Friend speaks out after Kouri Richins found guilty of fatally poisoning husband with fentanyl: Exclusive
Ali Staking talks about how she and her family reacted to Eric Richins’ sudden death and Kouri Richins’ subsequent murder trial. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — After Kouri Richins was charged with murder for fatally poisoning her husband with fentanyl, a friend of the Utah mother of three had a difficult time reconciling that.
In an exclusive interview with “20/20,” Ali Staking said she and her children were “devastated” about the sudden 2022 death of 39-year-old Eric Richins.
“I said, along the way, ‘Sometimes it looks like Kouri might have done it,'” Staking recalled saying to her children. “Then my kids would say, ‘Well, did she?’ And I’d say ‘I don’t think so. But, you know, it sometimes looks like it.'”
A Summit County jury ultimately found 35-year-old Kouri Richins guilty of aggravated murder on Monday, after prosecutors argued during the three-week trial that she killed her husband for financial gain by giving him a lethal dose of fentanyl in a cocktail.
Eric Richins was found dead in bed on March 4, 2022. An autopsy determined that he died from fentanyl intoxication, and the level of fentanyl in his blood was approximately five times the lethal dosage, according to the charging document. The medical examiner determined the fentanyl was “illicit fentanyl,” not medical grade, according to the charging document.
Kouri Richins, who self-published a children’s book on grief following her husband’s death, was arrested in May 2023 following a lengthy investigation.
The charges alleged that she spiked his drink with a lethal dose of fentanyl that she purchased illicitly, and that she also gave her husband a sandwich laced with fentanyl on Valentine’s Day two weeks before his death in an initial, failed attempt to kill him.
Prosecutors argued that Kouri Richins wanted a “fresh start” and to leave her husband, but didn’t want to leave his money. They said she was in “financial desperation” due to her house flipping business’ debts and needed a significant influx of cash immediately.
According to prosecutors, she believed she would have financially benefited from her husband’s death — without realizing that his assets were in a trust overseen by one of his sisters.
A jury found her guilty of all five counts, including aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, after about three hours of deliberations on Monday. She was also found guilty of insurance fraud for taking out a $100,000 insurance policy on her husband’s life with his forged signature and also for submitting a claim following his death.
Kouri Richins, who had pleaded not guilty and asserted her innocence from jail, did not testify during the trial and the defense called no witnesses. Her sentencing has been scheduled for May 13. She faces 25 years to life in prison.
Staking, who testified during the trial, said she was “very surprised that there was no defense.”
ABC News contributor Brian Buckmire suggested this was a reflection of the defense’s confidence.
“They may believe the prosecution didn’t make out their case, that having any witness on the stand wouldn’t make sense because they’ve already won their case,” he told “20/20.”
Staking said it was “surreal” learning that Eric Richins had died, describing him as a “dedicated dad” and a “goofy cowboy dude who loved to dance.”
“He had so much more life to live and he wanted so much for his boys,” she said. “I’m gonna remember just how much he loved them.”
Kouri Richins also faces more than two dozen charges in a separate case filed last year, including allegations that she committed mortgage fraud in 2021. The charging document alleges she submitted falsified bank statements in support of mortgage loan applications for her realty business, committed money laundering and issued bad checks.
The charges in the case also allege she murdered her husband for financial gain as she “stood on the precipice of total financial collapse.”
She has not yet entered a plea to those charges.
Staking said she wants Eric Richins to be remembered as a “loving dad.”
“I believe Eric is with his kids all the time every day,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anywhere else he’d wanna be.”
(NEW YORK) — A severe weather threat continues over the Deep South on Saturday with tornadoes and flash flooding possible. A Flash Flood Watch remains in effect for more than 8 million Americans in parts of Alabama and Georgia until Saturday evening.
Early Saturday morning, there were already active storms over parts of the South, primarily in Mississippi. The main threat will be in the morning into the afternoon hours where conditions will be more favorable for severe development.
These storms will continue into the afternoon from New Orleans to Clemson, South Carolina — including cities like Atlanta and Pensacola. Damaging wind, tornadoes, and some large hail are the primary threats Saturday morning and into the day.
