Kouri Richins, now 33, is accused of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, for financial gain. But in exclusive interviews with PEOPLE, friends of Kouri point to evidence they say does not add up.
Eyes reddened by crying, mom and aspiring children’s book authorjoined a Zoom business meeting with ghostwriter Shane Walter late last year from her home in Kamas, Utah. The newly widowed 32-year-old parent of three young boys – her husband, Eric, 39, had died suddenly months earlier – wanted to hire Walter to work on a children’s book she was planning to publish around the anniversary of Eric’s death and based on her own family’s story.
But in interviews with PEOPLE, friends of Kouri’s say the Utah soccer mom is innocent of her husband’s March 4, 2022 death and that the evidence prosecutors have used against her has been taken out of context. “There’s a lot that will come out at trial,” says a friend close to the case. “I’m certain that once it does, the jury will make the right decision.”Kouri, who worked as a housekeeper through college, often felt an outsider in Eric’s affluent ranching family, according to friends.
The couple came to a head when Kouri decided to start a real estate business a few years ago, Kouri told investigators in an email sent weeks before her May 8, 2023 arrest. “Eric wanted us to live the typical conservative life where the man takes care of his family and the wife is a homemaker, wife, mom and that’s it. That is not my personality and not the way I was raised,” Kouri said in the email, adding: “I wanted to be more.
“The family needs an answer — someone to blame,” adds Kouri’s best friend, Ali: “I believe Eric must have died from an accidental overdose.”Prosecutors say that hours after her arrest, in a recorded jailhouse phone call, Kouri told her mother and brother that Eric asked her to purchase pain pills for him and suggested that the drug dealer had sold her fentanyl instead.
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Lindsey Carnett, Author at San Antonio ReportLindsey Carnett covers the environment, science and utilities for the San Antonio Report. A native San Antonian, she graduated from Texas A&M University in 2016 with a degree in telecommunication media studies and holds a master's from Bellevue University. She is a board member of the San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists and previously worked at the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung and the San Antonio Express-News.
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