Utah author convicted of murdering husband with fentanyl-laced drink

Kouri Darden Richins stood in a courtroom in Park City, Utah, on Monday afternoon as a jury deliberated for three hours before returning with a verdict that would reshape the rest of her life. The 35-year-old woman was found guilty of first-degree aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, forgery, and insurance fraud in the death of her husband, Eric Richins, who died on March 4, 2022, from a fentanyl overdose in their home in Kamas, near Park City. She now faces 25 years to life in prison, with sentencing scheduled for May 13.

The case carried an unusual dimension: Richins had published a children's book titled "Are You with Me?" within a year of her husband's death—a ghost-written work about grief and processing loss. The book's existence would later become part of the narrative prosecutors wove about a woman who, they argued, carefully constructed a public persona while committing a private crime.

According to prosecutors, Richins poisoned Eric Richins by mixing him a Moscow Mule laced with nearly five times the lethal dose of fentanyl. But the killing was not impulsive. Months earlier, on Valentine's Day 2022, she had attempted to poison him again, this time with a sandwich she had prepared after asking the family housekeeper to help her obtain illicit street drugs. That attempt made him sick but did not kill him. The second poisoning, in early March, succeeded.

Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth laid out a financial motive during closing arguments. Richins' real estate business was failing—what he called a "death spiral." She wanted a divorce, but the prenuptial agreement she had signed would have left her with very little money. Before her husband died, Richins forged his signature on four life insurance policies, positioning herself to collect substantially more than she would have received through divorce settlement. The math was stark: Eric Richins was worth far more to her dead than alive, or so the prosecution argued.

The defense presented a different picture. Attorney Wendy Lewis suggested that Eric Richins, who suffered from chronic pain, could have brought illicit drugs home from a trip to Mexico and accidentally overdosed. She acknowledged that Richins' business was struggling, but countered that her husband's income made him valuable to her living, not dead. The defense called no witnesses. Richins herself did not testify.

The trial lasted three weeks, with 13 days of testimony at the Summit County Courthouse. The jury's swift deliberation—just three hours—suggested the evidence had been persuasive. Eric Richins' sister, Amy Richins, spoke to reporters after the verdict. "Honestly, I feel like we're all in shock," she said. "It's been a long time coming. So just very happy that we got justice for my brother."

The conviction closes one chapter but opens another. Richins will return to court in May for sentencing, where a judge will determine whether she spends the next 25 years in prison or the rest of her life behind bars. The children's book she published—a work ostensibly about navigating grief—will remain in circulation, a peculiar artifact of a case that turned on the question of whether someone can write convincingly about loss while orchestrating it.