The Case Against Kouri Richins

Eric Richins knew something was wrong. He documented it. He restructured his estate, told his attorney he was protecting his children from his wife, and took legal steps to put his fear on the record. And then he died in that house anyway. This week on Hidden Killers, Tony Brueski, psychotherapist Shavaun Scott, and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke examine the human story underne...

Eric Richins restructured his estate roughly eighteen months before he died. He told his attorney exactly why: to protect his children from his wife. He knew something was wrong. He documented it. He took legal steps to protect the people he loved. And then he died in that house anyway. A jury just said his wife killed him. This week on Hidden Killers, Tony Brueski breaks down the full weight of w...

The jury came back guilty. For the family of Eric Richins, that word carries everything they fought for over four years of investigation, hearings, and trial. And yet the questions that settle into a family after a verdict like this — they don't disappear when the gavel comes down. This week on Hidden Killers, we look at what the conviction of Kouri Richins means for the people who were closest to...

This channel has covered every turn of the Kouri Richins case — from the night Eric died to the arrest, the pretrial hearings, and the three-week trial that just ended with a unanimous guilty verdict on all five counts. Now we're looking at what comes after. If you've followed this case from the beginning, you already know the facts. What this episode digs into is the question the facts keep point...

Eric Richins knew. He restructured his estate. He sat across from his attorney and said, explicitly, that he needed to protect his children from their mother. He put that fear into legal documents. He took every step available to him. And then he died in that house anyway. A Summit County jury just told the world what happened to him. Kouri Richins has been found guilty of his murder. Fentanyl. No...

Eric Richins told people after Valentine's Day 2022 that he believed his wife was trying to poison him. He had been violently ill. He said it out loud to people he trusted. Prosecutors say Kouri made him a Moscow Mule with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl approximately a month later. He was dead by morning. Bobby Curley grabbed a nurse's arm in a hospital on September 22, 1991. Weak, barely...

Eric Richins signed mortgage papers with his wife. He called his friends to tell them about the new house. He had no idea what she was allegedly planning. That's the Melanie McGuire case — but the behavioral pattern it documents sits at the center of what prosecutors argued was happening inside the Richins marriage, and it's where this week's Hidden Killers' Week in Review begins. Kouri Richins al...

Eric Richins saw it before anyone else did. Eighteen months before he died, he quietly visited an estate attorney. He didn't file charges. He didn't go public. He simply had his estate restructured to protect his children — and he specifically told that attorney about recently discovered and ongoing abuse and misuse of finances. He stayed in the marriage. He said nothing. According to prosecutors,...

Eric Richins told multiple people he believed his wife was trying to poison him. He said it eighteen days before he died. This week in Hidden Killers' Week in Review, the expert analysis that surrounded the final days of the Kouri Richins trial tells the story of how that warning — and everything that came after it — became the foundation of a guilty verdict on all counts. Before the jury returned...

For the people who loved Eric Richins and followed every day of this trial, the guilty verdict on all counts was the outcome the evidence demanded. This week in Hidden Killers' Week in Review, we go back through the case that got there — and the defense strategy that chose not to answer it. Tony Brueski walks through the full prosecution record: the $4.5 million in alleged debt that prosecutors sa...

The verdict is in. Kouri Richins has been found guilty on all counts in the murder of Eric Richins. This week in Hidden Killers' Week in Review, we look back at the final days of trial that brought the jury to that conclusion in three hours. On Day 13, the defense rested without calling a single witness. Three were reportedly ready. The decision came after a one-hour recess following the judge's d...

At the center of every document filed, every exhibit entered, every expert analysis offered in this case is a fact that doesn't change: Eric Richins is gone, and five children are living in the aftermath of what allegedly happened to their father. This week in Hidden Killers' Week in Review, the focus is on understanding — as completely as possible — the woman those children called their mother. T...

