5 Traits of Partners Who Poison — A Psychologist Explains

relationships. Look, for those of you who are in a relationship, I'm sure there have been

“those fleeting moments where you've had a disagreement with your partner and you think, oh my god,”

I'm going to kill him. But it's just an overreaction, right? And you're not actually thinking you're

going to kill them because you would never hurt them. You love them. Well, this is a case that's

different. Cory Richins, she's a Utah mom and she's on trial right now for killing her husband. Prosecutors say she poisoned him that she put fentanyl in his drink. Five times the lethal dose. I mean, who does that? It's a question we took to our forensic psychologist and believe it or not, the government says that types of killings like this are on the rise. And believe it or not, there's a profile for someone who poisons. But before we get into it, I'm excited to announce that

Crimly Obsessed is headed to CrimeCon Vegas in May. I can't wait to hang out with you guys and

I want to know if you're going. So drop a comment below and let me know are you going to

CrimeCon in Vegas and make sure you're following us for more CrimeCon updates coming soon. Dr. Delitori, thank you for coming to our shared today. I appreciate it coming on Crilly Obsessed. Tell me a little bit about your background. Yeah, so I'm a forensic psychologist and private practice in San Antonio, Texas. I do primarily criminal work. What that means is I get asked by the court to evaluate people for competency, distance, trial, insanity evaluations.

A lot of what I do is based around violence, particular sexual violence. We are so interested to hear your perspective about what was going on in the mind of someone who allegedly would poison their partner. We've had a chance to speak to Joseph Scott Morgan from his perspective to understand about the how of poisoning. But we need to know from you why people

“do this. Are you familiar with intimate partner poisons? Yeah, you know, I think poisonings as a whole,”

I think probably get a little bit of a bad wrap. You know, I think oftentimes true crime audience members are just like the regular audience members tend to think of poisoning as

like a woman's method to commit murder. The reality is is that anybody's capable of using poison

and when we look at the statistics such as they are, it is more men that actually engage in poisoning. And so when we look at the concept of poisoning as a whole, I think what we're missing is that poisoning as a method of murder has been one of the primary methods since man first walked out of the cave, honestly. And when we think about, well, who's capable then of using poisoning and why we often think of someone who is maybe physically weak or unable to be more aggressive,

“right, demonstrate aggressive behaviors. But I think that kind of belies a little bit the reality”

which is people use poisons when they want to get away with it for the most part in human history uncovering a poisoning as a murder has been extremely difficult. We were better at it today, but that's because we have thousands of years of science behind us, but even then I would content that there are a multitude of murders that go unknown as a murder because a poisoning was used. And so when we see it in domestic and intimate part of violence, what we're seeing is that the

method is used because the the perpetrator of that crime doesn't want to get caught, right, and so they're instead of, you know, beating up someone or stabbing or killing or whatever it is that they're going to use that's more aggressive. It want to get away with something. They want to get something out of this, either it's through their freedom or some kind of financial or external game that they can only get if the death of their partner is viewed as an accident. This is something I've

heard from other experts that we've spoken with, Dr. Petler, Laura Petler. She talks about how it has to meet the needs of the person committing the crime. So whatever the methodology is for the way they want to kill someone, it needs to meet those needs. So you're saying, it's not about getting even the rage, the wild emotion. It's about another need. There's an underlying, so

because you're angry, it's because somehow you were afraid. You were either afraid for your safety,

you're afraid for your life, you're afraid for other people of how your ego could get hurt. So

“that level of fear comes from somewhere else. But when you're using poisoning, would you have to”

remember is that there is a level of patience associated with that. Anger and aggression are often responses that are, you know, you don't really consider them, right? Not on your frontal leg type rational talk, dot type thing. You're engaging in poisoning, not because you're afraid, or not because you're angry, you're engaging in poisoning because you have a plan. You have a method

that you're trying to kind of get to the end resolution. That requires patience. That requires

rationality. That undercuts any idea that you would be driven, you know, sparked, you know, like crime of passion type thing. You don't engage in poisoning as an as a sole act of anger and aggression. You engage in it as part of a plan. Could it be revenge? Of course it could be revenge. But you engage in it through patience and determination as opposed to, I'm just going to get mine back. Well, with all of the different ways that we can see now what's going on behind the scenes,

from a cellular data, digital forensic evidence, the surveillance videos that we've been seeing.