The threat will die down later in the afternoon and into the early evening but rain continues to push east and northeast from the late evening into the overnight hours.
Another few rounds of heavy rain are likely and could inundate areas of the South again, leading to a widespread additional 1 to 3 inches, with some localized areas of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee getting up to 3 to 4 inches of additional rain.
Rain is expected to fall in Philadelphia starting at 11 a.m., New York City after 12 p.m. and Boston and further up the I-95 corridor later in the afternoon. Rain will continue through much of the day across most of the Northeast down to the Mid-Atlantic.
On the northern side of the storm, some light snow — quick dusting up to 3 inches — could fall in Chicago on Saturday morning, but will be clear before the NFL Wild Card Matchup this evening.
Parts of Wisconsin and especially Michigan could see 3 to 6 inches of fresh snow on Saturday, while northern New England could be cold enough to see a dusting to 3 inches of snow and up to a tenth of an inch of ice.
Jeffrey Epstein is seen in this image released by the Department of Justice in Washington, December 19, 2025. (U.S. Justice Department)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for hundreds of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors told ABC News that names and identifying information of numerous victims appear unredacted in the latest disclosure of files on the late sex offender by the Department of Justice, including several women whose names have never before been publicly associated with the case.
Three million pages from the DOJ’s files on Epstein were being released to the public Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing this morning.
Several categories of pages were withheld from the release due to their sensitive nature, Blanche said. These items include personally identifying information of the victims, victims’ medical files, images depicting child pornography, information related to ongoing cases and any images depicting death or abuse.
“We are getting constant calls for victims because their names, despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public, have all just been released for public consumption,” said Brad Edwards, an attorney for some of the victims, in a telephone interview with ABC News. “It’s literally 1000s of mistakes.”
ABC News has independently confirmed numerous instances of victims’ names appearing in documents included in the latest release.
Shortly after the new material appeared on Friday morning, Edwards said he and his law partner, Brittany Henderson, began receiving calls from clients.
“We contacted DOJ immediately, who has asked us to flag each of the documents where victim names appear unredacted and they will pull them down,” Edwards said. “it’s an impossible job. The easy job would be for the DOJ to type in all the victims’ names, hit redact like they promised to do, then release them. “
“They’re trying to fix it, but I said ‘the solution is take the thing down for now. There’s no other remedy to this. It just runs the risk of causing so much more harm unless they take it down first, then fix the problem and put it back up.'”
ABC News had reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The department has reviewed and redacted “several millions of pages” of materials related to the investigations of Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and expects to publish “substantially all” of the records “in the near term,” according to a letter filed Tuesday by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence prison.
Blanche said Friday’s release, which follows the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.
Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
Karen Read confers with defense attorneys Robert Alessi, left, and Elizabeth Little on June 9, 2025. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — This year was full of first-of-its-kind stories that got Americans talking. Here’s a look back at some of the most talked about U.S. stories of 2025 outside of politics, from the Los Angeles wildfires to Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial.
LA wildfires
The Palisades and Eaton fires erupted in Los Angeles County on Jan. 7. With severe drought conditions and strong Santa Ana winds fueling the flames, the fires spread quickly, killing at least 29 people and wiping out thousands of homes in the densely populated neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
In October, Jonathan Rinderknecht was arrested for allegedly igniting a brush fire in the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 1 — a fire that prosecutors say eventually became the Palisades Fire. Rinderknecht, a former Pacific Palisades resident, has pleaded not guilty to arson affecting property, timber set afire and destruction of property.
3 back-to-back plane crashes
On Jan. 29, an American Airlines regional jet was on approach to Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, sending both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River.
All 64 people on board the plane and all three soldiers on the helicopter were killed.
The collision marked the nation’s first major commercial airline crash since 2009.
The National Transportation Safety Board has not released its final report, which will determine the probable cause of the crash, but investigators said during a July hearing that the Black Hawk pilots likely didn’t know how high they were flying or how close they were to the plane due to faulty altimeters inside the aircraft. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters, “It’s possible there was zero pilot error here.”
