Transcript of The After Show: Murder She Wrote: The Kouri Richins Trial

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Hi everybody, and welcome to 2020: The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts, and as always, I'm so delighted that you are with us today to spend some time with us as we take a closer look at one of our 2020 episodes. And this one is truly, truly a jaw-dropper. If you saw it, chances are you're still talking about it. And if you didn't, you're gonna hear all the details today about an episode called Murder, She Wrote: The Corrie Richens trial. Now, this one has gained headlines all over the country, really, probably all over the world. It grabbed a lot of attention. The story of Kori Richins, a 35-year-old mom and wife from Utah who seemed to be living the good life. She had a real estate company, she volunteered in her community, and her husband Eric owned a multi-million dollar masonry business. By all accounts, they were devoted parents. They had 3 children, and everybody saw them as a kind of a young, successful, happy couple. Well, that was until tragically on March 4th, 2022, Eric was shockingly found dead after he and his wife had shared a nightcap. While an autopsy would later reveal that he died from a fentanyl overdose with 5 times the lethal limit in his system.

That's right, 5 times. His family was in deep grief. And interestingly, a year after Eric's death, Kori Richens published a children's book about grief, trying to help her sons cope with the loss of their father. She even appeared on a local television show.

We got an email, wrote into the station. It was Kori saying that she had just written what she believed to be was the first book for kids about coping with grief, and that she would love the chance to share that on Good Things Utah. My kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced last year, and to make sense and process, I'm sure. Yes, exactly, exactly.

So she seemed to be moving forward in her life, and then a breathtaking shocker. A month after her media promotion, Cori is arrested, accused of poisoning her husband's drink, and charged with his murder. I mean, it was truly like something out of a TV show. This story was one that people were talking about everywhere. And of course, we're still talking about it after we aired it on 20/20. So to help us peel back the layers of this unbelievable story, we are turning to our ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmire, who reported this piece for 20/20 and included some exclusive interviews with Corey's family, a former best friend, and all kinds of clips that you're going to hear today that you didn't hear about in that episode. Brian is bringing us some new details from inside the courtroom. Courtroom, which is something he does best, because you are a lawyer in addition to being a legal analyst for us. Brian, good to see you.

Always a pleasure.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, always a pleasure. Well, you and I always get to dive into these stories, and I think I saw on your social media where you said you've covered a lot of strange, unusual, you know, jaw-dropping stories, but this one ranks up there. How so?

Absolutely. Utah always gives us a lot of gems, right? Uh, if you're thinking about the, uh, the social media moms who were arrested and convicted some years ago, now this one. And Utah is good in the sense of we get cameras in the court, so we get to see a lot. But I don't think we've ever thought about, saw, conceptualized, think we would ever see a story that involved the death of a father and the death of a husband, and then a children's book that followed it, and how long it took for the arrest. And then add an affair, add in some insurance fraud. Like, it just had all of the elements. It was like, did someone write this story, or was this like a real life thing?

Because you You wouldn't believe it if somebody had written it. You'd think this has to be fiction. And that's what I think was so captivating, I think, for so many of us. And the conclusion actually just happened in this story, and still a little more to come. But before we get to that and get to the courtroom, let's go back to the beginning and understand a little bit more about this couple.

Yeah, so Corrie Richards, I think it'll be Corrie Darden at that time, when you hear her maiden name. She's a cash register assistant or cashier at Home Depot. He is starting this soon-to-be successful masonry business We found out during the trial that he co-owns the business. I think he, uh, is worth $2.6 million, so doing fairly well, right? Meets this beautiful young lady, they hit it off. Years later, they end up having 3 sons, and by all intents and purposes, at least from the outside looking in, looks like they're doing fairly well. His background is a little bit different than hers, right? She comes from more humble beginnings, as the prosecutor described it. He comes from a family of cattle ranchers, but they get married and it seems to work out. His business blows up, they have 3 children, she decides to get into flipping houses and seems to be doing successful in some regards, at least in terms of types of property that she's able to acquire and then flip. But clearly we hear about the debts and things of that nature. He is described as an outdoorsy guy. He's coaching his son's basketball and baseball and soccer team.

