Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
The repeated verdict echoed through the Summit County courtroom in Utah, leaving Kouri Richins, a mother of three, visibly stunned. She let out a silent gasp and lowered her head in disbelief.
As the reality of the situation sank in, she stared at the floor, her body trembling and her breaths coming in deep, steadying rhythms.
Once, she appeared to have a picture-perfect life.
Despite a challenging upbringing marked by her father’s imprisonment due to alcohol issues and her mother’s struggles with gambling, she had built a family with a devoted husband, welcomed three children, and successfully launched her own real estate business.
And yet it wasn’t enough.
She wanted to end her marriage and start a new life with her handyman lover, but she couldn’t bear the thought that this would mean waving goodbye to her husband Eric Richins’s wealth.
Which is why on the night of March 3, 2022, Richins slipped five times the lethal amount of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule cocktail and gave it to her husband.
Just days on from the four-year anniversary of his sudden death, it took less than three hours for jurors to find Richins guilty of all charges on Monday.
Kouri Richins silently gasped and bowed her head as soon as Judge Richard Mrazik read out the conviction finding her guilty of the murder of the father of her three children Eric Richins
Eric Richins’s sister Amy dabbed tears from her eyes as the verdict was read out in court
Eric Richins and Kouri Richins with their three young sons – who are now left to grow up without either parent
Inside the courtroom during the second week of the trial, I had sat just feet away from Richins and saw the drama, emotion and shocking details all unfold before my eyes.
I watched Richins intently as she sat between her defense attorneys, scribbling on a yellow pad and passing pink post-it notes to her team. I searched for any glimmer of heartache, sorrow or remorse for her husband’s untimely death.
I saw none.
There was no reaction when the 911 call or bodycam footage from the night Eric was found dead were played in court, nor when grief-stricken friends and family members described what a wonderful father Eric was to the three young sons they shared.
There was no emotion when her heartbroken lover broke down in tears on the witness stand when speaking about the love affair that she wanted to get rid of her husband in order to pursue.
And there was no expression when her best friend, Chelsea Barney, testified how she was evicted from her home because she had trusted her real estate agent friend, handing over $45,000 in life savings only for Richins to use it to pay off her own debts.
Instead, the moments that triggered intense scowls, eyebrow raises and animated facial expressions were those where her financial and business failures were put under the spotlight and where her own words came back to haunt her.
There was a furious eyebrow raise and incredulous stare as she eyeballed close friends who testified to intimate conversations about the state of her marriage.
They told how Richins said she felt ‘trapped’ and wanted to leave but worried that she would be poorer if she did, and described one apparent Freudian slip where she said ‘it would be easier if Eric were dead.’
Inside the courtroom, Kouri Richins’s expressions revealed what mattered to her the most
The biggest show of emotion came when the verdict was read out and she learned that – despite her plotting, cover-ups and attempts to blame her victim for his own death – she had not been able to fool the jury
There was the face pulling and furious note-taking when a forensic accountant dug deep into her bank accounts and real estate business, revealing her finances and company were in dire straits.
And there was even a smirk and laugh when drug dealer Robert Crozier was asked about the request to buy ‘the Michael Jackson stuff’ – a reference to more potent drugs after her first attempt to kill her husband failed.
These were the moments – unrelated to the death of the father of her children – that appeared to get under Richins’s skin.
Sitting inside the courtroom, to me, Richins’s face told a story about what really mattered to her most: that the facade she had built as a doting mom, loving wife and successful businesswoman had finally been shattered.
As prosecutor Brad Bloodworth described in his closing statement, Richins was someone who felt ‘aggrieved’ by her situation – and turned to murder to resolve it.
It then perhaps comes as no surprise that the biggest show of emotion was for herself when the verdict was read out and she learned that – despite her plotting, cover-ups and attempts to blame her victim for his own death – she had not been able to fool the jury.
While Richins’s self-pity and frustrations were written all over her face, inside the courtroom, Eric’s family members remained stoic throughout the trial, even as allegations were repeatedly hurled at both them and their late son and brother.
Eric’s elderly father Eugene and sisters Amy and Katie were forced to listen as the defense team made unfounded claims that the 39-year-old also had an affair, that he had a drug problem and even a bizarre moment where they suggested jokey texts with his best friend alluded to a homosexual relationship and sexting scandal.
Kouri Richins poisoned her husband Eric with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule cocktail in 2022
Kouri Richins smiles during a ‘Celebration of Life’ one day after Eric’s death – while a woman in the background shotguns a can of beer
Shortly after Eric’s death, Kouri Richins self-published a children’s book titled ‘Are You with Me?’
None of these claims were ever corroborated by prosecution witnesses and the defense ultimately declined to call a single witness to the stand to back any of them up.
The seed was simply planted in what appeared to be a futile attempt to drag a dead man’s name through the mud and paint his killer as the true victim.
