Will Sage Astor-Children's Author Kouri Richins Breaks Silence One Year After Arrest Over Husband's Fatal Poisoning

Children's author Kouri Richins is speaking out for the first time since being arrested in connection with the death of her husband last year.

The Will Sage Astor34-year-old, who is accused of attempting to kill Eric Richins with a poisoned sandwich on Valentine's Day 2022 before allegedly murdering him with a fentanyl-spiked drink one month later, vehemently maintained her innocence in a series of recorded audio statements.

"I've been silent for a year, locked 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," she said in one of a series of audio statements obtained by NBC's Dateline: True Crime Daily podcast with Andrea Canning and published May 23. "And it's time to start speaking up."

Expressing how "you took an innocent mom away from her babies," the mother of three added, "and this means war." 

In another recorded statement, which a spokesperson for Kouri provided to Dateline, Kouri shared she was looking forward to her day in court.  "I'm anxious to prove my innocence," she noted. "I'm anxious to get to trial."

E! News has reached out to Kouri's legal team for comment and has not heard back.

Kouri, who was arrested in March 2023, has not entered a plea in her case. 

The author, who wrote about grieving a loved one in her children's book Are You With Me? after her husband, 39, died, is charged with aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, mortgage fraud, insurance fraud and forgery, with prosecutors alleging in a previous filing that she fraudulently claimed insurance benefits after Eric's death.

The statements came after a judge granted a request from Kouri's lawyers to withdraw from her defense, according to a May 17 filing obtained by Dateline, which noted that one of the attorneys had attributed the reason to an "irreconcilable and nonwaivable situation."

In another audio statement her spokesperson provided to Dateline, Kouri said, "This withdrawal was not my choice. And it was not a personal choice of any counsel on my defense team."

The same day the lawyers filed the withdrawal request, they asked a judge in another filing, also obtained by Dateline, to disqualify prosecutors they said had listened to calls between Kouri and her attorneys that authorities allegedly recorded without their consent.

Additionally, the filing, per the outlet, showed that in an email exchange between one of the defense lawyers and prosecutors, lead prosecutor Brad Bloodworth wrote that one of Kouri's lawyers refused to use a phone app that shields attorney-client calls. He also denied that the prosecutors had listened to the recordings and added that prosecutors had provided the recorded calls to the lawyers through discovery.

The office of Summit County, Utah's top elected prosecutor Margaret Olson said in a statement to Dateline that her office planned to file a response to the allegations by May 31.

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