Kouri Richins ‘duped’ TV hosts after allegedly killing husband

The two TV news anchors who interviewed Kouri Richins — the Utah mom accused of killing her husband — said they felt “duped” and “sickened” that she spoke to them about her new children’s book after her alleged crime.

Deena Manzanares and Surae Chinn, hosts of KTVX’s “Good Things Utah,” interviewed Richins, 33, in March about the children’s picture book “Are You With Me?” that she penned after the fatal poisoning of her husband, Eric Richins, 39, a year before.

“I definitely feel like we were duped, in a sense,” Chinn told Fox News about Richins plugging her book, which was described on Amazon as “a must-read for any child who has experienced the pain of loss, and for parents who want to provide their children with the emotional support they need to heal and grow.”

The hosts said Richins appeared “cold” during her interview after she sent the show’s executive producer an email containing a heart emoji in her request for the sit-down.

“Sitting down with her, we both felt … she was a little bit cold. She wasn’t super emotional. But again, we’re trying to show our guests in the best light. We’re trying to be on their side,” Manzanares told the outlet.

They said Richins described Eric’s death as sudden but didn’t address the cause on air.

Chinn recalled wondering at the time how the author was “able to take care of your kids — write a book, too, grieve with your kids, and then come on a show to promote the book that you also wrote?”

When asked by Manzanares after the interview what she thought happened to her husband, Kouri said she believed it was “COVID-related” and that Eric had a “lung issue,” according to Fox News.

The host said the show received an anonymous message the following morning, stating: “YOU KNOW SHE KILLED HER HUSBAND!!!”

They thought the email was “bizarre” and “alarming,” but didn’t pay too much attention to it because they often get “crazy” emails.

But the missive proved prophetic when Richins was charged in May.

“I’m sickened now that, OK, she sat on our couch, she talked about grieving, and we showed so much compassion and empathy for what seemingly look like a mourning widow,” Chinn told Fox News.

She also suggested that Richins may have already known she was being eyed as a suspect when she requested the interview because authorities had already searched her home and questioned her several times.

“That’s what I think is scary and that’s what makes me question what it is she’s dealing with, whether it’s a mental illness, it’s a personality disorder,” Manzanares said.

“I have no idea. But what makes somebody behave in that way and then put on whatever facade she had put on to appear as the quote unquote, grieving mother. It’s truly mind-blowing,” she added.

Richins wrote the tear-jerker after she allegedly poisoned her husband with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule.

“It completely took us all by shock. We have three little boys, 10, 9 and 6, and my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we’ve experienced in the last year,” she said on the show.

Eric suspected that she had been carrying on an extramarital affair, family attorney Greg Skordas has said.

He told The Post that despite Eric’s alarming suspicions, he stayed with his wife to spare their kids from growing up in a broken home.

Eric had previously told a pal he believed Kouri was trying to poison him after he became sick following a Valentine’s Day dinner the month before his death, according to court documents in the battle for his $3.6 million estate.

He died a day before she closed on a $2 million deal to buy a 22,000-square-foot home — a deal for which he had refused to pay, according to documents.

Richins was charged with first-degree aggravated murder and multiple counts of second-degree possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.