Kouri Richins: Defense for woman accused of murdering husband asks to reopen witness questioning
Attorneys claim lead detective was untruthful in his preliminary testimony
Defense attorneys for the children’s book author accused of murdering her husband have filed a motion expressing their wish to re-question several witnesses while jury selections are underway for the upcoming trial.
Kouri Richins, a 34-year-old mother from Kamas, Utah, stands accused of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, with fatal fentanyl overdose in a Moscow Mule drink on the night of March 3, 2022, according to court documents.
Her attorneys are asking to reopen questioning in order to help determine which evidence should be presented during the trial, according to a KSL report. They express concerns that some of the testimony from some of the state’s witnesses appeared to be problematic.
Wendy Lewis, one of the attorneys, said in the motion she wants to question at least four different witnesses before she submits briefs in regards to the testimony of Detective Jeff O’Driscoll and others. The motion cited the Giglio case, which was a U.S. Supreme Court case which dictates that prosecutors are obligated to to disclose evidence which could possibly impact a witness’s credibility.
Prosecutors accuse Lewis of publicly questioning the detective’s character without any evidence to do so, KSL notes.
“Defense counsel’s feelings do not matter. Objective facts matter,” said the prosecution’s response.
Summit County chief prosecutor Brad Bloodworth called the motion a “a cheap litigation trick” in the response filing.
While prosecutors maintain that the detectives testified truthfully, Bloodworth did note that a discrepancy exists between the testimony of O’Driscoll and a second officer. The recollection between the two was investigated by outside attorneys. Bloodworth also notes that the prosecutor’s office disclosed this discrepancy to the defense on Jan. 31 and provided the outside attorney’s findings on Feb. 6.
The report, according to KSL, found no evidence that the recollections were inappropriate or that the detectives were untruthful.
The prosecution’s objection notes that the defense filed this motion without talking to prosecutors first. The day after, according to documents, the defense told prosecutors about their belief that O’Driscoll was untruthful in his testimony. In specific, they took issue with O’Driscoll saying he didn’t think he knew Kouri was represented by an attorney when he went to her home and spent multiple hours talking to her.
"It’s shocking that detective O’Driscoll testified well to the state’s questioning after the state exhaustively prepared him to testify, and equally shocking that he could not recall insignificant-at-the-time details about events that occurred nearly two years earlier in response to the defense's questioning. Poppycock,” the defense states.
Bloodworth also said the accusation that this disclosure included “potential Giglio information” was “inaccurate and irresponsible.” He added that the prosecution would have been fine to reopen evidence if it was appropriate following the outside attorney’s report, but that Kouri’s attorneys are simply trying to cast doubt on O’Driscoll’s testimony. He has asked the judge to deny the motion.
The next hearing is scheduled for Feb. 21, 2025.
The Case: A black widow driven by greed, or a grieving wife caught up in her husband’s addiction?
For over a year, 33-year-old Kouri Darden Richens appeared to be a wife and mother grieving the devastating loss of her husband, and even penned a book to help children struggling with losing a father — until she was charged with murdering him after her arrest on May 8, 2023.
Kouri faces three charges of second-degree possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, and one charge of first-degree aggravated murder for the death of her husband, Eric Richens, the arrest warrant says.
Police and EMS responded to the family home at 3:22 a.m. on March 3, 2022 that morning after a call came in about an unresponsive male, the warrant states. They found Eric on the floor at the foot of his bed, and pronounced him dead after life saving measures were attempted.
Kouri allegedly told police that she and Eric were celebrating the closing on a house for her business at about 9 p.m. that night. She claimed she made a Moscow Mule in the kitchen, then brought it to Eric, who drank it while sitting in bed. The couple was at home with only their children.
According to the warrant, Kouri told police she went to bed, then went to sleep with one of the kids, who was having a night terror. She claimed to have woken at about 3 a.m., and upon returning to Eric, found him to be cold to the touch and called 911.
Her story seemed to unravel almost immediately when she told police she left her phone in her bedroom, plugged in, when she went to her child’s room, the warrant says. But within the time she was in her child’s room, police discovered that her phone was unlocked and locked several times and had sent and received messages, which were later deleted.
An autopsy and toxicology test determined Eric’s cause of death to be a fentanyl overdose, the warrant states. The medical examiner found the level of fentanyl in Eric’s body to be “approximately five times the lethal dosage,” and that it was illicit fentanyl, not prescription. With this, investigators obtained a search warrant for the family home to seize all electronic devices.
