Updated at 4:06 p.m. on July 15, 2025.
By Jesse Bedayn | AP
A dentist on trial for allegedly killing his wife by poisoning her protein shakes had fallen in love with another dentist, was in financial straits and had bought various poisons in the lead up to her death, prosecutors said in the trial's opening statements on Tuesday.
Craig, 47, allegedly used cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in over-the-counter eye drops, to kill his wife of 23 years, Angela Craig, two years ago in suburban Denver.
In a nearly full courtroom, Craig sat in a dark suit as Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley laid out the case against him and pointed out that Craig may have been motivated by the payout from his wife's life insurance.
Angela Craig, 43, who had six children with James Craig, had gone in and out of the hospital over several days. Her worsening symptoms, including dizziness, vomiting and fainting, perplexed doctors. Craig gave his wife a final dose of poison after she had already been admitted to the hospital, Brackley said.
“He went in that room to murder her, to deliberately and intentionally end her life with a fatal dose of cyanide," Brackley said. “She spends the next three days dying."
After his arrest, Craig tried to conscript a fellow inmate and others into covering his tracks. That included requests to create false testimony and kill the lead investigator on the case in exchange for money, Brackley said.
Craig, who shook his head at times when Brackley spoke, has pleaded not guilty to several charges, including first-degree murder.
Craig's attorney, Ashley Whitham, said they aren't disputing that Angela Craig was sick, hospitalized or that poison was found in her system. But Whitham argued that the evidence didn't show that he poisoned and killed her.
Whitham seemed to suggest Angela Craig may have taken her own life. Whitham repeatedly described Angela Craig as “broken," partly by Craig's infidelity and her desire to stay married, since they were part of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints. Hospital staff had said Craig had been caring and “doting” while Angela Craig was in the hospital, said Whitham.
The police's investigation was inadequate, said Whitham, and had been biased against Craig from the beginning. Investigators hadn't taken Angela Craig's laptop or found her journal in the search of the couple's home in Aurora, said Whitham, adding that only parts of the journal were later turned over to investigators.
Whitham said the prosecution overdramatized Craig's financial problems. She refuted prosecutors' suggestion that Craig was so enamored with one of the women he had an affair with — a fellow dentist from Texas — that he was motivated to kill Angela Craig.
"That's simply not the case," Whitham said, adding that Craig had many affairs over the years that his wife knew about. “He was candid with Angela that he had been cheating.”
Prosecutors said Craig searched Google for “how to make a murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy,” and that he tried to make it appear his wife had killed herself.
Angela Craig was hospitalized several times. After the first time, she can be seen on home surveillance video accusing her husband of implying to medical staff that she was suicidal.
“It’s your fault they treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and like nothing I said could be believed,” she said to her husband on the video.
After Craig's arrest in 2023, prosecutors alleged that he sent a letter to his daughter, offered a fellow jail inmate $20,000 to kill the case's lead investigator and offered someone else $20,000 to find people to falsely testify that Angela Craig planned to die by suicide.
Whitham told the jury to consider the credibility of those witnesses, calling some “jailhouse snitches.”
In addition to first-degree murder, Craig has pleaded not guilty to the other charges, including solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.
Craig remains in custody, according to jail records.
