Robert Josh Grossmann said Wednesday was the first time he’d seen Kouri Richins since they broke off their relationship in early 2023.
It began as an affair after Grossmann moved from South Carolina to Utah to help Richins’ house-flipping business. He testified that he was in love, and chief prosecutor Brad Bloodworth asked if he felt Richins loved him.
“Yeah. I have a tendency of going head over heels, though, probably more than most,” Grossmann said. “So, you know, I think she did.”
Now Kouri Richins is charged with aggravated murder, attempted murder and financial crimes in connection with her husband Eric Richins’ 2022 fatal overdose. She has pleaded not guilty.
He said he was “overwhelmed with guilt” after he learned she was implicated in Eric Richins’ death.
“And then I'm looking at everything in our past with a different set of goggles on, through different lenses,” Grossmann said on the stand. “I was trying to figure out if she did it. And if I could help [in the investigation], that's what I was going to do.”
Grossmann recounted meeting Kouri Richins in the Uinta Mountains a couple weeks after her husband died. They had an hourslong conversation about life, death, her kids, God and the supernatural.
“She asked if, if I had ever killed anybody,” Grossmann recalled.
“And was that specific to — killed anybody while serving in Iraq?” Bloodworth asked, which Grossmann confirmed.
He said Richins also asked him how it made him feel.
But Grossmann also wanted to put the conversation in context, since he agreed with defense attorneys who suggested Kouri Richins was “grieving” and “sad” after her husband died.
He said it changed her.
“I think she was exhausted, emotionally,” Grossmann said. “And I think she was looking for a reason to divert the conversation away from herself, because she does that.”
As part of his testimony Wednesday, prosecutors showed various text exchanges between Grossmann and Kouri Richins, ranging from November of 2021 to mid-2022.
Grossmann was visibly upset as the jury read each message in turn, laying his head down at times.
The texts contained mutual declarations of love. At one point, Kouri Richins suggests they could live at the Midway mansion she would eventually acquire the day after Eric Richins’ death.
But on the stand, Grossmann said their plans now seem like something he “wanted at the time,” more a fantasy than an eventual reality. He said, “Things changed after Eric passed.”
The trial is scheduled through March 27.
