The Case Against Kouri Richins

Kouri Richins told her sons to forgive. Prosecutors say she spent every day before that speech attacking the people around this case from inside her jail cell — and the sentencing memo has all of it. A fake dating profile made for the lead detective and posted online. What prosecutors call false reports filed against the family raising her boys. Hired a lawyer to go after her sister-in-law. Federa...

Kouri Richins' boys couldn't stand in that courtroom and say what they needed to say. They wrote it down and gave it to their therapists. What those therapists read out loud described locked doors, animals dying because nobody cared for them, a brother sneaking food to a sibling shut away in his bedroom, and a childhood where fear was the only constant. Every one of them asked the judge for the sa...

Kouri Richins' boys couldn't stand up in that courtroom and say what they needed to say. They're too young and too scared. So they wrote it down and asked their therapists to read it for them. What they wrote is devastating. One boy talked about waking up to sirens and not being able to do anything. Another described becoming a parent to his younger brother — feeding him, walking him to the bus —...

Before the judge even handed down life without parole, Kouri Richins was already making promises from inside her jail cell. She wrote that she'd "expose this county, the prosecution, the judge, the Richins, the investigation." She wrote "they picked the wrong one." She wrote "they haven't seen anything yet." Then she stood in a courtroom and told her sons — children she hasn't seen or spoken to si...

Kouri Richins looked at her three boys during sentencing and told them she'd fight her conviction "no matter how long it takes." She called the verdict an "absolute lie." She said "we're going to make this right." But her own children had already told the judge exactly what they wanted — their mother locked away forever. The oldest, now thirteen, said he's afraid she'd come after him and his broth...

She didn't have to speak to tell the room who she is. Kouri Richins' face told the story before she ever opened her mouth — and a psychotherapist with thirty years of experience is here to translate. Shavaun Scott joins this three-part deep dive into every behavioral moment of the Kouri Richins sentencing. The contempt visible during victim impact statements from Eric's family and the children who...

Three boys just told a judge they're afraid of their mother. They asked for life without parole. They described a childhood they don't miss. And then Kouri Richins stood up and promised those same boys she'd be back. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott breaks down the 45-minute sentencing speech that told three traumatized children their reality is wrong, their feelings have been manufactured by the fam...

The split happened in plain view. While Eric's family described devastation — and while her own sons described survival — Kouri showed contempt. The instant the defense stepped in with praise, loyalty, and proclamations of innocence, the tears started flowing. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott examines the behavioral flip and what it reveals about Kouri's psychological wiring. She breaks down the clin...

Her youngest wants her in prison forever. Her middle child said she never apologized for anything. Her oldest said he doesn't miss her and fears what she'd do if she got out. All three wrote statements that were read by their therapists because they cannot be in the same room with her. And Kouri Richins sat at the defense table making faces. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott breaks down the behavioral...

The sentencing memo in the Kouri Richins case doesn’t just recommend life without parole. It documents a campaign. According to prosecutors, every person who stood between Kouri and what she wanted got a file opened on them — from her jail cell, through proxies, while she prepared a courtroom speech about love. The detective who investigated her got a fake dating profile posted in his name. The si...

Every one of those boys said the same thing: keep her away. Their words were read by therapists because the children couldn’t stand in that courtroom. They described locked doors, animals left to die, a brother smuggling food to a sibling isolated in his own bedroom, and years of being afraid. Kouri Richins heard all of that and then delivered a forty-minute speech that didn’t acknowledge a single...

Kouri Richins had forty minutes. She used every one of them. She talked about herself. She talked about her innocence. She told her sons to "be like your dad" and to "ignore the noise." She told them their memories were "an absolute lie" and to distrust the people keeping them safe. In forty minutes, she never once acknowledged what her children had just told the court through three therapists who...

Every one of Kouri Richins’ children asked a judge for the same thing: keep her away from us. Her response was to look into that courtroom and promise she’s on her way back. The boys’ statements described a house where bedroom doors were locked from the outside, where a brother had to smuggle meals to a sibling shut away in his room, where animals starved and froze because the only adult present c...

