Key Witness Testifies in Richins Trial, Defense Loss in Robinson Case, Kohberger College Denies Wrongdoing, with Angenette Levy

and I'm a former police officer. I have been in and around the criminal justice system for about 40 years now. And I think I know a great True Crown show when I see one, and we've

got one for you today. Here's what's on our MK True Crown bucket. We're going to begin with the

Corey Richen's murder trial. It's currently underway and we are live streaming at here

“at MK True Crown. You need to follow every minute of it there, but we're going to talk in depth”

about it today. There have been many legal moves to dissect for you, and Dave Aaron Berg, my co-host and I will get into all of that. We'll talk about how the prosecution and the defense are shaping their arguments so far. Also, the judge in the Tyler Robertson case has ruled out the possibility of excluding the prosecutor's office. He says they are not disqualified for a conflict of interest. We'll bring you the latest. And we'll also be joined a little later in the show by

Anjanette Levy. She's a correspondent for The Law and Crime Network and The Host of the Show

Crime Fix. We'll be digging into the Corey Richen's trial also with her, but a little bit deeper, particularly about Corey Richen's financial troubles. I'm happy to be joined by my co-host Dave

“Aaron Berg, my friend, the Florida Lawman, former state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida,”

and the managing partner at Dave Aaron Berg Law. Dave, we've got this Corey Richen's trial right and it's underway, started this week, by way of reminder for those of you who may not be following the case, quite that closely. Corey Richen's is charged in Utah with aggravated murder, attempted criminal homicide, and various financial crimes in the depth of her husband, Eric Richen's. He died from a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022. I know that you and Johnna Dave, a couple of

days ago, Wednesday, you discussed the beginning of this trial, but we didn't really get into the opening statements. We're going to have all of that for you today. In fact, Dave, let me go ahead and call for salt five because prosecutors have alleged in their opening that this is a financial

motive that she killed him basically for his money and then I want you and I to really flesh this out.

The evidence will prove that Corey Richen's murdered Eric for his money and to get a fresh start at life. More than anything, she wanted his money to perpetuate her first side of privilege, affluence, and success. All right, Dave, there you have it. That's just the snippet of the opening. There's a lot more to break down. I know you've been following this case very closely as have I and most of our audience seems to be as well based on what I can see from their online and social media

comments, but you know, we've got a lot going on. We've got the defense is cross-examining a lot of the witnesses. What's your take so far on how each side is doing and are you seeing, particularly I'm interested to see from your former prosecutor perspective, what themes are you seeing that have sort of developed by each side? I mean, I see the prosecution giving us the goods. I mean, the facts are what they are. The facts are really strong against Corey Richens, and it doesn't

help that she shed crocodile tears on national TV after her husband was allegedly poisoned death by herself. When she wrote a book about grief and so she wanted to tug at our heartstrings and get a few dollars along the way. So you have a person who is in love with another man who has an open relationship with a boyfriend, not an open marriage, a hidden relationship, and she can't wait to leave her current relationship and go with this guy. So she has clear motive. Now she's a

financial motive on top of that, and the existence of fentanyl is really devastating, especially when

“we'll hear how she got the fentanyl through someone she knew with a housekeeper. But I think to me,”

the reason why the prosecution is winning here is a head-on point. It's not because the evidence is what it is, because it is. But it's also because I think the defense stepped on a rake, and it's happened a couple times now. But there's one particular instance on a cross-examination, and I know we have the side. I think it's one, but I'll let you, you're driving the bus today, Phil. But it is when the question was asked about a, you know, it looks like based on the autopsy

that it took a little longer for the victim to die, that would indicate he's done fentanyl before, right? That means he's the drug user, right? It didn't quite work out very well.

That's a great point. Mr. Richens was alive long enough that his liver began to metabolize

them, or fentanyl, or the fentanyl resulting in nor fentanyl. Correct. And that would be more likely for the body to start to metabolize it before death, and someone who was not their first time taking fentanyl. Correct? I don't think you can draw that conclusion. And, well, let me back up. So, it's possible someone who's no exposure to fentanyl, they take it. They die very, very quickly. That's a possibility, yes. And someone who has had exposure,

I'm not saying that 100% wouldn't, they may show no fentanyl, but it's more likely that someone who's had some exposure to fentanyl would start, especially to higher dose,

would start to metabolize it, having the nor fentanyl appear as opposed to someone who had never

“taken it. True? I don't agree with that. All right. All right, Dave, look, clearly, I think what”

Defense Attorney Wendy Lewis is trying to get to there. They're trying to develop the theme, make the point that perhaps the victim in the case died of an accidental overdose, that maybe he had was no stranger to using fentanyl or other drugs. So, I kind of see where she's gone with there, but I think that was a big swing in a miss. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that maybe just maybe a discussion with that witness, assuming the witness is willing to talk to

the defense lawyers sometimes, they're not, but if you, if you have a chance to talk to the witness ahead of time, you would not necessarily get the answer that you got in court, which was clearly not the answer that they were looking for. Yeah, and you notice you pronounce it fentanyl, because it's pronounced fentanyl. So, if this is, you know, you pronounce it correctly, Phil, and you know, if this is South, we see all kinds of crazy things here. No, no, that's the way

it's supposed to be pronounced because fentanyl, it does bug me. It's like a pet peeve in my, maybe I'll do it in one of my closing rants one of these days, where fentanyl spelled NYL. It's fentanyl, not fentanyl. I don't know where you get fentanyl. So, the fact that you're making your whole case about the existence of fentanyl in someone's system beforehand, that this victim was a drug user, so you're essentially revictimizing him again. First, he gets poisoned

a death allegedly, and then you blame it on the victim, like he's a drug addict, and let the defendant run off with her boyfriend and live happily ever after. No, it doesn't work like that.

