She Wrote a Book About Grief… Then Was Charged With Murder — Rain ASMR

0:00 This is Edward, come join me because I have a story to tell you tonight. It's dark and twisty, but it's true. Before we settle down, let me know what time it is and where in the world you're listening from. And if you like our little community of night owls, please follow from wherever you're listening. Let's begin in the mountains of Utah, where winter snow settles softly on rooftops and the air carries that stillness of high altitude. They lived a family that seemed to have everything figured out.

0:40 Park City sits nestled in those mountains, a place where successful people build their lives, where real estate moves in millions, not thousands. Eric and Cory Richens had made their home in this world. Eric, at 39, was a man who understood the value of hard work. He'd built a successful stone masonry business with his partner, Cody Wright. His hands new stone and mortar, the satisfaction of building something that would last.

1:17 Corey, 35, moved through the world of real estate. She developed a business flipping houses, buying properties, improving them, selling them for profit. It was ambitious work that required significant capital and careful timing. They shared three children together, boys who filled their home with the kind of noise and movement that makes a house feel alive. Soccer practices and school events, the comfortable rhythm of family life. From their neighbors perspective, the Richings family represented something enviable, a marriage that had weathered 9 years, children who seemed happy and well cared for success without ostentation.

2:09 Eric had always been someone who powered through difficulties, illness, injury, setbacks. He rarely slowed down. He dealt with COVID, with Lyme disease, with the physical demands of his business, and he kept moving forward.

2:27 Cory's real estate business was demanding. Success in house flipping depends on timing, having enough resources to weather unexpected costs, and maintaining relationships with contractors and lenders. Their home reflected their combined achievements. It was comfortable without being excessive. The kind of place where family life could unfold naturally and where children could grow up with both stability and opportunity. In the months leading up to March 2022, those who knew the family might have noticed subtle shifts, nothing dramatic.

3:07 Eric had been dealing with some lingering health challenges. Corey's business required more and more of her attention, more financial resources to keep projects moving forward. They were, by all appearances, a family navigating the normal complexities of successful adult life, work pressures, health concerns, the constant juggling act of parenting while maintaining careers and a marriage. The children continued their routines. Their home remained a place of warmth and activity, filled with the sounds of boys growing up, of parents managing the daily details that keep a household functioning.

3:54 In Park City, where success is often measured in property values and business growth, the Richins family seemed to be thriving.

4:06 On a quiet evening in March 2022, as the Richins family settled into what seemed like another ordinary night, none of them could have known that everything was about to change forever. The house was peaceful. The children were settling into their bedtime routines. Eric and Corey were winding down from another day of work and family responsibilities. It was the kind of evening that happens in thousands of homes, unremarkable in his familiarity. But sometimes, in the space between one ordinary moment and the next, everything shifts.

4:49 March 4th, 2022, a Friday evening that began. Like so many others, Corey had reason to celebrate. She just closed on a property, a $2,000,000 house that represented months of work, negotiation, careful planning, the kind of deal that made all the stress and financial juggling worthwhile. She decided to make Eric a drink, a Moscow Mule, the cocktail that feels like a small celebration. Ginger beer, vodka, lime, something to mark the end of a successful week. They drank in their bedroom, a quiet moment between husband and wife, away from the children and the demands of their separate worlds.

5:39 Eric seemed to enjoy it. They talked about the day, about the property deal, about ordinary things that fill the space between two people who've been married for nine years. Little was Eric to know that this would be his last night alive. Later that evening, one of their sons experienced night terrors, the kind of frightening episode that sends any parent rushing to comfort their child. Corey went to him, spent time soothing him back to sleep. When she returned to their bedroom around 3:00 in the morning, she found Eric lying on his back, cold, heavy, not breathing.

6:24 The 911 call came at 3 O 6:00 AM. My husband, he's not breathing. He's cold and he's not breathing. The dispatcher guided her through the steps. Check for a pulse, try CPR, keep talking to him. But Corey didn't seem to be able to follow the dispatcher's instructions. I can't move it, she said when he asked to bring her husband's body to the floor. It was too late. Eric was gone. The first responders arrived to find him lying at the foot of the bed. His body was straight, positioned in a way that seemed unusual to the EM TS.

7:09 They'd seen many deaths, many scenes, and something about his positioning caught their attention. Something wasn't right. There was blood coming from his mouth, more than they typically expected to see. Margaret Offred, the advanced EMT who responded later, described finding Eric cold to the touch. He'd been dead for some time before anyone attempted resuscitation. The house filled with a controlled chaos of emergency response. Paramedics, sheriff's deputies, the careful choreography of people trained to handle crisis.

