A Colorado dentist has been found guilty of murder for poisoning his wife’s protein shakes to try and escape his marriage.
Dr James Craig, 47, was accused of killing Angela Craig over a period of ten days in March 2023 with arsenic, cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a chemical found in eyedrops – poisoning not just her shakes but also prescription capsules and, ultimately, administering a final fatal dose of cyanide as Angela lay dying in the hospital.
Craig stood silently with his defense lawyers as the verdict was read out on Wednesday. Relatives of Angela – who was one of ten siblings- quietly wiped away tears after two and a half weeks of shocking and emotional testimony.
The jury also found Craig guilty on all counts of solicitation to tamper with physical evidence, solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury – after jurors heard how Craig tried to get his kids to lie for him and tried to order hits on the lead detective and other victims from behind bars.
Arapahoe County Judge Shay Whitaker sentenced him to the mandatory life sentence without the possibility for parole on the murder charge. He was given a combined 33 years to run consecutively on the other charges.
Craig’s only son and oldest daughter – in addition to Angela’s siblings – gave tearful victim impact statements in advance of sentencing.
‘It’s hard to lose your mom and, three days later, lose your dad,’ Toliver, the oldest of the couple’s six children, told the court, pausing as his voice broke. ‘And have to spend the next two and a half years trying to untangle whatever he tells you.
‘It’s just been hard to not be able to really mourn my mom,’ he said – adding that he has an alarm set for 10pm each night that ‘just says Mom’ to set aside time to ‘think about her and miss her and mourn her.’
Colorado dentist Dr James Craig sobbed occasionally during the closing arguments of his murder trial in connection with the March 2023 poisoning death of his wife, Angela
His sister Miriam, who married not long before her mother’s death, also addressed the judge, her husband at her side.
‘I was supposed to be able to plan my sisters’ weddings with my mom … I was supposed to be able to share with her the stories and the things happening in my life,’ Miriam said.
‘I was supposed to be able to trust my dad,’ she said. ‘He was supposed to be my hero – and instead, he’ll forever be the villain in my book.’
Craig heaved with sobs at the defense table as she spoke, and one of his lawyers placed a comforting arm on his back.
‘It hurts so bad every day, and I miss her so much,’ Miriam said.
‘I think I speak for everyone when I say that life and the world will truly never be the same,’ she added. ‘It will never be as bright as it was when my mom was here with us.’
Angela’s siblings struggled to keep their composure as they addressed the judge – and the dentist.
‘None of us could have imagined that the person she chose as her companion, the father of her six children and the man we welcomed into our family as our trusted brother-in-law, would callously and cruelly and without mercy take her life,’ Angela’s older sister, Kathryn, said on Wednesday.
‘And he perpetrated this murder while she was in her own home, with her own children around her,’ she told the court. ‘It’s heartless … cowardly. He’s a pretender and a liar.
‘He’s a snake in the grass.’
Angela’s family silently wiped tears from their eyes as Craig was sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole – in addition to 33 years to be served consecutively on other charges
Craig was taken into custody on March 19, 2023, the day after his wife was taken off life support.
The 43-year-old mother had been suffering from mystery and worsening symptoms since March 6, when prosecutors argued that her husband of 23 years first began to poison her.
Two of her daughters testified during the trial, and many of her relatives traveled from out of state to be there every day of proceedings. They complied with the judge’s request to keep all courtroom reactions muted following the verdict.
Arapahoe County Judge Shay Whitaker announced Craig would be sentenced later on Wednesday. He spoke quietly with his defense team as they waited to hear his fate.
Prosecutors outlined for jurors during the trial how Craig began researching poisons in late February 2023 after returning from a Las Vegas dental conference where he’d met a new paramour.
It wasn’t his first affair; three women he’d met on ‘sugar dating’ site Seeking.com in the months before Angela’s murder told the court about their ‘arrangements’ with the dentist.
Witness Carrie Hageseth testified that he bought her daughter a $9,000 car; witness Elizabeth Gore said he gave her $8,000 on ‘monetary gifts.’
Craig separately took vacations to Montana with ‘sugar babies’ Jordan Ivey and Gore, who testified she and Craig cut the trip short because Angela found out and called him, irate.
Prosecutors displayed during closing arguments a photo of mother-of-six Angela, 43, who began suffering mystery symptoms on March 6, 2023. Prosecutors outlined for the jury how Craig used arsenic, cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, found in eyedrops, to poison her
Two of the women told the murder trial that Craig believed a divorce would financially cripple him.
