Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shocking Twist: Kouri Richins Throws Party 1 Day After Alleged Poisoning Death of Husband

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Utah mom Kouri Richins stands accused of poisoning her husband.After he died the mom self-published  a book about helping her children through grief.  Shockingly, a report suggests that Richins hosted a lavish party at her new $2 million home the day after her husband died. Legal commentator Nancy Grace and psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall provide insightful reactions.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The merry widow, Corrie Richens, instead of planning a funeral, planning a gathering at the home following her husband's funeral, instead, Corey Richens throws a party at her house. A party to celebrate a closing on a $2 million mansion sitting on 10 acres of land that her husband opposed. But hey, he's already been dead at least, what, Jackie, 12, 15 hours? So it's time to party down. With me, renowned psychoanalyst joining us out of Beverly Hills, Dr. Bethany Marshall.

Now, Dr. Bethany, that's a whole other can of worms to talk about. But what I'm interested in is the psychopathy of a person, in this case a female, Corey Richens, who tries over and over and over to murder her husband. We believe we know of three instances where she tried to kill her husband. I mean, perseverance is normally something that you should strive for, but not in this scenario. What is that psychopathy? Oh gosh, Nancy, there's so much to say about this. It's important to know that she is what we call cluster B. Cluster B in my field means that the person has three co-occurring personality disorders, borderline, antisocial, and sociopathic.

So with all three of those personality disorders... Right, borderline, sociopathic, and what? Antisocial. Well, she threw a party. How does that fit with her being antisocial? But okay okay go ahead antisocial is disregard for the rights and safety of others so you're not bonded in such a way that you care about them but you might be bonded in such a way that you get excited by them you want

to have sex with them you want to take money from them you want to manipulate them you want to be around them all the time and be the life of the party, like Casey Anthony on the stripper pole. But that doesn't mean she had regard for anybody. So the antisocial part has to do with lack of remorse, lack of thoughtfulness in bonding. What do you make of repeated attempts to murder her husband? Eric Richens was very opposed to buying a $2 million mansion and trying to flip it.

He dies. She closes immediately after. She reaches a deal the day after he dies in their home by extreme fentanyl overdose. I believe it was three to five times a lethal dose of fentanyl served to him. We believe in a Moscow mule by her. So she's throwing a party in the home, in their home to celebrate the deal on a $2 million mansion. But that was not the first time, according to prosecutors, that she had tried to kill him. I want to talk about the fact that he even joked about it, that she was trying to kill him, that, ha, ha, ha, she's going to kill me for the money. Or the fact that he very much in a serious tone called his sister from Greece and said, I think she's tried to poison me.

You've got the Greece incident where she went overseas with him on a trip and tried to kill him there, hoping and praying the Greek police would screw up the investigation. And then an incident on the Valentine's Day preceding his death where she gave him a love note and a poison sandwich. He took, I think, one or two bites and immediately started going into anaphylactic shock with hives and difficulty breathing. And yet he stayed in the relationship. That's one thing to figure out. But she was undeterred.

I mean, there's the old slogan, try, try again, if at first you don't succeed. But he was joking about it. She showed no fear that she would be caught or anybody would put two and two together. So Nancy, what I think was happening is that she was becoming emboldened to administer larger and larger doses of the drug to kill him. So she started small and worked up. That's one thing. The other is that she was stealing money from him. And it was a pretty startling amount.

She had tax debt. She had taken money out of his business account. She had, I think, $1.1 million that she had taken from a lender. And at the same time, she felt she was the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. So I think that what was happening is that she was very reckless and impulsive, and she was a thief. She kept taking money, and then she would panic, and she would want the life insurance policy to pay that debt back. She bought four life insurance policies before his death.

So she would need all four life insurance policies because the one policy, $500,000, wouldn't have satisfied all that debt. So it was sort of like a Rob Peter to pay Paul on your husband's life and soul kind of situation. And Nancy, I want to say I have had a couple of patients in my practice like this. Two women right about the same time, extraordinarily wealthy, generous husbands who would have given them anything that they wanted. But they got access to the business account. And I remember these cases because they were about the same time these women were gorgeous they were like models they they got

access to the husband's business accounts and they would steal or take money behind the husband's back and in both cases they had lovers who were sort of near dwells didn't have much money i know this is going somewhere. Where this is going is that, you know, everybody might think about this story, how can you steal from your husband? Well, you can steal if you prefer to take it behind his back rather than to have him know about it. If you're reckless, if you're impulsive, if you go on spending sprees, and that every time you run up debt, you take out one more life insurance policy,

and then you plot and scheme and plan to kill your husband to satisfy the debt. I mean, I think that's just one aspect of this. I think she wanted him gone. Okay, wait a minute. I think she didn't love him. Dr. Bethany Marshall, let me redirect your answer before I have to declare you a hostile witness. My question was, I know the facts.

