DENVER — Lawyers are set to deliver closing arguments Tuesday in the trial of a Colorado dentist accused of killing his wife by gradually poisoning her.
James Craig is charged with murder in the death of Angela Craig in suburban Denver in 2023. He is also accused of trying to fabricate evidence in the case to make it look like she killed herself and of asking a fellow jail inmate to kill the detective who led the investigation into his wife’s death.
Angela Craig, who had six children with James Craig, died in 2023 during her third trip to the hospital in a little over a week. Toxicology tests later determined the 43-year-old died of poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient found in over-the-counter eye drops.
Police previously said James Craig purchased a variety of poisons before his wife’s death and put some in the protein shakes he made for her. During the trial, prosecutors alleged that he also gave her a fatal dose of cyanide as she lay in her hospital bed on March 15, 2023, as doctors tried to figure out what was ailing her. She was declared brain dead soon afterward.
James Craig didn’t testify and his lawyers didn’t present any witnesses — and it wasn’t required. Instead, in opening statements and in their questioning of prosecution witnesses, Craig’s lawyers seemed to suggest that Angela Craig may have taken her own life and faulted police for focusing solely on James Craig as a suspect.
In notes that police found on James Craig’s phone, the dentist said Angela Craig asked him to help kill her with poison when he sought a divorce after having affairs. In the document, which was labeled “timeline,” Craig said he eventually agreed to purchase and prepare poisons for her to take but not administer them. Craig said that he put cyanide in some of the antibiotic capsules she had been taking and also prepared a syringe containing cyanide.
According to that timeline, Craig wrote that just before she had to go to the hospital on March 15, 2023, she must have ingested a mixture containing tetrahydrozoline, the eye drop ingredient, because she became lethargic and weak. Then, he wrote, she took the antibiotic laced with cyanide that he prepared for her.
Mark Pray, who was visiting to help the Craig family because of his sister’s mysterious illness, testified that he gave Angela Craig the capsules after being instructed to do so by James Craig, who was not at home. Pray said his sister bent over and couldn’t hold herself up after taking the medicine. He and his wife then took Angela Craig to the hospital.
The lead investigator, Detective Bobbi Olson, testified that James Craig’s timeline account differed from statements he had made to others about what happened, including accusing Angela Craig of setting him up to make it look like he had killed her.
The defense introduced into evidence Angela Craig’s journal in which she talked about struggles in their marriage in previous years and her husband’s infidelity. In one entry she wrote, “He doesn’t love me and I don’t blame him.” The journal ended in 2018 and did not include any mentions of suicide, Olson said.
In opening statements, one of Craig’s attorneys, Ashley 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 of Latter-day Saints.
Angela Craig’s sister, Toni Kofoed, pushed back against that suggestion. She testified that her sister had a “broken heart” because of the affairs, but not a “broken mind.”
Prosecutors have said James Craig fell in love with another dentist and was in financial straits when he killed his wife.