MEDFORD, Ore. – A jury of her peers found Louise Richards guilty of murdering her 70-year old husband, Terry. It happened in August of 2017, in their Central Point home.
Her account of what happened was all captured on a video recording shown to the jury on Thursday, the second day of her murder trial.
“It was immediate. I picked up my gun and I walked out and I shot him,” said Richards in the video.
In the video, Richards talks about her explosive relationship with her husband. The two were going through a divorce and she claims he was both emotionally, and sometimes, physically abusive.
The accumulation of abuse is what the defense argued led to Richards acting under the influence of “extreme emotional disturbance” or EED.
On the final day of the trial, Richards took the stand in her own defense.
Richards told jurors her husband threatened to take all her money before she shot him.
She also described the moment she pulled the trigger, saying she saw only “red” and a “red tunnel.”
The defense argued her seeing red shows she acted under an “extreme emotional disturbance” or EED. But the state argued she never told police about any of that in her account of what happened just hours after the shooting.
The state also said Richards admitted to a friend who she called moments after the shooting that “I finally did it.”
The state also said Richards told police she could have turned away after waiting in her room for two hours as she walked down the hallway with a gun.
That, they said, showed she did not make the decision under EED because she could have acted to prevent his death.
Friday, she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
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