The Utah mom accused of poisoning her husband—and later writing a children’s book about grief—allegedly refused to help with his funeral and physically attacked her sister-in-law just days after his death.
“I will never forget the look in her eyes when she attacked me that Sunday morning,” Amy Richins told a packed Third District courtroom on Monday. “It took four people to pull her off me that day.”
“I never knew evil like this existed.”
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The new details emerged during Amy’s impassioned victim impact statement in which she urged that Kouri Richins remain in jail on charges stemming from her husband’s March 4, 2022, murder. In the days after Eric Richins was found dead inside his Kamas, Utah, home, Amy said, his wife closed on a $2 million home, hired a lawyer to sue her husband’s trust,” and attempted to have her husband cremated.
Amy also detailed how Richins “hired a locksmith to clean out and break into” Eric’s safe. During a fight over the safe, Amy said, Kouri Richins allegedly screamed and called her some “inappropriate names,” and looked at her “with pure hatred and rage” before punching her in the face and neck “multiple times.”
Afterward, Amy argued, Kouri took steps to financially gain from her husband’s death, including putting together a golf tournament that Eric’s family was not allowed to attend.
“Her behavior gives me great concern,” Amy said, adding that she believes Richins is “devoid of moral sensibility.” “There is no telling what she would do if she was released. Please do not allow Kouri to hurt Eric’s memory any more… Our family has already suffered enough.”
Judge Richard Mrazik agreed, denying Richins bail. Kouri Richins, 33, is charged with aggravated murder and multiple counts of drug possession for allegedly spiking her husband’s Moscow mule with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl.
Investigators say she later called 911 to report her husband, who was found at the foot of his bed, was “cold to the touch.”
“I pumped so damn hard, so hard, screaming at him to come back to life,” Richins said in a text message to her friend about performing CPR on her husband, prosecutors said. Prosecutors, however, note that evidence suggests that first responders were actually the first to perform CPR on Eric.
A year later after the slaying, Kouri Richins released an illustrated children’s book, Are You With Me?, “designed to offer comfort and solace to young minds” dealing with grief. The book was featured on a local TV segment, where Richins said her late husband died “unexpectedly.”
Prosecutors allege that Richins took steps to plan her husband’s death, including taking out six life insurance policies totaling $2 million in his name and securing hydrocodone and fentanyl from an acquaintance. The homicide allegedly punctuated a slew of marital arguments and mounting monetary problems in Richins’ real estate company, prosecutors said. Financial forensics expert Brooke Karrington testified that by the end of 2021, Kouri Richins was on the hook for over $4 million connected with over a dozen properties she owned.
Summit County Sheriff's Det. Jeff O’Driscoll testified that an anonymous acquaintance supplied Richins the drugs. O’Driscoll said that the acquaintance previously provided “housekeeping services” for the Richinses and later became an informant because she felt guilty about Eric’s death.
Prosecutors say that at one point, Kouri Richins asked the acquaintance for more powerful medicine, specifically “some of the Michael Jackson stuff.” (Jackson fatally overdosed on anesthetic propofol.)
Less than a week after she received more fentanyl pills, authorities say Eric was found dead.
Ahead of Monday’s detention hearing, prosecutors also revealed in a motion that Richins allegedly searched for “luxury prisons for the rich in America,” “women utah prison,” “can cops for you to do a lie detector test,” and “what is a lethal dose of fentanyl” around the time of the slaying.
The motion added that Richins read several concerning online articles, including “Signs of Being Under Federal Investigation” and “Delay in Claim Payment for Death Certificate with Pending Cause of Death.”
Chris Kotrodimos, a private investigator retained by the Summit County District Attorney's Office, testified that he evaluated the digital evidence from Kouri Richin’s phone between March 3 and March 4, 2022. He said that Richins deleted the web history and phone calls from her phone around the time she called 911.
Defense attorneys for Richins insist there is no evidence that ties their client to the crime. A defense motion says there were no drugs found at the home and no evidence that Kouri Richins would benefit from her husband’s death. The motion also notes that investigators “never investigated an alternative theory that perhaps Eric’s alcohol and drug use had escalated.”
O’Driscoll, however, testified that friends and family told investigators that Eric did not do drugs apart from “occasional THC gummies.”
