Utah Mom's Lawyers Quit in Husband Poisoning Case Ahead of Critical Hearing

M richens your next court date is a preliminary hearing starting at 9:30 a.m. on August 26 continuing through August 28th as necessary the Utah mom accused of killing her husband then writing a children's book about grief to help her sons cope with the loss is set to finally learn if the state has enough evidence to take her to trial for murder we have new details from Cory Rich's latest pre-trial hearing as we get you caught up on everything that has happened with the case so far welcome to sidebar presented by law and crime I'm Jesse Weber more than two years after Eric richens was found dead inside of the Utah home he shared with his wife Corey and their three children 34-year-old Corey richens May finally have her preliminary hearing this after accusations that she drugged and killed him so what we're going to do is we're going to get caught up on the background of this case what has been happening so far because there is a lot there and a lot to get into let's actually start though from the beginning so Eric and Corey richens they got married in 2013 they have three sons together Eric operated a masonry business while Corey worked in real estate flipping houses then we go to March 4th 2022 the most important date here Corey says she fell asleep with one of their children she wakes up she went to the bedroom where Eric was sleeping but instead she found him dead now according to a statement that Corey wrote for the Summit County Sheriff's Office at the very start of this investigation she wrote quote went to hug cuddle Eric and he was freezing I put a blanket on him then gently pushed him and said Eric but he didn't respond and his body was heavy and weird feeling I knew something was wrong I turned the lights on he was pale not breathing I called 911 she told me to do CPR pull them off the bed with the sheets and I did then the paramedic showed up and took over from there Corey told police that she'd made Eric a Moscow Mule before bed and that seemed to be acting normally she also told police that he had a marijuana gummy the thing is when Eric's autopsy was performed it showed that he had five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system Richard's housekeeper a convicted drug dealer named Carmen Marie laber had allegedly confessed to authorities that she supplied richens with 50 to 30 fentanyl pills on two separate occasions approximately 1 month before Eric's death and said that Cory paid her about $900 each time and what's chilling about all of that is that Eric allegedly previously claimed that richens tried to poison him Valentine's Day 2022 said that she gave him a sandwich he took one bite broke out into hives and couldn't breathe then there was an allegation that years before richens gave him a drink while in Greece and Eric became violently ill and Eric also allegedly told his family at one point if something happens to me check out Corey so investigators they end up arresting Corey richens more than a year after the murder in May of 2023 she's charged with multiple offenses aggravated murder attempted aggravated murder distribution of a controlled substance insurance fraud mortgage fraud forgery and what's interesting about that timing too knew is that just the month prior to her arrest she made an Infamous appearance on local news abc4 good things Utah to promote her book are you with me and this was a book as I said that she had written to help her children cope with the death of their father a death that she is now accused of causing and in that interview she said quote my husband passed away unexpectedly last year March 4th was a one-year anniversary for us he was 39 it completely took us all by shock we have three little boys 10 n and six and my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced in the last year and then she's arrested the next month now authorities believe that Corey killed Eric to collect on multiple life insurance policies a financial motive as we've seen in so many of the cases that we cover here on sidebar and law and crime so the idea is that she was in financial trouble thanks to this huge huge purchase of a multi-million dollar Utah home that was never completed Cory wanted to flip the home Eric was against it we actually did an episode about Corey's financial trouble and the legal battle she's going through with Eric's family I encourage everybody to go back and take a listen to that one to learn more about the allegations of Corey trying to get her hands on Eric's money allegations that she forged his signature on one of his life insurance policies this was shortly before his death stealing from his personal accounts misappropriating money from his business in the past all these kinds of allegations by the way Eric also allegedly changed his will without Corey knowing and placed control over his entire estate in the hands of his sister by the way when you hear allegations like this how do you not ask yourself how well do I really know the people in my life really I mean it's a scary concept to think about but it's the truth but that is why I want to talk to you about our incredible sponsor who may be able to help you out here truthfinder so truthfinder is a service that can provide provide actual safety for you guys and I say that because truthfinder is one of the largest public records search services in the United States their whole goal is to help people like you learn about the people in their lives and here's how it works you go on their website truthfinder.com and you type in a name make it simple type in my name Jesse Weber you type in my name and within minutes and a paid subscription purchase you can access unlimited reports that can include information like phone numbers location history criminal and