Utah children’s grief author Kouri Richins had asked her secret handyman lover if he’d ever killed anyone — just days after she allegedly slipped her hubby a fatal dose of fentanyl, according to testimony.
Robert Josh Grossman, a 43-year-old Iraq war veteran, detailed the chilling exchange with the 35-year-old writer as he gave emotional testimony in Park City on Wednesday about their months-long affair, KSL reported.
Richins posed the question in March 2022 as the pair discussed 39-year-old Eric Richins’ sudden death for the first time.
“We sat there and talked for quite a while… I had never seen her that way, obviously, and it was a heavy conversation, and I’m not used to that with her. She’s not used to being open like that,” Grossman told jurors.
“She asked if I had ever killed anybody … She asked me how it made me feel or something along those lines. And then I answered her.”
After confirming that he had taken a life while serving in Iraq, Grossman said the author then asked “how it made me feel or something along those lines.”
The grim exchange unfolded roughly 10 days after prosecutors say Richins killed her hubby by lacing his Moscow mule cocktail with four times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid.
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, prosecutors said.
In the wake of her husband’s death, Richins self-published a children’s book about grief to help her sons and other kids cope with the loss of a parent.
Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth told jurors early on in her trial that Richins was $4.5 million in debt and wrongly believed that if her husband died she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million.
Prosecutors have also argued she had been planning a future with her lover in the lead up to the killing.
“The evidence will prove that Kouri Richins murdered Eric for his money and to get a fresh start at life,” Bloodworth said.
“More than anything, she wanted his money to perpetuate her facade of privilege, affluence and success.”
Richins’ defense team, however, have claimed Eric died of an accidental overdose.
Her lawyers argued that he had asked his wife to get him the pain pills to help him cope with chronic back and knee pain from his physical work as a stone mason and outdoorsman.
In opening statements, defense attorney Kathryn Nester played Richins’ 911 call from the night of her husband’s death where she could be heard sobbing.
“Those were the sounds of a wife becoming a widow,” Nester told the jury.
Richins, who has pleaded not guilty, faces nearly three dozen counts, including aggravated murder, attempted murder, forgery, mortgage fraud and insurance fraud.
The murder charge alone carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
