Bob Motta on Kouri Richins — Why the Medical Examiner's Testimony Backfired

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1:04This is Hidden Tillers Live with Tony Brusky and Robin Dree. The prosecution in the Cory Richards trial played a bombshell recording the other day. Cory Richards calling the medical examiner's office asking detailed questions about the substances found in Eric's body. But that same witness, Dr. Eric Christensen, made damaging admissions under cross-examination. Meanwhile, the state's drug chain witnesses are contradicting each other, and no fentanyl has ever been found in the Richards home. We are going to dive into right now what is going on in the prosecution of Cory Richards, and then we'll discuss the defense of Cory Richards and how that's playing out. Joining Robin and myself, Robin Dreeck, retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program is Bob Mata, defense attorney. Bob, welcome. This has been such an interesting case so far. It's had its moments. I feel like

2:08on both sides where you go, oh, oh, and you just kind of keep going, oh, it sits back and forth quite a bit. But one of the things that we've recently seen like I said was that phone call. I want to talk about the phone call to the medical expert, the examiner, that Dr. Eric Christensen. It was an interesting phone call. If you've not had a chance to hear it, if it's obviously available out there online, and she gets into wanting to know information about, you know, exactly how much of this drug fentanyl killed Eric, the different types of it, at one point she's confused about a prescription that's actually her own prescription that was in Eric's body. She can't quite pronounce it. What was your take on that phone call? Is it a big, big thing for the prosecution, or is it really kind of a nothing burger at the end of the day, and just a curious wife wondering what happened to her dead husband?

3:09Yeah, I guess the easiest way to put that is beauties in the eye of the polder. It depends on which side of the case you're on, and frankly at this point, I'm very big about this. Nobody should be at any point until we hear all the evidence. That's when we decide whether or not the state's met its burden. But the thing that mattered most to me, Tony and Robin is when did the call take place? Because I was probably halfway through the testimony, and I thought Christensen was overall a phenomenal witness, not so much for either side, for the jury, because he was incredibly articulate about so many things that I had questions about with respect to fentanyl in general, and he was just, he was a great assistance to the jury in understanding kind of the mechanics of fentanyl, and how much it takes to kill somebody, and just all of the

4:09ins and outs of that drug in particular. And he was very knowledgeable about the kind of the street black market fentanyl that was out there and was being sold a lot too. So I just thought he was very, very helpful. Now, when you kind of look at the questions from Corey's, when I find out that it's eight months after the fact, that the call was basically as a result that they had done a supplemental autopsy report, and they had added in all of the additional toxicology testing that they had done with respect to all the other fluids. And then she gets it, and she calls right away, and she's just inquiring. I mean, I thought it was fair. I said, look, if I died like Eric and my wife didn't do it, she would absolutely be calling asking questions. You know, like I didn't think it was abnormal. Did I think it was a little bit strange that she couldn't pronounce acetaminophen? A little bit? I thought that was a little strange. Did I find it a little

5:13strange? And the script that she couldn't pronounce of whatever drug that was, I can't remember what it is, but I didn't find that as strange as her not being able to pronounce acetaminophen. I mean, the one with the master's degree, like she's not yet. You know, and Tony and Bob, to these points, when I just listened to it last night as well, the thing that was striking me was that I, Bob, you're going to see, I'm the boring one. I do all the research, you know, kind of look at trends on this thing. That phone call and the content of it actually fit the profile of what typically people do, especially as you highlighted that time removal from that. So she's been so compartmentalized that there's been no over the top tells of whether she's accepted or not deceptive. And you've point that numerous times on this case as well, that if you're looking behaviorally, you're not getting much. So it's coming down to what you said is that reasonable doubt aspect. I feel like Corey is someone who is very strategically

6:16deceptive. She doesn't drop the mask all that often. You really got to kind of dig, it feels like to get behind the mask. And then once you see what's there, you're like, oh God. And what we're seeing behind the mask is the text messages, the Google searches, those sort of things. Those are the things you're looking at going, oh God, it's the same person that's doing this. Why are you doing these searches? Why are you looking these things, these things up? Because there really isn't a whole lot of verbal evidence in this case that really is is showing her acting super strange. I mean, the her behavior on the 911 call, her behavior when the police arrived, the first responders. I mean, it all, nothing stands out as super weird. I mean, you could pick little things here in there, I guess, and say, oh, that might, but again, everybody does grieve differently. And