traffic records including possible arrests and criminal convictions I don't have those but you get the idea and you can use truthfinder to look up information about all sorts of people new dates new friends new people you buy or sell to online how about the parents of your child's new friend can never be too careful that's the truth well here's the kicker right now you can get 50% off of your first month of confidential background reports if you go to truthfinder.com LC sidebar hope you check it out but now back to court so Corey richens she pleaded not guilty a judge denied her bail so she's been locked up since her arrest in 2023 and she was supposed to have a preliminary hearing in May a preliminary hearing is where the prosecution has the burden to prove through evidence that probable cause exists that the defendant committed the crime and you have to present that in order for the defendant to be bound over for a trial but like I said she was supposed to have this preliminary hearing in May but things kind of went off the rails when her defense team announced that they would be objecting to all of the prosecution's planned exhibits M Lazar let me ask you a direct question yes are you prepared today to uh wave uh any foundational or hearsay or other admissibility objections regarding any of these exhibits 19 through 65 no you're okay it seems like what we need to do is just set a continued preliminary hearing where the state is prepared to L Foundation uh under 1102 and the other the rules that would apply to prary hearing for the evidence that it wants to admit does that sound about right Miss Lazaro yes sir okay do you need to change defendant's position at all with respect to exhibits 1 through 18 it this point your honor re object to all of EXs prosecutor said he' had no advanced warning that he was going to need to argue whether every single one of his exhibits was admissible so the hearing was delayed and then just Days Later Sky Lazaro the lead attorney on Corey's team somebody who's actually appeared here on sidebar filed a motion to withdraw from the case the motion read quote the ethical mandate for withdrawal results from an irreconcilable and non-waivable situation it first emerged from the civil cases in which the firm has been representing Miss richens but is imputed to the firm as a whole and thus requires the firm to withdraw from its representation of the defendant in this criminal proceeding this matter emerged after the hearing held on Wednesday May 15 2024 the court and opposing Council in the Civil matters are being notified today of the firm's withdrawal now there were no details that were given beyond that usually you hear language like that when there's some sort of conflict of interest and the lawyer can't represent a client I will note however and we don't know if this has any relation to what happened but kv2 news out in Utah reported that according to court filings richens had apparently said some not so nice things about Miss Lazaro during a video conversation reportedly calling Lazaro a dumb exploitive and richens family allegedly claimed that Lazaro's ego was taking over well Cory richens now has a new defense team and this after she was declared to be Indigent so she's now being represented by court appointed attorneys Wendy Lewis and Kathy Nester they've been reviewing the case and they let the judge know at this latest pre-trial hearing that they're going to be ready soon we're here for a scheduling conference uh M Lewis I understand you're ready to schedule a preliminary hear yes we would like to get that on the calendar once upon a time it was one day then it became three days do you have a sense of how many days you need we think one to two Okay was wrong so we discussed it is it is what we have discussed before you h i I now think two to three okay I think the state will um be calling three Witnesses um same three we called at the detention hearing I think the state wants to do that to uh for a Curative effect fine thank uh we can reserve 3 days and we'll proceed efficiently uh are you thinking in August we were thinking think actually the week of August 26th that that works with your calendar definitely works on the 26th and 27th but this is this is the way the Constitution works we'll just make it happen all right uh preliminary hearing August 26 27 and 28 and as I mentioned during that preliminary hearing the state will present some of its evidence whatever it thinks is enough to convince the judge that this case should go to trial prelim hearing by the way is almost mirroring in many ways what an eventual trial would look like in a way because usually the evidence that's presented in a preliminary hearing will be presented in a very similar way at a future trial now we also want to talk about another motion that Sky Lazaro and her team filed with the court along with their motion to withdraw and that motion was they wanted the prosecution off the case too the motion includes an email from Cory's team to The Summit County Attorney's Office from December and it says quote I discovered this morning while reviewing discovery on box that the jail has been listening to and recording Cory's Jail phone calls to Ramsay and they are produced onbox did you know that this was happening Ramsey is clearly an attorney of record in the criminal case and the DCFS case so I'm concerned Ramsey hamadi by the way is a member of Cory's legal team so clearly there's a concern regarding attorney client privilege Communications the motion says quote in the series of responses that followed Summit County attorney Brad Bloodworth who is now lead Council in this case stated Ramsey refuses to register for and use the home wve app that Shields attorney client calls his calls are therefore recorded as any other call Mr Bloodworth goes on