PARK CITY, Utah (Court TV) — The author of a children’s book on grief accused of murdering her husband is renewing her request to be released on bail, saying that prosecutors withheld information that shows she’s innocent.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother of three who wrote a children’s book about coping with grief after her husband’s death and was later accused of fatally poisoning him, looks on during a hearing Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool)
Kouri Richins is charged with murdering her husband, Eric Richins, who investigators say was poisoned with a lethal dose of fentanyl in a Moscow mule his wife prepared in 2022. Prosecutors say the murder was part of Kouri’s larger plot to get rid of her husband and cash in on his life insurance.
Kouri has been behind bars for the last 28 months, after being denied bond twice. Now, her attorneys have filed a renewed request for bail, citing a failure by prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence as a key change in circumstance that should qualify her for release.
Prosecutors have alleged that Kouri purchased the lethal dose of fentanyl from her housekeeper, identified in court documents as Carmen Lauber. While Lauber initially told officers that she never bought any fentanyl, she eventually told them that she had purchased it from Robert Crozier.
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Crozier was interviewed several times, with the first conducted by police in May 2023 when he was arrested on drug charges. At that point, officers say Crozier admitted to selling Lauber fentanyl twice in 2022. But in an affidavit filed with the court as part of their motion, Kouri’s defense says Crozier has no memory of that interview because he was “detoxing from drug use and was very ‘out of it.'”
When members of the Summit County Attorney’s office went to interview Crozier in April 2025, he told them that he had never sold Lauber fentanyl, and rather had sold her OxyContin pills twice. The defense says the details of that interview were never disclosed to them.
Kouri’s defense claims that prosecutors violated their ethical duties by not disclosing the interview, which they said “not only negates Ms. Richins’ guilt, but completely eviscerates the prosecution’s own theory that Ms. Richins procured the fentanyl that ultimately killed her husband. … This was not an oversight. This was a continuing and knowing concealment. It is not a blemish on the fruit — it is a rot at the core, poisoning the whole harvest of justice.”
In addition to requesting Kouri’s release on bail, her attorneys have also asked the judge to order prosecutors to disclose all evidence, including emails and texts, relating to their communications with Crozier within three days.
Kouri’s handyman, who was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2024, allegedly told investigators that Kouri had also asked him if he could get her fentanyl before Eric’s death.