7:16there's nothing to me that goes way off the charts in any of those interactions as being super deceptive or strange or hiding anything except for when you get to talking about real estate deals in the middle of your, your husband being zipped out and taken out of the house. But to me, that also just shows a really weird way. I mean, I guess not weird, but the way she can compartmentalize different things and handle really, I guess, multitask if you're putting it bluntly, you know, two things at once your husband dying and closing on a house the same day. Wow, that's multitasking. But she's able to do it. And she doesn't seem to do it with a whole lot of, I don't know. There's, it doesn't seem to be that evil vibe that's coming off of her in those situations until you start again, reading in a little bit deeper and seeing the searches. And that's what the prosecution came at with her with in opening. But then they're bringing it up.

8:17We're getting into the digital trail now. Just yesterday, they were talking about the memes. And I'm really curious, Bob, to get your thoughts on those memes and how damning they are, the memes where she's looking up someone wiping their nose with cash. The one that says, it's, it's, it's everywhere as, as first responders are going through her house trying to figure out what's happening. And then the, I'm rich. I'm rich. The Trump meme that she's looking up literally as Eric's being zipped into the body bag and being taken out of the house. How are they going to explain that one away? I thought they did an excellent job of explaining it away yesterday on cross examination. There was, there was no actual determination as to whether or not she even Google those. Okay. So I mean, essentially what their expert had to admit on the stand was he could not say with any kind of certainty whether or not those were things that were sent to her,

9:21whether they were things that she had looked up at a certain point in time. I mean, the bottom line is they simply, and again, the burden is entirely on the state to prove when these things happened. And you know, I mean, what a lot of people do. And I think sometimes we're all guilty of it, but especially folks that are lay people and don't necessarily do trial work. We all tend to form a bias based on the information that we get that comes out from the state post aroused pre-trial. You know, in this case was one of those cases where man, their whole theory was out there for everybody to digest for two and a half, three years. And it's a hell of a story. You know, but in terms of those memes, to me, are they somewhat problematic? Yeah, I mean, but if I'm for attorney, do I feel like they're the death now? No, because I thought Ramos did a very effective job in terms of pointing out the kind of the gaping holes with

10:25the celebrate extraction and the great key, man. It's like he just can't pinpoint exactly when that happened. And even if they were generated from her phone initially. Yeah, you know, and like Tony, look, man, the Google searches, I don't know if I agree with you there. I mean, to me, a bunch of them were pretty rational. No, not all of them were damning. I mean, there was a handful that were very rational that I think could be explained away. Brian Walsh is the bold standard. That's true. Incredibly fucked up. Incredibly damning consciousness of guilt, Google searches. And these don't even enter the same universe is what that guy was googling. You know what I mean? So it's like I kind of compare it to that in terms of do I find these to be somewhat benign in terms of context because everything about this case is going to be context and I would just have people wait until the defense is able to put their case in chief on and if we get some of that context, if that context does not exist, well, then the defense and

11:31poor e-richens in particular has a very, very big problem and she's going to be found guilty. But if they can show that there's a context in where these things might make sense, then like I thought it was kind of a brilliant little piece of the cross-examination yesterday when Ramos asked, I forget what the guy's name is from whatever the forensic tech guy is. Yeah. And he says, are you familiar with the housewives of wherever? Yeah. Specifically, housewives of Utah, were you aware that one of those housewives was arrested? You know, and it happened right around that Google search. To me, that's context. That's probably the kind of thing that I would, if I was a fan of that show, that I might Google, like, oh, well, where are they going to send this woman if she can? Sure. Is it? So Corey couldn't have thought she was wealthy at that point. I mean, yes, it could be argued that she thought that she was going to get the assets.

12:33But I mean, if she knows Katie, and I'm talking about her Existor, and she does, she should have known that she was never walking into all that money without a fight, because the probate battle in that case, which preceded this trial, is the background of everything in this case. And I have a feeling as much as the defense can get in about that probate battle, it's going to be interesting to see. It's also interesting, you know, and these are all, I see the most old very fair points when you take them individually, you know, because each one of these individual things can be explained away, but they're also for the jury. That's why I'm curious on your take on how you think the jury from your experience is going to respond to, not just this one or not just this one, but they're formed that arc, and there are these wobbles of what normal people would do if they just lost a husband, even if it's someone they didn't like, because you get a cascading wobble effect outside of what you would reasonably expect. And also, and I apologize for not being completely clear in this.

