Her defence crew selected to not name any witnesses, and rested their case with out having her take the stand to testify in her personal defence.
Richins was additionally found guilty of fraudulently claiming insurance coverage advantages after her husband’s demise at their dwelling outdoors the ski resort city of Park City. Prosecutors mentioned in the course of the trial that she falsely believed she would in inherit his property price greater than $4m after he died.
They additionally mentioned she was planning a future with one other man who she had been having an affair with.
Officials mentioned Richins was found to have poisoned her husband’s sandwich in an earlier incident, practically killing him, earlier than later growing the dosage till he died. She was additionally found guilty of tried homicide over this incident.
Richins pleaded not guilty to all the fees. The most severe, aggravated homicide, carries a sentence of 25 years to life in jail.
“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” mentioned Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth.
Richins was arrested in March, 2023 – two months after she printed the image guide Are You With Me?, which she mentioned was designed to assist individuals – together with her three youngsters – deal with the demise of a beloved one.
“We wrote this book and we’re really hoping that it provides some comfort for not just obviously, our family, but other families that are going through the same thing,” she informed informed radio station KPCW in an interview earlier than her arrest.
She devoted the guide to her husband, calling him “my amazing husband and a wonderful father”.
According to courtroom paperwork, between December 2021 and February 2022, Kouri Richins texted an individual who had beforehand been arrested on drug costs asking for prescription ache medicine.
She obtained hydrocodone tablets, the courtroom paperwork mentioned, earlier than she requested one thing stronger – “some of the Michael Jackson stuff”, asking particularly for fentanyl.
Three days after she allegedly obtained the medicine, she and her husband had a Valentine’s Day dinner, after which he fell in poor health.
“Eric believed that he had been poisoned,” the courtroom paperwork mentioned. “Eric told a friend that he thought his wife was trying to poison him.”
Two weeks later, in response to courtroom paperwork, Richins acquired extra fentanyl.
Prosecutors mentioned that on 4 March 2022, Richins referred to as the police within the center of the evening to say she had found her husband unresponsive.
She informed authorities she had served her husband a combined vodka drink in mattress after which went to sleep with one of her younger youngsters who was having an evening terror. She later returned to her husband of their room the place she mentioned she found him “cold to the touch”.
A health worker later found Mr Richins died from a fentanyl overdose. He had 5 occasions the deadly dosage of the drug in his system.
