By Nicki Brown, CNN
(CNN) — About a year after her husband’s death, Kouri Richins published a children’s book to help her three sons cope with their grief.
“Just because he’s not present here with us physically, that doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us,” Richins said during an interview promoting the book on a local news program in April 2023. “Dad is still here, it’s just in a different way.”
A month later, the Utah mother was arrested and accused of poisoning her husband, Eric Richins, with a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022.
On Monday, a jury will hear opening statements as Richins goes on trial for the murder of her husband of nine years. Prosecutors allege she killed him for financial gain and to start a new life with the man with whom she was having an affair. She is also accused of attempting to poison her husband on Valentine’s Day, weeks before his death.
Richins, 35, has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, insurance fraud and forgery. If convicted of the most serious charge, she could face up to life in prison.
Richins faces additional financial charges in a separate case. Court records indicate she has yet to enter a plea.
In a statement to CNN, Richins’ attorneys said their client was eager to have her day in court.
“Kouri has waited nearly three years for this moment: the opportunity to have the facts of this case heard by a jury, free from the prosecution’s narrative that has dominated headlines since her arrest,” her defense attorneys said in the statement. “Now the state must prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.”
A lethal dose of fentanyl
Eric Richins, 39, was found dead in the couple’s bedroom in the early morning hours of March 4, 2022.
Earlier that night, Kouri Richins brought cocktails up to their room to celebrate a success with her real estate business, according to an account she gave to investigators outlined in court records.
Richins told authorities one of their sons was having bad dreams, so she went to sleep in his room around 9:30 p.m., charging documents said. When she returned to the master bedroom roughly six hours later, she said she found her husband dead in their bed.
“I turned over, like to put my arm around Eric and he was just cold,” she told investigators in April 2023, according to court documents. “Like it was like a – like putting your arm over a cement brick.”
Richins called 911 at 3:21 a.m., and first responders arrived at the home in Kamas, outside Salt Lake City, shortly after. They noted it seemed like Eric Richins had been “dead a while,” the charging documents said.
Richins told investigators she left her cellphone in the master bedroom and called 911 immediately after she found her husband dead. Prosecutors, however, said a forensic analysis of her phone showed it was unlocked six times in the 15 minutes before she made the emergency call at 3:21 a.m.
The autopsy revealed Eric Richins died from a fentanyl overdose, with about five times the lethal dose in his blood.
Kouri Richins told investigators her husband would sometimes take THC gummies before bed – and that she believed they could have contained fentanyl. The night of his death, she told authorities she didn’t think he had eaten one. A year later, Richins said she thought he did eat a gummy that night, prosecutors said in charging documents.
The medical examiner did not detect THC in Eric Richins’ system, and prosecutors said the gummies in his home