Woman who wrote book on grief after husband’s death is guilty of murdering him

A US mum of three who wrote a children’s book about grief after her husband’s death has been found guilty of his murder.

Kouri Richins, 35, was also found guilty of attempted murder, two counts of falsifying insurance claims and forgery yesterday.

Prosecutors argued Richins carried out an elaborate scheme to poison her husband, Eric Richins, 39, and inherit more than $4 million (£3 million).

Deeply in debt, the defendant opened $2 million’s worth of life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge.

Hanging her head as the verdict was read, Richins will spend 25 years behind bars.

The jury deliberated for only three hours.

Erin was found dead in Kamas, Utah, early in the morning on March 4, 2022.

Prosecutors said Richins spiked his cocktail as they sat outside their home, celebrating the closing of a real estate deal, at 9pm the day before.

An autopsy revealed he had roughly five times the lethal dose of fentanyl – a potent synthetic opioid often used as an anaesthetic – in his system.

One year following Erin’s death, Richins published a children’s book, Are You With Me?, to help her boys process the death of their dead.

She flogged the book on the local TV station, abc4, saying she ‘needed a distraction’.

Woman tried to kill husband ‘with the Michael Jackson stuff’, court hears

Richins attempted to kill Eric on Valentine’s Day by poisoning his sandwich weeks before his death, the court heard.

Eric became violently ill after having dinner with Richins, breaking out in hives until he used his son’s EpiPen and took an antihistamine.

Richins allegedly bought $900 worth of fentanyl pills beforehand and later bought $900 more in pills from their housekeeper before Eric’s death.

She had asked the housekeeper, Carmen Lauber, for the ‘Michael Jackson stuff’. The singer was killed by his doctor with an injection of a powerful anaesthetic, propofol and the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam in 2009.

Forensic analysis of Richins’ burner phones used showed she searched for: ‘women utah prison’, ‘can cops.uncover deleted.messages iphone’, ‘if someone is poisned what does it go down on the death certificate as’. ‘how long does life insurance companies takento.pay’ and ‘what is a lethal.does.of.fetanyl’.

Richins was in $4.5 million in debt and, after the killing, planned to spend the rest of her life with another man she was having an affair with.

Yet she had no idea that Eric, who ran a stone masonry business, had secretly put most of his estate into a trust in his sister’s name.

Summit County prosecutor, Brad Bloodworth, said: ‘She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money.’

The ‘intensely ambitious person’ felt there was one solution to this, Bloodworth said: ‘Eric had to die.’

Wendy Lewis, representing Richin, argued that there was always a ‘reasonable explanation’ to the case.

Her client’s husband, for example, she said, was addicted to painkillers.

Richins also faces 24 additional state fraud charges in separate cases related to the life insurance policies.

She will appear at a 19 May detention hearing.

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