Colorado dentist accused of poisoning his wife’s protein shakes going on trial for murder

Denver – A few days before his death, after suffering from symptoms that mystified her doctors, Angela Craig confronted her husband, James, in their suburban kitchen in Denver for lack of support.

In this argument in 2023 captured on home surveillance video, she accused her of suggesting the hospital staff that she was suicidal, according to court documents.

The prosecutors say that James Craig caused the evils that finally killed his wife by poisoning his protein shakes and trying to give the impression that she committed suicide. His trial on murder and other accusations should start on Monday with the interrogation of potential jurors.

Angela Craig, 43, died in March 2023 during her third trip to the hospital this month. The toxicology tests later determined that she had died of a poisoning of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient found in the over -the -counter eye drops.

The couple got married 23 years and had six children.

Craig pleaded non -guilty to accusations, including a first degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit a perjury.

The 47 -year -old dentist bought online arsenic when his wife began to feel symptoms such as stunning and headache for whom doctors found no cause, according to the prosecutors.

At the time of his arrest, the police said that Craig was trying to start a new life in the midst of financial problems and seemed to have an affair with another dentist. Prosecutors said he had business with two other women, but that they did not detail a reason in the death of his wife.

Craig’s lawyers argued that the police had been a supporter against him and said that his wife’s Shake containers had not shown signs of poison. They questioned the reliability of an inmate who declared that Craig had offered him $ 20,000 to kill the principal investigator of the case, an alleged plot for which Craig is also judged.

To avoid being held responsible, prosecutors said, Craig tried to make evidence to reveal that his wife committed suicide.

He tried to ask another colleague to plant fraudulent letters at Craig’s home to give the impression that his wife was suicidal, prosecutors said. Then, in the weeks preceding that Craig should be tried in November, the prosecutors said that he also sent letters to the ex-wife of the detainee whom he would have tried to kill the investigator, offering him $ 20,000 for each person she could wrongly find that his wife was planning to die by suicide, they said.

While the selection of the jury was about to start, his lawyer at the time, Harvey Steinberg, asked to withdraw, citing a rule allowing lawyers to resign if a customer persists in the actions considered to be criminal or with which they do not agree.

Another lawyer for Craig, Robert Werking, later argued that the investigators did not look if Craig had written the letters or checked them against his writing. Werking also said that the detainee and his ex-wife had been prosecuted for counterfeiting for their roles in an alleged fraud network in 2005, suggesting that they could not trust.

Werking withdrew from the case himself this month after being accused of criminal fire in his own house, leaving his wife and legal partner, Lisa Fine Moses, to defend Craig. Werking lawyer David Beller said he was receiving mental health treatment and asked the public to show him the grace.

Moses did not immediately return the phone and the emails asking for comments.

During the defense objections, prosecutors plan to show the video of the argument in the kitchen to the jurors.

“It’s your fault, they treated me as if I was a risk of suicide, as I did for myself, and as nothing I said could believe,” Angela Craig told her first trip to the hospital.

Prosecutors convinced that the judge’s jurors should see the video because they said it refuted the potential statements that Angela Craig poisoned – perhaps trying to dissuade him from divorce – or to supervise him and gain an advantage over him if they divorce.

“His mental state is anger and frustration, not the suicidality or despair of keeping the defendant in marriage,” said the main district prosecutor Michael Mauro in a recent judicial file.

One of Angela Craig’s brothers and sisters, Mark Pray, said last year that James Craig not only orchestrated the “torment and disappearance” of his sister, but had shown contempt for others, including their children.

Prosecutors say that James Craig looked online answers to questions such as “how to make murder look like a heart attack” and “is the arsenic detectable in an autopsy?”

After Craig’s first attempts to kill have failed, the prosecutors claim, he ordered a rushed expedition of potassium cyanide, supposedly for surgery. The shipment was accidentally discovered by an employee of his dental office in the suburbs of Denver d’Aurora on March 13, 2023. The employee reported him to the office director two days later when Angela Craig returned to the hospital for a third and last time.

Craig’s trading partner Ryan Redfearn told a nurse who treated Angela Craig that she feared that she could have been poisoned by cyanide. The nurse reported this to the police, who began his investigation on the same day.

Angela Craig died a few days later.