Murder, Money, and a Children's Book

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0:52I'm sure everyone's familiar with the nationwide opioid crisis we face. Fentanyl-related deaths are on the rise pretty much all over the country. In the state of Utah, the number of deaths involving fentanyl more than doubled from 2019 to 2020. and the Utah Poison Control Center has only expected things to get worse. Even those who aren't thought to be at risk of a fentanyl-related crisis or death are getting caught up in the epidemic. And that might be why someone who showed none of the risk factors associated with opioid abuse ventured into the dark world of illicit fentanyl to stage her own husband's death and get away with his murder.

1:38But this person didn't just capitalize on the opioid crisis. She also took the opportunity to bolster her personal brand, even at the alleged expense of her children. Soon, she'd realized that the problem with embarking on a life of crime, all in the name of greed, is that successfully pulling off a crime is hard. You've got to be savvy. You've got to be smart. Unfortunately for the woman currently sitting in a Utah jail cell, she was neither.

2:19This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin.

2:28Today we'll be talking about Corey Richens, the Utah-based house flipper and mother of three who has been accused of poisoning her husband in order to steal all of his assets. We'll trace the path to that fateful night in the Richens' household and every misstep Corrie made in her fight to prove her innocence. We'll also examine the shocking family secret that came to light while Corrie sat behind bars.

3:08In 2013, Corey and Eric Richens had a small backyard wedding. Corey was 23 and Eric was 31. They had a young son and Eric owned a stone masonry business that was worth about a few million dollars. Even though they were already a pretty well-established family, they wanted to prepare for the risk that things wouldn't work out. So they agreed on a prenup, which states that some assets would remain in Eric's ownership if they divorced. But Corey could claim ownership of some of those things if Eric died while they were still married. The list of assets included Eric's 50 % ownership in his business.

3:47It sounds like a fairly standard prenup. To some, the agreement might have suggested that Corey and Eric's relationship wasn't particularly strong. Especially since they already had a child at the time. it maybe raised the question of whether they were marrying for love or simply for their son's sake. There is a certain stigma attached to prenups, but let's assume for a minute that they can also be a show of good faith, a way of saying, I'm not in this for your money and I'll prove it by signing away my rights to it if we break up. In any case, over the next few years it seemed like things were going well for the Richens.

4:24They had two more sons and they adored their kids, they spent as much time with them as they could. They were a soccer family and Cory and Eric went to every single one of their son's games. Even with a growing family, Eric was more than able to provide. But Cory wanted to make her own mark, not just as a lady of the house, but as a career woman in her own right. Their small town of Camas, Utah, was known for its serene hiking and shimmering lakes, but it was less developed than Park City or Salt Lake City. Corrie saw an opportunity to spruce up their community and to make some money while doing it.

5:01She wanted to break into the real estate business, and she started out with a rental portfolio. Here is Emily Ashcraft, a reporter at KSL.com. She did have a lot of rental properties, I think 12 to 14. So she was getting income from those. Corrie managed the properties and leased them out. But sometime around 2015, her business started going south. She was way in debt. She was overestimating what she had in her bank account in order to get loans that she likely wouldn't be able to pay off. She needed a lifeline. And with a portfolio that big, that lifeline needed to be pretty substantial. For whatever reason, Corey wasn't comfortable asking Eric for help.

5:51even though his business was thriving and helping his wife's business would ostensibly have been good for the whole family. Instead, Corey decided to help herself. To Eric's money. And I'm not talking about stealing cash from his wallet or transferring some funds to her PayPal account. Allegedly, Corey fraudulently withdrew$100 ,000 from Eric's bank accounts and borrowed$30 ,000 on his credit cards. Of course, Eric quickly found out about this and he was livid. He confronted Corey and she promised to pay everything back. But instead, she allegedly forged Eric's signature and opened a new bank account under his name.

6:37And without his knowledge. This account had a revolving line of credit and she allegedly borrowed$250 ,000. She had broken her promise to her husband, big time. But all of this did seem to get Corey's business back on track. I mean, how could it not? That was a lot of money to steal. Then in 2019, she officially launched a business flipping houses for a profit. According to friends and family, she worked on about three houses at a time. By all appearances, it looked like Corey was on track to pay back everything she owed. If nothing else, it seems like Eric saw that she was making a genuine effort to make right, and the tensions in their relationship started to ease.

7:23Then in March of 2022, Corey made a huge sale. It was a big win for her business, and she and Eric had drinks that night to celebrate. Corey planned to close the sale the next day. Then she wanted to plan a big party with all of her friends to celebrate it some more. So after one drink, she and Eric went to bed. According to Corey, around 3am, she woke up because one of the boys had a nightmare. She went to his room to calm him down and then went back to bed. That's when she noticed that Eric didn't wake up when their son was freaking out. It was unlike him. He hadn't moved an inch. Concerned, she tried to wake him, but he was unresponsive.

