Chapter 1: What shocking event triggered the Kouri Richins trial?
It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows. Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life.
I'm Juju Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Debra Roberts. And as always, I'm so delighted that you are with us today to spend some time with us as we take a closer look at one of our 2020 episodes. And this one is truly, truly a jaw dropper.
if you saw it chances are you still talking about it and if you didn't you're going to hear all the details today about an episode called murder she wrote the corey richards trial now this one has gained headlines all over the country really probably all over the world it grabbed a lot of attention the story of corey richards a 35 year old mom and wife from utah
who seemed to be living the good life.
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Chapter 2: How did Kouri Richins portray her husband's death?
She had a real estate company, she volunteered in her community, and her husband Eric owned a multi-million dollar masonry business. By all accounts, they were devoted parents, they had three children, and everybody saw them as a kind of a young, successful, happy couple. Well, that was until tragically on March 4th, 2022, Eric was shockingly found dead after he and his wife had shared a nightcap.
Well, an autopsy would later reveal that he died from a fentanyl overdose with five times the lethal limit in his system. That's right, five times. His family was in deep grief. And interestingly, a year after Eric's death, Corrie Wrenchins published a children's book about grief trying to help her sons cope with the loss of their father. She even appeared on a local television show.
We got an email, wrote into the station. It was Corrie saying that she had just written what she believed to be was the first book for kids about coping with grief and that she would love the chance to share that on Good Things Utah.
My kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced last year. And to make sense and process, I'm sure. Yes, exactly, exactly.
So she seemed to be moving forward in her life and then a breathtaking shocker a month after her media promotion? Corey is arrested, accused of poisoning her husband's drink and charged with his murder.
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Chapter 3: What evidence led to Kouri Richins' arrest?
I mean, it was truly like something out of a TV show. This story was one that people were talking about everywhere. And of course, we're still talking about it after we aired it on 2020. So to help us peel back the layers of this unbelievable story.
We are turning to our ABC News legal analyst, Brian Buckmeyer, who reported this piece for 2020 and included some exclusive interviews with Corey's family, a former best friend, and all kinds of clips that you're going to hear today that you didn't hear about in that episode.
Brian is bringing us some new details from inside the courtroom, which is something he does best because you are a lawyer in addition to being a legal analyst for us. Brian, good to see you.
Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, yeah. Always a pleasure. Well, you and I always get to dive into these stories. And I think I saw on your social media where you said you've covered a lot of strange, unusual, you know, jaw-dropping stories. But this one ranks up there. How so?
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Chapter 4: What role did the children's book play in the case?
Absolutely. Utah always gives us a lot of gems, right? If you're thinking about the social media moms who were arrested and convicted some years ago, now this one. And Utah is good in the sense of we get cameras in the courts. We get to see a lot.
But I don't think we've ever thought about, saw, conceptualized, think we would ever see a story that involved the death of a father, and the death of a husband, and then a children's book that followed it, and how long it took for the arrest, and then add in an affair, add in some insurance fraud.
Like you just had all of the elements, it was like, did someone write this story, or was this like a real life thing?
Because you wouldn't believe it if somebody had written it, you'd think this has to be fiction. Yeah. And that's what I think was so captivating, I think, for so many of us. And the conclusion actually just happened in this story and still a little more to come. But before we get to that and get to the courtroom, let's go back to the beginning and understand a little bit more about this couple.
Yeah. So Corey Richards, I think it would be Corey Darden at that time would be her maiden name. She's a cash registrar.
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Chapter 5: How did the courtroom dynamics unfold during the trial?
assistant or cashier at Home Depot. He is starting this soon to be successful masonry business. We found out during the trial that he co-owns the business. I think he is worth $2.6 million, so doing fairly well, right? Meets this beautiful young lady, they hit it off.
Years later, they end up having three sons, and by all intents and purposes, at least from the outside looking in, looks like they're doing fairly well. His background is a little bit different than hers, right? She comes from more humble beginnings, as the prosecutor described it. He comes from a family of cattle ranchers, but they get married and it seems to work out. His business blows up.
