Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022.
A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a fentanyl-laced sandwich.
Photo: AP
Judge Richard Mrazik said that Kouri Richins is “simply too dangerous to ever be free” when handing down the sentence on the day that her husband would have turned 44.
Her attorneys said they would appeal the conviction and sentence.
Kouri Richins has said that she is innocent.
The verdict was “an absolute lie,” she said on Wednesday.
She stood at the podium in a lime-green jail uniform as she asked her sons, who were not in court: “Please just don’t give up on me.”
She encouraged them to always “be like your dad.”
Prosecutors said that Kouri Richins, a 36-year-old real-estate agent with a house-flipping business, was millions in debt and planning a future with another man.
She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge and falsely believed she would inherit his estate worth more than US$4 million after he died.
Eric Richins’ father, Eugene Richins, had urged the judge to impose a life sentence without parole to protect his grandsons, who were aged 9, 7 and 5 when their father died.
“This sentence is important so Eric’s three sons never have to live with the fear that the person responsible for taking their father could ever harm them again,” he said.
Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
Kouri Richins also faces more than two dozen money-related criminal charges in a separate case that has not yet gone to trial.
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