She wrote a kids’ book on grief — then was charged with killing her husband
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When she published a children’s book almost a year after her husband’s death, Kouri Richins wanted to help kids struggling to cope with the loss of a loved one. The Utah mother of three was facing her own grief when she wrote the picture book after her husband, Eric Richins, died in March 2022, she said.
“It completely took us all by shock,” Richins said in April while promoting her book, “Are You With Me?” In an interview with KTVX, an ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, she added: “It’s — you know — explaining to my kid just because he’s not present here with us physically, doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us.”
But after a month of praise from local media for helping children deal with grief, Richins’s story took a dark turn. She has been charged with her husband’s murder, accused of poisoning him with a lethal dose of fentanyl.
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Richins, 33, was arrested Monday and charged with aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, and three counts of second-degree felony possession with intent to distribute, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.
Richins initially told police that she had made her husband a mixed vodka drink and that he consumed a THC gummy as the couple celebrated his sale of a home, according to charging documents obtained by The Washington Post. She told police that she later found her 39-year-old husband unresponsive and “cold to the touch” before he was pronounced dead, charging documents say.
But a toxicology report from the Utah Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that Eric Richins “died from an overdose of fentanyl,” according to charging documents unsealed Monday.
“The level of fentanyl in Eric’s system was approximately five times the lethal dosage,” the medical examiner wrote.
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The murder charge stems from police investigators’ interactions with Kouri Richins as well as the account of an “unnamed acquaintance” who claims to have sold her the fentanyl, according to authorities. If convicted, Richins faces 25 years to life in prison.
Skye Lazaro, Richins’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.
Margaret Olson, one of the prosecutors in the case for the Summit County Attorney’s Office, stressed that Richins is “presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” She declined to comment on the charges.
“Please keep in mind there are three young children belonging to the decedent and the accused, making this matter very sensitive and difficult,” Olson told The Post on Tuesday.
The charges in Utah come less than four years after an author in Portland, Ore., wrote about “how to murder your husband” — and was convicted of murdering her husband. Romance novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy fatally shot her husband, 63-year-old chef Daniel Brophy, at the Oregon Culinary Institute on June 2, 2018. Crampton Brophy, who was sentenced to life in prison last year, had published an essay in 2011 describing five core motives and a number of murder weapons from which she would choose if her character were to kill a husband in a romance novel.
Kouri and Eric Richins were married nine years and had three sons — Carter, Ashton and Weston, who were 9, 7 and 5 years old at the time of his death — according to his obituary.
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“Eric was a family man, who always strove to be the absolute best father and husband,” his obituary reads. “Eric did absolutely everything in his power to provide his family with every possible opportunity to learn, grow, and have fun.”
But the couple was not in a good place in early 2022, authorities say.
An unsealed warrant states that Kouri Richins had logged into the joint life insurance policy her husband had with his business partner at C & E Stone Masonry in January 2022. She removed them as each other’s beneficiary and named herself as the policy’s sole beneficiary, the warrant says. Eric Richins and his business partner were able to change it back after the insurance company notified them of the change, authorities say.
Around this same time, Kouri Richins, a real estate agent, had been in contact with an acquaintance about obtaining prescription pain medication for an investor, charging documents say. The acquaintance, who is identified by authorities only as C.L., said Richins made multiple requests for pain medications. C.L. said Richins specifically asked for fentanyl, prosecutors say, and requested “some of the Michael Jackson stuff” as well. After C.L. obtained about 15 to 30 fentanyl pills from a dealer in Ogden, Ore., Richins purchased them for $900, according to the charging documents.
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On Feb. 14, 2022, Kouri and Eric Richins were having a Valentine’s Day dinner at their home in Kamas, Utah, when the husband “became very ill” shortly after they had eaten, authorities say. He believed he had been poisoned — and allegedly had an idea of who might have done it.
“Eric told a friend that he thought his wife was trying to poison him,” prosecutors say.
About two weeks later, Kouri Richins asked for another $900 worth of fentanyl pills, which she received from C.L. at one of the homes she was showing on Feb. 26, 2022, authorities say.
Unbeknown to Richins, her husband had replaced her as the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney, the warrant says. He did not tell his wife that he replaced her with his sister in the will because he believed his wife might “kill him for the money,” his sisters told authorities.
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One of his sisters recalled to authorities how Eric Richins had called them years earlier while he and his wife were vacationing in Greece to say he had become violently ill after he had an alcoholic drink that Kouri Richins handed him. The sister alleged that Eric Richins believed then that his wife had tried to kill him, the warrant says.
“He warned them that if anything happened to him, she was to blame,” the warrant reads.
The charging documents do not explain why he had stayed with his wife if he believed she had tried to poison him.
On March 3, 2022, Kouri Richins said she and her husband were celebrating closing on a $2 million house to be used for her business. Family members have disputed this, telling authorities that Eric Richins was going to tell her they weren’t buying the home, charging documents say.
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About 9 p.m., Kouri Richins said, according to the documents, “she made Eric a Moscow Mule in the kitchen and brought it to their bedroom where Eric consumed it while sitting in bed.” After he fell asleep following a night terror, she told authorities, she went to the bedroom of one of her children.
At 3 a.m., she returned to her bedroom, she told investigators.
“She felt Eric and he was cold to the touch,” prosecutors say. “That is when [the] defendant called 911.”
After he was pronounced dead, Richins told police that she had kept her phone plugged in next to her bed and did not take it into the other bedroom. But investigators say they later found that the phone had been locked and unlocked multiple times and that messages were sent, received and deleted during that time.
As his death was being investigated, Richins posted photos to social media remembering her husband.
When she was reading her children bedtime stories, she found that nights were the hardest for her sons and wanted a book that addressed some of the feelings of grief they were processing, she told local media. That’s when she decided to write and self-publish a children’s book to help others deal with grief.
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“I just wanted some story to read to my kids at night, and I just could not find anything,” she told KTVX.
The 41-page book released March 7 is described on its Amazon page as “a must-read for any child who has experienced the pain of loss, and for parents who want to provide their children with the emotional support they need to heal and grow.” Richins’s book is based on what she calls the three C’s: connection, continuity and care.
“It’s just comforting to them to know that they’re not living this life alone,” Richins said last month. “Dad is still here — it’s just in a different way.”
She told KPCW, an NPR affiliate in Salt Lake City, that there were plans for sequels, including her next title, “Mom, How Far Away is Heaven?” Her first book “Are You With Me?” had surged into the top 5,000 of Amazon’s top books list as of Tuesday morning. Later in the day, it appeared Amazon removed the book from its website.
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A detention hearing to decide whether the mother should be held in jail is scheduled for May 19, according to KPCW.
Eric Richins was remembered as an avid outdoorsman and hunter who spoke Spanish fluently after a two-year mission to Mexico City for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his obituary says. Above all, the University of Utah graduate “lived to the fullest and with few regrets,” according to his family.
“Words can’t describe the loneliness and loss that is felt in every heart that was lucky enough to know him,” the obituary says.
Before she was arrested, Richins posted a video reel to Facebook saying how much she missed the late husband she is now accused of poisoning.
“Life is just so … hard without you here!” she wrote. “The cards I have been dealt seems like a game that just can’t be played.”
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Source: The Washington Post
