In a case that has shocked the public, Kouri Richins is facing first-degree murder charges following the mysterious death of her husband, Eric Richins.
We rarely cover stories that are still developing because we like to wait to get all the information before we present the story. But when we heard about today’s story, we knew right away we had to make an exception and post the story right now.
The plot of this story you’re going to hear today is so absurd it just sounds like fiction—bad fiction, like badly written, unrelatable fiction. But it’s not fiction; it’s true, it really happened.
At around 9 PM on March 3rd, 2022, a 31-year-old woman named Kouri Richins tucked her three young sons into their beds and then headed downstairs to her kitchen inside her luxurious home in suburban Utah. Once she got down to the kitchen, she yelled out for her husband, whose name was Eric, to come join her in the kitchen.
Kouri Richins had some big news that she had just learned that day, and now that their kids were all tucked away in their beds and off to sleep, she and her husband could celebrate this big news and share a drink together.
A moment later, Eric walked into the kitchen and Kouri grinned at him and handed him his drink, and then gestured for them to go upstairs to their bedroom. And so, the two of them went upstairs. They sat down on the bed, and then Kouri broke the big news.
Kouri’s tiny real estate company had just found out that day that they were very likely going to close on a deal for this gorgeous 20,000-square-foot mansion in Utah for two million dollars. Now, Kouri knew once she bought this property, she could do a couple of renovations to it and then quickly sell it for three million dollars, meaning she was about to make a one million dollar profit.
Kouri Richins had been working really hard on her real estate business for years, but this really represented the first big break. She and Eric lived in a very conservative part of Utah where it was kind of expected that someone like Kouri would stay home with the kids and be a good housewife, and that would be her life.
But Kouri Richins didn’t really want that; she wanted to have a professional career that was kind of on par with her husband’s. Eric ran a very profitable masonry company that allowed the family to take vacations to Mexico and Spain every year and also to afford their sprawling property at the end of the cul-de-sac.
Kouri had stayed home when the three boys were much younger, but now that they were five, seven, and nine years old, they had decided to hire a nanny, which had allowed Kouri to finally go out and pursue her professional dreams.
And so, totally beaming with pride, Kouri sat there on the bed and clinked her husband’s glass, and went over all the details of the deal, and talked about how great their lives were about to become with all this additional income.
But fairly quickly, both of them decided they were too tired to stay up and celebrate any longer, especially Eric, who earlier that day had gotten an allergy shot and it had totally knocked him out. He was feeling kind of weak and tired, and so the two of them decided to just go to bed.
And so, after brushing their teeth and changing, they got into their bed, they turned off the light, and they were about to lay down and go to sleep when they heard their seven-year-old crying in his bedroom.
Both parents let out a groan, and then Kouri stood up, indicating she would handle this, because they knew often their seven-year-old would have nightmares, and the only way he would go back to sleep was if his mom laid with him.
And so, Kouri kissed Eric, and then as Eric rolled over to go to bed, Kouri walked out of the room. She went down the hall, went into her son’s bedroom, she got under the covers, and then before long, she and her son had fallen asleep.
A few hours later, Kouri suddenly sat up inside of her son’s bed. It was about 3 A.M., and for a second she couldn’t even figure out where she was. The house was silent, it was totally dark, and she was confused.
But then she remembered she had gotten up to tend to her son, and so she checked on her son, saw he was still sleeping, tucked him back in, gave him a kiss, and then she left his room, went down the hall, and went back into her bedroom, where she climbed into her bed, and saw that Eric had kicked off all the covers and was sleeping on his back.
And so, Kouri laid down on the bed and kind of rolled up right against her husband and she pulled the covers up over both of them, and then she closed her eyes to go to sleep. But right as she did that, she noticed something very strange. Eric’s body felt freezing cold.
Kouri opened her eyes and sat up in bed. She turned over and kind of pushed Eric to see if he would sit up and figure out why he was so cold, but Eric didn’t budge. And when she pushed him, he felt really heavy, like dead weight.
And so, suddenly starting to panic, Kouri yelled Eric’s name several times, but Eric didn’t budge. And so, Kouri leapt from the bed, she grabbed her phone, and she dialed 9-1-1.
And when the dispatcher picked up, Kouri was so hysterical, as she’s looking at her husband lying motionless in his bed, that she could barely tell the dispatcher what was going on. But finally, she did get it out to the dispatcher, and the dispatcher said, “Stay calm, the ambulance will be there as soon as we can.”
And so, just moments later, Kouri heard the sirens outside, and so she ran downstairs, she flung the door open, and practically cried with relief as the paramedics charged into the house. But when the paramedics got upstairs into the bedroom and they went to go revive Eric, they saw right away it was already too late. Eric was dead.
