A daughter of James Craig, the US dentist accused of fatally poisoning his wife and the mother of their children, has testified that her father asked her to make it seem like her mother wanted Craig to order the ingredients, which ultimately led to her death, so she could ingest them.
Craig gave step-by-step instructions in a letter for how to create the deepfake video of his wife, the daughter testified.
Deepfakes are inauthentic images, videos or audio recordings created by artificial intelligence that appear real but have been digitally manipulated, or faked.
“I love you … I’m sorry to even have to ask you for this help,” prosecutor Michael Mauro read in an excerpt of the letter, which the daughter testified was written in her father’s handwriting.
Craig is accused of poisoning his wife, Angela, in March 2023, with a mix of arsenic, cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a medication commonly found in eyedrops.
Once she was in the hospital, he allegedly filled a pill with cyanide and made sure she took it, killing her, according to the prosecution.
Prosecutors allege he killed his wife because of his growing financial troubles and his affair with another woman.
Craig has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder, solicitation to commit tampering with physical evidence and solicitation to commit perjury.
He had told several people that his wife was suffering from suicidal ideations leading up to her death, according to the probable cause affidavit.
The letter’s directions included buying a “cheap” laptop, installing a private network and dark web browser and paying for the project using a pre-paid Visa gift card, the daughter testified.
The video must appear to have been made in the weeks before Angela Craig’s death, the daughter testified.
He also asked her to burn the video to thumb drives and let an investigator know she found them in her mother’s bag, all before destroying the laptop, she testified.
The letter said the second-oldest daughter out of six children was chosen to do this favour because she is most like her mother, stoic and practical, and is technologically adept, she testified.
In cross-examination, she admitted the letter was disappointing, confusing and made her feel a lot of emotions.
The 20-year-old daughter said she was living at home at the time her mother became sick and she drove her to and from emergency rooms to be treated, while also taking care of her younger siblings.
In one instance, she found her mother “almost fainted on the floor” of their bathroom, she was “super tired and super out of it,” she said.
Craig did not want autopsy for wife, oldest daughter says
Craig’s oldest daughter also testified, revealing her father did not want an autopsy to be conducted on her mother.
He didn’t want to “satisfy their curiosities” and have them poking at her, the daughter testified her father said after her mother’s death.
When she expressed her concerns about her mother’s illness being hereditary and that she might have passed it on to her youngest children, the daughter testified her father stayed quiet.
During her emotional testimony, the daughter said that while her mother struggled “like anyone else,” she wouldn’t have taken her own life.
“We were making plans,” the 21-year-old woman said.
With a comfort dog named Fancy by her side, the oldest daughter testified, often through tears, that her mother was her best friend and she tried to talk to her each day.
She knew her mother to be very active, loved exercising on her stationary bike and did yoga and Pilates.
But in early 2023, her mother had gotten very ill and was frustrated over not knowing what was wrong with her.
Her oldest daughter remembers her mother saying she felt “dizzy” and “heavy” before her symptoms worsened and she felt “pukey” and “less stable on her own two feet”.