7:50 Corey, still in her pajamas, recounted the evening to the officers, the celebration drink, her son's night terrors. Returning to find Eric unresponsive. She seemed shocked, disoriented. Eric's family received the call in the early morning hours. His father, his sister Amy, her husband. All of them pulled from sleep into the worst kind of news. Amy Richens would later describe that phone call as the moment their world changed forever. Her brother, who'd always seemed so strong, so capable of pushing through any challenge, was suddenly gone.

8:33 They rushed to the house, arriving to find it still filled with emergency personnel, still carrying the weight of what had just happened. Curry was there, surrounded by the aftermath of the night. She seemed overwhelmed, struggling to process what had occurred. The family gathered in those early morning hours, trying to make sense of something that felt impossible to understand. Eric had been dealing with health issues, yes, but nothing that suggested he was in immediate danger. He was 39 years old.

9:14 The house that had been filled with the ordinary sounds of family life just hours before now carried a different kind of silence. In the bedroom where Eric and Corey had shared their celebration drink, investigators began their initial examination. They photographed the scene, documented the position of his body, collected what seemed relevant. An empty bottle of cock and bull ginger beer was found in the trash, one of the ingredients Curry had mentioned using for the Moscow Mule. The children, mercifully, had slept through most of the emergency response.

9:58 They would wake to a world fundamentally changed, though they wouldn't fully understand it yet. As dawn broke over Park City, the rich and family faced their first day without Eric, the man who'd been the foundation of so much the business, the family, the steady presence that had anchored their lives. Curry found herself a widow at 35, with three young sons and a real estate business. The investigation into Eric's death would begin that morning, standard procedure for any unexpected death, especially 1, involving someone so young, so apparently healthy.

10:44 But things were about to turn. Curry faced the immediate, overwhelming task that sudden widowhood demands Funeral arrangements, notifications to family and friends, the countless phone calls and decisions that death requires of the living. The community responded, as communities do. Neighbors brought food. Friends offered help with the children. The stone masonry business that Eric had built with Cody Wright suddenly needed decisions about his future. But those who knew the family began to notice something in Cory's behavior that felt not quite right.

11:28 Eric's sister, Amy had always felt protective of her brother. She'd watched his relationship with Corey develop, had seen the dynamics between them, and formed her own quiet concerns over time. Now, in the aftermath of his death, those concerns took on a different weight. Amy remembered conversations with Eric, times when he'd seemed worried, stressed about things beyond the normal pressures of work and family life. He'd mentioned feeling unwell after eating food Corey had prepared, small incidents that it seemed unremarkable at the time.

12:10 There was the trip to Greece years earlier, when Eric had become violently I'll. He told Amy he suspected Corey might have been involved, though it seemed almost impossible to believe. More recently, there had been Valentine's Day. Just weeks before his death, Eric had called his business partner, Cody Wright, with what Wright later described as fear and urgency in his voice. He'd eaten a sandwich Corey had left in his truck and had become sick, breaking out in hives, having trouble breathing. These incidents, viewed individually, could be explained away.

12:54 Food poisoning. Allergic reactions, the kind of health issues that happened to anyone. But taken together, they formed a pattern that made Eric's family increasingly uncomfortable. Curry, meanwhile, was dealing with her own immediate crisis. She owed millions of dollars to various lenders, hard money loans with high interest rates and balloon payments. Lines of credit that were maxed out. A web of financial obligations that it seemed manageable when spread between two incomes, but now felt overwhelming the house flipping business that it seemed so promising just days before now represented a series of urgent problems that needed immediate solutions.

13:47 But Eric had been insured multiple life insurance policies that, combined, would pay out over $2,000,000. The timing was strangely fortunate. Some of these policies were relatively new, taken out in the months and years leading up to Eric's death. The most recent had gone into effect just 10 days before he died. As Corey navigated the insurance claims process, she also began working on something else, a project that would, she hoped, help her children process their grief while also creating a new source of income.

14:28 A children's book about loss, about a father who dies but continues to watch over his son from heaven. She titled it Are You With Me? The cover showed a father with Angel wings looking down at a young boy. It was, she explained to those who asked, her way of helping her sons understand that their father was still with them, just in a different way. The speed with which she completed it surprised some people. Within weeks of Eric's death, she was already reaching out to local television stations, pitching appearances to promote the book.

15:10 She appeared on Good Things Utah, a local morning show, just a few weeks after becoming a widow. But the book hadn't actually been written by Corey alone. Text messages recovered later would show that she'd worked with a ghostwriter, someone who'd helped to write the book. This wasn't necessarily unusual. Many celebrity authors use ghostwriters. But Corey wasn't a celebrity, and she had been passing it off as her own. In her television appearance on Good Things Utah, Corey spoke with calm composure about the challenges of sudden widowhood.