I mean, we are all tracking everyone, license plate readers, all this stuff. It does feel like a very

“sneaky way. What we also have to remember is that it takes a level of access in order to engage”

in long-term poisoning. So, I mean, you could easily poison someone. Like you could easily do that. But if you do it too quick, then, you know, the spotlight's going to be placed on you as a person of interest. The plan and the methodology of using poisoning is to ensure, right, quote unquote, ensure that you don't get caught having done something bad, right? Like it's meant to look as if, you know, the person either died of natural causes or the exposure to the toxin was purely

coincidental and it wasn't like nefarious any way. So, you need access, right? You don't poison someone that you don't have access to. And the really, the only people that you actually have access to are of the people close in your sphere. Yeah, it's like the definition of intimate violence, really. Tell me, doctor, about the psychological traits of someone that would carry this out. Who would do this? You do this. The type of person who does this has access and they have patients.

It's insistence is what I would say, right? So, people have particular patterns of behavior, right? Everybody has their likes, right? Everybody has, you know, their favorite foods. They have their favorite, you know, laundry detergent, right? They have their favorite everything that they're going to use. So, an accidental exposure to a toxin is unlikely to happen. So, then you need someone who, right? Again, we're talking about someone who wants to harm you with, with poison.

They have to introduce the poison in some way and then get you to continue to use that poison over a period of time. If you use too much poison too fast, you run the risk of having the spot

“by placed on you. The ultimate goal is to get away with murder. Is poison the best way to do it?”

Probably not. Is it the easiest way to do it? Yeah, it is because too often, corners have no idea how someone would die based on poison. So many poisons aren't, you know, our colorless and and flavorless, right? They're odorless. You don't really know. And so there's no real way to test it. You kind of, it's a death of exclusion, right? Like, you look at the body, you think, well, none of these other things happen, so then it has to be poison. But you don't, you don't really know.

You don't start there. You don't start there. And so insistence, if you are engaged, right? If you're going to be a victim of poison and you're engaged in a particular behavior that you've done so often, like make her own protein drinks. Are colorado dentist? Yes. Yes. So he was just convicted of killing his wife by making protein shakes, right? Right. And there was an insistence by him that she continued to drink the protein drinks even while she was in the hospital. He

would bring protein drinks to give her. And so someone who wants to harm you using poison needs to do it over a long period of time, even heavy metal poisoning is like gold and stuff like that.

find it. So if something is making you ill, but someone is telling you, now it's in your head or

know it's something else here. Let's continue to take this other, this thing. That's the biggest red flag when you've already complained. No, this is making me ill. And the person is insisting that you continue to consume whatever it is that that thing is. Corey richins in the case that we've been following so closely. They very clearly said in their opening statements in the trial is that Corey was according to the state. This was about money. And this is about getting a new start

a fresh start in her life. Would that be enough? I mean to kill someone, I mean you've probably

“only need one of those things to convince yourself to kill someone else. I think one of the bigger”

issues when it comes to this case in particular, something that we saw was the empty pill bottle

that was there on the nice thing hand. For our viewers, I have to explain this because I think this is so interesting and I so glad you brought it up because for every side of the coin, we're going to hear the other side in court. And yes, the state is setting up this lethal fentanyl poisoning with Corey. But the defense, I thought this was a brilliant move on. Their part was to show this picture of a bottle that had been on his bedside of Eric Richins before he died of this bottle

that was dated 2016. It had been expired since 2016. What did that mean to you?

Tom, it honestly doesn't say anything to me. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if I walked into

anybody's house. And if I spent enough time finding an empty pill bottle somewhere hidden that the person just either failed to discard or discard it and ended up, you know, underneath the couch or something. I don't really think too much about it, but everything from a defense perspective is to raise reasonable doubt. And so if you can convince even one member of the jury that, you know, it wasn't Corey because, you know,

this guy actually had, you know, a fentanyl addiction and he was just getting it from off the street.

“And that's how he was, you know, getting his fix was through this empty pill bottle, right?”

