"Smiling Mom Turns Murderer: How She Poisoned Her Husband, Played the Grieving Widow on TV, and Wrote a Book to Snatch $4 Million"

FOLLOWING her husband’s death, mum-of-three Kouri Richins published a book about helping children through bereavement.

But this grieving widow wasn’t quite what she seemed…

Kouri Richins wrote a book about a young boy dealing with his father’s loss after the death of husband Eric Credit: The storybook Are You With Me? hid a shocking truth Credit:

On the surface, it was a television interview like any other: an author on a morning TV show, Good Things Utah, promoting her new book.

The author was Kouri Richins , a 31-year-old mother of three who had penned the children’s storybook Are You With Me?, about a young boy dealing with his father’s death.

“My husband passed away unexpectedly,” she said, her voice filled with emotion.

“He was 39. It completely took us all by shock.”

She explained the book was written to help her boys, who were all under 10 when they lost their father, Eric Richins, in 2022.

No one watching that broadcast on March 2, 2023, could have failed to feel sympathy as she discussed channelling her loss into something positive.

The truth, however, was far darker, encompassing infidelity, poisoning, and murder. Far from the grieving widow, Kouri Richins was, in fact,.

The pair met in 2009 when Eric – a businessman who co-owned a masonry company – came into the hardware shop where Richins worked.

They married four years later in the garden of their $1.1million home, their newborn son beside them.

However, after six years – and two more kids – things began to unravel. Richins had started a property business, taking out loans to buy , fixing them up and selling them on for profit.

As the business accumulated debts of $8million to banks and investors, Eric discovered she’d been taking from his accounts to prop it up.

In response, he secretly set up a separate trust to manage his estate in the event of his death, naming his sister as trustee.

Determined to try to keep the family together for his sons, who he was devoted to, Eric remained in the , and the couple started counselling.

Life continued as normal until one night in March 2022, and paramedics were called to their home in the wealthy mountain enclave of Kamas, Utah. Richins had called 911 at 3.22am, saying she’d found her husband in their bedroom “not breathing” and “cold”.

‘She told her brother to say her husband was getting pills from and had a “drugs problem”’

Police bodycam footage shows her in her pyjamas, her face buried in her hands, explaining she’d made her husband a cocktail at around nine o’clock the previous evening.

After finishing half of the drink, he’d gone to bed, while she slept in their middle son’s bedroom because he’d been having nightmares.

When she woke up at 3am, she returned to the marital bed, where she found Eric unresponsive.

Weeks after a television appearance to promote her book, Richins was arrested for her husband’s murder, above the couple with their sons Credit: Unknown Eric was worth over $4million, but a pre-nuptial agreement meant they would only transfer to his wife if he died, above the family home where Eric was murdered Credit: AP

“My husband’s active,” Richins told the deputy. “He doesn’t just die in his . This is insane.”

An autopsy confirmed Eric’s cause of death as an overdose of non-prescription fentanyl, taken orally, with five times the lethal dosage in his system.

His death was treated as suspicious, with Richins a person of interest. Days after Eric died, their families held a celebration of his life at the family home.

However, relations soon soured, and Eric’s family filed a criminal complaint against Richins after they found out she had called a locksmith to open the house safe, containing $100,000 in cash.

When Eric’s sister told her about the trust and that the safe wasn’t hers to open, a fight broke out, with Richins later pleading guilty to assault.

As the police continued to investigate Eric’s death, Richins turned her attention to becoming an author, hiring a ghostwriter for $2,500 to bring her idea for a children’s book to life. She dedicated it to “my amazing husband”.

Just weeks after the TV appearance , on May 8, 2023, she was arrested for murder.

Her children were taken in by Eric’s sister, while Richins’ family and friends rallied around her.

Richins’ cool display in court as she tried to escape justice Credit: AP But it was revealing her legal team couldn’t call a single witness in her defence Credit: via REUTERS

As her charges progressed through court, Richins was held without bail, and then a letter was found in her cell that would become a damning piece of evidence.

“It was a letter where she instructed her mother and brother on what to tell investigators and how to testify if they were called as witnesses,” says Nate Eaton, news director at Eastidahonews.com , who covered the case and was in court throughout.

“She outlined a whole story in the letter, telling her brother Ronney to say that Eric was getting pills from Mexico and had a ’drugs problem’.”

In the letter, Richins writes to her mother: “When you talk to Ronney about this, meet up with him in person. I worry sometimes your house and phone are bugged.”

It became known as the “Walk the Dog letter”, Nate explains, because of a particular line in it.

“She wrote in the letter to be sure to take vague notes of everything she was telling them before they ‘walk the dog’,” he says.

An investigation also uncovered that Richins had been having an affair for nearly two years, above police bodycam footage of Richins after calling 911 Credit: AP It took three hours for a jury to come to a unanimous guilty verdict, above Richins during a hearing in 2023 Credit: AP Juror Christie Halverson said: ‘I kept trying to get a read on her, but she seemed cold’ Journalist Nate Eaton, who covered the case in the US Credit: Nate Eaton

“Walking the dog was taken to mean them giving their testimony – so, to remember what she tells them before they take the stand.”