15:54 She described Eric's death as unexpected, something that had caught their family completely off guard. We had no idea, she told the interviewer. He seemed fine, he was healthy. It was just sudden. She talked about the importance of keeping Eric's memory alive for their children, about finding ways to help them feel connected to their father even though he was gone. But in time, her children would have to cope with a much darker truth. As Corey was building this public story in private, questions were beginning to emerge.

16:38 Eric's family had hired private investigator Todd Gabler to look into the circumstances of his death. Gabler's examination of phone records revealed something interesting a high volume of calls between Cory and their former housekeeper, Carmen Lauber.

17:00 The calls had been frequent in the weeks leading up to Eric's death, then had continued afterward. Nothing necessarily suspicious about that. People often lean on household help during times of crisis, but the pattern was notable enough to warrant attention. Meanwhile, the medical examiner's office was still working on determining the exact cause of Eric's death. The initial autopsy had been inconclusive, requiring additional testing and analysis. Toxicology results were pending. These tests would examine Eric's blood and tissue samples for any substances that might explain his sudden death.

17:47 As Curie waited for these results, she was also dealing with the practical aftermath of widowhood. The life insurance policies would provide significant relief, but the claims process required documentation, medical records, official cause of death determinations. She called the medical examiner's office multiple times, asking about supplemental reports, about when additional test results might be available. The calls seemed reasonable, a widow trying to understand what had happened to her husband, needing official documentation for insurance purposes.

18:32 But the frequency of her calls, the specific nature of her questions, would later be viewed in a different light. Beneath this public narrative, a more complicated picture was beginning to emerge, one that would challenge everything about the story she'd been telling. The toxicology results arrived in late spring, several weeks after Eric's death. They changed everything. Eric Richins had died from fentanyl poisoning. Not just a trace amount, but 15 nanograms per millilitre in his blood. This was five times the minimum level considered fatal.

19:16 The synthetic opioid had been accompanied by other substances, ethanol, quetiapine and acetyl fentanyl. The combination painted a picture of someone who'd ingested a massive, lethal dose of drugs for Eric's family. The results were shocking. Someone had given Eric enough fentanyl to kill him five times over. Detective Jeff O'Driscoll of the Summit County Sheriff's Office took over the investigation. What had begun as a routine inquiry into an unexpected death was now a potential homicide case. O'Driscoll began by examining the scene more carefully.

20:00 The Richins home had been searched multiple times since Eric's death, but now every detail took on new significance. In Eric's night stand, investigators had found an empty prescription bottle for hydrocodone. The bottle was photographed but initially not collected for testing. It seemed like standard evidence of someone managing chronic pain, but the presence of prescription opioids raised questions. Had Eric been struggling with addiction? Had he somehow obtained St. drugs that turned out to be laced with fatal amounts of fentanyl?

20:43 The detective began interviewing people who'd known Eric well. His business partner, Cody Wright, was adamant that Eric wasn't someone who used illicit drugs. Yes, he dealt with health issues, COVID, Lyme disease, the physical demands of his work, but Wright had never seen any signs of drug abuse. Wright did remember the concerning phone call from Valentine's Day, just weeks before Eric's death. Eric had called with what Wright described as fear and urgency in his voice. He'd eaten the sandwich that Corey had left in his truck and had become violently I'll breaking out in hives, having difficulty breathing.

21:32 At the time, it had seemed like a severe allergic reaction. Now, in light of the toxicology results, it took on a more sinister possibility. Detective O'Driscoll also spoke with Eric's family members. They shared their growing concerns about Curry's behaviour both before and after Eric's death. Amy Richins, Eric's sister, had been harbouring doubts for months. She told the detective about Eric's suspicions regarding the illness he'd experienced during their trip to Greece years earlier and his weariness around food that Corey prepared.

22:12 She also shared something that Eric had told her directly that he believed Corey had threatened to kill him. The private investigator of the family had hired, Todd Gabler, shared his findings with law enforcement. The phone records he'd analyzed showed an unusual pattern of communication between Curry and Carmen Lauber, their former housekeeper. The calls had been frequent in the weeks leading up to Eric's death, dozens of communications between the two women during a period when, according to Curry's public statements, she'd been focused on her real estate business and family life.

22:56 Lauber was a woman with her own complicated history. She'd worked for the Richins family as a housekeeper, but had also struggled with drug addiction. She was currently involved in drug court, trying to address her substance abuse issues through the legal system. When O'Driscoll first approached her, Lauber was reluctant to talk. She seemed nervous, evasive, unwilling to provide details about her relationship with Corey or the nature of their frequent communications. But as the detective pressed, explaining the seriousness of the investigation, Lauber's resistance began to crumble.

