The Utah mother and grief-book author was also found guilty of attempted murder, forgery and insurance fraud.
PARK CITY, UT — A Utah jury on Monday found Kouri Richins guilty of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, after prosecutors said she poisoned him with fentanyl at their home in March 2022 and later tried to profit from his death.
The verdict closed one of Utah’s most closely watched murder trials, a case that drew national attention because Richins later self-published a children’s book about grief after her husband’s death. Jurors convicted her of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, forgery and insurance fraud after about three hours of deliberations. The decision followed three weeks of testimony in Summit County, where prosecutors argued Richins killed for money while her lawyers said the state had built its case on shaky inferences and an unreliable witness.
Judge Richard Mrazik read the verdict shortly after 6:30 p.m. in a courtroom outside Park City. Richins stared down and took deep breaths as each guilty finding was announced. Family members on both sides cried, embraced and left the courtroom in an emotional scene after the hearing ended. The trial had started Feb. 23 and was expected to last five weeks, but it moved faster after Richins waived her right to testify and her lawyers rested without calling witnesses. Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth had told jurors that Richins slipped a fatal amount of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule that Eric Richins drank on March 4, 2022, at the couple’s home near the Kamas and Park City area. Bloodworth said the killing was not sudden or accidental. “She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” he said in closing argument.
Jurors also found Richins guilty of trying to poison her husband weeks earlier with a fentanyl-laced sandwich on Valentine’s Day, a charge prosecutors used to show planning and intent. In the murder count, the state said the drink Eric Richins consumed contained nearly five times a lethal dose of fentanyl. Prosecutors told jurors Richins was buried under roughly $4.5 million in debt tied to her real estate business and falsely believed she would take control of an estate worth more than $4 million after her husband died. They said she had quietly opened life insurance policies on him years earlier without his knowledge and later filed claims after his death. The jury accepted that broader financial picture, convicting her on the forgery and insurance counts that prosecutors said were part of the same pattern. Defense attorney Wendy Lewis told jurors the state had not shown exactly how the fentanyl got into the drink and had asked them to fill gaps with suspicion. “They haven’t done their job,” Lewis said, arguing that prosecutors relied on “paper-thin evidence.”
A large part of the prosecution’s case centered on records, messages and digital evidence. Jurors heard that Richins had searched online for phrases including “what is a lethal dose of fetanayl,” “luxury prisons for the rich America” and a question about how a poisoning would appear on a death certificate. Prosecutors also introduced text messages between Richins and Robert Josh Grossman, a man they said she was seeing while still married, to argue that she was imagining a future outside the marriage. Another major witness was Carmen Lauber, the family’s housekeeper, who testified that she sold fentanyl to Richins more than once. Bloodworth told jurors Richins asked for “the Michael Jackson stuff,” which he argued showed she wanted a drug strong enough to kill. The defense attacked Lauber’s credibility from start to finish, pointing to her shifting statements and her position in a drug court program. Lawyers for Richins argued Lauber had a strong reason to cooperate with investigators and shape her story to protect herself. That dispute sat at the center of the trial, and the defense said it left reasonable doubt. Still, prosecutors answered with financial records, phone data, insurance documents and the timeline around Eric Richins’ death.
The case had already drawn intense interest long before jurors were seated. In May 2023, about a year after Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins promoted a self-published children’s book titled “Are You With Me?” The book described a father watching over his son after death and was presented publicly as a way to help the couple’s children process sudden loss. Weeks later, Richins was arrested and charged with murder. Prosecutors later used the book and its promotion to argue that she was building a public image of a grieving widow while hiding what really happened. The story grew even larger as court filings laid out a bitter money dispute, secret insurance policies and competing claims about Eric Richins’ estate. Prosecutors said she misunderstood the terms of the couple’s prenuptial agreement and thought she would inherit more than she actually could. Defense lawyers, meanwhile, tried to shift attention to tensions between Richins and her late husband’s family, especially over the estate, and argued that investigators locked onto one theory too early. Jurors were told about those family disputes, but they were also asked to focus on the evidence tied to the poisoning itself.
Monday’s convictions do not end Richins’ legal troubles. Sentencing is set for May 13, the date Eric Richins would have turned 44. The aggravated murder count alone carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. KPCW reported that Richins was convicted on all five counts in this trial, and prosecutors have separately said she still faces additional financial crime charges in another case. Those accusations include allegations of mortgage fraud, money laundering, forgery, bad checks and other misconduct tied to her business dealings, though they were not decided by Monday’s verdict. For now, the murder conviction is the most important legal step in the case, and the next hearing will focus on punishment. It may also be the next time the victim’s family and Richins’ supporters address the court in detail. Eric Richins’ sister, Amy Richins, said after the verdict that the family felt shock and relief after the long wait for trial. She said they could now focus on honoring her brother and supporting his sons.
The courtroom reaction showed how personal and painful the case has remained four years after Eric Richins died. Bloodworth replayed part of Richins’ 911 call during closing arguments and told jurors it was not the sound of a new widow but of “a wife becoming a black widow,” one of the trial’s sharpest lines. Lewis pushed back, saying prosecutors had taken scattered facts and twisted them into a story of guilt. “If you look at those facts another way, you see a widow,” she said. Outside the legal arguments, the human weight of the case was hard to miss. The Richins family sat through weeks of testimony about their son, brother and father. Richins, a mother of three, sat beside her lawyers as the verdict was read in a courtroom packed with reporters and observers. By Monday night, the basic question that had driven the case since 2023 had been answered by the jury: they believed the death of Eric Richins was not a hidden overdose or a mystery, but a deliberate killing carried out inside his own home.
Richins remains in custody as the case moves to sentencing on May 13. Where things stand now is clear: a Summit County jury has convicted her of murder and related crimes, and the next milestone is the punishment phase in court.
Author note: Last updated March 16, 2026.