After the crash, Sen. Ted Cruz introduced legislation called the ROTOR Act. The law would require nearly all aircraft to transmit Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B), a system which allows aircraft to transmit their location to other aircraft as well as air traffic controllers. It would also close a loophole that allows military aircraft to operate without ADSB-Out. The ROTOR Act is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
The NTSB is expected to reveal the probable cause and its recommendations in late January.
Just two days after the D.C. crash, a medical transport jet crashed in Philadelphia. The jet, which was carrying a child and her mother along with four other people, was in the air for less than a minute after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. All six people on board, as well as one person on the ground, were killed. The NTSB has not released a cause.
Then on Feb. 17, a Delta plane crashed and overturned during landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. All 80 people on board survived. Twenty-one passengers were injured, including two seriously injured.
A report released in March found that the right main landing gear broke and collapsed on impact as the plane landed at a high descent rate. Once the right main landing gear collapsed, the wing hit the runway, sprayed fuel and caused a fire. The Transportation Board of Canada has not yet released a probable cause for this crash.
Gene Hackman and his wife die in their home
When actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead at their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home during a Feb. 26 welfare check, their causes of death were not immediately clear, which sparked national intrigue.
In March, investigators announced that Arakawa, 65, died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare disease transmitted through rodent urine, droppings or saliva, officials said.
Hackman, 95, who died of cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease, was likely home with his deceased wife for one week before he died, officials said. Arakawa died around Feb. 12, while Hackman died around Feb. 18, officials said.
Hackman “was in an advanced state of Alzheimer’s, and it’s quite possible that he was not aware that she was deceased,” an investigator said.
One of the couple’s three dogs was also found dead in a crate during the welfare check. The dog likely died of dehydration and starvation, a report found.
Karen Read’s trial
On June 18, a Massachusetts jury found Karen Read not guilty of murdering her Boston police officer boyfriend, ending a criminal case that gripped the nation’s attention.
While Read was acquitted of the most serious charges — including second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene after an accident resulting in death — the jury did find her guilty of operating under the influence of liquor. The judge immediately sentenced her to one-year probation, the standard for a first-time offense.
The first criminal case against Read ended in a mistrial last year.
Prosecutors alleged Read hit her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, with her car outside the home of a fellow police officer after a night of heavy drinking in 2022 and then left him to die there during a blizzard. The defense had argued that Read’s vehicle did not hit O’Keefe and instead said O’Keefe was attacked by a dog and beaten by other people who were in the house before he was thrown outside in the snow to die.
Texas flooding
In the early hours of July 4, heavy rain inundated Texas’ Hill Country region, quickly sparking catastrophic flooding.
Over 130 people were killed, including at least 117 in Kerr County, officials said. More than two dozen of the victims were from Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls sleepaway camp in Kerr County.
Some state leaders and environmental experts told ABC News in July that a number of the cabins were in known flood zones and close proximity to the river, according to officials and FEMA’s road maps.
In September, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law three bills aimed at improving the safety of camps in Texas and protecting Texans from future flooding events, after parents of Camp Mystic flooding victims advocated before the state legislature for better safety measures.
In October, legislative committees were formed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Dustin Burrows to investigate the flooding. No investigative findings have been announced as of December.
In November, a slew of wrongful death cases were filed against Camp Mystic on behalf of many of the parents who lost their children. The families previously criticized Camp Mystic’s decision to reopen one of its campsites next year.
In a December letter to parents, Camp Mystic officials said they plan to implement safety measures that are not only in compliance of the new camp safety laws, but “exceed their requirements.” The camp’s partial reopening is slated for summer 2026.
Bryan Kohberger pleads guilty
Weeks before Bryan Kohberger was set to go on trial for the 2022 quadruple homicides at the University of Idaho, Kohberger admitted to the crimes at a change of plea hearing in July.
At sentencing, Kohberger was given four consecutive life sentences on the four first-degree murder counts and the maximum penalty of 10 years on the burglary count.
