Update: Kouri Richins trial: Jury says “guilty” of aggravated murder after about 3 hours of deliberations

Watched by livestream viewers across the country, Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth called more than 40 witnesses as he tried to prove Kouri Richins schemed to kill her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl.

Richins, a 35-year-old mother of three who wrote a children’s book about grief after her husband died, has maintained her innocence and waived her right to testify. Her defense lawyers had argued prosecutors would not be able to prove she gave her husband fentanyl, and they did not call any witnesses of their own.

After closing arguments Monday, jurors will begin weighing the evidence surrounding the death of Eric Richins, at 39, in the family’s Kamas home in 2022. Here is what they will consider.

Prosecutors: Richins was “chronically unhappy” in her marriage and had money problems

Prosecutors charged Richins with five felonies: one count of aggravated murder in Eric Richins’ death, one count of attempted aggravated murder related to his illness after he ate a sandwich on February 14, 2022, two counts of insurance fraud and one count of forgery.

Kouri and Eric Richins were married in 2013. The couple soon had three boys, who they were raising in Kamas while she flipped houses in Summit County and he ran a successful stonemasonry business.

But in 2020, Eric Richins accused her of “ongoing abuse and misuse of his finances” and removed her as a beneficiary of his life insurance policy, according to charging documents. He also transferred his home and company interest to a trust managed by his sister, Katie Richins-Benson, the documents state.

In 2021, Richins allegedly created false bank statements to obtain a loan using financial details from her husband’s company, according to charging documents.

On the day Eric Richins died, Richins owed over $4.5 million to over 20 different lenders — and she didn’t have the ability to service that debt because her bank accounts were exhausted, Bloodworth said during his opening statement.

On Dec. 17, 2021 — less than three months before Eric Richins died — Richins told her friend Becky Lloyd that “she was feeling trapped; she was feeling like there wasn’t an easy way forward out of her marriage,” Lloyd testified.

Lloyd added that during the conversation, Richins told her “in many ways, it would be better if he were dead.”

Richins was having an affair

Robert Josh Grossman testified that he met Richins while working for her, flipping houses in South Carolina. In 2020, their relationship turned romantic and he moved to Utah, where he first stayed at a home he was helping her flip in Summit County, he said.

Although they never had a contractual agreement for his work, Grossman said, “she took care of me.” Richins gave him “lump sums” when he needed money; one amounted to $25,000, Grossman told defense attorney Wendy Lewis.

Grossman was in love with Richins, he told the jury, and he thought she was in love with him. The jury saw pages of the texts they exchanged.

On the afternoon of March 4, 2022, text records showed, Richins told Grossman that her husband had died. That evening, she added: “They think aneurysm.”

After Eric Richins’ death, Richins was emotionally exhausted, Grossman said. She ended their relationship months later, Grossman said, after they had a few disagreements.

“Things changed after Eric passed,” Grossman said.

When he learned in 2023 that Richins had been charged with killing her husband, “I was overwhelmed with guilt, sorrow, over my wrongdoings,” Grossman testified on March 4, which was the fourth anniversary of Eric’s death. “You know, infidelity.”

Defense: Lack of physical evidence

Carmen Lauber, Richins’ former housekeeper, told the jury that she bought pills for Richins four times in early 2022, according to CNN. But Robert Crozier — the man Lauber said she purchased pills from three times — said during his testimony that he wasn’t selling fentanyl at the time of the sales, only oxycodone.

Both Lauber and Crozier have received immunity for their testimony in the case, CNN reported.

Defense attorneys have also pointed to evidence that Eric Richins had access to drugs, such as a 2016 prescription for hydrocodone, marijuana gummies found in the Richins home, and via a trip to Mexico that he took weeks before his death.

During her final questioning of the lead detective, defense attorney Kathy Nester had him confirm the investigation had continued for more than four years, involving 10 search warrants and multiple agencies.

“In all of that, we have no murder weapon, like you haven’t found anything that was connected to Eric’s death, no fentanyl in the house, correct?” she asked.

“There was a boatload of fentanyl in his stomach that came out of the house with him,” Summit County Sheriff’s Detective Jeff O’Driscoll replied.

“Other than what’s in his stomach, did you find anything else that had fentanyl in it?” Nester followed up.

“No,” he said. Asked whether he knew how the fatal dose of fentanyl was administered to Eric Richins, he answered: “That’s all I know, is that he took it orally.”

Summit County Sheriff’s Office patrol deputy Vincent Nguyen testified early in the trial that investigators did not collect the cups from the celebratory drinks Eric and Kouri Richins had the evening before he died.

Those cups were never tested, Nester had said during her opening statement. “What you will never hear … is how that fentanyl got inside of [Eric Richins],” she said, “because there’s zero evidence of that.”