That's how he was getting his drugs. All you do is convince one person. Right. And I mean, could it work? I mean, it, yeah, it gets a good work. I have no reason to suspect that it wouldn't work. Is, is that what I think actually happened? No, of course not. That there's too many, there are no coincidences in, you know, there's a way to maintain it around the poison exactly. And so I, I'm not going to, I'm not going to sit here and say, no, he did this to himself. It,

it looks plainly to me that there were other external forces at work that led to his death, that weren't necessarily related to him having an old pill bottle found on his eyes. And then also all of the little gummy packages around marijuana gummies that had were in baggies. So it looked

“like they could have come off the street. We don't know any of this. We don't know why. There was a”

2016 bottle next to his bed. But it certainly raises the doubts because you're looking at a mom of three little boys, the father of their children. Yeah, who's, who's dressed as if she's a mom. Right, right, right, her hair is in a specific way. The clothes that she wears in a specific way. All of this is just trial tactics. Sure. And in very effective withdrawals, too. It's hard to, to imagine a mom wanting to do this to her husband who is also very successful, by the way. And

they had plans. So all of that goes into how the jury sees it, right? Yeah. And goes back again to the poisoning, which is poisoning is such a nebulous way to kill someone. I mean, the idea then being sparked is if she was going to kill him, she would have found a different way. She wouldn't need to use, you know, poisoning to do it. Right. It's meant to suggest as if all she needed to do was wait until he overdosed by himself. She didn't need to then poison him. Right. Like, like, essentially,

Eric was just a ticking clock of death. And she did all she needed to do was wait. If his death was what she wanted, and he's engaging in all these other things, she doesn't then need to murder him. Again, all you need is one person to think that that's true. Yeah. And, you know, you essentially get it. It's a mistrial, but essentially it's a victory. Yeah. This state's case falls

this through the lens of the prosecution when we're talking about it right now. No one has been

convicted of poisoning Eric Richens yet, but there is this concern that we're two other alleged attempts. And one of them is very, you know, well known now in this case with Corey Richens, this Valentine's Day sandwich that Eric got. And she had gone to the Deli according to this state. She gone to the Deli. She picked up the sandwich. She gave it to him. He gets violently ill with this allergic reaction. They say that he even called someone and said, "Hey,

“I think she's trying to poison me." I mean, yeah. So, so, so there is your pattern, right?”

She's allegedly making a pattern here. Right. And so, again, that goes to the experimentation of the poisoner. Remember, you don't really know, unless you're a toxicologist or a pharmacist, you know, you don't really know just how much of something is going to make someone else sick. Everyone has unique metabolism. Poison's going to make you sick no matter what, but the level

which you get sick initially through that first exposure has a lot to do with your own basic

physiology. And so, you experiment with a particular kind of poison. You see, you know, oh, man, like that, that really didn't work because he got too sick. He got too sick too fast. It's not something that you do just to, again, have like a level over Venge. You know, like, oh, he's beating me up. I need to poison him in order to get rid of him. That's, that's not really the decision-making process that someone has. You do this because there is some other external goal that the person

is in the way of you obtaining. And for whatever reason, their death has to look a specific way

in order for you to achieve that end goal. Now, again, it, it, it sounds like I'm saying financial.

It doesn't have to be financial. I think, you know, from the prosecutor's point of view, opening multiple, you know, life insurance policies and then all of a sudden, the, the person's did, right? I think that raises a red flag. And you know, is, is that, is that something as a potential

“victim that you need to be aware of? Sometimes you're not aware of a life insurance policy that's”

been opened in your name. You know, like sometimes these kinds of things that they're, they're done to you. And I think that's one of the more insidious elements of domestic and intimate partner violence is that a lot of times, you know, the victim in these cases is unaware of the economic control that the victimizer has over the victim. And so it's a level of planning that doesn't just happen out of nowhere. You, you have to conceive of this thing and research it for a long period of time

and experiment at times. And I hope that you get that you find the right mix of a poison that will come across that would debilitate the person over a long period of time as opposed to making them extremely ill and caught by medical or law enforcement, who would poison a sassence use poisons? That if we're, if we're going to look back through history, a sassence use poisons and a sassence

“can be anybody. And so I think that's the mindset that we probably need to consider, which is the victim”

of an assassination has something. They are in possession of something. Now that thing can be tangible, like money or a children or a house or something, but it can also be intangible. That the killing of this individual will, it would provide some kind of spotlight, it would provide some kind of attention, it would provide some kind of something that, you know, someone like Dr. Peller would be discussing, which it meets a need, right? This death, it meets a need for the person who is

committing this act. And so interesting. The other thing is what happened afterwards in, in this story of Corey Richards, she decided to write a book for her children, a children's book. I'll throw this on the screen for our viewers here. If you're on audio, the book is called "Are You With Me?" And it's by Corey D. Richards, you can see a little boy illustrated kind of running in the four chasing a soccer ball with a soccer goal behind them. And then up in the clouds

is a man who is Eric Richards, and he's got his baseball cap visceral up in the air, cheering his

out for his son, watching all of his accomplishments from above. And I think from a psychological

perspective, that's extraordinary. I think, too, I think, you know, there are many routes. I think we could go this, not having evaluated her. It's hard to know which route that was taken,

“but it's much more complex than I think just initial knee jerk reaction would suggest, right?”

