How Did Prosecutors Convict Kouri Richins With No Murder Weapon?

**SPEAKER_1** (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 With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:16)
The night before Eric Richins died, Josh Grossman sent Kouri a text, Josh is Kouri's lover, her boyfriend on the side or side piece, 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 11 o'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 Richins, her husband, totally different guy, dead. After something he ate that involved Kouri Richins.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:04)
Coincidence?

**Tony Brueski** (1:08)
And there's also been some reporting that the boyfriend Grossman's dog even died.
What the hell was that?
A jury of eight people spent three hours reviewing three weeks of evidence and reached a conclusion against Kouri Richins.
Guilty. All five counts. Aggravated murder, attempted murder, insurance fraud, forgery, unanimous. Kouri Richins, 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 of Children. She's not really the author. 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 without a single holdout. There was only one explanation for all of it. It's not a close call. That's called a conclusion. Love to get your thoughts in the comment section as we work through this. The verdict in the trial of Kouri Richins. Guilty. I always like to see a good narcissist go down, don't you? Forty-two 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. Kouri Richins chose not to take the stand in her own defense. So the jury was left with exactly what prosecutions or prosecutors put in front of them. The paper trail is 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 have a little bit of time to enjoy their Quiznos. Is yours toasted? Mine's not toasted.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:24)
They didn't toast it.

**Tony Brueski** (3:25)
What's wrong with these people? That right there, there's five minutes of deliberation over toasted subs. I have no idea if they had Quiznos or not. I'm just throwing it in there. But seriously, they had to eat. They were hungry. So take the hour of dinner out of the mix and you'd 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? OK, 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 of 2022, Kouri Richins text Josh Grossman and asked him whether he's ever done drugs besides marijuana. How recently?
She frames it casually. She's been watching a show about 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 any of the blue stuff? You doing that? Like what? Watch 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 of 2022, Kouri, I made plans to spend the day with her boyfriend, Grossman. Instead, she made Eric a sandwich and sent it to him. Eric Richins 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 little nap, honey.