“Are You With Me?”
On March 7, 2023, a year after her husband died, Kouri Richins published a children’s book.
It was called “Are You With Me?” It was a picture book about a young boy whose father has died. On the cover, a smiling boy chases a soccer ball while his dad flies above him in the clouds, with angel wings and a halo.
She dedicated it to “my amazing husband and a wonderful father.”
She then went on “Good Things Utah,” a morning talk show on Salt Lake City station KTVX, to promote it. She talked about the sudden loss of her husband, and said she had written the book to help her boys deal with their grief.
The hosts had no idea who they were talking to. “I definitely feel like we were duped,” one of them, Surae Chinn, said later.
Handcuffs
On May 8, 2023, about two months after the book came out, Kouri Richins was arrested and charged with aggravated murder. Prosecutors said she had killed her husband by putting fentanyl in his drink.
The charging documents told the story investigators had pieced together.
The key witness was Carmen Lauber, the house cleaner. She told detectives that in early 2022 Kouri had asked her for strong prescription painkillers, saying they were for a real estate investor with a bad back. Lauber bought 15 to 30 fentanyl pills from a dealer and handed them over.
About two weeks after Valentine’s Day, Lauber said, Kouri came back. Her investor wanted something stronger. She asked for “some of the Michael Jackson stuff.” Lauber said she had to look up what that meant. Kouri specifically asked for fentanyl, and paid for another batch.
Days later, Eric was dead.
Investigators had also gone through Kouri’s devices. She had told deputies her phone was in the master bedroom while she slept in her son’s room. But the data showed her devices being unlocked and moving around the house in the minutes before she called 911.
Prosecutors also pointed to searches made on her phone after Eric’s death, including “what is a lethal dose of fentanyl” and whether deleted text messages could be recovered from an iPhone. Her lawyers said those searches came after she knew she was under suspicion, and only showed her trying to understand what she was being accused of.
The letter in the cell
In jail, Kouri kept writing.
During a search of her cell, guards found a long handwritten letter. At the top, in big letters, it said “Walk the Dog!!”
Prosecutors said it was meant for her mother, and that it told her mother to coach a family member into giving false testimony. They called it witness tampering. Kouri said it was part of a book she was writing. A judge ruled the state had not proven tampering.
The trial
Kouri Richins finally went on trial in Park City in late February 2026.
Over about three weeks, the jury heard that Eric’s life was insured for more than $2 million across several policies, and that in January 2022, a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, Kouri had forged Eric’s signature on an application for another one.
Josh Grossmann, the boyfriend, took the stand too. He told the jury that a couple of weeks after Eric died, the two of them were together in the Uinta Mountains when Kouri asked him if he had ever killed anybody while serving in Iraq, and how it had made him feel.
Carmen Lauber testified under an immunity deal. The defense went after her hard. They said she could not be trusted, and pointed out that the dealer who sold the pills now claimed they were oxycodone, not fentanyl. Kouri’s lawyers argued that the state could not show where the fatal dose came from, or how it got into Eric.
Then the defense rested without calling a single witness. Kouri chose not to testify.
On March 16, 2026, after deliberating for less than three hours, the jury found her guilty on every count: aggravated murder for the Moscow mule, attempted aggravated murder for the Valentine’s Day meal, two counts of insurance fraud, and forgery.
Life
Kouri Richins was sentenced on May 13, 2026. It would have been Eric’s 44th birthday.
Statements from her three sons were given to the court. The oldest boy, now 13, said he was afraid that if his mother ever got out, she would come after him and his brothers.
Kouri read a long letter to her boys. She apologized for what they had been through and said she had never abandoned them. She still says she is innocent, and her lawyers have said she will appeal.
Judge Richard Mrazik gave her the maximum: life in prison without the possibility of parole. She had tried to kill her husband once, the judge said, and then she finished the job, for money. He called her “simply too dangerous” to ever be free.
Eric Richins was 39. He left behind three young sons.
A year after he died, their mother wrote them a story about a dad watching over them from the sky. She had made his last drink.