I think the initial knee jerk reaction is, well, she wrote it because she knew she was guilty, and she needed, you know, the spotlight kind of placed on her, but placed on her in a way that wouldn't suggest that she was capable of committing this act, right? We call that reconstitution. Reconstitution happens after you have transitory guilt. You feel bad for having committed some misbehavior, but you only feel bad for a little bit because you wanted the misbehavior to happen.

But in order to prove that you are not capable of the misbehavior, then you do like a whole bunch of pro social positive things, essentially putting the spotlight on you as if you're a pillar

of the community and not some, you know, nefarious killer. I could never be a murder if I'm writing

children. Right. Right. Right. And, you know, Abba, I'm a widow who's experiencing grief and something like this, and this is the way that I'm processing it. That's, and that is certainly

“the knee jerk, you know, reaction that I think a lot of people have, is it possible that she was”

truly feeling guilty and wrote this, you know, in some ways, because she was truly experiencing guilt. That's certainly possible, too. But that doesn't just because someone is feeling a particular emotion, doesn't mean that it stems from having engaged in a misbehavior. She might have felt guilty because she realized, oh, wait a minute, the kids don't have a father anymore. We don't know

why she wrote this thing. But on its face, it certainly comes across as if she decided to put the

spotlight on her as a grieving widow in order to prevent an investigative spotlight being placed on her. Well, and, you know, it's, and how diabolical that plot would be is I think what the prosecution's trying to set up right now in the trial. You know, if it was just guilt that, you know, she had, she had allegedly poisoned him. Or is it that trying to very, um, as a planner, you know, as you said, we have a planner on our hands. If someone is going to poison someone else,

is this part of the plan so that itself preservation and all of that attention is like, oh, no, she read a book. She read a book for our kids. I think I think one way to to be able to determine that is to see if there were any, if there's any evidence that suggests that she was thinking about writing a book on grief prior to him dying. Writing a book isn't easy, right? It's not easy. Even at children's book is not an easy thing to do. In some ways, writing at children's

book is even more difficult than writing a book for adults. And so you don't just kind of, you don't

“just kind of write a book in 72 hours. So you have to, you have to be considering how this book”

is going to be generated. The message that you're trying to get across. So if there's evidence to suggest that she was thinking about writing this book or she had, you know, come up with dress or ideas and they were saved in her notes app or something like all of that would indicate more about the level of planning that she had been doing in terms of engaging in this be. I mean, any children's book for that matter, like just a children's book, just a book, yeah, yeah.

She did seem to be a prolific writer. I mean, one thing that's interesting is the, I think we're going to get into it to about her need to write things down. And I don't know if you are following that part of the strawberries, we're still getting there, you know, but the walk the dog letter. I'm going to throw this letter up on the screen for our viewers so they can take a look as well. It's a handwritten letter by Cory and it was found in her jail cell after she was arrested for the

murder. From her perspective, she was just writing about things that were happening and making sure that her brother knew what was going on at that time. To the prosecution, this is a letter that she's telling a brother what to say when he has to talk to law enforcement, the courts, testify. What does that tell you about about Cory as a, as a person? If she's legitimately writing in code, then that she's written down everything that she had intended to do. You don't, again, randomly

writing in code. So they would have already read something else that you've given to him to them

in that code. And so if she, if she is this kind of writer, then she's written down everything that she intended to do a long, long time ago, those things would have been important because she needs to reference them again or else, why write them down. And so these are essentially notes that she would be taking. So there's somewhere that tells you more about the, the, the, the deviant thought that was going inside a person's head that they need to write down in order to kind of get them going,

right? Anybody can have thoughts on your head, but once you start writing it down, then things start becoming real. All we've been told or hinted at from from the state and the prosecution is that there's this orange notebook that she was holding on to in that orange notebook. They're trying to introduce five pages that would tell us a timeline of when Eric Richen's died. So the orange notebook, this is allegedly a journal that Corey Richen's was keeping.

