A real estate agent and investor was found guilty of murdering her husband for financial gain after taking out millions of dollars in hard money loans.
A Utah real estate agent and investor was found guilty of poisoning her husband to finance an affair.
Kouri Richins (via LinkedIn)
In addition to the murder charge, he was also found guilty of additional charges of attempted murder, falsifying insurance claims and forgery after prosecutors outlined a scheme involving secret life insurance policies and real estate holdings worth millions of dollars.
Richins will be sentenced to 25 years in prison at sentencing scheduled for May 13th. The jury deliberated for less than three hours after prosecutors presented testimony from dozens of witnesses. Ms. Richins, by contrast, waived her right to testify. Her attorney called no witnesses on her behalf.
Prosecutors say that on the night of March 4, 2022, while celebrating the sale of a property she was representing, Khouri slipped fentanyl into a Moscow Mule cocktail and poisoned her husband, Eric, a mason, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl. Khouri said she went to sleep in one of the children’s rooms and later noticed that Eric was “cold to the touch.”
A year later, Kouri published a children’s book about the incident, “Are You With Me?” In an interview promoting the book, she said that she wrote the book to help her three children cope with loss.
Richins’ primary motive appears to have been financial, involving millions of dollars in high-interest, hard-money debt from the purchase of new homes in his real estate business. Richens was scheduled to close on another $2.9 million property on the day of Eric’s death, but delayed the closing by a day.
“On the day of Eric Richens’ death, K. Richens Realty owed hard money lenders at least $1.8 million, and the day after Eric Richens’ death, it owed nearly $5 million,” according to the indictment.
Kouri had taken out multiple life insurance policies on her husband over the years, receiving a total of nearly $2 million in benefits. She also expected to inherit a large fortune from Eric after his death.
But unbeknownst to her, Eric worked with a divorce lawyer and an estate planning attorney to change his will, form a living trust, and place it under the control of his sister, Katie Richens-Benson. He also transferred a partnership interest in his business to a trust, making it the beneficiary of a life insurance policy worth $500,000.
In late June 2025, multiple additional financial crime charges were filed against Richins, including charges of mortgage fraud, money laundering, forgery, issuing bad checks, and one count each of wire fraud and “pattern of unlawful activity.” Those charges are still pending, and Richens’ attorneys, Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis, characterized them as an indication of the “weakness of the state’s pending murder charges” to be filed in the event a conviction is not obtained.
Khouri is also the subject of multiple civil lawsuits. These include lawsuits brought by real estate clients and a lawsuit filed by Eric’s sister against Khouri, his mother, brother and real estate company K. Richins Realty LLC for financial misconduct.
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