Thursday, prosecutors showed Kouri Richins’ self-authored “life story” to the Summit County jurors who will decide whether she’s guilty of murdering her husband back in 2022.
She wrote it in the third person as part of an assignment at an Arizona wellness retreat in 2021.
By her own account, Kouri Richins had a difficult and itinerant childhood.
She was born in Oklahoma in 1990 and moved to 17 different states because of her parents’ work. She said her dad was a “successful engineer” but went to prison when she was 6 years old.
She said he was drunk and passed out at the wheel, hitting an officer making a traffic stop.
Kouri Richins’ parents divorced after that, and she moved to Utah with her mom and brother in 2000.
“Kouri’s mom, who today is her best friend, had her own addiction,” Kouri Richins wrote. “She is a compulsive gambler.”
Kouri Richins remembered spending weekends in casino hotel rooms, where her mom lost money, their house and their cars.
She said college was a fresh start and when she met her late husband Eric Richins.
“She instantly fell for the idea of a marriage with kids and a happy family, a stable family,” Kouri Richins wrote.
She got pregnant her sophomore year and had the couple’s first of three children.
Kouri Richins wrote she tried to “chase happiness” through marriage, having more kids and going to graduate school.
She said her life spiraled after 2018, when she discovered her husband was having an “emotional affair.” Kouri Richins said she went to counseling for anxiety and depression and that her husband emotionally exhausted her.
Now she is on trial for his 2022 murder and has pleaded not guilty.
Summit County prosecutors allege Kouri Richins also had an affair and that the realty business she started in 2019 was millions of dollars in debt.
They believe she fatally poisoned her husband with fentanyl to recoup life insurance money and inherit his estate.
Kouri Richins wrote a children’s book about coping with the death of a parent before her May 2023 arrest. She’s been in the Summit County jail ever since.
Her attorneys initially asked the court to exclude the life story she wrote in 2021 from the trial.
Judge Richard Mrazik ruled it was relevant to how she felt about her marriage, so Summit County prosecutors prepared a redacted version for the court.
However, the defense asked for the jury to see the entire journal entry Thursday. It’s not clear which information was originally redacted.
The trial is scheduled through March 27.
