The Kouri Richins Trial ~ A Convoluted Trail Of Deception

The Kouri Richin’s case was brought into the limelight because after the death of her husband, she claimed to have written a children’s book about grief, to help her children cope with the death of their father.

She contacted media outlets, and did interviews, all of which drew attention to her situation. As it turns out, it has come out in the trial, that she hired a ghost writer and vanity press, so it was just one of the many layers, upon layers of deceptions.

The book is no longer available, because apparently the family of the victim sued, and had it removed. The book has been shared online by various true crime podcasters. It is a haunting book that does not seem like it would comfort anyone, except maybe the author. It might in her own mind, reduce guilt by portraying her husband as having angel’s wings, and being capable of attending all the family parties, and soccer games. 

The illustrations for the book are also very questionable. They do not show children going on with their lives, but rather show a lone child in a hallway at school, a lone child in bed at night looking terrified, a lone child sitting in a large chair opening gifts. It does not show the children surrounded by family, friends, grandparents, and neighbours as one would expect. 

When she gave a televised interview about he book, she said the words “you know” over, and over again. What did the interviewers know? How could they know? So what was the point of saying that repeatedly, unless it was filler, in order to avoid any in-depth questioning. She was informing them that they knew what they did not know, so it seemed like a manipulative, or avoidant way to frame the interview (in my opinion). 

She soon became a prime suspect in the murder of her husband Eric Richins. The couple’s three young children, three boys aged three to nine at the time, are probably the most unfortunate victims in this entire saga, next to their father.

Eric Richins was a partner in a successful stone mason company. At the time of his death his net worth was around five million dollars. He made over $400,000 US per year to provide for his young family. He was an active, involved family man, and well liked member of the community. 

Perhaps one of the revenge motives for Kouri began as early as the day they married. She was presented with a pre-nuptial agreement to sign. Her husband had already been through a messy divorce, and did not want to ever have to drag his company assets into another divorce. 

Maybe he had a glimpse into a future with a wife he could not trust, and thought he was protecting himself, and their soon to be young family. But little did he know that a wife who cannot be trusted, is a deadly proposition. One does wonder why a pre-nuptial agreement would be presented to the bride by a family member on the day of the wedding?

You would think a pre-nuptial agreement would be discussed between the bride and groom, and signed beforehand. By the day of the wedding, most people are not in a position to back out of the wedding, or the pre-nuptial. It may have seeded some resentment on her part. 

His good name, his flaws, and every pill he took in the previous twenty years, was put under a microscope. Sadly, a murder victim gets dragged though the mud on all of the minute aspects of his or her life, when they are no longer here to defend themselves. It sticks another knife into the heart’s of those who loved him. They have to sit through it all, and listen to every detail, when they must feel like screaming. 

One of the things the defence has harped on endlessly is the claim that Eric Richins used cannabis in the form of gummies on a regular basis. This is designed to make the leap that he was a hard core fentanyl addict. However, no one seems to be pointing out that there was no THC in his stomach, or in his system. If he was a user of cannabis, it would have shown up in the toxicology reports, because cannabis stays in the body longer than most other drugs. The fact there was no sign of THC or cannabis, means he could not have been a regular user, and had not used cannabis recently (prior thirty days at least). 

Who knows where and when it all began, but given the litany of deceptive practices on the part of Kouri, her pattern of behaviour must have been a lifelong thing.

Going back to her early years, apparently both parents were engineers. Her father ended up in prison over alcohol related issues, and her mother was reported to be a compulsive gambler. Kouri felt the sting of being judged by others as coming from a troubled family.

Troubled families are often the subject of gossip, which is difficult for the children to endure. She became fixated on money, and image. Money is a sign of success, and allows a person to portray the image, and pride that goes along with it. She may have formulated that concept with a laser focus in order to overcome a troubled childhood. Or she may have had some ingrained mental health issues. At this point, no one knows for sure what drove the behaviours. 

After they married, she got a real estate licence and started flipping houses. This gave her all kinds of leeway with large sums of money. However, she was more of a gambler like her mother, and tended to lose money, instead of manage it with a gradual accumulation of net worth.

Over time, she owed far more than she made. In fact it sounds like she owed almost the equivalent of her husband’s entire net worth. It’s hard to believe she never managed to make a profit on any of those deals. Yet she envisioned herself to be the shining star of one successful venture after another. 

When she got her real estate license, she began one of the most convoluted journeys ever put on trial in front of the public. She set up and changed life insurance policies. She started seeking out lethal doses of fentanyl, and propofol, which she knew was the drug that killed Michael Jackson.

