Hidden True Crime - Dr. John Analyzes Kouri Richins

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Find out the easiest way to get to sleep, and stay asleep when you click https://shopbeam.com/hiddentruecrime and use code TRUECRIME to get up to 35% at checkout. About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias was a television reporter for a decade and has followed the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell case since 2019. She and her husband, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Is there a psychological profile of a poisoner? And the answer is, sort of. It's vague. There's not a lot of research supporting a profile of someone who poisons someone else. But there is some research, and it is interesting. And so I wanted to start with that, and we can think about the typical psychological profile of someone who's a poisoner and maybe how it relates to Corey Richens or doesn't relate. The sources I want to cite here are a book by Michael Farrell, written in 2017.

It's called Criminology of Homicidal Poisoning. It's probably the best-known textbook at the moment on this topic. There is a forensic psychologist. Her name is Joni Johnston. She's written a number of articles for psychology today. She did an interview with A&E a few years ago. fairly recently. She's researched this topic. She's written about it. And lastly, there's a book by John Trest Trail called Criminal Poisoning. That's probably the third source that's worthwhile in

terms of thinking about a psychological profile. So let me, I'm going to combine some of these sources. If people want to go look individually, you can do that. Some of the elements of a poisoner would include a sense of inadequacy, a strong need for control. They tend to be self-centered and have an exploitive interpersonal style. They often have childhoods where they're extremely spoiled or they grow up in homes that have trauma. Or both? Or both. It could be right. It could be both. I'm going to quote, this is an article actually called the psychological profile of a poisoner by Joni Johnston psychology today

2012 she says quote some experts likened the poisoner's personality to an incorrigible child whose immature desire for his or her own way

leads him or her to try to control and manipulate the world it's as if the poisoner never grew up and is determined to take what he or she wants just as a child would

from a candy store I think that was an interesting observation that the word that they're not using, Joni Johnson actually uses it once. She refers to narcissism. But a lot of this description is consistent with narcissistic features. So I don't know.

I think the researchers are stopping just shy of using that term because maybe they don't want the association with narcissism or maybe there's insufficient research to tie in poisoning with narcissistic personality disorder. And I'm certainly not going to go there because I don't know Corey Richens, but the profile is the profile of someone with a lot of narcissistic features. When you refer to someone as an incorrigible child who doesn't get their way and tries to control and manipulate the environment, you're essentially talking about a narcissist.

A narcissist would be someone with stunned development, usually someone who has a strong sense of entitlement, someone who lacks empathy. someone with a lot of grandiosity. And those, by the way, are all additional traits of this profile that, you know, Michael Farrell and Joni Johnson talk about. They also talk about in the Johnson article, she talks about the two main motives

for poisoners in committee murder. The main motive is, wait for it, money. Okay. The main motive is money and greed, and typically it involves insurance policies. Does that sound familiar here? Yes, it does. And the second motive is jealousy.

So some type of a lover's triangle, which actually, if you read, there's an email from Corey Richens that she sent to law enforcement on April 19th, 2023. She accuses, I don't know, we don't know if it's true. We haven't fully vetted this, but she accuses Eric of engaging in fidelity and an affair. And so here you have the classic lover's triangle. Was she threatened by this relationship? Did she think that it would lead to divorce? Was she worried that Eric would leave her for someone else and she wouldn't get any money?

Right. So you'd have to say that financial gang would be the primary motive here, but certainly jealousy could play a role in this. Michael Farrell in his book identifies three main traits of poisoners. They are greed. that he also thinks that people who poison are remorseless. The lack of remorse would be consistent. It could be consistent with someone with narcissistic personality disorder.

It's also a very common trait of psychopaths. He also says that poisoners are cunning and manipulative. I think those two run together. So those are his main observations about offenders who poison. Someone is asking, aren't poisoners usually women? Yeah, you know what? So in terms of overall numbers, more men poison than women. And the reason for that is that more men murder than women, more men are violent and engaging crime than women. So the sheer numbers actually point towards men. Interesting. The percentage, here's where it differentiates, the percentage of women is much higher. When you look at women who commit murder, the percentage you poison is, way higher than men. So women engage in more poisoning than men. It's just that in terms of the

gross statistics, men poison more because men kill more. So that makes sense. So women prefer poisoning when they do commit murder. And often the poisoning occurs with a spouse or someone they know. Almost all poisonings, 90 plus percent occur in these types of scenarios where the offender knows the victim, has some relationship with the victim. That's just a brief portrait or psychological portrait of someone who would poison. One of the interesting things about this portrait, and Joni Johnston talks about this, is that a lot of poisoners tend to be conflict-voinant. They tend to be less confrontational than most murderers. So a lot of murderers are aggressive and violent, and poisoners tend to be sort of on the other side of that. They're less confrontational. They're less aggressive.

