May 19, 2023 • 28 mins
Nancy Grace sits down with Forensics professor and host of “Body Bags” Joseph Scott Morgan, to break down what would have happened to Eric Richins after drinking the fentanyl laced ‘Moscow Mule’ his wife Kouri Richins poured for him. Is an opioid overdose a peaceful death? Can first responders determine if Richins performed CPR on her husband? Join us to hear Joseph Scott Morgan’s thoughts.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grease, the so called Moscow Mule
victims wife believe she was about to break in three
point six million dollars life insurance.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Just let that sink in three point six million.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Dollars in her back pocket, minus the funeral expenses for
her husband. That is.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks for being with us. I'm Nancy Gracion.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Joining me is a renowned expert professor of forensics at
Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on
Amazon and Starving You hit series Body Bags podcast. Joseph
Scott Morgan Joscott, thank you for taking time away from
your teaching and your research at Jacksonville State University to
(01:13):
join us. I'm talking about the victim in this case,
Eric Richians. I almost said he never saw it coming,
but you know what he did. There have been two
prior occasions. Joe Scott Morgan that he at least one
of the occasions laughingly said, Hey, I think she's trying
(01:34):
to kill me for the money man. Well, according to prosecutors,
she did. I want to talk about multiple attempts on
Eric Richand's life, and it's not just about him, Joe Scott,
It's about his three little boys that are left behind
(01:55):
three boys nine, seven and five at the time daddy
is murdered. If Mommy's convicted, they will be orphans. Now
lay out the facts to me as you understand them, please.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The wife had Forrey Richins.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, yeah, had agreed to prepare a celbratory drink for
mister Richards and it was, you know, a Moscow mule.
I was actually just looking at the recipe for it, Nancy.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yes, I looked it up. It's ginger beer, which right,
do you know what? I found out A lot of
drinks that claim that their ginger are not so I
was looking up drinks that had real ginger in it
for my son John David. You know, he's been nauseous,
had a whole lot of issues because he had that.
He was at track and field just just got to think.
(02:53):
I told you this and some kids practicing discus, and
some kid came up behind him and started practicing discus.
That's like being at a shooting range and somebody standing
right in front of you. No. Anyway, he got hit
in the head with a steel discus level three concussion.
You live through that with me. Anyway, I wanted something
(03:14):
with ginger to help him with nausea, and I had
to research online what drinks actually really have ginger in them,
and I found ginger beer non alcoholic, and he loves
it and it did work. But it's really strong tasting
and that is the main ingredient in a Moscow mule.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, ginger beer. You know, it's got lime juice in it.
And you know, for the alcohol version, two ounces of vodka.
But you know what it doesn't include, Nancy, it's fentanyl fentyl. Yeah,
and in this particular case, his drink.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
You're right about that. You're right about that, professor.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
It was it was laced with fentanyl, which you know
is an absolute scourge on our country.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Can I tell you something before you get on the scourge? Yeah,
it's evil genius what she did right there, even though she.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Of course got caught.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
But nobody is going to taste grind up fentanyl when
it's mixed in with ginger beer. It's yeah, ginger, I
guess it's ginger beer and vodka and line, you're not
gonna taste it.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
No, it's gonna be easily masked. And for those that
don't know, you know, fentanyl is it falls into the
opiate family. Which you know, you begin to think of
things like morphine and heroine and all of that.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But I think of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. Yeah,
skipping across the big field of poppies from which you
make opiate's heroin and they all fall asleep.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, and then they're awakened by snow, which is another
interesting aspect, but we won't go down that road.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But with I think I already did.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
But go ahead with this particular case though, you begin
to think about, you know, how do you get access
to this, well, fentanyl is it's just it's like a
massive infection in our country. It's you can come across it.
It's you know, it's been used as as pain rely
for years and years, but it's it's a synthetic substance.
(05:20):
It's it's created in a laboratory, and it's obviously lethal.
I'm sorry. Yes, yes, similar in the same fashion, in
the same fashion, But.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Is not actually fentanyl, right.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
No, it's not. But it falls within the same the
same family of opiates, if you will, so the base
at a base elemental level, it's going to have many
of the same effects. And we we all know, you
know what an overdose, say for instance, of heroin or
morphine can do where it begins to suppress system. People
can go into a Komoto state, and it's all dependent
(05:58):
upon how much of this that they're exposed to in
their system, and it can kill you. It can send
you into cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Because everything goes to sleep, including your brain and your
lungs and your heart.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, it does. It's a particularly nasty way to die.
