PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A Utah mother of three who published a children’s book about grief after her husband’s death and was later accused of fatally poisoning him will stand trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Utah state Judge Richard Mrazik ruled on the second day of Kouri Richins’ preliminary hearing that prosecutors had presented enough evidence against her to proceed with a jury trial.
She faces a slew of felony charges for allegedly killing her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022 at their home in a small mountain town near Park City. Prosecutors say Kouri Richins, 34, slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a Moscow mule cocktail that Eric Richins, 39, drank.
Kouri Richins has been adamant in maintaining she is innocent. She entered pleas of “not guilty” to all 11 counts on Tuesday.
The second morning of her preliminary hearing centered around an additional attempted murder charge filed in March that accused her of slipping fentanyl into her husband’s favorite sandwich on Valentine’s Day, causing a severe but nonfatal reaction.
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth defended the charge by describing how he thinks Kouri Richins learned lessons during the first unsuccessful attempt on her husband’s life that helped her carry out the killing 17 days later.
One bite of his favorite sandwich — left with a note in the front seat of his truck on Valentine’s Day — made Eric Richins break out in hives and black out, prosecutors allege. His wife had bought the sandwich from a local diner in the city of Kamas two days after she also purchased fentanyl pills from the family’s housekeeper, according to witness statements and deleted text messages that were recovered by police.
Text messages and location data indicate Kouri Richins may have brought the sandwich home, then left to spend Valentine’s Day with another man with whom she was having an affair, Bloodworth said. A day after Valentine’s Day, she texted her lover, “If he could just go away ... life would be so perfect.”
In written testimony, two friends of Eric Richins recounted phone conversations from the day prosecutors say he was first poisoned by his wife of nine years. After injecting himself with his son’s EpiPen and chugging a bottle of Benadryl, he awoke from a deep sleep and told a friend, “I think my wife tried to poison me,” charging documents allege.
Housekeeper Carmen Lauber told police that Kouri Richins then asked her to procure stronger fentanyl, Detective Jeff O’Driscoll said on the first day of the hearing Monday.
“She learned that putting it in a sandwich, where Eric Richins could take a bite, feel the effects and set the sandwich down, was not the proper way to administer it,” Bloodworth told the judge. “She learned that it takes a truckload” of fentanyl to kill him.
Days later, Kouri Richins called 911 in the middle of the night to report that she had found her husband “cold to the touch” at the foot of their bed, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead, and a medical examiner later found five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system.
In the months before her arrest in May 2023, the Utah mother of three self-published the children’s book “Are You with Me?” about a father with angel wings watching over his young son after passing away.
The book could eventually play a key role for prosecutors in framing Eric Richins’ death as a calculated killing with an elaborate cover-up attempt. The judge scheduled a pretrial conference on Sept. 23 for the prosecution and defense to discuss jury selection. A trial date has not been set.
Hannah Schoenbaum, The Associated Press