So, pronounce it correctly. It's fentanyl, as you correctly had, and then yes, never ask a

question on cross-examination that you don't already know the answer to, because you saw the end, she was like, okay, well, and then she just moved on. Which is smart, you don't want to belabor it to make it obvious to the jury that you just made a huge blunder, but it was a huge blunder. Well, speaking of blunders, to me, there's another thing that happened earlier in the case that I would call it a little bit of a blunder. You know how when people

are in custody these days, every phone call that they make is recorded, right? And prosecutors

“actually listen to those. I think it's smart. I mean, I think there's, you know, software that”

flags it and sends it to the appropriate prosecutor and all kinds of stuff. So, everything that you say can and will be used against you in court, right? And so, there was an issue that came up with another witness, which had to do with the jail calls, right? So, defense attorney, Nester, was questioning Chelsea Gibson's the evidence tech about these phone calls. Let's go ahead and run salt one, and then the folks will know what we're talking about.

As another part of your duties, I don't want to use our language really carefully here, so if you can match my language, that would be helpful, okay? Okay. Where there are calls between misrichens and her family that you obtained recordings of. Can you clarify? On about a weekly basis there for a while, were you downloading calls between Cory Richens and her family? Are you talking about jail calls? You're on our move to strike and need to approach.

Let's go ahead and set this up so the folks will know what we're talking about. Normally,

“okay, you're not supposed to show the jury that a defendant is in jail, right? That's why”

they're in street clothes, but I don't think Dave that you, you know, I don't think you're supposed

or has not at some point been in jail. So I understand why they didn't want to talk about it,

but the defense kind of was kind of kicking the door open on this. Yeah, they asked the question. It wasn't the prosecutor. That's the question. And what's the big deal, anyways? Okay. Well, she's been sitting in jail. She hasn't been convicted of anything, and so you could fix it with a curative instruction by the judge. It doesn't need to be a mistrial. So these things happen in trial. It's real life, and I don't think it's that big of a deal. No, it wasn't. And we've got

speaking of the language that we use. You're talking about people pronounce, you know, fentanyl. Well, there's been an objection over the word y'all. Now, this I thought was,

I don't know that I really appreciate this objection because I have some of it. And look, Dave,

you're in Florida. So you're, you're Southern adjacent, but you're in South Florida. So I don't know if you really count, but anyway, we'll just say that you do count for sake of this discussion. But anyway, Southerners ought to be offended a little bit by this objection, shot three. Is there any reason that you all believe that Miss Richen's new and advanced, you guys were coming to a house on an objection? Well, let's find out if she has any knowledge,

and we'll now, we're in our speculation. I would just ask, like a more precise question,

“I think, and I'm not picking on Miss Nestor, but I think it was you all, and I think we just need”

a little more. Can we just limit the question to you? This gives it. It's a Southern thing, y'all is just in my, my blood on her. I just wanted to be clear. I'll try not to say y'all. We see a great state of questioning, limited to this witness. I'm happy to. I will try to keep y'all out of my vocab, but it's hard. It's deep in there. Did you have any reason to know that Miss Richen's either suspected there was a search coming or knew there was a search coming?

Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Well, so Dave, look, I was joking when I said people should be offended by that. I understand the point of the objection by saying you all, which is actually what she said. It was a little bit unclear who she may have been referring to, so the objection might have been to seek a clarified question, rather than the use of that particular word. But, you know, Dave, what they're doing? Okay. They're trying to set up a theme as part of this defense that maybe

“some of the evidence was, was planted in this case. Did you pick up on that?”

Yeah, I mean, it's like the last refuge of the scoundrel, you know, it's like, well, the evidence or welding must be planted. You know, the FBI, the local law enforcement, wherever, must have just put it there. Remember, Brian Coberger, they had him dead to write, so it's like, well, the DNA from him was planted. Like, like, some Rando is going to, uh, random cop is going to get some DNA from some guy, like, Brian Coberger and just smudged it on the knife sheet. No,

yeah, I just think that shows they're reaching. And, uh, as far as y'all, well, I am in South Florida, which is South, but you're right. It's really almost till this really, like, we're in the North, uh, there's a phrase, you know, in North Florida, which is a deep South. We call it LA and LA stands for "Lore and Alabama." There you go. Well, so, um, part of what they were getting at here was, all right, so defense attorney Nester is asking if, you know, folks are given a heads up before a search

“warrant is served. And, of course, the answer is, is there not, but I think where they're going with this,”

so the idea is that, all right, the defense, uh, will not the defense. Let's just say the family of the victim, I should say that's the appropriate way to put this. They are said to have hired a private investigator, an expensive one. And the story goes like this, and I'm not saying this is true, but I think this is the theme that they're, they're going to get it. They're, they're

going to basically try to paint a picture of that the private investigator, uh, went to the home,

uh, after a police had kind of finished there, and then found, um, items of evidence called police back out there who then showed up with a search warrant to look for and seize the items that perhaps they were allegedly going to be tipped off by the, um, private investigator. So we see a lot of bits and pieces of themes developing, um, they're going to say evidence was manufactured or planted, um, they're going to say that the victim was, uh, a victim of accidental overdose that he was a drug user,

and all these kind of things is going to be very interesting to see how all this plays out. And I won't you folks at home, uh, whether you're watching on YouTube, you're listening on podcast, or on, uh, Series XM, right here at MK True Crime, we're streaming the whole thing, and we're going

