This case is insane. They didn’t actually charge her until something like a year after the murder because the cops so badly fucked the initial investigation, but the prosecution still got a conviction with barely minutes worth of jury deliberation, because of what a fucking terrible job she did of covering it up.
The 911 call alone is a horror show. The defense tried to use it to show how sad and scared she was, and then the prosecution proceeded to play the entire call, with a stopwatch running from the time she agrees to start CPR - not when she is first asked to by the dispatcher, but when she actually finally relents and agrees to try - to the first actual compression. Six god damn minutes. She is something like ten minutes into the 911 call at this point. During that time she repeatedly informed the dispatcher that she wasn’t in the room when it happened. Zero interest in saving her husband’s life, only in establishing her alibi.
Oh, and she claims that her phone was in the room with her husband while she was away (in her kids room) but the records on the phone show that it was unlocked several times over fifteen minutes before she dialled 911. After finding her husband unconscious this woman managed to waste almost half an hour before starting CPR.
She had multiple searches on her phone for things like “How much fentanyl is lethal”, “Can deleted texts be recovered from an iPhone”, “How to remotely wipe an iPhone”, and “Luxury women’s prisons”, which reads like an avant-garde short story about someone doing a crime. She met up with a convicted drug dealer multiple times despite having no prior history of drug use. She wrote a letter to her mother detailing an extensive scheme of witness tampering that she was to rope Kouri’s brother into, with notes on all of the exact lies he should tell. She changed two different life insurance policies on her husband to have her as the only beneficiary just weeks before he died.
Why would she give her password to the police?
Munchausen syndrome.
heaven forbid a woman have hobbies
I wonder if her lover knew. They were already planning a future with the money she thought she would get from the insurance.
digital forensic analyst
Of course this is a thing already
That’s been a thing for decades… Who do you think goes through the data on seized computers?
I thought some normal prosecuter/police guy
deleted by creator
some more quotes from the new york times
Forensic analysis of burner phones used by Ms. Richins showed searches for “women utah prison,” “can cops.uncover deleted.messages iphone,” “if someone is poisned what does it go down on the death certificate as,” “how long does life insurance companies takento.pay” and “what is a lethal.does.of.fetanyl.”
Prosecutors said that weeks earlier, on Valentine’s Day, she had tried to kill him by poisoning his favorite type of sandwich with fentanyl. Mr. Richins became extremely ill that day but recovered after using Benadryl and an EpiPen, charging documents said. Afterward, Ms. Richins asked the housekeeper, Carmen Lauber, for “something stronger,” Ms. Lauber told prosecutors, specifically asking for “the Michael Jackson stuff.”
Ms. Richins’s lawyers argued that Mr. Richins was addicted to painkillers and had asked his wife to buy painkillers for him; they suggested he may have overdosed. They argued Mr. Richins could have purchased the drugs himself, and contended during the trial that there was no evidence that showed how Mr. Richins had ingested the fentanyl. Detective Jeff O’Driscoll, the lead investigator on the case, testified that law enforcement authorities did not find evidence of fentanyl on any glasses or straws in the home.
“women utah prison,”
Why tf would she Google this?!? Like she was trying to figure out what to pack for vacation? “What do the other girls wear in prison?”
Kinda reminds me of a friend that got arrested for missing a court date over something stupid right after high school. Everyone told her not to stay at her house until she got the court date sorted out, but she hadn’t been in trouble before and I guess just didn’t believe they would actually come and arrest her over an active warrant… Yeah…
When the cops showed up she was stoned af and said “Ok…, just let me get my stuff.”
The cop seemed kind of genuinely surprised. Like that was the first time anybody had ever responded that way to being told they were under arrest. Then he said “You don’t have ‘stuff’ in jail…?” and then she went “Oooohhh Noooo!!” and threw herself over the back of the couch sobbing.
Honestly it’s pretty fucked that people don’t get to bring their stuff to jail
It’s wild that some people are so sheltered
Either she doesn’t grasp the concept of a burner phone, or I don’t.
Well if Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have taught me anything, it’s that you have to rip it apart or smash it when you’re done.
I have a friend that married a PoS. At her wedding she told our mutual friend that her now husband hits her. I believe she got married because she was scared of being alone even though we’re not old enough for that to be a real concern. A week or more later the mutual friend and I were playing cards at her parent’s. The topic of the husband came up and we pushed the topic to this. I said she told us that he hit her. It turns out that they knew but had the belief that there is never a valid reason to get divorced. I shut that shit down right away and surprisingly they sort of agreed.
She divorced him months later.
Point being some people have weird and dangerous beliefs about marriage
Her husband was worth 4 million. She wanted the money.
That’s not speculation, the prosecution showed a financial motive and the jury agreed.
She tried to kill him once before and failed, and he not only stayed together but continued to let her get near his food and drink? My guy…
Mushroom lady ex hubby ate food from her for yonks after he suspected she had started poisoning him.
The only justice for these people is to poison them a little bit sometimes so they are suspicious of their food for the rest of their lives.
Some kinks are unhealthy
Maybe they were Mormons. Their views on marriage are kinda…unique.
“yeah it’s risky but that I can beat that pussy up like Muhammad Ali and drive her wild even after I’m done with her sister so it’s a fair trade”
Sex must have been amazing
The crazy ones are usually pretty good at it.
Not that weird. Usually these types can’t shut the fuck about it.
The internet search history from Richins’s phone included “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl” and “luxury prisons for the rich America”
Lmao
As a defense attorney I would’ve immediately declared my client mentally disabled and listed the search history as proof.
