Crime Weekly - S3 Ep211: Crime Weekly News: Kouri Richins Loses Lawyers & Elderly 'Serial Slingshot Shooter' Arrested

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Kouri Richins is a Utah mother and wife who, in 2022, allegedly poisoned her husband, Eric Richins, with a fatal dose of fentanyl. She was arrested and charged with his murder in 2023, but not before writing a book for children on how to handle losing a parent. Now, her lawyer has filed to withdraw from her case, and she makes her first public comments since her arrest. Also in recent news, an 81-year-old man was arrested for terrorizing a neighborhood with a slingshot for over 10 years. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod    ADS: 1. PDSDebt.com/CrimeWeekly - Get your FREE debt analysis today! 2. ProsecutorsPodcast.com - If you love true crime, check out The Prosecutors wherever you listen to podcasts!

Hey everyone, welcome to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And we're going to talk about someone tonight who many of you will be familiar with, and that's Corey Richens. But for those of you who are not familiar with the name, Richens is 33 years old, and she's accused of killing her husband, Eric Richens, with a lethal dose of fentanyl in a Moscow Mule cocktail that she made for him at their home in Park City, Utah in March of 2022. We covered this case on Crime Feed a while back. And the interesting thing about her is not only did she allegedly do this, right? She also wrote a children's book after the fact about the grief of losing a parent, right? So I think she has a daughter on the cover, actually, maybe even Eric on the cover as well. So some really sick stuff.

And we're not just assuming she's responsible for this. There's many layers to this investigation that we went over in depth. There's a lot of information that she contradicted as far as, I think one thing she said she went to sleep, but then there's a lot of activity on her phone after the time she said she went to sleep. There's a drug dealer involved where she actually purchased the fentanyl from. So she's got some major issues. And I remember it appeared to be tied to some type of life insurance poly, which the irony there is before Eric's death, he felt like something was wrong and took her off of it. So she's really not doing well,

but that's not why we're here tonight. The newest update on Corey Richens is that her private attorney has now filed a motion to separate from her. They filed a motion basically saying there's quote irreconcilable differences in a non-waverable situation. And they're asking to no longer represent her. So why that is, we don't know, but there's got to be something going on behind the scenes and the attorney is clearly not happy about it. Are you familiar with this case, Stephanie? Yeah. Yeah. I covered it on YouTube. There's a lot going on behind the scenes with Corey over here. This was a crazy case when it happened because the footage of her on this like daytime sort of talk show, it was a local talk show, but she's sitting there and she's like

talking about this book that she wrote to help children go through grief and cope with the loss of a loved one, you know, aka she's talking about her own children coping with the loss of their father, who allegedly she killed. And to have her be on there and then just days later she gets arrested for the murder. It's, you know, it's kind of like you can't make this stuff up sort of thing. It's something you'd see in a movie. But yes, Corey, I don't even think it was just about the life insurance policy. She was into real estate and she wanted to buy this massively expensive home in Utah. And her husband was basically like, no, it's not the right time. And, you know, what does she do pretty much as soon as he's gone is she announces and celebrates and throws a party because she closed on this house. She threw a party at her home because she closed on the house that he didn't want her to buy when he was alive. It was a multimillion dollar mansion that she wanted as an investment. And she also did open up numerous life insurance policies on her

husband without his knowledge. The benefits totaled nearly $2 million. But apparently, she's probably having some money troubles right now. She probably can't pay her lawyers. That may have something to do with it. But she's also now spoken out for the first time since her arrest. She hasn't said anything until now, and it's been quite a while. So according to NBC News, Corey Richens made her first comments since she was arrested last year in a series of jailhouse statements that criticized prosecutors, asserted her innocence, and described recent upheaval in the case as forced. So she says, quote, I've been silent for a year, locked away from my kids, my family, my life, living with the media, telling the world who they think I am, what they think I've done, or how they think I've lived. And it's time to start speaking up. You took an innocent mom away from her babies, and this means war, end quote. Big words, big words from a person in her position, considering the evidence against

her. It's pretty extensive, and it just continues to pile up. So in one of her statements, Corey said last week that she was filled with great devastation and added, quote, my defense team has been forced to withdraw from my case. Represented or not, we all know and should understand there's only so much I can say. But what I will say is this withdrawal was not my choice and it was not a personal choice of any counsel on my defense team, end quote. Now, the lawyer in question, Sky Lazaro, she has decided to not comment about the withdrawal, which is interesting because Corey is saying that her lawyers were forced to withdraw. Who's forcing them? Who? If not you, if it's not their choice, who's forcing them? Who? If not you, if it's not their choice, who is forcing them to withdraw? And the withdrawal request was filed the day that Corey's lawyers asked a judge to disqualify prosecutors over what they described in a filing as severe

