Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 3 Shocking Developments in Utah Mom Accused of Poisoning Husband

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Lawyers representing Kouri Richins filed a flurry of motions asking to withdraw from the case and to disqualify prosecutors. Richins is accused of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, in March 2022. Richins claims prosecutors have violated her rights by listening to her phone calls with one of her lawyers. They're also asking the judge to suppress the so-called "Walk the Dog Letter." The moves come after a long-awaited preliminary hearing was delayed until June. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks about the new developments with the spokesperson for Eric Richins' family in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Greg Skordas  https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-skordas-b2533512CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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wants the prosecutor kicked off the case, accusing them of listening into her phone calls with her lawyers. Those are just two recent developments in the case and there's even more. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Corey Richens was supposed to appear in court last week for a hearing where a judge would determine whether there was enough evidence for her to be bound over for trial in the death of her husband, Eric Richens. Corey Richens faces a long list of charges in the 2022 murder of her husband, Eric. Corey has pleaded not guilty. She's accused of poisoning Eric Richens with fentanyl so she could collect millions in life insurance money after he

died. Prosecutors say that Corey was in financial dire straits in her real estate business and that she had a paramour that she wanted to be with. Killing Eric, according to their theory, would have given her access to millions of dollars and allowed her to have sole custody of their children. Last week, the preliminary hearing was postponed after Corey's lawyer said she would object to all of the prosecution's exhibits. Ms. Lazar, may I ask you a direct question? Are you prepared today to waive any foundational or hearsay or other admissibility objections regarding any of these exhibits 19 through 65? No, Your Honor. Okay. It seems like what we need to do is just set a

continued preliminary hearing where the state is prepared to lay foundation under 1102 and the author of the rules that would apply to a preliminary hearing for the evidence that it wants to admit. Does that sound about right, Ms. Lazar? Yes. Okay. Do you need to change defendant's position at all with respect to exhibits 1 through 18? At this point, Your Honor, we object to all exhibits. Understood. So now, Sky Lazaro has filed a motion asking to be removed from the case. The ethical mandate for withdrawal results from an irreconcilable and non-waivable

situation. It first emerged from the civil cases in which the firm has been representing Ms. Richens, but is imputed to the firm as a whole and thus requires the firm to withdraw from its representation of the defendant in the criminal proceeding. The motion to withdraw said this issue came to the defense's attention at that hearing last week, where the prelim was rescheduled for June. And the defense wants the prosecutor removed from the case too. A motion accuses prosecutors of listening into phone calls between Richens and her attorney over the last year. They said they discovered this when they received the privileged phone calls in discovery. The motion says lead prosecutor Brad Bloodworth responded to questions from the defense about the

calls being included in discovery. He wrote, Ramsey refuses to register for and use the HomeWave app that Shields attorney client calls. His calls are therefore recorded as any other call. Ramsey Hamadi is one of Corey Richens' defense attorneys. The motion continues. Mr. Bloodworth goes on to state that the prosecution has been listening to at least a portion of the calls between Corey and defense counsel since May 2023, and the entire prosecution team had been in possession of the calls for the entire period between May 2023 and December 2023. Bloodworth sent an email to the defense and other prosecutors the next day, writing about how the calls were recorded and turned over to prosecutors.

He wrote, since May, Ramsey has deliberately refused to use the HomeWave app. According to Corey, Ramsey thinks the app somehow bugs his phone. Also, according to Corey, Ramsey knows that in refusing to use the app, the state maintains recordings of their calls. The email also included highlights from some of the calls between Corey Richens and her family and how they wanted Sky Lazaro off the case. On November 18th, there was a voice call with Renee at 1223. Corey did not like Ramsey at first, but now he is her favorite on the team. Ramsey wrote 90% of the filings. On November 19th, there was a voice call with Ronnie at 1212.

Corey is done being here. Sky needs to get her the F out of here. Corey considering firing Sky and putting Ramsey in charge. But back to the jail calls. The defense says the state having those calls and listening to them violated Corey Richens' rights. Bloodworth said in an email that the state had not listened to the calls. He said that they would stop listening in the first few seconds once Ramsey Hamadi identified himself. And finally, the defense makes another claim. The jail corrections officers have violated Richens' rights by improperly going through documents marked attorney-client privilege in her cell. Sky Lazarus says this happened recently on March 26th.

