ISLAMABAD: With angel wings on its cover, the children’s book told the story of a father watching over his son from heaven, a tale Utah mother-of-three Kouri Richins said she wrote to comfort children grieving the loss of a parent.
It would later be revealed that she had poisoned her own husband six months earlier.
On May 13, a Utah judge sentenced Richins to life in prison without parole for the 2022 fentanyl murder of her husband, Eric Richins, 39, as reported by ABC News
The date was not incidental. It was Eric's birthday. He would have turned 44.
The book was called “Are You With Me?” Richins published it in the months between killing her husband and her arrest, appearing on local television, speaking about loss, and building the image of a widow doing her best.
A ghostwriting company helped produce it, according to CNN. Her mother mailed a copy to the Summit County Sheriff's Office with a note describing Kouri as a “devoted wife.”
However, investigators were less convinced.
Eric Richins was found unresponsive at the foot of the couple's bed on March 4, 2022, in their home near Park City, Utah, United States. A medical examiner determined he had died of fentanyl poisoning, at five times the lethal dose, as reported by several American news outlets, including the New York Times and CBS News.
The fentanyl was illicit. There was no therapeutic explanation for the concentration found in his system.
And it was not the first attempt.
On Valentine's Day, six weeks earlier, Eric had consumed a fentanyl-laced sandwich, suffered a blackout and respiratory distress, and survived only after a family member administered an EpiPen, according to CNN.
He called a friend afterward and said, "I think my wife tried to poison me," as per the New York Times.
He was right. The father of three would be dead within weeks.
The motive, prosecutors argued, was financial and cold. By early 2022, Richins had accumulated approximately $4.5 million in debt, according to several local news outlets, including The Park Record and CNN.
She had taken out fraudulent credit lines in Eric's name, opened life insurance policies on him without his knowledge, and purchased a $2 million mansion he had refused to fund.
She closed on that property the day after he died, according to CBS News.
Eric had been quietly preparing to leave. He consulted a divorce attorney in 2020 and restructured his estate to exclude her, according to KPCW, a public radio station in Kouri’s city. Prosecutors argued Kouri did not know this and believed she stood to inherit millions.
The digital record was direct. Searches recovered from her phone included "What is a lethal dose of fentanyl?", "How is poisoning marked on a death certificate?", and "Luxury prisons for the rich America," according to AP News.
The family housekeeper testified that Richins had purchased fentanyl pills on at least four occasions.
While in custody, Richins was found with a handwritten six-page letter allegedly instructing family members to tell investigators Eric had sourced the fentanyl himself, as per CNN and KPCW. The defense called it fiction. The jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting her on five felony counts, including aggravated murder.
At sentencing, the boys she had written the book for delivered statements of their own. The middle son, now 11, testified that his mother locked him inside the house when she was intoxicated. He said he would feel safer if she stayed in prison, according to CBS News.
Judge Richard Mrazik sentenced her to life without parole, calling her "simply too dangerous to ever be free," as reported by KPCW.
She wrote a book about children who lose their fathers, yet her own children lost theirs — and she was the reason.
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