You know, that's interesting to think about in terms of Corey Richens. Cory Richens attacks her sister-in-law. Amy Richens. Amy Richens attacks her, brutally attacks her. By Amy's account, it took four people to pull Corey Richens off of her because she was so enraged. So Corey Richens doesn't really seem to fit a typical profile here in terms of someone who's conflict avoidant. I'm not saying that she's seeking out conflict, but you and I have also talked to a source who said that there might be some history of bullying where she's the bully, not the bully, but she's actually doing the bullying. And that happened when she was younger.

So she tends to be a little more confrontational than kind of the typical profile. And this, by the way, gets into some of the limitations of psychological profiles. There's no profile that fits everyone. So I think the pattern, the overall pattern here, with the exception of being conflict avoidant, if we call it that, the pattern is from what I know of Corey Richen, and again, I've never met her or sat in a room with her and done an interview or testing. But it does seem that some of these qualities do apply to her. didn't you also say there's another reason for poisoning of women or that women that poison

which is abuse not that we're putting her in that category but that's common right i guess i just want to point out there's goodbye earl or there's corey richon i'm just saying like i just think that that is well the number one motive the number one motive for poisoning a spouse is money okay but however that women in general, women who commit suicide in general, and women who commit suicide within marriages or significant relationships, there is a class of women in that category who are essentially engaging in reactive violence. In other words, they're an abusive relationships and they're responding to the abuse with violence, let's call it as a type of self-defense.

Okay. So that's, which is an interesting point, because it raises the question about whether Corey Richens would go down that road. If she feels like the evidence is overwhelmingly against her and that there's no way she can shake this poisoning accusation, then maybe she goes to that. Maybe she says that Eric was abusive and she poisoned him because she was afraid for her life or something like that.

I mean, I think that's going to be hard to sell because when the first officer arrives and we have the body cam transcript, she basically, you know, the officer asks if everything's okay and she says it's fine. She doesn't indicate that there's anything wrong at all in their marriage or with Eric's health or that there's been any type of abuse or that he harmed her any way or attacked her, right? There's never been, as far as we know, there's never been any accusations of that. So I think if she's going to pull that out of her hat at the last minute, minute, it's going to be a little suspicious. But it is a common accusation in these types of scenarios where I shouldn't say an accusation that in many cases where there is domestic abuse,

there is reactive violence where the spouse does resort to violence to protect themselves. So, and sometimes that leads to homicide. I've talked to people that knew her and him, Eric and Corey, excuse me, and they're shocked. They did not see any red flags in the family system. And then, I mean, that's not everyone. I know that there are some people that did. And there's also someone that has mentioned to us that Corey was, as John mentioned already, her bully, a bully in junior high or high school time.

One of the first things I said was that poisoners have a deep sense of inadequacy. And I want to read, this is from an email. that was written by Corey Richens to law enforcement. Yes, Eric made more money than me. Do you make more money than your wives? Have I ever been financially reliant on Eric in the last five years? Question mark? Absolutely not.

That's a strange thing to write to law enforcement. First of all, right, it's very defensive. It's very defensive. It's extremely defensive. Like she's threatened by the fact that not only is she threatened by the fact that Eric makes more money than she does, but she's saying, well, how many of you detectives make more money than your wives, right? Like, is that, that is not something I would write in an email to law enforcement if I knew they were investigating me for murder. Right.

So there's some anger, right? There's some anger in there in the sense that she feels as if somehow there's this, accusation about Eric making more money than her and supporting her. And we know now that she was stealing from him. She's very upset about this. And she feels a deep sense of inadequacy here. She feels a lot of shame, I think, in the sense that she sees herself as being on a par with Eric, knowing, of course, that she's been stealing from him and that she does,

you know, that she's not making as much money as he is. But it's a really, it's a peculiar thing to put in an email to law enforcement. Someone's asking why she's writing law enforcement. It's because there was an investigation going on for a year that it wasn't in the media or because we didn't know about it. It surely would have been if people understood or if her, his family probably came forward. But there was an investigation going on that the public. really wasn't privy to or aware of.

Yeah. Well, so, yeah, here's a short answer. The law enforcement had asked her some questions, and apparently they provided her a list of items that they wanted her to address, and she said, hey, there, this is how she starts her email. She says, hey, there, I thought I would clarify some items on your list that you spoke to blank about redacted. We don't know who blank is, but, so she's writing to clarify some issues that launched some

questions that law enforcement had. There's a lot of interesting things in this email, by the way. And more on this issue of feeling inadequate or almost kind of this childish sense of entitlement and maybe even independence. I'll read a little bit more. She says here, quote, Eric wanted us to live the typical conservative life where the man takes care of his family and the wife is a homemaker, wife, mom, and that's it. She says that is not my personality and not the way I was raised.