Good Lord. Pic of internet searches shown in court.
iPhind. Isn’t that from GTA5?
This is why you should always google really funny shit before committing a crime.
“How to not incriminate myself but make the query so funny that it shows up in the court docs”
“The suspect had a dozen copies of a 10hr looped video of a man shattering a jar in his anus on their phone.”
Have fun watching that, detective.
“how to tell the police that you totally did it and leave every trace imaginable, for ipohen”
That would almost be as bad as writing a six page letter detailing all of your attempted witness tampering and accidentally having it found in your jail cell.
Which is a thing she did.
It could only be worse if that letter included instructions to make threats against someone’s children.
Oh. It did.
Look up the “Walk the dog” letter. It is one of the most unbelievably damning pieces of evidence you will ever see. The prosecution literally built their entire closing argument around it because it’s so bad that they can just discard the rest of their case and still win on that alone.
Never heard of this case before. Thank you for sharing, for anyone else I think this is a link to the letter mentioned:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23980331-kouri-richins-walk-the-dog-letter/
For anyone who needs context, because on its face this is a confusing document, the actual letter was intended to be delivered to her mother. It conscripts said mother into a detailed scheme of witness tampering heavily involving her brother. Kouri concocts a fake history of drug use for her dead husband with numerous details designed to create reasonable doubt and open up the idea that her husband was a habitual fentanyl user, while explaining away the fact that no drugs were found in their home. She also implores her mother to send photos of her nieces to the press as an implicit threat against one of Eric’s sisters (Eric’s family were pretty firmly in the “She killed him” camp at this point). The large “Walk the dog!” heading, along with other notes throughout, is understood to be an instruction to get out of the house before reading the letter and then to dispose of it somewhere safely.
How do you be so stupid you think that people are reading the letter you sent from jail over the recipient’s shoulder but not before delivery
You misspelled iphind
Is that an STD?
Do you mean an iphkne? Common mistake tbf.
Big “Can u get pregante” vibes.
Lmao I followed this trial start to finish but mainly listened to it in the background podcast-style so I didn’t see most of the closing slides. Didn’t realize how many typos were in those searches haha.
She also searched for her own net worth, which is super embarrassing.
That’s interesting. On the surface one might assume she’s just dumb and doesn’t understand how to assess her finances, but I wonder if there’s more to it; maybe she already knew her net worth (or didn’t particularly care), but wanted to know what other people say her net worth is.
Ngl, if I had “people googling my net worth” money, I’d check at least once lol
She didn’t. She was in the hole $1.5M. There’s a whole series of fraud cases which are basically her singled-handed personal ponzi scheme of bad loans that are still pending trial.
What is it with these people? One thing is just never enough. If she had just killed her husband that’s fine, if he was just scamming people that’s fine, but if you can’t stick to one crime at a time honey you’re gonna get caught 👁️👄👁️💅🏾
They don’t think anything is their fault.
In her mind her husband was probably awful and abusive for not bailing out her 1.5million in debt.
I’ve dated women like this. Had a few break ups where I was told how awful horrible man I was for not paying off her debts for her. The irony was I had no money… but she thought I did… god I had one lady I was dating a month who started asking me to pay off her car loan and when I said no she threatened to beat me up.
And the scary part is lots of people who are like this are out there, and people like them because they are so superficially charming and sociable. It’s only once you have a legitimate relationship with them that the crazy starts to show, and for some people, they can’t walk away and can’t see the red flags due to the charm.
Causality is hard at work; as certain as death and taxes.
Reminds me of “‘How to murder your husband’ writer sentenced for murdering husband”
At least she didn’t name it “How to murder your husband and get away with it”.
Real OJ Simpson “If I did it” vibes.
Or I Killed Darnell Simmons by the legendary rapper Gun Rack.
And of course it happened in Utah - the Florida of the West.
Defendant’s first name checks out.
(Kouri)
what are you trying to say?
Mormon culture is prevalent in Utah, and for some reason they have a peculiar obsession with weird names and spellings.
Gotcha - thanks for the explanation. Although I read her alleged notes from jail and - as suspected - she sounds in parts like someone with a borderline personality disorder. Definitely in need of treatment. Somehow I have my doubts that’ll be provided in jail.
Oh so it’s not Erika Kirk… This time
Someone who is good with .gifs needs to add the coffee pouring right out his neck.
Interestingly, the same defense team who defended Kouri Richins (the Utah mom) is defending the guy who killed Charlie Kirk.
Can’t write books without doing some research, I guess?
Write what you know.
The psychology of this case, and other cases like it, is really baffling. The article didn’t go into much detail except mentioning the prior attempt, the millions of dollars of life insurance, and her cover story about him being addicted to opioids.
When investigators found those details the picture must have became clear.
What causes one person in a long-term relationship to off the other one? Why not just, you know, do what everyone else does and divorce? I’m sure being a divorcee sucks but it can’t be as bad as a convicted aggravated murderer who will live life behind bars
Money. He was worth 4 million. And had multiple life insurance policies, which she tried to make herself the sole beneficiary of before killing him.
She, on the other hand, was carrying 4.5 million in debt.
Fun fact, he wrote her out of his will. So even if she’d gotten away with the murder, she still got nothing.
You assume the relationship was the cause, and that it wasn’t just an underlying latent psychopathic person.
Lots psychopaths don’t start killing people well into adulthood, and otherwise lead normal lives.
People tell themselves stories to rationalize everything. Some make sense to most people, some dont. The story this lady told herself to enable her to murder her husband instead of just divorcing him is surely going to sound insane.
Causality is hard at work; as certain as death and taxes.
