By Nicki Brown, CNN
(CNN) — Eric Richins, a Utah father of three, would have turned 44 years old on Wednesday. Instead, his wife will be sentenced for his murder.
Watch the live sentencing below, starting at 9:30 a.m. MT:
After a weekslong trial earlier this year, an eight-person jury convicted Kouri Richins, 36, of aggravated murder for fatally poisoning her husband in March 2022. She was also found guilty of attempted aggravated murder for trying to kill him weeks before his death, on Valentine’s Day, and insurance fraud and forgery related to his life insurance coverage.
Kouri Richins – who published a children’s book about coping with grief following Eric Richins’ death – could be sentenced to 25 years to life or life in prison without parole for her aggravated murder conviction when she appears in court in Park City, Utah.
Family members and other witnesses are expected to address the court before Judge Richard Mrazik hands down the sentence.
In a court filing this week, the Summit County Attorney’s Office invoked the Richins’ three young sons while urging Mrazik to sentence Kouri Richins to life without parole, the maximum sentence for the aggravated murder charge.
“The boys deserve finality and should not have to revisit their father’s murder at future hearings or worry about the Defendant’s potential parole,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum. “Given the tremendous trauma and upheaval that the Defendant inflicted upon their childhood, this Court should ensure that she does not harm their adulthood.”
Prosecutors are asking the judge to issue a protective order that would prohibit Kouri Richins from initiating contact with her sons and other members of her late husband’s family.
The couple’s eldest son – a 13-year-old identified in the filing as “C.R.” – said he misses his father but not his mother.
“I’m afraid if she gets out, she will come after me and my brothers, my whole family,” C.R. said, according to the memorandum. “I think she would come and take us and not do good things to us, like hurt us.”
During the trial, members of Eric Richins’ tight-knit family tearfully remembered him as a skilled outdoorsman, hardworking businessman and dedicated father to his three young sons.
“Eric was their coach, their father, but most important, was their very, very best friend,” his father, Eugene Richins, said on the stand.
Eric Richins would do anything for his children, one of his sisters testified, recalling how he often arrived early at their sporting events to hang up signs cheering them on.
“My dad can’t be my coach anymore and can’t be at any of my games,” the Richins’ middle son said in the state’s filing. “He won’t be at my birthdays. He can’t teach me how to drive. He won’t be at my graduation.”
How the trial unfolded
Eric Richins, 39, was found dead in the couple’s home in Kamas, Utah, during the early morning hours of March 4, 2022.
Earlier that night, Eric and Kouri Richins had a drink to celebrate a successful transaction with her real estate business, according to a statement she gave law enforcement. One of their sons was having nightmares, so Kouri Richins went to sleep in his room around 9:30 p.m., she told police.
When she returned to the master bedroom about six hours later, she said, she found her husband dead in their bed.
The autopsy revealed Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, with roughly five times a lethal dose in his blood. Prosecutors argued Kouri Richins slipped the drugs into her husband’s drinks the night of his death, although they did not present evidence supporting this theory at trial.
Over 13 days of testimony, the Summit County Attorney’s Office called more than 40 witnesses, including Eric Richins’ grieving family members, people who exchanged the illicit drugs said to have killed him, Kouri Richins’ paramour and a private investigator hired by the victim’s family. The defense rested its case without calling any witnesses.
The prosecution’s star witness, a housecleaner named Carmen Lauber, testified she sold illicit pills to the Utah mother several times in early 2022. Cell phone data showed her phone near the location where she picked up the drugs on dates close to the attempted murder and fatal poisoning.
Other witnesses testified about Kouri Richins feeling “trapped” in her marriage, her yearslong affair and her business’s ballooning debt – all reasons prosecutors say she killed her husband.
Robert Josh Grossmann, with whom she was having an affair, became emotional on the stand as scores of their affectionate messages were displayed in court.
“I do want a future together. I do want you. Figure life out together,” Kouri Richins texted Grossmann roughly two weeks before her husband died. “If he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!! I love you.”
Although her friends testified Kouri Richins appeared to be financially successful, a forensic accountant said she was caught in a relentless debt cycle and her real estate business was “imploding.” Eric Richins’ life was insured for about $2.2 million through several policies, including one Kouri Richins was convicted of applying for fraudulently.
“She murdered Eric Richins,” prosecutor Brad Bloodworth said in his closing argument, “and then she submitted a claim to get the money.”
Kouri Richins was also convicted of trying to murder her husband on Valentine’s Day 2022 – ten days after that insurance policy went into effect. Eric Richins called two friends that day and said he felt like he was going to die after eating a sandwich his wife gave him, according to charging documents.
Within weeks, he was dead.
At trial, prosecutors emphasized evidence they said demonstrated Kouri Richins’ guilty conscience after her husband’s death, including search history from her cellphone that showed queries about women’s prisons in Utah, remotely deleting cell phone data and life insurance payments.
The searches included: “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “kouri richins kamas net worth,” and “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as.”
Prosecutors argued that, amid the criminal investigation, Kouri Richins tried to deflect attention away from herself by publishing a children’s book about a year after her husband’s fatal overdose. Kouri Richins said she authored the picture book – titled “Are You With Me?” – to help her three young sons navigate the loss of their father.
“Just because he’s not present here with us physically, that doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us,” Richins said while promoting the book on a local news program in April 2023, weeks before her arrest. “Dad is still here. It’s just in a different way.”
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