From the outside in, it's like, hey, this is like a Hallmark movie, right?

Yeah, yeah, they're making it. They're making it. And of course, this is 2020, so we know there's going to be an end to that making it.

Exactly.

Scenario. So folks think that they're doing pretty well, but clearly behind closed doors, things aren't going so well. And we would learn more about that later on when this goes to a trial. But before his death, they were clearly having some ups and downs in that relationship. And then she was also sneakily doing some things in that relationship as well.

Because the heart of this all, of course, to the prosecution is that she was bad with the money. The theory the prosecution had was he was killed because she wanted to start a new life with this Josh Grossman, her paramour. And that the way that their prenup operated, because again, going back to how they come from very different backgrounds, there's a prenup before they got married, that she knew that she had to get out of this relationship in a certain way to be able to keep the money and keep the kids and keep this new boyfriend of hers.

So what was interesting, and there you hit on a number of things there, and some of those we want to get to later because a lot of this would be revealed in the trial and in the court case. But before all of this happened and before he is killed, there's an incident that happens just a few weeks before he actually dies. He becomes ill, and there's a little hint there later on that he thought something was going on with her.

Yeah, well, so with most of our homicide cases, you'll see the person is charged with homicide, like a murder, and then also attempted murder because it's like a lesser included. That's not the case here, because here she tried to kill him on Valentine's Day, and then 2 weeks later she actually killed him.

On Valentine's Day?

Yeah. And so the way the story goes out is that she went out to go get a sandwich for him, and here he thinks This is my loving wife. Like, she's, she's going off selling homes and, and making money, but she thought about me on Valentine's Day. He takes a single bite, according to some text messages we learned in the trial, feels ill. And I think like most fathers and probably most parents who've got 3 kids and they gotta run out, ain't nobody got no time to be sick. Yeah, yeah, right.

So you gotta power through it.

Yeah. So he says he takes his son's, uh, EpiPen, hits it in his leg, takes a gulp of like some allergy medication, sleeps it off, and then goes to, I think, like coaching the kids or something with the kids. Wow. But in the text we hear him texting some of his friends saying, "Hey, you almost lost me there. I think my wife might have tried to kill me." And it's those text messages that the prosecution used to say, "Hey, something happened here." They also use messages, and we'll talk about this later, about her quote-unquote drug dealer and how another amount of drugs were purchased between the Valentine's Day and the second drugging, where she was asking for some stronger stuff.

Then a couple of weeks later, they're celebrating something or another. She makes them a round of cocktails on March 4th, 2022. Everything changes.

Yeah. So the way the story goes is that they came home, they were celebrating both of their success, namely hers as well. She's about to flip a major property, right? She was supposed to come into a lot of money and they're supposed to celebrate. Well, if you have kids at home, you understand how celebrating works for parents. You got to have to wait for the kids to go to sleep and then you can have your cocktail afterwards.

Yeah.

I got a 3-year-old, I'm still living it. But that's the story that One of the kids is having a nightmare. She makes him a drink. She goes into the child's bedroom and stays with him, but she doesn't get up until 3:00 AM in the morning. And that's when, according to her, she discovers that he had passed away.

And then she calls 911 and the call is kind of interesting. Let's listen.

911, what's the address of the emergency? My husband's not breathing.

He's cold.

Okay. Tell me exactly what happened. I don't know. I just came in.

I was sleeping with my kids.

Okay, I can't understand you. I need you to take a deep breath. What's going on? Okay, we're gonna— can you do CPR? You don't know?

I'm gonna tell you how to.

Are you willing to do CPR? Yeah. Okay.

Now, you've heard a lot of calls, uh, in court, uh, over the years. They are all very different. What did you make of this one?

