Featured Image Credit: Facebook/Kouri Richins
Topics: Crime, True Crime, True Life, US News, Domestic Abuse
Jen Thomas
Topics: Crime, True Crime, True Life, US News, Domestic Abuse
A mum of three who wrote a children's book about grief in the wake of her husband's death has been found guilty of his aggravated murder.
Kouri Richins, 35, was arrested in March 2023, just two months after the book was published, called Are You With Me?.
Richins, who lived in Utah, said she wrote the book to help her children and other people to cope with grief.
It emerged in court that while she played the grieving widow, she actually killed her husband, Eric Richins, a year earlier in March 2022 and threw a party in the days after he died.
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She slipped a deadly dose of the drug fentanyl into a vodka drink, handed it to him in bed, and left the room to share a bed with one of their children who she claimed was having a night terror.
The court heard she later found Eric dead in their bed, and called 911.
An autopsy found Eric's cause of death to be a massive fentanyl overdose, after they found more than five times the lethal limit in his system.
The prosecution told the court that they found she had searched on her phone for things including 'what is a lethal dose of fentanyl', 'luxury prisons for the rich America', 'can cops force you to do a lie detector test', 'how to permanently delete information from an iPhone remotely' and 'if someone is poisoned what does it go down on the death certificate as.'
Richins had tried to wipe the searches from her phone prior to her arrest.
The defence had played a clip of the 911 call, and claimed it was 'the sound of a wife becoming a widow', but the prosecution replayed it and insisted "It’s the sound of a wife becoming a black widow."
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth also told the court that Richins delayed starting CPR for six minutes after the dispatcher asked her to.
It took a jury just under three hours to find her guilty of aggravated murder, for which she faces life in prison.
She was also found guilty of aggravated attempted murder, after she previously tried to poison a sandwich she made for Eric on Valentine's Day, with her husband telling friends he was sure she tried to poison him.
Richins was also found guilty of two counts of insurance fraud and forgery.
According to the Daily Mail, Richins, who worked as a real estate agent, had built up an astonishing $7.5 million debt to more than 20 payday loan and high-interest lenders.
Not only that, but she had taken out multiple life insurance polices in her husband's name which she hoped to cash in and clear the money she owed.
A handwriting expert testified in court that Eric's signature appeared to have been forged on the insurance policy documents.
Unbeknown to her, Eric had actually secured his estate worth $4 million in a trust for his young sons with his sister as the trustee.
They also found evidence that she was having an affair, and she had sent him multiple texts wishing they could be together.
After murdering her husband, she text the other man saying she wanted to make him her new husband, as well as planning a luxury holiday.
Her defence team inexplicably declined to call a single witness to testify.
Richins will be sentenced on what would have been Eric Richins' 44th birthday, May 13.
Eric's sister Amy told reporters after the verdict: "Four years ago, our family lost the brightest light," she said.
"Eric is deeply loved and missed every single day. We are grateful for everyone who has worked tirelessly to bring justice for Eric.
"Our focus is now on honoring Eric's life and supporting his boys."