I am very independent. Even when I stayed home with my kids the first few years, I was in grad school for years because I wanted to be more and do more than be a homemaker. And I did. And when I did and started my business, it took some adjusting, but Eric and I were fine with it. So again, she's intent upon selling this image to law enforcement of how independent is she is, how she doesn't need Eric for money, how she's so successful, she goes to graduate school, I guess. I'm not sure if she graduated. I'm not sure what she went to graduate school for,

but she said she started her business. I know this wasn't even a question they were asking her. She was offering this. Make no mistake. You know, I'm an independent woman. Right. Hear me roar. Yeah, it's very odd. Which very clearly, we know she wasn't because she had huge amounts of debt. She was stealing money from Eric. Everything she says here is false. Right. In the sense that she's, she's not independent. She's totally dependent on money and support to the point where she's stealing. She starts a business that's unsuccessful that has a lot of debt. She's clearly trying to create a favorable impression here for law enforcement, as if law enforcement doesn't know, right? They think law enforcement already knows that this is

all false. So I'm sure when it comes time for the trial, this email is going to be a part of it in one former. There's another line from the email. She says, no, Eric and I did not have financial problems ever. Ever. Right. So. Someone says ever, be very suspicious. Yeah. Little hint, don't put ever in an email when you're trying to sell somebody on something you're writing. So it doesn't work very well. It certainly didn't age well. No, it didn't. So in looking at the patterns or a profile of a poisoner,

it's interesting to see some of this and to think about the fact or the possible fact that Cory Richens does seem to have some underlying narcissistic features. I'm not saying she's a narcissist, but she does seem to be very insecure. She has a sense of inadequacy. She has a sense of entitlement. She feels like she can steal his money with no problem or impunity and that he shouldn't care because she deserves it.

So anyway. And people are asking, yes, she had a real estate business that flipped houses. She did this without telling him a lot of what she was doing. People are pointing out that she was taking out loan. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

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She was trying to flip homes, but she was not doing so in a timely manner. So she kept taking out hard money loans. And she was behind on those hard money, hard money lenders tend to have higher interest rates. So they're harder to keep up with, especially if you're not making money from the home since you're buying and flipping. So it seems like she got behind the curve. She was taking out loans. She was getting into debt. She wasn't able to pay back the loans.

The interest rates were high. So she started stealing from Eric, essentially, to try to cover her debts. And because I think because she didn't want to be ashamed, I think shame's a part of this. She doesn't want to be exposed as someone who's not. this independent, successful woman that she talks about in the email. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving.

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2025 pilot or a 2.9% APR on a 2025 Ridgeline or CRV. See dealer for financing details. Anyway, I think that's a good introduction. I think the main things I want to look at with Corey Richens and the things that really make this case stand out are the book and the interview on your previous station that you worked for. I think in a way, there's a moment in this interview that's extremely revealing and there's a moment in the email that I'll read after, we talk about that moment that confirms that same

impression. No matter if it's a parent, a sibling or friend, talking about loss with kids can be a tricky subject. Joining us now is author of Are You With Me, Corey Richens, to share her three Cs to helping kids cope with grief. And Corey, I want to start with your story. What happened in your personal life? 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, 9, and 6. 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. And, you know, hoping that it can kind of help other kids, you know, deal with this and kind of, you know, find happiness some way or another. There's a couple moments in there I want to talk about. This is the first one. So she says, you just heard it there. She says, I want to help kids deal with this to find happiness. That's a really peculiar statement when you're talking about grief.

I get that the idea of coping with grief or mourning or somehow dealing with sadness, but that's quite different than happiness. So this is a year on from when her husband passed away. And she's saying that the purpose of her book is to find happiness. I mean, I don't think she's talking about. about our kids here. I don't think she's talking about grief. I think she's talking about herself. This is a moment here, I think, this is a slip where she's saying that the goal is to find happiness. There's nothing about grief and losing your father that's going to be happy.

And so to use that term is so peculiar. You know, the question I have is, is she talking about herself? Perhaps she's looking for some type of happiness that she didn't have her marriage that may have been a part of the alleged murder. And let me say now, by the way, that obviously she's innocent until proven guilty. This is all speculation. We don't know there's been no trial. So at the moment, obviously,

she's innocent until proven guilty. But I think that this is a bit of a projection in the sense that she's thinking about her own future and she's thinking about her own happiness and what would that look like. And obviously, in her mind's eye, at least, I think that future looks like a life without her husband or her deceased husband. So this is a really interesting moment because in no way do I associate grief with happiness. In fact, quite the opposite, right?