So as a defense attorney, whenever I hear a 911 call or a call or a conversation with someone talking about their grief, my first mindset is, unless I know this person, I do not know how they grieve. And so for me to take my measuring stick and say like, well, this is what I would do when I would grieve, it's kind of unfair. But there are— even that aside, you listen to her and it's like, this sounds weird. There are the franticness, the tone in which it is, and maybe this is like hindsight being, excuse the pun, 20/20.

You couldn't help it.

Yeah. You could be like, okay, I can see where she's lying here. I can see where she's not. But when it first came out, you're like, okay, maybe.

Yeah.

I mean, don't forget, for a long time she was the victim in this case.

Well, of course. And that's the way she was treated. So it sounds like this is a woman who maybe was flailing, trying to see if she could help her husband. The 911 operator's trying to walk her through compressions. And, you know, they would come to the house and, you know, they would discover later on it didn't look like that had happened.

At the time when they came in, they were shocked. You can see some of the body worn camera were like, this is a healthy guy. He's fairly young. And you can see one of the EMTs kind of shrugging their shoulders, be like, maybe like an aneurysm or something, like a sudden death. They were asking questions about his health, any medication he takes. She did reveal that he takes THC gummies. Don't forget, this is the state of Utah. Recreational marijuana is illegal, but medicinal is legal. And so, like, he's a mason worker. We, we clearly know about the opioid epidemic. He works with his hands. Maybe he has a bad back. Maybe he was given proper drugs to take care of, and then he moved to illegal drugs to help where he could.

There's no sign of trauma, blunt force trauma, anything like that.

They're grasping at straws at this point.

The authorities are looking into this, and They think it could be an accidental overdose.

Fentanyl. So when the toxicology— when the autopsy comes back and the toxicology report comes in, that's when they know. You can tell whether or not the fentanyl that is in someone's system is the illegal type of fentanyl or the medicinal type of fentanyl. And when they realize it's the illegal type, that's when they start to look at this case as a criminal case.

Corey, actually not that long after this death, writes a book. The book is called "Are You With Me?" She talks about how she's self-publishing this book to try to help her children make sense of the loss of their father. It's all about dealing with grief, which is kind of interesting because we don't know, but police apparently at that time are taking a second look and a deeper look at her and the death of her husband. When you look back on it and the fact that she would go out and present this book on television, what do you make of that?

The only thing that can make sense to me is that she is still thinking as a mother in the sense of Okay, let's assume that she knows that she's guilty, right? Even as she's writing this book, but she's still thinking like a mother. How do I protect my children? I might have done something horrible, but I still want to protect them from something. That's the only thing that makes sense to me, because doing this as a way to try to push any suspicions off of you, yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me because it's also not a successful tactic.

And you're standing in the limelight in a way. I mean, you know, the glare of the lights, and you would think you would be retreating from the lights knowing that you did something. So at what point then in this investigation, because police are still looking into this case, family members of Eric's are suspicious, they don't think that he died of an overdose, at what point do they start seeing Corey as a suspect?

I think the biggest point in this case is when Carmen Lauber is arrested, and that is the housekeeper of the family who ultimately does testify at court that Corey was the one who approached her not once but twice to get illegal drugs. They investigate her. And it's— I think it was March of 2023 when she's arrested. And in about mid-May of 2023, she's released on a GPS ankle monitor. And that's very coincidental because also in May of 2023, Corey Richens is arrested.

He's arrested.

And so it's the idea of— and the defense tried to raise this as a reasonable doubt too, that the only reason why we're here is because you arrested the housekeeper, you forced her to flip by telling a lie, and you took and I'm using air quotes, a lie to then prosecute Corey Richens, that it came from the arrest of the housekeeper.

Okay, you've got us all intrigued. Don't go anywhere because there's so much more to talk about. She's arrested, and then we're going to get to the court case. Brian is going to take us inside that courtroom, and we're going to talk about the explosive moments that our 2020 team caught on camera, the arguments from both the defense and the prosecution. This was a high-profile case, so many talking about it. So you don't go anywhere, you're going to want to hear this.

