Robin Dreeke on Kouri Richins: Reading Deception in Real Time

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2:02This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brusky and Robin Dree. Let's move over to another case that's going on right now. I'll take you to all my notes. The Corey Richens case. We are now entering week number two. The jury has heard two completely different realities. The prosecution says Corey systematically positioned insurance policies, sourced fentanyl through her housekeeper and poisoned her husband for money. The defense says the key witness is an active drug user who changed her story after getting immunity. The supplier now contradicts her and the physical evidence simply doesn't exist. Robin Dreeke with us as he is now every day. Have to get used to this. Like you're always there. Robin Dreeke. Robin Dreeke is always there. I've got to tell you he really does. Yeah. Robin Dreeke. I'll begin kind of his overwhelming. Yeah. T for the counterintelligence behavioral analysis program, Retired FBI Special Agent.

3:05This is a fascinating case because I feel like there's two lanes here that can simultaneously be true. Corey Richens could have very likely and easily killed her husband and a lot of the evidence. I would say a mountain of it points to that. Circumstantially just through her own words, but you can also have a very bad investigation at the same time that misses so many obvious things. But just because they miss so many obvious things doesn't discount these pieces over here. But it certainly helps if you're the defense attorney for Corey Richens. You can point or you can poke holes in all this. Let's start out with Carmen Lauber, the prosecution's, one of the prosecution star witness. She was using meth during the time of the period in question. She got immunity from three jurisdictions. Her own supplier now says he sold her oxy, not fentanyl. She admitted confusion on the stand when a witness has that many credibility wounds.

4:06Robin, what kind of behavioral signals does that give off to the core of their testimony is being reliable when they're on drugs, they're contradicting their story, left and right. I don't know, I mean, this is an interesting one because the big contradiction I play here is the type of drug that Eric consumed and died. But at the end of the day, are we just playing semantics with a label? Because at the end of the day Corey wanted something stronger and she got something stronger and that chain is not really denied as having taken place. It's more so what they called what they got as being in question. You know, the number of times we've covered cases where the chaos of drug addicts and alcoholic plays out, it's like, all right, of course, there's not going to be good memory because they are what they are. I've watched a lot of her testimony, Carmen's, and I do have a soft spot for people in recovery

5:06because they typically are more forthcoming because they've owned their behavior and unlike Nick Reiner, Carmen has the appearance and the demeanor and the presentation of doing just that. So, I give Grace to not remembering exact details because she's drug-induced as well as the person countering her claims. So I think a jury, if I was on the jury, if I hear this, I'm like, all right, I'm kind of, all right, it's all over the place, was Corey going for something? That could potentially, you know, that she wants to give her husband? Yes. What the semantics of what actually what it was was, whatever. Because when you put that, because remember, her testimony, she is the key witness for the prosecution. A lot of it would not have been here without her coming forward. At the same time, though, once that knowledge just comes forward, it's like the card of

6:06house just tumbles because when you start looking at the whole insurance fraud side of things, remember, there's two, there's two prosecutions going on here and the second one hasn't started yet. The first one is for murder. The second one is for this massive financial fraud that she's committed and the whole, and the whole background of financial fraud comes about in order, the whole reason for this one was that would be successful. You got to kill the husband first so you can't have one without the other. What kind of drug she bought, when, how, I think the jury, would the way they're taking notes, the way they're presenting, the way they're paying attention to her, I don't, it wasn't a great day for prosecution, but I don't think it was one that's going to kind of shift anything on them. I don't know. It was a great day for either, honestly, I mean, the thing is nobody knew what it was. I mean, what is calling it oxy cotton, what's calling it oxycodone. One of them is saying it's there's fentanyl and then one's, Corey's asking for propifal. Literally, the Michael Jackson shit is what she said.

7:07She doesn't even know what she's asking for. So it's not like she went to the, how, this is what kind of gets me. I mean, I get what the defense attorney is doing. They're just trying to basically create something out of nothing to create confusion here with the jury. See, they didn't even know what they were ordering. Yeah. I don't know. A bunch of drug addicts too. I mean, the drug addicts also didn't know what they were delivering either. We're just going to get high. Exactly. They're watching. They're watching. This is going to kill someone. I mean, literally. When you're asking for the Michael Jackson shit, that has one meaning to it. Right. I want something that's going to kill someone and make it look like I didn't try to do it. I mean, it's literally, you know, you know, to try to paint him as a drug addict that was addicted to painkillers and that he accidentally overdosed. Again, I looked at this too. Does it hit, does it fit his behavior arc in life and that anyone was anywhere else aware of it? No, it does not fit Eric's behavior arc. Now, could he have this super secret side of himself that he hid because he's an addict?