The grief is about sorrow and loss and pain and sadness. And Corey Richens doesn't seem to have a lot of those qualities, by the way. Right. Yeah. And we're going to keep playing this. I want to bring up a couple things that. good for Utah host did mention. I did check in with my old station and then they were on national news and Saray was on News Nation with Ashley Banfield. And these are the things

they pointed out. They thought it was strange that she didn't take her jacket off. And I want to say that I do too. Again, this, this is a talk show format, much like the view and fashion is a big part of this talk show, oddly. It's a lot of most of the viewers are women. They talk about, about fashion and a lot of, I don't know, but fashion is a big part of, think again, the view, this talk show. So for Corey to be someone that seems to be into fashion herself or the way she looks, it's strange. She's not taking her jacket off.

And then people are bringing up her use of, you know, John, you and I haven't talked about that. I don't know if that means anything, but she always is saying, you know, that's been brought up multiple times. And the other thing that the host noticed was, and they did notice, it wasn't even hindsight. They noticed it during the show that she, they said that she was emotionless. She didn't have a lot of emotion.

Their reaction to it was, well, who's to say how someone grieves? And they also pointed out, well, it's been a year. And so one thing that they noted with her, that day was,

huh, it's odd. She doesn't have a lot of emotion. And then they chalked it up to, well, it's been a year and everyone grieves differently. And who are you to say how someone should grieve? So I just want to lay that out.

So this part about happiness is odd. It's peculiar for someone dealing with grief or writing a book about grief. But the next part is even more revealing. And this next part, I think, really gets to the heart of what we're trying to, what we're going to talk about tonight. So let's take a listen to that. Took us all by shock. And we have three little boys, 10, 9 and 6.

And, you know, my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different, emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced last year and, you know, hoping that it can kind of help other kids, you know, deal with this and kind of, you know, find happiness some way or another. And to make sense and process, I'm sure, and I'm sure you felt that going through and trying to explain it and articulate it for you and your boys. Yes, exactly, exactly. And so I've done, you know, I'm new to all of this.

So kind of doing, you know, research and reading books and things to try and understand, you know, not only how to grieve as a widow as a wife, but also, you know, with my kids, how to help them, how to help them understand what just happened. And what I have kind of found is, as I mentioned, it's kind of the three Cs is how I has visualized it. And it's, you know. Okay. All right. So I don't know if people caught that, but it took me a couple of listens to really grasp what she just said there. But let me repeat what she just said, because this is a really important moment in understanding Corey Richens. She said, I'm paraphrasing a little bit because she didn't say it exactly like this. But here's what she said.

She said, I've been researching and reading books to try to understand how to grieve as a widow and a wife. Let me repeat that. I'm researching and reading books to try to understand how to grieve as a widow and a wife. What? What she just said there is she hasn't grieved. What she just said there is not only has she not grieved, but she doesn't know how to grieve. She is reading and researching to try to understand how to grieve. This has been a year later and there's no grief because she doesn't understand grief.

And so you could say on the one hand that this lack of emotion and this lack of sorrow, maybe she doesn't do well with sadness or sorrow. And that, by the way, is... Probably doesn't. She probably doesn't. That, by the way, is a possible marker of a psychopath. Psychopaths, we've talked about this numerous times, but psychopaths do not do well with what we call,

psychologists call distress emotions. The distress emotions are fear and sadness. So when other human beings experience fear or sadness, the typical human response is to try to help them. to try to reach out to them, to comfort them. Psychopaths, they don't understand. They have no fear. They're fearless.

They don't care if someone's experiencing fear. And they have no sadness. They have no sorrow. They don't care if someone's distressed with sorrow. They only care about themselves and getting their needs met. And so I'm not saying that applies to Corey Richens here. But what I am saying, is that this is someone who hasn't grieved.

And she sees grief, at least here with her husband, her deceased husband, she sees grief as an intellectual exercise in the sense that she's saying, she's researching and reading and trying to understand. This grief is not an emotional process to her. It's purely intellectual. And I'm going to tie this in now with her email.

This is the email to law enforcement that I was just reading April 19. 2023. Here's what she says, quote, I just want our lives back and to move on and grieve and mourn my husband without looking over my shoulder constantly for you guys, meaning law enforcement. So let me repeat that. I just want our lives back and to move on and grieve and mourn my husband. So she's saying the same thing. She's saying she has not grieved. This is a woman who twice, now in the interview and in the email, she said she hasn't grieved for her husband. So let's break this down.

This is really critical. Let's break this down and why this is important. Okay. Why doesn't someone grieve? That's the question. If Corey Richens has not grieved, which she's telling us she has it. As a busy mom and as a journalist, I need to make every minute count, whether that's working or creating more family time. And insomnia, when it comes to that, is not my friend.

It can throw everything off. When it comes to work, I like my alone time before the sun is up. I like to be able to sit there and work so that as soon as the family wakes, I can focus on them. And so if I am dealing with insomnia the night before and I'm up until 3 a.m., fretting and worrying and tossing and turning, I pretty much can kiss the next day goodbye. And it's not just work the suffers, but the entire family. I used to try over-the-counter sleep aids, but those caused groginess like no other. It didn't matter how much caffeine I drank the next day.