From this perspective is that what happens is that the
mechanism here, it leads to a congestive failure and the
lungs get very, very heavy. You have to struggle, you
mean full of fluid, full of fluid. Many times we'll
(06:31):
actually see in cases involving Od's you'll actually begin to
see a similar finding to what you have in drownings.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace od on fentanyl. How does
that make your lungs heavy? What do you mean by
heavy lungs? I've never heard that before.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah, it's it's a congestive failure where your lungs are
beginning to fill up with fluid as a result of
not being able to produce or to actually reap or
breathe to circulate oxygen through your body, so they progressively
become more and more heavy. As a matter of fact,
at autopsy, you know, we.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
I was just going to ask you, what do the
lungs look like at autopsy?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Well, when you touch them, they're they're very tense, heavy,
you can tell that they're congested. When we take them out,
they're going to weigh they're going to weigh, in some circumstances,
almost twice their normal their normal weight. So you figure
if a normal male's lung adult male is say four
(07:52):
hundred and fifty grams, that's on the right lung, which
of course is the is the heaviest because it has
three lows.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Wait, can you increase increase.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That number by two? Well, grams, that's that's that's the
weight that we measure it in as opposed.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I know, but can you can you convert that to ounces?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Pounds?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Not off the top of Oh, dear lord, did you
say four hundred and fifty grams? Yeah, four hundred and
fifty How many pounds? How many ounces? It's four hundred
and fifty grams. Can believe you four hundred and fifty
grams is equal to thirty five point twenty seven ounces. Wait, yes,
(08:44):
something like that, just under a pound, just under a pound.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, and you know there's sixteen what's sixteen ounces and
a pound? I think, yes, Yeah, it's they're very very heavy. Well,
multiply that by two and you'll get the So it
increases by that factor. So essentially you have an individual
that is compromise their airways compromise. It's almost like a drowning,
(09:10):
if you will. And guess what happens many times with
these individuals. You'll see this kind of frothy, ademitous cone.
It's pink. It looks like the head of a beer,
only it's pink. And it'll begin to produce. Out of
the nose and out of the mouth.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
You exhale pink froth, which is the fluid from the
lungs mixed with blood particles.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, it'll be tinged with blood and that's that's what
gives it that kind of pink here.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So let me cut through the heavy lungs and the
frothy blood.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
At the nose and mouth, because you know what that you, you.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Joe Scott, are why we need death investigators and medical
exam or medical examers just take the stand because a
lot of people when they hear this what happened to
Eric Richards. They went, oh, she put fentanyl in his
moscow mule and he just went to sleep and never
woke up.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
That's not what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
You basically have internal drowning and you're trying to breathe
and the bloody froth's coming out of your nose in
your mouth, and that's what happens.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yes, it's an absolutely horrific death, Nancy. And he would
have felt the self slipping away, you know, this kind
of uncontrollable dizziness. There would have been disorientation and all along,
and you don't know what his level of awareness would
have been. It would have been slipping away, but there
would have been real strugglings as he was there and
(10:47):
you were witnessing this, Nancy. In from her perspective, she
could have seen him, her own husband, by the way,
struggling to take up air, to intake air in order
for it to process, and his blood his brain is
actually screaming out, I need oxygen, I need oxygen, and
there was nothing, nothing there for him to uptake at
(11:08):
that point in top and the drug itself is pressing
him deeper and deeper and deeper into this Komato State
till eventually, eventually he's going to go into cardio respiporia REPS.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
You know, Joe Scott, I why did I have to
have some type of a minor surgery? Anyway, they put
me under, and the last thing I thought about I
visualized John, David, my son, Lucy, my daughter, David, my husband,
(11:41):
and then everything went black, and I'm just thinking about
his last Moment's the victim here? Because you know what,
Joe Scott and I am guilty of this. You know,
you and I have done it together. We deal with
death and murder and the most horrific acts that people
(12:05):
commit on each other. And it's heavy to carry around.
So sometimes we laugh, laugh about stupid criminals like you
murder your husband and then you go on TV to
(12:30):
sell your children's grief book talking about how much you're
grieving about the husband that you.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Killed, the irony of that.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
You know, when criminals leave a trail a mile why
we can sit back and ha ha.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
But when you.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Describe what this victim went through, and I just wonder if.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
His last thoughts were about.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
His little children, Carter, Ashton and Weston, three very little
boys that let's just be brutally honest to Scott.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You got one that's five.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
By the time he's twenty one, he probably won't even
remember very much about Daddy at all. He's gonna end
up being raised by relatives or someone that adopts them.
I wonder if those were the last thoughts that Eric
(13:37):
Richand's had. And I wanna talk to you now, not
necessarily know more about the cod and what he endured,
but about the trail, the electronic trail, and the evidentiary
trail that this woman left behind. Okay, and I want
(14:02):
to start with something I really love. Of course, there's
text messages. There's her buying nine hundred dollars worth of
fentanyl before Valentine's Day, where he had another similar incident.
He had food and beverage with his wife and then
he had a horrible allergic reaction and had to use
(14:23):
benadera and an EpiPen and he somehow miraculously lived. So,
based on text message, she goes back to the doper
who happens to be a CI confidential informant and says, hey,
I need another nine hundred bucks of fentanyl. Give me
the Michael Jackson stuff. That time, right after she buys
(14:46):
more fentanyl. He dies a fentanyl overdose, and they're Mormon.
