SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The young sons of Utah children’s author Kouri Richins said before Wednesday’s sentencing hearing that they would not feel safe if she was released from prison after being found guilty of killing their father in March.
Richins, 35, faces decades to life in prison after being convicted on five felonies, including aggravated murder.
In 2022, she laced her husband, Eric Richins, with five times a lethal dose of fentanyl in a cocktail at their home near the ski town of Park City, prosecutors said. She then published a children’s book shortly before her arrest in 2023, telling the story of a boy coping with the death of his father.
Richins’ attorney declined to comment Tuesday ahead of the sentencing hearing, the day her husband turns 44.
Statements from their sons, who were 9, 7 and 5 when their father died, came in a memo from prosecutors urging Judge Richard Mrazik to sentence Richins to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The eldest child, now 13, said he wanted the court to know he didn’t miss his mother.
“I was worried that if she got out, she would come after me and my brother and my whole family,” he said. “I thought she was going to come and take us away instead of doing good things to us, like hurting us.”
Prosecutors claimed the boy suffered emotional and physical abuse from his mother, which they said was supported by findings from the Utah Department of Children and Family Services, which were included in a sealed court filing. Agency officials could not comment on the allegations because most records on minors are tightly protected, spokesman Josh Loftin said.
Richins, a real estate agent who ran a house-flipping business, was millions in debt and planned a future with another man, prosecutors said. She opened multiple life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge and mistakenly believed she would inherit his estate, worth more than $4 million, upon his death.
Her aggravated murder charge alone carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, or life without parole. Prosecutors did not push for the death penalty.
Jurors also found Richins guilty of other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder, after she tried to poison her husband with a fentanyl-laced sandwich weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day, causing him to pass out.
The Riggins’ middle child, now 11, refuted his mother’s claims that she slept with him in his bedroom on the night his father died. He recalled the unusual circumstances of that night, such as being sent to bed early without a shower and his parents’ bedroom being locked with the television blaring from inside. The boy said his mother yelled at him to go away as he used a broom to try to get the bedroom key, and Richins later told a 911 operator she noticed her husband was cold to the touch.
The 11-year-old told the judge he was sad his father could no longer take him camping and fishing, coach him in sports or witness his major milestones. Like his brother, he said he wouldn’t feel safe if his mother wasn’t in jail.
“With (her) behind bars, I will be able to continue to feel safe and live a happy and successful life without having to worry about (her) harming me or my loved ones,” he wrote in the statement.
The younger son said he felt “hateful and ashamed” when people talked about his mother because “she took my father away”. He said he would be “very scared” if his mother was released from prison.
“I will be happy once she is gone, I will feel safer, more relaxed and more trusting,” said the boy, whose current age was not included in the memo.
Richins also faces two dozen money-related criminal charges in a separate case that has yet to go to trial.