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shopbeam.com slash hidden true crime and enter the code true crime for up to 35% off your first order. You can also just click the link that's in the description of this video. That is there. Shopbeam.com slash hidden true crime. Why hasn't she grieved? Why doesn't someone grieve? So let's talk about grief in general as a process that the most intense grief occurs when someone passes unexpectedly. If somebody passes away and you don't expect it, the loss is intense. You feel that intensely because you don't see it coming. And then not only is it unexpected, but there's a deep sense of longing for the person that's gone, right? A big part of grieving is you want the person back.

You miss them. You want them to show up again. I've worked with a lot of people that have experienced a lot of victims and people that have experienced trauma that are grieving intensely. And one of the things they say all the time is, I just want him or her to come back. I would give anything if they could just walk through the door again. And I could just hug them, right? So a big part of grief is not only that it's unexpected, but there's this longing for the other. There's this longing for the deceased to return and to be a part of their lives again. And all of that, the fact that a loss is unexpected, that there's this longing, all of that leads to, in many ways, a sense of helplessness, which compounds grief because there's nothing you can do.

The loss is in the past, you can't change it, you can't repair it, you can only cope with it. So those are the components, in my opinion, of grief. So let's talk about the components of someone who's not grieving. Right? And this is going to help us understand Corey Richens. So she's saying she's not grieving, even though her husband's been deceased for years. So the components of someone who wouldn't grieve are that they know the loss is coming. So instead of being unexpected, it's planned. It's expected. Right? They know the loss is coming. You're not going to grieve something if you know something is about to happen or there's some loss on the horizon. The second reason someone who's wouldn't grieve, given that, is that they're creating the loss. There's no sense of longing because if you murder someone, you're actually responsible for creating that loss. So you don't miss the person. You don't long for them to come back. It's quite the opposite. You actually want them to see. Right. Right. Exactly. Yes. And when you take those two, when you take the planning of the loss

and the fact that you're not long for the deceased to return, that you actually want them gone, it creates a sense of power and control, as I mentioned at the beginning with our profile, that poisoners have this need for control. They have this need for power. I think you clearly see that here. The reason why Corey Richens is not grieving

is because she's basically telling us that she murdered him in the sense that she knows it's coming, she knows that she doesn't want him back so she doesn't miss him there's no longing to have him back she murdered him and all of that creates the sense of empowerment the sense of there's almost like with this book there's almost she's got this secret that nobody else knows that she she was able to essentially kill her husband in secret in her mind and then would not be able to know about it and that kind of fuels this whole fantasy. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every

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Right. Yeah. And so it's an extraordinary thing to see because it's a strong suggestion. if there's doubts about whether she murdered her husband, I think to me this is sort of the final straw. The most difficult part of grief is that we all have what I call mental maps of the world. And on our mental maps, we have our loved ones. And we give them a large place on the mental map.

And so if a loved one happens to pass away unexpectedly, that creates a lot of problems in terms of our ability to make sense of the world. we're used to someone being there all the time, and now they're not. And so we have to readjust our mental maps. We have to reform our mental maps in a way that helps us make sense of the world. And it's a profound change, right? Because the person we relied on day after day is not there. And so for most of us, for normal people, it takes some real effort and sorrow and struggle and pain to start adjusting our mental

maps because the person we love the most all of a sudden is gone and we have to reconfigure our sense of the world. But, and this is, this gets to a narcissist or Corey Richens or somebody like Cory Richens, let's say, that people that are more narcissistic, the people on their mental maps didn't mean that much anyway. So it doesn't take that much reconfiguring because for many narcissists, people are seen as objects, people are seen as pawns to be manipulated. And so the mental map of a narcissist, you won't see narcissists grieve as much because the people in their world exist for them. And they don't have reciprocal relationships. And so it's not unusual to see someone like Corey Richens or someone who's extremely narcissistic really struggle to grieve

because their mental maps are primarily about them anyway. And they don't know how to incorporate other people and other people's emotions and needs and wants. So that's another component of this. Why did she write a book on grief? You would think that she wouldn't want attention on herself right now. Why did she not only write a book on grief, but ask to appear on good things Utah to promote it?

I think she wanted to be on television. because she's attention seeking. She probably has some narcissistic features. But I think she's also written this book to normalize grief. She's sending the message that she's a grieving mother, she's a grieving widow, and that she's quite capable of occupying this role. Even though she's not grieving,

she's trying to normalize the grief process. I think there's an element of law enforcement here, too. She knows law enforcement is looking. She's trying to send a message to law enforcement. Hey, look, I'm grieving. This is what a normal person does who loses their husband. There's nothing to see here. There's nothing to worry about.

