A woman from Utah is facing serious legal trouble after being accused of murdering her husband and then penning a book for children about dealing with grief. The Summit County court has now added 26 new felony charges against her.
Kouri Richins, aged 34, was initially charged with the murder of her 39-year-old husband, Eric Richins, in March of 2022, as well as an attempted murder a month before that. Her trial is scheduled to commence in February 2026.
During a court session on Friday, prosecutors brought forth the additional charges. These new allegations against Richins include various financial crimes such as five counts of mortgage fraud, seven counts of money laundering, five counts of forgery, seven counts of issuing bad checks, along with one count each of communications fraud and engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity.
She was originally charged with some of the new counts, but a judge ruled that they should be dealt with in a separate trial. Prosecutors say the financial charges are all linked to her husband’s death.
Richins defense attorneys said the financial charges underscore “the weakness of the state’s pending murder charges.”
Prosecutors contend that Richins poisoned a cocktail she made for her husband and did so to gain permanent access to his finances. Charging documents filed on Friday say in 2019 she “used a power of attorney to obtain a $250,000 home equity line of credit on Eric Richins’ premarital home without his knowledge. … (She) used the proceeds from the HELOC to initially fund K. Richins Realty and hard money loans to finance its ongoing operations.”
Eric Richins learned of the deception a year later. It “was a source of tension between (Kouri) and Eric Richins. (She) informed Eric Richins that she would repay the loan and led Eric Richins to believe that she had repaid it. The HELOC was not paid off on the day of Eric Richins’ death,” the charges state.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins’ realty company was under a “staggering and unserviceable debt load” by late 2021, and she was adding more debt.
“By that day, she had already defaulted on one loan and was delinquent on several others. She continued efforts to borrow from new high-interest lenders to meet her existing obligations. By the end of 2021, (she) stood on the precipice of total financial collapse,” the charges allege.
The documents say her realty company owed debtors nearly $5 million on the day after her husband’s death.
Kouri Richins “mistakenly believed” she was the beneficiary of her husband’s life insurance policies, but he had changed the document after discovering her deception.