After downloading the information from those devices, including Kouri’s phone, investigators found messages between her and an acquaintance, named in the arrest warrant as C.L. This person had multiple drug-related charges - and unearthed Kouri’s alleged sinister side in a May 2, 2022 interview with police.
The Dealer
C.L. claimed that “sometime between December 2021 and February 2022,” Kouri sent a text message asking if C.L. could obtain some prescription pain killers for an investor with a back injury, the warrant says. C.L. got a hold of some hydrocodone pills from a dealer within the next few days, and claimed that Kouri told them to leave the pills at a house Kouri was flipping. C.L. left the drugs. Kouri left the cash.
Roughly two weeks passed before C.L. heard from Kouri again. This time Kouri claimed her investor wanted something stronger - “some of the Michael Jackson stuff,” as Kouri allegedly said, according to the warrant. C.L. claimed that Kouri asked for fentanyl in specific this time. On February 11, 2022, C.L. got 15-30 fentanyl pills from a dealer and exchanged them for $900 when Kouri stopped by C.L.’s home.
On February 14, 2022, a Valentine’s Day dinner at the Richen home resulted in Eric becoming very ill. He believed he had been poisoned, and later told a friend he believed Kouri was trying to poison him somehow.
Kouri apparently wasn’t finished, the warrant alleges. Two weeks later, she once again contacted C.L. to ask for another $900 in fentanyl pills. C.L. provided them on February 26, 2022, leaving the drugs at the outdoor fire pit of the house Kouri was flipping, where the cash awaited C.L.
Six days later, Eric Richens was found dead on his bedroom floor of an overdose from fentanyl.
A sister’s suspicions
According to documents obtained by KPCW, Eric made a chilling phone call to one of his two sisters while he and Kouri were on vacation in Greece a few years ago. He told his sister that after consuming a drink Kouri had handed him, he fell violently ill. The sister told investigators that she believed his wife was trying to poison him.
Eric and his business partner, Cody Wright, hold a joint life insurance policy, KPCW reveals. Together, they ran C&E Stone Masonry. Kouri went online and tried to change the policy. Instead of the men being each other’s beneficiary, Kouri allegedly made herself Eric’s beneficiary. The men were notified of the change, and they reverted it back.
Eric also changed the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney to his sister, as it had previously been Kouri. He told his sisters that he didn’t inform Kouri of the change because he feared Kouri might try to “kill him for the money,” and wished to secure his sons’ financial future.
According to warrants, Eric planned on filing for a divorce from Kouri, but this was preceded by his death.
Kouri didn’t discover the change in the will until March 5 at a family gathering following Eric’s death.
Eric and Kouri disagreed on the $2 million home she wanted to buy and flip, warrants allege, and family members told police Eric was going to tell Kouri they weren’t buying the home. However, Kouri told investigators she and Eric had been celebrating that purchase the night he died.
She closed on the home the day after his death, according to search warrants which add that she later invited friends over for “a large party at her home where she was drinking and celebrating.”
On the same day Kouri closed on the home, she learned that she had been cut out of Eric’s will.
Prosecutors allege that Kouri hired a locksmith on March 6, 2022 to drill a hole in Eric’s safe, which apparently held between $125,000 and $165,000 in cash, KSL-TV reveals.
Eric’s sister told Kouri she was out of the will, and Kouri allegedly punched her sister-in-law in a rage, KPCW says. Eric made the change to his will, making his sister the beneficiary of his $500,000 life insurance policy, without telling his wife, implying that Kouri had no right breaking into her husband’s safe.
For that altercation, Kouri was charged with assault. She pleaded no contest to a class-B misdemeanor. Kouri sued Eric’s sister for the rights to the property as outlined in a prenuptial the couple signed before marrying.
KSL-TV explains that the couple signed the agreement on June 15, 2013. It stated that neither party had rights to each other’s current or future income, property, or assets, unless Eric died while they were still lawfully married. His partnership interest in his business would transfer to his wife if that were to happen.
Eric discovered in September 2020 that Kouri got her hands on $250,000 from a home equity line of credit for the home Eric owned before they got married - and she allegedly spent it all. Court documents also claim she withdrew $100,000 from Eric’s bank account and spent $30,000 on his credit cards.
Kouri also faces stolen tax payments totaling around $134,346 after “appropriating distributions made from Eric Richins’ business for the purpose of making federal and state quarterly tax payments and not paying the taxes,” KSL-TV says, quoting the court documents. She apparently agreed to repay Eric when he confronted her about it.
