Over the final two weeks, jurors in Kouri Richins’ murder trial have heard wide-ranging testimony about troubles in her marriage, her secret affair and the hundreds of thousands of {dollars} she owed in debt – all elements prosecutors say led her to fatally poison her husband.
Prosecutors say the Utah mom of three killed her husband, Eric Richins, with a deadly dose of fentanyl in March 2022. She can be accused of making an attempt to kill him by lacing his sandwich on Valentine’s Day, weeks earlier than his dying.
Nearly 40 witnesses have testified so far, together with the girl who allegedly gave Richins the medicine, buddies who stated that they had heard about the couple’s marital issues and the man with whom she was having an affair.
“The evidence will prove that Kouri Richins murdered Eric for his money and to get a fresh start at life,” Brad Bloodworth, chief prosecutor in the Summit County Attorney’s Office, stated in his opening assertion. “More than anything, she wanted his money to perpetuate her facade of privileged affluence and success.”
Kouri Richins has pleaded not responsible to aggravated murder and different costs, along with her protection arguing she has been wrongfully blamed for Eric Richins’ dying and that prosecutors are unable to show how the fentanyl entered Richins’ physique. If convicted of the most severe cost, she may withstand life in jail.
“They’re going to spend weeks in this trial trying to convince you that Kouri had reasons to kill her husband, because they can’t show you that she did kill her husband,” protection legal professional Kathy Nester stated in her opening assertion.
With prosecutors anticipated to conclude their case in the coming days, listed here are 5 key revelations from their witnesses so far:
Robert Josh Grossmann, the man with whom Kouri Richins had a yearslong affair, wiped his eyes and put his head down as their affectionate textual content messages had been displayed in court docket.
“I do want a future together. I do want you. Figure life out together,” Kouri Richins texted Grossmann roughly two weeks earlier than her husband died. “If he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!! I love you.”
Grossmann labored on homes Kouri Richins purchased for her actual property enterprise, he stated, and their relationship grew to become romantic round early 2020. She let him dwell in a house she was flipping, purchased him two vehicles and gave him cash at any time when he wanted it, Grossmann stated. He cherished her, he testified, and believed she cherished him, too.
The jury noticed dozens of texts the place the two expressed their love and dreamed about being collectively in the future – although each acknowledged the thought was extra fantasy than actuality.
Grossmann and Richins deliberate to get brunch collectively on March 4, 2022, to have a good time her closing on a helpful property, he testified. The night time earlier than, he despatched her a GIF – a sort of animated picture – of two individuals kissing with the caption, “love you,” in accordance with messages proven in court docket.
Hours later, Eric Richins was useless.
The two stayed collectively for a number of months after Eric Richins’ dying, Grossmann stated. About a month after her husband died, Kouri Richins texted Grossmann, “I think I want you to be my husband one day.”
But their relationship quickly ended. Grossmann stated, “Things changed after Eric passed.”
Kouri Richins seemed to be grieving after Eric Richins died, Grossmann stated on cross-examination.
Under questioning by protection legal professional Wendy Lewis, Grossmann stated after Richins’ arrest in May 2023, he spoke with a non-public investigator employed by Eric Richins’ household. The P.I., Grossmann stated, instructed him Richins had killed her husband.
“I was blown away,” Grossmann stated, “and then I’m like, looking at everything in our past with a different set of goggles on, through different lenses. And I was trying to figure out if she did it.”
He instructed the investigator a couple of sprawling dialog he had with Kouri Richins about two weeks after Eric Richins’ dying, in which they mentioned dying, God, bowhunting and “supernatural stuff.” During that dialog, Grossmann stated Kouri Richins requested if he had killed anyone whereas serving in Iraq and the way it made him really feel.
“Today, sitting here, when you think back on that conversation, does that conversation seem like it was a strange conversation to you?” Lewis requested.
“I can’t tell one way from the other anymore,” Grossmann responded. “I’ve been confused for years.”
