\n Over the last two weeks, jurors in Kouri Richins\u2019 <\/a>murder trial have heard wide-ranging testimony about troubles in her marriage, her secret affair and the millions of dollars she owed in debt \u2013 all factors prosecutors say led her to fatally poison her husband.\n <\/p>\n \n Prosecutors say the Utah mother of three killed her husband, Eric Richins, with a lethal dose of fentanyl in March 2022. She is also accused of attempting to kill him by lacing his sandwich on Valentine\u2019s Day, weeks before his death.\n <\/p>\n \n Nearly 40 witnesses have testified so far, including the woman who allegedly gave Richins the drugs, friends who said they had heard about the couple\u2019s marital problems and the man with whom she was having an affair.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe evidence will prove that Kouri Richins murdered Eric for his money and to get a fresh start at life,\u201d Brad Bloodworth, chief prosecutor in the Summit County Attorney\u2019s Office, said in his opening statement. \u201cMore than anything, she wanted his money to perpetuate her facade of privileged affluence and success.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder and other charges, with her defense arguing she has been wrongfully blamed for Eric Richins\u2019 death and that prosecutors are unable to prove how the fentanyl entered Richins\u2019 body. If convicted of the most serious charge, she could face up to life in prison.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey\u2019re going to spend weeks in this trial trying to convince you that Kouri had reasons to kill her husband, because they can\u2019t show you that she did kill her husband,\u201d defense attorney Kathy Nester said in her opening statement.\n <\/p>\n \n With prosecutors expected to conclude their case in the coming days, here are five key revelations from their witnesses so far:\n <\/p>\n \n Robert Josh Grossmann, the man with whom Kouri Richins had a yearslong affair, wiped his eyes and put his head down as their affectionate text messages were displayed in court.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI do want a future together. I do want you. Figure life out together,\u201d Kouri Richins texted Grossmann roughly two weeks before her husband died. \u201cIf he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!! I love you.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Grossmann worked on houses Kouri Richins bought for her real estate business, he said, and their relationship became romantic around early 2020. She let him live in a home she was flipping, bought him two trucks and gave him money whenever he needed it, Grossmann said. He loved her, he testified, and believed she loved him, too.\n <\/p>\n \n The jury saw dozens of texts where the two expressed their love and dreamed about being together in the future \u2013 though both acknowledged the idea was more fantasy than reality.\n <\/p>\n \n Grossmann and Richins planned to get brunch together on March 4, 2022, to celebrate her closing on a valuable property, he testified. The night before, he sent her a GIF \u2013 a type of animated image \u2013 of two people kissing with the caption, \u201clove you,\u201d according to messages shown in court.\n <\/p>\n \n Hours later, Eric Richins was dead.\n <\/p>\n \n The two stayed together for several months after Eric Richins\u2019 death, Grossmann said. About a month after her husband died, Kouri Richins texted Grossmann, \u201cI think I want you to be my husband one day.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But their relationship soon ended. Grossmann said, \u201cThings changed after Eric passed.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Kouri Richins appeared to be grieving after Eric Richins died, Grossmann said on cross-examination.\n <\/p>\n \n Under questioning by defense attorney Wendy Lewis, Grossmann said after Richins\u2019 arrest in May 2023, he spoke with a private investigator hired by Eric Richins\u2019 family. The P.I., Grossmann said, told him Richins had killed her husband.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI was blown away,\u201d Grossmann said, \u201cand then I\u2019m like, looking at everything in our past with a different set of goggles on, through different lenses. And I was trying to figure out if she did it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n He told the investigator about a sprawling conversation he had with Kouri Richins about two weeks after Eric Richins\u2019 death, in which they discussed dying, God, bowhunting and \u201csupernatural stuff.\u201d During that conversation, Grossmann said Kouri Richins asked if he had killed anybody while serving in Iraq and how it made him feel.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cToday, sitting here, when you think back on that conversation, does that conversation seem like it was a strange conversation to you?\u201d Lewis asked.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI can\u2019t tell one way from the other anymore,\u201d Grossmann responded. \u201cI\u2019ve been confused for years.\u201d\n <\/p>\n 1:26 \n Several witnesses testified there were difficulties in the Richins\u2019 relationship, with two of Kouri Richins\u2019 friends saying she told them she felt \u201ctrapped\u201d in her marriage.