Utah mother charged with murdering her husband with a Moscow Mule spiked with fentanyl

A body language expert claims the Mormon mother accused of poisoning her husband last year advertised her bachelorhood while promoting the children’s mourning book she wrote after he died.

Kouri Richins, 33, is charged with the murder of her husband Eric, 40, last March at their home in Kamas, a town near Park City, Utah. Police believe she gave him a lethal dose of fentanyl disguised in a Moscow Mule cocktail.

Just last month, she appeared on a local TV station to promote her $14.99 book, Are You With Me?’.

Body language expert Patti Wood noted that she went to the show without wearing her wedding ring.

“Writing a children’s book about grief after losing your husband and promoting it without wearing another wedding ring is an interesting choice,” Wood said..

While Wood told The sun that “everyone is grieving differently,” she believes there was another sign besides the lack of a ring that Richins may have betrayed.

“She’s nonverbally promoting not only the book, but the fact that she’s worked through her grief enough to advertise that she’s single and available,” she added.

Described as the “gold standard” in her field, Wood noted that Richins used the phrase “you know” more than 40 times in chat, which she felt may have been a “cry of desperation” to be heard.

“So when you make a definitive statement, usually when you’re telling the truth, there’s power and lore that goes from the first word to the end of the sentence,” Wood said.

“If you say it and there’s no interruption, that’s one of the indications of a true statement. So if you have an interrupter like “you know,” it breaks a sentence. It makes it easier for you to lie.’

She said it’s not a surefire way to tell if someone is lying, but it makes it harder for the listener to decipher the truth.

In the weeks and months before, Richins tried to make himself the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policy. He had changed his will and power of attorney to give his sister full control, and even feared his wife was trying to kill him, according to a police search warrant.

Kouri remains in the custody of Summit County sheriff’s deputies pending her next trial.

Video from that performance shows her calling her husband’s death a “shock” and talking wistfully about how she helped their three sons through the grief.

My husband passed away unexpectedly last year. March 4 was an anniversary for us, he turned 39.

“It completely shocked us all,” she said.

“We have three little boys, ten, nine, and six, and my kids and I have written this book about the different emotions and grieving we’ve been through over the past year.”

She said she was motivated to write the book after searching Amazon and Barnes and Noble and finding “nothing” to help them “cope.”

“I went on Amazon and Barnes and Noble to try to find something to help us out at night, nights are the hardest. I just wanted a story to read to my kids at night and couldn’t find anything that suited them so I thought ‘let’s just write one’.

Richins had told police she had resuscitated Eric after finding him unconscious in their home, but the fire department and medics who arrived at the scene said this was unlikely as blood was coming from his mouth.

Her arrest came just two months after that of Mormon dentist Jim Craig, suspected of poisoning his wife in Colorado.

In the years before his death, Eric told his family that he feared his wife was trying to kill him. There were two occasions when Eric became violently ill after drinking or eating with his wife.

One of Eric’s two sisters told police he called her three years ago from Greece, where he and Richins were vacationing together. He claimed that Richins gave him a potion that made him violently ill and said he thought she had tried to kill him.

In January 2022, she changed Eric’s joint life insurance policy, which he shared with his business partner Cody Wright, so that she was the sole beneficiary, according to a warrant.

When the insurance company notified the partners, who own the C&E Stone Masonry company, of the change, they were able to change it again.

After learning that Richins had tried to change his life insurance policy, Eric changed the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney to his sister without telling his wife because he was afraid she would “kill him for the money,” according to a warrant. .

Police say Kouri asked a friend to buy the drugs for her, paying $900 for the first batch and another $900 after Valentine’s Day.

It is said that she asked for the “Michael Jackson thing” and was then given fentanyl.

While she told police she wasn’t using her phone the night of her husband’s death, police say records show she texted back and forth with someone.

Those posts were later deleted, they said.

But a month later, court documents show Eric had an allergic reaction to a meal with Richins on Valentine’s Day last year. He couldn’t breathe and passed out after using an EpiPen and taking Benadryl.

According to the documents, Richins had bought $900 worth of fentanyl pills from an acquaintance for the Valentine’s Day meal, and two weeks later she asked for $900 more. Days later, Eric died of an overdose.

After Eric’s death, Richins claimed him was addicted to painkillers in high school, but had no substance abuse problems since then.

But friends and family told police they had no idea Eric was addicted to any kind of drug, and officers found no painkillers in the family home.

In addition to the murder charge, Richins also faces charges for alleged possession of GHB – a narcolepsy drug commonly used in recreational settings, including dance clubs.

The allegations are based on officers’ interactions with Richins that night and the account of an “unnamed acquaintance” who claims to have sold her the fentanyl.

In April, Richins promoted her children’s book on local TV, telling a segment called “Good Things Utah” that she wrote it to help her three boys deal with the grief of losing their father.

She called her husband’s death unexpected and described how it rocked her and her three boys.

For kids, Richins said, grieving was about “making sure their spirit always lives in your home.”

“It’s – you know – explaining it to my child just because he’s not physically here with us doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us,” she told the presenters, who praised her for being a great mother.

Richins’ lawyer, Skye Lazaro, declined to comment on the allegations.