Kouri Richins’ ex-boyfriend testifies at murder trial
Robert Josh Grossman, the ex-boyfriend of Kouri Richins, appeared to cry whereas testifying at her murder trial. Richins is accused of fatally poisoning her husband, Eric Richins, with fentanyl in 2022.
Several witnesses testified there have been difficulties in the Richins’ relationship, with two of Kouri Richins’ buddies saying she instructed them she felt “trapped” in her marriage.
“She felt like she was frustrated in the relationship but also it would be difficult to leave – Eric would end up financially secure and her the opposite,” stated Allison Wright, the spouse of Eric Richins’ enterprise associate. “She feared what would happen in divorce.”
Another pal testified Kouri Richins instructed her in December 2021 she couldn’t see an “easy way forward out of the marriage.”
“She said that, in many ways, it would be better if he were dead,” Becky Lloyd stated.
During cross-examination, protection attorneys tried to undercut Lloyd’s testimony, taking part in recordings in which she expressed uncertainty about what was stated in the dialog. But Lloyd stood by her testimony on the stand.
“I don’t want to be here saying it,” she stated, “but I know that that is what was said.”
The jury additionally heard two recordings of telephone calls between Kouri Richins, her finest pal and Eric Richins’ finest pal.
“We were in a rocky spot two years ago,” Kouri Richins stated of her marriage throughout a kind of calls, which occurred about two weeks after her husband’s dying.
Eric Richins’ pal then referenced Kouri Richins kicking her husband out of the home for a pair weeks after she learned he had been seeing one other girl.
Two divorce attorneys testified they met with Eric and Kouri Richins individually in 2020 and 2021, respectively, though neither filed for divorce.
While Richins’ buddies stated she seemed to be financially profitable, a forensic accountant testified her enterprise flipping properties was “imploding.”
“As of the date that Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins was in financial distress and her financial enterprise was collapsing, had been collapsing – and but for a significant infusion of cash and capital, would have continued to collapse,” stated Brooke Karrington, who analyzed monetary data in the case.
Kouri Richins’ debt issues started after she took out a $250,000 dwelling fairness line of credit score, or HELOC, towards their household dwelling in 2019, round the identical time she registered her actual property enterprise, Karrington stated. The mortgage was taken out in her husband’s title and signed by Kouri Richins as his attorney-in-fact, in accordance with data displayed in court docket.
By the time Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins had taken out a number of loans and owed hundreds in debt funds each week, so her checking account was “perpetually in the hole,” Karrington stated. Her web value was adverse $1.6 million the day after her husband’s dying, in accordance with Karrington’s evaluation.
In monetary data Richins submitted as a part of 4 mortgage purposes, she reported her financial institution accounts contained considerably extra money than that they had, Karrington stated.
Eric Richins’ life was insured for about $2.2 million by means of a number of insurance policies, in accordance with Karrington. Prosecutors allege Kouri Richins cast an utility for one in every of his life insurance coverage insurance policies that went into impact on February 4, 2022, 10 days earlier than they are saying she first tried to poison her husband and a month earlier than his dying.
Richins obtained about $1.3 million in life insurance coverage funds in the months after her husband’s passing, Karrington stated. By September 2022, most of the cash had been spent – a lot of it towards paying down her debt.
“If, in fact, Ms. Richins was in financial distress, you’re not here to say she killed her husband, are you?” Nester requested the forensic accountant throughout a testy cross-examination.
“That’s for the jury to decide,” Karrington stated. “I’m not making any conclusion about that at all.”
Carmen Lauber, a home cleaner who labored for Kouri Richins, testified she bought drugs to the Utah mom 4 occasions in early 2022 at the defendant’s request.
“She’d called me and asked me if I could reach out to somebody for some pain meds for an investor that she knew,” Lauber testified. She purchased illicit opiate drugs for Richins, who later requested for one thing stronger, the home cleaner testified.
Lauber received in contact with Robert Crozier, who stated he had drugs containing fentanyl, Lauber stated. When she texted Richins about the fentanyl drugs, Richins responded, “OK, go ahead and get them,” in accordance with Lauber’s testimony.