See, this book shows that I'm grieving. She's trying to normalize it. It is Ryan Seacrest here. There was a recent social media trend, which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment. But a better trend would be going to, at Chumba Casino.com. It's like having a mini social casino in your pocket.

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But she was writing, she was writing emails to police. to law enforcement and doing interviews with detectives and knowing that Eric Richon's family was suspicious of her. She knew all this during this time that she wanted to come appear as a grieving mother and share this book, that a ghost writer, a book that she didn't write, you know. Yeah. Ozzie Tad says she thinks that she thought the book would make it appear she was grieving, as you point out.

but it is, I think this is the most bizarre thing about this case. In fact, can I read a comment from a gem that they left on our community post? This is a comment that Chelsea Whitaker left, not a question, but she said, with everything we have learned, I find Corey to be quite bland and literally unremarkable. Perhaps the only interesting or remarkable thing about her is the children's book she wrote after allegedly killing her husband. Being a murderer sets her apart from other people, but writing a children's book about grief after the fact

sets her apart even from other murderers. She will always be remembered for this atrocious detail, but remember nonetheless. I would love to hear your take on this, which is what we're doing. Thank you, Chelsea. But I agree with that. That's what makes her,

she is an unremarkable person, and this sets her. part. It really does make this story bizarre and interesting. And I mean, that's why we're talking about it. I think if she doesn't write this book, we're probably not delving into this case. I mean, it does, the more we dig into this, the more bizarre cats every minute. But let's talk about the book. So the book essentially is the book's title is, are you with me? And I've read the book. We don't have the book, by the way, but we've read it. The first half of the book is... We tried to get it. We weren't going to pay $1,200 on eBay, but we tried. But we've seen it. We've read it. Yeah. So the first half of the book is a series

of pictures of a child, a young male child. He is supposed to be a composite of their three children, their three boys. And it presents a series of scenarios. where the child's at school and the child is saying, this is my first day of school. I'm feeling afraid. Will you be with me? The child is, he's opening Christmas presents and he's saying, I have no one to, or you know,

you're not here with me when I'm opening the Christmas presence. Will you be with me? So this question is repeated during the first half of the book, Are you with me? And then the second half of the book, essentially, is Eric entering the picture. and telling the child, I'm with you in all of these occasions. I'm with you when you're afraid. I'm with you when you're happy.

I'm with you when we're going to soccer. So the question, are you with me where the child is portrayed? It's actually quite sad. The child is in tears quite a bit. Very sad book. There's something, yeah, there's something very profoundly sad about the first half of the book because it portrays a child that's extremely lonely and detached from from the world and a child that's really grieving.

And the second half of the book tries to solve that dilemma by presenting the father who has wings. They present him as an angel. And Eric is consoling the child and saying, yes, I'm with you in all these situations. So don't worry, I'm with you. Now, again, it took me a minute to digest this book. But there was something about the book that really bothered me. And it finally struck me what it was. And that is that I think this whole book is really very much an avoidance of grief.

So the book purports to be about helping a child deal with grief. But the reality is it's about an avoidance of grief. And the reason why that's true is because this angel of this angel Eric is omnipresent. He's everywhere. So in many ways, the book is sending the message that, if somebody dies, they're going to be present with you all the time, 24-7. So it's almost as if she's painting a portrait of grief here where the person doesn't die. The person is actually with you all the time, which is peculiar.

If you're dealing with grief, you have to deal with loss. Right. This book is the opposite of loss. This book is about an angel that's with you all the time, 24-7 for the rest of your life. And don't worry about it. he'll be there and if you're feeling alone or sad or whatever, you know, Eric the angel will show up and he's always there and she's really minimizing. Right.

And avoiding his death and the fact that we don't have to deal with loss and grief. Because the solution to this issue of all these emotions that a child experienced from grief is to picture your father being there all the time. In fact, the irony is that when Eric is deceased, he's more present and more available to the child than when he's alive. Right. He's there at everything.

He doesn't miss a game now. He never misses a game. He doesn't miss a cruise. Like the reality is I'm sure Eric was busy as a, he owned a business. I'm sure he couldn't be there for some of the children's activities. But when he's deceased, he's always there. Again, I think this is indicative for Corey. I think this book is a function

of her guilty conscience. I do think she has some guilt and she's trying to minimize or even sugarcoat his departure, his death through this book, which essentially is a complete avoidance of grief because it shows someone who's really not deceased in many ways. It's not that he's alive, but he's just there. He's always there. These are some lines from Eric from the book. These are direct lines. Yes, I am with you when you are feeling sad.

I am wiping away the hurt, holding you in my arms and telling you I love you. I am here with you. I am here with you every day, every minute, every second. Again, this is Eric the angel. Although you cannot see me, I am there. It's me in the wind. I'm the chill you feel. It's me, the feeling as if someone is with you.

