KOURI RICHINS WROTE THE GRIEF BOOK. PROSECUTORS SAY SHE WROTE THE MURDER TOO. Seaaon 2 debuts!

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher, and this this is Daily Crime Injustice. If you've been with us since season one, welcome back. If you're joining us for the first time, perfect timing. If you used to know us as celebrity trials, same team, bigger canvas, same obsession with making sure the truth gets said out loud and that the people who got hurt don't get forgotten in the process. I want to take sixty seconds for the man who built this show from the ground up. Read Carter spent over a year sitting with you every morning, walking you through some of the most important criminal cases in the country. He did it with rigor, with heart, and with a level of sarcasm that honestly set the bar uncomfortably high for me. If you're a longtime listener, you know what he built. We're taking it from here and we're not forgetting any of it. Season two, Daily Crime and Justice. Let's go now. While we were bringing you some of the best of season one over the past couple of weeks, the Alexander Brothers which will hit tomorrow, and some others, one of the most significant murder trials in the country was reaching its final act. Fourteen days of testimony, nearly forty witnesses, a forensic accountant, a housekeeper, a lover, phone data from the night a man died, and now silence from the defense, not strategic silence, complete silence.

1:32 They rested without calling a single witness. Her name is Cory Richins. She's thirty five years old. She lives in Park City, Utah. She flips houses. She wrote a children's book about grief after her husband died. She titled it Are You with Me? She is charged with aggravated murder. Today we walked through the whole thing, because if closing arguments land Monday and this jury goes to deliberate, you need to understand exactly what they've been sitting with for the last three weeks. Let me walk you through this segment one. The setup, the marriage, the money. The man.

2:14 Eric Richins was a businessman in Park City, Utah, real estate and development. By all accounts, he was the kind of person who showed up for his kids, for his business partner, for his family, a hunter, a builder, the kind of guy who when he got sick, powered through it. He should be alive today, He should be watching his three kids grow up. Instead, he died in the early morning hours of March fourth, twenty twenty two, in his own bed. His wife found him cold and unresponsive at around three in the morning, five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. That's where this story ends. Let's go back to where it begins. Curry and Eric Richins had a rocky marriage, not a quiet secret kind of rock a. Multiple friends testified about it under oath kind of rocky. Two of Curry's friends told the jury she felt trapped. One of them, Alison Wright, the wife of Eric's own business partner, testified that Coury feared what would happen financially if the marriage fell apart. She felt that Eric would come out fine and she would not, and that prenup, she reportedly referenced, wasn't paranoia, it was math.

3:26 Another friend, Becky Lloyd, testified to something far darker. She said that in December of twenty twenty one, three months before Eric died, Corey told her she couldn't see an easy way forward out of the marriage, and then she said this, in many ways, it would be better if he were dead. Lloyd didn't want to say it, she made that clear. I don't want to be here saying it, she told the jury, but I know that that is what was said. The defense played recordings in which Lloyd expressed uncertainty about the exact conversation. Lloyd didn't move. Now let's talk about the money, because if you want to understand this case, you have to understand the financial picture prosecutors painted for that jury. Corey Richins ran a house flipping business on the surface successful, behind the scenes collapsing.

4:18 Forensic accountant Brooke Carrington was brought in to analyze the books, and she did not mince words. As of the day Eric Richards died, Corey's net worth was negative one point six million dollars. She had bounced two hundred and thirty six checks in the fourteen months before his death to the tune of three hundred and sixty thousand dollars. She was borrowing from hard money lenders, short term loans, balloon payments, high interest. She was running out of runway fast. She had also taken out a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars home equity line of credit on the house she shared with Eric without his knowledge. She signed it as his attorney, in fact, maxed it out made no signify payments. Eric, for his part, was not sitting still. He had quietly set up a trust for his assets and named his sister as trustee. Specifically, Prosecutor's alleged, because Kouri had been misusing her power of attorney, he consulted a divorce attorney.

