Kouri Richins wrote a children’s book about loss after her spouse passed away last year. She is currently accused of killing him.
Kouri Richins, 33, was detained on Monday and is charged with poisoning her husband at their Kamas, Utah, home with a deadly quantity of fentanyl. Kamas is a small mountain town close to Park City.
The murder accusations came months after Richins self-published the picture book “Are you with me?” in which a little kid questions his father’s continued presence in his life after the father passes away.
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Prosecutors allege Richins called authorities in the middle of the night in March 2022 to report that her husband, Eric Richins, was “cold to the touch.” She told officers she had made her husband a mixed drink to celebrate him selling a home. She then went to soothe one of their children to sleep in the next bedroom. She later returned and, upon finding her husband unresponsive, called 911.
A medical examiner later found five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system.
Richins is accused of murder as well as alleged possession of GHB, a psychoactive medication that is often used in social settings, including dance clubs.
The accusations are supported by Richins’ encounters with police that evening and the testimony of a “unnamed acquaintance” who says they bought the fentanyl from Richins. The friend claimed to have sold Richins fentanyl twice, in February and March 2022, as well as the narcotic hydrocodone once.
Before giving her phone to detectives, the charging documents state that Richins deleted texts from the night of her husband’s death and may have attempted to poison him on Valentine’s Day, a month before to his death.
“Shortly after their dinner, Eric became very ill. Eric believed that he had been poisoned. Eric told a friend that he thought his wife was trying to poison him,” investigators wrote, referring to the Valentine’s Day incident.