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Using promo code True Crime. We've got some news in the Tyler Robinson case. You and I've talked about this, I believe. There was a motion filed to disqualify the prosecutors. They said the defense said they had a conflict of interest. And by the way, the same lead defense attorney Katherine Nestor is also representing Tyler Robinson, by the way. So Dave, your thoughts on the

judges ruling? Well first, it is amazing. She's working double time taking two very high profile

cases doing them both. And you know, respect, I always have respect for criminal defense lawyers, especially in unpopular cases, even as I disagree with them and their clients who I feel are almost all the time guilty, but hey, that's another matter for another video for another day. But as far as the motion, this is the defense lawyer who is trying to slow things down by saying, you know, the prosecution needs to be conflicted off because of an attenuated situation. A situation that

wasn't even a direct conflict, something where there was a prosecutor in the office who's not even working on the case who's child was at the event of the shooting and the child said,

the young person, not totally a child, but was there. So what? So what? I don't even know why we're

even thinking this was ever going to have a chance of success. I'm not surprised by the judges really made the right decision, but this is what criminal defense lawyers are paid to do. They want to slow things down. They because when you delay, then memory's paid, the passion's cool, witnesses could die or move away, evidence could spoil, but here the judge said, now we're moving ahead. Well, let's speak in what the judge said, and you and I have talked about this here on the show.

“I think you and I both predicted this ruling, but let's go ahead and call for SOT4. This is”

judge graph issuing his ruling. Prosecutors need not be immune to the emotional response of others to prosecute a case. Indeed, it is part of a prosecutor's duty to interview witnesses, end victims, and evaluate the impact of an alleged crime. A prosecutor need not be disinterested on the issue whether a prospective defendant has committed the crime, which, with which he is charged, if honestly convinced of the defendant's guilt, the prosecutor is free. Indeed, obligated to be deeply

and interested in urging that view by any fair means. Yeah, so the defense day was arguing that the prosecutors were so quick to announce their intention to seek the death penalty that that could only mean that they were, I guess, improperly influenced because one of the assistant prosecutors in the office had an adult child who was there when Charlie Kirk was killed. Now, I thought that was a bit of a stretch, clearly the

judge does too, and you know, as well as I do, prosecutors talked to witnesses. They should talk

“to witnesses. They should develop some idea of how these witnesses were affected by crimes, right?”

Yeah, of course. I do like your use to the term adult child. It's like jumbo shrimp. You know, it's one of those oxygen morons, sorry. But yes, adult child, yes, people, this is again, the real world and your why is it a conflict? Why is it a problem that someone was there and said, oh my gosh, look what happened. That should not conflict an entire prosecutor's office off a case, but it's what

much of a chance of success. When I first heard there was a motion, I thought, oh, somehow the

“prosecutor that's on the case was somehow a witness to the case. No, no, not even close. It wasn't”

even the prosecutor in the case. And it's live in the prosecutor who's not a prosecutor on the case. It's an adult child of a prosecutor who's not on the case. Come on. Well, now we know that it was a deputy Utah County attorney, Chad Grunander, it was his adult daughter that was present, but you know, she testified that she was there, but she did not actually see the shooting. She said she was in the crowd, but she did not learn until after she ran to safety that it was

Charlie Kirk, who had been in fact shot. And so that's really what the judge was having to go on. To me, it seems like much to do about nothing, but as you correctly pointed out when you're defending a death penalty case, every moment that your client is not under the sense of death, that your client is taking a breath, then that would be a victory. And look, I'm not trying to come down on the defense. I mean, we when I both do defense. And we want lawyers who are zealous

advocates for their clients. And just because you make an argument to a court that doesn't win, doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. It simply means that you just didn't win on that particular issue. The judge's job is to call balls and strikes. Prosecutors do their thing, defense attorneys do their thing, and judges are supposedly the neutral referee. But Dave, I've got some lingering concerns. Now, you and maybe some others have not, don't, don't share my concern

about this judge, but let me tell you where I'm coming from. You know, I'm a big proponent of open

courts. I'm a big proponent that basically the default setting on courts needs to be everything's open,

everything's transparent. We don't have things, and the public has to write to see things. But Dave, do you know about the defense request to exclude cameras and to classify their motion to exclude cameras as a secret motion? Yeah, I didn't like that. In fact,

“you and I did a video previously about that, and you blasted the judge, and I think,”

Ashley and I were like, well, we don't want to say bad things about judges. I do agree with you though, Phil, that transparency is best, especially in a case like this, that is marked by so many conspiracy theories. It's outrageous. We know the person who, to me, did, I mean, we know the person who pulled a trigger, whether he wants to, whether he wants to claim insanity or something out the middle of the capacity. So if you exclude cameras and make private motions and stuff,

then it's just going to feed more of these conspiracies on the internet. And so I know that there was a request from a coalition of news organizations, including the Associated Press, to allow attorneys for the media to view the defense request to classify documents in the case. So that's good, the judge granted that request, so at least not totally pushing for all secrecy. I mean, there is some ray of light there. You know, the defense, you know, files this motion

and the judge is, I guess, very willing to willing in my opinion to classify their motion as a private motion, or that call it a secret motion, right? The media lawyers, however, have been allowed access to it. So they can meaningfully respond. But, you know, I mean, simply the motion to take cameras out of the courtroom. What's so crazy about that, that it's got to be hidden from the public. I just don't understand.

Yeah. No, I agree with you on that. I don't know. I, yeah, first off, they're trying to remove cameras and then they're trying to make the motion secret. No, double secrecy is worse than regular secrecy and regular secrecy is worse than transparency. Let's stick to transparency.

100% agree on that. You know, this is very strange. I've never seen a case that has so many

“efforts and so much. I think danger of some of it being hidden from the public. I'm very concerned”

about that because sunlight is the best disinfectant. The public has to know what goes on in the courtroom. So the public can have confidence in the result. If you got somebody who's convicted and gets to death penalty, but the public can't see what they all happen in court. How can the public be satisfied in the integrity of that process? But look, I don't want to get up on my soapbox too much right now because we've got to talk about Savannah Guthrie. What's the latest on that one?

