US author of children’s book on grief killed husband for his money, court hears

South China Morning Post · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Prosecutors portrayed a Utah mother and children’s book author as a money-hungry killer Monday on the first day of a murder trial in her husband’s death, while her defence team urged jurors not to make judgments before hearing her side.Kouri Richins, 35, faces a slew of charges for allegedly killing her husband, Eric Richins, with fentanyl in March 2022 at their home just outside the ski town of Park City. She has vehemently denied the allegations.Prosecutors say she slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail that he drank. She is also accused of trying to poison him a month earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him break out in hives and black out, according to court documents.After her husband’s death, Kouri Richins self-published a children’s book about grief to help her sons and other kids cope with the loss of a parent.As arguments in the case got under way on Monday, Richins sat next to her lawyers, taking notes and passing some to them. It was not known whether she would take the witness box in her defence.Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth told jurors that Richins was US$4.5 million in debt and falsely believed that if her husband died she would inherit his estate worth more than US$4 million. Prosecutors have argued she was planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.