Woman Comes So Close to Getting Away With Killing Her Husband, Until Cops Found Her Internet Search History
PRE-BLOG DISCLAIMER: I know I'm not necessarily qualified to write about crime, but due to recent developments here at 'Barstool Sports presented by Penn Entertainment', we've found ourselves void of a legitimate criminal journalist, so I thought I'd take a stab at it (no pun intended).
NBC News - The Utah woman (Kouri Richins) accused of killing her husband by poisoning him with a spiked drink — then writing a children's book about grief — allegedly searched for lethal doses of fentanyl, life insurance payouts and lie detector tests on her iPhone, according to a court filing.
Murdering people isn't as easy as it used to be. Back in the day, getting away with murder was as simple as getting away with jaywalking. Swing open the double doors of any saloon in Old Creek Valley, fire 6 shots into the bartender's chest, announce the name of your gang, carve your social security number into the side of the wall as a calling card, and ride off into the sunset, never to be seen again. Then do it all over again the next day when you make it to Cattle Ridge. It was murderer's paradise, back then.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your political affiliation), that's no longer how murdering works. It takes more than growing a mustache and buying a new cowboy hat to go off-the-grid nowadays. Not that it's impossible. Statistically you have a 49% chance of getting away with murder in America. But not when you're trying to pull off what rookie murderer Kouri Richins was going for. Not when you're trying to murder your husband to collect on an insurance payment, and follow it up by authoring a children's book about dealing with grief. The level of difficulty to execute that cash grab as a first time killer is exceptionally high.
Which is probably why she took to www.google.com to educate herself on the finer points of "getting away with poisoning your husband to death and collecting a bag".
Prosecutors urged the court Friday to deny bail to Kouri Richins, cited alleged internet searches from her in the filing that included:
- “if someone is poisned what does it go down on the death certificate as"
- “what is a lethal.does .of.fetanayl"
- "can cops force you to do a lie detector test."
- "death certificate says pending, will life insurance still pay?"
- "luxury prisons for the rich in america"
- "how to.permanently delete information from an iphone remotely”
- “FBI anyalsis of electronics in an investigation”
Kouri's Google searches are poetic in a way. It's a beautiful look into the mind of a woman who’s finally decided she’s going to take her shot at a better life. A woman who's obviously far too stressed to spell a single word correctly (pot meet kettle, I know). A woman who was sick and tired of being both married and not rich. Midas whale get 2 birds stoned at once.
It really is fascinating. It almost feels like we’re in the room with her as she executes these horribly incriminating searches.
"If I poison him, will I still get paid? How much fent do I need to kill him? Wait… what if the cops make me take a lie detector test? Maybe a rich person prison isn’t that bad anyways. OH FUCK… they can probably trace these searches. But will they really look into my Google history?"
Yes, bitch. They most certainly will.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn't actually planning on diving into this case. I was just going to make a couple murder jokes, clock out at 4pm, and go home to eat an edible that I'll regret taking 90 minutes after consumption. But I happened to stumble upon this video of Kouri Richin on a talk show pitching her children's book "Are You With Me?"
God damn she was so close. She got all the way to the point of doing talk shows, then got her ass busted a month later. The court even denied her bail. Kouri Richin's is big time fucked.
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The court documents don't specify when she is alleged to have made the searches, saying only that authorities found the iPhone in "the dresser drawer on her side of the bed during the second search of her home on the day she was arrested."
Richins, 33, was arrested last month on charges of aggravated murder and three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute after her husband died at their Kamas home, about 40 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
Summit County sheriff’s deputies responded after Richins called 911 to report she had found him unresponsive in their bedroom, according to a probable cause statement.
Deputies found Eric Richins on the floor at the foot of the bed, the document said. Lifesaving measures were attempted, but he was declared dead. A medical examiner said he had five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system at the time of his death.
Say what you want about this woman, but you can never say she didn't swing for the fences. It would have been one thing to take out a life insurance policy on your husband. It would have been another thing to capitalize on his death by writing a children's book about grief. But Kouri went for the whole kit and kaboodle. I'm not sure if she was really that close to getting away with it, but she was close enough to get a taste. She did appear on the power house morning show 'Good Things Utah' after all. She was was able to cash some book checks and grab a glimpse of what her life would be like if the investigation never found that phone in her bedroom drawer. But to be fair, it sounds like her in-laws were onto her from the jump.
In a victim’s impact statement she read in court, Amy Richins, Eric Richins' sister, called her sister-in-law “desperate, greedy and extremely manipulative.” She accused her of intentionally poisoning her brother and said it was painful for the family to watch her promote her book and herself as an amazing mother.
Thems the breaks Kouri. Good try, good effort. Just not quite good enough. Hopefully they'll send you to one of those "luxury prisons for the rich in America" that you were so curious about. But I'm not sure you'll qualify for one of those either.
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