There's just never any good news there. It's just it's heart wrenching. You know, apparently

today show. And I just think that's it's good to try to go back to work and let the authorities do their best and just to have her in Arizona where she's not being able to assist in any meaningful way. It's just it's it's like compounding the tragedy because it's bad enough what's

“happened to Nancy. But to see Savannah Guthrie in this state, I think it's better for her to be around”

her friends in the city where she lives to be with her family and to be at the job she loves. So it's still it's it's tragic and just it's realistic that she can't just stay in Arizona forever.

And I'm glad that she's back home because there's now meaningful reward. There are a million

dollars and she's done everything she can. The family's done everything they can and you just hope that this these criminals slip up and law enforcement can make an arrest because right now just seems like law enforcement didn't running in circles. Well, look, everybody deals with grief and they're only and I can't I can't even conceive of how Savannah Guthrie and Nancy's other loved ones have have to be dealing with this. Everyone has to at some point move on and I posted about this

on X earlier. And by the way, if you don't follow me and Dave and Ashley and all of our colleagues on social media do that because we talk about these things online, not just here. This is where

like an ongoing conversation. So if you get a chance, check us out. Our handles are usually on the

screen for those of you watching on YouTube. I'm at Phil Holloway, ESQ and you are at Aaron Berg.

“And so folks can find this because I know we talk about these things a lot but look, I think”

Savannah Guthrie is having to you know come to terms with a very sad reality and I wonder and I hope I'm wrong. I just I wonder if this case is growing cold. We haven't seen any public momentum. In fact, there's been a flurry of that activity at the home. When they have this week, the FBI made their final sweep of the home because they're wanting to rule out whether there's any additional evidence there before the scene and the property is released released to

the family of Nancy Guthrie. Okay. The Pima County Sheriff's Office has said that they already have made that decision. They've released it. Now the FBI has been sort of hanging on to it. But they made a final sweep through there to see if the family could not go ahead and have access to it. And that probably Dave, while they instituted a parking band because when I was there in Tucson a couple of weeks ago for Megan Kelly Show and for MK Media and of course for this show,

the street in front of that house was essentially a parking lot. It's a very narrow street but the media had had crowded up at least half of the street to do their live shots and things. But now they're not allowing any parking for a good ways around the house. Did you see that? I did see that. Yes. But, you know, it's nice for them to at least create a barrier here because we've seen reporters go right up to the steps. Video blood on the steps. In fact, we know we have a sought from Brian

Enten. We want to show that. We can talk over that one if we can show that we're Brian Enten from News Nation just walked right up and there was the, there was blood right on the stairs. Yeah. And we don't fault Brian. I mean, he's doing his job. He's a great person. Yeah, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's the first guy I went to find as soon as I got off the plane, by the way, in Tucson. But he, he's not the only one. Other journalists

went up there. And the sheriff and I, I criticized him at the time and I stand by that

“criticism. I think it was, the scene was sort of vacated and cleared by law enforcement too soon”

because there could have been other things of evidence-revalue that were completely destroyed by all the third parties and by that, I'm including the media that sort of descended onto the actual

yard and on the scene. But anyway, I had, I'm not trying to be too critical of the media,

but my, my criticism is for, I think law enforcement. By the way, did you catch this that there was a one third party, a Dominic Evans, a 48 year old school teacher who plays the drums in a band with one of Miss Guthrie's sons in law and folks, you know, found him online. They found pictures and said maybe his features sort of looked like the features that they saw in the imagery, the videos and the photos we saw from that doorbell camera. Did you see

what his response was to all this? Yeah, he was, he was hiding in his home with lights off to frighten to pick up his son from his grandfather's or grandmother's house. He was

because he had an arrest back in 1999 for swiping a calculator in a watch while he was drunk

at a bar and so they thought, well, he resembled the guy in the mask and he had prior, so let's ruin his life. No. Yeah, he said that the New York Times says that he said, quote, "I feel like someone's taken my name, but for what reasons I don't know, monetary clickbait

“to be relevant entertainment, but there are innocent people that get hurt." And I think that's a”

good point. One worth making. Bill, just so you know, this guy Evans, he spoke to investigators two weeks ago for about 40 minutes, hasn't heard from them since, so it's not like he hasn't been spoken to, they apparently spoken them and decided he is not the guy, so they should, he should be left alone. All right, we'll leave it right there. Coming up next, we have engine that lady correspondent for the Law and Crime Network and host of the show, Crime Thicks. Stay tuned,

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healthy and flavorful beef shipped directly to your home. Order today at River Bend Ranch.com and use promo code Megan M. E. G. Y. N for $20 off your first order. I'll be doing that as well. Welcome back to MK True Crime. Joining us now is an engine that leavey corresponded for the long crime network and a host of the show Crime Fix. Welcome, an engine that. Hey, thanks for having me. Hey, I love being on your show. It's great to have you on ours. Now what are your thoughts

on the Cory Richens trial so far? You know, it's a really interesting day. I just covered it on Crime Fix today and we knew a lot of this stuff going into the trial. If you've been following the pretrial hearings and reading all of the documents, but it's very interesting to see us

finally getting into the trial and hearing the evidence as it's unfolding. One of the most interesting

things to me so far has been the body worn camera footage of Cory when she calls police to the house that night and she's in her PJs, you know, in the GMEs and she's got her hair pulled back and, you know, she's like sobbing, oh my god. You know, like the whole nine yards about Eric, you know, he's dead. He's dead. She said he was cold. She pulled a blanket over him because she thought, oh, he's just cold. But he, it sounded like they thought he had been the EMT's thought

he had been dead for a while. By the time they got there, at least for, you know, a time. And there's, they're wondering, did he have an aneurysm? You mean, this is a 39-year-old guy. 39-year-old people don't just die typically unless it's one of two things. Maybe just some random heart thing or drugs. Typically, the cardiologists will tell you that. A younger people just don't die like this. So that was a very interesting to see Cory because we really haven't seen her accepting

court and we've seen her in that interview about the grief book. Well, she's lucky that when the cops came and the body cameras were rolling that she was dressed perfectly. The pajamas from head to toe, she didn't look to shovel the hair was was well-capped. She, she looked like she was

maybe like other nights where she's just, you know, not herself and not looking good and maybe

