Eric Richins, a Utah father of three, would have turned 44 years outdated on Wednesday. Instead, his spouse will be sentenced for his homicide.
After a weekslong trial earlier this yr, an eight-person jury convicted Kouri Richins, 36, of aggravated homicide for fatally poisoning her husband in March 2022. She was additionally discovered responsible of tried aggravated homicide for attempting to kill him weeks earlier than his dying, on Valentine’s Day, and insurance coverage fraud and forgery associated to his life insurance coverage protection.
Kouri Richins – who published a children’s book about dealing with grief following Eric Richins’ dying – may be sentenced to 25 years to life or life in jail with out parole for her aggravated homicide conviction when she seems in court docket in Park City, Utah.
Family members and different witnesses are anticipated to handle the court docket earlier than Judge Richard Mrazik arms down the sentence.
In a court docket submitting this week, the Summit County Attorney’s Office invoked the Richins’ three younger sons whereas urging Mrazik to condemn Kouri Richins to life with out parole, the utmost sentence for the aggravated homicide cost.
“The boys deserve finality and should not have to revisit their father’s murder at future hearings or worry about the Defendant’s potential parole,” prosecutors wrote within the sentencing memorandum. “Given the tremendous trauma and upheaval that the Defendant inflicted upon their childhood, this Court should ensure that she does not harm their adulthood.”
Prosecutors are asking the choose to problem a protecting order that may prohibit Kouri Richins from initiating contact with her sons and different members of her late husband’s household.
The couple’s eldest son – a 13-year-old recognized within the submitting as “C.R.” – mentioned he misses his father however not his mom.
“I’m afraid if she gets out, she will come after me and my brothers, my whole family,” C.R. mentioned, in keeping with the memorandum. “I think she would come and take us and not do good things to us, like hurt us.”
During the trial, members of Eric Richins’ tight-knit household tearfully remembered him as a talented outdoorsman, hardworking businessman and devoted father to his three younger sons.
“Eric was their coach, their father, but most important, was their very, very best friend,” his father, Eugene Richins, mentioned on the stand.
Eric Richins would do something for his youngsters, one of his sisters testified, recalling how he typically arrived early at their sporting occasions to hold up indicators cheering them on.
“My dad can’t be my coach anymore and can’t be at any of my games,” the Richins’ center son mentioned within the state’s submitting. “He won’t be at my birthdays. He can’t teach me how to drive. He won’t be at my graduation.”
Eric Richins, 39, was discovered useless within the couple’s house in Kamas, Utah, through the early morning hours of March 4, 2022.
Earlier that evening, Eric and Kouri Richins had a drink to have fun a profitable transaction with her actual property enterprise, in keeping with a press release she gave regulation enforcement. One of their sons was having nightmares, so Kouri Richins went to sleep in his room round 9:30 p.m., she advised police.
When she returned to the main bedroom about six hours later, she mentioned, she discovered her husband useless of their mattress.
The post-mortem revealed Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, with roughly five times a lethal dose in his blood. Prosecutors argued Kouri Richins slipped the medicine into her husband’s drinks the evening of his dying, though they didn’t current proof supporting this principle at trial.
Over 13 days of testimony, the Summit County Attorney’s Office known as greater than 40 witnesses, together with Eric Richins’ grieving relations, individuals who exchanged the illicit medicine mentioned to have killed him, Kouri Richins’ paramour and a personal investigator employed by the sufferer’s household. The protection rested its case with out calling any witnesses.
The prosecution’s star witness, a housecleaner named Carmen Lauber, testified she bought illicit capsules to the Utah mom a number of instances in early 2022. Cell cellphone information confirmed her cellphone close to the situation the place she picked up the medicine on dates near the tried homicide and deadly poisoning.
Other witnesses testified about Kouri Richins feeling “trapped” in her marriage, her yearslong affair and her enterprise’s ballooning debt – all causes 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 have 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.”
Although her mates testified Kouri Richins appeared to be financially profitable, a forensic accountant mentioned she was caught in a relentless debt cycle and her actual property enterprise was “imploding.” Eric Richins’ life was insured for about $2.2 million by a number of insurance policies, together with one Kouri Richins was convicted of making use of for fraudulently.
“She murdered Eric Richins,” prosecutor Brad Bloodworth mentioned in his closing argument, “and then she submitted a claim to get the money.”
Kouri Richins’ ex-boyfriend testifies at homicide trial
Robert Josh Grossman, the ex-boyfriend of Kouri Richins, appeared to cry whereas testifying at her homicide trial. Richins is accused of fatally poisoning her husband, Eric Richins, with fentanyl in 2022.
Kouri Richins was additionally convicted of attempting to homicide her husband on Valentine’s Day 2022 – ten days after that insurance coverage coverage went into impact. Eric Richins known as two mates that day and mentioned he felt like he was going to die after consuming a sandwich his spouse gave him, in keeping with charging paperwork.
Within weeks, he was useless.
At trial, prosecutors emphasised proof they mentioned demonstrated Kouri Richins’ guilty conscience after her husband’s dying, together with search historical past from her cellphone that confirmed queries about ladies’s prisons in Utah, remotely deleting cellphone information and life insurance coverage funds.
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 prison investigation, Kouri Richins tried to deflect consideration away from herself by publishing a youngsters’s e book a few yr after her husband’s deadly overdose. Kouri Richins mentioned she authored the image e book – titled “Are You With Me?” – to assist her three younger 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 mentioned whereas selling the e book on a local news program in April 2023, weeks before her arrest. “Dad is still here. It’s just in a different way.”