Kouri Richins, who wrote a book in which a child navigates the loss of their father, was charged with murder earlier this month in Utah.
A Utah mother accused of killing her husband, and then authoring a children’s book about grieving, took out millions of dollars in life insurance on him years before his death, prosecutors alleged.
According to updated charging documents obtained by The Associated Press, prosecutors said that Kouri Richins bought four life insurance policies on behalf of her husband, Eric Richins, without his knowledge from 2015 to 2017, including benefits totaling nearly $2 million.
The woman, age 33, is accused of poisoning her 39-year-old husband in March 2022 by lacing a Moscow mule cocktail with a lethal dose of fentanyl. She reportedly told investigators that she had found her husband unresponsive in the middle of the night, and earlier this month, she was charged with murder.
A statement of probable cause alleged that Kouri Richins had made previous attempts to poison her husband. He once became ill after she made him a drink while on vacation in Greece, it said, and he also became sick after eating a sandwich she made on Valentine’s Day last year.
According to court documents, investigators found messages that Kouri Richins sent to an acquaintance about obtaining drugs including fentanyl and “some of the Michael Jackson stuff,” presumably referring to the anesthetic propofol. Prosecutors allege that these substances were used in the attempts to kill her husband.
Before his death, Eric Richins reportedly planned to divorce his wife and changed his will to benefit a sibling rather than her. Three months before his death, however, Kouri Richins made herself the sole beneficiary, according to local news outlet KPCW.