My Mormon friends do not even drink chocolate milk because
they think it's a stimulant, which it is much less fentanyl.
This guy was not on fentanyl, and he had five
times a lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system. But
(15:09):
there's the text messages back and forth to the CI
timed during his last two leading up to his last
two murder attempts on his life, her last two murder
attempts on his life.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
There was also a third.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Attempt when they went to Greece and he's with her
again and he has a horrible medical reaction after having
food and beverage with her, and he actually calls his
sister in the States and has the sister changed.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
His will. He changed his will. Now we know.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
That he also had his life insurance policy changed because
his wife, expecting the three point six million dollars after
his death, had changed the life insurance policy beneficiary to
her and not his business partner. He found out and
fixed that so she didn't get that time stories with
(16:19):
Nancy Grace. So there's three attempts on his life. I
want to talk about the text messages and specifically her
phone she talked too much. She told cops the night
of the death of her husband that her phone had
been plugged up in their bedroom and she had not
been using it. But then, as you know Joe Scott,
(16:41):
her phone reveals it was locked and unlocked several times
where she was texting, and then those texts were deleted.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Let's start with that.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
The locking and the unlicking kind of reminds me of
the Alex murder case, where this was awesome where the
car manufacturer can tell the state everything the car did,
where it was traveling, how quickly it was traveling, the mph,
and the opening and the shutting of doors of his
(17:10):
Alex Mornaux car, which shows he was lying.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Let's talk about her phone locking unlocking.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, you think about how how the thing operates. It's curious,
isn't it, Nancy, Because many times people will say, you
know what we're when they're talking about the criminal cases,
they'll say, we're not tracking the person, we're tracking the phone. Okay,
that I'll give you that. You know, they could say
(17:39):
the phone is moving in a car, somebody's placed in
a car. You don't know if the person we're talking
about her being in a phone though, we're talking about
her being at home inside of their domicile and the
house being and the phone being unlocked there. So unless
the phone, you know, has developed a life of its own,
(17:59):
you can or you can make note of these little
electronic breadcrumbs that are you know, that are filling in
the blanks for this, you know, when she's trying to
alibi herself in this particular case, perhaps you can state
that definitively, and that's some alibi.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
It reminds me I've caught mom Laurie Valo. Oh yeah,
when JJ was taken and murdered. I was, I wasn't there.
She was three doors down in her apartment. Stop and
here she say her alibi Corey Richins is saying her
alibi was she went and slept with her son that
night up until three am, comes back in and finds
her husband cold to the touch. Her alibi she's like
(18:39):
eight feet down the hall.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Really yep.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, And in this case, in this case, she claimed that,
you know, like you had said, that the phone was
plugged in, that it was in a static position, that
it wasn't moving. That's not what investigators uncovered here this
phone moved. It actually moved. She said that she never
took the phone into the kid's room. Well, they were
nancy in this particular case to give a specific pinpoint
(19:04):
location that the phone was active in the kids rooms
when she said that she hadn't touched the damn thing.
But the case is the fact. The fact is she's
moving around, and you know what that leads to. I mean,
you're you're from prosecutor. I mean, somebody's lying. You're not
telling us the truth. And so with that bit of
information in hand, they know that they've got somebody that's
(19:26):
you know, that's that's a deceptive.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
She remember, Josica, I think I've told you this before.
After my fiancee Keith was murdered shortly before our wedding,
I couldn't even think straight. I really actually just wanted
to go outside and howl like an animal. I didn't
want to see anybody. I didn't want to talk to anybody.
I dropped out of school.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I couldn't think straight.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And she has the wherewithal Her husband is lying dead
on the floor, and she's lying about our phone. That
takes nerves of steel and a lot of calculation.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, certainly does. It also takes a lot. It certainly
takes a certain level of boldness to write a book
about grief in the wake of what police are a
legend is a murder on her part. And you think
about that just for a second. Let that sink in.
(20:32):
You know, you and I have both grieved, you know,
we We've talked about it publicly. I've lost a child,
uh with with the death of Keith. For you, we
understand that pain, you know that you experienced during that
period of time. And how how is it that that
this can be so systematically planned out and she's got
(20:53):
you know, you mentioned she's got these babies, and they're
babies to me. I mean, these these these beautiful children
that she has that are now fatherless. How is it
that you can be thinking in these specific terms where
you're attempting to deceive, deceive in order to achieve a
long term goal, and you're not placing the appropriate amount
(21:15):
of grief, You're not going through the process that you
have to go through to get on with your life.
She was getting on with her life, all right, and
it seems like it's been well planned out on her part.
This is one of the most callous things I've heard about, and.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
So far we haven't heard about a boyfriend or a lover.
We've heard a lot about money changing the life insurance
policy so she would get the three point six million,
and he found out, the victim found out and changed
it back. I want to point out one more thing.
