What began as a quiet celebration at a Utah couple’s home in 2022 ended hours later with the husband dead in their bedroom and prosecutors alleging his wife slipped him a fatal dose of fentanyl.
Nearly four years after Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins is on trial on charges of aggravated murder, attempted criminal homicide, false/fraudulent insurance claim and forgery. She has pleaded not guilty.
The case drew national attention after Kouri Richins published a children’s book about grief following her husband’s death and later proclaimed her innocence on NBC’s “Dateline.”
Family and friends have said that the couple appeared to have a “perfect” marriage and seemed to have it all. Kouri Richins had a real estate company, and her husband owned a stone masonry business. The pair shared three children.
But court documents alleged that Kouri Richins had significant debt, fraudulently took out life insurance policies on her husband and attempted to poison him multiple times.
In opening statements, chief prosecutor Bradley Bloodworth said the “evidence will prove that Kouri Richins murdered Eric for his money and to get a fresh start at life.”
Bloodworth said that before Eric’s death, Kouri Richins’ boyfriend had texted her an image of two people kissing. She replied, “Love you,” before making her husband a drink, he said.
He also told the jury that at the time of Eric’s death, Kouri Richins was in debt. Eric’s estate was worth $4 million, and she believed that she would inherit it all, Bloodworth said.
“She needed Eric Richins' money to have her fresh start at life,” he said.
Kouri Richins' attorney Kathryn Nester began her opening statement by playing a call Kouri Richins made to a 911 dispatcher saying that Eric wasn’t breathing. Kouri Richins appeared to be crying on the call.
“Those were the sounds of a wife becoming a widow,” she said.
Nester said that before Eric’s death, the couple had a “celebratory shot” of alcohol, and Kouri Richins made a Moscow Mule. Nester said they did not finish the drinks, and the cups were never tested for evidence by law enforcement.
She told the jury that an empty pill bottle, with an expiration date of 2016, was also found by Eric's body.
“Between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., somewhere in that time, Eric Richins died,” she said. “Somewhere in that time, he ingested a fatal dose of fentanyl. What you will never hear, after four years of investigation … is how that fentanyl got inside of him because there is zero evidence of that.”
Celebratory drink ends in death
Kouri Richins told investigators she found her husband unresponsive in the couple’s bedroom on March 4, 2022, after they had celebratory drinks at their home to mark her recent sale of a property.
According to court documents, Richins said she made her husband a Moscow mule in the kitchen and brought it to their bedroom, where he drank it. She said she went to sleep in their child’s bedroom, and when she woke up and went to her room, Eric was cold to the touch.
Emergency personnel found him at the foot of the bed and administered CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A medical examiner said Eric, 39, had five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system, and that it was “illicit,” not medical-grade fentanyl, according to the court documents. The medical examiner concluded the drug had been orally ingested.
