For anyone who needs context, because on its face this is a confusing document, the actual letter was intended to be delivered to her mother. It conscripts said mother into a detailed scheme of witness tampering heavily involving her brother. Kouri concocts a fake history of drug use for her dead husband with numerous details designed to create reasonable doubt and open up the idea that her husband was a habitual fentanyl user, while explaining away the fact that no drugs were found in their home. She also implores her mother to send photos of her nieces to the press as an implicit threat against one of Eric’s sisters (Eric’s family were pretty firmly in the “She killed him” camp at this point). The large “Walk the dog!” heading, along with other notes throughout, is understood to be an instruction to get out of the house before reading the letter and then to dispose of it somewhere safely.
Yeah. In the letter she tells her mother to have this planned conversation with brother (to fill him in on his part of the cover-up) somewhere away from home because she’s worried about her mother’s house and phone being bugged. But she didn’t think “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t leave this highly incriminating document in my jail cell.” She is not a smart person, at all.
The wildest part about this case is that she really ought to have gotten away with it. The police absolutely botched the case. Kouri wasn’t even charged until something like a year or two after the murder. The initial investigation failed to gather any meaningful evidence, basically just completely shit the bed on everything, overlooked a whole bunch of red flags, and she was free and clear until Eric’s family hired a PI to look into it and get charges pressed.
The only reason she got convicted is that she’s spectacularly stupid and left a trail of evidence a mile wide, so that even a year or so after the fact it will still possible to easily show that she did it.
Never heard of this case before. Thank you for sharing, for anyone else I think this is a link to the letter mentioned:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23980331-kouri-richins-walk-the-dog-letter/
For anyone who needs context, because on its face this is a confusing document, the actual letter was intended to be delivered to her mother. It conscripts said mother into a detailed scheme of witness tampering heavily involving her brother. Kouri concocts a fake history of drug use for her dead husband with numerous details designed to create reasonable doubt and open up the idea that her husband was a habitual fentanyl user, while explaining away the fact that no drugs were found in their home. She also implores her mother to send photos of her nieces to the press as an implicit threat against one of Eric’s sisters (Eric’s family were pretty firmly in the “She killed him” camp at this point). The large “Walk the dog!” heading, along with other notes throughout, is understood to be an instruction to get out of the house before reading the letter and then to dispose of it somewhere safely.
How do you be so stupid you think that people are reading the letter you sent from jail over the recipient’s shoulder but not before delivery
Yeah. In the letter she tells her mother to have this planned conversation with brother (to fill him in on his part of the cover-up) somewhere away from home because she’s worried about her mother’s house and phone being bugged. But she didn’t think “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t leave this highly incriminating document in my jail cell.” She is not a smart person, at all.
The wildest part about this case is that she really ought to have gotten away with it. The police absolutely botched the case. Kouri wasn’t even charged until something like a year or two after the murder. The initial investigation failed to gather any meaningful evidence, basically just completely shit the bed on everything, overlooked a whole bunch of red flags, and she was free and clear until Eric’s family hired a PI to look into it and get charges pressed.
The only reason she got convicted is that she’s spectacularly stupid and left a trail of evidence a mile wide, so that even a year or so after the fact it will still possible to easily show that she did it.
That’s the cops and criminals I’ve learned to expect