13:35I know the two cases on the murder trial, and then the financial fraud are different. Are they able to bring in, are they going to be able to bring in the life insurance part as part of this, because that to me is going to be the huge part of the rationale of this being outside the norm, and then all these things support that ration, that outside norm. Yeah, I think they are in part. They did sever those counts in terms of straight up financials, but like right now, they have the forensic accountant who was hired to kind of see what was what by Katie, the sister in terms of the estate battle. So right now, we're hearing about how poorly Corey Richards ran her real estate business, this flipping business that she had. She was way over extended. She had balloon notes out there, which we're going to come do sooner rather than later. I think in her estimation, she was going in saying, well, I've got a six month balloon on this thing before anything's due, but when that other shoe drops,

14:37it's a hammer. And if she's not able to get the houses rehabbed and flipped and sold, in that period of time, it puts her in the situation that she ended up being in, which is broke and overextended and all the banks bearing down, all the contractors bearing down, all the landscapers, all the people that she was, you know, all the vendors that she was getting her material. So she was in an absolute dire straits as far as her business goes. And you know, I mean, you can let the bank foreclose and that takes care of the property aspect of it in terms of you're not going to have to owe that money. But the vendors and the contractors, they're still knocking. They still want their money. Yeah. You know, what's interesting about the fact that she's overextended is that part of that overextension is coming because she's paying like hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but hundreds of dollars a month in premiums on life insurance policies. You know, because I looked up that the numbers it would take, you know, for premiums in order to pay that monthly bill that the husband's completely unaware of for having those numbers of

15:38policies, which is ridiculous. If you're overextended, the last thing you should be doing is that. Exactly. I think an interesting thing in this case is just how, how bad she was with money, how bad she was with running her business. As we know from the reports, at least from the family, Eric wasn't super down with any of what was going on. He apparently did not want to close on this house. The defense of Cory is saying they were celebrating the night before. He was excited about it. He even sent her a text that I believe he like offered to get lunch or something the day before. But she was too busy doing something else. So she didn't take him up on that. But, but they're trying to paint it. See, he was super excited too, even though I don't think he really was. They're painting really two different worlds. And we're going to get more into the defense in a second. But how, how difficult is that going to be to paint this world of see they were, they were trying to to work it out and be together. Meanwhile, she's like planning a vacation where

16:41their boyfriend for a month after Eric dies. She's actively, you know, talking about going, will you be my Valentine to her boyfriend? Is she leaves the supposed fentanyl or drug-laced sandwich? Yeah, one of my Valentine's is that what she says words matter Tony. Yeah, I didn't I didn't even know that what would you be one of my Valentine's? One of my Valentine's, yeah. Are they doing full-blown like old school Mormonism here? Where it's like where she's taking on multiple partners or what? I'm imagining her kids or her three boys, meaning the other Valentine's. Okay, hopefully not like multiple, although who knows? I mean, I don't know the woman personally. Yeah, all speculation. Sure. Well, you'd be one of my Valentine's, so all of that, all of that being part of this, it's got to be somewhat difficult to dispel this narrative of they're working on it and things are good and she's in love with her husband when she's doing all these things, it clearly contradict that. Yeah, you know,

17:45it's one of the fascinating things about trials that I always, you know, really delve into pretty deeply, especially coming from the defense side of people's, the reality is that when you look at a prosecutor's job and a defense attorney's job, like we are intimately involved on a much different level with the defendant and typically their family. So, so we get to know a lot more of the inner workings than, than frankly, the prosecutor ever does. The prosecutor typically has zero contact with the defendant that that person is merely what they're reading about on a piece of paper. And if they have witnesses, whatever they can glean from them, you know, so like kind of that intimate knowledge always is like what is in the back of my mind when I'm thinking about what was the reality of this relationship? Because frankly, we don't know Jack should about it. No, we don't. We're in that house unless you were living with Corey and Eric and the kids.