She did not end up getting her hands on propofol, but she did line up some dealers to get her opiates, and fentanyl. She also had some prescription Seroquel, which was found to be part of the cocktail she allegedly used to kill her husband. 

As it is with so many spousal murders, she was also having an affair. She was supporting her lover, and gave him vehicles, along with large sums of money. It sounds like she dumped him shortly after the murder.

It also sounds like she may have been setting him us as the fall guy, to be framed. However that panned out, he dodged a bullet. There was also an inference that she tried a lethal dose of drugs on him as well, because he gave an account of eating something she provided, and then not waking up for something like fourteen hours. He also spoke of having supernatural experiences with her. Whatever that means? 

Of all the witnesses, he was the least sharp of them all, by a long shot. I think it garnered him even more sympathy. You could see that he had been a fish on a hook, getting reeled in, with no more awareness of what was going on than a hapless fish. 

On top of all the other shenanigans, to include deleting hundreds of text messages and emails, changing insurance beneficiaries, and forging her husbands signature to take out a large loan, there was more. Much more.

She attempted to poison him more than once, causing him to be violently ill. He became suspicious. He was so worried, he put all his assets into a separate trust, confided his concerns to others, and got a divorce attorney.

Meanwhile his wife never stopped scheming for a second. She was allegedly seeking out the drugs to kill him. She was setting up one financial con after another. And after she was arrested, she never toned it down.

Perhaps one of the most damning things she did after her arrest, was to write a letter from her jail cell, called “Walk the Dog”. The letter outlined a witness tampering perjury plot she was planning to set up. She wanted to get to her family, specifically her brother, to testify (give false testimony) about her husband, and his supposed drug use.

She wanted him to testify that her husband was a chronic drug user, and got drugs from Mexico. The letter incriminates her beyond what most of us can comprehend, because we are not trial lawyers, or prosecutors. But it is enough to potentially remove all reasonable doubt about her guilt.

For her own lawyers, such actions are the stuff of nightmares. She could not stop scheming and incriminating herself. She could not keep anything under wraps, or in the vault of attorney client privilege, which would have, or could have been protected from exposure. I guess in a way, her games of playing fast and loose as a cannon, with no shortage of ammunition, is a blessing for the prosecution, and for those who want to see her locked up. 

She also went on a fishing spree about the autopsy results. The recorded phone call was played in court. She called the medical examiner’s office, and throughout the call, was giddy, and acted like she was talking about a drain pipe or something, not the death of a human being, who was her husband.

It was clear she wanted to know what they knew, and what had been determined about his manner of death. She was curious to know whether they could determine the amount of fentanyl in his system. She wanted to know if they could tell if it had been ingested, or injected. If she did what she is accused of doing, she knew full well it had been ingested.

She wanted to know if there was anything else detected, because she had also dosed him with Seroquel, which is a highly sedating antipsychotic drug that would have potentiated the effects of the opiates she gave him. During the conversation she was very upbeat, laughing inappropriately, and literally fishing for information.

She was talking more like a salesperson seeking to find out the objections she might have to overcome in order to close a deal. There was not even a hint that she was a grief stricken widow. You would think that for most people, such details would be very upsetting. 

The list of witnesses include her best friend who she stole a sum of money from, which caused her friend to end up homeless.

Her husband’s elderly father took the stand absolutely heart broken. All of Eric’s family had to move into position to protect his children, his assets, his house, his safe, which she was drilling into, and as a result, got into a physical fight with a family member.

They had to put up cameras in and around the house, which was put into a family trust, barring her from all access. They hired a private investigator, which cost a huge sum. They had to give the police access to the house numerous times, accompanying them to deal with multiple search warrants. They had to document and submit evidence, one thing after another, to the sheriff’s office. They had to set up supervised visits with the children. No doubt, it must have consumed their lives. 

After his death she sent text messages to certain people, thrilled about her newfound wealth. She claimed she was going to be rich. She did in fact get insurance payouts for something like $1.3 million dollars. A forensic accountant testified when each deposit was given to her, and showed the bank documents of each deposit, in three different lump sums.

Within a matter of weeks, she spent all of it. The $1.3 million rapidly dwindled, and by the third month she had $820.00 left in her account.

It would not matter what sum of money was given to Kouri Richins. If it was $20 million, it would have gone up in smoke. Real estate was her gambling addiction, a very sinister and deadly game of blackjack. She could not control whatever it was that drove her poor decision making. 