Lazarus said the notebook's pages were clearly marked attorney-client privilege. The motion says the officer spent several minutes looking at every page of the notebook, during which defense counsel repeatedly told him he could not read the pages and was violating her client's constitutional rights. And apparently the prosecutor, Brad Bloodworth, was brought into this discussion. Lazaro claims that she was interrogated about the contents of the notebook and that the entire ordeal violated Richens' right to counsel. Lazaro also wants the court to suppress the so-called walk the dog letter. She says it should have never been filed publicly with the court. Prosecutors had originally said the letter asked Corey Richens' mom and brother to lie at trial, but it was later determined to

be a privileged document and part of a fictional manuscript. I want to take just a short break from this update on Corey Richens' case to tell you about something that can help you learn more about the people in your life. It's a great website and it's called truthfinder.com. Truthfinder is one of the world's largest public record search services truthfinder has just one goal and that is to help you and me learn the truth about the people we meet each day here's how it works log on to truthfinder.com and put in your name within minutes and maybe even seconds you will get reports that include phone numbers, addresses, friends, family, criminal records, and more about the people you are searching. It will also show you sex offender statuses

for the people who live in your neighborhood. The cases that I cover make it clear that you have to do everything you can to keep you and your loved ones safe. So right now, Crime Fix listeners and viewers can get 50% off of confidential background reports at truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on to truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix and start accessing information about almost anyone. Greg Skordas is the spokesperson for Eric Richens' family.

Greg, first of all, I want to ask you, how is the family doing and how are they feeling about the preliminary hearing being pushed into June? You know, it's been a long process even to get to the preliminary hearing. The case is over a year old at this point. So it was disappointing that it continues to get postponed. But she's in custody where she should be. The county attorney's office and the local law enforcement are doing a very good job. The case seems to be getting stronger by the day. So the delay isn't hurting the case at all, as you might expect, and the family's being patient and working with the prosecutors. There's some drama now, though, being brought into the case. I mean, the case is kind of dramatic

anyway, with all of these kind of allegations of infidelity and, you know, sadly murder for life insurance money. Corey Richens maintains that she didn't do this. But now we have Sky Lazaro saying, I want to be off the case. She's saying there's some type of, you know, irrevocable, you know, some issue coming up that she just learned of at the hearing last week. What are your thoughts on that? Because obviously, Corey Richens was not happy with her, according to some of the things we've read in the documentation, but she's saying there's some kind of conflict that's arisen. Yeah, we don't really know what that is. We do know that the law firm is a little frustrated because Corey Richens has apparently

run out of money and they were not too happy about continuing to represent her for either low fees or no fees but there was a civil case filed two years ago right after Eric passed away and it was involving Corey on the one hand and Eric's estate on the other. And the same lawyers that were representing Corey in the civil case commenced to represent her in the criminal case, which was filed a year later. So they're claiming that the conflict arose in connection with the civil case, which has been going for two years. So I can't imagine what they learned or what happened in that intervening time that would have caused them to suddenly discover that they have a conflict. And the only thing that may have occurred new is that the state filed its pretrial brief right

before the preliminary hearing, just a couple days before, which outlined their evidence, who they were going to call, and some witness statements. And I think it may have caught the defense off guard a little bit. But for whatever reason, they not only moved to get themselves off the case, but they filed another motion to have the prosecuting attorneys removed from the case. And I wanted to get to that. I mean, in that motion, they're saying, we received privileged phone calls in discovery. So the prosecution has been listening to our calls. Brad Bloodworth in an email to the defense last December said, we've only listened to

maybe the first few seconds. Ramsey Hamadi, the one defense attorney, refuses to use this app that signals that this is a privileged call. So basically, you know, the calls are recorded as any other call. We listen, we hear it's him, we stop listening. We're not listening to the contents of the call. But they dispute that. The defense disputes that and says, well, we're pulling out. Sky says, I'm pulling out of this case. Now you should pull out too. and this is why. But in that motion also, we learned that Corey Richens wants the attorneys, including Ramsey, including Sky Lazzaro, including the other two involved in the case. So just so you know, when a person calls from a correctional facility here in Utah

