(NewsNation) — A Utah mother of three was arrested for allegedly killing her husband by lacing his Moscow mule cocktail with fentanyl — and then writing a children’s book to help her kids deal with the grief.
Kouri Richins is now charged with his murder. Friends and family say they’re shock.
Greg Skordas, the attorney for the deceased husband’s family, discussed the case on NewsNation’s “CUOMO” on Wednesday, saying, “The state has put together a very compelling case.”
Skordas said the state has a witness willing to corroborate that they did, in fact, sell fentanyl and other opioids to this suspect.
A medical examiner later found five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system.
“We do know that the circumstantial evidence and even the direct evidence from this drug dealer is that she purchased fentanyl in the days, probably hours before she served it up in this Moscow mule cocktail to her husband,” Skordas said.
Prosecutors are saying Eric Richins died of a lethal dose of fentanyl at their home in Kamas, a small mountain town near Park City, and that he didn’t have any other drugs in his system.
“39 years old, not any history of substance abuse, alcohol, drugs, never been charged with a crime, never had a family history of addiction, never had even an even as a minor possession of alcohol, nothing like that,” Skordas said. “He was very healthy. He took very good care of himself.”
Skordas said Eric Richins was active in his children’s soccer coaching, basketball coaching and baseball coaching. He was an avid hunter, who was involved in search and rescue in the nearby mountains.
“This is a man who took very, very good care of himself,” he said. “And there is no history from any source at all, that he never even touched an illegal drug.”
There is a suggestion, though, that he had problems with his wife and that he may have even suggested that he thought she tried to poison him in the past.
“That’s accurate.,” Skordas said. “And in fact, he told some family members that if something ever happened to him, to check out her to make sure that she didn’t get away with something, he felt that she was trying to kill him. And in retrospect, he was appears to have been right.”
There are also allegations that she had a boyfriend the entire time the two were married.
“Eric was a fairly well-to-do man, she came from a life where she didn’t have the same means that she had once she married him,” Skordas said. “And so there was some hint, at least some motive there, that there was some financial gain for her by doing this.”
Skordas said Eric Richins would have done anything for his children.
“He would have stayed in a miserable relationship for his children,” he said. “I mean, this man, by all accounts, everything I’ve learned from him and about him is that he that being a father was the most important thing in his life.”
Linda King was a co-worker of Kouri Richins and actually introduced the pair.
King worked with Kouri Richins for more than a year and said the incident breaks her heart.
“I never saw anything that would be awful like what I’m hearing, never,” she said.
King remembers that Kouri Richins was at first shy to talk to her future husband.
“They were both shy about talking to each other,” she said. “They went on a date and it was just perfect from then on,” King said, “and I was with her all the time at work.”
King said their relationship was “like a fairy tale relationship,” saying, “It just seemed beautiful.”
King heard from one of his employees that Eric Richins had died from a brain aneurysm.
“They said that, you know, young people have those and that’s what I thought,” she said. “That’s exactly what I thought until I’m hearing this stuff. I heard it and it just, I’m numb. I’m totally numb.”