It was a move that echoed Richins’s infamous ‘Walk the dog’ letter in which she claimed for the first time that her husband was addicted to drugs.
The six-page letter to her mom, found in her jail cell in 2023, was exposed as an attempt to coach her family and friends what to testify to at trial. Not satisfied with killing her husband, Richins also wanted to tarnish his reputation in death too.
Eric’s loved ones – who turned out en masse, filling at least a full row of the small, five-row courtroom every single day – held their quiet dignity as they too came under the crossfire.
Richins wanted the jury to believe she was the victim of a vendetta by her late husband’s family, who hired a private investigator and fought her for Eric’s estate which he had placed in a trust for his sons and named his sister Katie the trustee of.
What is striking about Richins’s crimes is the level of plotting that went into Eric’s murder.
This was no crime of passion or fit of rage. It was a carefully orchestrated months-long plot.
Robert Josh Grossmann broke down in tears when he testified about his affair with Richins
In January 2022, Richins approached the subject of drugs with her lover Grossmann. It was around this time that she first reached out to her housekeeper Carmen Lauber asking her to help source drugs for her
Three shocking GIFs found on Richins’s cell phone including a Trump meme with the slogan ‘I’m rich’, a person wiping their nose on money, and a meme that reads: ‘Idiots. Idiots everywhere’
The memes were found on Richins’s device at around 8.30am on March 4, 2022 – around five hours after Eric died
While behind bars, Richins wrote a six-page, handwritten letter to her mother in which she made several claims, including that her brother Ronny would need to testify that Eric confided in him about buying fentanyl from Mexico
She had fraudulently taken out new life insurance policies on Eric without his knowledge and believed, as his widow, she would get a $4 million windfall from his estate.
She planned a luxury Caribbean vacation with lover Robert Josh Grossmann for that spring.
And she sought out someone who could provide her with deadly drugs.
In early January 2022, she texted Grossmann asking if he had ‘ever done more than just weed.’
It was a message that even he questioned the suddenness of, and now suggests she was fishing to see if he could unwittingly aid in her plot.
Next, she turned to her housekeeper Carmen Lauber – a woman who had struggled with years of addiction issues.
Lauber became the star witness at the trial, testifying how she had supplied Richins with drugs four times around the time of Eric’s death, including providing her with the fentanyl that killed him.
The first known attempt to kill Eric unfolded on Valentine’s Day 2022 when Richins spiked his sandwich.
When it failed that time, Richins had the opportunity to stop.
Much of the case hinged on testimony from the state’s star witness, housekeeper Carmen Lauber
A photo from Lauber’s bedroom, captured during a police search, showed Eric’s obituary on the wall among family photos and motivational messages about overcoming addiction
Instead, she asked Lauber for stronger drugs – drugs that, that time, did the job.
Watching Lauber’s testimony, it was clear she felt remorse and regret for her unwitting part in Richins’s crimes.
A photo from Lauber’s bedroom, captured during a police search, showed Eric’s obituary on the wall among family photos and motivational messages about overcoming addiction.
It was something that meant something to her.
By contrast, three memes reading ‘I’m rich’ and showing someone sniffing money were accessed on Richins’s phone less than five hours after her husband’s body was wheeled out of the house.
Days later, she was proclaiming her love for Grossmann and telling him she wanted to make him her new husband in text messages that she thought had been deleted.
Within the year, she had self-published a children’s book about grief, titled Are you with me? in a move to make some quick cash from Eric’s death.
In a local TV appearance promoting the book, she came across every inch the grieving widow trying to simply help her sons deal with the loss of their father.
Feet away from her inside the courtroom, at first glance, Richins appeared just as unassuming, with her hair tied in a neat bun, and dressed in knitwear and floral shirts.
It was an image Richins’s mother, Lisa Darden, also sought to project when she mailed the children’s book in an anonymous package to Summit County Sheriff’s Office soon after her daughter’s arrest.
‘There are two sides to every story. This is a true Kouri, a devoted wife and adoring mother. Thought you should know,’ a note accompanying the book read.
The jury was not convinced.
Outside the courthouse, Eric’s family and friends hugged and embraced each other and said that ‘justice’ had finally been served
The panel of six women and six men had watched intently and made notes throughout the 13 days of testimony. After closing statements, eight were sent out to deliberate, with the four alternates on standby.
In less than three hours of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all five felonies: aggravated murder, aggravated attempted murder, two counts of insurance fraud and forgery.
Outside the courthouse, Eric’s family and friends embraced each other and said that ‘justice’ had finally been served.
Eric’s sister Amy told reporters that the family’s focus is now on caring for his three young boys who, because of Richins’s callous crime, will now grow up without either parent.
Their father was murdered by their mother. And their mother is now facing the prospect of life in prison.
On May 13, the boys should have been celebrating their dad’s 44th birthday with him.
Now it will be the day that their mom is sentenced for murdering him in a chilling crime motivated by money and a sordid affair.
