Utah Woman Charged With Killing Husband Googled ‘Luxury Prisons for the Rich in America’

One would think that, given the worrying amount of true crime content our country consumes on the regular, the general public would be even an iota better at covering up their alleged horrendous crimes. That certainly has not been the case for Kouri Richins.

Richins is the Utah woman who wrote a children’s book about grief, along with her three sons, after her husband died in March 2022, only to then be charged last month with murdering him by lacing his Moscow Mule with fentanyl. Along with allegedly texting her drug supplier that she wanted “the Michael Jackson stuff,” court documents released Friday show even more potentially incriminating phone activity.

According to CNN, prosecutors say that Richins searched the following things on her phone:

• “can cops force you to do 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.”

Obviously none of these searches bode well for Richins, but I really need to take a moment to sit with “Luxury prisons for the rich in America.” Isn’t that just…a cruise ship?! No, no, I’m kidding; I am aware of the cushy prisons reality stars and government officials are sent to that appear to be pared down resorts. But searching for that in the middle of the other queries is the equivalent of taking a brief pause from sobbing to look up and examine your face in the mirror.

The new filings also suggest that Richins may have forged her late husband’s estate and life insurance documents in order to set herself up better. “The forgeries in this case are ‘simulated forgeries,’” Matt Throckmorton, a forensic document examiner, explained in court today. “That is when someone tries to copy, draw or duplicate another person’s characteristics and habits and tries to create a fraudulent signature or set of initials with enough similarities they might get passed off as genuine.”

Richins also allegedly searched online multiple times to see if her family had donated to the local police department. For someone who seemingly doesn’t understand the idea of incriminating evidence, she certainly appears to understand the nuanced benefits of privilege within our country’s carceral system.

The judge in the hearing denied Richins bail before her trial.