violations that compromised their defense and violated Corey Reachan's constitutional right to effective counsel. From May to December of last year, the filing states authorities recorded jail calls between Reachin's and her lawyers without her consent or without their consent. Prosecutors had listened to some of them, the filing alleges. When one of the defense lawyers discovered the practice and asked prosecutors whether they were aware of it, Summit County's top elected prosecutor, Margaret Olson, responded, no, according to emails included in the filing. Minutes later, lead prosecutor Brad Bloodworth wrote that because one of the defense lawyers had refused to use a phone app that shields attorney client calls, those calls had been recorded and that the lawyer was, quote, well aware of this.

Bloodworth added that prosecutors had not listened to any of the calls. When the defense team continued to express concern, Bloodworth responded that by not using the app, the lawyer had seemingly consented to the practice and recording the calls, and the defense team had ratified it because it had happened for six months. Prosecutors had provided the lawyers with the recorded calls through discovery throughout that time period, Bloodworth said in the email. And in one of her statements, Corey, she basically accuses prosecutors of doing, quote, anything they can to prolong this process and hide their corruption. I will not play into the prosecution's unconstitutional behavior anymore. Although I'm extremely disappointed

where we're at right now with this case, I'm anxious. I'm anxious to prove my innocence. I'm anxious to get to trial, she said in the statement. Listen, the prosecutors have alleged that Corey was deep in debt. She'd fraudulently obtained a nearly $2 million insurance policy on her husband, Eric, before she poisoned him, allegedly. And they've charged her this year with an additional count of attempted murder because now they're alleging that she drugged her husband's Valentine's Day sandwich in a separate attempt to try and kill him. And she was also been charged with forgery and mortgage and insurance fraud because I believe she signed Eric's name to the mortgage documents, even though he had not wanted her to purchase that house. are her lawyers withdrawing because the prosecution is being corrupt? Are her lawyers withdrawing really over these jailhouse phone calls? Because if what the prosecutor is saying is true, where you have to use a certain app, otherwise the lawyers should know that the calls can be recorded. Is it moral? Is it a move that's full of integrity? Maybe not. But is it a legal loophole? Probably.

Yeah, there's a lot here. And I'm glad you touched upon the Valentine's Day sandwich, because when I initially covered this, there was no charge for that yet. But yes, Eric was given a sandwich by Corey. She basically put the sandwich down with a love note. And according to Eric, after he started- In his car. I think he was at work. Yeah.

And she came and put it in his truck. Yeah. So he eats it, right? And then he starts having this breakout. He has these hives. He's having difficulty breathing. And thank God he found his son's EpiPen and he administered it to himself and he actually passed out. He slept right there. But fortunately, he survived because of his actions. But he did tell a friend and family members, hey, listen, I think Corey's trying to kill me. If anything happens to me, it's her. And then just a week after that, March 4th, that's when he died. But that wasn't, like I said, you had the phone activity, but there was also evidence found from Corey's Google history,

which included things. I have them actually right here. I have all my notes when I covered the case. So these are some of the things that she searched for. Okay. Can cops force you to take a lie detector test? Luxury prisons for the rich in America. Death certificate says pending. Will life insurance still pay? If someone is poisoned, what does it go down on the death certificate as? How to permanently delete information from an iPhone remotely. Information on the Utah prison. If police can see your deleted messages. How long life insurance companies take to pay.

If the cause of death can be changed on a death certificate. And if cops can force you to take a lie detector test again. So she was conducting a lot of searches for someone who had nothing to do with her husband's death. And I had mentioned it earlier, where she was buying the fentanyl from was actually her housekeeper, Carmen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she bought it from her on two different occasions,

both with 15 to 30 pills of fentanyl, which we've talked about fentanyl in the past, 15 to 30 pills. So that's a lot for someone. And Carmen had a history- Yeah, you could kill a whole bunch of people with that. Yes, exactly. And Carmen had a history of selling drugs.

She had felony charges on her record. I believe she came over and testified against her. And then finally, the other thing, do you remember the witness tampering? So Corey was in prison and on September 14th, 2023, authorities searched Corey's jail cell and they found a six-page handwritten note to her mother, instructing her to tell her brother Ronnie to testify that Eric Richens was actually getting his drugs and his pills from Mexico so that they could link the drugs to his death and basically say like he gave himself the fentanyl and that's how he died. But she, she later claimed that this wasn't instructions for Ronnie. This is for her next book. So it was pretty crazy.

