Jessica SchreifelsConvicted murderer Kouri Richins hasn’t been able to speak to her sons since early 2024, after their custody was transferred to her husband’s family.
She sent her children letters and tried calling — but she said they never got her messages.
So she said she would take the chance to speak to them on Wednesday, at her sentencing hearing, in her jail clothes — hoping that they one day will hear her message.
“The one thing I need you boys to know is that I did not abandon you,” Richins said, becoming emotional. “Regardless of what anyone tells you, I would never ever leave you boys. And I am so sorry that even for one second you think that I did.”
Richins’ attorney had told 3rd District Judge Richard Mrazik that Richins maintains her innocence, and plans to fight a jury’s verdict that she poisoned her husband, Eric Richins.
The 36-year-old woman spent most of her court statement not declaring her innocence, but speaking directly to her young sons — giving them advice about marriage, life and the importance of supporting one another. The speech marked her first public remarks in a case that has garnered widespread attention.
“Be like your dad,” she said tearfully.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Surrounded by her attorneys, Kouri Richins speaks at her sentencing in 3rd District Court in Park City on Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
About a half hour into her statement, Richins said she wasn’t guilty and promised her sons that she would come home some day.
“I will appeal,” she said, “and fight the charges. No matter how long it takes.”
Mrazik sentenced Richins on Wednesday to the maximum penalty he could: life in prison without the opportunity of parole. The judge said that the sentence was deserved because Richins tried to poison her husband not once, but twice.
She was, he said, “too dangerous to ever be free.”
[Read more: Judge sentences Kouri Richins to life in prison for husband’s murder.]
The judge contemplated how Richins’ sons might feel about her prison sentence decades from now — and whether they would want the finality that a life sentence gave, or the chance to advocate for their mother at a future parole hearing.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Third District Judge Richard Mrazik at the sentencing of Kouri Richins in Park City on Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
His worry, he said, “comes from a place of genuine concern and humility of the court’s inability to predict the future and how this case will evolve.”
In March, jurors deliberated for three hours before they found Richins guilty of murdering her husband in the couple’s Summit County home. She was also convicted of attempted aggravated murder, two counts of insurance fraud and one count of forgery. She did not testify in her own defense.
In her statement she read aloud Wednesday, Richins told her children she was sorry that eight strangers who served as jurors had a “right to determine our future” — and did so with a quick verdict.
“In a perfect world, there might be justice,” Richins said. “But in a perfect world, nothing ever goes wrong.”
[Read more: Full hearing recap: Utah mom Kouri Richins sentenced to life in prison.]
Richins was charged in May 2023, months after she published a children’s book about grief.
Prosecutors alleged she slipped a lethal dose of fentanyl in a Moscow mule cocktail she made for Eric in March 2022. And, they said, she tried to poison him weeks prior to his death with a fentanyl-laced sandwich. After that incident, prosecutors say Eric was growing suspicious and told a friend that he thought his wife had poisoned him.
Prosecutors alleged that Richins was having an affair and was in financial chaos at her real estate business, which motivated her to kill her husband.
Richins told her sons in her statement that “I fell in love with someone who wasn’t your dad” and “your dad fell in love with someone who wasn’t me.” She said that despite the challenges of their marriage, they never separated and always came back to each other, “because our love never failed.”
Earlier in the hearing, her sons’ therapists read statements the children had written. They expressed anger at their mother, and said they hope she is never released from prison. All were under the age of 10 when their father was murdered.
Richins made one more promise to her sons Wednesday before she was sentenced: She said she would never stop writing them letters, and would keep trying to call.