Not only will her phone show that it was locked
and unlocked multiple times where she said it was plugged
(21:49):
in and or off in the husband in her bedroom,
so she was using it. Text messages back and forth
during that time period were deleted. I look down, Joe
Scott while you were talking to see I have three
one hundred and thirty seven unread emails. Repeat three thousand,
(22:09):
one hundred and thirty seven emails.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Okay, I'd be to talk to you about that, nimes.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Not People say didn't you get my email? And won't
totally no, And so she takes time to delete texts
while her husband is lying there with red pink broth
coming out of his mouth and nose.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And who do you? I wonder who's she texting? Because
we're gonna find out.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
You can bet your bottom dollar on that she was
dub enough to text her CI confident informant doper, so
I can't wait to find out who she's texting.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So the phone can tell.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Us locked unlocked, multiple times, texts back and forth during
this period of time while her husband is dying with
his lungs so heavy, he's like breathing out asperating bloody
phae and movement.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Can we tell if the phone was moved about the house?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
According to the authorities? They can you know? Because she actually,
you know, she had stated, I don't know if they
asked her this directly, but somehow they determined that that
phone was not again in one single place that that
phone during the period of time was She alleges that
it was that it was locked down, that it was charging,
or whatever circumstance there was, that phone somehow migrated to
(23:36):
the children's bedroom where it was unlocked. What what are
you doing in the children's bedroom at this point in time,
She claims that she's found her husband lying on the
floor and he's cold to the touch. Well, when was
the last time you actually saw your husband, ma'am. If
you're saying that this is some kind of natural event
that has occurred, he's lying on the bedroom floor cold.
(23:57):
So if that's the case, are you moving back and
forth across his body while you're toting his phone back
and forth. It's supposed to be static, and it's being open.
And by the way, you're probably the only person that
knows how to unlock it because you know the code.
We all have a security code for it. So you
show that it's unlocked. You're going down the hallway, you're
(24:18):
in the kids room. What was she doing? She's contemplating
as she's walking up and down the hallway, trying to
determine what the next move is, because now at this
point she probably has some kind of awareness that, you
know what, I've just facilitated the death of the man
that I'm married to. Who are they going to look at?
They always look at the spouse. But for some reason,
she just she didn't necessarily panic. I would certainly be
(24:41):
in a state of panic.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Joe Scott, do you know that they had a prenup.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
They had a prenup that was signed on the day
of their wedding, and he Eric Richins was worth more
to her, Corey Richards dead than alive. Can I ask
you something else that happened? Factually, she told cops that
(25:13):
she performed CPR on her husband. I find that very
difficult to believe. If pink, bloody froth was still coming
out or had come out of his nose and mouth
and it was still on him in that fashion when
first responders got there, what does that tell you that
it's still there?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
This is what can happen. I'm just giving you a
scientific facts here. If he is presenting with this pink
frothy cone, this can be exacerbated. It can, and this
is what would probably argued, this can be exacerbated by
chess compressions. I think the key here though, is, you know,
the first responding officers, the EMTs, when they're talking to her,
(25:58):
if she's done mouth mouth, if she's done chest compressions
on him, I think the question or that I would
ask them, what did you observe on her person? Was
there anything on her that's some kind of contact that
had leached back onto her, say, for instance, because it
would stain the mouth if she did mouth to mouth,
it would be on her potentially on her hands that
(26:19):
she's trying to open the airway. You know, that's how
we do CPR. You got to clear the airway, you
got to open it up. But I'd like to know
to what extent this cone was presenting, if in fact
it did, which is normal in these circumstances when you
have a fentanyl OD.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
So you're telling me that when the cops got in
there and they say he still has the bloody foam
coming out of his mouth and nose, you think it
was possible she had performed CPR on him.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I'm not saying that it's possible she performed CPR. But
what can happen, though, is if you are in this
status after you've odeed or been odeed on fentanyl, will
continue People don't believe this, but I've actually seen it happen.
It will continue to present and actually come out of
the body for a protracted period of time. It's going
(27:11):
to be further exacerbated by the fact that you're doing
chest compressions, you know, so you're compressing the lungs, You're
pushing more and more out all the while.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So she could have performed CPR and then the phone
continued to come out of his nose and mouth. If
you're doing mouth to mouth on somebody, how would that work?
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Well? You would you there would be a sensation that
this is traveling. You know, you're you're actually sharing this
with the body. It would go back into her mouth,
it would be on her face, there would be a
ring around her face perhaps, but you know, you don't
know if she took time to clean up, if she
and it did in fact attempts CPR.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So we need to know her presentation, how she presented
when cops got there, what she looked like in regular talk,
what she looked like.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah, absolutely, and you you want to know. And one
of the things that we also look like is are
one of the things we also look for in individuals
that are the reporters of death, those that discover the dead,
is are they presenting with an appropriate amount of grief?
