Convicted husband killer Kouri Richins was so hellbent on taking down her foes from behind bars that she enlisted her family to smear the lead cop in her Utah murder case, prosecutors revealed.
Richins — the 35-year-old Kamas mother who fatally poisoned husband Eric Richins — attempted to launch false criminal, civil and public accusations against Eric’s family and law enforcement even after she was arrested, according to papers filed by prosecutors ahead of her Wednesday sentencing.
While the failed home flipper was languishing behind bars awaiting trial, she had her family accuse Summit county prosecutors and the chief prosecutor of misconduct in complaints to the Utah bar and “post a ‘gay dating profile’ of the lead detective online,” prosecutors claimed in the filing.
A slew of new accusations against Kouri were revealed as the office asked a judge to sentence her to life in prison without the possibility of parole on the grounds she was “irredeemable.”
Judge Richard Mrazik granted the request and threw the book at Kouri after an hours-long hearing where Eric’s family and Eric and Kouri’s sons pleaded with a judge to never let her go free again.
Kouri also delivered a blubbering speech claiming she didn’t murder Eric and reciting platitudes to her three sons — who were not present in the courtroom but whose statements were read by social workers.
From inside the slammer, Kouri wrote a letter to her mom instructing her to release photos to the press of the young children of Eric’s sister, Katie Richins-Benson. She also wrote in the letter “bring me home and then we’ll get those damn b—hes,” in an alleged reference to Eric’s two sisters.
Kouri then claimed she wrote the letter as part of a novel she was writing from jail after she was confronted with it, prosecutors claimed.
Kouri also tried to get Katie criminally investigated and filed a false report with child services against her sister-in-law, the filing alleged.
Kouri also reported Eric’s other sister, Amy Richins, for allegedly having pot, the court papers claimed.
And she asked her family to launch criminal gun charges against Eric’s dad, Gene Richins, after he removed a gun from her family home for “safekeeping,” prosecutors claimed.
Before her arrest and just days after Kouri killed Eric, by lacing his Moscow Mule cocktail with fentanyl, she “throat punched” Amy, the filing charged.
And Kouri also tried to falsely smear Eric’s name after he died, accusing him of having an affair with a coworker and sleeping with another man, one of his best friends, the papers alleged.
She also made “an unfounded criminal complaint to the FBI about Eric Richins’ business partner,” the filing claimed.
“The defendant cannot check her ambition,” prosecutors wrote. “Or her sense of entitlement. When confronted, she lies. When she feels aggrieved, she attacks. And she certainly feels aggrieved; she always has.”
At Kouri’s Wednesday sentencing, her lawyers said she should receive the lightest sentence possible of 25 years to life in prison as they claimed prosecutors’ sentencing papers were a “character assassination” of Kouri.
It was also first revealed in the sentencing papers that Kouri’s sons were terrified of her and didn’t ever want her to get out.
Kouri was convicted in March of putting five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into Eric’s drink on March 4, 2022. She unsuccessfully tried to kill him two weeks earlier by lacing his sandwich with the same drug.
Kouri was motivated by her misinformed belief that she would inherit Eric’s $4 million estate to help her clear her real estate business debts and allow her to start a new life with her handyman lover.
She wasn’t arrested until a year later and after she wrote a children’s grief book to help her sons process the loss of their dad, entitled “Are You With Me?”
Kouri went on local TV and radio stations to promote the book just months before she was cuffed.
She has maintained her innocence and said she plans to appeal. Her lawyers didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday morning.
