A Utah grief author accused of fatally poisoning her husband has spoken out for the first time from jail.
Kouri Richins, 34, from Park City, is charged with murdering her husband Eric, 39, back on 4 March 2022 by slipping a lethal dose of fentanyl into his Moscow mule.
Now, two years on from his death and one year since her arrest on 8 May 2023, Ms Richins has broken her silence in s jailhouse interview.
Speaking out from Summit County Jail, east of Salt Lake City, Ms Richins protested her innocence and vowed “war” against authorities for taking “an innocent mom away from her babies”.
“I’ve been silent for a year, locked away from my kids, my family, my life, living with the media telling the world who they think I am, what they think I’ve done or how they think I’ve lived,” she said in recorded comments to Dateline.
“You took an innocent mom away from her babies. And this means war,” Ms Richins concluded.
Prosecutors allege that Ms Richins was $1.8m in debt and had fraudulently obtained a nearly $2m life insurance policy on her husband.
She first tried to kill her husband with a spiked sandwich on Valentine’s Day 2022, according to charging documents.
After ingesting the food, Richins broke out in hives and blacked out, prosecutors said.
“I think my wife tried to poison me,” Mr Richins’ friend claimed he said, after injecting himself with his son’s EpiPen and drinking a bottle of allergy relief medicine Benadryl.
The couple’s housekeeper told investigators that she had given Ms Richins fentanyl pills a couple of days before that incident.
Later that month, Ms Richins allegedly told the housekeeper that the fentanyl had been too weak and asked her to find stronger pills, according to charging documents.
Then, in May 2022, Ms Richins allegedly tried to kill her husband again – and this time succeeded.
Prosecutors allege that she slipped five times the lethal dose of fentanyl – which is 50 times more porent than heroin – into his Moscow mule.
Ms Richins called 911 in the middle of the night to report that she had found her husband “cold to the touch” at the foot of their bed, according to the police report.
He was pronounced dead at the scene, with a toxicology report finding a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. They also found trace amounts of the antipsychotic medication, Quetiapine, that seemingly belonged to his wife.
Following his death, the mother-of-three proceeded to write a children’s book about grief called Are You With Me?, with its blurb stating it “gently guides children through the difficult experience of losing a loved one,” a challenge personally faced from the “loving mother” who wrote the book.
She dedicated it to her “amazing” husband of nine years.
Her recent comments came after a judge granted her lawyers’ request to withdraw from her defense, with lead attorney Skye Lazaro attributing the request to the “irreconcilable and nonwaivable situation,” according to a recent filing.
Ms Richins said in a statement that it was neither her lawyers’ nor her own choice and described her “great devastation”.
“Although I am extremely disappointed with where we’re at right now with this case, I’m anxious. I’m anxious to prove my innocence. I’m anxious to get to trial,” she added.
Their withdrawal came just one day after Ms Richins’ legal team asked the judge to disqualify prosecutors from the case. alleging that they had listened to jailhouse calls between Ms Richins and her legal team.
The defense argued that this violated the defendant’s constitutional right to effective counsel. Ms Richins’ lawyers, however, had failed to use an app to shield calls, which the lawyers seemingly consented to.
Summit County’s top elected prosecutor, Margaret Olson, denied being aware of the practice, according to court filings, while lead prosecutor Brad Bloodworth insisted prosecutors had not listened to any of the calls.