Lauber testified she purchased drugs from Crozier at a gasoline station in Draper, Utah, twice earlier than Eric Richins’ dying and a 3rd time shortly after.
Chris Kotrodimos, a digital forensics analyst, confirmed the jury location information from Lauber and Crozier’s telephones. The gadgets had been each close to the Draper gasoline station on February 11, February 26, and March 9, 2022, in accordance with his evaluation.
When Eric Richins was discovered useless on March 4, 2022, he had roughly 5 occasions the deadly dose of fentanyl in his system, in accordance with charging paperwork.
On the stand, Crozier confirmed he gave Lauber drugs at the gasoline station however insisted he didn’t promote fentanyl at the time.
In early 2022, Crozier was promoting pharmaceutical oxycodone drugs he obtained from individuals with prescriptions, he stated, and didn’t begin promoting fentanyl till late that yr.
Crozier had beforehand confirmed he bought Lauber fentanyl in a jailhouse interview with legislation enforcement throughout the investigation into Eric’s dying. In footage of the interview proven in court docket, Crozier struggled to recollect particulars about his interactions with Lauber and which medicine she requested for. But he stated, “She knew what she was buying.”
“So, she knew that there was fentanyl in those pills?” an investigator requested.
“Absolutely,” Crozier stated.
On the stand, Crozier stated he didn’t keep in mind that dialog.
“I was on a lot of drugs at that time, so I was detoxing from those drugs,” he testified.
Though he was referred to as as a witness for the prosecution, Crozier’s testimony is essential to Kouri Richins’ protection: In her opening assertion, Nester argued if Crozier solely bought oxycodone as he now claims, his drugs couldn’t have killed Eric Richins.
“The pills that were purchased by Carmen Lauber could not have been the cause of Eric’s death,” Nester instructed the jury. “The fentanyl must have come from somewhere else.”
Attorneys on either side tried to undercut Lauber and Crozier’s credibility by questioning their recollections, histories of drug use and inconsistencies between their testimonies and their earlier statements.
Crozier and Lauber each obtained immunity in change for his or her truthful testimonies. The protection has instructed Lauber altered her story to suit the prosecution’s narrative.
Although a number of information from early 2022 was deleted from Kouri Richins’ telephone, Kotrodimos testified about a few of her cellphone exercise round the time of her husband’s dying.
Kouri Richins instructed investigators she left her cellphone in the main bedroom whereas she slept in her kids’s bed room the night time her husband died and he or she referred to as emergency providers as quickly as she returned to search out him chilly and unresponsive, in accordance with court docket paperwork.
Kouri Richins’ cellphone was locked at 9:32 p.m. on March 3, 2022, and remained locked till 3:06 a.m. the subsequent morning, in accordance with Kotrodimos’ evaluation. It moved 35 ft round 10:30 p.m. after which moved 243 ft at 3:08 a.m. The telephone was unlocked six occasions in the quarter-hour earlier than she referred to as 911 at 3:21 a.m., he stated.
Around 8:30 a.m., hours after she referred to as 911, cellphone data present three GIFs had been accessed on Kouri Richins’ telephone: One was captioned, “Idiots. Idiots everywhere,” whereas one other confirmed a girl wiping away her tears with greenback payments. A 3rd included the caption, “I’m really rich.”
Kotrodimos testified he can’t decide who despatched or obtained the GIFs – or if Kouri Richins even considered them.
Kotrodimos confirmed the jury dozens of web searches made on the telephone Kouri Richins used starting in April 2022, after her different telephone was seized by legislation enforcement. The searches included queries about remotely deleting cellphone information, how investigators get well deleted messages, ladies’s prisons in Utah, and life insurance coverage funds.
According to Kotrodimos, 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.”
Kotrodimos testified the searches had been all made after Kouri Richins knew she was below investigation, and he confirmed he couldn’t say with certainty who made the searches nor what prompted them.