Jury deliberating in case of Utah woman accused of killing husband, then writing book on grief

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Prosecutors on Monday aimed to drive home their argument that a Utah woman who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband killed him for his money, while her defense team argued the prosecution's case leaves much to speculation.

Defendant Kouri Richins was $4.5 million in debt and falsely believed she would inherit her husband Eric Richins' estate worth more than $4 million when he died, prosecutors said during closing arguments in her murder trial.

“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” said Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth.

Prosecutors say Richins, 35, slipped five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a cocktail that she made for her husband, causing his death in March 2022 at their home just outside the affluent ski town of Park City.

She is also charged with fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after her husband’s death, trying to kill him weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him black out, and other felonies, according to court documents. Richins has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The most serious charge — aggravated murder — carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

What was scheduled to be a five-week trial was cut short last week when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Richins’ attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.

“They haven't done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence. They want you to do their job for them. Tell them, ‘No,’” defense attorney Wendy Lewis urged the jury on Monday.

Jurors must reach a unanimous verdict.

Prosecutors said Richins, a real estate agent focused on flipping houses, was deep in debt and planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side. She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million, prosecutors alleged.

They showed the jury text messages between Richins and Robert Josh Grossman, the man with whom she was allegedly having an affair, in which she fantasized about leaving her husband, gaining millions in a divorce and marrying Grossman.

The internet search history from Richins’ phone included “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “luxury prisons for the rich America” and “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as,” a digital forensic analyst testified.

Bloodworth replayed for the jury a clip of Richins’ 911 call from the night of her husband’s death. That’s “not ‘the sound of a wife becoming a widow,’” he said, quoting the defense’s opening statement. “It’s the sound of a wife becoming a black widow.”

Lewis responded that the prosecution “looks at facts one way and sees a witch, but if you look at those facts another way, you see a widow.”

Richins listened to the prosecution’s presentation with a furrowed brow and whispered with her attorneys.

The defense focused on trying to discredit the prosecution's star witness, Carmen Lauber, a housekeeper for the family who claimed to have sold Richins fentanyl on multiple occasions.

Lewis argued Lauber did not deal fentanyl and was motivated to lie for legal protection. Lauber said in early interviews that she never dealt the synthetic opioid, but later said she did after investigators informed her that Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, the defense noted.

Richins had asked Lauber for “the Michael Jackson stuff," which Bloodworth said likely refers to the drug combination that killed the singer.

“She knows she wants it because it is lethal,” he argued.

The housekeeper was already in a drug court program as an alternative to incarceration on other charges when authorities arrested her in connection with the Richins case, investigators said. She had also violated some conditions of drug court.

The defense showed a video of law enforcement warning Lauber that they could pull her drug court deal and that she could face a lengthy prison sentence.

“Give us the details that will ensure Kouri gets convicted of murder,” a man in the video said.

Lauber was granted immunity for her cooperation in the case. She testified that she felt a need to “step up and take accountability of my part in this.”

Shortly before her arrest in May 2023, Richins self-published a children’s book about grief to help her sons process the loss of their father. She promoted the book “Are You with Me?” on local TV and radio stations, which prosecutors have pointed to in arguing that Richins planned the killing and tried to cover it up.

Summit County Sheriff’s detective Jeff O’Driscoll, the lead investigator on the case, testified that Richins paid a ghostwriting company to write the book for her.

O’Driscoll said the sheriff’s office received an anonymous package shortly after Richins’ arrest that contained the book and a note: “There are two sides to every story. This is a true Kouri, a devoted wife and adoring mother. Thought you should know.”

Investigators later learned from Amazon that Richins’ mother sent the package.

Prosecutors showed the jury excerpts of a letter found in Richins’ jail cell that they said appears to outline testimony for her mother and brother. In the six-page letter, Richins instructs her brother to tell her former attorney that Eric Richins confided in him about getting fentanyl from Mexico and “gets high every night."

