salt lake city — A year after her husband’s death, a mother of three in Utah published a children’s book that she said helped her sons cope with the sudden loss. Corey Richins She promoted her book, “Are You With Me?” on a local television station and received praise for helping young children process the death of a parent.
Weeks after the book was published in 2023, she was arrested for her husband’s death and charged with murder.
The arrest sent shockwaves through her small mountain town outside Park City, where a 12-person jury is scheduled to decide her fate in a case. One month trial Which starts on Monday.
Richins, 35, faces nearly three dozen charges related to her husband’s death, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, forgery, mortgage fraud, and insurance fraud. She has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say she killed her husband, Eric Richins, in their home in March 2022 by slipping fentanyl into a cocktail he was drinking. They say she was deeply in debt and killed him for financial gain while planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.
The horrific case of a once-respected local author accused of profiting from her violent crimes has captured the attention of true crime fans in the years since her arrest. After being hailed as a moving read, her book has since become a tool for prosecutors in arguing that she carried out a calculated murder.
Her defense attorneys, Wendy Lewis, Kathy Nester and Alex Ramos, said they were confident the jury would rule in Richins’ favor after hearing her side of the story.
“Corrie has waited nearly three years for this moment: the opportunity to have the facts of this case heard by a jury, far from the prosecution narrative that has dominated headlines since her arrest,” her legal team said in a statement. “What the public was told bore little resemblance to the truth.”
On the night of her husband’s death, Richins called 911 to report that she found him “cold to the touch” at the foot of their bed, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead, and the coroner later found five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.
That was it This is not her first attempt on his lifeThe charging documents claim.
A month ago, on Valentine’s Day, Eric Richins told friends that he had hives and fainted after eating one bite of a sandwich Richins had left for him. She had bought the sandwich the same week police say she also bought fentanyl pills from the family’s housekeeper. Opioids, including fentanyl, can cause severe allergic reactions.
After injecting himself with his son’s EpiPen and taking the allergy medication Benadryl, Eric Richins woke up from a deep sleep and called a friend to say, “I think my wife tried to poison me,” the friend said in written testimony.
The day after Valentine’s Day, Corey Richins texted her alleged lover, saying, “If he could just walk away…life would be so perfect.”
Friend Eric Richins called that night, and the housekeeper who claims she sold his wife drugs could be key witnesses in the upcoming trial. Others may include family members and the man with whom Corey Richins allegedly had an affair.
The prosecution’s witness, housekeeper Carmen Lauber, told police she gave Richins fentanyl pills she bought from a dealer two days before Valentine’s Day. Later that month, Richins allegedly told the housekeeper that the pills she provided were not strong enough and asked her to buy stronger fentanyl, according to charging documents.
Defense attorneys are expected to argue that Lauber did not actually give Richins fentanyl and had a motive to lie for legal protection. Lauber has not been charged in connection with the case, and investigators said at an earlier hearing that she had been granted immunity.
Fentanyl pills were never found in Richins’ home, and the housekeeper’s dealer said he was in prison and detoxing from drug use when he told investigators in 2023 that he sold Lauper fentanyl. He later said in a sworn affidavit that he only sold her the opioid OxyContin.
Charging documents state that Eric Richins met with a divorce attorney and estate planner in October 2020, a month after he discovered his wife had made some major financial decisions without his knowledge. She had a negative bank account balance, owed lenders more than $1.8 million, and was being sued by a creditor, according to court documents.
Prosecutors say Corey Richins mistakenly believed she would inherit her husband’s estate under the terms of a prenuptial agreement. She also opened several life insurance policies for her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million, prosecutors allege.
She is also accused of falsifying loan applications and fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after her husband’s death.