On the seventh day of the Kouri Richins murder trial, the Summit County Attorney’s Office seized the cell phone of Richins' friend and marketing manager, Greg Hall.
It wasn’t because prosecutors needed more evidence for the trial. Two warrants obtained by KPCW show the seizure was tied to a parallel criminal investigation into Wasatch County Sheriff Jared Rigby.
The Summit County Attorney’s Office is investigating Rigby’s actions leading up to the Richins murder trial.
Search warrant affidavits in the case state that Rigby brought concerns about Detective Eric Mainord, his political opponent and a potential witness in the Richins case, to the Summit County sheriff in early January. The sheriff later told investigators she believed the allegations would become public unless Mainord withdrew from the Wasatch County race.
Rigby and Hall also met in early January. Hall told KPCW in an Aug. 31 text exchange he offered to help the Wasatch County sheriff with his bid for a third term in office.
Hall said they had just one meeting for about 20 minutes.
“I’ve known Jared Rigby since he was very young, and have always known him to be a genuinely good person,” he said. “When I found out he was running for reelection, I offered to help him with his campaign, as I have done for other politicians since the 1980s.”
Hall added that the two have not talked otherwise since the 1990s. He said Rigby did not pay him.
“I left it up to him to contact me in the future if he chose to, which he never did,” Hall said.
But Hall did tell Kouri Richins about his conversation with Rigby when they spoke during the first week of her trial in February.
A search warrant affidavit says Hall told Richins in a recorded jail call he was helping Rigby with his reelection campaign “primarily because Mr. Mainord helped create this problem with Ms. Richins by investigating her.”
“Both Mr. Hall and Ms. Richins commented that, in their opinion, once Mr. Mainord testifies in her trial, he would not be successful in the Wasatch County sheriff’s election,” the affidavit states.
Court records indicate Judge Richard Mrazik, who presided over Richins’ trial, signed two warrants for Hall’s phone and cellular data Feb. 28. They were served in March and April and unsealed Aug. 28.
Investigators’ applications for the warrants claimed the searches could yield evidence of two possible crimes: obstruction of justice and a threat to influence official or political action.
Hall denies knowing about “any conflict he [Rigby] had with Eric Mainord” at the time he met with Rigby.
“Any comment I made to Kouri was nothing more than something that I thought she would find interesting,” he told KPCW. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
Rigby’s attorney, Blake Hamilton, said his client did not discuss Richins or Mainord with Hall. Rigby has said he acted within the law.
The Summit County Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the Hall warrants.
KPCW accessed the documents on a public Utah State Courts website on Aug. 31. They were removed from the site later the same day after KPCW reached out to parties in the case for comment.
Third District clerks say the Hall warrants should not have been posted because a court order was supposed to have kept all warrants in the case private.
Mainord withdrew from the Wasatch County sheriff race before the June primary. Rigby lost the race to challenger Jeremy Hales, who will be on the November ballot.