Kouri Richins is watching her story fall apart in real time. Every day in Utah, another witness testifies. Another text message is read. Another crack in the foundation. This is Part 5 of The Perfect Wife — examining why the long con always ends. Denise Williams held hers together for seventeen years. Mike Williams disappeared December 2000. Duck hunting trip. Official story: drowned, eaten by all...

You've followed every day of this trial. You know the testimony, the texts, the timeline. And when the verdict came in, it probably didn't feel like a finish line — it felt like a different kind of question mark. This listener Q&A is built for you. Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke go straight to the things that the verdict didn't resolve: whether Carmen Lauber's immunity deal was justice or a dea...

After Eric Richins died, Kouri wrote a children's book. "Are You With Me?" About a father who dies and becomes a firefly. She promoted it on morning television. Played the grieving widow. Prosecutors say she killed him with fentanyl. This is Part 4 of The Perfect Wife — examining the narcissist's need to control the narrative. Nancy Crampton-Brophy understood this impulse. In 2011, she wrote "How...

The trial answered the legal questions. This conversation answers the human ones. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott joins Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke for a full examination of what the Kouri Richins case reveals about life inside a relationship with someone operating with narcissistic or borderline personality traits — told across the complete arc of that relationship. The beginning, where the trap...

Prosecutors say Eric Richins was quietly consulting divorce attorneys and adjusting his estate before he died. He was, by all indication, trying to find a way out. According to the prosecution, that's when everything changed. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott joins Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke to examine what the final phase of a relationship like this looks like — what triggers the end, how someone...

Prosecutors described a marriage where Eric Richins was systematically deceived — financially, emotionally, and ultimately fatally. But the machinery behind that kind of sustained deception doesn't switch on all at once. It builds slowly, over years, in ways the person experiencing it can feel but often can't name. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott joins Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke to examine what w...

Before the fentanyl. Before the alleged forgeries. Before the affair. Before any of what prosecutors say happened in the Kouri Richins case — there was a beginning. A courtship. A relationship that by all outward appearances looked like love. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott joins Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke to examine what that beginning likely looked like through the lens of narcissistic and bord...

Kouri Richins sat on camera before her arrest and promoted a children's grief book she paid someone else to write. She talked about loss, healing, and her children. A jury has since convicted her of murdering the man the book was about. Tony Brueski brings psychotherapist Shavaun Scott and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke to examine that interview with everything the jury now kno...

Kouri Richins allegedly texted Josh Grossman while married to Eric: "If I was divorced right now and asked you to marry me tomorrow, you would?" She had a secret $250,000 HELOC Eric didn't know about. Prosecutors say she searched for fentanyl while he was still alive. This is Part 3 of The Perfect Wife — examining the premeditated mind. Women living two complete lives. The wife their husbands knew...

Kouri Richins has been convicted of aggravated murder. Tony Brueski, defense attorney Bob Motta, and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke break down everything that happened inside that Summit County courtroom — from the prosecution's circumstantial case built around motive and money, to a defense that called zero witnesses and still made the state fight for every inch, to the appell...

Kouri Richins has been convicted of aggravated murder. Her defense team preserved a record throughout this trial that now becomes the foundation for what comes next. Tony Brueski, defense attorney Bob Motta, and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke break down what's in it. The video of investigators telling Carmen Lauber they needed details to convict Kouri — the jury saw it and conv...

The defense in the Kouri Richins murder trial has argued that Eric Richins was a financially controlling husband — that Kouri felt trapped, unsupported, and forced to act independently because he never believed in her. Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty to all charges. This episode goes directly at that narrative — and at the documented evidence that exists on the other side of it. According to...

The Kouri Richins defense team called no witnesses, presented nothing from their side, and lost. Tony Brueski, defense attorney Bob Motta, and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke break down exactly what happened. The jury watched investigators on tape telling Carmen Lauber they needed details to convict Kouri — and convicted anyway. Detective O'Driscoll confirmed four years of inves...