8:07Panic set in and Corey called 911. one. When medics arrived, they confirmed that Eric was dead. Initially, they suspected he had suffered an aneurysm. In an instant, Corey went from wife to widow. She now faced the reality of raising her three boys alone without Eric's support. As devastated as she may have been, she still found time to plan and host that huge party the day after he died. It was reported that she was drinking and celebrating. Maybe she was putting on a brave face or maybe focusing on business helped her cope with things. Or maybe she knew she needed to secure her business as much as possible, especially after discovering that back in 2020, Eric had consulted a divorce attorney, created a living trust, and placed his sister in charge of it.

9:04In the event of his death, she was to ensure that Eric's kids were provided for and no one else. He transferred his share of the company into the trust and named the trust as a beneficiary of his life insurance policy, not Corey. If Corey knew about this immediately after Eric's death, she didn't show it. She didn't mention it to friends or family, nor did she take any steps to challenge it. And in the months that followed, she appeared to be managing financially, supporting herself and her sons without issue. But coping with Eric's death emotionally was much harder, especially when the truth about how he died came to light.

9:48An autopsy showed that Eric didn't actually have an aneurysm. He had a fentanyl overdose. Five times the lethal dose was found in his system, and it was illicit, not medical grade. According to the medical examiner, Eric had adjusted it orally. Corey certainly didn't tell her kids about this. On the outside, her priority was to help them cope. She said she was struggling to teach them about death and grief. Parents have every right to teach their kids about death in whatever way they see fit. There's no single roadmap for navigating grief and every family handles it differently. But for those struggling to find the right words, there are plenty of resources.

10:33You can easily search the internet for books, therapists, and expert guidance to help kids process loss in a healthy way. But for some reason, though, Corey couldn't seem to find those tools. Maybe she just wasn't that savvy with Google. All judgment aside, Corey did what she was known to do. She thought outside the box. About a year after Eric's death, Corey appeared on Good Morning Utah. You know, I just watched the struggle that my kids were going through. And I went on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and trying to find something that we could use to cope at nights. Nights are the hardest, it seems like, for everybody when, you know, dealing with anything.

11:17But I just wanted some story to read to my kids at night. And I just could not find anything. I couldn't find anything that really, you know, suited them or help them find comfort and peace. And so, you know, I was like, let's just write one. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket.

11:50Visit Progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Since Corey couldn't find a children's book about grief, she decided to sit down with her kids and write one of their own. Here's Emily Ashcroft again. It was published March 5, 2023. three. The title is Are You With Me? And it's got a picture of a boy playing soccer. Eric Richens would take his boys to soccer games. So that's something they did. That's featured in the pictures of the book. Basically, it's a kid saying, are you here?

12:34Are you around when I blow out birthday candles or when I win a soccer game? And the dad just reassures he's in the sky with angel wings on and he reassures like, yes, I'm here with you throughout all those things. I can see how a book like this could help children process their grief, especially when it's about their actual life with their dad and they helped write it. The heartwarming story spread throughout Utah. Horry was seen as more dedicated and hardworking than ever, but that reputation wouldn't last. Because even though Corey might not have wanted people to know about Eric's actual cause of death, as we all know, anytime someone dies from having that much fentanyl in their system, authorities are going to get involved.

13:25And they're going to look at who that person spent their final hours with. In Eric's case, the last person to see him alive was Corey. She was promoting the book and no one batted an eye at that. We didn't know at the time that she was being investigated. So while Corey was continuing to grow her real estate business and going on a press tour as a newly minted children's book author, investigators were looking at our financial records and speaking to people close to the Richens. Soon, they discovered that Corey might have been capable of more than raising a family and running a business on her own She also might have been capable of murder

14:17In March of 2023, Corey Richens appeared on Good Morning Utah to promote her children's book, Are You There? That she wrote with her three young sons in the wake of her husband's sudden death Corey's husband Eric's passing had appeared to be from an aneurysm, and it seems like Corey let her friends and family believe that. But in reality, his death was later ruled a homicide, caused by a fentanyl overdose. Toxicology reports revealed that Eric had five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system the night he died. Investigators started looking into what might have happened. For some reason, Corey seemed to ignore the fact that Eric's family would also be notified of his actual cause of death.

