Kouri Richins Guilty on All Counts: The Full Verdict Breakdown

0:00If you want the latest technology in your laundry room, you got to visit the BrainScarf Upgrade and Save laundry event right now with our best price guarantee, helpful experts and extra bonus savings plus next day delivery on our top-selling GE and GE profile washers and dryers. It's the best time to upgrade and save. See for yourself why Braybeats big. Visit any of BrainScarf's convenient locations or shop online at brayenscarf.com where it doesn't cost more to get more. One iced coffee 99 cents please. For real? No way. One iced coffee 99 cents please. For real? No way. What a deal. Your new morning groove. Ice coffee from McDonald's any size for just 99 cents to 11 a.m. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer.

1:01It's tax season and by now I know we're all a bit tired of numbers. But here's an important one you need to hear. $16 billion. That's how much money and refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud. Here's another one. One in four honest hardworking tax-paying Americans has been a victim of identity theft. But it's not all grim news. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second for your personal information and alerts you to threats you could easily miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's US-based restoration specialist will fix it backed by another good number. The million dollar protection package. In fact, restoration is guaranteed or your money back. Don't face identity theft and financial losses alone. There's strength in numbers with LifeLock identity theft protection for tax season and beyond. Visit LifeLock.com slash iHeart and save up to 40% your first year. That's 40% off at LifeLock.com slash iHeart. Terms apply.

2:17This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brusky. Here now, Tony Brusky. The the night before Eric Richens died. Josh Grossman sent Coryatex. Josh is Cory's lover, a boyfriend on the side. Her sidepiece, if you will. He told her he wasn't feeling well. Said he'd sat down to eat that hush puppy thing. The next thing he knew, it was the love at a clock at night. Hours gone, vanished. He got sick and he didn't know why. He didn't ask too many questions. He was in love. The next day, Eric Richens, her husband, totally different guy, dead. After something he ate that involved Cory, Richens. Coincidence? And there's also been some reporting that the boyfriend Grossman's dog even died.

3:27What the hell was that? A jury of eight people spent three hours reviewing three weeks of evidence and reached a conclusion against Cory Richens. Guilty. All five counts, aggravated murder, attempted murder, insurance fraud, forgery, unanimous. Cory Richens, 35-year-old mother of three real estate agent, we put that in air quotes, and published author of children's grief book or ghost author. She's not really the, she hired someone to write a grief book. Lowered her head as the judge read the verdict. It took three hours, not three days, not a week of agonizing deliberation, three hours. To look at everything this woman did and said and searched and texted and forged and agree with how to single hold out. There was only one explanation for all of it.

4:30It's not a close call. That's called a conclusion. Love to get your thoughts in the comments action as we work through this. The verdict in the trial of Cory Richens. Guilty. Always like to see a good narcissist go down, don't you? 42 prosecution witnesses testified over three weeks. The defense called zero. Gee, that was a good call there. Let's just do nothing. That'll work out. That'll help the client. Cory Richens chose not to take the stand in her own defense. So the jury was left with exactly a prosecution. They're prosecutors put in front of them. A paper trail, so thorough, so specific. So damningly sequential that the only remaining question was whether eight people could follow it to its logical end. They did in three hours. I bet if they didn't have dinner, they would have been done sooner. But they wanted to some have a little bit of time to enjoy their quiznos. Is yours toasted?

5:31Mine's not toasted. They didn't toasted. What's wrong with these people? That's right there. There's there's five minutes of deliberation over toasted subs. I have no idea if they had quiznos or not. I'm just throwing that in there. But seriously, they had to eat. They were hungry. So take the hour of dinner out of the mix and you probably get this done in less than two hours, really. They walked into that room when you see a three hour verdict and they knew their answer walking in. There wasn't a lot of deliberating. There was a lot of, what do you guys think? Okay. I mean, we'll find out. We'll find out when the jurors actually talk. But three hours, nobody needed a hell of a lot of convincing. The evidence stood on its own. Let's go back to January 9th, 2022, Corey Rich in text Josh Grossman and ask him whether he's ever done drugs besides marijuana. How recently? She frames it casually. She's been watching a show

