A mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband and was later found guilty of killing him has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Kouri Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing her husband’s cocktail with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022.
“A person convicted of those things is simply too dangerous to ever be free,” Judge Richard Mrazik said, when handing down the sentence on the day her late husband, Eric Richins, would have turned 44.
Prosecutors said the mother-of-three had been struggling financially because of problems linked to her house-flipping business and wanted access to her husband’s money. They alleged she was having an affair and was seeking a “new start”.
Richins was also accused of forging her husband’s signature on a life insurance policy she had taken out just two months before his death and using falsified bank statements from his company to secure a loan. She falsely believed she would inherit his estate worth more than $4m after he died.
According to prosecutors, she told someone close to her that she felt “trapped” in the marriage and believed it would be better if her husband died.
Jurors in Park City also found Richins guilty of four other felonies, including attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich.
Ruchins has been adamant in maintaining she is innocent, saying on Wednesday that the verdict was “an absolute lie”.
Her case captivated true-crime enthusiasts when she was arrested in 2023 while promoting her children’s book Are You With Me? about a boy coping with the death of his father.
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