S3 Ep145: Kouri Richins Found Guilty of Murder

On March 16, 2026, a Utah jury convicted Kouri Richins of murder in the fentanyl poisoning death of her husband Eric. Prosecutors alleged she spiked his Moscow Mule with nearly five times a lethal dose of fentanyl. The case gained attention after Richins wrote a children's book to help her young sons cope with their father's death, before being arrested for his murder. She faces 25 years to life in prison, with sentencing scheduled for May 13. Try our coffee! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And we're going to be talking about a case that we've covered before and it's making national headlines. It did when it originally happened. There were some back and forths about this case. Some people believed this person was innocent. I'd like to think more people believed she was guilty and I'm talking about Cory Richins if you didn't read the title of this episode. Who believed she was innocent? There definitely was. So I had originally covered this on Crime Feed if you remember. And then you were like, oh, did you hear about Cory Richins? I'm like, why does that sound so familiar? And I'm like, oh, we just covered it. And yeah, I'm with you. To me, the evidence was overwhelming. However, we're going to talk about the basics. Stephanie's

• 0:58Derrick Levasseur?

  going to give you the rundown for anybody. You know what I think it was? I just read because basically what we're going to talk about is that she was found guilty by a jury. No! Yeah. Okay. One of the jurors who was on, I don't, I don't think it's called a panel, but she said she was, she and the other people on the jury were hoping that Cory was innocent. Yeah. Like, hoping that she was. And it only took three hours for them to come back, you know, to say that she was guilty of aggravated murder and the other charges. But I guess they like, I don't know why, maybe they, obviously Cory and her husband Eric, who she was accused of killing, they had small children. Yeah.

• 1:42Derrick Levasseur?

  So maybe the jurors were like, well, we, you know, they already lost their dad. We don't want to take their mom from them. This was a jury in Utah. So I don't know. Take that as you want. A case like this, when something occurs in your own backyard, it doesn't only affect the immediate people, it affects the entire community because many people walk around believing stuff like this can't happen where they live, right? They hear it on the news or they watch it on a podcast and they think, oh man. That's crazy. I'm glad I don't live there. And then it happens a street or two over and you're like, wow. Even if it's not directly something you're connected to, it does still have an impact on you and your family members and it causes some interesting dinner table conversations. But that's what I was gonna say. We're gonna talk about

• 2:27Derrick Levasseur?

  just the overview of what happened here. Anybody who's not familiar with this case and and what happened to Eric? Yeah. And then you kind of just hit the the nail on the head as far as jury members coming to a conclusion rather quickly, relatively speaking, how it goes in most cases. But in but also still in a way which is interesting for them to admit this, but wanting to find her innocent, wanting to acquit her and just not being able to do so with the overwhelming. Because of the overwhelming evidence. Yeah. Which is why when you're like people, some people thought you I'm like, who? Who? There were people. You have a whole jury of people who are like, we don't want it. They're going in biased, kind of like, we don't want to find her guilty. We want her to be innocent. And they still, after only three hours,

• 3:13Derrick Levasseur?

  had no other choice but to come back with a guilty verdict. And that's interesting. I think it's I think not even necessarily people believing she's innocent, but thinking the evidence wasn't strong enough to find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I think there's a big distinction there where you can believe the person's involved, but think that the evidence to to support that is is weak, right? We've seen that in many cases where someone is found innocent of a crime and we agree with it, even though candidly, we think they're guilty. You know, it's just not enough in the court of law to get there. So I do think there's a group of people who believe that she was involved, but didn't believe the evidence was there to support it. But I also disagree with that notion as well. We can talk a little bit about the evidence, but

• 3:57Derrick Levasseur?

  I thought it was a slam dunk, to be honest. So for a quick overview, if anybody doesn't know this case, and it'll be very quick because I'm sure most people do. Eric Richards was found dead at the home he shared with his wife and children in Kansas. Cause of death was a fentanyl overdose and toxicology later showed an extremely high level of fentanyl in his system of about five times the lethal. Now, at first, the death was treated as suspicious, not immediately ruled a homicide. And then investigators later uncovered a series of details that raised serious concerns, like the celebratory drink that Cory allegedly made Eric the night that he died. She made him a vodka Moscow Mule. And then she claimed she went to bed and later found him unresponsive.

• 4:43Derrick Levasseur?

  And then prosecutors say that Cory had previously tried to poison Eric in the weeks earlier by spiking a sandwich. Yes. He had Ian. He reportedly did become very ill. He survived. And then we have, you know, the overwhelming motives. There's a lot of motives here, and that's kind of where it all comes in. So they still, and then the defense kind of rested heavily on this. They were like, hey, the prosecution, they still cannot show you how Eric Richins ingested that fentanyl. And so they haven't done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on what they called paper-thin evidence. This was Cory's legal team. But really, yes, was there a lot of circumstantial evidence?

