A mom wrote a book to help her kids process their dad’s death. Now she’s on trial for his killing

SALT LAKE CITY– A year after her husband’s death, a Utah mother of three self-published a children’s book that she said helped her sons cope with the sudden loss. Kouri Richins promoted her book “Are You With Me?” on a local television station and received praise for helping young children cope with the death of a parent.

A few weeks after the book’s publication in 2023, she was arrested following the death of her husband and charged with murder.

The arrest sent shockwaves through his small mountain town just outside Park City, where a 12-person jury must decide his fate in a monthlong trial that begins Monday.

Richins, 35, faces nearly three dozen charges in connection with her husband’s death, including aggravated murder, attempted murder, forgery, mortgage fraud and insurance fraud. She pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say she killed her husband, Eric Richins, at their home in March 2022 by slipping fentanyl into a cocktail he was drinking. They say she was in deep debt and killed him for financial gain while she was planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.

The chilling case of a once-respected local author accused of profiting from her own violent crime has captivated true crime fans in the years since her arrest. Once hailed as a touching read, her book has since become a tool for prosecutors to argue that she committed a calculated murder.

His defense attorneys, Wendy Lewis, Kathy Nester and Alex Ramos, said they were confident the jury would rule in Richins’ favor after hearing his side of the story.

“Kouri has waited nearly three years for this moment: the opportunity to have the facts of this case heard by a jury, free from the prosecution’s narrative that has dominated headlines since his arrest,” his legal team said in a statement. “What was said to the public bears little resemblance to the truth. »

The night her husband died, Richins called 911 to report that she found him “cold to the touch” at the foot of their bed, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead and a medical examiner later found five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.

This was not his first assassination attempt, according to charging documents.

A month earlier, on Valentine’s Day, Eric Richins told friends that he broke out in hives and passed out after taking a bite of a sandwich that Richins had left for him. She had bought the sandwich the same week. Police said she also bought fentanyl pills from the family’s housekeeper. Opioids, including fentanyl, can cause serious allergic reactions.

After injecting himself with his son’s EpiPen and drinking the allergy medication Benadryl, Eric Richins woke up from a deep sleep and called a friend to say, “I think my wife tried to poison me,” the friend said in written testimony.

A day after Valentine’s Day, Kouri Richins texted her alleged lover: “If he could just go away…life would be so perfect.”

Friend Eric Richins called that evening and the housekeeper who claims he sold his wife the drugs could be key witnesses at the upcoming trial. Others could include family members and the man Kouri Richins allegedly had an affair with.

The prosecution’s star witness, housekeeper Carmen Lauber, told police she gave Richins fentanyl pills she bought from a dealer a few days before Valentine’s Day. Later that month, Richins allegedly told the housekeeper that the pills she gave him were not strong enough and asked her to get stronger fentanyl, according to charging documents.

Defense attorneys are expected to argue that Lauber did not actually give Richins fentanyl and that he was motivated to lie to gain legal protection. Lauber is not charged in the case and detectives said at a previous hearing that she was granted immunity.

No fentanyl pills were ever found at Richins’ home, and the housekeeper’s dealer said he was in jail and in rehab when he told detectives in 2023 that he had sold Lauber fentanyl. He later said in an affidavit that he only sold her the opioid OxyContin.

Charging documents say Eric Richins met with a divorce attorney and estate planner in October 2020, a month after he discovered his wife had made major financial decisions without his knowledge. She had a negative bank account balance, owed more than $1.8 million to lenders and was being sued by a creditor, according to court documents.

Prosecutors say Kouri Richins wrongly believed she would inherit her husband’s estate under the terms of their prenuptial agreement. She also took out numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling nearly $2 million, according to prosecutors.

She is also accused of falsifying loan applications and fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after her husband’s death.