Children’s book author Kouri Richins sentenced to life in prison without parole in fatal poisoning of husband

(CNN) — Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who wrote a children’s book on grief after her husband’s death, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole for his murder.

Judge Richard Mrazik handed down the life sentence – the most severe penalty Richins faced for her aggravated murder conviction – on what would have been her late husband’s 44th birthday.

After a weekslong trial earlier this year, an eight-person jury convicted Richins, 36, of aggravated murder for fatally poisoning her husband, Eric Richins, in March 2022. She was also found guilty of attempted aggravated murder for trying to kill him weeks before his death, on Valentine’s Day, and insurance fraud and forgery related to his life insurance coverage.

“A person convicted of those things is simply too dangerous to ever be free,” Mrazik said during the sentencing. He ordered her to serve consecutive prison sentences for her convictions on the other charges.

Richins shot a look at her defense attorney and raised her eyebrows as the judge handed down the sentence.

Before her sentencing, Richins read aloud a lengthy statement that she addressed to her three young sons.

“As much as you’ve been influenced into thinking that dad was murdered, that I took your dad from you, that is completely wrong. An absolute lie,” Richins said as she sniffled and wiped her nose with tissues. “And the thought of that is still as absurd today as it was four years ago.”

Statements written by the couple’s three boys were read aloud by therapists during the hours-long sentencing hearing. Each one said they would fear for their safety if their mother were ever released from prison.

“You took away everything from me and my brothers. I don’t want you out of jail because I will not feel safe if you are out,” the couple’s middle child, identified as ‘A.R.,’ wrote. “You have never said sorry for anything that you have done to me or my brothers. I don’t want you to hurt anyone again.”

Other members of Eric Richins’ tight-knit family tearfully addressed the court Wednesday as they urged the judge to hand their in-law a life sentence without parole.

“Please do not leave those boys to wonder whether Kouri might track them or their children down in the future,” his sister, Katie Richins-Benson, said. “Please do not create a possibility for Kouri to endanger Eric’s boys, my daughters, my family, or anybody else ever again.”

Kouri Richins’ attorneys argued the judge should impose a lesser sentence, raising the possibility that her children may one day want a relationship with her.

“A life without the possibility of parole, the sentence cannot be changed,” defense attorney Wendy Lewis said. “If Kouri and Eric’s boys someday change their mind and it is too late to say something different than what they’ve said today, this day will become one more day that haunts them.”

Kouri Richins’ loved ones also urged the judge to issue a less severe sentence, describing her as a devoted mother and generous neighbor – with some insisting she had been wrongfully convicted.

“We don’t with 100% certainty know what happened to Eric – no one does,” her brother, Ronney Darden, said. “But we do know with 100% certainty that it wasn’t caused by you.”

Richins’ defense attorneys told the court they plan on appealing the sentence and filing a motion for a new trial.

How the trial unfolded

Eric Richins, 39, was found dead in the couple’s home in Kamas, Utah, during the early morning hours of March 4, 2022.

Earlier that night, Eric and Kouri Richins had a drink to celebrate a successful transaction with her real estate business, according to a statement she gave law enforcement. One of their sons was having nightmares, so Kouri Richins went to sleep in his room around 9:30 p.m., she told police.

When she returned to the master bedroom about six hours later, she said, she found her husband dead in their bed.

The autopsy revealed Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, with roughly five times a lethal dose in his blood. Prosecutors argued Kouri Richins slipped the drugs into her husband’s drinks the night of his death, although they did not present evidence supporting this theory at trial.

Over 13 days of testimony, the Summit County Attorney’s Office called more than 40 witnesses, including Eric Richins’ grieving family members, people who exchanged the illicit drugs said to have killed him, Kouri Richins’ paramour and a private investigator hired by the victim’s family. The defense rested its case without calling any witnesses.

The prosecution’s star witness, a housecleaner named Carmen Lauber, testified she sold illicit pills to the Utah mother several times in early 2022. Cell phone data showed her phone near the location where she picked up the drugs on dates close to the attempted murder and fatal poisoning.

Other witnesses testified about Kouri Richins feeling “trapped” in her marriage, her yearslong affair and her business’s ballooning debt – all reasons prosecutors say she killed her husband.

Robert Josh Grossmann, with whom she was having an affair, became emotional on the stand as scores of their affectionate messages were displayed in court.

“I do want a future together. I do want you. Figure life out together,” Kouri Richins texted Grossmann roughly two weeks before her husband died. “If he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!! I love you.”

Although her friends testified Kouri Richins appeared to be financially successful, a forensic accountant said she was caught in a relentless debt cycle and her real estate business was “imploding.” Eric Richins’ life was insured for about $2.2 million through several policies, including one Kouri Richins was convicted of applying for fraudulently.

“She murdered Eric Richins,” prosecutor Brad Bloodworth said in his closing argument, “and then she submitted a claim to get the money.”

Kouri Richins was also convicted of trying to murder her husband on Valentine’s Day 2022 – ten days after that insurance policy went into effect. Eric Richins called two friends that day and said he felt like he was going to die after eating a sandwich his wife gave him, according to charging documents.

Within weeks, he was dead.

At trial, prosecutors emphasized evidence they said demonstrated Kouri Richins’ guilty conscience after her husband’s death, including search history from her cellphone that showed queries about women’s prisons in Utah, remotely deleting cell phone data and life insurance payments.

The searches included: “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “kouri richins kamas net worth,” and “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as.”

Prosecutors argued that, amid the criminal investigation, Kouri Richins tried to deflect attention away from herself by publishing a children’s book about a year after her husband’s fatal overdose. Kouri Richins said she authored the picture book – titled “Are You With Me?” – to help her three young sons navigate the loss of their father.

“Just because he’s not present here with us physically, that doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us,” Richins said while promoting the book on a local news program in April 2023, weeks before her arrest. “Dad is still here. It’s just in a different way.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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