MEDFORD, Ore. — “I reached my breaking point,” said accused murderer Louise Richards to investigators in a 2017 video recording.
That’s what Richards told investigators after she killed her husband, Terry, in August of 2017 at 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.
“Where was he at when you shot him,” asked the detective to Richards.
“In his chair,” she said.
“Did he know you were behind him with the gun,” asked the detective.
“No,” Richards said.
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 physically abusive.
“Were you trying to kill him,” asked the detective to Richards in the video.
“I just wanted him out of my life,” she said.
Richards even goes so far as to show investigators exactly how she did it.
“I think it was like this,” she said.
“You were that close,” asked the detective to Richards.
“I think so,” she said.
The accumulation of abuse is what the defense is arguing led to Richards acting under the influence of “extreme emotional disturbance” or EED.
A forensic psychologist was called as a witness to explain what that means.
“It’s a build-up of something and then at a certain point when it hits the threshold, that it needs to have that chemical, emotional reaction then you can have a surge which is then the action that we’re talking about,” said Dr. Eric Morrell, a forensic psychologist.
Dr. Morrell says he evaluated Richards nearly a year after the shooting.
He believes she did, in fact, act under EED.
“When I shot, I didn’t hear anything,” said Dr. Morrell reading his notes of what Richards told him. “I didn’t feel a recoil. I didn’t even know if I hit him. I assumed that I did.”
The prosecution says Terry Richards’s death was murder and cast doubt on the doctor’s evaluation.
The trial is scheduled to end on Friday.
Stay with NBC5 News for more updates on this developing story we’ve been following for more than 2 years.
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