DID SHE MURDER HIM?

AFTER HER HUSBAND'S SUDDEN DEATH, SHE WROTE A KIDS' BOOK ON GRIEF. ERIC AND KOURI RICHINS SEEMED LIKE HAPPILY MARRIED PARENTS OF THREE. THEN HE WAS FATALLY POISONED-AND SHE WAS ARRESTED

- EMILY PALMER, TRISTAN BALAGTAS and WENDY GROSSMAN KANTOR

Eyes reddened by crying, mom and aspiring children's-book author Kouri Richins joined a Zoom business meeting with ghostwriter Shane Walter late last year from her home in Kamas, Utah. The newly widowed 32-year-old parent of three young boys-her husband, Eric, 39, had died suddenly months earlier-wanted to hire Walter to work on a children's book she was planning to publish based on her own family's story. Titled Are You With Me?, the book would feature a boy dealing with grief over the loss of a parent. And at the same time, it would serve as a memorial for Kouri's recently deceased husband. "She was all alone at that point," says Walter, adding that Kouri often teared up when talking about her husband and boys. "She was doing everything that a mother can do."

But just months after Kouri's heart-tugging story-depicting her late husband as an angel watching over the boy in the book-appeared on Amazon and began to rack up impressive sales, news broke about the Richins family that reverberated well beyond the world of books. On May 8, 2023, police arrested Kouri and accused her of giving her husband five times the legal dose of fentanyl, leading to his death at their home in the rural ranching community of Kamas on March 4, 2022. Kouri has not yet pleaded to charges of aggravated murder, possession or use of a controlled substance and two counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.