Three children wrote down what living with Kouri Richins was actually like — and then asked their therapists to say it out loud because they still cannot face her themselves. What came out in that courtroom wasn’t legal argument. It wasn’t prosecution theory. It was the unfiltered testimony of boys who described locked bedroom doors, starving animals, a brother smuggling food to a sibling who’d be...

Kouri Richins stood at a podium in a lime-green jail uniform and handcuffs and delivered a forty-minute prepared statement addressed to three boys who weren't in the courtroom — and who, through their therapists, had just told a judge they're scared of her and want her locked up forever. She didn't use those forty minutes to address what her children described. Not the locked rooms. Not the dead a...

Kouri Richins has been sentenced to Life Without Parole after being convicted in the murder of her husband, Eric Richins, who died from fentanyl poisoning inside the couple’s Kamas, Utah home in March 2022.She faces consecutive sentences for the other four charges. The trial centered on prosecutors’ claims that Richins poisoned Eric after secretly taking out life insurance policies, facing severe...

  By the time you reach a sentencing hearing, the jury has already spoken. The defense knows that. Which makes what Kouri Richins' attorneys said in that courtroom even more worth paying attention to. Attorney Wendy Lewis led the charge, and she didn't soften a single word. Her argument on remorse was blunt: you cannot ask someone to be sorry for something they insist they didn't do. Lewis told th...

Courts deal in evidence. Families deal in loss. Sentencing is where those two things finally share a room. Kouri Richins has been sentenced to [INSERT SENTENCE] for the murder of her husband Eric — killed, prosecutors argued, with a deliberate overdose of fentanyl slipped to him in March 2022 while their children were in the house. A jury agreed. A judge has now put a number on it. But before that...

 Eric Richins knew. He knew his marriage was dangerous. He knew his wife's business was collapsing. He knew she needed him dead more than she needed him alive. So he went to divorce attorneys. He went to estate planners. He removed Kouri from his will. He cut her from his life insurance. He built a trust she didn't know about — designed specifically to protect their three sons from the woman he'd...

She bowed her head when the verdict was read. Five charges. Five guilty. A juror was wiping his eyes. Another stared directly at her. Three hours of deliberation after thirteen days of trial. In the final episode of our definitive five-part Kouri Richins series, we cover the reckoning — the trial, the zero-witness defense, Bloodworth’s devastating closing, and the three-hour verdict that ended the...

She searched “if someone is poisned what does it go down on the death certificate as.” Not overdosed. Poisoned. Her own word. In part four of our five-part definitive series, we lay out the digital evidence and public performances that sealed Kouri Richins’ conviction. Over 800 deleted text messages. A new phone loaded with searches about fentanyl dosages, prison conditions, and whether the FBI wa...

Unlock at 3:06 a.m. Speaker at 3:08. The 911 call two minutes later. That’s the timeline. No frantic calls to family. No calls to friends. Just a precise, measured sequence that suggests a woman who knew exactly what she was about to report. In part three of our five-part definitive series, we walk through the night Kouri Richins killed her husband with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule and the first 7...

She bought the pills. She asked for stronger ones. She asked for the strongest thing available. And then she put them in her husband’s drink. In part two of our definitive five-part Kouri Richins series, we follow the fentanyl from a gas station in Draper, Utah, to Eric Richins’ bloodstream. The procurement chain ran through Carmen Lauber, Kouri’s housekeeper, who testified she bought drugs at Kou...

A prenuptial agreement. One clause. If Eric Richins died while they were married, Kouri would inherit everything. Divorce meant walking away with nothing. Death meant millions. That single clause in a document signed on their wedding day became the engine of a murder that a jury needed less than three hours to see through. In this first installment of our five-part definitive series, we examine th...

The verdict is in. Kouri Richins is guilty of charges that she poisoned her husband with fentanyl. But this part that still lands like a gut punch — She wrote a children's book about his death and went on television to promote it. The jury took three hours. Three hours to convict her on all counts. Apparently, they didn't need much time. But verdicts don't raise kids. Her three sons were 9, 7, and...