So this notion of being there every day, every minute, every second is that's not grief. Grief is about processing loss. And I'm not saying that I think a book like this could potentially provide comfort in the sense that a child, it's important for a child to retain memories of, in this case, a deceased father. I think that's very important. And those memories should be internalized. Those memories can be used in a very positive way. But I think it's sending the wrong message when you have this idea that there's really no loss and that someone's there every second. Because that's not real.

And that's not really going to help a child cope with loss. So I think one important function of this book, and again, this is a book that Corey wrote, or had help writing, it was ghostwritten, but one function of this book is to really minimize what happened. Right. It's to appease her guilty conscience in the sense that if she portrays him as really being there still and still being alive, especially for the children,

then she doesn't have to fill as much guilt. Right. And that goes, I think that goes hand in hand with this idea that she hasn't grieved. She hasn't grieved because she doesn't miss him. and now she's writing this book in an attempt to kind of sugarcoat the whole thing and say, look, yeah, he might be dead,

but it's no big deal he's with you. It's as if he's alive. That's the message she's kind of sending. It really is to get rid of their emotions. If they're crying and they're weeping and they miss him, oh, he's here, he's here. Don't worry, don't worry. Right.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Not only that. I want to say this. It's one thing to cling to the religious notion that I know growing up that I believe my grandfather who passed away at age nine might you know be watching over me occasionally or a guardian angel of sorts but this this is different yeah nobody was telling me when I cried because I missed him and I wanted one more hug to oh get over he's

right here he's right here that that's that's different that's that is a it's not allowing grief Right, right, exactly. The line I read about, I am wiping away the hurt. You know, I don't, again, I think a child needs to experience some hurt and some pain. I mean, not excessively, not to the point of clinical depression, but part of grieving is going through the sorrow and the pain and the hurt of losing someone. And as I said earlier, even for a child, it's trying to reconfigure that mental map of the world. So that the person you're used to seen every day, in this case, their dad, is not there every day. And this book is presenting this picture, this false picture of the dad being there every day, of the dad, you know, literally waiting in the wings or putting on his angel gear and, you know, flying around and being in the kids' lives.

And so there's something not only unrealistic about it, especially in dealing in terms of dealing with grief, but I think there's a real avoidance here of the main issues. And the reason why there's an avoidance is because the mother, Corey, not only is incapable of grieving, but she doesn't want to deal with it. She doesn't want to deal with the situation she created. Let's call it.

She doesn't want to deal with the alleged murder of her husband. Right. She's not dealing with it. The kids can't deal with it. Everything has to be good. They're moving forward. Yes. With life insurance policies. Yeah. Right. So that's my take. I think the book and the interview and the email are both in some ways her telling us what she did. You know, something with narcissism too. A narcissist, someone that's narcissistic, they think they're smarter than everyone else. I can't help but see a bit of that in Corey, too. She thinks she's going to get away with this. She thinks this is no big deal.

She thinks that someone said, wouldn't she not want attention? You know, a lot of people might not. They think, you know, lay low. And she's like, no, no, I'm going to make sure I, everyone sees. me pretending to grieve. Is there a bit of that too? I'm the smartest one of the room. I've got this.

Oh, for sure. In the references I mentioned earlier about poisoning and poisoners, the main components of making a case against a poisoner are proving that the poisoner had access to the substance, to the poison. And then that's one part. That's the first prong. The second prong then is showing that the poisoner, administered the poison, right?

We know from the probable cause statement that she had access, she was dealing with the drug dealer who gave her fentanyl. We know she possessed fentanyl. We know that she gave him Moscow mule, and we know that within a couple of hours after that, he was dead of fentanyl poisoning. So whatever, that chain of causation that law enforcement is trying to prove, it, I mean, in fact, in terms of poisoning cases,

this is actually really simple. most poisoners are a little more cunning and a little more stealthy than this. You know, she's leaving a trail that leads directly to her. A lot of people have been wanting us to just bring up the pre-up. And Janine asks, I want both of your opinions on that pre-nup. So many questions. The family's involvement, presenting it on the wedding day, the stipulation that Corey would get no portion of Eric's earnings or assets gained during the marriage.

Yet he wanted a traditional stay-at-home wife and mother. Any thoughts on that? So I think we're still gathering some information about family issues and the pre-nup. And I think we're, at least for me, I'm still kind of in the fact-finding stage with that. Right. A little premature right now. It seems to me that there might be a family dynamic here where she's perceived as being a bit of an outsider by the Richens family. and by the way, it's probably a part of her anger and this sense of independence she's trying to convey in her email,

that she feels like she doesn't really fit into this family. And certainly one way of exacting revenge against a family that she feels rejected by would be to murder the son. Right, right. And take his money, right? Because part of the money is family money. So I think all of those could play in the motive a little bit. bit here. Perhaps she was enjoying the sympathy when she told the host that her husband had died, leaving three sons, she paused as if waiting to receive the, oh, poor thing. There's a little bit

of, it reminds me of Moonshausen, you know, this attention, wanting attention for being a widow, too, or this, oh, how sad. You know, she clearly wasn't getting that from his family, right? And then people in her inner circle might have been suspicious of her. I mean, maybe she needed a bit of that, too. For someone who can't grieve, she's clearly playing the role of the grief-stricken widow, mother, right? She's definitely trying to step into that role. And she's painting this portrait. She's creating this public persona that fits with someone who should be grieving for this type of loss. So I agree, yes, there's definitely an attention-seeking component.

