CRIME HUNTER: Did greed drive kids author Kouri Richins to kill hubby?

Article content

Once upon a time, there was a princess who turned her grieving into a children’s book for kids dealing with the loss of a parent.

Article content

She made boffo bucks on the book but then, arch-villain homicide detectives put handcuffs on our heroine and accused her of poisoning her handsome prince. It wasn’t an apple. It was fentanyl.

Article content

Now, a happy ending appears increasingly elusive.

***

Eric Richins suspected that his entrepreneur wife Kouri had been having a sexual affair throughout their nine-year marriage. The couple’s happy middle-class life in tiny Kamas, Utah compete with three kids was coming off the rails.

“(But) he hoped to keep his family together,” his lawyer Greg Skordas told the Salt Lake Tribune. “He hoped to keep his boys in a nuclear family, and he had hoped that things would work out.”

He added: “And he was very much in love with his wife, even though it became fairly obvious that she was trying to undermine him professionally and … he at least suspected that she was trying to kill him at one point.”

Article content

Article content

An avid outdoorsman, Eric was also devoted to his children.

According to cops, on March 3, 2022, Kouri Richins, 33, and her hubby were celebrating a big real estate deal. She allegedly made her hubby a Moscow Mule with a potent fentanyl chaser that could kill him five times over.

Within hours, he was dead. Kouri threw a party the next day, as you do.

“He’d had concerns previously, and he also had reason to believe she was having a relationship and that was continuing through their marriage … apparently in person,” Skordas told Fox News.

Eric Richins, 39, also told his family he had been poisoned twice before, once on a trip to Greece, the other the Valentine’s Day before he died.

An affidavit filed by the family said: “They advised he warned them that if anything happened to him, she was to blame.”

Article content

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

***

His family had good reason to be suspicious. The merry widow had purchased four life insurance policies on his life worth a whopping $2 million in the years before the alleged murder.

Eric Richins was in the dark for years about her machinations. He did discover that Kouri had taken a $250,000 home equity line of credit which she blew through with lavish spending.

She also allegedly stole $134,000 from her husband’s business, another $100,000 from his bank accounts and racked up $30,000 on his credit cards.

Eric discovered Kouri’s deceit in September 2020. He met with a divorce lawyer and estate planner. When she was confronted, she paid him back.

What she didn’t know was that in the days before Eric Richins death, he had her cut out of his will and changed the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. He was ready to pull the pin on the marriage.

Article content

Investigators say that two days after Eric died — ruled a fentanyl overdose by the medical examiner — Kouri hired a locksmith to drill into her husband’s safe.

That’s when she discovered it was her sister-in-law who was the beneficiary of her husband’s $500,000 life insurance policy.

Cops say the new widow became “enraged” and attacked her in-law, and landed an assault charge for her trouble. She would later sue her sister-in-law for property she claimed was hers.

Both sides of the family are now at war over the $3.6 million estate.

***

In the wake of her husband’s death, Kouri self-published the kids book on grieving, entitled Are You With Me. It was about a dad who had died and was his kids guardian angel. Publicity on TV and radio was plenty.

Article content

But there were clouds on the horizon. She wasn’t exactly stuck financially, but cops say she wanted much, much more. There was the $2 million insurance policy Eric had with his business partner.

Plus, Kouri was on the hook for $189,840 in unpaid state and federal taxes and owed a lender $1,847,760. She also allegedly owed Eric $514,346 for the financial schemes she had launched.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

***

In homicide investigations, cops typically take a long look at those closest to the departed. And in this case, it was Kouri Richins.

Detectives discovered that Richins allegedly purchased $900 worth of fentanyl pills from an acquaintance on two separate occasions in February 2022. Earlier, she allegedly bought hydrocodone from the dealer, court docs say.

Prosecutors believe the author’s motive for allegedly icing her hubby was purely financial.

Kouri Richins is now charged with with first-degree aggravated murder and multiple counts of second-degree possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. She has a detention hearing on June 12.

It’s believed that several of her friends have flipped and are ready to point a finger at Kouri in court.

Prosecutors have not yet indicated whether they will seek the death penalty.

[email protected]

@HunterTOSun