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Hi there, and welcome back to 2020: The After Show. I am sitting here with ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmire, Ryan Meyer, who played a huge part in our most recent 2020 story, helping us take a look at that high-profile case that centered on the murder of Eric Richens. You'll remember that he was poisoned by a lethal dose of fentanyl mixed into a cocktail. The story was the topic of our episode called Murder, She Wrote: The Kori Richens Trial. And last week, a Utah jury found her guilty on all 5 counts related to the poisoning death of her husband Eric. And our team was right there inside the courtroom during this trial. And Ryan, let's start off with the defense's argument. The defense was obviously trying to cast a lot of doubt on whether she could have potentially done this. What were they hanging their hat on?

Yeah, so the defense here— there were two defense attorneys actually. First, she had private counsel, and then she was given public defenders. Their main thing was embedded within the idea of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right? That there's reasonable doubt as to how the fentanyl, one, got into Corey Richens' hands, and then two, got into Eric Richens' system. And there was no direct evidence evidence that could show that either she was given those drugs by one of the drug dealers or one of the people who testified against her, or two, that Eric Richens consumed that drug because of her. And so they said, because you're missing that very crucial link, everything else is circumstantial, everything else has some sort of level of reasonable doubt, and you have to acquit her.

And that's all a defense has to do is just like create some reasonable doubt. There was something in the trial that was kind of interesting, a bombshell, the walk the dog letter, and it was found found in a book that Corey had in her jail cell. Tell us a little bit about that one.

Yeah, so this is a multi-document kind of writing. If you were going to ask the defense, they said, well, she's a writer, right? She's an author, she's writing a manuscript. But the prosecution was able to make the argument that at least 6 of those pages of that entire manuscript could come in. And the reason why I call it the walk the dog script is because at the very top it says like, walk the dog, be inconspicuous. And the prosecution uses what's called consciousness of guilt, an action that a person would do only if they are guilty and nothing else. And in that document, she is writing to her mother to explain to her brother how to testify specifically about her husband, about where the fentanyl might have come, about his trips to Mexico, about some of their interactions and text messages, and kind of walking them through that. Even to say, if my memory serves me right, or like kind of throwing in legal jargon as to how he should respond in a certain way. And the prosecution says only guilty people do this. And that was able to be presented in front of the jury.

I mean, she just explained to me that it was some fairy tale book that was loosely based on what's going on, but there's a whole bunch of stuff in there that makes it very obvious that it's not true.

Corey has always maintained that the walk the dog letter was part of a greater manuscript.

Uh, the prosecution also talked about her being not only a woman from humble beginnings, but one who would stop at nothing to get what she wants. So they portrayed her as a a completely different person than people sort of thought she was.

Absolutely. And you'll hear this cliché over and over again. As a prosecutor, they don't have to prove motive, but they like to do so because it is— I think it's easier for people to understand. I mean, you're a storyteller, right? If you can't explain the why— I said why something is happening or why a person is doing something— oftentimes a person might try to figure out, maybe they did, maybe they didn't do it. But when it comes to murder, it's usually the big three, right? It's usually love, money, or revenge. And here you had two of the three where they are able to explore. They had the love when it came to the paramour, Josh Grossman, and they had the money when it came to the insurance fraud. And so they use those as motivations and then say, "Well, this is why she really needed it, because she didn't come from money. She wasn't from a cattle ranch family. Money was a very important thing to her, and she was looking to get that by any means necessary." One of those means? Murder.

Kory didn't testify, and she didn't have to testify. We know that. You've taught us that as an attorney. And that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether she's guilty or not. The jury has to be told that. That all of this evidence is coming out that she had plotted this, that she wanted a new life, she wanted out of this relationship with her husband, would it have benefited her in your view to testify?