5:17 He didn't file, but he was watching. Then there was the insurance. In January twenty twenty two, six weeks before Eric died, someone made changes to a business life insurance policy using Eric's login but from Kuri's email address. A separate policy, Prosecutor's alleged, was forged Coury's signature standing in for Eric's, and it went into effect on February fourth, that's ten days before Valentine's Day twenty twenty two. Valentine's Day is important. We'll get there. Eric Richand's life was insured for approximately two point two million dollars across multiple policies. After he died, Kuri received about one point three million dollars by September of twenty twenty two, six months later, most of it was gone used to pay down the collapsing debt. There's one more piece to the setup. His name is Robert Josh Grossman Corey's boyfriend. She had been seeing him since around early twenty twenty. He worked on homes she was flipping. She bought him trucks, gave him money, let him live in a home she was rehabbing, and she texted him roughly two weeks before Eric died, if he could just go away and you could just be here, life would be so perfect. Of course she did. Grossman testified at trial. He wiped his eyes. He said he loved her. He said he believed she loved him. He said things changed after Eric passed. He said that when a private investigator told him after her arrest that Corey had killed her husband, he was blown away. And then

6:51 he said something that will stay with you. I've been confused for years. The jury heard that. Let it settle a man in love who spent years trying to figure out if the woman he loved murdered her husband. We'll be back with the drugs, the deal, and the digital trail that prosecutors say ties it all together. Welcome back, Garrett Fisher, Daily Crime and Justice. Let's get into the evidence, because this is where the prosecution built its case. Brick by Brick Carmen Lauber was the rich In's family housekeeper.

7:42 She testified that, starting in early twenty twenty two, Corey Reachins asked her on four separate occasions to procure illegal drugs. The first ask, according to Lauber, was framed as pain medication for one of Corey's real estate investors. Then came the escalation. Coury eventually asked for something stronger. Lauber reached out to a man named Robert Crozier, a drug dealer in the Draper, Utah area. Crozier told Lauber he had pills with fentanyl. She texted Richins. Richins replied, Okay, go ahead and get them. Prosecutors then put a digital forensics analyst on the stand. He pulled location data from both Lawber's and Crozier's phones. Their device is ping near the same gas station in Draper on February eleventh, February twenty sixth, and March ninth of twenty twenty two. Eric Richins died on March fourth. The last drug transaction, per the evidence, happened five days after he was dead. A toxicologist confirmed what was in Eric's blood when he died fifteen nanograms per millileter of fentanyl. The minimum fatal dose is around three nanograms. He had five times that amount. He also had acetyl fentanyl in his system, a synthetic variant with no legitimate prescription use. This was not accidental in congestion of someone else's pill. This was a load. The defense did not sit still on Laubert. They hit her hard.

9:09 They argued her testimony was inconsistent with a prior statement she gave federal investigators in May twenty twenty three. The day that should have been testimony Day eleven was essentially consumed by legal argument over a thousand page transcript of that earlier interview. The judge ultimately ruled the consistent portions could come in. The defense also pointed out that detectives told Lauber that Eric had died of a fentanyl overdose before she gave her full statement, a significant point about how her narrative may have been shaped. Crozier was also complicated on the stand. He said he wasn't selling fentanyl in early twenty twenty two, only pharmaceutical oxycodone, but in a prior jailhouse interview with investigators, he said Lauber knew what she was buying and confirmed fentanyl was involved. When confronted with that interview in court, he said he'd been detoxing from drugs when he gave it and couldn't remember.

10:06 Both Lauber and Crozier received immunity in exchange for a truthful testimony. The defense argued both shaped their stories to fit the prosecution. That's a live question for the jury. Now here's where it gets grimly fascinating. The phone data. Corey Richins told investigators she left her phone in the master bedroom the night Eric died while she slept in the children's room. Sell data said otherwise. The phone was locked at nine thirty two pm, It moved thirty five feet around ten thirty that night, It moved two hundred and forty three feet at three oh eight am, it was unlocked six times in the fifteen minutes before she called nine one one at three twenty one am. And then there's this around eight thirty in the morning, hours after she found her husband dead, after she'd called nine one one, after the EMTs and the sheriff's deputies had come and gone. Three gifts were acts on her phone.

11:01 One caption idiots idiots Everywhere. Another showed a woman wiping her tears with dollar bills. The third, I'm really rich. The analyst testified he couldn't determine who accessed them or if Corey even saw them. The defense will absolutely note that, but they were accessed on her phone that morning. The prosecution also introduced searches made on a secondary phone Coory began using after her primary device was seized by law enforcement, starting in April twenty twenty two. The search history included queries about remotely deleting phone data, how investigators recovered deleted messages, women's prisons in Utah, and life insurance payouts. It also included and I want to read these accurately because precision matters.