They have three children. She decides to get into flipping houses and seems to be doing successful in some regards, at least in terms of types of property that she's able to acquire and then flip. but clearly we hear about the debts and things of that nature. He is described as an outdoorsy guy. He's coaching his son's basketball and baseball and soccer team.
Chapter 6: What were the defense's arguments in Kouri Richins' trial?
From the outside in, it's like, hey, this is like a hallmark movie, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're making it. They're making it. And of course, this is 2020, so we know there's going to be an end to that making it scenario. So folks think that they're doing pretty well, but clearly behind closed doors, things aren't going so well. And we would learn more about that later on when this goes to a trial.
But before his death, they were clearly having some ups and downs in that relationship. And then she was also sneakily doing some things in that relationship as well.
Because the heart of this all, of course, to the prosecution is that she was bad with the money.
The theory the prosecution had was he was killed because she wanted to start a new life with this Josh Grossman, her paramour, and that the way that their prenup operated, because again, going back to how they come from very different backgrounds, there's a prenup before they got married, that she knew that she had to get out of this relationship in a certain way to be able to keep the money and keep the kids and keep this new boyfriend of hers.
So what was interesting in there, you hit on a number of things there and some of those we want to get to later because a lot of this would be revealed in the trial and in the court case. But before all of this happened and before he is killed, there's an incident that happens just a few weeks before he actually dies.
He becomes ill and there's a little hint there later on that he thought something was going on with her.
Yeah, so with most of her homicide cases, you'll see the person is charged with homicide, like a murder, and then also attempted murder, because it's like a lesser included.
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Chapter 7: What was the jury's reaction to the evidence presented?
That's not the case here. Because here, she tried to kill him on Valentine's Day, and then two weeks later, she actually killed him. On Valentine's Day. Yeah. And so the way the story goes out is that she went out to go get a sandwich for him. And here he thinks, this is my loving wife. Like she's going off selling homes and making money. But she thought about me on Valentine's Day.
He takes a single bite, according to some text messages we learned in the trial, feels ill. And I think like most fathers and probably most parents who've got three kids and they got to run out. Mm-hmm. ain't nobody got no time to be sick.
So he says he takes his son's EpiPen, hits it in his leg, takes a gulp of some allergy medication, sleeps it off, and then goes to, I think, coaching the kids or something with the kids. But in the text messages, we hear him texting some of his friends saying, hey, you almost lost me there. I think my wife might have tried to kill me.
Chapter 8: What implications does the verdict have for Kouri Richins?
And it's those text messages that the prosecution used to say, hey, something happened here. They also use messages, and we'll talk about this later, about her quote-unquote drug dealer and how another amount of drugs were purchased between the Valentine's Day and the second drugging, where she was asking for some stronger stuff.
And then a couple of weeks later, they're celebrating something or another. She makes them a round of cocktails. On March 4th, 2022, everything changes.
Yeah, so the way the story goes is that they came home, they were celebrating both of their success, namely hers as well. She's about to flip a major property, right? She was supposed to come into a lot of money and they're supposed to celebrate. Well, if you have kids at home, you understand how celebrating works for parents.
You got to wait for the kids to go to sleep and then you can have your cocktail afterwards. Yeah, I got a three-year-old, I'm still living it. But that's the story that... One of the kids is having a nightmare. She makes him a drink. She goes into the child's bedroom and stays with him, but she doesn't get up until 3 a.m.
in the morning, and that's when, according to her, she discovers that he had passed away.
And then she calls 911, and the call is kind of interesting. Let's listen.
911, what's the address of the emergency? My husband's not breathing. He's cold. Okay, tell me exactly what happened. I don't know. I was sleeping. I was sleeping with my kids. Okay, I can't understand you. I need you to take a deep breath. What's going on? Okay, we're going to... Can you do CPR? No, I don't know how. You don't know? I'm going to tell you how to. Are you willing to do CPR? Yes.
Okay.
Now you've heard a lot of calls in court over the years. They are all very different. What did you make of this one?
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