6:34about the opioid epidemic. She says it reminded her to ask, you know, like you just do randomly asking people that question after you watch documentaries about drug use. I do the same thing after I watch Breaking Bad. Don't you? I walk up to everybody. You got to hear the blue stuff. You doing that? Like, what? What's a lot of breaking bad? Then they saw a woman building a baseline learning what her boyfriend had already been exposed to figuring out what his system could handle at the time. It probably seemed like an odd but harmless question looking at it now with everything that followed. It kind of reads like research. Five weeks later, Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2022, Corey, I made plans to spend the day with her boyfriend Grossman. Instead, she made Eric a sandwich and sent it to him. Eric Richens broke out in hives. He blacked out. He texted his wife that he was thinking about going to the hospital. She told him to take a nap. Take a lonely nap, honey. Then she went silent for two hours and hung out with her boyfriend. Eric thought,

7:39you know, maybe she'd come home to help him. According to prosecutors, she was in provo waiting for a cabinet contractor. He survived. He later joked to friends that Corey had tried to a poison on Valentine's Day. I thought it was kind of a funny story. Yeah, I got real sick after Corey dropped off that sandwich for me. I didn't see her much of the day, but you know, she was the only Valentine she gave me. It made me sick. Funny story. It wasn't a funny story because then came March 3rd. The night before Eric died. And this is where the picture becomes something you can't unsee. According to more text messages, entered into evidence. A trial Grossman told Corey that night that he wasn't feeling well. The day before Eric died, said he'd sat down to eat that hush puppy thing that she'd given him and didn't remember a thing until 11 p.m. hours of his life gone. The boyfriend didn't understand what happened to him. He was texting the only person who did prosecutors and analysts who reviewed the evidence to

8:43a specific conclusion from that sequence. She'd already attempted it on Eric in February. She may have used Grossman the night before to calibrate the dose to confirm it worked or didn't. I mean, think of it. I mean, this is a weird thought process, sir. I mean, this I wonder in itself could be attempted murder or I don't know what. Although we have talked about this on the show, there might not have been an attempted all on Grossman's life. I know it's like, well, what do you mean by that? I mean just handling the stuff. Did she handle it? And then handle something that he was going to eat and just the residue of it then affected him. I mean, it's kind of, I mean, you take a second look at this and go, well, why didn't it affect Corey? It was on her hands, right? Yes, but she didn't ingest it. There's a difference to the way the body will be affected by it. I would honestly be curious, though, to know if Corey herself had any sort of ill reaction in any way, shape or form.

9:47Not obviously horrible enough to stop anything, but enough to go, hmm, maybe I should wear gloves next time because that really could be how Grossman got ill. Just the handling, handling. We may have learned Corey doesn't wash your hands all that often to be completely honest. That may be the lesson in this part of the story. Corey does not really, it's clearly as we all think. Moscow Mule made for Eric the next day. The drink Eric got contained five times the lethal dose of fentanyl and that medical grade, street fentanyl, the kind that you have to go looking for and she did to her housekeeper and she went to her friend. They got it. The Michael Jackson stuff. And they're like, that's profile. Yeah, I know, but Corey didn't know what the hell anything was called. Corey's not the brightest bulb if you haven't caught on by this trial and her millions of dollars

10:53of debt and poor decision making process. She's what you call colloquially a fucking idiot. I know. It's a term that, you know, reserved for the special ones. So sometime in early 2020, to your prosecutors say Corey contacted an acquaintance asking to purchase medication telling her was for an investor. When that source suggested hydrocodone, Corey allegedly asked for something stronger, something like the Michael Jackson drug. She knew what Michael Jackson died from or that he died basically. Something, some drug. And that's what she wanted. She eventually got something according to testimony through her housekeeper Carmen Lover who purchased fentanyl pills through a street dealer up to 90 of them. She needed something that would kill and she knew enough to ask for it by reputation. Now look at the money because that's what prosecutors say. This was always about at its core. Corey Richards was

11:57four and a half million dollars in debt. Her real estate business was collapsing. She owed lenders more than 1.8 million and was being actively sued by a creditor. Eric State was a state was worth of her four million. She'd taken out multiple life insurance policies on him without his knowledge, totally nearly two million. And in the weeks before he died, she allegedly forged his signature on a new application for additional coverage. A handwriting expert testified a trial that Eric Richards did not sign that document. Here's the part that sharpens all of it. Eric knew something was wrong. In October of 2020, a full year and a half before his death, he consulted a divorce attorney and then a state planner. He restructured everything. He opened a living trust placing his assets under his sister's control for the benefit of his three children. He transferred his business interest. He was systematically removing Corey from the equation. The window was closing. According to prosecutors, she knew it. So she closed it herself. The text messages didn't

