A Utah mom who wrote a children’s book about grieving after her husband died and then charged with fatally poisoning him was denied getting released on bail on Monday before her murder trial.

A judge said Kouri Richins, 33, posed “a substantial danger to the community” if she was allowed to post bail during a detention hearing, KTVX-TV reported.

Richins is accused of killing her husband of nine years Eric Richins by allegedly slipping him five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule she mixed for him in March 2022.  Richins was arrested in Park City, Utah, last month.

About a year to the day after her husband died, Richins published an illustrated children’s book, “Are You With Me?” about navigating through grief after losing a loved one.

Prosecutors say Richins, the widowed mom of three kids from Kamas, Utah, faces charges of criminal homicide, first-degree aggravated murder and three counts of possessing a controlled substance with intent to distribute. Richins has yet to enter a plea. She is due back in court for a pretrial hearing on June 22.

Utah mom accused of killing her husbandA woman wrote a children’s book about grief after her husband died. Now she is charged with his murder.

Prosecutors say Kouri Richins planned for her husband’s death

Richins allegedly bought four life insurance policies on her husband’s life totaling $2 million without his knowledge years before the alleged murder, prosecutors say.

Richins also took out a $250,000 home equity line of credit, spent it and stole about $134,000 from her husband’s business, withdrew $100,000 from his bank accounts and spent more than $30,000 with his credit cards, prosecutors claim.

During Monday’s hearing, Amy Richins, Eric Richins’ sister, during a victim’s impact statement, called her sister-in-law “desperate, greedy and extremely manipulative,” according to the Associated Press.

“I never knew evil like this existed,” said Amy Richins, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Amy Richins also accused Kouri Richins of intentionally poisoning Eric Richins and said it was painful for her family to watch Kouri Richins promote a book and describe herself as an amazing mother, the AP reported.

“How can anyone value human life so cheaply?” Amy Richins said. “I cannot comprehend it.”

Also during Monday’s four-hour hearing, a detective, a private investigator and a forensic accountant testified, describing Richins as someone who calculatingly plotted to kill her husband.

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Kouri Richins’ attorneys claim ‘no substantial evidence’ against her 

Prior to Monday’s hearing, Richins’ defense team filed a motion calling for her release. Richins’ defense attorneys argued in court papers on Friday that “there is no substantial evidence to support the charges.”

Her attorneys claim the evidence against Richins is circumstantial because authorities never seized fentanyl from the family home. Richins’ defense team is also questioning the credibility of key witnesses expected to back prosecutors’ wishes that Richins remain in custody.

Her attorneys said that prosecutors simply accepted a narrative from Eric Richins’ family that his wife had poisoned him “and worked backward in an effort to support it” by spending about 14 months investigating and finding no evidence to support their theory.

In a court filing containing a letter on Monday, Kouri Richins’ attorneys claim detectives detained and questioned her unlawfully while executing a search warrant on the family home about a month after her husband’s death, the AP reported.