Prosecutors claim that a Utah mother of three and children’s book author who is accused of poisoning her husband to death last year ordered her brother to provide false testimony in a letter she penned while in jail.
According to court records, deputies from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office discovered the six-page, handwritten letter sent to Kouri Richins’ mother, Lisa Darden, in her cell during a search.
Richins claims in the letter that Skye Lazaro, her attorney, “wants to link getting drugs and pills from Mexico, so we need some kind of connection.”
Richins, 33, is accused of poisoning her 39-year-old husband Eric Richins with a concoction that contained fentanyl on March 3, 2022, while their three young sons slept in their Kamas, near Park City, home. According to the prosecution, Eric’s murder was motivated by money.
The letter also directs Ronald “Ronney” Darden, Kouri’s brother, to testify about Eric’s “Mexico trips” to get “pain pills and fentanyl.”
“Reword this however he needs to, to make the point[.] Just include it all,” the letter reads. “The connection has to be made with Mexico and drugs. … Upon information and belief LOL.”
Prosecutors claimed that “no such link exists” between Mexico and the fentanyl that caused Eric Richins’ death in a document filed on September 15.
“[T]he defendant concocts a false narrative for Ronald Darden to repeat,” prosecutors said in their filing, adding that the letter shows “evidence of witness tampering. It is unclear if the letter ever made it to Lisa and Rodney Darden, according to the court filing.
Between 2015 and 2017, Kouri reportedly spent over $1.9 million on four different life insurance plans on Eric. A court document claims that Kouri “secretly and without authorization changed the beneficiary for Eric’s $2 million life insurance policy to herself” on January 1, 2022, months before his murder.
Investigators claim that before he passed away, Eric changed the beneficiary of his estate from Kouri to his sister.
Kouri allegedly attempted to poison Eric twice: first on Valentine’s Day 2022, when he claims she tried to poison his sandwich, and again some years earlier in Greece, according to Eric’s family, who reported this to the authorities.
The couple was reportedly at odds about money because Kouri wanted to buy a $2 million mansion that was being built in Wasatch County. According to a warrant, she intended to renovate the property and sell it for a profit, but Eric believed the project would be too costly.
In a different part of the letter, Kouri begs her mother to assist in spreading the myth that she was “jealous” of Eric Richins’ sisters because “anything they could do, Kouri could do better.”
“Being a mom, college, stay-at-home wife [sic] until she built a million dollar company. A nice house, car, everything she had, they wanted,” she wrote.
Kouri allegedly completed a contract on the Wasatch County estate “alone” a day after discovering Eric dead in their bed.
According to a transcript of police-worn body camera footage captured at the scene of Eric’s suspected murder, Kouri told detectives the morning of March 4, 2022, that she did not know what happened to her husband after calling police to report his death and describing the scenario as “insane.”
Kouri’s children’s book “Are You With Me?” was written in the aftermath of Eric’s death.
A description for the book, which was listed on Amazon for $14.99, describes “Are You With Me?” as “a must-read for any child who has experienced the pain of loss, and for parents who want to provide their children with the emotional support they need to heal and grow.”
