Episode 26 Once Upon a Trial: The Kouri Richins Case

Poisoning cases are meant to pass as fate.
No struggle. No witnesses. No clear moment where everything breaks - just a death that looks ordinary until the system slows down and starts asking harder questions.

Now that a jury has convicted Kouri Richins, we take a close look at how a case like this is actually proven - how evidence stacks, how motive helps but never replaces proof, and why the record matters long after the verdict.

This is a story about quiet crimes, procedural certainty, and what it takes to lawfully call something murder.

Because court is the one place where the story has to hold — line by line.

Mixed & Edited by Next Day Podcast

info@nextdaypodcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Justice Seekers. I'm Natalie. And I'm Katrina. We're two attorneys on a mission to go beyond the headlines and even shine a light on the cases that never make the news, to find the truths that get overlooked, and ask the questions the justice system doesn't always want to answer.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Each episode, we take you beyond the surface of high-profile cases and also cases that never garner the attention they deserve. The ones that haunt communities, shake families, and test the limits of the law. To examine what justice really looks like. When it works, when it fails, and when the truth is far more complicated than anyone expected.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

There are cases where the crime shows up like a car crash, noise, witnesses, a single moment everyone can point to and say, that's it, that's when everything broke. And then there are cases like this one. No scream, no struggle, and no obvious crime scene. Just a man who goes to bed and doesn't wake up. And when the system finally looks closer, it runs into the question it hates most. If no one saw it happen, how sure do we need to be that it did? Because in this case, it didn't stay a question. A jury listened, a jury weighed it, and a jury convicted.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

And if you've ever thought, okay, but how do they prove that? Yeah, same. Poisoning cases are the ultimate show your work problems.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Right, like in algebra. I I think I took it more than once.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Bad memories. Right. Today we're talking about the Corey Richens case, a prosecution that starts with a quiet death and ends with something very loud. A verdict. And a sentence that's still coming. And we're also going to talk about the part people don't always want to sit with. How a case can feel obvious to the public long before it becomes provable in court. Those aren't the same thing. And when a system forgets that, it doesn't just make mistakes, it makes permanent ones.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

But before we start, two quick notes. First, this case has gone to trial. On March 16, 2026, a jury in Summit County, Utah found Corey Richens guilty on all counts, including aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, plus two counts of insurance fraud and forgery. The jury deliberated for about three hours. Second, we're going to stay in our lane. We're not here to pile on. We're not here to replay the trial like we're in the jury box. We're here to talk about how the system takes a death that looks like nothing and builds a case that can survive beyond a reasonable doubt. And we're going to keep the human part in view. Eric Richens was a father of three. Those kids did not sign up for a headline.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Also, a guilty verdict isn't the end of the legal story. Sentencing is next, verdicts are words, sentencing turns those words into decades. And then potentially motions, appeals, and everything that happens after the cameras leave. The justice system is nothing if not committed to paperwork.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

It really is. And for today's purposes, that's the point. This is where criminal law draws its line, not at what feels right, but at what can be proved without wrecking the wrong life.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

So that's our frame for today's episode. We'll live inside it without repeating it back to you like a slogan.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Eric Richens died in 2022. The state's theory was fentanyl intoxication, a lethal dose. But from the outside, it didn't present like a classic homicide. There was no forced entry, no stranger in the night, no obvious violence. And early investigations start with a practical fork in the road. Do we have a crime here or do we have a tragedy? In this case, that fork didn't happen all at once. It happened gradually, through test results, timelines that didn't quite sit right, and questions that kept coming back even after the funeral. Poisoning is designed to sit in that uncertainty. It's built to register as fate, not force. Think of Romeo and Juliet. A death that looks like destiny until you step back and notice how much had to be arranged, concealed, and misunderstood for it to work. It's harm engineered to move quietly through ordinary life. Until something interrupts the story and forces a second look.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

And it's unsettling because there's no warning label in real life.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Exactly. Which is why these cases often hinge on the one thing you can't shrug away, toxicology. Prosecutors argued Eric had around five times the lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. When you hear that, your brain tries to sprint ahead and say, okay, who did that? But a courtroom isn't built for sprinting. It's built for surviving contact.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So let's talk toxicology. People hear science and assume certainty. Sometimes you get certainty. But toxicology usually gives you a different kind of answer. It tells you what is in someone's system, not how it got there, and not who introduced it. And fentanyl is a terrifyingly potent matter. The margin for error is basically non-existent.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