12:58leave much room for interpretation. In December of 21, she wrote to Grossman, we both know this love triangle can't go on forever. You don't deserve it. I don't deserve you. I can't expect you to sit around for the day. The trigger gets pulled. The trigger, her word, not a figure of speech, a countdown of sorts. Less than a month before Eric died, she asked Grossman if he'd marry her. Well, it's more like if he could just go away and you could just be here, life would be so perfect. The week of Eric's death, she texted Grossman. Can I try Friday? Give me a few days. Hang in there until please. Until then, please. They had brunch plans for March 4th to get together. A celebration of her real estate closing was the plan. Well, that didn't happen. Well, not exactly. She celebrated

14:00with some other folks, not Grossman. Grossman testified he never once interpreted that as meaning Eric would be dead by then. He was in love. He wasn't thinking that, you know, wait till Friday. Give me a few days. Hang in there until then, please. mend anything more than just, I'll see you Friday to celebrate the real estate deal. And the night of March 3rd, Grossman sent her an animated GIF image, a GIF. Two people kissing captioned, love you. She responded hours later, told him she hadn't, had a second. She said she loved him. Said she'd talk later. That same night, he told her about the hush puppies, about the hours he couldn't account for. She read that message. She knew exactly what it meant. She knew because she was one allegedly giving him some food. We don't know a ton of details about this exchange, but again, weird. The next morning, Eric was dead. She texted Grossman

15:02two words, Eric passed away, then talk later. She told him they thought it was an aneurysm, very specific, very settled, ready before the body was even cold. Here's what happened. It was an aneurysm. Nobody knows the answer to this question, but Corey did. Corey had answers. I mean, Carmen Lawer, the housekeeper who procured the pills, called and said, please tell me those pills were not for him. Corey didn't flinch. Now they were not. Eric passed away from a brain aneurysm. Same answer, same words. The story was already locked. Her phone told investigators what she'd actually been thinking about. What is a lethal dose of fentanyl? Women, Utah prisons, luxury prisons for the rich in America. If someone is poisoned, what does it go down to the death certificate as? Can cops force you to lie to a lie detector test? She wasn't grieving. She was in damage control and she started before anyone knew there was damage. The day after Eric died, she signed closing documents on a 2.9 million dollar

16:06mansion. She had dreamed of owning property like that. She told Grossman. She grew up scrubbing toilets for rich people in Park City in Suara. She'd own one of those homes one day. She signed those papers while her husband's body was being examined and then came the book. A children's picture book about loss about a father with angel wings watching over his young son. She dedicated it to her amazing husband. The man this jury has now found she murdered. She appeared on local Utah television to promote it. Warm, composed, tearful in the right moment. Prosecutors noted at trial that text messages revealed she didn't even write the damn thing. A ghost writer did. She performed the grief. She packaged it. She put her name on the cover and her dead husband's memory on the title page and sold it to the public that had no idea they were looking at the aftermath of a calculated killing. And through all of it, every forged signature, every calibrated dose, every rehearse lie, every television appearance, three little boys.

17:11We're just living their lives. They didn't know their father had been scared. They didn't know their mother had spent months acquiring the drug that would kill him. They didn't know that the woman who took them in had already tried it on Valentine's Day. That she'd been running tests. That she'd googled what prison she might prefer if things went wrong. They were just kids. They just knew their dad died one morning and didn't come back. And then their mom got arrested and then the cameras came. They've been in guardianship ever since. Three boys have spent four years watching their last name become a headline. They lost their father because of what their mother did. Then they lost their mother to the consequences. Corey Riches didn't just kill Eric Richens. She detonated every stable, safe, ordinary thing those children had. And then wrote a book about the explosion, their grief. She literally tried to

18:13suck in the grief, the empathy of others that would be thinking about her children. She wanted that. She wanted that too. That's how much of a vampire this bitch is. She manufactured her own reality. She packaged their loss. She took it on television. She built a public identity out of the wreckage of a family. She destroyed on purpose. She made herself the victim. You think these people are like no one could possibly do that. Meet a borderline. Meet a narcissist to that enth degree. These people are capable of anything. There is no empathy. There is no feeling. There is just a motor that goes and no walls to keep them in.