11:49 What is a lethal dose of fentanyl misspelled? If someone is poisoned, what does it go down on the death certificate as also misspelled? And this one kury rich AND's commas net worth. The analyst acknowledge he couldn't prove with certainty who made those searches or when the defense hammered that point. Prosecutors say, the pattern tells its own story. And then there's Valentine's Day February fourteenth, twenty twenty two. Prosecutors alleged Kouri attempted to poison Eric with a sandwich he left in his truck, along with a love note. Eric called his business partner that afternoon, and the partner testified Eric's voice had beer and urgency in it, a sound he'd only heard on two previous occasions in his life.

12:36 Eric reportedly got sick that day but didn't go to the hospital. He was dead eighteen days later. Someone should have said something. Eric's own body was telling him something was wrong, and nobody connected the dots until it was too late. We'll be back with the defense's non case and where things stand as of right now. Welcome back, Garrett Fisher. Let's talk about what the defense did and didn't do. After fourteen days of state testimony and nearly forty witnesses, the defense rested its case without calling a single witness zero. They had witnesses ready to go, They told the court as much, and then they sat down.

13:29 How did that happen? It came down to a legal standoff on day thirteen that looked like a high stakes poker game. The defense had been building toward presenting testimony from a man named David Norris, an individual who had reportedly contacted the Summit County Sheriff's office, claiming that Eric Richards himself had asked him about obtaining fentanyl. The implication being maybe Eric had his own drug problem, maybe the fentanyl in his system came from somewhere other than his wife. The prosecution had an answer ready if the defense defense opened that door. If Norris's statement came in, prosecutors would immediately counter with two pieces of previously suppressed evidence. First, Hayden Jeffs, who worked as a handyman for Koury's house flipping business before he was killed in a motorcycle accident in twenty twenty four. Jeffs told investigators that Kouri had asked him about obtaining fentanyl. Second, a jailhouse call involving Nick Bonsvig, who stated that Carmen Lawber made money selling fentanyl.

14:30 The judge had suppressed both of those for separate reasons, but the defense, in choosing to pursue the Norris testimony, would have handed the prosecution the key to unlocking them. Defense attorneys asked for a recess to consult with their client. They came back and declined to pursue the line of questioning. Then they sat on their witnesses entirely, just nothing. What that tells you The defense calculated that whatever value Norris brought was not worth the cost of what would follow a handyman telling investigators that Corey asked about fentanyl that goes directly to intent, directly to the mechanism of the crime. They couldn't risk it. As for Couri Richans herself, she will not testify. Her attorneys informed the court of that decision before the defense rested. That is her constitutional right, and the jury will be instructed not to draw any inference from her silence. They will try not to. Whether they succeed is another matter. So where does that leave us?

15:31 The jury is not in the building today. Yesterday was a charge conference, the attorney's meeting with the judge without jurors to hammer out the exact language of the instructions the jury will receive before deliberations. How has aggravated murder defined? What does the state have to prove on each of the five counts? What instructions go to the jury on circumstantial evidence? Those words matter enormously. The jury will go into that deliberation room with the judge's instruction as their rule book, and both sides spent Friday trying to make sure those instructions favor their theory of the case. Monday morning, closing arguments begin. The prosecution will get to go first.

16:12 They'll lay out the full arc of their case, the financial motive, the affair, the drugs, the phone, the insurance fraud, the Valentine's Day attempt, all of it together. Then the defense gets their turn. Then the state gets a rebuttal. The defence's theory, to be direct about it is that the state cannot prove how the fentanyl entered Eric's body. They can't prove where it came from. Lawbard changed their story, Crozier contradicts himself. The phone data is circumstantial. The Google searches were made after kory knew she was under investigation, not before, And a man who went to Mexico and kept prescription bottles around might have had his own complicated relationship with pain management. The prosecution's theory is that all of those individual pieces, every single one, points in the same direction. A woman drowning in debt, a marriage, she was trapped in an affair, she wanted to make permanent insurance policies. She changed without her husband's knowledge. A housekeeper who bought her drugs. A husband who was sick on Valentine's Day and dead eighteen days later with five times a lethal dose of fentanyl in his blood. They don't need to show you a video. They need to show you that no other explanation fits. Daily Crime and Justice is an entertainment podcast. We research our stories using publicly available sources, news outlets, court records, tabloids, and, yes, the Internet,

17:48 which is occasionally wrong. We also use AI assisted research tools, which means we work fast, but we are not infallible. We try hard to get things right. Some times we won't. If we make an error, we'll correct it. We are not lawyers, investigators, or the court of record. We're storytellers covering cases that matter. Nothing on this show should be taken as legal fact or used in your own legal proceedings. Treat it like what it is, quality entertainment about real events, consumed responsibly