Kouri Richins “feared what would happen” if she divorced her husband, Allison Wright said when she took the stand during Richins’ trial.

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Another friend testified Kouri Richins told her in December 2021 she couldn’t see an “easy way forward out of the marriage.”

“She said that, in many ways, it would be better if he were dead,” Becky Lloyd said.

During cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to undercut Lloyd’s testimony, playing recordings in which she expressed uncertainty about what was said in the conversation. But Lloyd stood by her testimony on the stand.

“I don’t want to be here saying it,” she said, “but I know that that is what was said.”

Kouri Richins told Becky Lloyd she could not see an “easy way forward out of” her marriage, according to Lloyd’s testimony in Richins’ trial.

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The jury also heard two recordings of phone calls between Kouri Richins, her best friend and Eric Richins’ best friend.

“We were in a rocky spot two years ago,” Kouri Richins said of her marriage during one of those calls, which occurred about two weeks after her husband’s death.

Eric Richins’ friend then referenced Kouri Richins kicking her husband out of the house for a couple weeks after she learned he had been seeing another woman.

Two divorce attorneys testified they met with Eric and Kouri Richins individually in 2020 and 2021, respectively, although neither filed for divorce.

Kouri Richins’ finances were ‘collapsing,’ accountant said

While Richins’ friends said she appeared to be financially successful, a forensic accountant testified her business flipping homes was “imploding.”

“As of the date that Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins was in financial distress and her financial enterprise was collapsing, had been collapsing – and but for a significant infusion of cash and capital, would have continued to collapse,” said Brooke Karrington, who analyzed financial records in the case.

Kouri Richins’ debt problems began after she took out a $250,000 home equity line of credit, or HELOC, against their family home in 2019, around the same time she registered her real estate business, Karrington said. The loan was taken out in her husband’s name and signed by Kouri Richins as his attorney-in-fact, according to records displayed in court.

By the time Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins had taken out multiple loans and owed thousands in debt payments every week, so her bank account was “perpetually in the hole,” Karrington said. Her net worth was negative $1.6 million the day after her husband’s death, according to Karrington’s analysis.

A forensic accountant shared this exhibit during Kouri Richins’ murder trial.

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In financial records Richins submitted as part of four loan applications, she reported her bank accounts contained significantly more money than they had, Karrington said.

Eric Richins’ life was insured for approximately $2.2 million through several policies, according to Karrington. Prosecutors allege Kouri Richins forged an application for one of his life insurance policies that went into effect on February 4, 2022, 10 days before they say she first tried to poison her husband and a month before his death.

Richins received about $1.3 million in life insurance payments in the months after her husband’s passing, Karrington said. By September 2022, most of the money had been spent – much of it toward paying down her debt.

“If, in fact, Ms. Richins was in financial distress, you’re not here to say she killed her husband, are you?” Nester asked the forensic accountant during a testy cross-examination.

“That’s for the jury to decide,” Karrington said. “I’m not making any conclusion about that at all.”

2 witnesses described alleged drug deals prior to Eric Richins’ death

Carmen Lauber, a house cleaner who worked for Kouri Richins, testified she sold pills to the Utah mother four times in early 2022 at the defendant’s request.

“She’d called me and asked me if I could reach out to somebody for some pain meds for an investor that she knew,” Lauber testified. She bought illicit opiate pills for Richins, who later asked for something stronger, the house cleaner testified.

Lauber got in touch with Robert Crozier, who said he had pills containing fentanyl, Lauber said. When she texted Richins about the fentanyl pills, Richins responded, “OK, go ahead and get them,” according to Lauber’s testimony.

Lauber testified she bought pills from Crozier at a gas station in Draper, Utah, twice before Eric Richins’ death and a third time shortly after.

Chris Kotrodimos, a digital forensics analyst, showed the jury location data from Lauber and Crozier’s phones. The devices were both near the Draper gas station on February 11, February 26, and March 9, 2022, according to his analysis.

When Eric Richins was found dead on March 4, 2022, he had roughly five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system, according to charging documents.

On the stand, Crozier confirmed he gave Lauber pills at the gas station but insisted he did not sell fentanyl at the time.

In early 2022, Crozier was selling pharmaceutical oxycodone pills he received from people with prescriptions, he said, and didn’t start selling fentanyl until late that year.

Crozier had previously confirmed he sold Lauber fentanyl in a jailhouse interview with law enforcement during the investigation into Eric’s death. In footage of the interview shown in court, Crozier struggled to remember details about his interactions with Lauber and which drugs she asked for. But he said, “She knew what she was buying.”

“So, she knew that there was fentanyl in those pills?” an investigator asked.

“Absolutely,” Crozier said.

On the stand, Crozier said he didn’t remember that conversation.

“I was on a lot of drugs at that time, so I was detoxing from those drugs,” he testified.

Though he was called as a witness for the prosecution, Crozier’s testimony is key to Kouri Richins’ defense: In her opening statement, Nester argued if Crozier only sold oxycodone as he now claims, his pills could not have killed Eric Richins.

Robert Crozier testified he gave Carmen Lauber pills but said he did not sell fentanyl in early 2022.

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“The pills that were purchased by Carmen Lauber could not have been the cause of Eric’s death,” Nester told the jury. “The fentanyl must have come from somewhere else.”

Attorneys on both sides tried to undercut Lauber and Crozier’s credibility by questioning their recollections, histories of drug use and inconsistencies between their testimonies and their previous statements.

Crozier and Lauber both received immunity in exchange for their truthful testimonies. The defense has suggested Lauber altered her story to fit the prosecution’s narrative.

Kouri Richins’ phone records show searches about fentanyl, life insurance payments

Although lots of data from early 2022 was deleted from Kouri Richins’ phone, Kotrodimos testified about some of her cellphone activity around the time of her husband’s death.

Kouri Richins told investigators she left her cellphone in the master bedroom while she slept in her children’s bedroom the night her husband died and she called emergency services as soon as she returned to find him cold and unresponsive, according to court documents.

Kouri Richins’ cellphone was locked at 9:32 p.m. on March 3, 2022, and remained locked until 3:06 a.m. the next morning, according to Kotrodimos’ analysis. It moved 35 feet around 10:30 p.m. and then moved 243 feet at 3:08 a.m. The phone was unlocked six times in the 15 minutes before she called 911 at 3:21 a.m., he said.

A witness in Kouri Richins’ murder trial testified these GIFs were accessed by her phone after her husband’s death – though he could not say who sent or received them, or if Richins herself viewed them.

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Around 8:30 a.m., hours after she called 911, cellphone records show three GIFs were accessed on Kouri Richins’ phone: One was captioned, “Idiots. Idiots everywhere,” while another showed a woman wiping away her tears with dollar bills. A third included the caption, “I’m really rich.”

Kotrodimos testified he can’t determine who sent or received the GIFs – or if Kouri Richins even viewed them.

Kotrodimos showed the jury dozens of internet searches made on the phone Kouri Richins used beginning in April 2022, after her other phone was seized by law enforcement. The searches included queries about remotely deleting cellphone data, how investigators recover deleted messages, women’s prisons in Utah, and life insurance payments.

According to Kotrodimos, the searches included: “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “kouri richins kamas net worth,” and, “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as.”

Kotrodimos testified the searches were all made after Kouri Richins knew she was under investigation, and he confirmed he couldn’t say with certainty who made the searches nor what prompted them.