A Utah mother who wrote a children's book about helping kids cope with the loss of a parent is set to stand trial on Monday, accused of murdering the husband whose death inspired the project.
Kouri Richins, a 35-year-old real estate agent and mother of three from a community near Park City, is charged with aggravated murder and related counts in the 2022 death of her husband, Eric Richins. Jury selection has been completed, and a 12-person panel will hear opening statements in a trial expected to last about a month.
Prosecutors say she poisoned her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022, roughly a year before she self-published her children's book on grief, "Are You With Me?" according to the Associated Press.
Authorities allege Richins slipped fentanyl into a cocktail she made for her husband at their home, and an autopsy later found about five times the lethal dose of the drug in his system.
In court filings, prosecutors claim she had also attempted to poison him weeks earlier by lacing a Valentine's Day sandwich with fentanyl, an allegation they say supports a pattern of planning rather than a sudden act.
The case has drawn wide attention because Richins promoted her book publicly after Eric's death, describing it as a way to help her sons process their father's "unexpected" passing. Weeks after the book was released in 2023, investigators arrested her and filed murder and financial fraud charges, alleging she was in deep debt and stood to gain from life insurance policies on her husband, the Boston Globe reported.
Prosecutors say Richins wrongly believed she would inherit most of her husband's estate and had opened several life insurance policies on his life totaling nearly 2 million dollars. She also faces dozens of counts in a separate fraud case accusing her of falsifying loan documents, laundering money, and writing bad checks tied to her real estate business.
Richins has pleaded not guilty and denies killing her husband, insisting in a recorded statement that she did not murder him. Her defense team is expected to challenge the credibility of key witnesses and question how the fentanyl entered Eric Richins' system, while jurors weigh a story that has shifted from a public tale of family grief to a high-profile murder trial, as per Fox News.
