SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A Utah woman who wrote a children’s book about grief after her husband’s death and was later arrested on accusations of killing him made changes to her husband’s life insurance years before he was fatally poisoned, according to charging documents updated on Thursday.
The additional allegations, which were previously mentioned in search warrants but not the charging documents, led to the postponement of a detention hearing scheduled yesterday that would have been the first time Kouri Richins was in court since her case became the latest true crime sensation earlier this month. The hearing has been rescheduled for June 12.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins, 33, poisoned her husband, Eric Richins, 39, by slipping five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a cocktail she made for him in March 2022. The mother of three later self-published a children’s book titled Are You with Me? about an angel wing-clad deceased father watching over his sons. She promoted it on television and radio, describing the book as a way to help children grieve the loss of a loved one.
Years before, Kouri Richins bought four life insurance policies on her husband’s life without his knowledge from 2015 to 2017 with benefits totaling nearly USD2 million, prosecutors alleged in the documents updated on Thursday. The documents don’t disclose when Eric Richins discovered the changes but do say he met with a divorce attorney and estate planner in October 2020, a month after he discovered his wife had carried out several other major financial moves without his knowledge.

Prosecutors said Eric Richins found out that his wife had taken out a USD250,000 home equity line of credit and spent it, withdrawn USD100,000 from his bank accounts, and spent more than USD30,000 on his credit cards, according to the documents. Kouri Richins also stole about USD134,000 from her husband’s business meant for tax payments, the documents stated. She agreed to repay her husband when he confronted her, according to the documents.
Family members interviewed by investigators indicated that Eric Richins was seeking to divorce Kouri Richins and had recently changed his will and life insurance policy.
Previous charging documents and warrants detail the yearlong investigation that authorities pursued before arresting Kouri Richins this month.
The documents include interviews with an unnamed informant who says she dealt Richins hydrocodone and fentanyl in the weeks and months before her husband’s death.
Richins, a real estate agent, told the dealer that both drugs were for an investor with back pain. The dealer said Richins purchased the hydrocodone shortly before Valentine’s Day, when prosecutors say she laced drugs into Eric Richins’ sandwich.
After he survived, his wife asked for stronger drugs, specifically “some of the Michael Jackson stuff,” the dealer told investigators. When Jackson died of cardiac arrest in 2009, medical examiners found prescription drugs and powerful anesthetics in his system, not fentanyl.
Kouri Richins’ attorney, Skye Lazaro, has declined to comment on the charges.