The “grief author murder trial”, as it was dubbed, began in February this year.

The prosecution told jurors that the evidence would show Richins had two motives.

The first of these was financial. Between property, life policies and his share of the business, Eric was worth over $4million, but a pre-nuptial agreement meant she had no claim to any of her husband’s assets and they would only transfer to her if he died.

The prosecution also presented evidence that Richins took out an additional $100,000 life insurance policy on Eric just over a month before he died, making herself the beneficiary and forging Eric’s signature.

The other motive was a way out of a failing marriage.

The investigation had uncovered that Richins had been having an affair for nearly two years with a man named Josh Grossman, a tradesman she’d met through her business.

The relationship continued for a few months after Eric’s death, but had ended by the time of her arrest.

Christie Halverson, 52, a retired bakery owner from Utah, was selected as one of the 12 jurors who would decide Richins’ fate.

“When Kouri first walked into the courtroom she seemed small and frail,” Christie, a married mother of three, recalls. “I kept trying to get a read on her, but she seemed cold.”

The jury were played Richins’ 911 call, where the operator can be heard instructing her to put her phone on speaker so that she could perform CPR on Eric.

“I don’t believe she tried to perform CPR on him,” says Christie.

“We also heard evidence that when the EMTs arrived and tried CPR themselves, blood came out of Eric’s mouth. Had Kouri even attempted CPR, that would already have happened.”

Christie also found it odd that Richins made no attempt to make sure her children, who were all in their bedrooms, were OK.

“I can’t imagine knowing my husband’s in a body bag, and not wanting to have my arms around my kids,” she says.

Christie reveals that she and her fellow jurors felt sorry for Richins’ former lover Josh Grossman when he testified, adamant he’d had nothing to do with Eric’s death.

“It was evident that he still had very strong feelings for Kouri as he cried on the stand and was visibly shaken,” she says. “Kouri showed zero emotion towards him.”

‘She seemed to do everything in life for money and appearance – the children’s book was no different’

On day five, the prosecution called their key witness, Carmen Lauber, a housecleaner who worked for the family and who Richins knew had a history of drug use.

Carmen testified that Richins asked her to buy fentanyl for one of her investors who suffered with back pain, and that she had bought pills for her from a street dealer four times during January and February 2022.

On Valentine’s Day, the prosecution argued, Richins had tried to kill Eric with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that caused him to black out, but he recovered.

Richins then asked Carmen to get her some more fentanyl that was stronger than the last batch, which she bought on February 26.

At the time of the investigation, Carmen was on probation for selling and the defence suggested she had actually been coerced into providing false information in exchange for immunity.

However, Christie believed her. “I think Carmen was a credible witness, albeit an imperfect one,” she says.

The final witness, detective Jeff O’Driscoll, was called on March 11, 2026.

He was the lead investigator and was asked to testify in court about Richins’ children’s book and the “Walk the Dog” letter, which the defence tried to dismiss by claiming it was a chapter of a fictional murder mystery she was writing while behind bars.

“I felt that the letter was incredibly damaging” Christie says.

“I certainly didn’t believe the defence’s explanation. Given she hired a ghostwriter for the children’s book, she could hardly be capable of penning a more complex novel.

“What bothers me a lot about Kouri is that if she hadn’t murdered her husband, she would fight tooth and nail to protect his reputation and memory, but she was ready to throw him under the bus as a drug user. I think the letter made it impossible to find her not guilty.”

On March 12, 2026, after three weeks and 40 prosecution witnesses, Christie and her fellow jurors waited to hear from the defence. Incredibly, they didn’t call a single witness.

“It felt to me that they just didn’t have anyone in Kouri’s corner who would have helped her case,” says Christie.

“I also think if they’d put Kouri herself on the stand, she’d have done more harm than good, because she would have made a poor liar.”

It took three hours for the jury to come to a unanimous guilty verdict. When it was read by the judge, Richins looked on in disbelief.

Two months later, on what would have been Eric’s 44th birthday, Richins was back in court to receive her sentence.

Her sons – who are still with Eric’s sister after a juvenile court awarded her full custody – wrote impact statements, which were read out by their counsellors.

The boys, now aged nine, 12 and 13, asked the judge to give their mother the maximum sentence.

“You have never said sorry for anything that you have done to me and my brothers,” wrote one of them.

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone again.”

Richins also spoke publicly for the first time since her trial began. She addressed her comments to her sons, saying: “Just because someone may not be perfect, there’s a far reach for them to be capable of murder.”

Her friends and family professed her innocence and pleaded for leniency.

However, she was given a life sentence without parole.

“Kouri is obviously not sorry, in my opinion, and deserves to never be free,” says Christie.

“She seemed to do everything in life for money and appearance – the children’s book was no different. I don’t think the trial will ever leave me. I still think about it every day, especially the boys and Eric’s family, and my heart aches for them.

“I believe we made the right call based on the evidence, but it hurts to know it will affect those kids for the rest of their lives.”