Richins’ phone included “luxury prisons for the rich America,” “what is a lethal.dose.of.fentanayl,” and “if someone is poisoned what does it go down on the death certificate as.”
Summit County prosecutor Bloodworth played 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.”
Richins’ lawyer Wendy Lewis said the prosecution “looks at facts one way and sees a witch, but if you look at those facts another way, you see a widow.”
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 had claimed in early interviews that she never dealt fentanyl but later said she did once investigators told her that Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, the defence said.
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.
Lauber 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.
Lauber was granted immunity by prosecutors 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.”
Shortly before her arrest in May 2023, Richins self-published the children’s book Are You with Me? about coping with the loss of a parent. She promoted it on local TV and radio stations, which prosecutors pointed to in arguing that Richins planned the killing and tried to cover it up.
“We wrote this book and we’re really hoping that it provides some comfort for not just, obviously, our family, but other families that are going through the same thing,” she told radio station KPCW before her arrest, the BBC reports.
She dedicated the book to her “amazing husband and a wonderful father.”
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 that shortly after Richins’ arrest, her mother sent the book to the sheriff’s office in an anonymous package with a note saying it exemplified the “true Kouri, a devoted wife and adoring mother.”
—with files from The Associated Press
