Send us Fan Mail

Today's episode is one of the strangest and most unsettling cases we've covered so far: a woman who wrote a children's grief book after her husband's death, then was later convicted of murdering him.

Febriana tells John the case of Kouri Richins, a Utah mother and real estate investor whose husband, Eric Richins, died from a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022. At first, Kouri publicly presented herself as a grieving widow trying to help her children process the loss of their father. But investigators uncovered a very different story involving financial pressure, life insurance, forged documents, a prior poisoning attempt, and a marriage where Eric had reportedly feared his wife was trying to kill him.

In this episode, John hears the case for the first time as we talk through public grief, image management, financial desperation, and the disturbing question at the center of the case: what kind of person turns a death they caused into part of their public identity?

Content warning: murder, poisoning, fentanyl, family trauma, grief, and children affected by parental death.

Support the show