Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes Present
Blame the Dead Dad; Defense Takes Shape on Day 1 of Grief Author Murder Trial
24 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the background of the Corey Richens trial?
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Hey there, folks. It is Tuesday, February 24th, and we were wondering what defense the Utah mom would use as she goes on trial for poisoning and killing her husband. Well, we found out what her defense is going to be. Blame the dead guy. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Rose. We were curious. We got our answer pretty quickly in this case that is fascinating.
A grief author story. Kills her husband on trial for killing her husband. But Rhodes, they did not mince words yesterday. They are going after the victim and they're going after his family.
Yes. And you know what?
Chapter 2: What defense strategy is being used in the trial?
This seems to be a theme. If you can't take responsibility and you want to point the finger at somebody else, well, the one person who can't refute your version is the person who you're accused of killing. And that's exactly what's happening here.
Look, according to prosecutors, 35-year-old Corey Richens slipped her husband, Eric, five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in a Moscow mule she made for him right before he went to bed. But the defense says, hey, Eric Richens actually was addicted to painkillers. Loved his THC gummies. Who knows how the fentanyl got in his system? But he's the one who was doing drugs.
So this is going to be, Robes, they said this is a trial that's going to take a month. It feels like it could take longer. Yesterday was a lot of starting and stopping and objections and sidebars and confusion, quite frankly, in this trial. Maybe they just need to get some of this out of the way early. But it felt like a clunky trial. Not quite. It's day one, but they haven't found their stride.
Chapter 3: How did the prosecution present the case against Corey Richens?
The judge and the two attorneys just figuring each other out. But it was a lot of jerky movement yesterday and not real flow to the first day of testimony.
You know, that's interesting. You say that we've been watching a lot of trials lately and it does take there's a dynamic or a rhythm that. It tends to evolve between or at least among the judge, the defense and the prosecution. And it was messy yesterday. That's a good way to put it. Lots of I'm sorry's. I didn't mean to stops and starts. Even the the witnesses were apologizing.
It was it was definitely clunky. It's a very good word to use.
Figure that out later, I suppose. But yes, folks, this is going to be a trial that a lot of folks are going to keep an eye on because it's a case folks have kept their eye on. This happened in 2022. The death of Eric Richens died, at least according to the medical examiner, with fentanyl poisoning.
According to prosecutors, his wife, Corey Richens, is the one who slipped this fentanyl into his drink, killing him. She's also on trial robes for attempting to kill him, what, a month prior by poisoning a sandwich that he had eaten. All this was about financial gain. She had a house of cards, as we hear oftentimes with financial situations, but they're talking about she has millions now.
in debt, needed him dead because he was worth more to her with money. The other part of this robe, of course, that's making the big headlines is the fact that she wrote a book after he died.
That's correct. So, yes, there is high interest in this case. Just to give you an idea, apparently several dozen people actually camped outside the courtroom in lawn chairs for nearly five hours waiting to get a seat inside this court because this has made, of course, local headlines, but now national headlines because about one year after Eric's death,
Corey Richens published a book, and it was titled Are You With Me? It was a children's book about a father with angel wings who was watching over his young son after he died. So Richens was out there in Utah, Park City is where this trial is taking place, promoting this children's book about dealing with the loss of a parent.
She was on local television, she was on radio stations, and about a month later, She was arrested for killing her son's father.
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Chapter 4: What evidence suggests financial motives in the murder case?
She has three sons with Eric Richens, and that is one of the main reasons why so much attention is on this case.
And the boys were all under the age of 10, at least during when this all happened. So you see now why you throw that element, and there's a salacious element, a holy shit element, if you will, to this story given here. Now, he finally gets to trial. Here we are, Robes. And you and I and a lot of people wondered. We didn't have a full idea of what the strategy would be. So the opening ceremony.
The Olympics. Yes, it's fresh on your mind. That makes a lot of sense. I get that. Opening arguments were made. Opening statements.
Opening statements, closing arguments. I always get that confused as well.
Even the lawyer yesterday stopped herself and corrected.
She did. She did. That was one of the apologies.
So the opening statements were yesterday. We heard from the prosecution. It's what we would expect. They laid out the case. They laid out some of the facts that were already in evidence that we were aware of. And it all sounds awful. But we were very interested to hear, Robes, what the defense was going to say. It wasn't a long opening. But, man, she made the points pretty quickly.
that this guy is possibly responsible for his own death and his family is responsible for his now widow being on trial.
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Chapter 5: What role does Corey Richens' book play in the trial?
That's correct. So the defense started out with a 911 call, very dramatically. It was a 911 call that Corey Richens made when she found her husband, she says, cold to the touch. And so there's a lot of high-pitched sobbing, can barely understand her. And so the defense attorney opens with, those were the sounds of a wife becoming a widow.
So trying to create this air of sympathy for her among the jurors at that point.
There was a collective rolling of the eyes. From us, the two of us. I could feel it in the courtroom. It was dramatic. I get what she was trying to go for, but yes.
So, yes. So then the first thing she does is she asks jurors to suspend judgment. Obviously, most people, especially who live in that area, have heard of this trial, know about this trial. So she had to kind of start with that, like, please don't believe everything you've heard and seen and read so far.
You know, I appreciate that and I appreciate court TV. I know people do watch, but I like looking and that we all get a view inside a courtroom in these trials. And a reminder, Rose is important. She is an innocent woman. And we have to assume that. That's what the jury has to do. I know people talk online and all this stuff.
