Testimony Continues in Case Involving Utah Children’s Author

Utah children’s book author Kouri Richins can’t keep her story straight about how her husband died, witnesses at her murder trial testified.
So far, she’s given at least three versions of Eric Richins’ death.
Kouri’s drug-dealing housekeeper said Thursday that her died of a brain aneurysm after she was horrified at the prospect that he had OD’d on the pills she had sold Kouri.
“Please tell me these pills were not for him,” Carmen Lauber recalled saying during a phone call with Richins soon after Eric’s March 4, 2022 death.
“No, they were not. Eric passed away from a brain aneurysm,” Lauber recounted Kouri saying.
Earlier, Eric’s dad testified Kouri claimed he had died of COVID-19 and a fungal infection. And, finally at the opening of the trial this week, her lawyers claimed he was an addict who accidentally overdosed.
What really happened, prosecutors say, is that Kouri dosed Eric’s Moscow Mule cocktail with four times the lethal dose of fentanyl.
A medical examiner confirmed for the jury that Eric had high levels of the drug in his system.
Lauber — who knew the Richins for nine years during her time working for Kouri’s mom’s housekeeping company — was testifying under an immunity agreement for her involvement in Eric’s death.
She told jurors she was testifying because, “I needed to step up and take accountability in my part for this.”
The housekeeper — who cleaned the Richins’ house every Friday — said she’d struggled with addiction since she was a kid and had prior convictions for drug possession and dealing.
Kouri knew that Lauber had an open case in drug court when she asked for Lauber’s help getting pills for — which she claimed were for an investor friend.
She asked for pills three times in the weeks before his death — and once after.
Prosecutors also claimed Kouri previously tried to kill Eric by putting fentanyl in his sandwich just a few weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day.
Lauber said after her first time getting pills for Kouri in February, Kouri texted her that her investor “wanted something a little stronger … the Michael Jackson stuff.”
The king of pop died in 2009 from an overdose of of propofol given to him by his personal doctor.
Just three days after Eric’s death, Lauber told jurors Kouri asked her to get drugs for her one last time, which she did.
Prosecutors claimed that Kouri killed Eric to cash in on his $4 million estate to help clear her $4.5 million she racked up trying to project an image of success in her home-flipping business. They also claimed she was trying to get a “fresh start” with her handyman lover Josh Grossman.
Kouri was not arrested until over a year after the alleged murder and a few months before she was cuffed, she self-published a children’s book, “Are You With Me?” supposedly to help her and Eric’s three sons process his loss.
She brazenly went onto local TV and radio stations to promote the book — as part of her obsession with money and image, prosecutors alleged.