“dress a little more, you know, a little more adult-like instead of just as a perfect innocent,”

fully-closed individual who may need to get out of a murder charge. They're not saying this was staged or are you like her, her, you know, appearance to the cops. That's not what you're saying. Surely, it can't be. Yeah, this is this to planning and the only question was for me, like, what's the motive? Now we have so much motive, Anjanette, is that surprised you that the motive

of the $4 million that she was in debt also the the text messages with her lover? I mean,

I didn't know about those before the trial. Yes, so we knew a little bit about the text messages. I must say, though, if you come to my house in the middle of the night, if I call 911, I'm not going to look that good. My GMEs don't match that nicely. I will say that, but she did look pretty good. And I must say, Dave, you cannot take the prosecutor out of you. You might be a defense attorney now, but there's no taking the prosecutor out of Dave, Aaron Verde. But yes,

we knew a little bit about these text messages before the trial. They had been cited a couple of them in pre-trial documents that had been filed. She had, she had messaged this guy something about wanting to snuggle up and watch murder documentaries or something like that.

The prosecutors had thrown that into some of the documents when they first revealed that this

boyfriend existed. But yeah, they're saying, look, she was like, in debt, like, up to here. Like, she was drowning and dead. Like, more than anybody, anybody, any of us could ever act.

“Let me interrupt just because I think this is real important because I want to talk with you”

about the pre-nup. But before I do that, if we can run slot five and just back to back, hit slot six because both of these have to do with the prosecutor laying out the financial motive in their opening statement. The evidence will prove that Cory Richins murdered Eric for his money and to get a fresh start at life. More than anything, she wanted his money to perpetuate her facade of privilege, affluence, and success. The evidence will prove that on the day that

Eric died, Cory Richins owed over four and a half million dollars to over twenty different

lenders. And she did not have the ability to service that debt because her bank accounts were exhausted, and her credit was exhausted. She had been taking out new loans to include payday loans to service existing loans, but her new credit was drying up. In the five months leading to Eric Richins that Cory Richins overdrafted over 200 transactions totaling over 300,000 dollars. You know, when you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, as we say here in the south,

you can get desperate, right? And so we've got now court documents revealing that there was this pre-nup from June of 2013 that outlined all these financial agreements related to their marriage, and you can go into that. I know you're up to speed on it. But one thing I wanted to point out here is that in October of 2020, the Salt Lake Tribune is pointing this out. Eric told in a state planning lawyer that he wanted to protect himself from, quote, recently discovered in

ongoing abuse and misuse of his finances by his wife Cory Richins. This is according to also to court documents, and there's other things, right, that just showed that he was concerned about what she was doing, and I've got to think that this affair to tie that into this discussion, and the text messages has to be part of this motive. Definitely, and she was taking, she had taken out a loan without him knowing. So she was doing things according to the prosecution

“behind his back, and that's why basically he took steps to protect himself and his children.”

He had made his sister Katie. He had put her in charge, basically, of everything. So if anything ever happened to him, it was Katie who was the beneficiary. It was Katie who would take care of

passed away, Katie would be in charge, or there was another policy, too, I believe, that his business

partner, if I recall correctly, was in charge of as well, or was the beneficiary of. They have some

“evidence that they'll be presenting later in the trial. I think that goes to that, where Cory had”

gone in and tried to look at something related to one of these policies. Yeah, well, they say that in January of 2022, Cory richens applied for a life insurance policy, own Eric's life, named herself as the beneficiary, and that Eric had no idea that that even existed. So look, I mean, at some point, we got to be able to, I mean, isn't this just like overwhelming circumstantial evidence here? Well, to me, it seems, it does seem overwhelming. I don't, her defense attorneys seem to be trying

to chip away, you know, it's obviously it's the state's burden. They have to build the house from

the ground up, but they're trying to suggest that, that Eric, you know, may have had this fentanyl habit, or a drug habit, that nobody knew about, and they're just going to have to, I guess, chip away at this, or hope to make some dings in the state's case, because it does seem pretty overwhelming. You've got her, you know, in debt up to her eyeballs, as I mentioned, the boyfriend on the side, she wants to make plans with him. She wants to live in this guest house

for that big monstrosity of a mansion that she was building out in the middle of nowhere and have this place be like an event center that they run out. So she's making all of these plans with the boyfriend without Eric. So what else could you be planning? And then she's, you know, we've also got the testimony of the housekeeper who procured these drugs for her, according to, you know, that testimony. So it does seem very damning and very overwhelming.

You know, if you were the prosecutor on this case, I got to think you would be prosecuting this and exactly the same way. I would. I mean, the evidence is so strong. You'd lean into the evidence. And although motive is not an element of a murder case. You don't have to show a motor

or prove it, but the jurors always want to know the why. That was what was so difficult

in the Bryan Cobra case. We never really got the why. There are all these rumors around there. But we don't have to ask for the why here. In fact, this is the easiest motive that you can explain. She fell out of love with her husband. She won't. Thumb love with someone else. Oh, and she was deep in debt. I mean, this is the easiest motive you can ask for for a prosecutor. It is so obvious when it comes to the motive. Now, does the evidence corroborate that? Yes,

I would say, how about the housekeeper? Like you said, who's the drug dealer here, who's now testifying? And Janet, to me, the big question is, were we, will we see Grossman on the stand? That's the lover, the boyfriend. Because he knows all in my mind, right? I mean, is he going to get called? I certainly hope so. You would hope that they would call him. Because I feel like he's the lynch pin and a lot of this. And they've already talked about him

in opening statements. So I think that we need to see testimony from him and know what he was thinking and what he was seeing and what he knew at the time. Right. So I think that that will be an

“important piece of this. And it will be something I think that the jurors will be able to relate to.”

