Kouri Richins wrote a children’s book about the untimely loss last year of her husband Eric, billing it as an effort to help their sons grieve and heal. Now the mother is behind bars, accused of plotting her husband’s poisoning murder for profit. Sheila Flynn reports
news.yahoo.com
5/18/23
In July 2021, Utah mother-of-three Kouri Richins was keeping a family secret.
She was on a trip to Cancun, Mexico, and her brother, Ronney, was about to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Kouri, already married herself, was in on her sibling’s plan; she secretly recorded as Ronney surprised his girlfriend with a proposal that she quickly and happily accepted.
Kouri and her husband, Eric, were both invited to be in the newly-engaged couple’s bridal party, Kouri as a bridesmaid and Eric as a groomsman. The wedding was scheduled for August of the following year.
Eric, however, would be dead by then — after Kouri, prosecutors allege, carried out a secret and homicidal plan of her own. The 39-year-old died on 4 March 2022 after ingesting a fentanyl-laced cocktail prepared by his wife, prosecutors say.
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And so, on the weekend the Richins clan should have been celebrating Mother’s Day and marking Eric’s 41st birthday, his children were fatherless. His wife was in jail. And members of their community — along with the rest of America — were struggling to come to terms with the villainous accusations that Kouri callously plotted her husband’s poisoning murder for profit.
The accusations were not news to Eric’s siblings and closest family members, however.
“It's been a bit of a whirlwind, because Eric died over a year ago, and [his family] had obviously been involved in taking care of his estate, trying to maintain some relationship with the children, and working with the police and prosecutors who were investigating his wife,” lawyer and Richins family spokesman Greg Skordas tells
The Independent on Wednesday, just two days before Kouri is scheduled to appear in court for a detention hearing.
“And so everything sort of happened all of a sudden, and she was charged, and it wasn't necessarily unexpected, but it certainly brought on a flurry of attention to the case that hadn't happened for over a year.”
Kouri’s arrest, then weekend combination of Mother’s Day and Eric’s birthday, “was all hard because it all just resurfaced again,” he says. “ And you’ve got to think about the boys too, because they've lost their father. And, for most purposes, they've now lost their mother.”
He says: “It was right up until the end that she was carrying on as though nothing had happened, and that she was a victim, and she was a martyr and promoting her book. And I don't know to what extent she knew this was coming or suspected it, but we certainly did.”
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The couple moved into a spacious mansion on Willow Court in Francis and married in the home’s backyard on 15 June 2013. Eric’s first marriage had ended in divorce, and Kouri signed a pre-nuptial agreement on the same day as her wedding agreeing that, bar her husband’s death, she would have no claim to his 50 per cent stake in his business.
The pair welcomed three sons, now aged 10, nine and six, and Kouri left the cashier job to work in real estate. By the looks of it, the family was going from strength to strength; they lived in a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home of nearly 5,000 square feet valued at more than $1.1m. They enjoyed holidays abroad and the finer things in life; according to his obituary, Eric “owned almost every motorized toy possible, from four-wheelers and side-by-sides, to trucks and snow mobiles”.
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According to the family petition, Kouri began encountering financial problems as early as 2016 and started secretly stealing money from Eric to flip houses,
KPCW reported. In September 2020, however, he discovered she’d withdrawn at least $100,000 from his bank account and spent $30,000 on his credit cards — as well as using his power of attorney to secure a $250,000 loan and cashing checks from his business for her own use, the family claims in the petition.
The petition states that Kouri admitted to taking the money when confronted by her husband, according to KPCW.
The new widow, before her arrest for murder, had already been embroiled in civil legal battles with her in-laws. Eric’s sister, Katie Richins-Benson, filed court documents to formally take over his estate following his death, but Kouri contested the move, and Kouri has also sued Eric’s sister in a separate civil case.
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