- The trial of Kouri Richins, accused of fatally poisoning her husband, began Monday.
- Prosecutors argue Richins killed Eric Richins for money and to get a fresh start at life.
- Defense attorneys say the evidence tells a different story, and there is no evidence of how the fentanyl that killed Eric got inside him.
PARK CITY — Attorneys presented very different interpretations of the evidence during opening statements of the Kouri Richins murder trial Monday.
Deputy Summit County attorney Brad Bloodworth said Richins owed over $4.5 million, had recently overdrafted more than $300,000, and was scheduled to take on another $3.2 million in debt to purchase an unfinished mansion. He said her husband, 39-year-old Eric Richins, had an estate worth over $4 million and she believed she would get it all.
"The evidence will prove that Kouri Richins murdered Eric for his money, and to get a fresh start at life. More than anything, she wanted his money to perpetuate her facade of privilege, affluence and success," he told jurors.
Richins, a Kamas mother and real estate agent, is charged with murder and accused of fatally poisoning her husband in March 2022. She is also charged with attempting to murder him weeks earlier on Valentine's Day.
Defense attorney Kathy Nestor told the jury the same evidence can tell different stories, and although they won't dispute the facts shared by prosecutors they will dispute what those facts mean.
"We're asking you to be courageous, to pay attention, to stand strong and to hold the government to that burden that's on the table," she said. "The only proper verdict to return in this case … is to find her not guilty on all charges."
She said there is no evidence about how the fentanyl got inside Eric Richins, and said each witness will testify they have no information about what happened during those six hours on that night before Kouri Richins called 911.
Watch a livestream of the trial here:
Bloodworth said Kouri Richins delayed calling 911 for at least 15 minutes, saying she had a guilty conscience, could not face her children or her father-in-law in the hours after her husband's death. He showed a few memes she accessed on her phone just after police left on the morning her husband died, before she told her children.
One showed a hysterical woman wiping her face with money and another showed a man with the phrase, "Idiots. Idiots everywhere."
"Eric Richins did not kill himself or die accidentally. The evidence will prove that Kouri Richins had the means, motive and opportunity to murder Eric Richins," Bloodworth said.
The prosecutor said Richins needed the money from her husband's death to get a fresh start. He shared messages sent to her boyfriend in the month before her husband's death.
"If he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!!" Bloodworth said she told her boyfriend, Josh Grossman, in a text.
She texted him a "crazy dream" about the mansion she was planning to purchase, of her and Grossman using the house as an event center to make thousands of dollars a day. After Eric Richins' death, Bloodworth said she texted Grossman: "I think I want you to be my husband one day."
Bloodworth also said she asked Grossman days after her husband's death if he had killed anyone while in Iraq and asked, "How did that make you feel?"
But, he said her text messages from the two months leading up to her husband's death to two weeks after are all deleted. After police seized that phone, he said she searched whether deleted messages can be recovered and if she could delete messages remotely. After hearing that her husband died of fentanyl poisoning, Bloodworth said Richins then searched for "luxury prisons for the rich in America."
Nester began her opening arguments by playing the 911 call Richins made to report her husband was cold in their bed.
"Those are the sounds of a wife becoming a widow," she said.
She told jurors the couple were financially successful and were celebrating closing on the mansion. She said Eric Richins had been out to the location the previous day and suggested the two have a "celebratory shot." Nester also said his business was doing well, and he had reported earning over $700,000 in taxes the previous year and they expected that to grow.
Nester also critiqued the crime scene investigation. She said police did not search for fentanyl and the glasses from a Moscow mule and the celebratory shots were unfinished and sitting in the sink, but never analyzed by investigators. A nanny put them in the dishwasher the next day.
Eric Richins sounded fine talking to his friend on the phone at 10 p.m. the night he died, the defense attorney said, telling jurors that Eric Richins used drugs to manage his pain and a few weeks before his death he was in Mexico where he could have obtained fentanyl. Near his bed, she said, was an empty bottle for pain pills that expired in 2016.
Nester said her client could have staged a drug overdose scene, but she did not — she "told her truth." She said Eric Richins' family could not accept that and needed someone to blame — but that need went too far and led to them paying a private investigator $100,000 to implicate Kouri Richins.
"The investigator goes looking for skeletons in the closet, and boy did he find some," she said, noting those skeletons have now been turned into entertainment.
Nester showed jurors a drawing that when viewed one way appears to depict a young woman in a fur coat and when viewed another way appears to depict a witch.
"There's going to be times in this case where the state is going to discuss facts and certain witnesses and they're going to show you the witch. And I'm going to take those same facts and those same witnesses, and I'm going to show you a widow," she said.
The trial is scheduled to last through March 26.
This story will be updated.
