(AP) — A Utah woman was convicted Monday of aggravated murder after poisoning her husband with fentanyl and self-publishing a children’s book about coping with grief.
Prosecutors said Kouri Richins 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 affluent ski town of Park City. They said she was $4.5 million in debt and falsely believed that when her husband died, she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million.
“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth said.
Richins, 35, stared at the floor and took deep breaths as the judge read the verdict.
She 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. Jurors also found Richins guilty of forgery and fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after his death.
The jury deliberated for just under three hours. Afterward, family members on both sides of the case left the courtroom hugging and crying.
“Honestly I feel like we’re all in shock. It’s been a long time coming,” said Eric Richins’ sister, Amy Richins, adding that the family can now focus on honoring her brother and supporting his sons. “Just very happy that we got justice for my brother.”
Relatives of Kouri Richins left the courthouse without speaking to media.
Sentencing was scheduled for May 13, the day her husband would have turned 44. The aggravated murder charge alone carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
What was scheduled to be a five-week trial was cut short when the defendant waived her right to testify, and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Her attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.
‘A wife becoming a black widow’
The prosecution said Richins, a real estate agent focused on flipping houses, was deep 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.
Earlier Monday, prosecutors 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,” “luxury prisons for the rich America” and “if someone is poisned 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 defense’s opening statement. “It’s the sound of a wife becoming a black widow.”
Defense attorney Wendy 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.”
‘Give us the details that will ensure Kouri gets convicted’
The defense 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 defense 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 defense 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 cooperation in the case. She testified that she felt a need to “step up and take accountability of my part in this.”
Children’s book becomes a tool for prosecutors
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.
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 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.”
Prosecutors also showed the jury excerpts of a letter found in Richins’ jail cell that they said appeared to outline testimony for her mother and brother. In the six-page letter, Richins instructed her brother to tell her former attorney that Eric Richins confided in him about getting fentanyl from Mexico and “gets high every night.”
Defense attorneys said the letter contained a fictional story their client was working on. They 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.