Are they you know, are they in hysterical state. I've
seen people go catatonic, you know, where you can't get
(28:20):
any information out of them. But then you got those
that just kind of hit that kind of flat plane
where they're just kind of talking to you. Is if oham,
it's another day.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Five times the amount of a deadly dosage of fentanyl
in his system and prophetic words telling his sister she
might just kill me for the money, we wait as
just as unfalls.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Scott, You're awesome. Thank you for being with us.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grease, the so called Moscow Mule
victims wife believe she was about to break in three
point six million dollars life insurance.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Just let that sink in three point six million.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Dollars in her back pocket, minus the funeral expenses for
her husband. That is.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks for being with us. I'm Nancy Gracion.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Joining me is a renowned expert professor of forensics at
Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on
Amazon and Starving You hit series Body Bags podcast. Joseph
Scott Morgan Joscott, thank you for taking time away from
your teaching and your research at Jacksonville State University to
(01:13):
join us. I'm talking about the victim in this case,
Eric Richians. I almost said he never saw it coming,
but you know what he did. There have been two
prior occasions. Joe Scott Morgan that he at least one
of the occasions laughingly said, Hey, I think she's trying
(01:34):
to kill me for the money man. Well, according to prosecutors,
she did. I want to talk about multiple attempts on
Eric Richand's life, and it's not just about him, Joe Scott,
It's about his three little boys that are left behind
(01:55):
three boys nine, seven and five at the time daddy
is murdered. If Mommy's convicted, they will be orphans. Now
lay out the facts to me as you understand them, please.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The wife had Forrey Richins.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, yeah, had agreed to prepare a celbratory drink for
mister Richards and it was, you know, a Moscow mule.
I was actually just looking at the recipe for it, Nancy.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yes, I looked it up. It's ginger beer, which right,
do you know what? I found out A lot of
drinks that claim that their ginger are not so I
was looking up drinks that had real ginger in it
for my son John David. You know, he's been nauseous,
had a whole lot of issues because he had that.
He was at track and field just just got to think.
(02:53):
I told you this and some kids practicing discus, and
some kid came up behind him and started practicing discus.
That's like being at a shooting range and somebody standing
right in front of you. No. Anyway, he got hit
in the head with a steel discus level three concussion.
You live through that with me. Anyway, I wanted something
(03:14):
with ginger to help him with nausea, and I had
to research online what drinks actually really have ginger in them,
and I found ginger beer non alcoholic, and he loves
it and it did work. But it's really strong tasting
and that is the main ingredient in a Moscow mule.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, ginger beer. You know, it's got lime juice in it.
And you know, for the alcohol version, two ounces of vodka.
But you know what it doesn't include, Nancy, it's fentanyl fentyl. Yeah,
and in this particular case, his drink.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
You're right about that. You're right about that, professor.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
It was it was laced with fentanyl, which you know
is an absolute scourge on our country.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Can I tell you something before you get on the scourge? Yeah,
it's evil genius what she did right there, even though she.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Of course got caught.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
But nobody is going to taste grind up fentanyl when
it's mixed in with ginger beer. It's yeah, ginger, I
guess it's ginger beer and vodka and line, you're not
gonna taste it.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
No, it's gonna be easily masked. And for those that
don't know, you know, fentanyl is it falls into the
opiate family. Which you know, you begin to think of
things like morphine and heroine and all of that.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But I think of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. Yeah,
skipping across the big field of poppies from which you
make opiate's heroin and they all fall asleep.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, and then they're awakened by snow, which is another
interesting aspect, but we won't go down that road.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But with I think I already did.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
But go ahead with this particular case though, you begin
to think about, you know, how do you get access
to this, well, fentanyl is it's just it's like a
massive infection in our country. It's you can come across it.
It's you know, it's been used as as pain rely
for years and years, but it's it's a synthetic substance.
(05:20):
It's it's created in a laboratory, and it's obviously lethal.
I'm sorry. Yes, yes, similar in the same fashion, in
the same fashion, But.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Is not actually fentanyl, right.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
No, it's not. But it falls within the same the
same family of opiates, if you will, so the base
at a base elemental level, it's going to have many
of the same effects. And we we all know, you
know what an overdose, say for instance, of heroin or
morphine can do where it begins to suppress system. People
can go into a Komoto state, and it's all dependent
(05:58):
upon how much of this that they're exposed to in
their system, and it can kill you. It can send
you into cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Because everything goes to sleep, including your brain and your
lungs and your heart.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, it does. It's a particularly nasty way to die.