Instead of re-evaluating her strategy, considering bankruptcy, or admitting she had made a mess of things, she resorted to crime. Theft, forgery, tampering with documents, and false claims to lenders, all became patterns, and were central to her business practices. When that wasn’t enough, she resorted to a murder plot. 

Each hurdle she faced turned someone else into a victim. How she managed to buy that many houses is beyond comprehension. By the time she bought the huge mansion, closing on it the day after her husband’s death, she was in dire straights financially. She had no money to renovate any of the homes, and several were already being foreclosed on. She was paying high interest loan payments in massive sums. 

All of this, when she had a husband who was providing for the family very well. She defrauded him, stole from him, and used his credit rating without his knowledge to finance her crumbling empire.

Many people face financial ruin. Sometimes is is based on our own foolish mistakes, and sometimes it is based on circumstances. If we find ourselves trapped in an unwanted relationship, it is going to cost money to get out of it. 

It got to the point where Kouri wanted her husband’s money, but she did not want him. She did not want to simply get a divorce, because of the pre-nuptial agreement she had signed. The pre-nuptial was set up so that if they divorced, he kept the assets. But if he died, the assets would be transferred to her. It was probably more complicated, but basically that is what came out in the trial about it. She told friends she felt trapped. 

This is a story about the love of money to the exclusion of all else. It borders on a psychotic delusion of grandeur and riches. I believe the Seroquel she added to the cocktail that killed her husband, was a drug that had been prescribed for her. Her illusion of creating massive wealth single handedly through a bunch of flippant real estate deals, might be viewed as symptoms of psychosis. I am surprised the defence did not introduce an insanity defence.

It might have been her only hope, although it would probably have failed because she is alert, aware of what is going on, is coherent, planning, and knew right from wrong based on her efforts to hide her crimes, etc. She is playing an active role in her own defence.

But even so, as the saying goes – she was not playing with a full deck. It kind of reminds me of Erin Patterson, the Australian death cap mushroom poisoner.

She was supposedly smart, yet was dumber than all the idioms you could drum up, to describe how dumb she was. If you try to describe it, you might get banned from the conversation.

In social media, you cannot call a crazy person a lunatic, even if they killed numerous people. I guess it is viewed as being far too mean. What they did is always described as “what a shame, the poor person did not get the help they needed”. 

I always wonder why the victim, or victims did not get the help, or more so, the protection they deserved, when the perpetrator showed so many signs, and patterns of plotting harm.  

Kouri Richins, in spite of all her scheming and plotting, did not exhibit sound decision making, or the ability to see the writing on the wall. She had what most would consider to be the perfect life. She had a husband who was providing for her very well, and who was building wealth.

He was not even forty years old when he died. If he had lived until retirement, they would have been multi-millionaires. As it was, they were living in a beautiful home, had nice vehicles, and took frequent vacations. She had a nanny and housekeeper. Clearly she was not paying the bills because her real estate business was in deep debt, and was not generating any income. It was the proverbial black hole. 

Most of all, they had three healthy, active boys, and were a family with all the interests that go with raising a young family.

One of the saddest parts of the entire trial, was how the boys were sequestered in a playroom on the second floor of the house, as all the chaos unfolded with police and paramedics trying to revive their father, and figure out what had happened.

Although extended family members tried to shield the boys, the two older ones knew. When his body was taken out of the house, they ran to the window, and saw him covered up and loaded into an ambulance. Apparently the older one was stoic and quiet. The other one was inconsolable. He ran and got his dads Apple watch. He wanted that watch because his father always wore it, and he knew it recorded what his father was doing, in addition to his heartbeat, and breathing.

His mother Kouri immediately took the watch away from him, and deleted all of the history on that watch, before handing it back to him. I wonder if that will be seared into his memory, especially as the truth of what happened becomes clear as he gets older?

On the morning of his death, all the footage of how she reacted, is also being dissected during the trial. Those poor kids. She repeated over and over how she had been sleeping with one of the children, like she was setting up an alibi. 

For those of us who are Christians, we know we are all sinners. We all fall short, and often let down those we love. Therefore we are all called upon to acknowledge our wrongdoing, and repent. In this case, if the allegations are true, there were multiple egregious crimes against her own family, and those who were close to her. 

To repent brings about overwhelming awareness and remorse. It is a crushing realization to recognize the sin in our life. So far, she is not showing much remorse. She seems curious, alert, and yet strangely detached. 