I don't think so. And I'll say this, right, you are correct, right? And what I tell people is jurors cannot hold it against a person for not testifying. I'm not a juror, so I'm gonna do it, right? But I also understand the mechanics of why a person does or doesn't testify as well. In a case like this, I don't think it made sense for her to testify for two reasons.

Reasons.

One, the type of defense this is. This is not a defense where she would know what happened and then can give that information to the jury. Her whole defense is, I don't know how he got poisoned. She can only testify as to how he became poisoned, how that got into his system. And if she knew the answer and it was someone else, law enforcement would have investigated that and she wouldn't be the defendant. At least the jury is going to perceive that, right? So she comes up with a great reason. Now the question would I'm like, well, why are you the defendant then, right? Right. The other reason is the whatabouts. The cross-examination would have been horrible because then they would have then said, well, what about when you said this? And what about when you said that? And what about this?

The door?

Yes. And she would get crucified. A lot of people think that being cross-examined by a person who is trained to do it is a comfortable thing. They can do it. But when it's your life on the line and you're being cross-examined and you have to make sure that everything is Yeah.

No. No. It's not going to serve you any justice really to do that. Well, a jury clearly believed the prosecution's case. She was convicted. Korey was convicted. So many of us saw clips of her in court. When they read that verdict, she drops her head down. What did you make of her reaction after that? Do you think this is somebody who just could not believe that she would ever be convicted?

I don't think she couldn't believe it because I think anyone who's gotten to that point There's a piece of them that knows this could be it. I've done maybe about, I think shy of a dozen. So like 10 or 11 trials. Uh, and each one of them, you find yourself holding the hand of your client, arm around the shoulder, something, right? They're inches away from you. And you've, you've spent this time with them fighting for them, believing them, thinking that you can win this case. I don't know what the percentages was for her. Sure, she believed to some degree she might beat the top charges. She's maybe thinking, "Oh, maybe if they just get me for the insurance fraud, that's not that bad. If they get me for everything, I'm missing everything." And I think that head down, especially as a mother, I think that's her realizing, "I'm missing my entire children's lives." Yeah.

The sentencing will come later, but clearly she's going to be possibly gone for life in this case. 20/20 had a chance to speak with Allie Staking, who was Corey's who was in her corner and just couldn't believe what she heard in court, and certainly this verdict. I mean, she was devastated. Let's take a look.

How do you explain that to kids? I mean, we saw them as family. I told my kids they were family. I don't know how Corey's kids are doing. If I could say anything to Eric's family, it would be that I'm so sorry for their loss. I loved Eric, and I would have never wished that for them or for him. And I loved his kids. I have no idea what I'd say to Corey. I don't know. I'm going to need more time to think on that one.

You know, you can't forget that those in the circle of these people are really affected by these types of cases, Brian.

Absolutely. And it's not just the effect, but when the effect settles in, because you have a former friend who was a friend, it seems, all the way through this trial. And then upon seeing the evidence, seeing the verdict, she is now left in a place where she's thinking, I'm just sorry for all those involved, and thinking about the children, Eric Richens and his family.

It's painful. It is painful to watch her endure this. And I can only imagine what others are feeling too.

You think that a verdict would be like, oh, all right, everything's great now, this is better. No, but the wound is still there. The pain is still there, especially when there's been betrayal. The betrayal part of it is big, especially when you are alongside with the defense and you— I think not just the verdict, but you also agree with the verdict to some degree, if not completely. You say, wow, I was wrong. Wow, I thought, well, my friend could never do this. How can my friend kill her husband and then write a book about it and not think about the children, do all this? And then you have the trial and you're like, It was like, oh, wow, I was— I was wrong.

And you're confronted by the truth.

Yeah.

