Kouri Richins has been sentenced at a court in Utah, United States, to life without parole for murdering her husband Eric. Photo / Getty Images
A US mother who wrote a children’s book about grief after suddenly losing her husband has been sentenced to life without parole after being convicted of his murder.
Kouri Richins, 36, was found guilty after a three-week trial in March of poisoning Eric Richins with a fentanyl-laced drink.
Jurors heard how she had racked up millions of dollars in debt, taken out life insurance policies on her husband and was having an extramarital affair before Eric’s 2022 death.
During sentencing, Utah district court Judge Richard Mrazik reportedly “threw the book” at the mum of three, saying someone convicted of Richins’ crimes “is simply too dangerous to ever be free”.
“Kouri Richins was convicted unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt of attempting to murder Eric Richins – her husband and the father of her three children,” Judge Mrazik said while explaining his decision, CBS News reports.
“And then, having failed in her first effort, of spending the next 17 days not changing course, but doubling down, preparing to try again and ultimately completing the act through the administration of poison. And for what? Money.”
Before the sentence, Richins addressed the court for 30 minutes, mainly speaking at her boys who are now being cared for by Eric’s sister, Katie Richins-Benson.
Richins sobbed as she continued to maintain her innocence, stating she would never have killed her sons’ dad, the New York Post reports.
“Murder? No, absolutely not. I will not accept that and I will not be blamed for something I did not do,” Richins said.
She also aired frustrations about the fact she hadn’t spoken to her children since 2024, when custody was taken away from her after her arrest.
“I have been desperately trying to get into contact with you,” she said through tears.
During her address, she also said there were moments in her past she was “not proud of”.
“Nobody is all good or all bad,” she said, NBC News reports.
“We are not defined by our best or our worst moments.”
Richins, who was wearing a neon green jail T-shirt and a long-sleeve grey shirt, was said to have pulled faces while Eric’s family begged a judge to never let her out of jail.
Mrazik agreed and said Richins was “simply too dangerous to ever be free”.
The disgraced author’s expressions reportedly ranged from outrage to astonishment as Richins-Benson claimed Eric didn’t divorce her because he didn’t want to risk her sons being alone with her.
“He believed Kouri was the most evil person he had ever met,” Richins-Benson told the judge.
“He knew her sons did not like her and preferred to be far away from her. He said he could never allow his children to spend half of their time alone with her.”
Richins was also found guilty of fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after her husband’s death at their family home.
Prosecutors said during the trial that she falsely believed she would inherit his estate worth more than US$4 million ($6.8m) after he died, the BBC reports.
They also said she was planning to run away with a handyman she’d had an affair with.
She was also found guilty of attempted murder after she first tried to kill Eric two weeks earlier by dosing his sandwich with fentanyl.
Richins succeeded after she laced Eric’s Moscow Mule with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl, killing him in their Kamas home while their sons slept.
She wasn’t arrested until a year later, and after she wrote a children’s grief book entitled Are You With Me?, and began promoting it on local TV and radio stations.
The couple’s sons, now aged 9, 12 and 13, pleaded for their mum to spend the rest of her life behind bars.
“I’m afraid if she gets out, she will come after me and my brothers, my whole family,” her eldest son allegedly said. “I think she would come and take us and not do good things to us, like hurt us.”
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