From this perspective is that what happens is that the
mechanism here, it leads to a congestive failure and the
lungs get very, very heavy. You have to struggle, you
mean full of fluid, full of fluid. Many times we'll
(06:31):
actually see in cases involving Od's you'll actually begin to
see a similar finding to what you have in drownings.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace od on fentanyl. How does
that make your lungs heavy? What do you mean by
heavy lungs? I've never heard that before.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah, it's it's a congestive failure where your lungs are
beginning to fill up with fluid as a result of
not being able to produce or to actually reap or
breathe to circulate oxygen through your body, so they progressively
become more and more heavy. As a matter of fact,
at autopsy, you know, we.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
I was just going to ask you, what do the
lungs look like at autopsy?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Well, when you touch them, they're they're very tense, heavy,
you can tell that they're congested. When we take them out,
they're going to weigh they're going to weigh, in some circumstances,
almost twice their normal their normal weight. So you figure
if a normal male's lung adult male is say four
(07:52):
hundred and fifty grams, that's on the right lung, which
of course is the is the heaviest because it has
three lows.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Wait, can you increase increase.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That number by two? Well, grams, that's that's that's the
weight that we measure it in as opposed.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I know, but can you can you convert that to ounces?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Pounds?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Not off the top of Oh, dear lord, did you
say four hundred and fifty grams? Yeah, four hundred and
fifty How many pounds? How many ounces? It's four hundred
and fifty grams. Can believe you four hundred and fifty
grams is equal to thirty five point twenty seven ounces. Wait, yes,
(08:44):
something like that, just under a pound, just under a pound.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, and you know there's sixteen what's sixteen ounces and
a pound? I think, yes, Yeah, it's they're very very heavy. Well,
multiply that by two and you'll get the So it
increases by that factor. So essentially you have an individual
that is compromise their airways compromise. It's almost like a drowning,
(09:10):
if you will. And guess what happens many times with
these individuals. You'll see this kind of frothy, ademitous cone.
It's pink. It looks like the head of a beer,
only it's pink. And it'll begin to produce. Out of
the nose and out of the mouth.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
You exhale pink froth, which is the fluid from the
lungs mixed with blood particles.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, it'll be tinged with blood and that's that's what
gives it that kind of pink here.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So let me cut through the heavy lungs and the
frothy blood.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
At the nose and mouth, because you know what that you, you.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Joe Scott, are why we need death investigators and medical
exam or medical examers just take the stand because a
lot of people when they hear this what happened to
Eric Richards. They went, oh, she put fentanyl in his
moscow mule and he just went to sleep and never
woke up.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
That's not what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
You basically have internal drowning and you're trying to breathe
and the bloody froth's coming out of your nose in
your mouth, and that's what happens.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yes, it's an absolutely horrific death, Nancy. And he would
have felt the self slipping away, you know, this kind
of uncontrollable dizziness. There would have been disorientation and all along,
and you don't know what his level of awareness would
have been. It would have been slipping away, but there
would have been real strugglings as he was there and
(10:47):
you were witnessing this, Nancy. In from her perspective, she
could have seen him, her own husband, by the way,
struggling to take up air, to intake air in order
for it to process, and his blood his brain is
actually screaming out, I need oxygen, I need oxygen, and
there was nothing, nothing there for him to uptake at
(11:08):
that point in top and the drug itself is pressing
him deeper and deeper and deeper into this Komato State
till eventually, eventually he's going to go into cardio respiporia REPS.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
You know, Joe Scott, I why did I have to
have some type of a minor surgery? Anyway, they put
me under, and the last thing I thought about I
visualized John, David, my son, Lucy, my daughter, David, my husband,
(11:41):
and then everything went black, and I'm just thinking about
his last Moment's the victim here? Because you know what,
Joe Scott and I am guilty of this. You know,
you and I have done it together. We deal with
death and murder and the most horrific acts that people
(12:05):
commit on each other. And it's heavy to carry around.
So sometimes we laugh, laugh about stupid criminals like you
murder your husband and then you go on TV to
(12:30):
sell your children's grief book talking about how much you're
grieving about the husband that you.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Killed, the irony of that.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
You know, when criminals leave a trail a mile why
we can sit back and ha ha.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
But when you.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Describe what this victim went through, and I just wonder if.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
His last thoughts were about.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
His little children, Carter, Ashton and Weston, three very little
boys that let's just be brutally honest to Scott.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You got one that's five.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
By the time he's twenty one, he probably won't even
remember very much about Daddy at all. He's gonna end
up being raised by relatives or someone that adopts them.
I wonder if those were the last thoughts that Eric
(13:37):
Richand's had. And I wanna talk to you now, not
necessarily know more about the cod and what he endured,
but about the trail, the electronic trail, and the evidentiary
trail that this woman left behind. Okay, and I want
(14:02):
to start with something I really love. Of course, there's
text messages. There's her buying nine hundred dollars worth of
fentanyl before Valentine's Day, where he had another similar incident.
He had food and beverage with his wife and then
he had a horrible allergic reaction and had to use
(14:23):
benadera and an EpiPen and he somehow miraculously lived. So,
based on text message, she goes back to the doper
who happens to be a CI confidential informant and says, hey,
I need another nine hundred bucks of fentanyl. Give me
the Michael Jackson stuff. That time, right after she buys
(14:46):
more fentanyl. He dies a fentanyl overdose, and they're Mormon.
My Mormon friends do not even drink chocolate milk because
they think it's a stimulant, which it is much less fentanyl.