Survivors of the attack and relatives of the four slain students spoke out, sharing emotional statements at Kohberger’s sentencing hearing. Surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen said Kohberger “took away my ability to trust the world around me” and “shattered me in places I didn’t know could break.” Kristi Goncalves, mom of victim Kaylee Goncalves, told Kohberger that “hell will be waiting” for him.
The judge acknowledged Kohberger’s motive may never be known.
Sean Combs’ trial
Following an eight-week trial in Manhattan federal court that gripped the country, in July, music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was convicted of two counts of transportation for the purposes of prostitution. The jury acquitted Combs of more serious sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
At October’s sentencing hearing, Combs tearfully apologized in court, saying, “I’ve been humbled and broken to my core.”
The mogul is now serving a four-year sentence at FCI Fort Dix, a federal prison in New Jersey. Combs is appealing the conviction and his sentence.
It began on May 30 when Decker picked up his three daughters at his ex-wife’s home for a planned visitation.
On May 31, police announced the disappearance of the three daughters: Paityn, 9; Evelyn, 8; and Olivia, 5.
On June 2, the girls’ bodies were found near a campground. Decker allegedly suffocated his daughters to death, police said.
Decker, a former member of the military with “extensive training,” disappeared, sparking a multi-agency manhunt.
An attorney for Decker’s ex-wife told ABC News that Decker lacked mental health resources and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder.
On Sept. 18, Decker’s remains were found in a remote, wooded area. The local coroner said an autopsy couldn’t be done due to how little remains were left.
Menendez brothers resentenced, but denied parole and denied new trial
In their continued push for freedom this year, Lyle and Erik Menendez had one big legal win, but two significant losses.
The brothers were convicted in 1996 of the first-degree murder of their parents and sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole. The last several years, they’ve pushed to be released, citing accomplishments in prison and the abuse they alleged they suffered from their parents.
This May, Judge Michael Jesic resentenced Erik and Lyle Menendez to 50 years to life in prison, making them immediately eligible for parole under youth offender parole laws. Jesic said he was moved by letters from prison guards and is amazed by what the brothers have accomplished in their decades behind bars.
But in August, the brothers were both denied parole. Commissioners reviewed Erik Menendez’s time in prison and noted some inappropriate behavior with visitors, drug smuggling, misuse of state computers, violent incidents and illegal cellphone use. Lyle Menendez’s panel of commissioners — who were different from those reviewing Erik’s case — noted he also was caught illegally using cellphones. The brothers will next be eligible for parole in three years.
Their second loss came in September, when Judge William Ryan denied the brothers’ habeas corpus petition, which they filed in 2023 to try to toss their conviction and get a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. The judge said “neither piece of evidence adds to the allegations of abuse that the jury already considered.”
Charlie Kirk killed
On Sept. 10, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in the middle of his outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
Kirk, 31, was the founder of the conservative youth activist organization Turning Point USA, and the Utah Valley event marked the first stop of his “The American Comeback Tour,” which invited students on college campuses to debate hot-button issues.
Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, said at her husband’s memorial that she forgives Robinson. “That young man, I forgive him. … The answer to hate is not hate,” she said.
Robinson has been charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, two counts of witness tampering and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child. He has not entered a plea.
Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner killed
On Dec. 14, renowned Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home.
Hours later, the suspect — the couple’s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner — was taken into custody.
Nick Reiner — who was living on his parents’ property, according to a former family security guard — was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with the special circumstance of multiple murders, prosecutors said. He has not entered a plea. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty, prosecutors said.
“The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience. They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends,” they said.
“We are grateful for the outpouring of condolences, kindness, and support we have received not only from family and friends but people from all walks of life,” Jake and Romy Reiner said. “We now ask for respect and privacy, for speculation to be tempered with compassion and humanity, and for our parents to be remembered for the incredible lives they lived and the love they gave.”
ABC News’ Olivia Osteen, Meredith Deliso, Clara Mcmichael, Ayesha Ali and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.