But a lab report doesn't come with a name attached. It's like walking into a room and smelling smoke. You know something burned. You do not automatically know who lit the match or whether they used gasoline. So in poisoning cases, the lab result isn't the ending. It's the opening scene. And at that point, everyone thinks they know what kind of story they're watching. And once that happens, someone has to decide whether this ends in grief or in prison. But you need the chain, access, opportunity, intent, and administration. Without the chain, poisoning cases would be easy. And the justice system would be frankly terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Right, and jurors tend to trust science because it feels clean. But science gets interpreted by people, and people are not always consistent.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Mm-hmm. A number can be accurate and still incomplete.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So toxicology becomes one pillar. Then you build the rest of the structure, and that's where the case either tightens or falls apart.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only follow these cases through headlines. Poisoning cases are rarely about one fact. They're built like a bridge. You don't trust one bolt, you trust the way the bolts, beams, and cables hold together. So investigators don't ask who feels suspicious, they ask who had access, opportunity, and a plausible way to introduce the substance. So at trial, prosecutors leaned on a few familiar categories. First, alleged sourcing. The state argued the fentanyl was illicit, not medical grade, meaning this wasn't a pharmacy mistake. Second, alleged administration. Prosecutors argued the drug was delivered through something ordinary, like a drink, because that's how poison works. It hides inside routine. Third, alleged earlier attempt. Prosecutors also argued there was a prior poisoning attempt that didn't succeed. In law, an earlier attempt does two things at once. It undercuts a possible accident, and it also sharpens intent. Fourth, motive and money. We'll get there, but the state's position was this wasn't a sudden impulse. This was pressure and opportunity meeting the same timeline. And lastly, fifth, what lawyers call consciousness of guilt. That's the bucket for post-event behavior the state says shows someone knew what really happened. Things like inconsistent statements, suspicious searches, and destroying evidence. The defense usually fights that category hard because it can slide from evidence into character judgment if you're not careful.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Consciousness of guilt sounds like a book title from the psychology section at Barnes and Noble. But in court, it's basically do your choices make sense if you didn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Exactly. And to be clear, not every odd decision equals guilt. Sometimes it's panic or grief or just bad judgment, which is why the court's job is to keep the case anchored to the record, not to personality and not to what plays well in a headline.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Right. And once a case goes public, it's easy for people to slide into spectator mode, watching the defendant instead of the evidence. But a courtroom isn't an audience. It doesn't exist to react, it exists to decide.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

If you remember this case from the headlines, you probably remember the children's book Corey Richens wrote and promoted after Eric's death. It was titled, Are You With Me? And Corey touted its publication on TV and radio stations in Utah, noting that she wrote it to help her and Eric's three children cope with the grief of losing their father. So grief can be public, private, neat, but none of that answers the only question the jury is allowed to decide. And I want to say this cleanly: unusual grief behavior is not a crime. People don't mourn on schedule. They don't mourn correctly. Some people cope in ways that are messy and complicated and hard to watch. But being awkward in public is not an element of murder. It is, however, an element of the internet.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yes, and that's the danger because cases like this can turn into a kind of credibility test. She doesn't seem sad enough, or she seems too sad, or why is she doing social media? The courtroom is supposed to be the place where those things don't matter. A jury is supposed to evaluate evidence tied to elements such as did she knowingly cause the death? Did she intend it? Can the state prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? That's a narrower job than the public wants, but it's the only job that keeps the system from turning into a feelings pole. The book wasn't evidence of guilt. It was contacts the jury heard and then had to consciously set aside.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Prosecutors argued that Corey Richens intentionally caused Eric's death by administering the fentanyl. This was the aggravated murder charge. They also alleged there had been an earlier attempt. This was the attempted aggravated murder charge. And alongside those homicide charges, they brought separate financial charges involving insurance fraud and forgery.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

And this is where a lot of people get confused because you hear that list and think, wait, how can someone be charged with and convicted of more than one kind of murder for the same death? So here's what's going on. Richens wasn't charged under competing versions of what happened. She was charged and ultimately convicted under multiple theories tied to the same course of conduct. In Utah, aggravated murder isn't a higher degree of murder the way sometimes people expect. It's murder plus at least one statutory aggravating factor. So the jury first has to find an intentional or knowing killing. Then they have to decide whether the state also proved at least one factor the legislature has said makes that killing categorically more serious. Things like attempting to kill someone else, creating an extreme risk to others, killing for financial gain, or committing homicide as part of another serious felony. Once even one of those factors is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the offense legally becomes aggravated murder. Think of it less like picking between charges and more like checking every box the evidence supported. So here, that doesn't mean the jury was hedging. It means they found more, not less. Those findings can exist together because they answer different questions, like did she intentionally and unlawfully cause a death? And did she also commit additional crimes connected to that death? In this case, the jury said yes to both.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