• 5:28Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, but they don't, they don't need, the prosecution doesn't need to show you how Eric consumed the fentanyl. And this was a case that really rested heavily on how much motive Cory had to, to have Eric, her husband, be dead. So the prosecution focused a lot of their case on these many, many motives. And, you know, there was the fact that she was unhappy in her marriage. She was having an affair. We know that. She was also in huge financial debt. We can see that she was kind of running a real estate company and she was buying and selling things, but at the time that her husband died, Cory was in financial distress.

• 6:13Derrick Levasseur?

  She had been like significantly Going into debt and she needed a huge influx of cash and capital quickly. And so Eric's life had been insured for more than 2.2 million dollars through several policies. One of which, by the way, at least what they can prove so far is one of which Corey had applied for fraudulently. And then 10 days after that policy took effect, Corey attempted to kill Eric on Valentine's Day and then a month later he was dead. So she wanted that. And he was on to her, by the way. Yes. He knew something was up. He was talking to his sister, saying, if something happens to me, it's her. And so the jury unanimously agreed both the murder and attempted murder of Eric were committed

• 6:58Derrick Levasseur?

  for a financial benefit, according to the verdict form. Yeah, the motive and the money were really, I think, the most impactful thing for this jury. And that's why, you know, they want to go in and say, we don't want her to be guilty. A family's already ripped apart. But they looked at the money trail. They looked at the timing of everything. They looked at the fact that Corey was going to be in huge trouble if she didn't get money. And then they looked at the fact that, you know, Eric was insured for quite a bit and that money would have really helped her. And she was having an affair and talking about, you know, going away with this other guy. And it all kind of just didn't, it didn't look good. They're really, it's like, who else wants Eric Richins dead as much as Corey, his own wife?

• 7:39Derrick Levasseur?

  No, there was a lot there. And this isn't a Corey Richins episode. You can go back and kind of look at everything that we talked about in the episode when we covered it. I mean, there were so many things in addition to the failed attempt on Valentine's Day, or some people say a practice attempt. But there's a lot of digital evidence associated with this case, including her reaching out to someone who was like a housekeeper or a maid, someone who was at the house. For fentanyl, yeah. For fentanyl and that's who her supplier was. And then there's the digital evidence on the night in question of Eric's death where she allegedly said that she had gone to bed and she was sleeping. And yet there's multiple pieces of data on her phone that show that she was not sleeping, that she was in her room awake. And we didn't even really.

• 8:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Even if you like, open your phone and you don't sign the text, it still shows in the log of that phone. Everything you're doing is being tracked, yeah. Right. And Eric was, his, his fentanyl levels were approximately five times. Five times. The fatal dose and and he didn't have a known history of opioid abuse and they were able to determine that the fentanyl was ingested shortly before his death. And it was ingested, not like, they couldn't find any drug paraphernalia, right? So it's not like he's injecting it. He's not taking, you know, pills, things like that. Yep. No evidence of him leaving the home or anybody else being inside the home. So Occam's razor, right? Either he did it to himself.

• 9:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Or she poisoned him, period. And then when you take into consideration, like you had talked about the motive here where she was in a lot of financial debt. Eric had luckily removed her from the life insurance policies, but she had made multiple attempts to alter those policies. And one of the things that we talked about after his death was her finding out after he was already gone. That she'd been. Surprised you'd been, you've been removed, Corey. And I think, I can't remember the details.

• 9:29Derrick Levasseur?

  She was trying to like drill into a safe. Yeah. Didn't, didn't we learn that she like punched? The sister, yeah, well, allegedly or like struck the sister in some way, but, but she threw a party. After Eric died, so there's people at the house and this party was to celebrate like her buying this huge property that Eric hadn't wanted her to buy. And then, so after Eric dies, she still has this party and then the sister comes over and the sister's like, what are you doing? And allegedly Corey was trying to like get into the safe, like drilling into this safe, trying to get into it. And that's when the sister was like, well, you, you've been cut off anyways, so it doesn't matter. And Corey lost it, got mad and like allegedly struck her. Yeah.

• 10:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And then on top of all of that, where it's kind of after the fact, but it's, it may show a consciousness of guilt, which is something that is considered during the court proceedings. And that's the fact that after his death, she came out with this children's book called, Are You With Me? And it's about dealing with, with grief and. It's about a father who dies, who comes back as like an angel to watch over his children. Yes. And she went on talk shows. Yes. And the jury members talked about this. They talked about it. And it's not only the fact that she tried to profit off of this murder. But it was also in the prosecution's opinion, a, an attempt to control the narrative and to appear as a grieving widow, right? To kind of get. In front of it.

