Kouri Richins, Eric Richins and family.
“She was all alone at that point,” says Walter, adding that Kouri often teared up when talking about her husband and boys. “She was doing everything that a mother can do.”
Kouri Richins People Magazine cover.
But just months after the publication of “Are You With Me?” – a book featuring a boy dealing with grief over the loss of his father – appeared on Amazon and began racking impressive sales, Kouri was arrested and charged with her husband’s murder. Prosecutors say the deeply indebted real estate agent, who owed creditors more than $2 million, served Eric an evening cocktail laced with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl — which they say she had procured from a housekeeper moonlighting as a drug dealer — in order to collect on at least five life insurance policies she’d taken out in his name and which would more or less cover her debts.
But in interviews with PEOPLE, friends of Kouri’s say the Utah soccer mom is innocent of her husband’s March 4, 2022 death and that the evidence prosecutors have used against her has been taken out of context. “There’s a lot that will come out at trial,” says a friend close to the case. “I’m certain that once it does, the jury will make the right decision.”
Eric and Kouri Richins married in a backyard wedding in their Kamas, Utah home June 15, 2013.
The couple came to a head when Kouri decided to start a real estate business a few years ago, Kouri told investigators in an email sent weeks before her May 8, 2023 arrest. “Eric wanted us to live the typical conservative life where the man takes care of his family and the wife is a homemaker, wife, mom and that’s it. That is not my personality and not the way I was raised,” Kouri said in the email, adding: “I wanted to be more.”
Characterized as the ultimate “family man” in his obituary, Eric was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and had gone on a two-year mission to Mexico City. Those closest to Kouri say Eric was also a man who had strayed from the church and begun drinking and taking illegal drugs during their marriage. Eric’s family “never liked Kouri,” a friend says. “And they want to believe Eric was perfect in every way, that Eric couldn’t have died in any other way besides at Kouri’s hands.”
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“The family needs an answer — someone to blame,” adds Kouri’s best friend, Ali: “I believe Eric must have died from an accidental overdose.”
Kouri Richins with one of her defense lawyers, Skye Lazaro, in court June 12, 2023.Rick Bowmer/AP
Rick Bowmer/AP
Prosecutors say that hours after her arrest, in a recorded jailhouse phone call, Kouri told her mother and brother that Eric asked her to purchase pain pills for him and suggested that the drug dealer had sold her fentanyl instead.
A fentanyl-free cocktail glass could support Kouri’s defense, and in early pre-trial hearings, Kouri’s lawyers, who are gagged from talking to the media, have honed in on the cup in question. At a bail hearing in June, the lead investigator testified that law enforcement never tested the empty cup for traces of drugs. (Kouri mentioned the drink to investigators the day Eric died, according to a dated written statement she made to the sheriff’s office.)
Kouri, who faces between 25 years and life in prison without parole if convicted of her husband’s murder, is studying for the LSAT in the hopes of becoming a defense lawyer for people unjustly accused. Her trial date has not yet been set. A hearing in the case is slated for Sept. 1.
source: people.com