Well, as we talked about earlier, an autopsy toxicology report did reveal that Eric died from fentanyl poisoning. And it's sort of interesting to think about because I don't really know that much about fentanyl. We've all heard about it and the overdoses and so forth. But I've got a pencil here. And if you take a look at this pencil and you think about just the tip of this pencil, the size here is considered a lethal amount. And he was given 5 times that amount, 5 times. So we want to learn a little bit more about that, what it means to the system and how it affects you. So when we come back, we're going to talk to a toxicologist to explain what this all means. So don't go anywhere. This show is sponsored by Bombas. If people are asking you if you're still working on your New Year's resolutions, well, here's a new one to add to your list. List: get more comfortable. And you can do that with Bombas. Bombas makes everyday go-to items that bring serious comfort, like luxurious Sunday slippers that feel like you're walking on clouds, sweat-wicking sports socks tailored to any sport or activity you can come up with, and premium everyday t-shirts that are flexible, breathable, and buttery soft.

And your feet will love wearing the sports socks to the gym or lounging in your Sunday slippers at home on a rainy day. And there's an added bonus. For every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. That's one purchased, one donated, with over 150 million donations and counting. Head over to bombas.com/20 and use code TWENTY, T-W-E-N-T-Y, for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombas.com/20 and the code TWENTY at checkout. Welcome back, everybody, to 2020: The After Show. I'm sitting here with Brian Buckmire, our ABC News legal analyst, who was a part of our most recent 2020 episode, Murder, She Wrote, centers around the shocking story of Corrie Richens, who was found guilty of killing her husband by mixing a fatal amount of fentanyl in his drink. Just hours before he went to sleep. And of course, he never woke up. Well, many of us have heard this drug, fentanyl, mentioned so much over the years, but I, for one, don't even really know how it works. And you might not either. So joining us is now emergency room physician and toxicologist, Dr. Stephanie Widmer. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

I talked about having this little pencil. We use this as a prop to talk about a little bit of fentanyl and how it can do a lot of damage and then having so much more of this, which is what happened in this case. Case. Educate us a little bit. We know that this— there's so many deaths in this country. It's the leading cause, I guess, of opioid deaths in this country. Tell us a little bit about it.

Sure. So fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. Synthetic meaning it is man-made. It's synthesized in a lab. And it is incredibly potent. So to put it into context, when you compare it to other drugs in its class, other opioids, it is 50 times stronger than heroin and 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. So very, very potent. The difference between, you know, sedating someone and taking away their respiratory drive is very, very small. We do use fentanyl in the medical setting.

Well, that's what I wanted to know, because Brian talked about legal doses of it and lethal and illegal doses. Yes. So tell us how it's used.

We use it in the medical setting for pain and sedation, but we use it in very small, controlled doses. And like I just said, the difference between between providing that sedation and death can be very, very tiny. A lot of the drugs that we use in the hospital or in the medical field are dosed on the order of milligrams and sometimes grams. And just to put in perspective, fentanyl is dosed on the order of micrograms. So 1 milligram is 1,000 micrograms. So really small numbers here. And you picked up the pencil before. That's really a great visual. But just to put some numbers behind it, I mean, we're really dealing with very small doses is here, and, you know, it's very well regulated in the hospital setting, but when you're out on the street, there's essentially zero regulation, zero quality control.

When you say it's used in that setting, in the hospital setting, and people get hooked on it ultimately, it's obviously a pain medication.

So there's certainly a high that comes with it, and it's so, so potent that that's why it's so desirable to many people. But again, the difference between getting high and death is, it's razor thin. So really the margin for error is incredibly tiny here.

What would have happened to Eric when he got that much fentanyl in a drink? And she says she came out and he was passed out and he was gone. What would have happened to his body with that amount of fentanyl in his system?

So when we talk about potency, the fentanyl binds to opioid receptors in the brainstem and fentanyl binds very strong, very tightly, and very quickly to these opioid receptors in the brainstem. Of those receptors are occupied, that's when breathing and respiratory drive starts to shut down. So people don't die from, you know, being too high or being too sleepy. Fentanyl quite literally slows a person's breathing until it stops completely.