23:43 Eventually, she admitted something that would become central to the case against Corey Richins. She had purchased drugs for Corey. Not once, but multiple times in the months leading up to Eric's death, Lorber described meeting with a dealer named Robert Crozier at a gas station. She bought pills that she understood to be Roxy's street name for oxycodone, but she also admitted that Corey had specifically asked for something stronger. The Michael Jackson stuff was how Lauber remembered Corey describing what she wanted, a reference to the powerful drugs that had killed the pop *.

24:29 According to Lauber, she'd made these purchases in February 2022, just weeks before Eric's death. The timing aligned perfectly with the Valentine's Day incident when Eric had become I'll after eating the sandwich Corey had prepared. Cell phone records corroborated parts of Lorber's story. Her phone and Crozier's phone had been in the same location near the gas station she described on the date she claimed the drug purchases had occurred. Detective O'Driscoll also discovered that hundreds of text messages between Kuri and Lauber from early 2022 had been deleted from both of their phones.

25:20 The messages from the crucial period leading up to Eric's death were gone, but Detective O'Driscoll knew that building a murder case would require more than suspicious circumstances and the testimony of a drug addicted housekeeper. The answer lay in the complex financial web that Curie had been navigating in the months before her husband's death. Detective O'Driscoll understood early on that one voice would not be enough. Carmen Lauber's account, even if true, rested on uncertain ground. A housekeeper struggling with addiction offered immunity in exchange for her testimony.

26:07 It was a start, but not a foundation. On February 11th and again on February 26th, 20222 phones moved in quiet agreement. Carmen Lauber's and Robert Crozier's both connected to towers near a small gas station, the same place Lauber said the drugs had been purchased. The dates mattered. February 11th, just days before Valentine's Day, when Eric had fallen suddenly, violently, I'll February 26th, a little over a week before his death. It wasn't proof on its own, but it was alignment, and alignment has a way of narrowing possibilities.

26:57 O'Driscoll turned next to Crozier. He was already in custody, which made the conversation easier to arrange, but harder to trust. At first, Crozier kept things simple. He admitted to selling pills. Roxy's. He called them once, maybe twice. But fentanyl? No, not then. Not to her. But the past has a way of lingering. And when investigators placed an earlier recorded interview in front of him, his certainty began to shift. In that recording, he'd said something different. He'd confirmed it. Fentanyl.

27:37 Now, on the stand, he said he couldn't remember. He'd been detoxing his mind. Unreliable. It left the truth somewhere between versions, After her original phone had been taken by investigators, Corey started using a new one. And on that phone, the searches began. Can FBI find deleted messages? What is a lethal dose of fentanyl? If someone is poisoned, what does it go down as on a death certificate? They weren't brought questions. They were specific, targeted even. The typing carried a certain urgency.

28:21 Misspelled words, letters dropped or misplaced. The kind of small mistakes people make when they are thinking faster than they are writing.

28:33 Then there was the letter, written months later, in a place where time moves differently. A jail cell. September 2023. It became known as the Walk the Dog letter. Instructions carefully set out what to say, how to explain a version of events where Eric had his own history with drugs, where he had asked for them, where he had stored them himself. It read not like a memory, but like a plan, a way to shape what came next. By the time Detective O'Driscoll stepped back from the case, the picture had changed.

29:19 What began as a single account had become something broader. Digital traces, financial records, physical evidence, and words written in quiet moments that carried their own weight. By the time both sides were ready, 2 versions of the same story stood side by side. One of a woman overwhelmed and wrongly accused the other of a plan quietly carried out. And somewhere between those versions, said a jury, listening, weighing, deciding which story fell closest to the truth, the courtroom settled into silence.

30:03 Curry Richens sat still for a moment as the words reached her. Guilty on every count. The jury had taken less than three hours, not long for a decision that would shape the rest of her life. She looked down, breathing slowly as the weight of it began to settle around her. The room remained quiet. No sudden movement, no raised voices. Just a quiet recognition that something irreversible had happened. The case had been built carefully, piece by piece, and when everything was placed together, the jury had reached 1 conclusion that Eric Richins had been poisoned and that his wife was responsible.

30:55 12 people unanimous in that view. For Eric's family there was a sense of resolution, but the loss remained. Three children without their father. And now, without their mother, a family altered in a way that cannot be undone. Outside the courtroom, life continued. It always does. The mountains remain still, snow settling quietly as it had before, as it would again. For those who had known the family, there was a quiet awareness that nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors. There are no simple answers, only the record of what remains.

31:44 A verdict, a loss, and a story that settles into memory long after the room has emptied.

31:54 This has been Edward. If you've enjoyed my style of storytelling, please let me know. Sleep well. Good night.