8:08Yeah. That happens all the time. But it doesn't quite fit when you look at the totality of all the other data points and massive red flags that are out there, all the red flags aligned with. Cory did try to get the shit that's going to kill him, not him doing it accidentally overdosing. And it wasn't a story of, oh, she was scoring stuff off the street because he has pain and he can't get, just not from his doctor anymore. So this is what they're resorting to. It wasn't even that. It was the Michael Jackson shit. That's not a, oh, this is going to help with his knee. Well, when I'm to sleep better at night, the Michael Jackson shit means it's going to kill you. And obviously, Purple Fall is not what they were going to use, but that's what she requested. So she requested stronger stuff. She got stronger stuff. I could have been anything. I mean, at this point, it doesn't really matter if it was like chloroform or new. No, I mean, I don't think she knew.

9:09It was like, here's what's, here's the Michael Jackson shit, Cory, whatever you want to call it. Enjoy. And the fact that it was, you know, the things that were on the street too at the time, this stuff, I mean, we're in an epidemic of people dying from fentanyl overdoses because it's getting into other drugs. People are thinking they're getting oxy. People are thinking they're getting something else. And surprise, the street shit that was, you know, whipped up in some, you know, underground labs somewhere, not very scientifically, the portions can be off a bit. And that's how you could easily get something strong. So I don't have a doubt for a second that maybe, you know, the Crosor originally did think he was, you know, tell her it's fentanyl, tell her whatever the fuck she wants to think it is. And it is something stronger than what she got. Right. Just give me my money. Seriously. So when you're a dealer, are you really given a rat's ass?

10:09You'll pass anything you can get your hands on to because so he's saying it's one thing, you know, the guy that gave it to Carmen, he's saying it was this or this. How does he actually know that he make it? I mean, he doesn't. These people are all drug addicts and nuts. They're just going for money. They're going for high. Isn't that wasn't selling fentanyl yet because it wasn't on the street yet. Well, maybe you didn't realize it was. Maybe you didn't realize it was in your drugs. Right. When he went to the drug store, it was prescription to pick it up and said this. No, that's not how we got it. No, and it's also because some of the testimony he said also did it make a whole lot of sense because he had referenced that the prescriptions he was getting them from because he was referencing he was buying them from people who were getting legal prescriptions and then filtering that out. These were not prescription medications. They tested them. These were street drugs. These were not ones that you're getting at Walgreens. So there's that. More on. And more on's make stupid things happen. Very much so.

11:09And again, this goes to the stupidity of any time, we've seen it so many times, any time you involve at least one other person in the stupid shit you're going to do, it always goes sideways. And here's the thing about this is I looked at the background of Carmen and Cory, how they became friends. And so their friends for kind of acquaintances before that became, they only became friends because she was a housekeeper for them that came through a service that she hired. And so through the course of her coming in every other week to take care of the house, they became friends. And so you're asking, I mean, just think of the insanity of this, at least what the prosecution is saying. So here's someone you hired for a service to clean your house every other week. The service goes out of business and you keep Carmen on board because you like her. And she's got a drug addiction problem, but you like her enough to confide in her that you want to kill your husband and drug them the death. And what the, what kind of moron, what kind of moron to kill someone is what the kind

12:12of moron does this. And that's why I never give any kind of credit to anyone being smart, think about this. If you had any brain and intelligence that you can actually channel into providing for yourself, you wouldn't have to take out life insurance policies and bump someone off because you're not making enough money. How about don't spend the money in the first place, idiot? Then there's that. More. It's interesting, I mean, the modality of Cory, I mean, after Eric died, Cory, she wrote the children's grief book, are you still with me? And then went on the promotional tour podcast and reviews, public appearances, wild under investigation. I mean, most people that are facing potential murder charges, you try to minimize your exposure. She's out there. I mean, look, she could have shut up. She got away with it for a long time. They didn't arrest her for like a year. If you got away with this, nobody's asking questions, but she had the audacity again,

13:13assuming she did this in a central proven guilty alleged blah, blah, blah, blah. She had the audacity to go and do a book tour about, like, bring more attention back to her. It's just like, you just can't resist, can you little misnarsicist? It's like, it's just, it's too tempting to go and grab that carrot, even though the odds of it pulling the whole tree down are very high. If you're grabbing that stick that that carrot's hanging off of, but she did. She doubled down on stupid, didn't she? The look of me moments that people have, that people love sympathy themes in life because when people show gratitude and compassion towards you, it really fuels our big foreign brain. It don't mean the oxytocins are toning the endorphins because people are saying, oh, woe is cori. And now granted, I'm going to, I thought about this earlier today.