18:47You don't know anything about it. I thought that that one witness who was Cody's wife, I forget what the last name was, who was Eric's business partner. She was a very brief witness and I loved my chat because it was very telling in terms of how people viewed her. Was she helpful to the state or was she helpful to the defense? I found personally that Eric was ruling the financials in that family with an iron fist to the extent where Corey wanted to become independent financially, because you know, some testimony came out that Eric may have been having an affair prior to Corey doing it and that, you know, there was some talk about Corey, you know, thinking about divorcing him if that turned out to be true, but being concerned with the fact that he's got all the money, you know, like I'm concerned about what that looks like to my kid, hold on. Well, it's my kids in terms of he's got all the four wheelers. He's got this massive estate

19:51and I'm living over here in a hovel, you know, and that's a real thing that goes on and divorces him. The disparity and income between parents. So when she decides to go get her masters and get her real estate license, those things to me indicate that she was really trying her very best to become independently financially independent from from Eric, you know, and I think they have to factor those things in because that's a reality of the situation and we can't pretend to know what was going on in that relationship because we just don't until we get some testimony about it. And that particular Cody's wife was the first kind of actual inside baseball that I had heard about what was going on in that relationship. I want to say this about the iron fist. I don't know how much of an iron fist it is when she was able to siphon out hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, that's that's not super irony. That's that's kind of like bolsa wood. Well, the fact that she had to do that, did she have does anyone have to do that?

20:59Is there going to have to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars away from their husband's business? Let me put it this way. If she if she went to him and said, look, like I need help here because I've got notes are coming due and I'm doing the best I can to get the houses flipped and get them sold blah, blah, blah, blah. Again, we were not in that house. We weren't. So like if she had the conversation with Eric and like you were saying, well, I don't think she was that happy about the big purchase. Maybe he wasn't. You know, maybe maybe he was not down with her becoming financially independent. You know, what you're you're jumping to a massive I might be, but I guess I'm just trying to look at it from that perspective of okay, you know, I was trying to get it to look, look at it. Sure. And I hear you. That is another another prism that certainly can be looked at from. I guess the other prism I look at it from is she's insanely reckless with money. And maybe he had to be very harsh and strict with the money

22:04because he saw the way she handles it. And he'd rather not go bankrupt sometime soon. When he's been successful, he is making money. He is. They he clearly stayed married to her for all this time when he's been aware that she was siphoning money left and right. So whether he's approving it as she siphons it or not is I guess beyond the question, but it's happening and he's still there. I mean, I can see from another perspective, too, of just like she's reckless, she's out of control. And I'm there for the kids. And I'm going to just eat this insanity because at the end of the day, it's done about the money. It's not about her real estate business. It's about my family and being there for these children. So all that be damned. I'm going to sit here. I mean, that's the other perspective I'm looking at it from. But again, we don't know how much we know. We know. We know. But we're also making assumptions on your point, too. I'm going to the insurance. I still, you know, with the art and fist of I did. So I'm doing my research on all right. So how many times and what's the probability of multiple life insurance

23:06policies? Because that's part of their financial, you know, control that's going on. And they were done in secret. I looked up, you know, and can it even be done in secret technically? No, because he has to sign off on life insurance policies. He has to go for medical exam. She had fraud on that. I know it's going to be a separate thing on the other case, you know, on the financial fraud angle. But if he's got a financial fist over that, these are a lot of money and payments that are being made that he is completely unaware of. And so how much witness did he actually have or not have? And, and if, and, but now Bob, I'm on your side, you know, the deep act of empathy to understand, you know, her context of what she's trying to attempt to do. But as it looks from, you know, the confirmation bias side, when you know, you know, what she actually did with the insurance, her, her solution to it was to take out policies and try to knock them off. Because there's no, because I looked up the probability of people taking out life insurance policies. Now, people do take out multiple life insurance policies. There's a cap on it. And

24:07you're probably held a lot more aware of this than I am because I'm not the on the legal side. But she exceeded the amount that's typically allowed and it cannot be done in that kind of secret thing. And there's no reason to do it in secret unless you actually have an arterio motive. And again, him not being aware of those payments being made, that's a lot. Yeah. And until that comes in, I don't know how many policies she had out. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like two points something a million. No, but like what were the, like was at least four? What type of policies were they were they term or were they life? I mean, like, I don't know. I don't know if you've been termed because if it's life, you've got to, you know, if you have a life policy, they do the, the phone metaphor. I mean, basically, I believe it could have been, I think it seemed to have pointed out that I think some of them might have been like those ones. It was even brought up by the defense. Where, you know, you get them like from a credit union or wherever sometimes you get them from some business, whatever, like here's a, we're offering a triple A. Here's a life insurance

25:10pot in the mail. And those are pretty simple. It's like $10,000, $100,000. Sign your name and it's $4 a month. I mean, it could have been some of those two mixed in. There's just so many questions as to what and they're still not, we don't have the full picture yet. And that's important when we're trying to break this down. Bumble Wallace here from 2311 Racing. You know what's slower than a

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