• 10:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Which is exactly what the jury said, where it was like, we saw her in the courtroom. She just looked like a sad, you know, little woman and, you know, what if, what if her husband did die and this has nothing to do with her? What has she lost? Yeah. No, absolutely not. I mean, she also tried to delete stuff, you know, off of her phone. So that's another consciousness of guilt thing like. And you think about reasonable doubt, right? Like what other scenarios? The only angle that they could go with here, and I believe this is what Corey's teams tried to go with, which was that there was a dependency issue on Eric's behalf, where he had some, some problems with fentanyl use, or he may have used drugs in the past. And this was in a, this was an unfortunate circumstance where

• 11:33Derrick Levasseur?

  while poor Corey was in bed, Eric used drugs and he accidentally overdosed. And there was just nothing to substantiate that. From what I knew, there that he had never had a history of illicit drug use or addiction, but it was maybe in the past that he allegedly, according to the defense attorneys, Eric had been addicted to painkillers, specifically acetaminophen. And he had requested his wife to procure them for him. I don't think that that was ever proven necessarily more. This was something that Corey had alleged because once again, she's the person who she's, who's being forced to get the painkillers for, for Eric. And maybe she tried to make that seem like that's why she was in

• 12:18Derrick Levasseur?

  communication with these drug dealers and things. And, and it wasn't a, you know, I'm not trying to get a murder weapon. My husband had a problem and an addiction. There is evidence that Eric had used THC gummies in the past to manage pain and things like that. But the, the addicted to painkiller thing, the opiates thing mainly came from the defense team. And there was body camera footage on the night of Eric's death where Corey is telling the police that her husband has no history of illicit drug use. And she later tried to claim in a letter from jail that her husband gets high every night and he bought fentanyl from Mexico and all this stuff. But there's nothing to back that up. And if, why didn't you say that to the police?

• 13:02Derrick Levasseur?

  Right? When they showed up on the night he died, if they were like, does Eric have a history of, oh, it's a drug use? She could have been like, yeah, he's, you know, he's brought fentanyl from Mexico before and he pressured me to get painkillers. All that stuff, once again, only comes out after she's being accused of doing something wrong. So. Yeah. And I, and I think some people have said, oh, the first attempt on Valentine's Day was just a, was a practice. I, I disagree with that. No, I think it was an, an attempt. It was a failed attempt where she was trying to do the smallest amount of fentanyl possible so that it would look like a natural occurrence where he was just, he was experimenting with drugs and it would happen to be, uh, fentanyl inside the drugs. And yet, when it didn't work, he, she was like, okay, I have to up, up the dose.

• 13:46Derrick Levasseur?

  And that's where she really screwed up, right? Because she overshot and it was five times the, the, the fatal amount. Which is nothing you'd ever see in, in recreational drugs that just have fentanyl in them. That's way too much. This was a deliberate poisoning where she wanted to make sure, okay, first attempt didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. The job is done. And I think that's really what showed her cards in addition to a lot of other things. But you could make an argument with the motive as far as, listen, there's a lot of financial problems out there. If there's, if there's issues in the relationship, there could be some, some disagreements over life insurance policies, et cetera. But couple that with everything else, including her reaching out to someone for fentanyl, which happened to be the drug that killed her husband.

• 14:27Derrick Levasseur?

  You got a big hill to climb. It's not going to be an easy one to, to prove. And it's not her job to disprove the prosecution's theory on it, but they have to show some reasonable doubt to say, hey, listen, that's cool. That's their theory, but here's some other, uh, theories that could also have occurred. And ultimately, three hours, clearly the, the jury wasn't buying it. A jury, which we've already said, was hoping she was innocent. So she, the ball was in her court. She had the odds in her favor. And yet, as they watched her and a couple jury members talked about it, she didn't really say anything during the trial. She just kind of sat there with no, they said it was tough to read her, right? And, and overall, they deliberated and they, and they said this wasn't something they took lightly.

• 15:12Derrick Levasseur?

  They really wanted to acquit her, but just the overwhelming amount of evidence didn't allow them to do so. There was nothing that. That was presented that would suggest reasonable doubt. There's also another interesting thing that just popped up a few days ago. So it came out that the authorities who were investigating Eric Richins' death had found out through their investigation that Cory's mother, Lisa Darden, had been looked into in the 2006 death of a woman named Gertrude Moore, who was allegedly Cory's mother's lover. And this woman had died from an overdose and was found foaming at the mouth.