Now, we don't know exactly what's in the orange notebook yet because that evidence is being introduced during this trial. So there's still things for us to learn. But what we do know is what the prosecution

put in their filing when they asked for it to be admitted into evidence. And here's what they said,

it contains certain details regarding the timeline, the defendants movements, and what Eric Richen's consumed among other relevant details. They go on to say these details, especially when compared with other evidence in the case, tend to make it more probable that the defendant talking about Corey Richen's poisoned Eric Richen's with fentanyl. And once again, that's you would say that's to keep track of of the storyline of the storyline, but also maybe

experimentation for the types of poisons that she was going to use, you know, and it's dosage and how she was going to use it, it's, you know, the method of introducing the poisons. I mean,

using a poison is very difficult because too much too soon leads to quick a death, but not enough

and the person's getting sick. You run the risk that they're eventually going to go to the doctor and the doctor's going to figure out a way to make it. You're getting, you know, heavy metal poisons

“over time. So you need to kind of be able to keep track of that. If you want to make sure that”

you're on the path that you're trying to walk down, it's a lot easier to write those down than just try to keep it in your head. The jury's got to look at her every day. Here are these stories. How hard is it for jury to be able to look at a mom like this and say, yep, just for money, she got rid of a great man who was the father of her three kids. Is it going to be tough for this jury to do this? Yeah, I think so. This is a bad case for the

prosecution because Corey is able to present herself as someone who is incapable of doing this. Her lawyer has done a really good job at putting her in close and making sure that her make up is more natural looking and put it and she looks very matriently and poison is already something that people have a hard time kind of understanding and it kind of wrapping their heads around.

“I think that this is a very difficult case for the prosecution to win. I do think they win it,”

but I think the jury has to look long and hard at the distractions that are being presented like this, you know, empty pill bottle from 2016. They have to look long and hard at seeing that as a distraction and see more about what does she have to gain by committing an act of murder on the slide? And I think having a corners report where the death is unknown, I think would probably lend more credence to the jury saying, we're in a minute, if it's unknown, then maybe she did do

something, you know, that harm to him as opposed to him doing harm, something harm because if it's fentanyl, you test for that, you get that, but if it's a poison, then maybe you get an unknown, then maybe you get to, there's all these open life insurance that were started by her, if he died,

“right? Then I think you kind of get there. I think they were able to show that she that he died”

from what five times the lethal dose that went non-linear system. So if the state is trying to prove that she did this, did she screw up? If she allegedly killed in this way, did she screw up by dosing him five times the lethal amount and he's out like a light? And that was that. Yeah,

easily get one single hit that would be five times the the lethal limit off the street. Like

that's, it would be more difficult if they were suggesting that some doctor, right? If they were placing the blame that a doctor had been giving him fentanyl any died by that amount. That's a harder task, but off the street. Yeah, the implication is that he's doing this off the street. And so

“I think praying on on the fear that people have a fentanyl, right? People think that, oh my God,”

if you're just around it, right, that you're just going to all of a sudden overdose of fentanyl.

No, you're not. People think that, you know, if I just touch it with a glove hand, I'm going to, you know, have contact poisoning him and I'm going to, that's not going to have

“either. So a lot of people have a lot of myths that I think the defense is able to kind of prey on.”

And so they haven't made a mistake yet. They're not there yet, but a lot of these kind of,

you know, quote unquote, circumstantial only cases hinge around presentation of a piece of evidence that ends up being, you know, presented wrong or the jury takes it wrong, that one little trial tactic mistake, a lot of times, you know, jury decisions are hinged on that. They haven't made a mistake yet because they didn't say that it was a doctor. The implication is that he got it off the street. So right now, they still, I don't think they have the edge, but it's not a landslide

“against them. No, I think this is going to be a battle. Well, thank you so much for joining us today”

because this was so interesting. And as you talk about these other cases you're involved with, I would love to have you back for for other episodes, you know, we're going to be, we're going to have some very interesting cases coming up soon. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Wow, guys. What it glimps into the dark side of a poisonous mind? Between this psychological angle and our conversation with Joseph Scott Morgan about the physical side of poisonings, we're going to keep all of this in

mind as we continue to cover the trial of Corey Richens. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss an episode.