Utah mother who wrote grief book gets life for fentanyl murder

Kouri Richins will spend the rest of her life in prison after Judge Richard Mrazik sentenced the Utah mother to life without the possibility of parole on the birthday of the husband prosecutors said she killed with fentanyl.

The punishment came in 3rd District Court in Park City, Utah, after Richins, now 36, was convicted in March 2026 of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, insurance fraud and forgery following a weekslong trial. Mrazik said Richins posed a danger to society, a conclusion he reached after hearing disturbing victim impact statements from the couple’s children and other relatives. Richins denied guilt in allocution.

Prosecutors said Eric Richins died on March 4, 2022, after Richins laced his drink with fentanyl. An autopsy found about five times the lethal dose in his system. They also said she had tried and failed to kill him earlier, on Valentine’s Day 2022, with a fentanyl-laced sandwich, and that she later asked for the “Michael Jackson drug” while seeking fentanyl.

The case took on an even darker edge because Richins publicly presented herself as an author focused on childhood grief. While she was facing charges, she self-published Are You With Me?, a children’s book about a boy coping with the death of his father, and promoted it before her arrest in May 2023, more than a year after Eric Richins died. Prosecutors said she was also motivated by money, alleging she took out a $100,000 life insurance policy using his forged signature and filed a claim after his death. They said she believed she would inherit his estate, which they said was worth more than $4 million.

Eric Richins’ father, Eugene Richins, along with his sisters and brother-in-law, addressed the court at sentencing. Prosecutors also submitted statements from the couple’s three sons, who were 9, 7 and 5 when their father died. The oldest, now 13, said he feared Richins would come after him and his brothers if she were released, while the youngest said he would feel happy and safer once his mother was gone.

The sentencing landed exactly where the case’s public image had always collapsed, with the grief book on one side and the fentanyl death on the other. By the end, the courtroom had made its choice, and the birthday that should have belonged to Eric Richins became the day his widow was ordered to die in prison.