This guy was not on fentanyl, and he had five
times a lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system. But
(15:09):
there's the text messages back and forth to the CI
timed during his last two leading up to his last
two murder attempts on his life, her last two murder
attempts on his life.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
There was also a third.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Attempt when they went to Greece and he's with her
again and he has a horrible medical reaction after having
food and beverage with her, and he actually calls his
sister in the States and has the sister changed.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
His will. He changed his will. Now we know.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
That he also had his life insurance policy changed because
his wife, expecting the three point six million dollars after
his death, had changed the life insurance policy beneficiary to
her and not his business partner. He found out and
fixed that so she didn't get that time stories with
(16:19):
Nancy Grace. So there's three attempts on his life. I
want to talk about the text messages and specifically her
phone she talked too much. She told cops the night
of the death of her husband that her phone had
been plugged up in their bedroom and she had not
been using it. But then, as you know Joe Scott,
(16:41):
her phone reveals it was locked and unlocked several times
where she was texting, and then those texts were deleted.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Let's start with that.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
The locking and the unlicking kind of reminds me of
the Alex murder case, where this was awesome where the
car manufacturer can tell the state everything the car did,
where it was traveling, how quickly it was traveling, the mph,
and the opening and the shutting of doors of his
(17:10):
Alex Mornaux car, which shows he was lying.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Let's talk about her phone locking unlocking.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, you think about how how the thing operates. It's curious,
isn't it, Nancy, Because many times people will say, you
know what we're when they're talking about the criminal cases,
they'll say, we're not tracking the person, we're tracking the phone. Okay,
that I'll give you that. You know, they could say
(17:39):
the phone is moving in a car, somebody's placed in
a car. You don't know if the person we're talking
about her being in a phone though, we're talking about
her being at home inside of their domicile and the
house being and the phone being unlocked there. So unless
the phone, you know, has developed a life of its own,
(17:59):
you can or you can make note of these little
electronic breadcrumbs that are you know, that are filling in
the blanks for this, you know, when she's trying to
alibi herself in this particular case, perhaps you can state
that definitively, and that's some alibi.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
It reminds me I've caught mom Laurie Valo. Oh yeah,
when JJ was taken and murdered. I was, I wasn't there.
She was three doors down in her apartment. Stop and
here she say her alibi Corey Richins is saying her
alibi was she went and slept with her son that
night up until three am, comes back in and finds
her husband cold to the touch. Her alibi she's like
(18:39):
eight feet down the hall.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Really yep.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, And in this case, in this case, she claimed that,
you know, like you had said, that the phone was
plugged in, that it was in a static position, that
it wasn't moving. That's not what investigators uncovered here this
phone moved. It actually moved. She said that she never
took the phone into the kid's room. Well, they were
nancy in this particular case to give a specific pinpoint
(19:04):
location that the phone was active in the kids rooms
when she said that she hadn't touched the damn thing.
But the case is the fact. The fact is she's
moving around, and you know what that leads to. I mean,
you're you're from prosecutor. I mean, somebody's lying. You're not
telling us the truth. And so with that bit of
information in hand, they know that they've got somebody that's
(19:26):
you know, that's that's a deceptive.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
She remember, Josica, I think I've told you this before.
After my fiancee Keith was murdered shortly before our wedding,
I couldn't even think straight. I really actually just wanted
to go outside and howl like an animal. I didn't
want to see anybody. I didn't want to talk to anybody.
I dropped out of school.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I couldn't think straight.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And she has the wherewithal Her husband is lying dead
on the floor, and she's lying about our phone. That
takes nerves of steel and a lot of calculation.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, certainly does. It also takes a lot. It certainly
takes a certain level of boldness to write a book
about grief in the wake of what police are a
legend is a murder on her part. And you think
about that just for a second. Let that sink in.
(20:32):
You know, you and I have both grieved, you know,
we We've talked about it publicly. I've lost a child,
uh with with the death of Keith. For you, we
understand that pain, you know that you experienced during that
period of time. And how how is it that that
this can be so systematically planned out and she's got
(20:53):
you know, you mentioned she's got these babies, and they're
babies to me. I mean, these these these beautiful children
that she has that are now fatherless. How is it
that you can be thinking in these specific terms where
you're attempting to deceive, deceive in order to achieve a
long term goal, and you're not placing the appropriate amount
(21:15):
of grief, You're not going through the process that you
have to go through to get on with your life.
She was getting on with her life, all right, and
it seems like it's been well planned out on her part.
This is one of the most callous things I've heard about, and.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
So far we haven't heard about a boyfriend or a lover.
We've heard a lot about money changing the life insurance
policy so she would get the three point six million,
and he found out, the victim found out and changed
it back. I want to point out one more thing.