And I think the jurors, if they don't put him up there, the jurors are going to be like, where is he? Oh, yeah. Who is this guy? Does he really exist? He could take the fight right after put him up there. Well, he could take the fifth as an accessory, a principal, maybe, and then they can give him immunity. And then he has to testify. So yeah, they got to put him up there. Oh, that will, that will wreck her relationship. This can you

imagine that the one hope she has in the world right now is that she can get away with this and then live with her true love. Well, if the true love testifies against her, then he's got nothing, even if she gets away with it. Where's she going next? Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, we know her family is standing by her. We know that for certain, they believe in her. And they appear,

“I believe, to believe in her innocence. So let's talk about that. Because Lisa, Corey's mom,”

said to her at the end of a family meeting. They talked about the funeral. And she said, when are we going to talk about Eric wanting to be cremated? And then Corey appeared to be shocked. And then was like, oh, yeah, yeah. He told me he didn't want any bugs crawling on him while he's dead. So let's, let's, let's, let's, uh, cremate him. What do you take with that? What do you think about that? You know, there are a lot of cases. There, there's another case that I've, I'm covering right now

a year for the cops and the district attorney, the state's attorney to file the charges. He wanted to cremate her. She was thrown over a staircase and down, she was pulverized. They're trying to say she killed herself. But she was thrown down like 29 flights of stairs in a luxury condo building. The husband was like, I want to, she's be cremated. I want to cremate her. The parents went to court and fought to get her remains so they could give her a proper Catholic

“burial. I think anytime somebody's like, yeah, let's cremate the body. Let's do that really fast.”

I think that's a red flag. Back home, I think the first day of the trial,

there was some testimony about this particular issue. We've got some video and some sound. We've got Katie Richen's Benson testifying about this issue. If we can go ahead and run that, then we can talk about it. Lisa Darden and Cory's mother said, "When are we going to talk about that Eric wanted to be cremated?" Did you observe Cory react to her mother raising cremation? Yes, I did. She looked shocked like she was caught in off guard at first and then she went into it and

said, oh yeah, he told me that he didn't want any bugs crawling on him after he was dead.

It freaked him out. So we're cremating him. And I went on to ask. I said, Cory, why did we just

do a whole entire funeral, based around the casket, the burial, the Paul barriers, Paul bearers, sorry, excuse me, and now you're just bringing up cremation. As she played it, often said, oh, well, isn't that what you do when you cremate him? To that point, I said, no, and then my dad started getting visibly upset because he knew his son wanted to be buried. Angelette, do people think that, you know, if you can arrange a quick cremation,

that there won't be some kind of an autopsy? I mean, you know, that whole thing seems very strange,

“but I mean, that's really the only reason I think you would maybe kind of make up”

the idea that the deceased victim preferred cremation, right? I just don't understand why they would be this type of discussion about that. I think as I said, you know, I think any time you, there's a rush to do a cremation like that. I think that's a red flag, especially when you've had a casket with a funeral and you're talking about a burial. And it seems to me that maybe this is a sign that maybe this woman doesn't know how things work, even if there's an autopsy,

you know, obviously the cops tell Cory they're going to take him for an autopsy, you know, because of his age and everything like that. So I don't know if maybe the mom just didn't know how these things work, thinking maybe he's cremated, so maybe that just gets rid of any, I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking. It just sounds very, very strange. If I guess if you think if you cremate the body, then there's no way to go back and re-examine it again.

Well, do you think that the family of Cory Richards was part of this in some way? You know, I don't know. They're standing by her. You know, they are standing by her. So they believe

“she's innocent, I believe. So who knows? I guess it's possible. What do you think day?”

Well, I know that you don't, we don't want to cast as persons on someone who's not been charged. Of course not, not at all. Not at all. But they are supporting her in a way that the co-worker family did not support Brian because they knew he was a serial killer. And here, they either have their head in the ground refusing to see all the obvious facts right in front of their noses, or perhaps they're involved in some way. I'm not going to make accusations because they haven't

been charged with anything, but they clearly love their, their daughter. They are on her side, but come on. It's a strange conversation for sure. But speaking of co-worker, can I, can we ask you about that case? Because I'm sure you've been following this lawsuit now by watching to the state, against Washington State University, by the families of Brian co-workers, victims,

alleging that Washington State acted with negligence and basically is suing them for wrongful death.

moved to federal court and there's been an official denial. And the idea is Washington State says,

“hey, look, we, we weren't put on any kind of notice. The guy, you know, maybe we knew something”

about him being a little creepy, but that's not enough to cause us to be liable. We're not able

to see the future. We're not basically obligated to control Brian co-worker because he was a

student or a teaching assistant. Here, what, what do you make of that? You know, when I first heard that they were going to file this lawsuit, the families of the four victims, I thought to myself, I'm just not so sure that this is going to fly. You know, and then they filed it and I started reading it. And, you know, it is, it is very disturbing. The fact that it sounds like they knew they had this huge problem on their hands. You know, and a lot of this information came from the homicide

investigation when, when they went to talk to the staff and the professors and the fellow students at Washington State, the Idaho State Police did in the FBI. I mean, they are being told that the professors there, these criminologists, thought they had a future predator on their hands. They,

they were like saying, basically, if we give this guy a Ph.D. In a few years, he's going to be

sexually abusing and stalking his students. It's like it was, it's very stunning to hear that criminologists were, we're basically saying, we've got a predator in our midst. And so, the lawsuit said they received 13 formal reports that had appropriate predatory medicine behavior. But what I keep going to is, I mean, the, these are the most sympathetic plaintiffs you can find on the planet. They are, they are, but I've covered this lawsuit on my on crime

