Utah woman's hopes of flipping mansion flop after murder charge
Utah woman accused of murdering husband loses $12 million real estate deal after his death.
Updated on: May 13, 2026 / 7:17 PM EDT / CBS News
CASE UPDATE: Kouri Richins was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on May 13, 2026. In March, a jury convicted her of murder and other charges in her husband's 2022 death.
In the early morning hours of March 4, 2022, Kouri Richins says she found her husband Eric unresponsive in their bed. She said his death was an accident, but a year later she was arrested and charged with murder . The circumstances surrounding Eric Richins' death are investigated in "The People v. Kouri Richins," reported by contributor Natalie Morales.
Kouri's family says she lost more than just the father of her three young sons and husband of nine years. She also lost a huge business deal worth millions.
Kouri owned a real estate business specializing in buying and flipping houses for a profit. Her mother Lisa Darden says it was a constant rotation of new projects, and at any one time Kouri could be working on three different properties, "I would say on average." Darden had watched Kouri build the business from the ground up and says Kouri was proud of her success. Greg Hall was her friend and marketing director. He says the reason for Kouri's success was that she had something that a lot of people don't. "A lot of times you find an individual that is intelligent, but no common sense or common sense and no intelligence. She had both. She was a brilliant young lady," said Hall.
Before Eric died, Darden says Kouri was working on the biggest house-flipping deal of her career. The project was a 10-acre estate in Heber City, Utah, not far from the famed Park City ski resort. It was prime real estate. "I think this was kind of her dream when she got into this idea of flipping houses was to be able to do properties like this," Kouri's attorney, Skye Lazaro, told Morales as they toured the property.