And that's why this case wasn't tried on instinct or shorthand. It was tried deliberately at every level, over weeks of testimony, digital forensics, and cross-examination. And that's why the verdict lands differently than a headline. Because discomfort isn't actionable in court. Proof is.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And poisoning cases are a trip because you're asking jurors to convict without the movie evidence meaning. No video, no eyewitnesses, no confession, just pieces that either click or they don't.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Right. So let's talk a little bit about the piece people overestimate. Motive. Now, motive isn't an element of murder. The state doesn't have to prove why, only that. But motive does something powerful. It makes intent legible. It answers the question jurors carry with them. Why would someone do this? In this case, the state argued financial pressure and financial gain as part of their motive story. Corey had launched a house flipping business in 2019, which initially was very successful. But by 2022, it was struggling with mounting debt and a portfolio that was hard to move on the market. I think the headline said she had$6.7 million into properties at that time.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah, that's a hard mountain to climb.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

So here's the tough part. Money problems are basically adulthood. So motive cannot just be they fought about money because in everybody's life that's Tuesday.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Or Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Let's be honest. If money problems were enough to prove martyr, though, like really every coupled with that shared checking account would be surveillance.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yes. Right. So motive can support evidence, but it can't replace it. It's scaffolding. And scaffolding without a building is just a weird structure in your yard. Which is why in a poisoning case, the defense usually focuses on separation, pulling those pieces apart and asking whether the state story is actually holding together. That strategic split, story versus structure, is exactly what the jury heard collide in closing arguments.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

The prosecution leaned hard into Motive. They argued that Richens was deeply invested in projecting a certain image, privileged, affluent, successful, and that behind that image was serious financial pressure from a failing home flipping business. So the state's theory was that killing Eric solved multiple problems at once. It paid down the debt, it unlocked insurance money, and created what they called a quote, fresh start for Corey.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

The defense went straight at that framing. They called the investigation sloppy. They argued it was driven by assumption and bias. And they reminded the jury of a basic rule. Even a compelling motive isn't proof. A tidy story still has to clear the burden. And they told the jury the state hadn't done that.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

So by the time this went to deliberations, the question wasn't sympathy versus suspicion. It was whether the prosecution's story stayed intact under cross-examination, or whether the defense had pulled it apart. And this is where people can get impatient. They want the system to act like a group chat, fast, reactive, and driven by instinct instead of proof.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

But the burden exists for a reason. And once the jury decides that question, the case doesn't reset at appeal. It narrows. Appeals are not do-overs. They're not the jury got it wrong, try again. They're really more limited than most people think. Appellate courts generally don't reweigh witnesses and they don't redecide credibility. They assume the jury did its job. They just look for legal error. And if they find one, they ask the next colder question. Did that error matter? Because not every mistake requires a new trial. Some errors are harmless under the law, meaning the verdict stands anyway. So when a conviction gets reversed on appeal, it usually means the error was not cosmetic. It was structural and it reached into the proof of the matter.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So translation, it's not, I didn't like the verdict court.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Right. It's did the route to the verdict stay inside the rules court? And here's something I wish more people understood. Jurors aren't asked to solve the mystery. They're asked to decide whether the state proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. That's not beyond all doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's whether after you look at the evidence, you can say there is no reasonable alternative explanation that fits. And reasonable is doing a lot of work there. A far-fetched story doesn't count. A story that requires 10 coincidences in a row? Nope, not that either. But a story that actually fits the facts, that's doubt. That's the constraint criminal law is built around. On March 16, 2026, after weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for about three hours. And then they came back guilty on every charge. Aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, two counts of insurance fraud, and forgery. This wasn't a split decision and it wasn't a compromise. It was unanimity. And in criminal law, unanimity is the system's most serious voice. Twelve people saying, we're sure enough to take away your freedom for decades.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

And three hours isn't hesitation. Three hours is the jury laying it all out and realizing the alternative explanations simply don't hold.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

And yes, you have to be careful reading deliberation time like tea leaves. But in a circumstantial case, a quick unanimous verdict usually means something very specific. The pieces didn't just add up, they reinforced each other. At the verdict, the story stops being interpretive and it becomes binding. Also, a juror later describes starting out with sympathy for Corey and then shifting after hearing the evidence. That's a useful reminder, juries don't always start where the internet starts. One more thing about the speed, people treat deliberation time like a scoreboard, where fast means obvious and slow means doubt. But real life is messier. Sometimes a jury is fast because the case is thin and they can't get to guilt. Sometimes a jury is slow because they're careful, even if they're leaning in one direction. But in a circumstantial case, a quick unanimous verdict usually means the evidence didn't just form a story. It formed a story that survived the friction the defense tried to throw at it. Twelve skeptical humans trying to poke holes in the story the prosecution told, and not finding swished cheese, but a sharp cheddar.