fix. And I spoke with an attorney who handles these types of cases, you know, the, the wrongful, you know, wrongful death, employment law that made a thing. And he, and he basically said, look,

it would be one thing. He said this sounds like a mess and the optics are terrible. And they are

sympathetic plaintiffs. It's awful. But they may have, um, they may have more of a case, the families, if, if they were students at Washington State, and they had interacted with coberger, and they were like the people who had filed these complaints, and then they were the victim. But they're in another state in another city. And so, you know, he, he doesn't think legally that they're going to have much to hang their hat on. However, the same lawyer said, I would still

encourage the school to settle. The settlement. Yeah. Well, I mean, it goes to, it goes to what's foreseeable, um, what's reasonably foreseeable and look. What is the most that Washington State could have done that could have fired him in kicked him out of school? Maybe. But then the question is, would that have prevented the, the, the quadriple homicide? And that's, and that's very speculative.

“And, and one thing, the law does not like his speculation day. You know that? Yeah. And I, I think,”

I mean, I agree with you. They're incredibly sympathetic victims in Washington State had a mess on their hands. But does that mean that they were, if they had kicked him out, as you mentioned, would they have been able to prevent this? And I, I don't think you can go down that road. And I hate, you know, it's, it's sad. It's horrific. It's horrific that this happened. But I just don't know if they have a case. Well, also remember the victims here were not Washington State University students,

but students of University of Idaho. So does Wazu have a duty of care to students who are not even at their own school? That's part of the legal issue at play here. I agree. I want these plaintiffs, these victims get maximum compensation, maximum justice. Just that the law is sometimes

“imperfect and perfect as a vehicle to attain full justice. I think they should be filing a lawsuit”

against Brian Coburger, because I'm not convinced that we've heard the last of Brian Coburger. I've been saying since this plea agreement happened, I felt that the state made a huge error. I believe that they should have required a proffer of him. Yes. Something, you know, in other cases, I've covered where, excuse me, in another cases where I've covered, that I've covered not every case, but in cases where you've got, you know, multiple homicide victims like this,

you don't have to make them stand up and allocate in court, but you can sit that you can say, okay, we'll take the death penalty off the table. You want to plea guilty. We'll take the death penalty off the table. You're going to sit down. We're going to do a proffer. You're going to

as I'm concerned, and I've been saying this since this happened, they let Brian Coburger walk

into prison with currency. And that currency is his story. Somebody eventually is going to pay him for that story. And you can pass every son of Sam law you want to pass, but I've been saying this from the beginning. They screwed up. Like there are ways to get around that, and they need to they need to sue Brian Coburger because eventually that guy is going to talk, and I don't know who he's going to talk to, but it will happen. And he's going to revel in that, and whether his family

gets the money or somebody else, I don't know how it's going to happen, but I just feel that it will eventually happen. And so I just think that was a huge blunder. I asked Bill Thompson about it

when I interviewed him, and he really, in my opinion, didn't have a good answer. He said, "Well,

the FBI, you know, the BAU said, like, these people will lie. My answer to that was sometimes the lies, you still get, you're going to get beads of truth in the lies." So well said, ancient, and that's a great point to end it on. We're all helping for full justice here, at least Maxim, and just punished Coburg as much as possible. What an awful evil human being who just needs to go away forever. I don't want to ever hear from him again, but I think you're right. I think he's just going to be

hanging around us like a bad penny. So I want to thank you, Antonette. We're kind of audience, find your show, crime fix. It's on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. So just go over there. It's there, and have a look. And sometimes you can see Bill Holloway and being a bear. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Antonette, and our closing arguments are next, as well as your questions. Stay tuned. Hey folks, let's talk about something we all want. Real peace of mind. For me, that starts with

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we have a question from Selena. Hi! On our recent episode, Phil talked about jury selection and it got me thinking about how judges are assigned cases. It seems that the assignment of the

“judge is incredibly important, definitely. So, how our judges selected for cases. In addition,”

understandably, it is a huge deal to request a judge to recuse him or herself due to conflicts of interest. I wonder if any of you on the panel have ever had a judge to ask a judge to recuse himself

from a case. Thanks for always getting my mind thinking and maybe another life I could have been

a lawyer as I find your work fascinating. Thank you for that awesome question and Phil. What do you say? Well, that is a great question and I do find that the questions we get from our audience, our viewers, and our listeners are usually very thoughtful and just really good things to talk about. You know, she's right. Look, the assignment of a judge is critical. It's kind of like jury selection and a trial. It's one of those things that can literally shape the outcome of cases,

whether it's a small, like traffic court case or a murder case like we're following now with

“Cory Richards. These things are very, very important. And in most jurisdictions, and I can't”

speak, of course, for all of them, but the ones that I've been familiar with in my life. Judicial Simonist usually random or there's some kind of a process to evenly distribute cases. So the idea that prosecutors and a criminal case or plaintiffs in a civil case can engage in

everything to avoid judge shopping. And so the randomness of it seems to be what makes the most sense. Now, the point about being accused when a judge has a conflict of interest, sometimes that happens. And we take, for example, you know, Ashley Merchant had the case here in Fulton County,

“the Donald Trump recoke case, right? There was, I think, a judge on that case that”

recused themselves. And then it was randomly reassigned and it landed in the hands of Judge