Defense attorneys have said the letter contains a fictional story Richins had been working on. They have argued that Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and asked his wife to procure opioids for him.

However, Richins told police on the night of her husband's death that he had no history of illicit drug use, according to body camera footage shown in court.

Defendant Kouri Richins, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)

Judge Richard Mrazik listens to closing arguments in the Kouri Richins trial where she is accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)

Defendant Kouri Richins, left, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)

Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth presenting the state's final arguments in the trial of Kouri Richins, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Third District Court in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)

Defendant Kouri Richins, left, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who spent nearly two decades in prison for a roughly $550 robbery was exonerated and freed Monday, after prosecutors said they now agree he didn't commit the crime.

“It cost me 20 years, but they said they corrected it now. So that's all that matters. So I’m good with that,” Kenneth Windley, 61, said as he left a Brooklyn courthouse, at liberty for the first time since 2007.

A judge threw out his conviction and dismissed his case entirely, at the request of both prosecutors and Windley's lawyers. Prosecutors said new evidence — including confessions from two other men who were convicted of similar robberies — supported his longstanding claim of innocence.

“This case is really a cautionary tale of how things can seem one way but, without careful analysis, not be what it purports to be," Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, a Democrat, said after shaking Windley's hand outside court.

“Had we known what the evidence was, this case should have never happened,” he said, adding that he had apologized privately to Windley.

Windley was arrested in 2005, after buying a stove for his mother with a money order that turned out to be stolen.

It had been snatched from Gerald Ross, 70, by two thieves who followed him home from a trip to a bank and a post office. The thieves put Ross in a chokehold and took money orders, cash, and a bank book from him, prosecutors said in a report released Monday.

Ross regularly got money orders for his rent and life insurance payments at that post office, which helped him and authorities follow a paper trail after the robbery. The trail soon led to Windley, who had given his name, driver’s license and address when purchasing the stove at an appliance store.

From the start, Windley said he had nothing to do with the robbery. He said he'd simply bought a $542.77 money order at a discount from a couple of acquaintances, who insisted that it was valid but that they couldn't use it for a bureaucratic reason.

“He was duped," one of Windley's lawyers, David Shanies, told the court Monday.

Ross identified Windley in a lineup as one of the thieves, and a jury convicted him in 2007 of robbery. Because of prior felony convictions, he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. His appeals failed.

Early on, Windley told prosecutors what he knew about the men who sold him the money order: their nicknames, and some information about their legal names. After his conviction, a friend and private investigators helped him flesh out the men's identities and persuade the men to come forward about what had happened, according to the D.A's report.

In sworn statements and then in interviews with D.A.'s office representatives, the two men said that they had robbed Ross together and that Windley was not involved, according to the report. It called their admissions “compelling.”

It doesn’t give their names, referring to them only as “Suspect 1” and “Suspect 2.” Both are serving prison time on other robbery convictions, according to the D.A.’s office. Those convictions all involved male victims in their 60s and older who were followed home from banks and check-cashing offices in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006.

If the jury had known those men's identities and robbery records, the information would likely have raised reasonable doubt about the charge against Windley, prosecutors concluded.

No new charges have been brought in the case. The legal timeframe for bringing charges ran out years ago, and Ross has died.

Windley, heading off Monday afternoon to celebrate with his family, said he wasn't bitter about what he'd been through

“I’m just going to move on from there,” he said.

Kenneth Windley, right, shakes hands with Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez at the courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)

Kenneth Windley, left, leaves the courthouse with his mother, Francina Windley Patterson, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)

Kenneth Windley, center, speaks with reporters while accompanied by his fiancée, Donna Carter, left, and attorney David Shanies, right, outside of the courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)

Kenneth Windley, right, speaks to reporters while accompanied by his fiancée, Donna Carter, outside the courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)

Kenneth Windley, left, leaves a courthouse with his mother, Francina Windley Patterson, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)