The “Bombshell” Letter That Could Put Children’s Author Away For Murder

Alleged husband-killer and children’s book author Kouri Richins may have written her own fate. A confiscated letter she wrote to her mother while behind bars will prove hard to work around, a legal expert told Newsweek.

In retrospect, the April TV interview of Richins, the widow, may make for uncomfortable viewing.

Kouri Richins, nervous and jittery, was talking about the loss of her husband while promoting her children’s book Are You With Me?, which tells children that, even if their parents die, they are still with them in their everyday lives. In a soft voice, on April 6, Richins tells Deena Manzanares and Surae Chinn, the hosts of KTVX’s ‘Good Things Utah’, that her husband, Eric, died on March 4, 2022, leaving behind three young boys.

The camera focuses on the cover of the book. It is an illustration of Eric Richins, smiling down on his children from a heavenly cloud. He has angel wings and a halo and his hands are raised in celebration as his son runs for a soccer ball.

Eric is dressed in the farmer’s cap and sleeveless jacket he wore while working on the family’s Utah farm every day.

“My husband passed away unexpectedly last year. March 4 was a one-year anniversary for us. He was 39,” Kouri said in the April interview.

“It completely took us all by shock. We have three little boys, 10, 9 and 6, and my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we’ve experienced in the last year.”

Perhaps those emotions changed the following month when Richins was charged with murdering her husband.

The wealthy farmer and businessman died of a fentanyl overdose and prosecutors claim Richins slipped the drug into her husband’s drink.

It emerged that, in the days before Eric died, the couple had a dispute about her plans to purchase and flip a $2 million home, according to prosecutors court submissions.

On March 4, the day before the alleged murder, Kouri signed the closing papers on the mansion, which sits on 10 acres of land, and invited her friends over for a party, affidavits for search warrants show.

To celebrate the following night, she brought her husband a cocktail in bed—his favorite: a Moscow Mule.

By Kouri’s version of events, she was sleeping with the children that night, and when she returned to her husband’s bedroom in the early hours of the morning, he was already dead.

Initially, police believed her story, but strange details began to emerge. Firstly, Eric was a hard-working family man with no history of fentanyl use.

Also, Kouri had been stacking up life insurance on his name in the months before his death. According to a police affadavit in support of a search warrant, Eric had given his sister, Katie Richins-Benson, power of attorney over his estate because he had been worried his wife might ‘kill him for money’. It also emerged that on Valentine’s Day, he was poisoned after allegedly eating a special meal his loving wife had prepared for him.

After his death, she then launched a legal dispute against his family to secure an estate valued in excess of $3.6 million.

The 33-year-old Mormon and mother-of-three has been held in Summit County Jail in Utah since her arrest on May 8 and has been charged with criminal homicide, aggravated murder and three counts of possession of a controlled substance. She denies the charges.

According to Summit County detectives’ affidavit, Richins’ housekeeper, Carmen Lauber “admitted to supplying her with 15-30 fentanyl pills on two separate occasions, approximately one month before Eric’s death,” Summit County sheriff’s detectives said in the affidavit, adding that Lauber told them that Kouri paid her approximately $900 each time she supplied the pills.

Worse luck was to come for Richins and her defense team. A search of her jail cell in September revealed a six-page letter to her mother in which Richins allegedly explains how her brother, Ronney, should concoct a story about how Eric had been seeking out illicit drugs. A massive legal dispute has erupted about the letter that may continue for months.

In the letter, Richins allegedly wants Ronney to say Eric told him he got pain pills and fentanyl from Mexico through some farm workers working on the Richins farm.

Ronney’s court testimony “can be short and to the point but has to be done”, the letter states. She asked her mother, Lisa Darden, to pass the information to her brother in person, saying her mother’s home and phone could be bugged.

In the letter, she imagines the story Ronney should tell the court. “A year prior to Eric’s death, Ronney was over watching football one Sunday and Eric and Ronney were chatting about Eric’s Mexico trips. Eric told Ronney he gets pain pills and fentanyl from Mexico from the workers at the ranch,” the letter states. “[Eric said] Not to tell me because I would get mad because I always said he just gets high every night and won’t help take care of the kids.”

After the letter was confiscated, Richins phoned her mother from jail and, perhaps knowing the conversation was being taped by authorities, explained that the letter was just part of a novel she was writing.

That would appear to negate her lawyer’s claim in court that the letter was to be passed from her mother to her attorney, and would therefore be protected by attorney/client privilege.

Former Salt Lake County prosecutor, Nathan Evershed, who now works for the Nelson Jones law firm in Utah, told Newsweek that it would be “a bombshell for the defense if the letter is admitted into trial” and it now going to be “an uphill climb” to establish that the letter is attorney/client communication.

Under Rule 504 of the Utah Rules of Evidence, attorney/client communications are privileged if “the communications were made for the purpose or in the course of obtaining or facilitating the rendition of legal services” and they were communications between the client, or her representative, and the legal professional, or her representative.

Could it be argued that Richins was giving the letter to her representative (her mother) to communicate to her attorney?

“In this case, the contents of the letter do not, as far as I can tell, establish that it was either made for the purposes of facilitating legal services, or that it was between the client and attorney,” Evershed said. “Ms. Richins’ claim that it was a fictional narrative further undermines the argument that it was attorney/client communication.”

Richins attorneys are expected back in court later this month to fight for the letter’s exclusion from the case, and to argue that it is privileged information.

“The importance of this letter is underscored by the intense litigation now surrounding it,” Evershed said.

From his time as a prosecutor, he saw how a defendant’s attempts to tamper with witnesses can have a very powerful effect on a jury.

“In my experience, words from a defendant are incredibly material to a jury, especially directives to other witnesses,” he said. “Should it be allowed into evidence, the state will have a field day with the letter.”

Newsweek has emailed Kouri Richins’ legal team for comment.