McVee who ultimately remained on the case. Sometimes judges recused themselves because either

they, maybe they really don't want it or they think that they have some kind of a conflict of interest or a perceived conflict of interest. And yes, and I want to hear what you say, Dave, but I have had to ask a judge to do this before. Because one time I walked into court, on the case, it was a criminal case, not a serious one, relatively minor one. But when I walked into court, the prosecutor told me that his words were something to the effect of, I've heard it

straight from the horse's mouth that I'm not allowed to offer you this that of the other thing on a plea deal. And when he said the horse's mouth, I'm thinking that must be his boss, I'm thinking, why would your boss be interested in this kind of a routine case? This is not a big deal that much at all. He said, "No, not that horse." And he pointed to the judges, obviously, that horse. I'm like, surely the judge hasn't gotten involved in what you can and cannot,

you know, offer me on a plea deal. So I want to submit this to last year. So we went in there together to her office, the judge is this true. And her reaction told me that it was true because she became rapidly incensed. And the fact that I could even think of asking her that question,

“she found to be insulting. But honestly, I found it to be insulting that she's going to tell the”

prosecutor what he can offer me in the case. Because judges aren't supposed to be that involved. It would really be involved at all in that kind of thing. Plus it's improper to talk to one of the lawyers about a case without the other side being there. So I didn't have to file the motion. I just had to ask the judge the question and she tossed her own self from the case. So yes, it's uncomfortable that it's the lawyer's duty when they realize that there is a conflict by a

judge or perhaps even a prosecutor to raise that issue. Yeah, all good points. I've never had to

accuse a judge. It's a hybrid and also you're always worried that if you do that, that it's a judge. If it doesn't work out, the judge just poised in the well with the judge, not just for that case, but for future cases. And so you've got to be really careful. I mean, like if you're going to go after the king get better succeed. So yeah, well said, Phil, thank you for that excellent question. And now for our closing arguments. Dave, will it you go first? Okay, well, and I'll go.

“All right, thank you, my friend. All right. Well, Phil, remember that classic horror movie set up.”

You remember the babysitter is terrified. The phone keeps ringing and finally the police traced the signal only to tell her the call is coming from inside the house. Well, in 2026, the horror movie is real. Except the intruder isn't hiding in the attic. It's mopping your kitchen floor. We've reached a new level of surveillance, absurdity. According to popular science magazine, a software engineer just accidentally became the general of a 7,000 strong robot vacuum army.

He wasn't trying to be a supervillain. He just wanted to drive his vacuum with a PlayStation controller and with a little help from an AI coding tool. He didn't just get a remote. He got a front row seat to thousands of living rooms across 24 countries. Think about that. When you're in your pajamas, a total stranger with a choice that could be watching your camera listening to your mic and mapping your entire home, we are inviting Trojan horses into our bedrooms and calling it

convenience. If it has a camera and a Wi-Fi, it's a witness for the prosecution waiting to happen. In this high tech age, maybe the most revolutionary thing that you could do is maybe just buy a broom, doesn't need to be, or doesn't need to have a password, it doesn't have a cloud,

and it's never going to testify against you. But who am I kidding? Alexa is so darn convenient,

never complains and totally knows exactly when to order my toothpaste. And yes, it starts the vacuum when my beagle shedding starts to make my floors look like carpet. So yeah, the latest story from popular science is scary, but it's also scary to imagine a world where technology stopped advancing after clap-on, clap-off. I'm not willing to declare that I for one. Welcome, our new

Well, thank you very much for that day. Look, a lot of times here, uh, on MK True Crown, I like to

“talk about things that maybe have some educational value to maybe explain to folks, things about how”

the trial process or other legal issues were in real life, but today is a little bit different. Today is a cautionary tale. And it's about something that's, you know, it's unfortunately something that we are seeing more and more of in our society and in our culture today. And this is message is mainly to parents, parents of smaller children. So folks, I want you to, if you're in

that category, to think about exactly what's involved in handing your child over to a babysitter,

a daycare worker, or people that you may think you know, you're literally putting your kids

“lives in their hands. I want to show you this video, but what this is, this is a San Diego babysitter”

who just breaks down in tears in court after being sentenced to 100 years in prison, for essentially handing over children, even disabled children to her boyfriend so that he could do unspeakable things in ways of victimizing them. So let's go ahead and run that. A 31 year old Brittany Lyon back in 2021, her boyfriend Samuel Cabrera Jr. was sentenced to multiple terms of life without parole. After he was found guilty on several counts of child

molestation, kidnapping, burglary, and conspiracy. The two were also charged for allegedly molesting multiple girls while Lyon videotape the crimes. Today, family members of those victims confronted Lyon and caught calling her a monster. Cross-leggeders say Lyon found babysitting jobs on care.com, which is an online platform that connects families with caregivers. Prosecutors also say Lyon and Cabrera would often assault the young girls inside their own home. Every single day

in the United States, caregivers walk into homes. They have their spotless smiles. They have also their hidden past. Unfortunately, a quick Google search is not going to show you the domestic battery charge from three or four years ago, and it won't show you the person's name necessarily on a sex offender registry, and it certainly won't reveal the three or four jobs they may have

been fired from for theft or neglect or other types of wrongdoing. But here's what you can do.

You can do a proper background check, folks, and less than about 10 minutes. And for less than the price of a handstand, what you can basically do a background check, and you can know if the person who is watching your baby has a violent record, a DUI, or a pattern of endangering children. You'll be able to sleep better knowing that you've taken this simple, I think commonsense step to protect your children. This isn't about being paranoid. It's about being a parent. You can

“vet these caregivers, and you should. You know, your children can't call 911. They can't”

vet these caregivers themselves, and a lot of times they can't run, you know, if something feels wrong. So, you know, these kids are our precious, most precious gifts in life, and we've got to do everything we can to protect them. So, I'm serious. Before you hire that new babysitter, do a proper background check every single time, because literally your kid's lives depend on it. And that's it for us today. That's it for this particular episode of MK True Crime. I want to

have a, uh, make a special thanks to Dave Aaronberg and to Angelette Levy, our guest today. Thank you all for watching and for listening, and we'll see you back here next time on MK True Crime.