Housekeeper who worked for ‘Moscow Mule killer’ admits SHE supplied mother with ‘drugs she used to murder her husband’
The maid, who worked for Utah grief writer Kouri Richins, testified that she provided him with drugs that the prosecution said the mother of three used to kill her husband.
Richins, 35, was arrested in connection with the May 2023 death of her husband, Eric, 39, and eventually appeared in court in Park City, Utah, on Monday.
Eric was found dead in his bed in Kamas in March 2022. An autopsy later found that Richins had five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system when he died, which police said was administered by Richins, who allegedly mixed the substance into a Moscow Mule cocktail.
On Thursday, 53-year-old cleaner Carmen Lauber took the stand and claimed she was asked to provide drugs to Richins four times, then gave the mother-of-three pills twice in January and February 2022.
Lauber is the prosecution’s star witness and testified that he obtained the drugs for Richins from a dealer named Robert Crozier and made the exchange at a gas station in Draper, Utah.
One transaction was for $600 and the other was for $1000. Lauber said Richins asked him to buy pills for back pain.
Although he didn’t know exactly what was required, he assumed it meant prescription pain pills (OxyContin in this case) and provided them as needed.
In his earlier testimony, he claimed that he was allowed to buy fentanyl when the grief writer asked him to buy a second pill, stating that it was a “Michael Jackson thing”; He repeated this claim in court on Thursday.
Prosecutors allege Richins killed her husband, 39-year-old Eric Richins (both pictured), with fentanyl-laced pills dissolved in a cocktail in 2022
Richins, 35, is currently being held in the Summit County Jail while his high-profile murder case continues in Park City, Utah. Richins allegedly asked the woman’s maid, 53-year-old Carmen Lauber, to find the Fentynl needed for the murder.
At the urging of defense attorney Wendy Lewis, Lauber admitted that he didn’t know what the “Michael Jackson stuff” Richins asked about meant and had to Google it, discovering it was a powerful painkiller called propofol.
Lewis said Lauber changed his story multiple times and admitted he had a learning disability that meant he had a poor memory.
In an explosive development, Lauber claimed he confronted Richins following Eric’s death but was told the pills were not suitable for him and that he had died of a brain aneurysm.
Lauber, dressed casually in a beige T-shirt with his long black hair pulled back, became defensive on the stand during Lewis’ cross-examination, prompting Lewis to admit to using drugs, including meth and heroin, during interactions with his former home impersonator.
Richins, wearing a navy blue blouse and brick red jacket, shot several sharp glances at her former employee as her testimony continued.
Lewis also went after Lauber over his own legal troubles — he was jailed in 2021 on two charges of possession with intent to supply — and hinted that the maid agreed to testify against Richins to avoid further criminal charges against her and immunity in the case.
Lauber, who has since moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to live with his fiancee, faced a potentially lengthy prison sentence if convicted of distributing and possessing the drugs that caused Eric’s death.
He was interrogated seven times by cops and admitted to taking meth and heroin but denied knowing anything about fentanyl, according to the defense.
Lewis claimed this was a lie; He noted that Lauber’s own daughter nearly died from a drug overdose.
Lauber, who was facing the possibility of further imprisonment after Eric’s death, allegedly told the police during an interview that “this was going to kill me.”
Lewis then played explosive footage of Lauber’s initial interview with cops about Richins; The cops threatened to increase his prison sentence unless he helped them with their case.
In the footage, police can be heard saying, “You need to give us the details that led to Kouri Richins being convicted of murder.”
Responding in court, Lauber said: ‘I chose to move forward by telling the truth.’
Much of the prosecution is based on the theory that Richins intentionally obtained fentanyl to poison Eric.
That strategy suffered a near-fatal blow in October, when Crozier, the dealer who supplied Lauber with drugs, claimed in a sworn statement that he sold him OxyContin instead of fentanyl on both occasions.
But the prosecution pointed out that Crozier claimed in a May 2023 interview while locked up in the Davis County Jail that the pills contained fentanyl and that both Lauber and Richins knew this.
Meanwhile, the defense said there was no evidence that Richins poisoned her husband’s drink and that she may have purchased the drug that killed him during a holiday in Mexico two weeks before he died.
Crozier is among the witnesses expected to testify at the hearing, which is planned to last five weeks.
So far, the court has heard from numerous forensic experts, as well as police officers who went to the scene where Eric, his father, his sister and his brother-in-law died.