First responders had no idea what killed Eric. He seemed like a really healthy, fit guy who actually just the day before had gone for a casual eight-mile run, and had no known medical issues. The only thing they knew was he had gotten this allergy shot earlier in the day, but that was pretty routine and shouldn’t have caused any issues.
But the one thing that was kind of unusual about his death, aside from the fact that he was so young and so healthy, was that his body was so cold. He had been dead for quite a while, for at least a couple of hours, probably more.
And so, they asked Kouri Richins when was the last time she saw Eric alive. And Kouri said it was when she got up to go into her son’s room a few hours ago, at which point Eric was already asleep.
And so, the paramedics, they didn’t really have anything to go on, and so they just waited for the coroner to show up, and then eventually the coroner showed up and they took Eric’s body away, and Kouri was left alone in her house with her three kids who were still asleep upstairs.
The narrative effectively builds suspense, gradually unveiling the details of the evening and leading up to the shocking and mysterious conclusion of Eric’s death.
As the detective came down the road, he was waving to Kouri, clearly getting her to stop for a second. And so, Kouri parked her car, hopped outside, and went up to talk to him.
Immediately, Detective Woody got out of his car, walked up to Kouri, and with a grave look on his face, he told her that he had some big news for her and it was going to be pretty upsetting, but he knew he had to tell her in person and right away.
He told her that the autopsy results were in, and they determined that Eric had not died of natural causes. He had actually died from a fentanyl overdose.
Fentanyl is a very powerful opioid that’s often mixed with heroin, and just a little bit of fentanyl can kill someone. Eric, it would turn out, had five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.
Kouri was totally shocked at this news and told the detective that Eric didn’t do drugs. The only drug he did was periodically he would eat a marijuana gummy before bed, but that was it.
So this really didn’t make any sense. The detective was respectful and kind of nodded his head and said, ‘I totally understand that, but you know, these are the results, and we need to find out where he got fentanyl from.
So we’re going to need to search all of the electronic devices in your house to see if we can find communication between your husband and whoever got him the fentanyl.’
Kouri Richins told the detective that, of course, they could do that, but as she began thinking about all of their devices, she suddenly remembered that Eric’s business partner, Cody Wright, had actually taken Eric’s laptop very shortly after Eric had passed away.
Now, Kouri didn’t know why Cody had taken the laptop, but Cody had been a thorn in both Kouri and Eric’s side for several years.
Eric and Cody had been very close friends when they had started their masonry business together about a decade earlier, but they’d had a serious falling out a few years back. The two men had been on this elk hunting trip, and at one point, Eric had illegally shot and killed a bull elk, and Cody had actually reported Eric after this hunting trip to the game wardens.
As a result, Eric got in a lot of trouble and was temporarily banned from hunting anywhere in Utah. The two men still managed to continue to work together and build their masonry business, but it was very clear their relationship was totally fractured and would never be repaired.
Now, Kouri didn’t get into all the details of the tensions with Cody, but she did tell Detective Woody that, ‘You know, if you want access to Eric’s laptop, you got to go talk to Cody because he took it for some reason.
And also, you really just ought to talk to Cody in general because, you know, maybe he has more to do with what happened to Eric and this whole fentanyl thing than he’s letting on.’
The detective told Kouri that he appreciated the information and being allowed to go in and collect all the devices. He said he would go talk to Cody and try to retrieve Eric’s laptop. After that, the detective thanked Kouri and said they’d be in touch soon.
But after this conversation with Kouri Richins, the investigation into Eric’s death kind of stalled out. When police did follow up with Cody, they didn’t find anything really worth pursuing, and outside of talking to Cody, no new information came in about Eric’s death or about his connection to Fentanyl. So really, there was nothing for police to operate on.
And so, while the family just kind of waited for more information to come out about whatever happened to Eric, Kouri just focused her energy on taking care of her three boys and writing this grief book with them.
Finally, on March 5th, 2023, so almost exactly a year after Eric has died, and still police have no idea what happened to him, the grief book was finally done. Kouri self-published it on Amazon under the title ‘Are You With Me?’
And right away, the book was a total hit with parents of grieving children. As the five-star reviews poured in, so too did requests from local media for Kouri to be interviewed and talk about this book and why she wrote it and how her kids are doing.
Kouri Richins had no idea her book would be this successful, and so at first, she was really terrified to do any of these interviews. But eventually, she decided she would just say yes to all the interviews because she was very proud of what her and her kids had created, and she knew Eric would be proud too.
However, what Kouri didn’t know was there was going to be a massive unintended consequence from publishing this book. Ever since Eric was found dead in 2022, the police in Utah began painstakingly searching all of the electronic devices that the Richens owned, and that Cody, Eric’s business partner, owned.