19:14They will go off the cliffs. They will destroy themselves. I always say this a thousand times. You don't really have to do much when you're dealing with a borderline or someone with narcissistic personality disorder. We can't diagnose her. We don't know what she has. But if she is, if that's what she is, which I highly suspect, if you did diagnose her, you'd get something along those lines. That's my opinion, not a fact. So if we're looking at her just as resembling those personality types, this let this be the lesson to be learned. You don't have to do anything to have them destroy their world. They will do it on their own. Just sit back and relax and don't get in the way and make sure you're not part of their destruction process. I mean, get out of the way. Get out of the way. That's the lesson for anybody with that type of personality in or around them. Get the f out of the way because you're not going to do anything by standing in front of them. It's like standing in front of an f5 tornado going, hey, stop. We don't want the

20:18wind here. It's no go away. The tornado just plows through you and you die. You can watch the radar all you want and see the storm coming. That's been so much, so many of us do. Well, if I just know more, if I just educated on this better, I'll be able to handle it. Yeah, if the tornado comes the best you can do is get in the lowest place possible. Standing out in front of it, trying to reason with it, trying to tell it to stop, ain't going to stop it. I think I'm going to stop a borderline and it's not going to stop a narcissist. You will get hurt. So get out of the way and let it do its thing and watch it dissipate and disappear into the ether because that's what will happen. It may stick around for a while. It may cause more chaos, but eventually, if you don't feed it, if the atmosphere changes, if it's no longer conducive to that storm system, that storm system moves on. It needs something to feed on and if you don't provide the correct

21:23atmospheric environment for it to thrive and live and feed off of like a thunderstorm does, um, it'll go. It'll find another place. It'll find a better atmosphere to produce chaos and that's how you have to look at these freaking monsters because that's exactly what they are. The housekeeper who sold her pills went on the stand. She said, finding out Eric died of an overdose hit hard. She said she needed to step up and take accountability for her part. Carmen Labr a drug dealer found more accountability in that moment than Corey Richens is shown at any point in four years, but two weeks after Eric died, Corey and Grossman drove up to the Utah mountains and talked for hours. At some point during that conversation, she asked him if he'd ever killed anyone while serving in Iraq. She asked him how it made him feel. Prosecutors told the jury, she was working through her own feelings on the subject. It's called projection. Again, these people aren't that hard to read once you know what to look for. They ask obvious

22:26shit thinking they're being really sneaky and really covert. She's looking for permission, maybe, or just for company in something she was carrying alone. The boyfriend Grossman was gutted on that witness and a grown man had down and able to look at his own text messages on the courtroom screen. He thought she loved him. He thought he was her future he was according to prosecutors, a tool she used and looks like nearly a victim himself. Brad Bloodworth stood before the jury and told them, see? See through her facade. Check her ambition. Do not let her get away with murder. And then he went back in his casket. Mr. Bloodworth, they didn't eight people, three hours, five counts, guilty. Sentencing is now set for May 13th. So grab your popcorn, aggravated murder and Utah carries

23:27a mandatory life sentence. The only remaining question is whether parole is possible. Given the pre-meditation, the repeated attempts, the forgery, the fraud, the calculated construction of a cover story before her husband was even cold. That's a difficult argument for any attorney to make with a straight face. But you know, Kathy Nester. She's pulled other things out. The book is still out there. Her name is still on the cover of the identification. We're amazing. Husband is still on the inside pages. No verdict is going to change that. What a verdict can do is call it what it is. The night before Eric Richards died, she read a text from the man she claimed to love telling her he'd lost hours. He couldn't explain. She knew what happened to him. She knew because she'd handed him food. She knew because she'd been working towards this for months. She read that message sat on her phone and texted the next morning. The next morning, the next day, the next evening, she made her husband a drink.

24:34The jury saw it. And in three hours, it took the rest of us four years. Your thoughts in the comments section on YouTube and sub-stack. Love for you to weigh in. We have more inquiry throughout the week as we take a deeper dive and really take a look through the prism. Now they've just she did this. All of her actions, what they all mean. We've been looking at it from a prism of if, now it is. And it's a dark, dark place to travel. Join us, shall you? Press subscribe. So you don't miss any of it. We will see you in the comments and continue our conversation there. Until then, I'm Tony Bruce. We'll talk again, Reels. Want more on this case and others? Then press subscribe now and don't miss a moment of true crime coverage from Tony Brusky and the Hidden Killers podcast.

25:46Lifelock monitors millions of data points per second and alerts you to threats you could easily miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash iHeart. Terms apply.