14:15I'll give her, I shouldn't do it, but I'll give her a little grace. In the fact that because I don't, I don't know her, I don't live inside her head, maybe there was a part because she's got four kids, maybe there was a part that she was doing some semblance of this for her kids. Not because of her, you know, so it's hard not to want to kind of see it from her point of view after she killed her husband. I mean, because assuming she's really good at compartmentalizing this, you could have two lanes where she is looking at her kids going, oh, they really are looking hurt. And I want them to not look so hurt because I want to feel better about myself. So what can, so what can I do to make that happen? That's the definitely way I could see that plane. I was like, people say to themselves, how could she possibly freaking do that? So your husband's out of the picture and now you're left with the wreckage of your single mom of four kids and they're hurting their own pain and you want to do something

15:19to ease that pain. And so, you know, maybe the idea was even given to her or popped in her head to do this. And then that stupid narcissistic brain of her says, ooh, I can take care of them, but I can really take care of me even more because it'll be a bigger look at me moment because when you grow up in life without accountability or guardrails, we've seen this all the time, this is the kind of shit that comes about. And so no accountability, no guardrails. And the big reason that pops up on this one is she loves to control the narrative and what better way to control the narrative than to write the narrative and put it in a children's book. Well, it's very par for the course and we can't diagnose her. If I were to take a wild guess, I'd be going down borderline territory or narcissistic personality disorder. And if we were to operate from those patterns of behavior, those folks love to knock the blocks down and then build the tower back up and look at this tower they built. Oh my gosh.

16:19And hopefully everybody forgets that they're the ones that took their leg and kicked it over in the first place. That's that's par for the core. I mean, this is exactly that. Yeah. It's like, I'm going to destroy this and I'm going to be the hero because I'm going to fix everything too. It's just, there's no end of surprises of the stupid things people like this will do. You know, it struck me when we were talking about this the second it was, you know, in all my years, when I was in the FBI, the thing that people always said to me was, because you had two sides of the FBI, you had the side that worked on national security issues like I did, which is terrorism and spy recruitment. And then you had the side. There was a criminal guys and the criminal guys did stuff like this. And the running commentary I always heard was, you know, the guys that were criminal matters played, played with people that played checkers and then the guys that did what I did we played chess. Because the guys I went against that tried to that were committing espionage and spies and all that. You know, you're dealing with human beings with extremely intelligent, extremely emotional and highly functional individuals that I was doing the same kind of things that predicted

17:22behavior on. And then I came to this side of the world and I'm like, oh my God, these people are easy as shit now. Why? We're idiots. We're complete idiots. Yeah. And so not in not one case if we ever covered what I ever say that any suspects, whether they're guiltier innocent, but they're just in this chaotic world, would any of them ever reach a level that they could have ever been in the side of the world to work on national security? Not even close. Their emotional intelligence in IQ is so low, by comparison, it's ridiculous. So that's why working my wife asked me this over a weekend, you know, if you had to do any part of your career over what would have been, I said, instead of probably my last bunch of years, I would have probably loved to shift to this or even stayed longer to do this even more because this is, these people are just fascinating and easy to understand. It really is. Because you hit these themes, arcs of crazy, they all fall within it. And that's what we do all the time. And I think when you first see a case, if you're not familiar with true crime, a lot of

18:26people go into these cases and look at Cory, look at Merda, look at whoever. And I think we almost apply a filter to them that is more in line with like your former work in the counterintelligence world, where we were putting this level of sophistication intelligence on them, and they're not worthy of it at all. And they're so shocked when it's like, oh, they're just fucking idiots. No, yeah. Everything at all. It has not failed yet, Tony. No. And some are even funnier than others in a tragic way, you know, if you remove the horrendous tragic things that happen to the lives that they've destroyed, if you look at these people as individuals, I mean, one of the craziest is Lori DeBeauvelle hands down. She is a complete nutter. That is, I mean, she killed her kids for their life insurance policies to claim and claiming that they were possessed by dark demons.

19:26And she believes it, you know, I mean, and that and it's simple, I mean, it's pretty simple. She's nuts. She, her voices are telling her things in her head that are completely insane. That's Lori Valodebeau. Yeah. And then you have the crazy, you know, Wendy Adelson and Donna Adelson and that whole nut job case, you know, the murder for hires are extremely predictable because of the same themes every single time. If you start simple and build up and to understand these people rather than start like at some sort of elevated level, it's so much easier to understand them. Well, that's why we start with, we start with research. Yeah. It gives us the fundamental background of understanding what's going on here. And then because every individual is different, every case has got different nuances and leadership like, you know, Sheriff Nanos and things like that. But at the core, what happened in the core? What was, again, going back to the original profile is like, what's the intent? The intent in every single criminal case is to either get revenge, get money, get something

20:30for me. And then the self-centered action that all these individuals are doing, which is very wound collecting, victim mentality and grievance collectors, you know, which is completely different than a normal, healthy human being. And so they fit into this paradigm of just nutters that is much easier to understand that baseline start with. And then we just explore where the different little nuances are that made them who they were on that journey. So we can kind of predict the behaviors. So we can find and follow the leads where they go. We can get the evidence so we can put them away and not have them inflict themselves in the rest of the world. If we can only catch them before they do, that would be very, very wonderful. All right. This is going to wrap up this episode of the program. Give us your thoughts on the Corey Richens trial in the comments section, either on our sub-stack or YouTube. The links are in the description. Love to hear from you there and get your feedback. All right. We'll continue the conversation there until next time for Robin and Todd. I'm Tony Vursky. We'll talk again real soon.

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