A Utah jury delivered a swift and decisive verdict Monday against a mother of three who prosecutors say poisoned her husband with a fentanyl-laced cocktail in a calculated scheme to claim his multimillion-dollar estate and begin a new life with her secret lover.
Kouri Richins, 35, now faces the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars after a jury of six men and six women at Summit County Courthouse in Park City, Utah, found her guilty on all five felony counts.
The charges included aggravated murder, aggravated attempted murder, two counts of insurance fraud, and forgery.
The jury required only three hours of deliberation to reach the unanimous verdict.
Judge Richard Mrazik read each count aloud in the courtroom, according to media reports.
Richins visibly gasped and dropped her head as the first guilty verdict was announced. She kept her head bowed as the word “guilty” was repeated four more times.
She displayed no tears but shook and took deep breaths throughout the reading.
Eric Richins’s family and friends, who had attended every day of the trial, held onto one another as the verdict was delivered.
His sister, Amy, quietly wiped tears from her eyes. Richins’s mother, Lisa Darden, sat stone-faced with pursed lips.
Eric Richins, a 39-year-old businessman and father of three, was discovered dead in the early morning hours of March 4, 2022, inside the family’s home in Kamas, Utah.
Kouri Richins told authorities she had returned to their bedroom to find her husband cold in bed.
Earlier that night, according to trial testimony, she told investigators the couple had been celebrating her closing of a deal on a $2.9 million mansion in Midway with homemade Moscow Mule cocktails and a lemon drop shot.
An autopsy determined Eric Richins died from a fentanyl overdose. The amount of fentanyl in his system was more than five times the established lethal threshold.
Prosecutors alleged that Kouri Richins carried out a first attempt on her husband’s life on Valentine’s Day 2022, when she allegedly placed fentanyl in a sandwich she left for him in his truck with a love note.
Eric became ill following that incident and allegedly told friends he suspected she was trying to poison him.
According to testimony, it was after that failed attempt that Richins allegedly contacted her drug source and requested a more potent form of fentanyl, asking specifically for what she called “the Michael Jackson stuff.”
The prosecution’s key witness was housekeeper Carmen Lauber, who testified she sold drugs to Richins on four separate occasions around the time of Eric’s death, including the fentanyl prosecutors say was used to kill him.
Cell phone records presented at trial showed Richins and Lauber exchanged approximately 800 text messages in the three months leading up to Eric’s death — an average of 10 to 11 per day.
Graphics shown to jurors illustrated a clear pattern: Richins would contact Lauber, Lauber would then contact a drug dealer named Robert Crozier, and the two women would continue communicating heavily in the hours that followed, simultaneously with exchanges between Lauber and Crozier.
Cell tower data placed Lauber and Crozier’s phones at the same location during those windows, indicating in-person drug exchanges.
At the time of her husband’s death, Richins was carrying approximately $7.5 million in debt owed to more than 20 payday loan and high-interest lenders.
Her real estate business was in financial collapse. She was also engaged in an extramarital affair with a handyman and military veteran named Robert Josh Grossmann.
Text messages presented in court showed her expressing hope that she and Grossmann could be together and discussing plans for a vacation to a luxury Caribbean resort within days of Eric’s death.
Under the terms of a prenuptial agreement, Richins would have received nothing from Eric’s successful stonemasonry business in the event of a divorce.
His death, however, would have changed that equation — or so she believed.
Unknown to Richins, Eric had transferred his assets into a trust designated for his young sons, with his sister named as trustee. He had also reportedly taken steps to remove Richins from his life insurance policies and his will prior to his death.
Grossmann took the stand during the trial and broke down in tears while confronting the romantic text messages he had sent to Richins.
He testified that in the days following Eric’s death, Richins asked him what it felt like to kill someone. Investigators also recovered internet searches from Richins’s phone and browser history, including queries such as “women utah prison,” how to delete cell phone data, and “if someone is poisoned, what goes down on the death certificate as.” Richins had attempted to wipe her phone and internet activity before her arrest, prosecutors said.
For more than a year following her husband’s death, Richins presented herself publicly as a grieving widow. She authored a children’s picture book titled Are You With Me? about coping with loss and appeared on a local Utah television program to promote it. She was arrested in May 2023 and charged with murder.
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth described Richins in closing arguments as a “black widow” driven by money and an extramarital relationship.
He told the jury that during the 911 call played in court, Richins spent nearly six minutes before beginning CPR after a dispatcher instructed her to do so.
“The first minute is not the sound of a wife becoming a widow… the first minute is the sound of a wife becoming a black widow,” Bloodworth said. He also told jurors, “The morning Eric died, she had a plan on how to spend Eric’s money, not realizing it was trust money.”
The Daily Mail reported that defense attorney Wendy Lewis argued Richins was wrongly targeted because Eric’s family and their private investigator decided from the outset that she was responsible.
Lewis contended the investigation was careless, law enforcement ignored relevant leads, and Richins was judged for how she grieved rather than for committing a crime.
“They want you to look at a woman during the worst moment of her life and to judge her. There is no wrong way to grieve,” Lewis told the jury. The defense called no witnesses.
Richins is scheduled to be sentenced on May 13 and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She also faces a separate civil case over Eric’s estate and additional pending financial charges.