And she does want sympathy for sure. And I think that was another one of the motives for writing this book. People say she wrote the book for financial gain, but I don't see that. I think that might have been a little bit of the motivation. But first time authors don't make that much money, number one. Secondly, I don't think that's the primary motive for writing this book. I really think this book is a function of her guilt, which, by the way, as an aside, I know I'm going to get this question, but people can experience guilt and not remorse.

So remorse is a deeper level than guilt. Remorse is... Okay. Remorse is an admission that you did something wrong. It's more definitive than guilt. You can have guilt when you have some pangs of conscience. Guilt is more of a concern that maybe you did something wrong. it's about behavior.

It's about your conscience is being tweaked a little bit. But I think if Corey Richens has guilt, by the way, it's not because she murdered him. It's because she got caught. It's because she didn't take the right steps to avoid detection. The research on poisoning talks about staging, that poisoners are big into staging the scene. And I don't think Corey Richens really thought about that much.

She did a little bit in the sense that she went, she gave Eric the drink of poison and then she went to one of her son's bedrooms who was supposedly having nightmares so she wasn't actually there when he died she staged it a little bit in the sense that she left the room it gave her a little bit of a semi-alibi

not a great one obviously because she said she gave him a drink but there was a little bit of staging I think that really stealthy and smart poisoners do more staging. And she, you know, again, like, I think the narcissism gets in the way here,

narcissistic traits that she feels like she can get away with this because nobody's going to look that closely. And, you know, she didn't anticipate that law enforcement are looking at the death of a 39-year-old who's in perfect health, which is obviously that in and of itself is going to raise red flags. She didn't think that. John, she made her second appearance in court. We have that on our YouTube channel. It was quick.

It was six minutes, really. A total of 12 minutes camera, but really the entire hearing, it was a status hearing, it was scheduling. She appeared for her second time in court for six minutes. It was kind of a nothing burger, I'd say. Yet the most interesting thing about it was her crying

throughout the entire thing. I love what you said, by the way, that there's a difference between remorse and guilt, that she could feel some guilt, but remorse is an entirely different thing. I love that. Why would she, you know, some people think they're crocodile tears. Some people think it's fake. Whatever it was, it looked like she was crying. It looked like there were tears.

Why would she be crying in court? I think for Corey Richens, this is becoming real. And I think she's starting to come to the realization that perhaps she could spend the rest of her life in prison, that she'll never see her children again. And I do think there's some guilt. And so poisoners typically have no remorse. I don't think she has a lot of remorse. I think she believes what she did was fine

that she deserved his wealth or whatever. But guilt, that's a different issue. I think that maybe she might be experienced a little bit of guilt. She might be starting to fully understand the ramifications of her behaviors and how life in prison is not something that she probably bargained for and there's probably some guilt here about being caught

less so about killing someone and more so about she got caught. Yeah, and not just caught. Yeah, as you point out, the reality, you know, she probably thought she was going to be able to get out on bond. And there's no bail. Yeah, there's no bond.

She's there. And getting on that issue, by the way, this whole thing about life insurance on the kids, it's frightening. It is frightening. Getting the dose of fentanyl five days after her husband is deceased and then life insurance policies on the kids, it really makes me wonder if this was moving towards fill aside. Yeah. That if she envisioned a future without her kids, if she envisioned a future where she would. where she was in her mind where she could be completely free of all obligations, her husband and her kids just walk off into the sunset.

I think maybe, I think it's quite possible that that's where she was heading with this. And that, and by the way, Amy Richen said that in her, in the first hearing, Amy Richen said, do not let her go.

She is frightening and she will do this again. And she may well have. And you know, one scary way, to do that, she would take those kids on vacation out of the country. She was taking those kids out of vacation out of the country, to ocean, you know, places with an ocean, she could easily say an accident happened. Something happened. It is scary. Right. Or she could, she had fentanyl. She could, she could, she had fentanyl. She could have administered smaller dorses of fentanyl that would have been lethal. I mean, there's

so many ways, but just, I mean, who takes out life insurance policies on their children? Yeah, there's no... I don't know. It's peculiar. It is. It is. It's the Ashley President's Day sale. Going on now.

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