In a stunning twist to a case that already gripped the nation, Kouri Richins… a Utah mother and children’s book author once seen as a grieving widow… is now facing 26 new criminal charges, including fraud, forgery, and money laundering, as prosecutors build a case alleging she murdered her husband with a fentanyl-laced cocktail.
Richins made headlines in 2023 after publishing “Are You With Me?”… a heartfelt book meant to help children process the loss of a parent. The chilling irony? Authorities believe she killed her husband, Eric Richins, just a year earlier in March 2022.
The latest charges, filed Friday in Utah, include:
- 5 counts of second-degree felony mortgage fraud
- 7 counts of felony money laundering
- 5 counts of third-degree forgery
- 7 counts of issuing bad checks
- 1 count of communications fraud
- 1 count of unlawful activity pattern
Kouri and Eric Richins married in 2013. Eric, a successful stone mason, had a prenuptial agreement in place protecting his business… unless he died while still married, in which case it would go to Kouri. By 2019, prosecutors say Kouri secretly began siphoning funds from Eric’s personal accounts, prompting him to quietly create a living trust that excluded her and instead named his sister, Katie Richins-Benson, as trustee.
Court documents reveal that between 2021 and 2022, Kouri allegedly:
- Used falsified bank statements to secure mortgages
- Wrote bad checks to cover mounting debt
- Laundered money through various accounts
- Defrauded a close friend out of a home down payment, ultimately leading to the friend’s eviction
But perhaps most damning is the accusation that Kouri purchased a life insurance policy on Eric, attempted to poison him on previous occasions, and ultimately succeeded in March 2022 by slipping a fatal dose of fentanyl into a celebratory drink.
Just one year after Eric’s suspicious death, Kouri Richins published her grief book, allegedly inspired by the emotional toll her children faced. But in May 2023, her story unraveled. She was arrested and charged with murder, along with multiple counts of witness tampering. She’s been held without bail ever since.
Her trial date has not been set.