15:03And they were more than happy to tell detectives what they really thought of Eric's widow. According to Emily Ashcraft, a reporter at KSL.com, Eric had even raised suspicions about Corey to them. Eric Richenson told his family, If I'm gone, look into her. So they did. And that's how investigators started piecing together what really happened the night of Eric's death and what might have led to it. They say that she drugged her husband's drink. What we do know is that Corey Richens, at about 3.15 in the morning, called 911 to report she had found her husband unconscious, not responsive. One of the things prosecutors point out is that the call happened about 15 minutes after her fitness watch reported her getting up, moving around.

16:01So they're saying she was not in a rush to call 911. one. She says that she was helping some children with a bad dream in the middle of the night. So it obviously wasn't suspicious enough for police to arrest her or charge her right on the spot. It took them over a year. She was in some legal trouble. Her husband changed around the will and there was a confrontation over getting into a safe. And so she did get some misdemeanor charges pretty soon after her husband's death, but not any murder charges. The closer investigators looked, the more clear it became. Corey had plenty of financial motives.

16:46They're claiming it was all financial. She was way in debt. She was overestimating what she had in her bank account in order to get loans that she likely wouldn't be able to pay off. Her husband died shortly after they closed on a personal home that she was going to fix up, that she was really happy about it. But it sounds like he didn't really want to make that purchase. It was more to help her business rather than his. Eric's sister, Katie, told investigators that Corey had stolen money from his accounts and fraudulently opened accounts in his name. And remember, Corey and Eric's prenup granted her the right to many of his assets if he were to die, so the evidence for a financial motive was pretty damning.

17:39But the deeper detectives dug into Corey's life, the more they uncovered about why she might have wanted her husband dead. Among the discoveries? Text messages between Corey and another man, whom she was apparently having an affair with. Someone that prosecutors are referring to as her paramour. They texted frequently. Investigators found evidence of some lavish vacations Corey had been on, presumably with the man she was having an affair with. In response, Corey sent them a rambling email explaining those vacations and even flipping things around on Eric. ABC4 Utah covered those emails. More and more of her personal affairs keep coming to light.

18:25In a recent release of documents, emails she sent to the police have now been made public. The email written by Richens was sent to Sergeant Chad Hoffmeyer of the Summit PD, Frank Root, and CC Detective Jeff O'Driscoll. In the email, she talks of being a soccer mom, of an affair she said Eric was having, the woman's name redacted. She uses emojis and LOLs, the tone informal. Detectives continued to scour Corey's digital footprint and came across even more incriminating details. First, they discovered that she'd been using burner phones. Well, kind of. Usually burner phones are prepaid, used to make phone calls, and then destroyed.

19:07But apparently Corey had never seen Breaking Bad or any of the other thousands of crime shows out there because not only did she use smartphones, she accessed the internet on them. There have definitely been some interesting Google searches. According to the New York Times, she searched for things like Women Utah Prison. Can cops uncover deleted messages iPhone? If someone is poisoned, what does it go down on the death certificate as? How long does life insurance companies take to pay? And what is a lethal dose of fentanyl? I've covered a lot of suspicious behavior on this show, but this, this is a new low.

19:56Also, I'm interested in what search results she got because the answer to any one of those questions should have been enough to clue Corey into the fact that she would definitely be a suspect in her husband's murder. It is always funny to me in these cases how many people don't realize that Google searches can be pulled up. The officers are going to find them. That evidence just always makes me laugh. Still, as obvious as these searches were, investigators didn't quite have a smoking gun. But soon they learned something that was enough to place Corey under arrest. she had multiple employees that helped her contracted employees she had a woman that cleaned apartments for her this woman police have been talking to all along the way she kind of connected cory richens to either two or three times that she helped her get fentanyl so police have been able to make these connections to cory richens getting fentanyl through this cleaning lady.

21:03But more recently, they added a text with another employee. I think it was a gardener who did not help her get fentanyl, but just to show she was reaching out to multiple people that she was interested in this drug. Investigators spoke with a handyman who provided them with text messages from Corey. Just weeks before Eric's death, she asked him for fentanyl. Now, in addition to an aggravated murder charge, Corey was facing three counts of possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Suffice it to say, she wasn't exactly being careful. To be fair, seeking illicit drugs does not automatically make someone a murderer.

21:47But at this point, if Corey was this reckless about acquiring fentanyl, it was only a matter of time before investigators uncovered even more evidence against her. And that's exactly what the police were banking on. Once they knew Corey had been shopping around for fentanyl, investigators started connecting the dots. According to Eric's loved ones, she had slipped something into his food a month before he died. On Valentine's Day, 2022, the couple had dinner together. Shortly after, Eric became violently ill. It's unclear whether he went to the hospital or if anyone found out exactly what was wrong with him, but he told one of his friends that he thought Corey was trying to poison him.