and they call for an attorney, there's a prompt that you get that says all calls are being monitored. If you want this call to be privileged or if this is an attorney-client call, then you have to go into a different system. And apparently the attorney had not been doing that because calls between inmates and their family are not privileged, they're not protected. The calls between inmates and their lawyers are so long as the inmate recognizes and the lawyer recognizes that it's an attorney-client conversation. Sometimes the jail will listen to those calls and then realize, hey, wait a minute, this is an attorney-client call, and then they'll shut it down. I think that's what's happened here. Do you expect this motion to withdraw, to be granted? And what do you see happening with the prosecution? Do you see the

prosecution being removed from the case? I don't think there's any way they could get the prosecution removed from the case. I mean, you may get an individual prosecutor removed, but the office itself will probably stay on the case. And if not, they can have a neighboring county attorney handle the case. Salt Lake County's just bordering that county. There are several others that do. So they could get another prosecutor. But with respect to their motion to withdraw,

if it is an irreconcilable conflict, the judge probably has no choice but to let the attorneys off the case. The result of that would be a huge long continuance. I mean, this case has already gone on for a year. We haven't even got to the preliminary hearing. This could cause another six, eight months before there is a preliminary hearing and perhaps another year before the case gets in front of a jury.

Let's talk about the walk the dog letter. The defense is saying that it should be removed from the public docket. It was privileged. It was part of some fictional manuscript. It should never have been public and it should be removed from the docket and suppressed. You know, you're the spokesperson for Eric to walk her dog. She was asking her mother to. And that's not necessarily a privileged conversation. There was some references in the letter to the attorney, but it was in the third person. It didn't say, Sky, you're my lawyer. You need to do this or that.

It was tell Sky this, or this is the narrative we need to feed to Sky, which, of course, we looked at the letter and believed that they were trying to create a false narrative. Nonetheless, I don't see how that letter could deem to be privileged because there is no expectation of privacy to inmates in the things that they write and the things that they send while they're incarcerated. And they know that. They're given that instruction very, very clearly when they're taken into custody. The defense is also contending that, you know, there was this visit in late March where Skye goes to the jail and she's basically interrogated about this notebook that was marked attorney client privilege and about her being able to take it with her and that the prosecutor

was involved in this as well. And there was discussion about this and that there's this jail staff member going through the notebook and that this is really hampering Corey Richens' constitutional right to effective counsel. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly problematic. If she was writing a letter to her attorney and she marks it privileged, confidential, attorney-client privilege only, then it should have been protected. But if, for example, an inmate is getting information out of the jail simply by noting that it's an attorney-client conversation and it's not, it's just being used

that way to get to another source, that's inappropriate. And so it puts the jailers in a weird conundrum because do they peek at it to make sure that it's legitimate? Do they let it go and assume that everything that's being said here is part of the attorney-client conversation? And it's a balancing that in this case caused some concern and some consternation between the assigned prosecutor and the defense attorney. It'll be interesting to see how it all unfolds. Obviously, I know delays are frustrating for Eric Richens' family. Oh, they've been incredibly difficult, but the boys are in very good shape. They're being taken care of by family members. Corey's in custody, and she will remain in custody

for the foreseeable future, and that's reassuring as well. But ultimately, this case is going to have to get to trial or is going to have to get resolved. Whether that occurs in 2024 or 2025 remains to be seen. But we'll be patient. We'll be respectful of the process. The judge has done a very good job. The county attorneys have done a very good job.

And the defense attorneys have done what they think is the right thing. So yeah, the system is grinding slowly in this case, but it's moving forward. Well, it will be really interesting to see what happens with this, what the judge decides on the walk the dog letter, obviously, and also on the motion to disqualify the prosecution, whether or not that is granted and how the prosecution responds, because at this point they haven't responded. Greg Skordas, thank you so much. You bet. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy.

Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.