Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
- Officers testified Thursday about the investigation into Kouri Richins' husband's death.
- Richins' attorneys contest some evidence, including cellphone data and a so-called "Walk the dog!!" letter.
- Richins faces charges of murder, insurance fraud and forgery, with trial set for April.
PARK CITY — Just a few weeks before Kouri Richins was arrested and charged with murdering her husband a year earlier, the chief investigator on the case said he was still considering all of the options and she was not his primary suspect.
He said investigators knew her husband had died of a fentanyl overdose but did not know how it got into his system — whether it was an accidental overdose, suicide or homicide.
"In order to be thorough, I was trying to investigate all of those possibilities," he said.
Detective Jeff O'Driscoll testified Thursday about visiting Richins in her home during that time and described her as outgoing. "She seemed very cheery, very open, happy to be talking to us."
O'Driscoll testified alongside other officers about the investigation of Kouri Richins, who is charged with murdering her husband, as attorneys continue contesting what evidence will be permitted at her trial in April.
Richins' attorneys have argued that information on her cellphone, other electronic data, a letter found in her cell known as the 'Walk the dog!!" letter, and various other items should not be admitted as evidence because they were not obtained properly.
Search warrants on Richins' home
Richins' attorney, Kathy Nestor, questioned why O'Driscoll stayed in her client's home for three hours for that visit when the purpose was to introduce himself. Nestor also asked why he did not tell Richins about an audio recording he was making of the interview.
The attorney also pointed out that the day before the visit, O'Driscoll had requested information from her client's phone, which the officer said was to see if she had tried to obtain fentanyl.
O'Driscoll answered saying that although they didn't disclose the audio recorder, it was apparent to Richins he was filming with an unattached body camera.
The officer said during his visit to Richins' home, he did not know she had an attorney. But Nestor said Richins let him know during the conversation. He said he did not tell Richins her Miranda rights, nor did he tell her she did not have to meet with the officers.
Less than three weeks later, on May 3, 2023, O'Driscoll applied for a warrant to search Richins' home for copper cups and counterfeit pills. As this warrant was being served, he approached Richins outside a Salt Lake County business and arrested her.
Deputy Summit County attorney Brad Bloodworth conceded that investigators grabbed an orange notebook during the search that day that was outside of the scope of the warrant. In addition to questioning about the notebook, Nestor asked questions about how O'Driscoll obtained the phone that was on Richins when she was arrested.
Over a year earlier, officers served the first search warrant on Richins' home. Nestor asked questions during Thursday's hearing casting doubt on whether her phone was taken legally in that instance because it was in her car and the search warrant was for her house only.
Eric Maynard, with the Summit County Sheriff's Office, testified about performing a traffic stop shortly after Richins left her home before that search. In parts of a recording played in court of his conversation with Richins in his police car, it sounded like Richins was crying, but Maynard said he did not see tears.
"My job was to preserve evidence. Her cellphone was left in (her) vehicle, and I wanted to get her out of the vehicle so she wouldn't be able to access her cellphone," he explained.
Maynard said Richins was not detained when she gave him her phone password. He said she returned to ask for some contact numbers from her phone and gave the password voluntarily. He said his report saying she was released from custody after giving the password was a mistake.
A second officer, Jayme Woody, said Richins also voluntarily gave officers a code for a safe during that same search, and confirmed he did not tell Richins she had the right to refuse to give him that code.
The letter
Summit County Sheriff's Sgt. Jeremy Thomas testified on Thursday about finding a letter in Richins' jail cell on a top bunk during a search on Sept. 13. He said he was looking for a separate letter that Richins had held up during a visit with her mother.
He said that letter was never found, but he gave the "Walk the dog!!" letter, as it is titled, to his supervisor after deciding it was concerning. In the letter, prosecutors say it appears Richins was outlining testimony for her mother and brother, although she has claimed it was a fictional story.
Richins' attorneys questioned whether the "Walk the dog!!" letter was found in an envelope marked with her attorney's name, or whether it could fall under attorney-client privilege because it mentioned conversations with her lawyer in the first paragraph and was attached to a page that she said was determined to be privileged.
Thomas denied that it was in an envelope with the attorney's name, which a second officer searched.
Bloodworth said he plans to argue that the letter was not a part of preparing for trial but was instead created by Richins for "witness tampering and publicity." He said understanding certain references in the letter could help Mrazik in that decision and asked O'Driscoll to testify about who investigators believe the people mentioned in the letter are.
O'Driscoll said the letter was directed at Richins' mother, as it talked about three mortgages facing foreclosure and the one she referred to as "yours" would have been her mother's.
He said "Lotto" in the letter is referring to a close friend and "intimate interest" of Kouri Richins, saying he was communicating with her through text messages over the mail system and she had asked the receiver of the letter to tell him to stop sending those messages. The letter says anything that puts the two of them together "doesn't look good."
The letter says Lotto might be able to help get a home to save the mortgages facing foreclosure, including the home her mother was living in that was owned by Richins' realty company.
What's next?
The judge asked attorneys on both sides to agree to a schedule for submitting written briefs and said he would not make decisions on which contested evidence can be used in Richins' trial after a future hearing on the topic.
Richins was arrested over a year after calling dispatch to report her husband, Eric Richins, 39, was nonresponsive. She is accused of administering a fatal dose of fentanyl to Eric Richins in March 2022 and has been charged with giving a lethal dose of drugs to her husband on Valentine's Day a few weeks earlier.
The jury during Richins' upcoming trial, currently scheduled for April, will be asked to determine whether she is guilty of charges of aggravated murder and attempted murder, first-degree felonies; two counts of filing a fraudulent insurance claim, a second-degree felony; and one count of forgery, a third-degree felony.
Richins is also charged with two counts of mortgage fraud, a second-degree felony, and two additional counts of forgery, a third-degree felony which will be addressed in a separate trial.
