Mum who wrote grief book for kids after husband died found guilty of his murder

Kouri Richins, a 35-year-old mum, wrote a children’s book about her grief.

She has been convicted of poisoning her husband Eric Richins with fentanyl in their family home.

As she was heavily in debt at the time, she falsely believed that she would inherit his estate worth more than $4million (£3million) after his death.

The mum of three has also been convicted of fraudulently claiming insurance benefits following the death of her children’s dad.

She promoted Are You with Me? on TV and radio stations, which prosecutors said showed Richins planned the killing and tried to cover it up.

Richins slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail her husband drank, and the jurors found the writer guilty this week after less than three hours of deliberations in the court in Park City, Utah.

According to prosecutors, the defendant had planned a future with another man she was seeing on the side when she killed Mr Richins in March 2022.

“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money”, Brad Bloodworth, prosecuting said.

The mum was also convicted of other felony charges, including an attempted murder charge in what authorities alleged was another effort to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich which made him break out in hives and black out.

However, the woman’s defence argued Mr Richins was addicted to painkillers and had asked his wife to procure opioids for him.

Her attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.

However, the jurors reached unanimous verdicts on all charges after hearing Richins had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million (£1.5 million).

Richins, an estate agent as well as a children’s author, faces sentencing at the same court in Utah on May 13.