And money – ‘a motive as old as time’ – was one of three motives Craig had to kill Angela, Deputy District Attorney Michael Mauro said during closing arguments on Tuesday.
‘First and foremost, he wanted out of his marriage,’ Mauro said. ‘He was tired of it; he was tired of going around and around, having an affair, getting caught, digging himself out, and then repeating that cycle.’
On top of that, Mauro said, ‘It doesn’t matter how much money he had; he didn’t want to part company with half of it. He was greedy. He had it all and he wanted more.’
Image, he said was another driving force.
‘This guy didn’t want the reputation consequences associated with divorce,’ Mauro told the court. ‘He didn’t want to be the guy who left the mother of his six children to go out and chase other women.’
It would be ‘much better to be the grieving widower’ who ‘gets sympathy,’ Mauro said.
And then there was the Texas orthodontist Craig met in Vegas – a conservative mother of two in the final stages of divorce who believed he’d moved out of the marital home and was also at the end stages of his marriage.
Angela and James were married for 23 years – during which the dentist had multiple extramarital affairs, his murder trial heard
Karin Cain took the stand and tearfully told the court how Craig ‘shared with me how he and his wife had told the kids that they were divorcing’ and ‘how the kids had responded,’ Cain testified.
‘That was the thing that drew me to him: The conversations were very deep and honest and vulnerable.’
She repeated ‘dishonest’ with incredulity, touched her face and blinked – as the first man she’d dated in ‘almost four years’ sat at the defense table just feet from her.
Cain and Craig would go on to exchange 4,000 texts and 80 declarations of love in under a month, the trial heard. Prosecutors argued that Cain was ‘different’ from his other affairs because she reciprocated his over-the-top advances and ‘wouldn’t sleep with him;’ the defense maintained throughout the trial that Cain was just another in a long line of women.
Whatever the reason, jurors heard that Craig began researching poisons upon his return from Las Vegas. He had arsenic delivered to his house and cyanide to his office and tried to obtain oleander but failed, witnesses testified.
Defense attorney Lisa Fine Moses told jurors during closing arguments on Tuesday that Craig had displayed ‘not very likable behavior’ and displayed a photo of her client scrawled with the word ‘dishonest’ – but said the case was not about ‘whether he was a good husband’
Angela began feeling sick on March 6 after drinking a shake jurors saw Craig preparing on home surveillance footage shown in court.
She repeatedly visited urgent care and hospitals and was frantically researching her symptoms until her final admission on March 15. Angela ‘crashed’ after her husband visited her room for 60 seconds on that afternoon, jurors heard.
Prosecutors argued that Craig not only poisoned his wife’s protein shakes but also put cyanide in her antibiotic capsules and administered a final dose in the hospital.
The same day, Craig’s office manager told her bosses how she’d noticed potassium cyanide in a ‘personal package’ Craig had delivered to work but told her not to open, she testified.
Caitlin Romero told her bosses about the cyanide, and Craig’s longtime friend and dental partner, Dr Ryan Redfearn, alerted the hospital – who then told law enforcement, the trial heard.
Angela was essentially declared brain dead the same day, though doctors began administering a cyanide antidote after Redfearn’s information – but too late, witnesses testified.
Craig was denied access to his home that night and wrote a ‘ridiculous manifesto,’ prosecutors said, in an iPhone night just after 1am on March 16.
In it, he claimed he’d asked Angela for a divorce upon returning from Las Vegas – but she refused and ‘said she was just going to end her life,’ he wrote.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Mauro told the court on Tuesday during closing arguments that Craig ‘This guy didn’t want the reputation consequences associated with divorce … didn’t want to be the guy who left the mother of his six children to go out and chase other women’
She asked him to order poisons for her, and he reluctantly agreed to obtain cyanide, arsenic and tetrahydrozoline, a chemical found in eyedrops, the iPhone note claimed.
‘She told me she intended to drink eyedrops again and then do the cyanide,’ Craig wrote. ‘She asked me to put it in a capsule and then, as a backup plan, have a syringe with potassium cyanide dissolved in water.’
He wrote: ‘I got her Clyndamycin [an antibiotic she was taking for sinus trouble] prescription and filled two capsules with 300mg each of potassium cyanide … she asked me to do something like a dozen capsules.’
The prosecution derided this ‘super secret suicidal pact’ during closing arguments, noting that only Craig had ever claimed Angela to be suicidal.
Instead of researching poisons, they pointed out, she was desperately searching online for what might be wrong with her.