unknown 19:40

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

That's good. It's good.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

No, really, it's a different kind of certainty, not emotional certainty, but procedural certainty. And it's why these cases can sometimes feel heavy, because the system is saying this isn't just plausible, this is provable.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Mm-hmm. And Corey Richens now faces 25 years to life, with sentencing set for May 13th, which incidentally would have been Eric's 44th birthday. Sentencing is where the court turns a verdict into a life outcome. In most cases, that means a presentence investigation report, arguments from both sides, victim impact statements, and then the judge deciding what the sentence actually is within the range the law allows. Depending on the jurisdiction and the charge, sentencing can also be where you hear the most honest version of the harm, not the legal version and not the media version.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

And it's where the courtroom energy changes. Trial is about persuasion, but sentencing, that's all about consequence.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Mm-hmm. And then you get the next phase, appeals, which is why the record matters so much. Because appellate courts do not retry your case. They read what happened, they read what was preserved, they read what was objected to. In other words, if it isn't in the record, it didn't happen. And that brings us to the case that shows how quickly a poisoning case can crack when the record includes an error that reaches into the proof.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

So not to compare outcomes, but to compare what happens when the record doesn't hold. So Mary Yoder, in a different case, was a chiropractor in New York who suddenly became ill and died in 2015. Her death was attributed to Coltrasine toxicity and ruled a homicide. Investigators focused on Caitlin Conley, an employee at the practice who had dated Mary Yoder's son. The case was built on a chain, including digital evidence. But Conley's first trial ended in a hung jury. Later, she was acquitted of murder, but convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 23 years.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

So you'd think verdict, sentence done. But in January 2025, An appeals court overturned that manslaughter conviction. Not because the court declared nothing happened, but because evidence from Conley's cell phone had been improperly obtained. The search went beyond what the warrant allowed. That's not a technicality. That is the Fourth Amendment doing its job. A smartphone is basically a map of where you've been, what you've wondered, and who you've trusted. Your private life flattened into a rectangle of glass and metal. So when an appellate court says the search exceeded the warrant, what it's saying is the state doesn't get to rummage through your life because it's convenient.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Right. And this is where sometimes people will roll their eyes and go, oh my God, criminals just have too many rights. But those rights are also precisely why an innocent person can survive a bad investigation.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

And the Mary Yoder case gets even more unsettling when you look at how it started. An anonymous letter accused Mary Yoder's son and pointed investigators to a bottle of Colchicine. A bottle was found. And investigators eventually tied the letter back to Conley. That detail matters because poisoning cases often start with something that feels like a clue. But a clue isn't proof, as we know, it's just a direction. And once digital evidence enters the room with phones, searches, and metadata, everything depends on how it's obtained and what the warrant actually allows. That's why the appellate reversal was significant, not because it declared innocence, but because it enforced the boundary. Here's what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to give a motivational speech. I will say it plainly. A jury convicted Corey Richens. Sentencing is next. Appeals may come. And now the system does what it does. It documents, argues, slows down, and checks itself. It might find something that the system didn't allow. If you take one thing from this episode, take this. Criminal cases aren't decided by what feels true. They're decided by what can be proven under rules designed to prevent the worst kind of mistake. Because the alternative, the just trust us alternative, is how wrongful convictions happen. So yes, guardrails, not sexy and not cinematic, but it's the only thing standing between you and someone else's certainty.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

And for everyone listening who's like, okay, but like I still want that satisfying ending. We get it. But satisfying isn't the justice system's job. Lawfulness is. And sometimes those overlap, but sometimes they don't.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

This case began with a man who went to bed and never woke up. For a long time, the system lived in that silence, trying to decide whether it could name what happened next. Now it has. And whether you find this verdict comforting or unsettling, it's worth sitting with what it represents. Even crimes designed to look accidental, and even deaths that leave no obvious trace can still be seen. But only if the proof is real, and only if the route holds. That's the standard, and that's the cost of taking certainty seriously. And in this case, the jury said the route held. If you're following the next chapter of this case, watch sentencing day. Watch what the judge says about the facts. Watch what gets preserved for appeal. Because that's where the record gets written. And on appeal, the record is the world. Translation: if it isn't on the record, it didn't happen. This is Justice Seekers, where we don't just follow the story, we follow what the law can actually prove. Thank you for joining us. If you found today's episode meaningful, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who cares about justice.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Got a burning question, a wild theory, or a case you want us to tackle next? Slide into our inbox or take us on social media. We love a good legal cliffhanger.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Remember, justice seekers, the truth is out there, and so is our next episode.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Until next time.