PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A Utah mother of three who published a children’s book about grief after her husband’s death and was later accused of poisoning him will stand trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Utah State Judge Richard Mrazik handed down the verdict on the second day of the Corey Richins case. preliminary hearing Prosecutors had presented enough evidence against him for a jury trial.
She faces multiple felony charges for allegedly killing her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl at their home in a small mountain town near Park City in March 2022. Prosecutors say Corey Richins, 34, mixed five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a Moscow Mule cocktail that Eric Richins, 39, drank.
Corey Richins appeared calm when the judge told her the jury would soon decide her fate. She remained adamant that she was innocent and on Tuesday entered pleas of “not guilty” to all 11 counts. Her trial is scheduled to begin on April 28.
The second day of her preliminary hearing centered around the following Additional attempted murder charges A case filed earlier this year accused her of lacing her husband’s sandwich with fentanyl on Valentine’s Day 2022, causing a severe but non-fatal reaction.
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth, defending the charges, said he believed the lessons Corey Richins learned during her first failed attempt to kill her husband helped her carry out the killing 17 days later.
Prosecutors allege that one bite of his favorite sandwich — which was left with a note in the front seat of his truck on Valentine's Day — caused Eric Richins to break out in hives and pass out. His wife bought the sandwich at a local eatery in the city of Camas two days after the family's housekeeper purchased fentanyl pills, according to witness statements and deleted text messages recovered by police.
Bloodworth said text messages and location data suggest that Kauri Richins may have brought home a sandwich and then left to spend Valentine's Day with another man she was having an affair with. The day after Valentine's Day, she texted her boyfriend, “If he would just go away … life would be great.”
In written testimony, two friends of Eric Richins recalled a phone conversation they had on the day prosecutors say he was first poisoned by his wife of nine years. After injecting himself with his son's EpiPen and drinking a bottle of Benadryl, he awoke from a deep sleep and told a friend, “I think my wife tried to poison me,” the indictment alleges.
Housekeeper Carmen Lauber told police that Kouri Richins later asked her to buy more powerful fentanyl, Detective Jeff O'Driscoll said during the first day of the hearing Monday.
“She figured out that putting it in a sandwich, where Eric Richins could take a bite, feel the effects and put the sandwich down, was not the proper way to deliver it,” Bloodworth told the judge. “She figured out it would take a truckload of fentanyl to kill him.”
A few days later, Cory Richins called 911 in the middle of the night to report that she had found her husband “cold” under the bed, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead, and a medical examiner later found he had five times the lethal amount of fentanyl in his system.
Defense attorneys Kathy Nestor and Wendy Lewis argued that because police did not find fentanyl in Richins' home, detectives could not be sure the drugs Corey Richins purchased from the homeowner matched those found in Eric Richins' body.
“These are excellent trial arguments,” Mrazik responded, but he wondered if his arguments were strong enough to prove there was no probable cause for the charges.
“We know the preliminary hearing phase was exceptionally favorable to the prosecution and we respect the court's decision,” Nestor and Lewis said in a joint statement after the hearing. “We firmly believe the allegations against Corey do not stand up to close scrutiny and we are confident the jury will reach the same conclusion.”
Mrazik recently hired two attorneys to represent Kauri Richins after she found she was unable to continue making payments for her husband. Private lawyerProsecutors say she mistakenly believed she would inherit her husband's estate under the terms of their prenuptial agreement, and she did. took life insurance Nearly $2 million in policies were taken out on him without his knowledge.
A few months before her arrest in May 2023, the Utah mother published a children’s book, “Are You With Me?” about a father with angel wings caring for his young son after his death. The book could play a key role in helping prosecutors ultimately present Eric Richins’ death as a premeditated murder with an elaborate cover-up effort.
The judge scheduled a pretrial conference for Sept. 23 for the prosecution and defense to discuss jury selection.