A Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband and was later found guilty of killing him has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Kouri Richins, 35, wearing a lime green uniform in court, stared ahead as the sentence was handed down on Wednesday, on what would have been her husband Eric Richins’s 44th birthday.
In March, Kouri Richins was convicted of aggravated murder in Eric’s 2022 death after prosecutors say she secretly slipped five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule cocktail she made for him. A year after the murder, Richins wrote a children’s book to help their three sons process the loss.
The 35-year-old real estate agent was millions in debt and planning a future with another man, prosecutors said during her trial. She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, and falsely believed she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million after he died.
The prosecution had urged the judge to impose a life sentence without the possibility of parole, saying Richins’ three sons “should never worry that they may one day encounter her.”
In an impact statement read to the court on Wednesday, Eric’s father Gene Richins said that his son’s death was a “permanent hole in our family that will never be filled.”
“No parent should ever have to bury their child,” he said. “It’s a loss that changes you forever.”
Katie Richins-Benson, Eric’s sister, sobbed as she told the court: “Nearly every aspect of our lives has been permanently changed, and we have no choice but to live with those changes and Eric’s loss forever.”
Richins’ case captivated true-crime enthusiasts when she was arrested in 2023 while promoting her children’s book “Are You with Me?” about a boy coping with the death of his father.
Richins’ mother, Lisa Darden, maintained that her daughter is not capable of murder and in court on Wednesday, asked, “from a mother’s heart, that Kouri be given a sentence that allows the possibility of a future.”
Sons say they are afraid of their mother
Eric Richins’ sister, Katie Richins-Benson, said her brother was taken from his sons, who are now in her care, by the person he should have been able to trust the most.
“They are not props for some twisted children’s book about grief and loss, and yet that is what they’ve been reduced to by Kouri,” Richins-Benson told the judge, her voice quavering.
The children have said Richins hit and threatened to kill their animals, showed them videos of famished children in war zones when they refused to eat their dinner and didn’t seem to care about their health.
At the sentencing hearing on Wednesday, licensed therapists read the children’s victim impact statements to the court.
One child talked about how Richins would “put us in the basement while she was with the neighbor.”
“I felt scared because I thought something really bad was happening again,” the child said in his statement. “She would take me to places that smelled really bad. Everything she did made me feel uncomfortable.”
Another child told Richins: “You took away everything from me and my brothers.”
The oldest boy, now 13, said he also felt like he had to take care of his siblings while in his mother’s care, but his younger brother “mostly took care of me, though, because I was locked in my room.” He said his mom would lock him inside “pretty much daily” after he pointed out that she was drunk.
The 13-year-old child said in his statement that he wanted Richins to get life in prison “because what she did is very sick.”
All three children have undergone intensive therapy and are being raised by Eric’s sister and her husband, according to the memo.
The trial
The trial was scheduled for five weeks but ended early when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team rested its case without calling any witnesses. Her attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors had not produced enough evidence to convict her of murder.
The jury deliberated for just under three hours before finding her guilty of all counts.
Jurors in Park City also found Richins guilty of four other felonies, including attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors portrayed the mother of three as a money-hungry killer. They showed the jury text messages between Richins and her lover in which she fantasized about leaving her husband and gaining millions in a divorce.
Prosecutors also displayed the internet search history from Richins’ phone, which included queries about the lethal dose of fentanyl, luxury prisons and how poisoning is marked on a death certificate.
The defense argued that Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers. Prosecutors countered by showing police body camera footage from the night of his death in which Kouri Richins tells an officer that her husband had no history of illicit drug use.
Defense attorneys also argued that the prosecution’s star witness, a housekeeper who claimed to have sold Kouri Richins fentanyl on multiple occasions, was motivated to lie for legal protection. The housekeeper was granted immunity for her cooperation in the case.
