Search warrant says Kouri Richins asked second employee for fentanyl ahead of husband’s death

PARK CITY, Utah (KSL.com) — Investigators now say a woman accused of fatally poisoning her husband asked multiple people if they could procure fentanyl for her.

Kouri Richins is a Kamas mother and former realtor who was charged with murdering her husband about a year after his death, during that year she wrote a children’s book about grief that featured her sons.

Prosecutors previously have said she acquired fentanyl through a woman who cleaned houses for her business both in the months before and shortly after her husband’s death in March 2022. A search warrant granted earlier this month, however, shows the woman was not the only person Richins went to for fentanyl.

William Hayden Jeffs, a handyman who worked on multiple homes owned by Richins, was interviewed by police, according to the search warrant. He told police Kouri Richins had asked him if he could obtain fentanyl and propofol for her during the weeks leading up to Eric Richins’ death.

The officer who authored the search warrant said Jeffs showed them text messages on his phone supporting his account and provided copies. The warrant did not say anything about what his response to her request was, but it did not claim Richins obtained any illicit drugs through him.

After Jeffs died in a traffic accident, a judge granted a search warrant for his phone for evidence in Richins’ case.

The search warrant, filed on Nov. 6, did claim Richins had obtained fentanyl multiple times, shortly before and after her husband’s death, through contacts of a woman who had cleaned houses for her business.

Another search warrant from that same day permitted officers to search Richins’ home again for other documents and journals; it said the evidence they had already gathered from the home suggested there was more in the home and buildings outside of the home, including a detached office.

Since these search warrants were granted, a judge denied a repeated request for bail from Richins.

Richins is charged with aggravated murder and attempted murder, first-degree felonies; two counts of insurance fraud and two counts of filing a fraudulent insurance claim, second-degree felonies; plus three counts of forgery, a third-degree felony.

Prosecutors claim she attempted to murder her husband on Feb. 14, 2022, less than a month before her husband died of a fentanyl overdose. Richins and her attorneys continue to dispute the charges and she has pleaded not guilty.

In a statement on Tuesday, her attorney, Kathy Nester, said, “It has been over two years since Mr. Richins’ death, and the state is still looking for evidence and coming up empty-handed.”