22:34Finally, in May 2023, just two months after releasing her children's book about grief, Corey was charged with her husband's murder. Given the overwhelming evidence against her, she was held without bail. At that time, members of her community began to question whether the children's book she wrote with her kids was a genuine effort to help them cope with their father's death, or if she simply used his death to bolster her public image. She's gotten a lot of grief for putting her children into this book and using their likeness to get more money. Despite her crumbling reputation, Corey thought that what the public needed was more Corey.

23:24Normally, defendants are pretty quiet while they await trial. They speak with their defense team, of course, but the public doesn't really hear from them again until they appear in court. But Corey couldn't stay out of the spotlight. After her book tour, she saw herself as a local celebrity, someone the public was eager to hear from, someone who didn't have to follow the rules. After about a year behind bars, she began sending voice notes to the press from her jail cell, and they were just as rambling as the emails she'd sent to investigators. I've been silent for a year, worked 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.

24:13I've been incarcerated for a year, promised a timely trial which hasn't happened. The prosecution will do anything they can to prolong this process and hide their corruption. I will not play into the prosecution's unconstitutional behavior anymore, and although I am 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. And I'm ready to get this one heck of a fight. You took an innocent mom away from her babies. And this means war. This was just the start of the bizarre behavior Corey displayed from jail. Soon investigators and the public realized that she might not have just been an amateur criminal motivated by greed, Corey Richens seemed downright delusional.

25:12In May 2023, Corey Richens was arrested for aggravated murder and three counts of possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Investigators believe she poisoned her husband Eric to death with illicit fentanyl. As evidence piled up, financial records, witness statements, and more, Corrie scrambled for ways to convince people of her innocence. The first thing she did was send a voice recording to the Utah press, claiming the case was nothing more than a conspiracy against her. Shortly after, in September 2023, something else leaked from Corrie's jail cell, something she allegedly never meant for prosecutors to see.

25:57Here's reporter Emily Ashcraft from KSL.com. The letter was found in her jail cell when she was rushed to get some medical care at one point. Prosecutors immediately published it on the public docket and her attorneys were like, please don't do that. Anyways, they were claiming that she was tampering with witnesses, but no chargers were ever brought for that. But this letter says that her attorney is going to test the gummies for fentanyl. And if they can find fentanyl, that proves that her husband was taking it on his own. I'll pause for a second because we haven't discussed one detail yet. Apparently, on the night Eric died, he had taken a THC gummy.

26:40So while prosecutors aimed to prove that Corey poisoned Eric's drink that night, Corey seemingly wanted to prove that his gummy was laced and that Eric consumed it of his own volition. Back to Emily. The letter overall is just trying to connect Eric Ritchens to fentanyl in some way. It's directed at her mom. She tells her mom to make sure there's a connection between her brother and Eric Ritchens going to Mexico and trying to say that he got fentanyl in Mexico. She claims that Eric Richards would put fentanyl in her bag, that he always wanted her to get caught for his drug use. Anyways, there's just this narrative.

27:20And after it came out, her attorney said that it was a fictional story. So Corey is apparently willing to throw her own brother under the bus. And to cover up this embarrassing revelation, her attorney claimed that the six-page letter was part of a novel Corey was working on in prison. But the letter was too incriminating, too close to home. In it, Corrie essentially coached her mother on what to say on the stand. The letter's still public, so you can read it for yourself. But it was not something she wanted out there, you can tell. She was not happy about it being out there. It is not another children's book.

28:03It became known as the Walk the Dog letter, because Corey wrote walk the dog in big letters with a bunch of exclamation points at the top. The letter immediately caused a stir. The state filed both the letter and a motion for a no-contact order asking that Corey not be allowed to speak with or contact her mother or her brother during the litigation. Then in mid-October, Corey's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss her case based on the letter. They said it violated a gag order, and since the public had seen the letter, Corrie wouldn't be tried fairly. And the problem with the state's characterization over and over and over again, and in fact that F got progressively worse or progressively more definitive in their statements that she is guilty of witness tampering, and that's the narrative that the media has picked up.

29:01they dispel or they characterize the defendant's alternative theory or perhaps a potential theory of the defense as a false narrative that it's a lie right which completely diminishes the credibility of anything we say and then they've gone on to say and all of her witnesses are lying and she's telling her witnesses to lie. So now we're in a position where anybody we put up there, you know, a jury pool is going to say, well, I mean, she witnessed Stanford, so obviously these people are lying. The next day, prosecutors petitioned the court to see the full document, not just the six pages that had been released.