And we have more to talk about with this, but then also some other stuff as well. But before we do, let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. So it does appear that Corey lost her lawyers, but she's got new lawyers. Right now, she is represented by Ray, Quinney, and Nebecker. She was appointed new counsel after she was declared to be indigent, meaning she can't afford to hire an attorney. And court records show Summit County will fund the indigent defense services by court-appointed attorneys Wendy Lewis and Kathy Nestor. So then her case was handed over to the law firm Nestor Lewis,

with attorney Wendy Lewis appearing via WebEx to accept the appointment. Now, these aren't, even though they're, I guess, I don't know, are they technically public defenders, or is the state just funding them? I'm not sure, but either way, both of these attorneys actually have, they've defended very high profile clients and they have a lot of experience. And these are not the worst public defenders you could get. So according to Kathy Nestor's bio on her law firm's website, in 2011, she was appointed to be the federal public defender for the District of Utah. And she managed more than two dozen assistant federal public defenders and paralegals, investigators and administrative employees. And in 2018, she was hired to be executive director of the Federal Defenders of San Diego.

She came back to Utah in 2022. That's when she started the law firm Nestor & Lewis with her friend and former co-worker Wendy Lewis. Now, Wendy Lewis, she's achieved several acquittals, including one for first-degree murder in the state of Utah versus John Blanchard, who was actually spared the death penalty. She also worked on the United States versus Brian David Mitchell case. Mitchell is actually serving a life sentence for the abduction and rape of Elizabeth Smart. If you're familiar with the Elizabeth Smart case, Wendy was big on that too. Now, Lewis told the judge that with Nestor presently out of the country, she plans to meet with Corey Richens at the jail on Monday, which would have been actually

today when we are recording this. So it looks like Corey's actually got some pretty decent lawyers, even though she's not able to pay for them herself. And she's going to need them because as you kind of briefly went over before the break, there is a lot of stuff that doesn't look good for her. In fact, it's one of those cases where it's like, I know this has to go to trial and I know the evidence has to be presented, but I just don't see what else could have happened here. I don't see how it could have been anybody else but Corey. It's just using common sense and logic. He didn't do it to himself. She made him the drink. She purchased fentanyl. We got all those web searches. She had the motive, which was financial. And I just I

don't see how it could have been anyone else. But at this point, it does look like her attorneys may be just trying to hope to get her the best sentence. They kind of know she's going to be found guilty, but they want to maybe spare her the death penalty. Yeah. I think even she knew there was a chance she was going to go to prison based on our searches. She was looking at- She's innocent. What are you talking about? You put an innocent woman in jail and tore her away from her children. She is innocent, Derek. Yeah. I think deep down she knew she had some issues. I will say there was some karma for Corey in this case, because as I said earlier, before Eric died, it was around October of 2020. He knew something was up. So he didn't

tell her, but he cut Corey out of the will, changed his life insurance policy and placed his estate under the control of his sister, Katie. Corey had no knowledge of this, right? So days after Eric passes away, Corey had a locksmith drill into Eric's safe, which contained like 125 or like $150,000 in cash. They were very well off. This family was doing very well. basically katie comes over and says hey listen you can't take that money you got to get out of here you have no right to that safe and cory's like what are you talking about katie drops the bomb on her that hey by the way yeah the sister yeah nothing's in your name it's all caught off you're cut off surprise and then cory gets pissed and what

does she do punches him she punches katie in the face she punched katie in the face because it's like go from the frying pan to the fire lady like you're not in a great position you bought a house a multi-million dollar mansion that literally like if you look at this place it's extensive there's a whole story behind this this mansion and like the person who built it and what happened to them. And it's like a cursed mansion, sort of. She buys it thinking she's going to flip it for all this money. So she goes ahead and buys that.

She's doing all shady stuff with the life insurance. She murdered her husband, allegedly. She knows all of this stuff. Then she throws a party. I mean, like a week after, maybe less than a week after he's dead to celebrate closing on his house. Then Katie shows up. She punches her in the face. It's like, what are you doing, man?

What are you doing? Like no self-awareness at all. You're not even pretending to look innocent. But now you want to scream from the rooftops that you're innocent. But you didn't even make an attempt to look innocent at all in the aftermath of Eric's murder. Yeah. I will tell you, we're not going to give it away right now, but the series that we're going to be covering after the Menendez series coming up soon does have some similarities to this case. Yeah. Dude, exactly. Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.