Not only will her phone show that it was locked
and unlocked multiple times where she said it was plugged
(21:49):
in and or off in the husband in her bedroom,
so she was using it. Text messages back and forth
during that time period were deleted. I look down, Joe
Scott while you were talking to see I have three
one hundred and thirty seven unread emails. Repeat three thousand,
(22:09):
one hundred and thirty seven emails.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Okay, I'd be to talk to you about that, nimes.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Not People say didn't you get my email? And won't
totally no, And so she takes time to delete texts
while her husband is lying there with red pink broth
coming out of his mouth and nose.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And who do you? I wonder who's she texting? Because
we're gonna find out.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
You can bet your bottom dollar on that she was
dub enough to text her CI confident informant doper, so
I can't wait to find out who she's texting.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So the phone can tell.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Us locked unlocked, multiple times, texts back and forth during
this period of time while her husband is dying with
his lungs so heavy, he's like breathing out asperating bloody
phae and movement.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Can we tell if the phone was moved about the house?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
According to the authorities? They can you know? Because she actually,
you know, she had stated, I don't know if they
asked her this directly, but somehow they determined that that
phone was not again in one single place that that
phone during the period of time was She alleges that
it was that it was locked down, that it was charging,
or whatever circumstance there was, that phone somehow migrated to
(23:36):
the children's bedroom where it was unlocked. What what are
you doing in the children's bedroom at this point in time,
She claims that she's found her husband lying on the
floor and he's cold to the touch. Well, when was
the last time you actually saw your husband, ma'am. If
you're saying that this is some kind of natural event
that has occurred, he's lying on the bedroom floor cold.
(23:57):
So if that's the case, are you moving back and
forth across his body while you're toting his phone back
and forth. It's supposed to be static, and it's being open.
And by the way, you're probably the only person that
knows how to unlock it because you know the code.
We all have a security code for it. So you
show that it's unlocked. You're going down the hallway, you're
(24:18):
in the kids room. What was she doing? She's contemplating
as she's walking up and down the hallway, trying to
determine what the next move is, because now at this
point she probably has some kind of awareness that, you
know what, I've just facilitated the death of the man
that I'm married to. Who are they going to look at?
They always look at the spouse. But for some reason,
she just she didn't necessarily panic. I would certainly be
(24:41):
in a state of panic.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Joe Scott, do you know that they had a prenup.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
They had a prenup that was signed on the day
of their wedding, and he Eric Richins was worth more
to her, Corey Richards dead than alive. Can I ask
you something else that happened? Factually, she told cops that
(25:13):
she performed CPR on her husband. I find that very
difficult to believe. If pink, bloody froth was still coming
out or had come out of his nose and mouth
and it was still on him in that fashion when
first responders got there, what does that tell you that
it's still there?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
This is what can happen. I'm just giving you a
scientific facts here. If he is presenting with this pink
frothy cone, this can be exacerbated. It can, and this
is what would probably argued, this can be exacerbated by
chess compressions. I think the key here though, is, you know,
the first responding officers, the EMTs, when they're talking to her,
(25:58):
if she's done mouth mouth, if she's done chest compressions
on him, I think the question or that I would
ask them, what did you observe on her person? Was
there anything on her that's some kind of contact that
had leached back onto her, say, for instance, because it
would stain the mouth if she did mouth to mouth,
it would be on her potentially on her hands that
(26:19):
she's trying to open the airway. You know, that's how
we do CPR. You got to clear the airway, you
got to open it up. But I'd like to know
to what extent this cone was presenting, if in fact
it did, which is normal in these circumstances when you
have a fentanyl OD.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
So you're telling me that when the cops got in
there and they say he still has the bloody foam
coming out of his mouth and nose, you think it
was possible she had performed CPR on him.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I'm not saying that it's possible she performed CPR. But
what can happen, though, is if you are in this
status after you've odeed or been odeed on fentanyl, will
continue People don't believe this, but I've actually seen it happen.
It will continue to present and actually come out of
the body for a protracted period of time. It's going
(27:11):
to be further exacerbated by the fact that you're doing
chest compressions, you know, so you're compressing the lungs, You're
pushing more and more out all the while.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So she could have performed CPR and then the phone
continued to come out of his nose and mouth. If
you're doing mouth to mouth on somebody, how would that work?
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Well? You would you there would be a sensation that
this is traveling. You know, you're you're actually sharing this
with the body. It would go back into her mouth,
it would be on her face, there would be a
ring around her face perhaps, but you know, you don't
know if she took time to clean up, if she
and it did in fact attempts CPR.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So we need to know her presentation, how she presented
when cops got there, what she looked like in regular talk,
what she looked like.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah, absolutely, and you you want to know. And one
of the things that we also look like is are
one of the things we also look for in individuals
that are the reporters of death, those that discover the dead,
is are they presenting with an appropriate amount of grief?
Are they you know, are they in hysterical state. I've
seen people go catatonic, you know, where you can't get
(28:20):
any information out of them. But then you got those
that just kind of hit that kind of flat plane
where they're just kind of talking to you. Is if oham,
it's another day.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Five times the amount of a deadly dosage of fentanyl
in his system and prophetic words telling his sister she
might just kill me for the money, we wait as
just as unfalls.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Scott, You're awesome. Thank you for being with us.
Host
Nancy Grace
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