To the outside world, she looked like the perfect mom and wife – a successful professional specializing in flipping luxury homes.
But mother-of-three Kouri Richins also had a secret lover with whom she exchanged racy texts and fantasized about starting a new life together before allegedly killing her husband Eric with a poisoned cocktail in 2022.
Richins’s murder trial kicked off this week in Park City, Utah, where prosecutors shared damning messages of the 35-year-old discussing a planned trip to a swank Caribbean resort with paramour Josh Grossmann and telling him she missed him ‘physically’.
But the Daily Mail can reveal the handyman is unlikely to make an appearance at Richins’s high-profile trial – because he has gone to ground and has spent the past three years living out of a truck, making it difficult for investigators to find him.
Instead, the case will hinge on testimony from other witnesses: among them the housekeeper Carmen Lauber who allegedly sold Richins the fentanyl pills prosecutors say she secretly spiked into husband Eric Richins’s Moscow mule – killing the 39-year-old.
The murder trial at the Summit County Courthouse is expected to last for five weeks.
The Daily Mail has learned that Grossmann, 43, has never cooperated with prosecutors, despite the Iraq war veteran’s forbidden fling with Richins hitting the skids just months after Eric Richins’s death.
The texts between the erstwhile lovers came under scrutiny after Richins’s trial began with prosecutors highlighting one message she sent on the night of Eric’s alleged murder that included a photo of two people kissing and read, ‘I love you’.
Mom-of-three Kouri Richins is on trial for allegedly murdering her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl slipped into a Moscow mule cocktail. Prosecutors have been unable to track down her lover Josh Grossmann (pictured right in a 2024 mugshot)
Prosecutors allege Richins killed her husband Eric Richins, 39, with fentanyl-laced pills dissolved in a cocktail in 2022
The lovers were once so close, they discussed marriage, according to papers filed by the prosecution.
Although Richins consulted a divorce lawyer in January 2022, she ultimately decided not to proceed.
That, however, wasn’t enough to stop her from making plans to go on a luxury trip to the Secrets Resort on the Caribbean island of St. Martin with Grossmann which she had booked for April 20 – six weeks after her husband died.
In the end, the pair didn’t go thanks to the fallout from Eric’s death.
‘If I was divorced right now and ask you to marry me tomorrow, you would?’ Richins texted her lover in February 2022, just weeks before she allegedly poisoned her husband Eric.
She added: ‘I just want to lay on the couch and cuddle you. Watch a murder documentary and snuggle!’
Two weeks later, she texted Grossmann: ‘Life is going to be different I promise’, adding: ‘I hate your hard days. I wish I could be there to turn them around for you.
‘Can I try Friday? Give me a few days? Hang in there until then please?’
Text messages displayed in court show Richins exchanging flirty texts with her lover Josh Grossman before her husband Eric’s death
Richins had fantasized about getting divorced and having a future with her secret boyfriend
Grossmann, an Iraq war veteran, has been down on his luck and has had multiple run-ins with the cops in the intervening years since his affair with Richins ended
In December 2022, the pair exchanged messages discussing divorce with Richins writing: ‘I’m in love with a man that’s not my husband’ and ‘I want to but I can’t break up my family.
‘It’s having your cake and eating it too. I do just want to love you. I do love you.’
‘I thought you were getting a divorce,’ he allegedly replied.
In the end, Grossmann only hung on for another eight months before being kicked to the curb by his former lover, booting him out of a condo she had an interest in in Sarasota Springs, Utah.
Iraq war veteran Grossmann has been down on his luck and has had multiple run-ins with the cops since their split.
In police reports he was listed as ‘transient’ while others note that addresses and phone numbers that had once worked are now invalid.
The most serious incident that took place on October 21, 2022 when Grossmann rented a 19ft scissor lift and flatbed trailer from a branch of Home Depot in Salt Lake City – and failed to return them.
After ignoring demand letters for eight months, cops got in touch in June 2023 – only to be told by Grossmann that he thought Home Depot had their property back and the would be in touch to tell them how to get it.
He never did, according to police.
After Eric’s March 4 death, Richins and Grossmann discussed plans to go on a luxury trip to the Secrets Resort on the Caribbean island of St.Martin
Richins, 35, is currently being held at the Summit County Jail as her high-profile murder trial in Park City, Utah unfolds
Richins is seen wearing a pair of checked pajamas and telling cops that her husband was ‘cold’ and ‘heavy’ and lying on his back after, she said, she discovered him dead
Subsequent calls to his phone found it was disconnected, while the address he provided on the rental paperwork turned out to be ‘not valid’.
Grossmann subsequently pleaded guilty to one count of theft – a class A misdemeanor in Utah – and was handed a probation term.
But despite his legal woes, Grossmann continued to defy the law and was busted in February 2023 for having expired tags.
Court papers seen by the Daily Mail show Grossmann still has a warrant out for his arrest in that case and has never made an appearance or paid a fine.
Despite that, in April the same year, he was collared for driving without a license and again for having expired tags – this time in Saratoga Springs, Utah.
After failing to show up at court, a warrant was issued for his arrest and he was eventually grabbed by cops in January 2024 and booked into the Utah County Jail where he spent one night.
Since then, Grossmann has gone to ground while his former lover cools her heels at the Summit County Jail where Richens occupies cell four in the lock-up’s Behavioral Health Unit.
Richins’s trial has so far heard opening statements and from Eric’s father, sister Katie and brother-in-law Clint Benson.
During trial proceedings this week, the 911 call Richins placed was aired in court as was harrowing bodycam footage showing her hysterical on being told her husband had died.
The prosecution is arguing that Richins murdered husband Eric to be with Grossmann – but also due to the millions of dollars of debt she was in.
Richins’s counsel says there is no proof she poisoned her husband’s Moscow mule – a cocktail of vodka, ginger beer and lime juice – and claim she is the victim of a vendetta by his family.
