A Utah woman who wrote a children's book on coping with loss has now been convicted of causing it. A Summit County jury on Friday found 35-year-old Kouri Richins guilty of aggravated murder in the 2022 fentanyl death of her husband, Eric Richins, and four related charges, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Jurors concluded she killed him for financial gain and by giving him a lethal substance, both factors required for an aggravated murder conviction. They also convicted her of attempted aggravated murder tied to a prior Valentine's Day illness he suffered after eating a sandwich, plus two counts of insurance fraud and one of forgery. Richins waived her right to testify in her own defense.
Richins "stared at the floor and took deep breaths," per the AP, as the verdicts were read; she largely remained still, in line with the judge's order against visible reactions. Prosecutors argued she was driven by money troubles and an extramarital affair, while the defense maintained the state hadn't met its burden of proof. Sentencing is set for May 13. Richins still faces a separate criminal case involving 26 alleged financial offenses that pre-date her husband's death, including mortgage fraud, forgery, money laundering, and writing bad checks; she also faces a civil dispute over her husband's estate that was paused until the murder trial finished. Prosecutors say she was $4.5 million in debt and wrongly believed she would inherit her husband's $4 million estate. The couple shared three young sons, for whom Richins said she wrote her grief book, Fox News reports.
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