Jury finds Utah author of children’s grief book Kouri Richins guilty of murdering husband with fentanyl

According to Axios, the three-week trial in Summit County captivated viewers across the country, with thousands tuning in to livestreams of the proceedings as prosecutors laid out what they described as a calculated scheme driven by greed. Prosecutors argued that Richins, a Kamas mother of three, killed her husband, Eric Richins, in an attempt to secure his fortune while her struggling house-flipping business was drowning in millions of dollars of debt.

According to testimony presented at trial, Eric had begun to suspect financial wrongdoing by his wife long before his death. Less than two years before he died, Eric accused Kouri of “abuse and misuse of his finances” and quietly took steps to separate his assets from her control — a move prosecutors said she did not know about. Investigators alleged Richins ultimately poisoned Eric by slipping fentanyl into a drink at their home. A key witness, Richins’ housekeeper, testified that she sold fentanyl pills to Richins twice in the weeks leading up to Eric’s death and again shortly afterward.

In closing arguments, Deputy Summit County Attorney Brad Bloodworth painted Richins as a calculating “black widow” who would stop at nothing to maintain the appearance of success. Bloodworth described Richins as an “intensely ambitious” social climber who wanted to project wealth and status despite the mounting financial failures of her business ventures. Jurors also heard testimony about Richins’ personal life, including claims that she was having an affair with a man who worked for her. Text messages presented in court showed Richins venting frustration about her husband, including one message that read: “If he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!!”

Another witness, a friend of Richins, testified that she had repeatedly expressed unhappiness in her marriage and once suggested that “in many ways, it would be better if he were dead.” Richins’ attorneys pushed back against the prosecution’s theory, arguing that investigators had not definitively proven that she poisoned her husband. They criticized detectives for failing to test drinking glasses from the home and suggested Eric could have accidentally overdosed or obtained drugs himself. The defense also attempted to undermine the credibility of the housekeeper’s testimony, noting that the housekeeper’s alleged drug supplier testified he was not selling fentanyl around the time of Eric’s death and claimed he had provided oxycodone instead.

In a surprising move late in the trial, the defense declined to call any witnesses, and Richins herself did not take the stand. The decision brought the trial to an abrupt close before the case went to the jury. After roughly three hours of deliberations on Monday, jurors returned guilty verdicts on all five charges against Richins: aggravated murder, two counts of filing false or fraudulent insurance claims, forgery, and attempted criminal homicide.

Prosecutors said the attempted criminal homicide charge stemmed from what they described as an earlier failed attempt to poison Eric on Valentine’s Day 2022, about two weeks before his death. Text messages sent by Eric that day indicated he became severely ill after eating a sandwich his wife had prepared, but he ultimately survived. Prosecutors argued that two weeks later, Richins tried again, this time successfully.

The case drew particularly intense attention after Richins published a children’s book about grief following her husband’s death, portraying herself as a mother helping her children cope with the loss of their father.