The housekeeper who worked for Utah grief author Kouri Richins has testified that she supplied her with the drugs the prosecution says the mom-of-three used to murder her husband.
Richins, 35, was arrested in connection with the death of her husband Eric, 39, in May 2023 and finally went to trial in Park City, Utah, on Monday.
Eric was found dead in his bed in Kamas in March 2022. A subsequent autopsy found he had five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system when he died – and, say cops, it was administered by Richins who allegedly laced a Moscow Mule cocktail with the substance.
On Thursday, cleaner Carmen Lauber, 53, appeared on the stand and claimed she was asked to supply Richins with drugs four times, before providing the mom-of-three with pills twice – in January and February 2022.
Lauber is the prosecution’s star witness and testified that she procured drugs for Richins from a dealer called Robert Crozier, doing the exchange at a gas station in Draper, Utah.
One transaction was for $600 and the other for $1,000. Lauber said she was asked by Richins to purchase pills for back pain.
Although she didn’t know exactly what was required, she assumed that meant prescription pain pills – in this case OxyContin - and duly supplied them.
In previous testimony, she claimed she was given the go ahead to buy fentanyl when the grief author allegedly asked her for a second pill purchase, specifying ‘that Michael Jackson stuff’ – a claim she reiterated in court on Thursday.
Prosecutors allege Richins killed her husband Eric Richins, 39, (both pictured) with fentanyl-laced pills dissolved in a cocktail in 2022
Richins, 35, is currently being held at the Summit County Jail as her high-profile murder trial in Park City, Utah unfolds. Her housekeeper Carmen Lauber, 53, was allegedly asked by Richins to source the fentynl for the murder
Pushed by defense attorney Wendy Lewis, Lauber admitted she did not know what the ‘Michael Jackson stuff’ asked for by Richins meant and had to google it - discovering it was a powerful painkiller called propofol.
Lewis said Lauber had repeatedly changed her story and admitted to having a learning disability that meant her memory was poor.
In an explosive twist, Lauber claimed she confronted Richins following Eric’s death but was told that the pills weren’t for him and that he died of a brain aneurysm.
Dressed casually in a beige t-shirt topped with a plaid shirt and her long black hair pulled back, Lauber became defensive on the stand during a cross examination from Lewis who got her to admit she herself was taking drugs including meth and heroin throughout her interactions with the former house flipper.
Richins herself, dressed in a navy blouse and a brick red blazer, offered her former employee several hard stares as her testimony continued.
Lewis also pursued Lauber on her own legal woes – she was jailed on two charges of possession with intent to supply in 2021 – and implied that the housekeeper had agreed to testify against Richins to avoid further criminal action against her and immunity in the case.
Lauber, who has since moved to live with her fiancé in Las Vegas, Nevada, was facing a potentially lengthy prison term had she been convicted of distributing and possessing drugs that caused Eric’s death.
According to the defense, she was interviewed seven times by cops – and admitted to taking meth and heroin but denied knowing anything about fentanyl.
That, claimed Lewis, was a lie – noting that Lauber’s own daughter had almost died from overdosing from the drug.
Faced with the prospect of further prison time over Eric’s death, Lauber allegedly told cops during an interview ‘that would f***ing kill me’.
Later, Lewis played explosive footage of Lauber’s first interview with cops about Richins in which they threatened to add to her prison sentence unless she helped them with their case.
In the footage, cops are heard saying: ‘we need you to give us the details that lead to Kouri Richins’ conviction for murder’.
Responding in court, Lauber said: ‘I chose to proceed with telling the truth.’
Much of the prosecution case hinges on their theory that Richins deliberately obtained fentanyl to poison Eric with.
That strategy was almost struck a fatal blow in October when Crozier – the dealer who supplied the drugs to Lauber – claimed in a sworn statement he never sold her fentanyl but OxyContin instead on both occasions.
But the prosecution pointed to an interview Crozier did while locked up in the Davis County Jail in May 2023 in which he claimed that the pills were laced with fentanyl and both Lauber and Richins knew about it.
The defense, meanwhile, says there is no evidence that Richins poisoned her husband’s drink and says he could have purchased the drugs that killed him himself during a vacation in Mexico two weeks before he died.
Crozier is among the witnesses expected to testify during the trial which is scheduled to run for five weeks.
So far, the court has heard from multiple forensic experts, as well as cops who attended the scene of Eric’s death and his father, sister and brother-in-law.