So that's how you know somebody has possibly overdosed, when they are not breathing and they've suddenly just succumbed to it. We've heard about Narcan over the years. It's available over the counter. Tell us a little bit about it. I think you have something here we can take a look at.

Yes, we have some Narcan here. So if you're If you're concerned that someone has overdosed, you want to check to make sure whether or not they're responsive. And there are certain things to look for with a fentanyl overdose or any opioid for that matter. We call it an opioid toxidrome, an opioid toxic syndrome. So people will come in, they can look very sleepy, they can have slurred speech. Very often you'll hear the term pinpoint pupils. People's pupils become very constricted, small to the size of like a pin. And as opioid toxicity progresses, their breathing can become very shallow. Very slow and shallow. You can hear choking noises, gurgling sounds, and when, you know, the breathing comes very close to a stop, you can see their skin turn kind of gray and their fingers turn blue because of a lack of oxygen. So if you are ever concerned that somebody has potentially overdosed on opioids, you check to see if they're responding. If they're not responding, call for help, call 911. We all have cell phones, put the phone on speaker, 911, lay the person on their back back, and if you have access to Narcan or naloxone, Narcan is the brand name, if you have access to Narcan, this is what it looks like, but you're going to essentially spray it in their nostril.

It comes in a 4 milligram dose, and there's one dose here, so don't kind of push on the plunger until you're ready to use it, because it's one and done, unless you have more, of course. Naloxone is the reversal agent for opioid toxicity. It reverses an opioid overdose. It basically knocks fentanyl off of those opioid receptors and restores the drive to breathe again.

Wow. So this has saved a lot of lives over the years. We've heard about people who have overdosed. One of the things that came out in trial was that the 911 operator suggested that she try chest compressions and so forth, and later they felt that that had not been applied. It had not happened. Does that make any difference if somebody is trying chest compressions?

That's a really great point. So naloxone, just like you said, is amazing. It saves lives. But if someone does not have a pulse, that's where CPR comes first. CPR, you're quite literally pumping the person's heart inside of their body. So if somebody does not have a pulse, if their heart is not pumping, it's essential before you even reach for the naloxone to start CPR.

But that's almost like a spray, as you said, a nostril spray. That's interesting. I've never had an opportunity to see that before.

Yes, right. And now naloxone is sold over the counter, so it's very easily accessible nowadays, but it comes in a nasal spray. There's the nozzle here and you have the plunger and it's just, it's almost kind of inherent. You hold it like this and you push it and delivers the full 4 milligram spray.

And it could have possibly saved the life of Eric here in this case if anybody had an opportunity to do it. Brian, before we go, sentencing in this case for Corey will happen a little bit later in May, we're told. What can we expect?

So what you would expect is victim impact statements and one of the reasons why the sentencing is so late, usually it's within 45 days in Utah, is so they can get all the victims to be able to organize themselves and come forward to give those victim impact statements. Victim impact statements operate for two reasons. One, it's cathartic for the victims to be able to express how they felt that this defendant, now convicted felon, has affected their lives, but also to inform the judge as to where the sentencing should, should fall. With a case like this, with aggravated murder, more likely than not where she's looking at 25 to life, the judge I think would give something very close to the top spend regardless of what anyone said. And then for the first time, because Corey Richens did not testify in trial, she would have the opportunity to speak in court. And she could speak, not speak, speak to the court, speak to the victims, whatever it is. The defense would also have the opportunity to give any kind of mitigation to request a lower sentence. The judge would take all information and then render a sentence.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to hear if she does and if there's remorse there, because we all listen for those kinds of things in these cases. Brian Buckmire, so great to have you here. Dr. Widmer, wow, you educated us tremendously. I had never had an opportunity to see this. So thank you for spending some time with us. And thank you for being with us too. As always, thank you for joining this podcast episode and for joining us on 20/20. And you know, all of our episodes are on Friday nights on ABC, and you can stream episodes like this one anytime on Disney+ and Hulu.

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