A Park City woman was convicted Monday of aggravated murder after poisoning her husband with fentanyl and self-publishing a children’s book about coping with grief.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail that Eric Richins drank in March 2022 at their home outside the ski town of Park City. They say Richins was $4.5 million in debt and falsely believed that when her husband died, she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million. They also say she was planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.
Richins stared at the floor and took deep breaths as the judge read the verdict.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours. Afterward, family members on both sides of the case left the courtroom hugging and crying.
She was also convicted of other felony charges, including an attempted murder charge in what authorities alleged was another effort to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him break out in hives and black out. Jurors also found Richins guilty of fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after his death.
Sentencing was scheduled for May 13, the day her husband would have turned 44.
Richins’ defense attorney said Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and had asked his wife to procure opioids for him. Kouri Richins, however, told police earlier in a video that her husband had no history of illicit drug use.
“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” said Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth.
Richins had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The most serious charge — aggravated murder — carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
What was scheduled to be a five-week trial was cut short last week when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Richins’ attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.
“They haven't done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence," defense attorney Wendy Lewis told the jury on Monday.
This story was written by Hannah Schoenbaum of the Associated Press