I don't need to have a rendition of the facts and examples of her behavior. I need to figure out what is wrong with this woman. I mean, she was, as you pointed out, so reckless and her attempts on her husband's life the whole family bully his whole family believed she was trying to kill him he believed she was trying to kill him but yet that did not deter her i mean typically when somebody's caught doing a nefarious deed something wrong breaking the law they stop but she kept going there's got to be something wrong up there what is it and i'm not saying she's insane, because that would be a defense under the law.

I'm not saying that. What personality is that? Well, this is where you go back to the cluster B, the borderline antisocial and sociopathic. When you have all three personality disorders, it becomes yet another psychological perfect storm for these kinds of others. Failure to pay back debts to society, kind of a parasitic lifestyle, impulsivity, hypersexuality. So that's antisocial. Sociopathic, as we all know, they turn into really high-level grifters. I mean, they're total parasites. They live off of other people. They have absolutely

no remorse. These are the people who can kill and become quite criminal. Then you have borderline. Now, borderline is an interesting one because you have what we call affectus regulation. These are the people who can't regulate their moods. They cling to others and then they reject. So they might put, this is the kind of person who puts you on a pedestal, idealizes you, thinks that you're the best person ever. And the minute you do one thing wrong, they reject you. They want nothing to do with you. Borderlines are the ones who can plot and plan forever to kill. In fact, most women that we see in court who kill their children or their husbands do have borderline personality disorder. They get so dysregulated, so enraged that they want that person out of the way. Can I ask you a question? Have you ever heard of SM, also referred to as SM046, And as an American woman with a particular type of brain idiosyncrasy that leaves her with zero ability to feel fear of anything. And that's how the human species has made it this far is because we have fear. We hear a loud crack of thunder. We run.

We see a snake. We back away. We hear a loud crack of thunder, we run. We see a snake, we back away. It is inherent. It is genetic. Some people do not have that fear. Now, it was my belief as a completely unlearned individual in psychopathy that someone who is a psychopath, they don't adhere to right and wrong. They don't recognize rules. Or narcissists, the namesake of a narcissist, could only see himself in the reflection.

You don't see anybody else. You don't care about anybody else. And what they think of you certainly does not concern you. Nancy, I've not heard of this person, but I will say that it has the ring of truth to me because what happens in our brains largely determines our behavior. And we have the amygdala and that's the center of fear, the fight, flight, or freeze, right? So that's the part you're talking about, the part that it creates anxiety, panic attacks.

It warns us if we're driving too quickly that we could get an accident. People who have OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, have overactive amygdalas, so they have fearful thoughts all the time. So that's at the top of the spine, at the base of the brain. It has a very important role in our behavior. What counterbalances that is something called the prefrontal cortex. That's right behind the forehead. That is the braking system, the center of higher reasoning, the part of our brain that helps us to plan ahead and to learn from our mistakes. Those two balance each other out all the time.

So I would say this particular woman we're talking about lacked an amygdala and a prefrontal cortex. In other words, she could plan ahead just enough to try to take money or keep poisoning her husband, but she couldn't plan ahead enough to see that she might be caught. Interesting, because when her sister-in-law confronted her about stealing money from her husband's safe, about $160,000, she punched the sister-in-law in the face. That was her reaction. Most normal people would say,

get out of my house. You don't even know what you're talking about. This is my money, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Instead, she just punched her. That's her reaction. So that's impulsivity. Yeah, she's not functioning on all cylinders. But you know what?

Unless it rises to legal insanity, which is a defense, or mental defect under the law, such as a not guilty by reason of mental defect defense, I don't care. He's dead. The three children don't have a father. And according to prosecutors prosecutors she did it and it wasn't her first try because she has no compunction and nobody matters but Corey Richens it's her world we just living in it bye Bethany I'll see you in the courtroom you're listening to an iHeart podcast I'll see you in the courtroom. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.