In October 2020, he consulted a divorce lawyer and an estate planning lawyer without Kouri’s knowledge. He changed his will to form the “Eric Richins Living Trust,” effectively placing his estate under his sister’s name so his children had something left. The trust became the beneficiary of his $500,000 life insurance policy. His wife had no idea she had been cut out.
More secrets brewed between the couple, prosecutors allege. KSL-TV reports that Kouri took out at least four life insurance policies on Eric between 2015 and 2017, worth a total of $1,947,000. They were purchased before the trust fund was established, though Eric couldn’t disclose what he didn’t know existed.
The court documents also state that Eric and his business partner had life insurance policies with each other listed as beneficiaries. Kouri took it upon herself on January 1, 2022 to change Eric’s beneficiary to her. The insurance company called Eric and he amended the policy back to its original state.
Despite that, prosecutors further allege that Kouri took out another life insurance policy on her husband worth $100,000. It was issued on February 4, 2022, only a month before he died.
On February 11, Kouri paid $900 for 15-30 fentanyl pills, the arrest warrant states. Two weeks later, she paid another $900 for more pills. On March 3, 2022, Eric was dead of a fentanyl overdose.
At that time, Kouri had a state and federal tax liability totaling $189,840, KSL-TV states. She also owed a hard money lender $1,847,760, and another $514,346 to her husband.
Investigators say that in the hours leading up to Eric’s death, Kouri spent the evening on the phone with the IRS, and called her hard money lender, KSL-TV says.
Eric is remembered in his obituary as a loving family man
Born May 13, 1982, Eric Richens grew up helping his dad work on the family ranch, a passion which remained with him into his adulthood.
“At an early age, Eric learned the joys of keeping horses and cows around. He spent countless hours helping his dad work the ranch, hauling hay, feeding the animals, and mending fences,” the obituary says.
He was also involved in various sports growing up. Eric was involved in cross country, basketball, baseball, and soccer, also serving as coach or assistant coach on all of his sons’ teams.
“Eric truly cared about every single child he coached and wanted the absolute best for all of them,” the obituary says.
He and Kouri had been married for nine years and had three sons, Carter (9), Ashton (7), and Weston (5). The obituary describes him as an “attentive and loving father” to the boys, and “a devoted husband” to his wife.
His life as an adventurous, loving family man is summed up in one sentence:
“No peaks were too high and the next adventure was always just around the next bend.”
Writing children’s books in the aftermath of her husband’s death
Almost a year to the day of Eric’s death, Kouri published her first book, titled “Are You With Me?,” telling local radio station KPCW that she found few resources to help herself and her boys to cope with the unfathomable loss, which is why she wrote the book.
“It's been a long, long year and difficult year. Writing this book has brought a little peace to me, to me and my boys,” Kouri said.
She claimed that the book was based on questions asked by her and Eric’s three sons after Eric’s death.
“‘Is dad with us during birthday parties or Christmas?’ Or you know, ‘Is dad with us?’ Because they’re going through the sadness of knowing that it's just, you know, he's not here, presently,” she added.
Kouri also told KPCW that she had no prior experience as an author.
“I'm not a previous author. I am not a child psychologist. I'm not a counselor, right? Like, I am a mom of three kids. And I can only write about what I know and what we’re going through,” she said, also discussing how her kids, especially her 10-year-old son, helped write the book.
“He, you know, helped kind of navigate through the process like, what he was feeling, what his heart, you know, the sadness that he was feeling,” she explained. “But then as we kind of spoke about, you know, though dad is with you, he's not present, but his presence is here in the room. And so that was a sense of comfort to him, that he can just kind of walk through life with now. And if he can do it, like other kids can do it too.”
She won’t face the death penalty
Prosecutors announced on Aug. 18, 2023 that despite the case being eligible for such, they won’t be seeking the penalty against Kouri.
Kouri’s defense team point out that investigators failed to find any drugs in the Richin home after Eric died, ABC notes. The attorneys also pointed out that the witness who claimed to have sold the drugs to Kouri had reason to lie, as the woman was facing federal drug charges and wanted leniency.
The attorneys also stated that Kouri was “bad at math” over her growing debt problems before her husband’s death, but it didn’t make her a killer, ABC says.
Kouri Richins’ trial is scheduled to begin in April 2025.
Sources
KSL-TV
KPCW
https://www.kpcw.org/arts-culture/2023-04-13/kamas-mother-and-children-write-book-to-heal-after-loss
Eric’s Obituary