<\/p>\n \n \u201cShe felt like she was frustrated in the relationship but also it would be difficult to leave \u2013 Eric would end up financially secure and her the opposite,\u201d said Allison Wright, the wife of Eric Richins\u2019 business partner. \u201cShe feared what would happen in divorce.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Another friend testified Kouri Richins told her in December 2021 she couldn\u2019t see an \u201ceasy way forward out of the marriage.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe said that, in many ways, it would be better if he were dead,\u201d Becky Lloyd said.\n <\/p>\n \n During cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to undercut Lloyd\u2019s testimony, playing recordings in which she expressed uncertainty about what was said in the conversation. But Lloyd stood by her testimony on the stand.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI don\u2019t want to be here saying it,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I know that that is what was said.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The jury also heard two recordings of phone calls between Kouri Richins, her best friend and Eric Richins\u2019 best friend.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe were in a rocky spot two years ago,\u201d Kouri Richins said of her marriage during one of those calls, which occurred about two weeks after her husband\u2019s death.\n <\/p>\n \n Eric Richins\u2019 friend then referenced Kouri Richins kicking her husband out of the house for a couple weeks after she learned he had been seeing another woman.\n <\/p>\n \n Two divorce attorneys testified they met with Eric and Kouri Richins individually in 2020 and 2021, respectively, although neither filed for divorce.\n <\/p>\n \n While Richins\u2019 friends said she appeared to be financially successful, a forensic accountant testified her business flipping homes was \u201cimploding.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAs of the date that Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins was in financial distress and her financial enterprise was collapsing, had been collapsing \u2013 and but for a significant infusion of cash and capital, would have continued to collapse,\u201d said Brooke Karrington, who analyzed financial records in the case.\n <\/p>\n \n Kouri Richins\u2019 debt problems began after she took out a $250,000 home equity line of credit, or HELOC, against their family home in 2019, around the same time she registered her real estate business, Karrington said. The loan was taken out in her husband\u2019s name and signed by Kouri Richins as his attorney-in-fact, according to records displayed in court.\n <\/p>\n \n By the time Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins had taken out multiple loans and owed thousands in debt payments every week, so her bank account was \u201cperpetually in the hole,\u201d Karrington said. Her net worth was negative $1.6 million the day after her husband\u2019s death, according to Karrington\u2019s analysis.\n <\/p>\n \n In financial records Richins submitted as part of four loan applications, she reported her bank accounts contained significantly more money than they had, Karrington said.\n <\/p>\n \n Eric Richins\u2019 life was insured for approximately $2.2 million through several policies, according to Karrington. Prosecutors allege Kouri Richins forged an application for one of his life insurance policies that went into effect on February 4, 2022, 10 days before they say she first tried to poison her husband and a month before his death.\n <\/p>\n \n Richins received about $1.3 million in life insurance payments in the months after her husband\u2019s passing, Karrington said. By September 2022, most of the money had been spent \u2013 much of it toward paying down her debt.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf, in fact, Ms. Richins was in financial distress, you\u2019re not here to say she killed her husband, are you?\u201d Nester asked the forensic accountant during a testy cross-examination.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThat\u2019s for the jury to decide,\u201d Karrington said. \u201cI\u2019m not making any conclusion about that at all.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Carmen Lauber, a house cleaner who worked for Kouri Richins, testified she sold pills to the Utah mother four times in early 2022 at the defendant\u2019s request.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe\u2019d called me and asked me if I could reach out to somebody for some pain meds for an investor that she knew,\u201d Lauber testified. She bought illicit opiate pills for Richins, who later asked for something stronger, the house cleaner testified.\n <\/p>\n \n Lauber got in touch with Robert Crozier, who said he had pills containing fentanyl, Lauber said. When she texted Richins about the fentanyl pills, Richins responded, \u201cOK, go ahead and get them,\u201d according to Lauber\u2019s testimony.\n <\/p>\n \n Lauber testified she bought pills from Crozier at a gas station in Draper, Utah, twice before Eric Richins\u2019 death and a third time shortly after.\n <\/p>\n \n Chris Kotrodimos, a digital forensics analyst, showed the jury location data from Lauber and Crozier\u2019s phones. The devices were both near the Draper gas station on February 11, February 26, and March 9, 2022, according to his analysis.