• 15:53Derrick Levasseur?

  And this was 20 years before Eric Richins was fatally poisoned with fentanyl. And so they actually started looking into Cory's mother, whose name is Lisa Darden, because they were like, hey, the circumstances are similar enough here. In Gertrude Moore's death, that authorities investigated Lisa Darden, with Detective Jeff O'Driscoll noting in a search warrant that the 66-year-old Lisa had been named as the beneficiary of her partner's estate a short time before her death. So not only do we have similar circumstances as in like, you know, a drug overdose that could be looked at as, you know, accidental, but was actually intentional with some sort of financial benefit happening. It was, it was kind of very suspicious.

• 16:38Derrick Levasseur?

  And O'Driscoll wrote in the warrant, quote, "Based on Lisa Darden's proximity to her partner's suspicious overdose death and her relationship with Cory, it is possible she was involved in planning and orchestrating Eric's death." End quote. So that's something interesting. That's kind of another, another twist here. I don't know if they've wrapped up this kind of potential investigation or if it's something that they're just maybe going to pursue further. But that's something to think about. That does seem to be a very similar sort of way to die with a similar motive. Yeah, there might, there might, this might just be the first, the first domino to fall. Who knows? But overall, we clearly believe that the jury got it right. It's unfortunate that it's after the fact

• 17:22Derrick Levasseur?

  and that we weren't able to prevent this from happening. But it is important to hold those accountable for their actions. And Cory can now- Now write her second book behind bars. I'm sure she's going to appeal it as she has the right to do. And you know, if there's a major update in the case, we will definitely let you guys know. We wanted to do just a quick update here because we covered the case and whenever we spend any time on an investigation, if there's an update, that's, that's kind of what crime weekly news is for. So that's the update with Corey. If there's any other things that go on there, we'll let you know. We also, I was just watching on the news today as we're recording this on Monday. Last night we had an unfortunate circumstance where the Canadian Airlines flight flying into LaGuardia, I believe it was in your neck of the woods, Stephanie,

• 18:04Derrick Levasseur?

  had an accident on the runway with a fire truck and unfortunately the two pilots passed away and there were multiple firefighters injured as well. So we're thinking about everybody in that situation as well because we know right now there's some major issues going on with TSA and all this stuff. So again, unfortunately with crime weekly news, we could do like a six hour episode on all the things that just happened the week prior, but we try to stay consistent with what we've already covered on crime weekly news. So if there's anything out there that we're missing that you guys want to make us aware of, please weigh in down in the comments. Let us know. We will be back later this week with part two of Eliza Sherman. The part one, you guys were very responsive to that. I hate to use the word like,

• 18:47Derrick Levasseur?

  but you guys really liked the first part, I think because there's a lot of mystery with it. I know for me, I was intrigued by it because it gets my, my wheels turning and it makes you think it's not very obvious what happened here. So I'm looking forward to part two. We're going to record it right after we finish this. Glad Corey's behind bars. Yeah, of course. Justice served. They don't always get it right, but in this one, we both believe they did, right? I don't think that there was ever, I, for me, there was no question. No doubt. Yeah. I was like, if a jury had found her not guilty. Crazy. I would have protested. Okay, I would have been like, we need to move that venue, get them out of Utah because these people are too nice or something. Yeah, it would have definitely been on a technicality. You need to try her in New York, okay? This would have been a 30-minute jury deliberation.

• 19:32Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I'm glad, I'm glad with the outcome and let us know what you guys think. You know, listen, we're no judgment here, maybe a little bit of judgment. But do you think Cory was innocent? Or do you think that there wasn't enough evidence to convict her and you don't agree with the ruling? Maybe that's a way to frame it. So let us know what you think in the comments, leave a review on Apple Podcasts on Spotify. One more thing that we want to cover here because we're still learning with the Patreon. We want to make sure we get all our Partner in Crime birthday shout outs in. We had four more come in late. If you're a Partner in Crime member, make sure you try to get it in at the beginning of the month. So that way we get all of you, but we got four more to go. Stephanie, you want to hit it off? Yeah, so we have, and these are for March, these are still the March birthdays.

• 20:13Derrick Levasseur?

  We have Angel Mann, her birthday was March 12th, Pisces. Happy birthday, Angel. People love the Zodiac, they love it. They were commenting on it. Well, we have another Pisces, Natalie O'Shea, that's March 19th. Happy birthday Natalie. And then we have two more Aries, we have Katie Shover, March 26th. And then Penny, she didn't give a last name, but that's fine. Pretty Penny, March 23rd. Happy birthday to all our March birthday patrons. Other than that, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you later this week. Have a good night.