Utah children's author Kouri Richins had two motives to kill her husband, expert says

A Utah children's book author accused of killing her husband with a cocktail laced with fentanyl is now facing a murder trial after new testimony alleges she had an affair with a man and bought the deadly drug from a housekeeper.

Kouri Richins, 34, a mother of three, is accused of poisoning her 39-year-old husband, Eric Richins, with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022 at their home in a small mountain town near Park City in order to collect millions in life insurance money, renovate a home and be with her lover.

On the second day of Kouri's preliminary hearing, a Utah state judge ruled that prosecutors had presented enough evidence against her to hold a jury trial.

“There are always two reasons why people lose their minds and commit murder. One is love, the other is money,” defense attorney Jonna Spilbor told Fox News Digital. “And Kouri Richins had both reasons, because now we know she had been in contact with a man she had worked with in her flipping business.”

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Kouri Richins, a Utah mother of three who wrote a children's book about coping with grief after the death of her husband, looks on during a hearing Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool)

Digital forensics expert Chris Kotrodimos testified Monday that Kouri regularly sent text messages to Robert Grossman, her alleged lover before her husband's death, who worked as a handyman and repaired properties for Kouri that she wanted to sell, the New York Post reported. In previous indictments, prosecutors referred to her alleged lover as her “lover.”

The night Eric died, Kouri sent Grossman a photo of two people kissing with the caption “Love you,” court documents show. In the week following Eric's death, Kouri sent Grossman “Love you” five times, according to the Daily Mail.

“You don't text someone and say, 'I love you,' you don't text someone with your location. You don't text someone every day unless there's a relationship,” Spilbor said.

“So now we also have evidence that there was indeed a lover, a 'beloved' in Kouri Richin's shadow. So we have plenty of motive… And you can bet that the evidence of that motive will be front and center when the case goes to trial.”

“Things are not looking good for Kouri Richins.”

Housekeeper Carmen Lauber also claims to have sold fentanyl to Kouri three times, Det. Jeff O'Driscoll of the Summit County Sheriff's Office said on the witness stand Monday. O'Driscoll said police initially linked Lauber to Kouri Richins through a series of text messages and later arrested Lauber because drugs and other illegal items were found in her home.

He said Lauber told him she sold Kouri up to 90 blue-green fentanyl tablets, and Lauber's supplier later confirmed to investigators that he sold her the fentanyl she wanted. Officers did not find any fentanyl tablets in the Richins' home, the investigator said.

Children's book author from Utah sent her lover a devastating text before her husband was poisoned: DOCS

An obituary for Eric Richins describes him as a “passionate outdoorsman and passionate hunter.” He enjoyed helping on his family's cattle ranch and expanding his “successful” masonry business. The obituary also describes him as a dedicated family man. (Facebook/Kouri Richins)

Prosecutors allege Kouri killed Eric to collect millions in life insurance and sell off a $2 million mansion in Wasatch County that was under construction at the time of Eric's death, an investment his family says he did not approve of.

The night Eric died, he, Kouri and her mother, Lisa Darden, were celebrating Kouri's recent closing on the mansion in question, according to Summit County court documents.

Kouri is said to have mixed a fentanyl-laced cocktail for her husband that evening. A medical examiner found that Eric had more than five times the lethal amount of the illegal opioid in his system when he died.

The examiner also found “16,000 ng/ml of quetiapine” in Eric Richins’ stomach fluid, an atypical antipsychotic that is “widely used as a sleep aid,” according to the charging documents.

The next day, Kouri reportedly made a deal for the villa after her husband was declared dead.

Kouri pleaded not guilty to all 11 counts on Tuesday, the second morning of her preliminary hearing. The focus was on another attempted murder charge filed in March. She was accused of slipping fentanyl into her husband's favorite sandwich on Valentine's Day, causing a severe but non-fatal reaction.

Richins' attorneys, Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis of Nester Lewis and Alexander Ramos of Langford Ramos, said in a statement Tuesday: “We recognize that the preliminary hearing is overwhelmingly in favor of the prosecution and respect the court's decision. We firmly believe that the charges against Kouri do not stand up to scrutiny and are confident that the jury will find the same.”

“Our focus now is to ensure justice is done through a fair trial. We are determined to defend Kouri against these charges and have every confidence that the truth will come out. The last fifteen months have taken a toll on Kouri and her three children. It is time to end this ordeal, restore her life and allow her and her family to move on.”

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The house where Kouri Richins and Eric Richins lived is seen in Francis, Utah, May 11, 2023. Kouri Richins wrote a children's book about grief after the death of her husband and now faces a murder trial in connection with his death. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth argued that Kouri learned from the first failed assassination attempt on her husband and that this helped her carry out the murder 17 days later.

Spilbor told Fox News Digital that evidence accusing Kouri of having an affair and selling fentanyl pills through Lauber would hurt her defense. She said prosecutors likely have further evidence that a romantic relationship existed between Kouri and Grossman, and that will prove crucial at trial.

“If the jury can say based on the circumstantial evidence that she got her hands on fentanyl, he died from fentanyl poisoning and she was the last person to see him alive, then they're really going to rely on that kind of evidence,” Spilbor said.

Spilbor also said that evidence at trial would show that Kouri was overwhelmed with her real estate portfolio and that her husband was considering divorce and wanted to remove her from his will.

“There will be evidence that her husband had a prenuptial agreement for a reason, and there will be evidence that the only financial benefit to Kouri Richins was not a divorce but his death,” Spilbor said, adding that prosecutors would not necessarily have to present evidence that her husband took the exact pills she bought and that it was fatal.

“When you line up all of this potential evidence, it doesn't matter to a jury that you can't link the exact fentanyl dots to the glass,” Spilbor said.

In the months before her arrest in May 2023, Kouri 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.

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Kouri Richins, a mother of three from Utah, is accused of using fentanyl to kill her husband of nine years, Eric Richins. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer/Family Release)

Spilbor said that although crimes are not supposed to make money, writing the book in and of itself was not a crime, but it could infuriate any juror who would be inclined to find her guilty anyway.

“That's something like hide and seek. That's something like trying to cover up such a monstrous crime because she has three children. That means those three children no longer have a father. And then to profit from it, to write this book and portray yourself as the victim when you're actually the perpetrator. I mean, that's Hollywood stuff.”

“And that's going to be a real punch in the gut for a lot of jurors if they believe all the other evidence that we expect will be used against them.”

Audrey Conklin of Fox News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.