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The allegations against Kouri Richins were raised in an amended court document filed Thursday that led to the postponement of a detention hearing originally scheduled for Friday. Richins, 33, is charged with aggravated murder and three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute following the death of her husband, Eric Richins, last March 4.
He was found unresponsive in the bedroom of their home in Kamas, about 40 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, after she made him a Moscow Mule to celebrate a business deal. An autopsy and a toxicology report found that he died from a fentanyl overdose, according to a probable cause statement.
Prosecutors said Richins slipped five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into the cocktail.
A year after his death, she published a book about grief titled “Are You With Me?” to “create peace and comfort for children who have lost a loved one,” according to a description on Amazon. She dedicated the book to “my amazing husband and a wonderful father.” It has since been removed from Amazon.
The court document filed Thursday alleged that in September 2020, Eric Richins found out that his wife had obtained and spent a $250,000 home equity line of credit on their home in Kamas, had withdrawn at least $100,000 from his bank accounts, and spent more than $30,000 on his credit cards.
Richins is also accused of appropriating distributions made from her husband’s business “for the purpose of making federal and state quarterly tax payments and not paying the taxes,” the document alleged. The stolen tax payments totaled at least $134,346, it said.
Eric Richins confronted his wife about the money and she agreed to pay him back, according to the document. The following month, in October 2020, Eric Richins consulted a divorce lawyer and an estate planning lawyer, the document said. Unbeknownst to his wife, he changed his will, formed a living trust, placed his estate under the control of his sister Katie Richins-Benson, and designated the trust as the beneficiary of his $500,000 life insurance policy, according to the filing.
It further alleged that between 2015 and 2017, Richins bought at least four life insurance policies on her husband totaling almost $2 million. Eric Richins was unaware that she had purchased the policies, the document said.
Richins also allegedly changed a separate life insurance policy that her husband had to list herself as the beneficiary. The policy had initially listed his business partner as the beneficiary. Eric Richins was alerted to it and was able to change it back to his business partner, the filing said.
The document also provided additional details on Richins’ alleged attempts to poison her husband with fentanyl pills she obtained from an acquaintance identified in court documents as C.L. Eric Richins’ family has said that she tried to poison him multiple times.