One of the saddest things about this trial is to see the complete lack of remorse, as each and every sordid lie, and deception is brought forward. So far, no tears, no shame, no signs of emotion. Professional people on the witness stand showed more emotion than she has shown.

Will she break? She gives the appearance of a student, or schoolmarm studying a math problem. She looks rather hawkish, and alert, like she does not want to miss an opportunity if one should arise.

Occasionally you can see her chewing on the inside of her cheek. Sometimes she looks a little bored, and other times she becomes very focused, and attentive on the testimony being given. When her friends testified against her, she looked outraged. 

As each day progresses, and the evidence piles on threatening to bury her, she has started to look a little more vulnerable. It appears that her defence team are duds. They are not the least bit likeable, and are not even borderline professional.

The judge rules the roost. He is running the show like a symphony. His deeply baritone voice is strong and calming. He is fair and compassionate toward witnesses, and shows no negative emotion, or bursts of ego like you see in other courtroom dramas. He seems to know what he is doing, and is handling all the courtroom kerfuffles very well. 

He is like a considerate coach, telling people to stretch their legs, take a break, and be mindful of instructions. One of the most emotional witnesses was Kouri’s boyfriend, the one she was having an affair with. The judge was very compassionate toward him, as he broke down throughout his testimony.

Even at the onset when he was being sworn in, and told to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, he was like “huh? I don’t know what the whole truth is”. He struggled. But in spite of it all, because he was so remorseful, and raw with his emotions, there was compassion for him.

Her lover’s testimony did not change her hawkish demeanour. I am not sure how much longer the trial is going to go on, but it could be a couple more weeks. It will be very interesting to see how long the jury deliberates, what the verdict is, and most of all – if she will finally show some emotion.

This is a woman, and a family who needs prayer. The rippling effect of her actions is immeasurable.

If anything, the cautionary tale is about the love of money, and how it truly is the root of all evil.

I have followed portions of a few notable trials of intrigue. Once they are over and done with, you wonder how the person lives their once privileged life in prison. No doubt they adapt, as they do not have much choice. In some cases it might even bring an out of control life, into a routine with less chaos and anxiety.

It seems to me that poisoning has to be one of the most underhanded deceptions known to humans. A person you trust, plots to give a lethal dose, all the while pretending to be a loving family member.

A prime example is the testimony that on Valentine’s Day, she left a poisoned sandwich in his work truck with a love note on top of it. She then went off to be with her lover, while he coped with the near death experience, and aftermath of what she had done. 

This trial brings to mind the death cap mushroom poisoning in Australia. In that case, the woman Erin Patterson had two children, a beautiful home, a large inheritance, supportive extended family, and a very comfortable life.

Instead of hobbies, or whatever – she spent her time plotting murder. She seemed to think she could conjure up a plot of murder, deception and mayhem, and get away with it.

She tricked her husband’s family members into coming over for a family meal. She served them beef wellington, and chatted throughout the three hour visit, knowing full well she had signed their death warrant. It took many hours, or days for each one of them to die. As they became sicker and faced death, the realization of how they had been duped and set up, must have been devastating.

It makes you wonder – what if these women with their poison plots did get away with it? Would they get whatever rage they harboured toward others out of their system? Would they go from murder to living the perfect life they envisioned post revenge? Or would they continue to plot more grandiose destructive schemes?

Who knows? All it can teach us, is that not only is the love of money, the root of evil, but so too, is a lack of forgiveness, and harbouring resentment, bitterness and rage.

Ironically, there is nothing wrong with being poor financially. There is nothing wrong with being humble and poor in spirit.

We can be poor, as well as poor in Spirit, and still find solace and acceptance in what Jesus has done for us, if we place our trust in Him. We will inherit the earth as promised, and we will be part of God’s kingdom, and family. We will no longer have to deal with scheming, and scams. 

Matthew 5:3

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

For so many reasons, the bible teaches us to repent – to let go of wrath, to forgive, to love, not to hate. We are to turn the other cheek, to persevere through injustices, to embrace and live each day as a new day, with the knowledge it could be our last day.

We have so many reasons to seek the truth, which can only be found in Jesus, in God’s word, and through not only hearing and reading God’s word, but in obedience to His word. Depravity begins with deception. One thing leads to another. Lying develops layers, and patterns of deceit that can destroy a soul.

Whereas the promise and hope we find in Christ will show us the way, the truth and the life. John 14:6

6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

The oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, should apply to our everyday lives. Deception is the path of destruction.