to state that the prosecution has been listening to at least a portion of the calls between Corey and defense Council since May 2023 and the entire prosecution team had been in possession of the calls for the entire period between May 2023 and December 2023 he further took the position that because defense Council had not downloaded the home wave app it seems that Ramsey consented to the state maintaining the recordings defense Council responded whether or not Ramsey uses the home wave app attorney client privilege calls are in the possession of the prosecution team which is the concern both Corey and defense Council believe that calls between them were privileged and that the state was not listening and did not have possession of them by law that's true right it's usually attorney client privilege Communications they can't be discovered they can't be a part of a litigation the other side can't know about them however there is an exception if that conversation happened in the presence of a third party it's almost your waving the privilege now in the end the district attorney ended up removing the privilege material from where the prosecution could access it but you could also say is that just too little too late the prosecutors insist that once they heard Ramsey hamad's name mentioned they stopped listening to any calls but Cory's team says they violated her rights by possibly accessing privileged Communications between her and her lawyer the damage is done the Sumit County Attorney's Office responded to the motion to disqualify saying this was filed in bad faith in a press release they said the scao will address RQ n's filing RQ is the initials of the law firm representing Cory richens of the most at the appropriate times and the appropriate forums the scao is aware that some anxious news agencies have reported on the motion before the scao has had sufficient opportunity to respond the scao appreciates the news agencies that have taken a more professional and responsible approach by the way on the subject of richens being locked up and whether the government is finding anything last year prosecutors accused Corey richens of witness tampering after a letter addressed to her mother Lisa Darden was found in her jail cell the letter allegedly instructs rich and's brother to testify falsely about how Eric got the drugs quote here is what I'm thinking but you have to talk to Ronnie he would probably have to testify to this but it's super short not a lot to it Eric told that he got pain pills and Fentanyl from Mexico from workers on the ranch so in other words trying to link Eric's death to the drug trade in Mexico well richens has Deni denied wrongdoing with this letter and claimed that what she wrote in that letter was part of a fictional mystery book that she was writing about time served in a Mexican prison court documents read quote its audience content and purpose are readily apparent the defendant is asking her mother to facilitate witness tampering involving her brother seeking to have her brother support a false factual narrative this came by the way after authorities said that richens had held up a letter on a video call with her mom so she could take pictures of it she also read to her mother a letter addressed to her by another inmate and apparently these letters haven't been found and by the way the state ended up filing a motion to cut off contact between richens and her mother and her brother but the court did not agree they said that this did not amount to witness tampering now let me end this discussion on Corey richens with this essentially Corey richens has just broken her silence yes after her attorneys asked to withdraw Corey apparently sent out audio recordings to some media outlets and she said quote they took an innocent mom from her babies and This Means War 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 and it's time to start speaking up she claimed that the prosecutors in this case will do anything they can to prolong this process and hide their corruption and then regarding Lazaro and her firms withdrawal of the case richens claimed my defense team has been forced to withdraw from my case represented or not we all know and should understand there's only so much I can say but what I will say is this withdrawal was not my choice and it was not a personal choice of any Council on my defense team H her statement goes on to say although I am extremely disappointed where we're at right now with this case I'm anxious I'm anxious to prove my innocence I'm anxious to get to trial who I really am and all that matters is a wife of Eric richens and a mom to three beautiful boys what I've really done is to protect Eric at all costs what I really didn't do is murder my husband I could not and would not ever do that to Eric or anyone for that matter I'm asking the world to give me a chance give me a chance to prove it to you and she will have that chance when this goes to trial and of course she is innocent until proven guilty but again Corey will have her first attempt to this she'll be back in court with her new defense team at the end of August for that preliminary hearing can they convince the judge that there's not enough evidence to bound her over for trial we'll see and we will keep you updated on what happens right here on sidebar that's all we have for you right now everybody thank you so much for joining us as always please subscribe on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube wherever you get your podcasts I'm Jesse Weber I'll speak to you next time [Music]

Channel: Law&Crime Network

Views: 201,533

Keywords: law and crime, law and crime network, true crime, truecrime, true crime videos, court, trials, law&crime

Id: Wa-yKnVYo4I

Length: 18min 6sec (1086 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2024