\n <\/p>\n \n When Eric Richins was found dead on March 4, 2022, he had roughly five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system, according to charging documents.\n <\/p>\n \n On the stand, Crozier confirmed he gave Lauber pills at the gas station but insisted he did not sell fentanyl at the time.\n <\/p>\n \n In early 2022, Crozier was selling pharmaceutical oxycodone pills he received from people with prescriptions, he said, and didn\u2019t start selling fentanyl until late that year.\n <\/p>\n \n Crozier had previously confirmed <\/strong>he sold Lauber fentanyl in a jailhouse interview with law enforcement during the investigation into Eric\u2019s death. In footage of the interview shown in court, Crozier struggled to remember details about his interactions with Lauber and which drugs she asked for. But he said, \u201cShe knew what she was buying.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cSo, she knew that there was fentanyl in those pills?\u201d an investigator asked.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAbsolutely,\u201d Crozier said.\n <\/p>\n \n On the stand, Crozier said he didn\u2019t remember that conversation.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI was on a lot of drugs at that time, so I was detoxing from those drugs,\u201d he testified.\n <\/p>\n \n Though he was called as a witness for the prosecution, Crozier\u2019s testimony is key to Kouri Richins\u2019 defense: In her opening statement, Nester argued if Crozier only sold oxycodone as he now claims, his pills could not have killed Eric Richins.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe pills that were purchased by Carmen Lauber could not have been the cause of Eric\u2019s death,\u201d Nester told the jury. \u201cThe fentanyl must have come from somewhere else.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Attorneys on both sides tried to undercut Lauber and Crozier\u2019s credibility by questioning their recollections, histories of drug use and inconsistencies between their testimonies and their previous statements.\n <\/p>\n \n Crozier and Lauber both received immunity in exchange for their truthful testimonies. The defense has suggested Lauber altered her story to fit the prosecution\u2019s narrative.\n <\/p>\n \n Although lots of data from early 2022 was deleted from Kouri Richins\u2019 phone, Kotrodimos testified about some of her cellphone activity around the time of her husband\u2019s death.\n <\/p>\n \n Kouri Richins told investigators she left her cellphone in the master bedroom while she slept in her children\u2019s bedroom the night her husband died and she called emergency services as soon as she returned to find him cold and unresponsive, according to court documents.\n <\/p>\n \n Kouri Richins\u2019 cellphone was locked at 9:32 p.m. on March 3, 2022, and remained locked until 3:06 a.m. the next morning, according to Kotrodimos\u2019 analysis. It moved 35 feet around 10:30 p.m. and then moved 243 feet at 3:08 a.m. The phone was unlocked six times in the 15 minutes before she called 911 at 3:21 a.m., he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Around 8:30 a.m., hours after she called 911, cellphone records show three GIFs were accessed on Kouri Richins\u2019 phone: One was captioned, \u201cIdiots. Idiots everywhere,\u201d while another showed a woman wiping away her tears with dollar bills. A third included the caption, \u201cI\u2019m really rich.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Kotrodimos testified he can\u2019t determine who sent or received the GIFs \u2013 or if Kouri Richins even viewed them.\n <\/p>\n \n Kotrodimos showed the jury dozens of internet searches made on the phone Kouri Richins used beginning in April 2022, after her other phone was seized by law enforcement. The searches included queries about remotely deleting cellphone data, how investigators recover deleted messages, women\u2019s prisons in Utah, and life insurance payments.\n <\/p>\n \n According to Kotrodimos, the searches included: \u201cwhat is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),\u201d \u201ckouri richins kamas net worth,\u201d and, \u201cif someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Kotrodimos testified the searches were all made after Kouri Richins knew she was under investigation, and he confirmed he couldn\u2019t say with certainty who made the searches nor what prompted them.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Over the last two weeks, jurors in Kouri Richins\u2019 murder trial have heard wide-ranging testimony about troubles in her marriage, her secret affair and the millions of dollars she owed in debt \u2013 all factors prosecutors say led her to fatally poison her husband. Prosecutors say the Utah mother of three killed her husband, Eric … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Kouri-Richins-trial-What-weve-learned-so-far-in-the.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23154,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23152\/revisions\/23154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"During](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/grossman-still-22421081-1566819-still.jpg\")
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