Yeah. It's a good one. It's a good one. Some of you may have heard about it before. Probably not everyone though. I mean, is it a super popular case though I'm recovering next? I had not heard about it before and I'm so glad now that I do know about it because damn. No, it's going to be good to cover that one. That one's going to be a good one. But yeah, I think Corey, she's got some issues. It doesn't matter what lawyer she has. She has the right to an attorney. Everybody has the right to an attorney. Everybody has the right to a fair defense. And I feel like you're probably right.

There's some situations going on here where Corey's running out of money. Maybe the lawyer is seeing how much they're putting into it. Maybe Corey's lying to the attorneys about certain things. And that's a whole different ballgame because if you're not being truthful with your attorney, how can they fairly and accurately represent you? So she definitely has a lot of issues. I don't think she'll be writing a new book anytime soon. She's going to definitely have to find a different means of income, if any income at all, because more than likely she's going to be in prison for the rest of her life but it is unfortunate because they do have children so there are there are people that are directly affected by this by because not only did they lose their father but they also are going to potentially lose their mother which in hindsight they're better off for it but i'm sure eric's family is are they i don't know man like well i mean losing your mom i know I know. I hate saying that because I've seen people who are terrible people to everybody, but good parents. However, based on the fact that she

seems very selfish, not self-aware, probably not the best parent, but those kids, man, they just lost everything. And she seemed to recognize that they were very heavily grieving in the wake of their father's death, to the point where she wrote a book about it, to get attention for herself. But also there was a reason she decided this was a way to get attention, because her kids were suffering horribly. And now, not only do they lose their father, they lose their mother. But hopefully they're not told this at this time, but she's the one who did it to their father. It's a terrible, you're never going to get over that. But it looks like her motive wasn't just financial. And I'm only saying this because I want to really drive home the fact that this

was not a good person. On the night that Eric died, Corey received a text message from a man she had been in a relationship with, and it was a photograph of two people kissing. So this man, he's not named in the court documents. He's referred to as Corey's paramour. But on the night of Eric's death, which was March 3rd, 2022, it was 8.36 p.m. Corey texted him back. She wrote, I love you. And she added a kissing emoji. And then less than 30 minutes later, according to Corey's own words, she and her husband, Eric, had a drink together and then he died. So literally within a half an hour of killing

her husband, allegedly, Corey is texting this other dude, I love you. And so it's not just financial. It seemed Corey wanted an entire new life or she wanted the life she had and just wanted to replace Eric with someone else. So instead of divorcing him or having a conversation with him and letting him know how she was feeling, she thought, you know, I'll just take him out, kill him, like he's not even a human,

and replace him with someone else and go and buy my multimillion-dollar house, which put her deep into debt so she can't even afford her lawyers, by the way. So that is a great person. You're right. Great person. So we actually have one more break and then we're going to come back and talk to you very briefly about a case that we found that was a little unique and interesting and kind of more lighthearted. So we will be right back. Okay, we're back. So I stumbled upon this story and I kind of, I think it's interesting because it's definitely different.

And nobody died. So that's a plus. That is a plus. It's just interesting because sometimes we have these crimes, you know, murders and things like that, and they go unsolved for years or decades. And that's kind of the case here, but it's not like a violent crime. It's an 81-year-old man who was arrested for terrorizing his neighborhood for 10 years with a slingshot. So this article from People magazine, they open it up. So ridiculous. Like they're so unserious about it. But they say, quote, an elderly man was forced to hang up his unusual weapon after a decade of allegedly terrorizing his neighborhood with a slingshot. So in a press release that they were the announced the arrest of this man, his name is Prince Raymond King of Azusa, California.

The police have dubbed him a serial slingshot shooter. The police said that King used ball bearings and a slingshot to damage property and almost hit people in his neighborhood for around a decade. They said, quote, D.E.U. conducted a lengthy investigation and learned that during the course of nine to 10 years, dozens of citizens are being victimized by a serial slingshot shooter. And they said that this guy used his slingshot to break windows, windshields, and almost struck people with ball bearings. Footage of the vandalized area captured by local outlet ABC7 showed windows with varying levels of damage, some with BB gun sized pellet holes, while others were entirely shattered. Now, throughout the decade of vandalism, no injuries were reported,

but Lieutenant Jake Bushy of the Azusa Police Department, he said that law enforcement officials have been investigating the serial slingshot shooter since his very first attack, which was a decade ago, but they were not able to identify him. He said, quote, it's been ongoing for many years because we just didn't identify who the suspect was.

