Kouri Richins: How the Defense Fought — And Where They Lost
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Kouri Richins defense team called zero witnesses and presented no affirmative case. They relied entirely on the damage done to the prosecution's evidence during cross-examination. A jury convicted her anyway.
Tony Brueski, defense attorney Bob Motta, and retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke examine what the defense actually accomplished and what the conviction tells us about where it wasn't enough. The investigator coaching video. The no-fentanyl admission from Detective O'Driscoll. The mid-trial disclosure of Carmen Lauber's drug court violations. The calculated decision to walk away from a witness who might have helped because of what came attached to him. Bob Motta breaks down the strategy call by call, and Robin Dreeke examines how the jury processed the behavioral picture the defense tried to build.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brewski and Robin Dree. |
| 0:07.0 | The defense called zero witnesses. They put nothing on other than, obviously, on Cross. |
| 0:14.0 | They bet the prosecution had improved their case, and they lost. |
| 0:18.0 | But they did land some real hits along the way. |
| 0:21.2 | What worked, what didn't, and what does the verdict tell us about where this all fell |
| 0:26.4 | apart? |
| 0:26.9 | Bob Mata is with us, defense attorney, host of the podcast, Defense Diaries, and Robin Drake |
| 0:31.5 | is always with us. |
| 0:33.1 | Bob, with the defense of Corey Richens, I want to talk about some things that came in that may have looked, I don't know, maybe strong for Corey at the beginning. |
| 0:45.1 | If we're to look at her as being completely innocent, have nothing to do with this. |
| 0:48.2 | This is just a mother. She's trying to help her kids grieve. She's trying to grieve. One of the way she expressed it was through writing a children's |
| 0:55.7 | book about grief. Okay, this is an interesting exercise. And if done from a pure standpoint and |
| 1:01.9 | this actually happened and you didn't kill your husband, okay, that's a creative way of dealing |
| 1:07.2 | with us. And then we found out she got a ghost written. She didn't participate in the |
| 1:11.5 | actual writing of the damn book. How damning was that little nugget that put some more context |
| 1:18.6 | around the book to Corey in this trial, do you think? Because it really took that whole concept |
| 1:24.0 | away of, well, maybe this was what she was doing. It was pretty much proven it wasn't. |
| 1:28.8 | Yeah, I think that that fact, even though I don't know the relevance, like that much because |
| 1:38.1 | it was after the fact. And I don't think they put anything on to show that that was certainly one of |
| 1:43.5 | her actual motives. Like, there's no part of me that thinks that Corey Richens did this in order for her to be able to write this book. You know, I, no, no, but I'm just saying it wasn't written by her. No, I understand. I understand. But what I'm talking about is relevance. Sure. Okay. To a murder charge. |
| 2:02.1 | So, you know, and like I think if you were to ask most attorneys, they'd be like, yeah, I'm having |
| 2:07.8 | a hard time figuring out the relevance. |
... |
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