Children's book author Kouri Richins must stand trial for her husband's death, judge rules

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) – A Utah mother of three who published a children's book about grief after her husband's death and was later accused of fatally poisoning him must stand trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.

On the second day of Kouri Richins' preliminary hearing, Utah State Judge Richard Mrazik ruled that prosecutors had presented enough evidence against her to proceed to a jury trial.

She faces a number of charges related to killing her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl in their home in a small mountain town near Park City in March 2022. Prosecutors say Kouri Richins, 34, mixed five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a Moscow Mule cocktail that Eric Richins, 39, drank.

Kouri Richins appeared stoic as the judge delivered the news that a jury would soon decide her fate. She vehemently maintained her innocence and pleaded not guilty to all 11 counts on Tuesday. Her trial is scheduled to begin on April 28.

The second day of her preliminary hearing focused on another attempted murder charge filed earlier this year. She was accused of slipping fentanyl into her husband's sandwich on Valentine's Day 2022, causing a severe but non-fatal reaction.

Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth defended the prosecution by saying that he believed Kouri Richins had learned lessons from the first failed assassination attempt on her husband that helped her carry out the murder 17 days later.

A bite of his favorite sandwich — which he left on the front seat of his truck along with a note on Valentine's Day — caused Eric Richins to break out in a rash and faint, prosecutors allege. His wife had bought the sandwich at a local diner in the town of Kamas, two days after she bought fentanyl pills from the family's housekeeper, according to witness statements and deleted text messages found by police.

Text messages and location data suggest Kouri Richins may have taken the sandwich home and then spent Valentine's Day with another man with whom she was having an affair, Bloodworth said. A day after Valentine's Day, she texted her lover: “If he could just disappear…life would be so perfect.”

In written statements, two of Eric Richins' friends recounted phone conversations on the day prosecutors say he was first poisoned by his wife of nine years. After injecting himself with his son's EpiPen and drinking a bottle of Benadryl, he awoke from a deep sleep and told a friend, “I think my wife tried to poison me,” charging documents say.

Housekeeper Carmen Lauber told police that Kouri Richins then asked her to get stronger fentanyl, Detective Jeff O'Driscoll said on the first day of the hearing on Monday.

“She learned that putting a lethal dose of fentanyl in a sandwich where Eric Richins can bite into it, feel the effects and put the sandwich back down is not the right way to administer it,” Bloodworth told the judge. “She learned that it takes a whole truckload to kill him.”

Days later, Kouri Richins called 911 in the middle of the night to report finding her husband “cold” at the foot of her bed, according to a police report. He was pronounced dead, and a medical examiner later found a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system, five times the fatal dose.

Defense attorneys Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis argued that investigators could not be sure that the drugs Kouri Richins purchased from the housekeeper matched those found in Eric Richins' body because police did not find fentanyl in the Richins' home.

“These are great arguments for the trial,” Mrazik replied, but wondered aloud if any of her arguments were strong enough to prove that there was insufficient prosecution evidence.

“We recognize that the preliminary hearing phase favors the prosecution to an extraordinary degree and respect the court's decision,” Nester and Lewis said in a joint statement after the hearing. “We firmly believe that the charges against Kouri do not stand up to thorough scrutiny and are confident that the jury will find the same.”

Mrazik recently hired the two lawyers to represent Kouri Richins after he found she was no longer able to pay her private attorneys. Prosecutors say she falsely believed she would inherit her husband's estate under the terms of their prenuptial agreement and took out life insurance policies on him totaling nearly $2 million without his knowledge.

According to court documents, Eric Richins met with an attorney in October 2020 to discuss the possibility of filing for divorce (which he never did) and quietly removing his wife from his will.

In the months before her arrest in May 2023, the Utah mother self-published the children's book “Are You with Me?” about a father with angel wings who watches over his young son after his death. The book could play a key role in prosecutors' efforts to portray Eric Richins' death as a calculated murder with an elaborate cover-up.

The judge scheduled a pretrial conference for September 23, at which the prosecution and defense would discuss jury selection.

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