End quote. They actually arrested him and then they searched his residence. They found an unspecified number of ball bearings and a slingshot. And then he was arrested and booked into jail several hours later. I think it's kind of funny and I didn't really pick up on this initially, but his name has both the words prince and king in it. And it's like, that's like, which one are you? Are you prince? Are you king? Clearly he's neither. Yeah. He's a and king in it. And it's like, which one are you? Are you prince or are you king? Clearly he's neither.

Yeah, he's in jail. He's not doing too good right now. He's not a prince or a king of anything other than a six by six jail cell. How embarrassing to be 81 and be arrested for using a weapon that leave it to be very used. Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. I don't know why it took so long to track this guy down or how how they eventually found him.

Probably ring doorbell footage at this. And if you look out there, you go on YouTube, there's some people who make slingshots that will absolutely kill a person if they're hit with it the right way. I had no idea. I thought a slingshot was a slingshot. No, I mean, you could have a slingshot that's made with a couple tree branches that you put an elastic on and you fling it. But there's some high grade carbon fiber. I don't know which one he was using. Is that necessary though? Is it necessary to have high grade carbon fiber, like war style slingshots?

No, it's not. But that's why I'm trying to just say that it's possible. I don't even know what he had, but it's important not to say like, oh, this isn't an important crime. Why are the police wasting their resources on something like this? And the reality is- No, it's terrorizing. Yeah. A lot of people over many years had their property damaged, were scared to go outside if you have children or animals. And clearly this person is not in the right state of mind to do this, to do this over these years for that long or to do it at all? I mean, because even if your intentions are just to scare someone or to break something, what if you accidentally miss and hit someone in the eye or hit someone in the temple and

you kill them? Clearly, his intention wasn't to hurt anybody because in 10 years time, he would have and he could have. But like you said, accidentally, it could have been like a heavy wind or the person just like zigged instead of zagged there could have been someone in a car that he didn't see when he was shooting at the car windows you're absolutely correct and I remember when I was young for almost a year eight or nine months somebody was doing this kind of thing but with a laser pointer in our

neighborhood and everybody was so stressed out about it because nobody it ended up being a kid with a laser pointer, but he would shine it into people's windows or you would just be walking down the street and all of a sudden there'd be a laser point on you. And it went on for almost a year and people were like stressed out about it. There was meetings, town meetings. They did like a neighborhood watch thing. So I get it. Yeah, it was probably incredibly traumatic to not feel like when is the slingshot i don't know how often it was either i don't know what the frequency was was it every day yeah was it every day was it every week did he just pop up once every couple of months and do it or was it just incessant i don't know well either way glad he's off the street sucks it

took it that long and i mean he's 81 years old i'm What's he going to get a year or two though, honestly? Maybe. I mean, it depends on the extent of the damage, some type of restitution. I don't know what his financial situation is, but it's not a victimless crime. People were affected by it. Glad the police finally got him off the street. But we wanted to cover the story, not because it's anything crazy, but because we're talking about a guy who was able to terrorize a neighborhood with a slingshot. So it just goes to show you if used in the improper way, almost anything can be a weapon. It's scary. Although obviously there is a little humor to it to think that this guy's out here with a slingshot shooting at things. But as an 81 year old man. Yeah. Yeah. And like,

was he concealing himself? Like that's the image I'm getting in my head. Like this guy, this old guy just hiding behind bushes, you know, like, what was the process? And I'd like to know why, why, what, what did it do for you? The why would be a big one. What happened in his life that he felt like this was okay, or that he, what gratification was he getting out of this? Either way, not a great story, but glad to see he's off the street glad to see no one was seriously hurt that's all we have for today any final words from you stephanie no i'm just uh understand what happens with cory slingshot

guys off the street two people that can no longer hurt anybody else not a bad night uh we do have the final part of the menendez Brothers series coming up later this week on Friday on audio and on video on YouTube. We're going to finish up the case, wrap it all up, talk about some things regarding Jose that we have not discussed yet, and then we're going to give our final thoughts on it. So make sure you join us for that. Until then, right now, as you're seeing this, we're currently at CrimeCon or we're heading down to CrimeCon. You're not currently recording at CrimeCon, though. Yeah, I think they probably put two and two together.

I was confused for a second. I was like, wait, are we at CrimeCon? No, no. We're on our way to CrimeCon. That's going to do it for us, guys. Everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you later this week. Thank you.