Basically, they were just looking anywhere for some sign of communication between Eric and whoever had given him the lethal fentanyl dose.
At some point during the search of all these devices, the police found something very unusual, and they knew it very likely had to do with Eric’s death. But they didn’t really have any evidence to prove that, and so they just had to kind of sit on it and wait to see what happened next.
And what happened next was, shortly after Kouri published her grief book, it got all this media attention and, in turn, because of this attention, Eric’s death – specifically the unsolved nature of his death – also got a lot of media attention.
Eventually, several people who kept seeing all this news about Eric’s unsolved death reached out to police and said, “You know what, he did not overdose on fentanyl, he was murdered, and I’m almost positive I know who did it.”
And lo and behold, the alleged killer that all these people brought up to the police was the same person that the police in Utah had become suspicious of because of all those unusual things they had found during their search of all of the electronic devices.
And so, on May 8, 2023, not long after getting all these tips about this alleged killer, the police in Utah felt like they finally had enough ammo to go after this person and they headed out to make an arrest.
While we don’t know for sure what happened because again, this story, it’s ongoing, this case has not even gone to trial yet, here is what prosecutors say really happened to Eric Richards on March 3rd, 2022, the night he died.
That night, Eric was upstairs when he heard Kouri Richins down in the kitchen calling for him, saying to come down and join her. And so, he went downstairs, he went into the kitchen, and immediately he saw his wife grinning ear to ear, and she promptly handed him a drink and said, “I have big news and we’re gonna celebrate.”
And after the two of them went up to their bedroom, Kouri told Eric all about this big real estate deal and how their company was about to profit a million dollars. And then after that, they clinked their glasses together, said cheers, and took a sip from their cups.
The drink that Kouri Richins made for both of them was called a Moscow Mule, made with ginger beer, vodka, and lime. But when Kouri mixed Eric’s Moscow Mule, she added one additional ingredient: a lethal dose of fentanyl. It would turn out Kouri had been stealing money from Eric’s bank accounts, and he had found out.
Eric also had discovered that Kouri had been taking out these massive loans in their family’s name, which Eric was really upset about. In fact, Eric was so upset with Kouri that he wanted a divorce and was talking to a divorce lawyer, making sure after the divorce was finalized that Kouri could not touch his money.
But perhaps sensing that a divorce was imminent, and the money faucet would be turned off, Kouri Richins simply took out a two-million-dollar policy on Eric and then killed him. And then shortly after that, in order to help her sons deal with the loss of their father, who she killed, she wrote a grief book about it and sold it for a profit.
Police say Kouri Richins had been working for weeks to figure out the right fentanyl dose to give to her husband. On Valentine’s Day that year, Kouri had given Eric a poisoned sandwich that had fentanyl in it, that she attached a love note to, but it obviously did not kill Eric; he just broke out in hives. So Kouri got a stronger dose of fentanyl, she put it in his drink on March 3rd, and this time it worked.
The story that Kouri Richins told first responders when they arrived, hoping to try to save Eric, was that, you know, they had had the celebratory drink and then they went to bed, and then she had gotten up to see her son, and then, you know, when she came back at 3 a.m, Eric was cold to the touch, and she called 9-1-1.
But in reality, after she poisoned her husband, and he’s laying there still on the bed, slowly dying from this overdose, she just got up and paced around the house for several hours, Googling things like “how to destroy electronic evidence” and “luxury prisons for the rich in America.”
These searches were, of course, the highly unusual and suspicious things that the police saw when they looked through all those devices during the initial part of the search. But as much as it made them think Kouri likely had something to do with this, they didn’t have enough to actually arrest her.
However, after Kouri Richins published her grief book and went on this big tour promoting her grief book, Eric’s family, who’s watching this happen on TV and listening to the radios, I mean, they just couldn’t take it. It disgusted them because they secretly believed that Kouri had killed Eric over money.
They didn’t like Kouri Richins to begin with, and it just felt like she did this and now she’s profiting on Eric’s death.
And so, family members began reaching out to police in Utah, and they said, “You really need to look into Kouri. We think she killed Eric. This whole grief book thing is a joke. She’s a killer.”
Ultimately, it was those calls from Eric’s family to the police, combined with Kouri ‘s very unusual and suspicious search history and electronic activity on the night that Eric died, that allowed police to arrest her at her home on May 8, 2023.
Kouri Richins, who denies any wrongdoing and says she did not kill her husband, is currently charged with aggravated murder, which could lead to the death penalty if she’s convicted. She’s being held without bail while she awaits trial, and her book, “Are You With Me”, is no longer being sold on Amazon.
