22. Verdict: Kouri Richins — Guilty on All Five Counts

The verdict is in. After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury in Park City, Utah found Kouri Richins guilty on all five counts — aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, two counts of insurance fraud, and forgery — in the fentanyl poisoning death of her husband Eric Richins in 2022. She faces life in prison without parole. Sentencing is May 13th. His sons were five, seven, and nine when he died. They are eight, ten, and twelve today. This one is for them.

Before we talk about how they died, we talk about how they lived.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome to I Fear You Babe. My name is Dino Malvone. I'm your host, and we got a break-in episode for you today. The verdict in the Corey Richards case came back as guilty on all five counts. The deliberation took about three hours, a little bit less than three hours. And her reaction in court was she basically looked down, remained as still as possible during the reading of each verdict. And the sentencing is taking place on May 13th, 2026. The sentence that they're looking for, or the maximum sentence that she can receive would be life in prison without parole. So again, guilty on all five counts. So less, again, less than three hours of deliberation. The jury in Summit County, Utah found Corey Richards guilty of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, insurance fraud, and forgery in the death of her husband, Eric Richens. She looked down when the judge read each verdict and she did not speak. She remained actually just totally still. She faces a potential life sentence without parole. The sentencing is May 13th. I'm Dino Malvone. This is I Fear You Babe. And before we talk about what this verdict means, we're going to talk a little bit more about Eric. So Eric Richens, of course, he never got to know the verdict. The guy was 33 years old when he died in March of 2022. His sons at the time were five, seven, and nine. Right now they're all eight, ten, and twelve. They have spent roughly a third of their lives in a world where their father is gone, and the question of what happened to him was unanswered. Today it was answered. And I want to say a little bit about what I think that means, not for the case or for the legal system, but for three little boys who watched their mom go on local TV to promote a book about grief that she didn't even write, about a father with angel wings on the cover. And, you know, while a jury was being assembled to decide whether or not she killed her husband. At the end of the day, those boys are going to grow up and they are going to read everything, and they're going to find the notebook with the Moscow mule and the lemon drop, and and they're going to find the text to Grossman and they're going to find the letter. You know? What they also have now is a jury of 12 people who looked at all of it and said, We believe your father's life mattered enough to hold someone accountable for it. And that's not nothing. It will never be enough though, but it's but it's not nothing. The three weeks of testimony, this is what the jury has heard, the jury heard rather, nearly 40 witnesses. And then the defense rested without calling a single person to the stand. And Corey Richens did not testify in her own defense either. So the prosecution's closing argument was delivered by Summit County chief prosecutor Blad Brad Blood. And he told the jury that Corey Richard was intensely ambitious, obsessed with protecting the image of a successful, affluent life while her finances were really quietly collapsing underneath her. She had bounced 236 checks in the 14 months before Eric died. She owed more than she owned. And she was two days away from closing on a mansion in Midway when Eric was killed. Bloodworth told told the jury she did not have the money to leave Eric or the money to salvage her business. There was a way forward, though, and that was that Eric had to die. A witness testified during trial that in December of 2021, three months before Eric's death, Corey had said that in many ways it could be better if Eric were dead. Days after the Valentine's Day poisoning attempt, she texted her boyfriend, Robert Grossman. If he could just go away and you could be just be here, life would be so perfect. Eric died the morning of March 4th, 2022. The night before, Corey and Eric had drinks together to celebrate a real estate deal she was closing. Writings found in Corey's Orange Notebook described the drinks a Moscow Mule and a Lemon Drop shot. Bloodworth told the jury in closing the Moscow mule she made was ginger beer and fentanyl. The lemon drop may have been lemon and fentanyl. The amount found in Eric's system, Blood said, was showed that Corey wanted Eric not only dead, but good and dead. It was five times the lethal dosage. After Eric died, Corey received$1.3 million in life insurance. She spent half of it within months just paying off her debts. Then she wrote a children's book about grief. A father with angel wings watching over her son on the cover. And she also appeared on local TV to promote the book. During the trial, investigators found on her phone that a ghostwriter had actually written the book for her. And then there was this letter. It's six pages, allegedly in Corey's handwriting, and it was sent from jail in 2023 to her mom. Basically coaching her brother on how to testify for the defense. Bloodworth told the jury in closing, how does she explain it? This is good. A year and a half after murdering Eric, she blames it on Eric. She's writing a fake story for her brother to testify to. The jury took less than three hours to decide what they thought it was. So here's what the defense argued. The defense attorney Wendy Lewis told the jury in her closing that Corey was being judged for how she grieved. Quote, they want you to look at a woman in the worst moment of her life and to judge her, end quote. There was no wrong way to grieve. Lewis argued that Eric was more, was worth more to Corey alive than dead, that the financial argument didn't hold up. She attacked Carmen Lauber's credibility as a witness, arguing that Lauber had tailored her testimony to avoid her own criminal charges. Remember, she was the one that the fentanyl was purchased from. She pointed out that the fentanyl was never found in the Richmond's home, despite nearly a dozen searches. No cup, no glass, no straw with traces of the drug was ever recovered. On the affair, Lewis told the jury Corey had ended things with Grossman before Eric's death, and they never went on any planned trip together. She argued that an innocent person would have been scared when police came, and that Corey's behavior after Eric's death proved nothing. The jury considered it all. Again, they deliberated for less than three hours. So here are the counts. The verdicts, count by count. Aggravated murder, guilty. Attempted aggravated murder, guilty. This is the Valentine's Day count. The jury found that Corey tried to kill her husband once before she actually succeeded. Insurance fraud, guilty on both counts. Forgery, guilty. Five counts, five guilty verdicts under three hours. Sentencing is May 13th. She faces life in prison without parole on the aggravated murder count alone. So what does this all mean? Well, the prosecution built a circumstantial case. There was no video of Corey putting fentanyl in a drink. There was no fingerprint on a pill. There was no confession. What there was a pattern. They have a financial collapse, an affair, a housekeeper connected to a drug supplier, an orange notebook, a letter that mapped into a defense strategy and a 911 call that prosecutors played repeatedly because they said it showed a woman distancing herself from her husband's death even while he was dying. The defense was right about one thing, though. This case was built on how Corey Richards behaved. And a jury of her peers looked at that behavior, all of it, and for three weeks, honestly, and decided it added up to murder. That is what beyond a reasonable doubt looked like in this courtroom. 40 witnesses, a financial analyst, digital forensic expert, a housekeeper who said she bought the drugs, a boyfriend who put his head down when their messages were read loud, and a six-page letter that the defense said was fiction. And you know what? The jury didn't buy it. So Eric Richards was 33 years old. He had three sons who are growing up without him now. He had a business partner who picked up the phone when he called on Valentine's Day because he was afraid. And who got on the stand three weeks ago and told a jury what Eric's voice sounded like when he got scared. Today, a jury told Eric's son something. It won't bring him back. It won't give them their father at their graduations or their weddings or, you know, the other ordinary Tuesday nights when you just need your dad. None of this does that. But the jury said that his name mattered, that what happened to him mattered, and the people who loved him deserved an answer. Sentencing is May 13th, and we will be here. Again, I'm Dino Malvone. This was I Fear You Babe, and I will talk to you soon. Bye.