But Robes, truth of the matter is we should all view folks through that lens. She is innocent until we determine otherwise.
And in the cynical world we live in, that's a pretty tall order for a lot of folks. So, yes, you and you hear the defense attorney and the judge remind the jurors of this constantly throughout the trial. But I thought this was interesting. Did you, and we heard this several times throughout the trial yesterday in testimony, that Eric Richens had Lyme disease.
I don't know why that's important, but it seems like it's going to be important for the defense because they've continued to bring it up. We actually even saw it in the body cam footage that...
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Chapter 6: How did the first day of testimony unfold in court?
Corey Richens is telling detectives immediately my husband had Lyme disease. I don't know if that's going to play a role, but it certainly popped up more than once.
They're trying to go into all of his any physical medical issues he might have had that would have caused him to seek out. fentanyl, THC gummies. There was hydrocodone prescription bottle that was on the thing. So she's trying to make it. Remember, they were talking about allergic reactions. Yes. Like he had this thing.
So if he would have had possibly ingested this other thing, that could have caused the hot. So they're trying to establish something medically with him, which they put his family up yesterday. We haven't gotten into testimony, but his family shot down a lot of that.
Yes. So the idea is that he was in chronic pain. He had chronic back pain and his sister did admit that he had chronic back pain. So, yes, he according to the defense, they're trying to set this up. They're suggesting that, yes, Eric may have been addicted to painkillers, may have been addicted to THC gummies. And then I thought this was effective.
The defense attorney ended with this or came to her conclusion with this. Yes, you're going to hear that Eric Richens died with a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. But I'm going to quote her here. What you will never hear after four years of investigation is how that fentanyl got inside of him because there is zero evidence of that.
And they pointed out that when the police were there on the scene initially investigating and setting up a crime scene, they never looked at those Moscow mule cups. And she says that they were there in the kitchen and that the next day the housekeeper ended up cleaning them, but they were never tested. So they could never actually prove.
There is no smoking gun, that there was fentanyl residue inside that Moscow mule.
Yeah, been there, done that in terms of not having a smoking gun. Been there, done that recently without having a smoking gun. They don't need one. Don't need one and circumstantial enough.
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Chapter 7: What were the reactions to the body cam footage presented?
It got into his body some way. Did he consume? Five times the lethal dose of fentanyl. Possibly, unwittingly, they're not saying he had suicidal ideations at all. So they're actually saying, and which was not effective to me, Robes, in the opening is when the attorney said he had recently gone to Mexico. Where does fentanyl usually come from in the United States, huh? I hated that.
Because it's this, huh, come on now. It's that tactic. It means we got nothing. So fine, Robes, if that's going to be the centerpiece, we don't know how it got into his system, and that's what it's going to come down to for the jurors? Yeah, fine. What about that other incident and all these financial things and all this other stuff?
There's a lot of motive here that the prosecution is setting up, which is going to be a very difficult mountain for the defense to climb, for sure. But when we come back, we're going to talk about the first witnesses that the prosecution put on the stand and that body cam footage that we couldn't take our eyes off of.
All right, folks, we continue here on Amy and TJ. Today will be day two of testimony in the Corey Richens trial. What is the they always it was the au pair affair. They always find little clever names. What are they going with on this?
I think they're calling this grief author murder trial. Yes, grief author. I wanted to add like children's author murder trial. I feel like that might even be more effective because that is what is so outrageous. Not only if you believe the prosecution and that this woman, Corey Richens, plotted, planned for years, by the way, to kill her husband.
And when she does, she tries to profit off of it by writing a book as a grieving widow helping her grieving children. I mean, it really is as disgusting as it gets, all to run away with her lover, which we haven't even really gotten into. But the prosecution set up the text messages that they will be reading in great detail between Corey Richens and her lover, which...
What was the other trial?
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of the upcoming testimonies in the trial?
Oh, it was the searches by, was it Canaro?
Yes.
Oh, my God.
So we've got Google searches on this one now. In the opening statements, we forgot to mention this. I want to point this out because this is important. The prosecution started to reveal some text messages between Corey Richens and her boyfriend, Robert Josh Grossman, where she talks about how she wants to marry him. She wants to raise her kids with him.
In fact, I believe the last thing that she texted before they claimed she slipped that fentanyl into her husband's drink was, I love you. to her boyfriend. So the Google searches, how about this? Luxury prisons for the rich America. Can cops force you to do a lie detector test? All, and of course the famous ones, you know, can police find deleted messages on your phone? All of this stuff.
They've recovered. That's all going to come out in great detail. So, again, a lot of evidence. The prosecution might not have that Moscow mule cup, but they have a lot of stuff. And the first witness they put on, Katie Richens Benson. That was Eric's sister. What did you make of her testimony, her demeanor? She was emotional.
I think she took it too personally. I think she's hurt, obviously, and she's pissed at the woman sitting at the defense table, and she's pissed at her lawyers. And some of that combativeness kind of came out, that animosity came out, and it wasn't helpful for either side, quite frankly. But I can understand where she's coming from. And also, she's on the spot. She's in front of cameras.
She's in front of a courtroom. She doesn't do this all the time. She was uncomfortable and awkward and tried to give the right answers it seemed like at times, but the authenticity in terms of the love for her brother was pure.
Oh, yeah, that just stabbed it in my heart to hear her emotion when talking about her brother. She fiercely loved him.
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