How Did Kouri Richins Fake Grief On Camera For A Dead Husband?

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers' half year in review. A look back at some of the most compelling cases of 2026 so far.
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

**Tony Brueski** (0:17)
We have a lot to break down today as we do a little review of the case of Kouri Richins. We're going to talk all about the psychological end of the whole case, from Kouri to Eric, how it all played out, why it all worked the way it did. But we're going to begin today with a video, because I found it's rather interesting to look back on this case at certain aspects now that the prism has aligned itself, to show that she is in fact guilty, that a jury of her peers found that she was lying her ass off the entire time, including to Good Day Utah, or whatever the hell the program was. Where Kouri goes on, and we've all heard about it, we've all seen clips of this, where Kouri is promoting her children's book, Are You With Me?
Seeing it from this perspective, knowing that all of it was a lie is really interesting. So I want to bring in Robin Dreeke, our co-host, retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, and Shavaun Scott, psychotherapist and author. Author of this book right here. It's Nightbird, available wherever books are sold.
And break down, and we're gonna play the video, and we're going to kind of work our way through it, stop, because there's just a lot of interesting observations that I know I was making, and I'd love to get your guys' opinions on what we are seeing as we go through this video. And as we watch this, you guys, in the comment section, please do weigh in with your thoughts on Substack and YouTube. The links are in the descriptions, and we'll try and get through your comments and your questions as we work through this. So, let's begin with this, Todd, and let's just go right into the video, and then we'll stop here at a certain point, and I'm gonna throw it over to you guys to get your thoughts. So, Kouri Richins, this is her, I believe. Do we have the video ready? Yep, here we go. Okay, this is her on that Good Day Utah program, promoting the book. What do we got?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:32)
Seize to helping kids cope with grief. And Kouri, I want to start with your story. What happened in your personal life?

**Kouri Richins** (2:39)
So, my husband passed away unexpectedly last year, so it's March 4th was a one-year anniversary for us, and he was 39 It completely took us all by shock.
And we have three little boys, 10, nine and six. And, you know, we kind of, my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced last year.

**Tony Brueski** (3:08)
And let's pause for a second.
My kids and I wrote this book on the various grieving processes we've been experiencing this past year. All lie. She didn't write the book. It was a ghostwriter. But she's she's the first thing out of her mouth to the folks at the TV station is we wrote the book and it helped with the grieving process. Shavaun, I want to start with you. What are we watching here?

**Shavaun Scott** (3:34)
Yeah. Lying, impression management.
She wants to look like someone we should all have empathy and compassion for.
I really don't understand. You see people do this a lot, a lot of celebrities, the whole ghostwriter thing. Then they win book awards and go on shows and talk about the process of writing. Then when you get under the surface, they didn't write the damn book. I wrote my own book. Yeah.

**Tony Brueski** (4:02)
It's a children's book too. It's not like you'd be really, I mean, illustration if that's not your thing. At the time, AI really wasn't out yet. So you couldn't really, but I mean, you could have written the damn book. It's a children's book. There's like a sentence on a page. It's like it's less than two paragraphs at the end of the day.
Then to say that this is an exercise in healing and grief. If you did it, cool. That's nice. It's unique. But obviously, you didn't do it. Robin, obviously, we're only 10 seconds in, but what's your initial feelings here?

**Robin Dreeke** (4:36)
Yeah. What we do when we first observe situations like this is we take in what we're seeing and we automatically start baselining and we baseline what their normal is in the situation. What you normally do when you're watching an interview or doing an interview or watching someone engage, typically, they start with a baseline so you can get what comfort looks like in someone. Then you can see what we're seeing from an escalation for discomfort or grief or emotions. But they hit it right off the bat of hitting it right on the grief process and what the book was written about. You expect to see something other than a casual baseline because a lot of times, it's not just what we see, it's what we don't see.