The Mormon mom accused of poisoning her husband last year was promoting the kids’ bereavement book she wrote after he died as recently as a month ago.
Kouri Richins, 33, is accused of murdering her husband Eric, 40, in their home in Kamas , a town near Park City, Utah, last March.
Police believe she gave him a lethal dose of fentanyl disguised in a Moscow Mule cocktail.
In the weeks and months before, she’d tried to make herself the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policy. He had changed his will and power of attorney to give his sister full control, and was even worried that his wife was trying to kill him, according to a police search warrant.
Kouri remains in the custody of Summit County Sheriff’s Deputies awaiting her next court appearance.
Just last month, she appeared on a local TV station to promote her $14.99 book, Are You With Me?’
Kouri Richins, 33, is accused of murdering her husband Eric, 40, in their home in Kamas , a town near Park City, Utah, last March. She is shown promoting her book, Are You With Me, last month
Kouri Richins (left) was arrested on Monday in Utah and is accused of poisoning her husband, Eric Richins (right), with fentanyl at their home in Kamas, a small mountain town near Park City
Video of that appearance shows her referring to her husband’s death as a ‘shock’, and talking wistfully about how she was guiding their three sons’ through grief.
‘My husband passed away unexpectedly last year. March 4 was a one year anniversary for us, He was 39.
‘It completely took us all by shock,’ she said.
‘We have three little boys, ten, nine and six, and my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we’ve experienced in the last year.’
She said she was motivated to write the book after searching Amazon and Barnes and Noble and finding ‘nothing’ to help them ‘cope’.
‘I went on Amazon and Barnes and Noble to try to find something to help us cope at night, nights are the hardest. I just wanted some story to read to my kids at night and I couldn’t find anything that suited them, so I was like “let’s just write one.”‘
Following his death, Richins wrote ‘Are you with me?’ – a picture book she wrote to help children cope after the death of a loved one
Kouri says she wrote the book last year to help the couple’s three kids deal with their grief
The $14.99 book is still available on Amazon and is dedicated to Eric Richins
Richins had told police she had performed CPR on Eric after finding him unresponsive in their home, but fire crew and medics who responded to the scene said this was unlikely as there was blood coming from his mouth.
Her arrest comes just two months after that of Mormon dentist Jim Craig, who is suspected of poisoning his wife to death in Colorado.
In the years before his death, Eric told his family he feared his wife was trying to kill him. There were two occasions when Eric became violently ill after having drinks or dinner with his wife.
One of Eric’s two sisters told police he had called her three years ago from Greece where he and Richins were on vacation together.
He claimed Richins had given him a drink that made him violently ill and said he believed she had tried to kill him.
In January 2022, she changed Eric’s joint life insurance policy, which he shared with his business partner Cody Wright, so that she was the only beneficiary, a warrant states.
When the insurance company told the partners, who own the business C&E Stone Masonry, of the change, they were able to change it back.
After finding out that Richins had tried to change his life insurance policy, Eric changed the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney to his sister without telling his wife because he was scared she might ‘kill him for the money’, a warrant states.
A medical examiner said they found five times the lethal dose of fentanyl – a painkiller 100 times stronger than morphine – in Eric’s system after he died on March 4 last year. Pictured: Richins and Eric with one of their sons
Eric’s family told investigators shortly after he died they suspected Richins had killed the father-of-three. Pictured: Kouri and Eric Richens with their three children
But a month later, court documents show that on Valentine’s Day last year, Eric suffered an allergic reaction following a meal with Richins. He could not breathe and passed out after using an EpiPen and taking Benadryl.
Court documents say Richins had bought $900 worth of fentanyl pills from an acquaintance before the Valentine’s Day meal and two weeks later she asked for $900 more. Days later, Eric died of an overdose.
Following Eric’s death, Richins had claimed he had an addiction to pain medicine in high school but there was no substance abuse issues since.
But friends and family told police said they hadn’t any idea of Eric being addicted to any form of medicine, and officers did not find any pain killers in the family home.
Kouri Richins was arrested on Monday in Utah and is accused of poisoning her husband, Eric Richins, with fentanyl at their home in Kamas
In addition to the murder charge, Richins also faces charges involving the alleged possession of GHB – a narcolepsy drug frequently used in recreational settings, including at dance clubs.
The charges are based on officers’ interactions with Richins that night and the account of an ‘unnamed acquaintance’ who claims to have sold her the fentanyl.
Two months ago, Richins promoted her children’s book on local TV and told a segment called ‘Good Things Utah’ that she had written it to help her three boys deal with the grief of losing their father.
She called her husband’s death unexpected and described how it sent her and her three boys reeling.
For children, Richins said, grieving was about ‘making sure that their spirit is always alive in your home.’
‘It’s – you know – explaining to my kid just because he’s not present here with us physically, doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us,’ she told the anchors, who commended her for being an amazing mother.
Richins’ attorney, Skye Lazaro, declined to comment on the charges.
Court documents show the charges brought against Richins