Friends and family repeatedly testified that Angela loved life, loved being a mother and in no way wanted to end her life.
Craig’s phone was turned over on March 16 to investigators, hours after he’d written the iPhone note.
‘He knows the jig is up,’ Mauro said.
Texas orthodontist Karin Cain testified tearfully on Tuesday about how Craig claimed to be in the final stages of divorce, continuing to woo her as he allegedly poisoned his wife
The trial has heard testimony from four of Craig’s misrresses, including ‘sugar baby’ Carrie Hegaseth, who told the court Craig believed a divorce would financially ruin him
Dr Redfearn, after alerting the hospital, had also confronted Craig in a phone call about the cyanide delivevry; the dentist claimed Angela was suicidal and had been playing a ‘game of chicken,’ the trial heard.
But there was no mention of such a game in the iPhone note, as prosecutors pointed to repeated inconsistencies in Craig’s story.
‘The devil’s in the details, and he can’t keep the details straight,’ Mauro said on Tuesday.
Some of Craig’s inconsistencies stemmed from accounts he gave after his March 19 arrest – to his family and others he asked to fabricate evidence, the court heard.
Craig’s 20-year-old daughter, for example, testified that Craig asked her to create a deep-fake video showing her mother asking for the poisons; he said her mother had accidentally killed herself.
In a letter to a stranger he hoped would lie for him, Craig offered another scenario in which ‘Angela actually wanted to set me up; she wanted to gain leverage in a divorce proceeding. She wanted to make it look like I was assaulting her, attempting to murder her and then she accidentally took that too far.’
The trial heard testimony from Craig’s former cellmate, who said the dentist asked him to kill lead detective Bobbi Jo Olson and other inmates, and another inmate who said Craig asked him to plant evidence in his truck or home.
Angela’s sister, Kathryn, on Wednesday said in her victim impact statement: ‘None of us could have imagined that the person she chose as her companion, the father of her six children and the man we welcomed into our family as our trusted brother-in-law, would callously and cruelly and without mercy take her life’
The defense, in closing arguments, told jurors that Craig was the victim of an investigation with ‘blinders.’
‘They honed in on that guy and … did not want to look at any other options but the narrative that they had in their head,’ defense attorney Lisa Fine Moses told the court.
The defense put up a huge picture onscreen of Craig with the word ‘dishonest’ scrawled across it.
‘This case is not about whether James Craig was a good husband,’ said Moses, whose own husband withdrew from the defense team earlier this month after his arrest for arson at their home.
‘I mean we heard from four women in four months about whether he was a good husband,’ Moses said.
‘This case is not about whether you like him or not, not about whether you agree with what you heard from those women, not about any of those things … it is not about speculation, it is not about assumptions, it is not about sympathy.’
The defense displayed a blown-up photo Craig had sent of himself nearly nude in bed to Cain as his wife lay dying.
‘That’s not very likable behavior,’ Moses said.
Judge Shay Whitaker sentenced Craig to a mandatory life sentence without parole on the first-degree murder charge – as well as 33 years to be served consecutively on the charges stemming from the dentist’s continued criminal activity from behind bars
She dismissed Craig’s continued behavior from behind bars, however, as ‘really horrible, awful decisions’ out of ‘desperation’ and ‘fear.’
Angela’s siblings, in their victim impact statements, railed against the portrait painted by the defense of their sister during the trial.
‘People are going to think maybe she should’ve left this relationship early, maybe not given him so many chance, maybe she was codependent,’ her brother, Mark, told the court. ‘That wasn’t who Angie is.
He said there were ‘a couple of types of people in this world.
‘There’s villains; they’re selfish, they think about themselves and they’ll kill you to take what they want.
‘And then there’s heroes, and they live their lives so that you can have the things you need.’
Angela, he said, was a hero – and ‘didn’t know that her husband and father of her children would kill her, or I’m sure she would’ve left.’
Instead, his sister ‘was willing to suffer way beyond what I would’ve been willing to take – the betrayal and the abuse from her husband, because she believed she could help him … overcome those demons and keep her family together.’
He paused.
‘Of course, it didn’t work out that way, because Jim killed her.’
Another brother, Rick Pray, incredibly expressed compassion for Craig’s own parents and family.
Craig, he said, ‘decided to bring shame to his family name and cast aside his good upbringing because Jim decided to satisfy his lust, needs, financial issues and desires.’
Those, he said, were ‘more important than having his children raised by a mother who loved them.
‘Because of his selfishness, greed, lust, dishonesty and and narcissism, this bright light has been extinguished.’
