DENVER: Just days before she died after suffering symptoms that mystified her doctors, Angela Craig confronted her husband, James, in their suburban Denver kitchen over his lack of support.
In that 2023 argument captured on home surveillance video, she accused him of suggesting to hospital staff that she was suicidal, court documents show.
Prosecutors say James Craig caused the ailments that ultimately killed his wife by poisoning her protein shakes and trying to make it look as if she killed herself. His trial on murder and other charges is set to begin Monday with the questioning of potential jurors.
Angela Craig, 43, died in March 2023 during her third trip to the hospital that month. Toxicology tests later determined she died of poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient that is found in over-the-counter eye drops.
The couple were married 23 years and had six children.
Craig has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.
Police say Craig tried to fabricate evidence to make it appear his wife killed herself
The 47-year-old dentist allegedly bought arsenic online around the time his wife began to experience symptoms like dizziness and headaches for which doctors could find no cause, prosecutors say.
At the time of his arrest, police said Craig was trying to start a new life amid financial troubles and appeared to be having an affair with a fellow dentist. Prosecutors said he had affairs with two other women, but they have not detailed a motive in his wife’s death.
Craig’s attorneys have argued police were biased against him and claimed testing of his wife’s shake containers did not turn up signs of poison. They’ve questioned the reliability of a jail inmate who said Craig offered him $20,000 to kill the case’s lead investigator, an alleged plot for which Craig is also on trial.
To avoid being held accountable, prosecutors said, Craig tried to fabricate evidence to make it appear his wife killed herself.
He tried to get another fellow inmate to plant fraudulent letters at Craig’s home to make it look like his wife was suicidal, prosecutors said. Then, in the weeks before Craig had been set to stand trial in November, prosecutors said he also sent letters to the ex-wife of the inmate he allegedly tried to get to kill the investigator, offering her $20,000 for each person she could find to falsely testify that his wife planned to die by suicide, they said.
Previous Craig attorneys withdraw from case
As jury selection was about to begin, his lawyer at the time, Harvey Steinberg, asked to withdraw, citing a rule allowing lawyers to step down if a client persists in actions considered criminal or that they disagree with.
Another attorney for Craig, Robert Werking, later argued that investigators did not look into whether Craig wrote the letters or check them against his handwriting. Werking also said that the inmate and his ex-wife were prosecuted for forgery for their roles in an alleged fraud ring in 2005, suggesting they could not be trusted.
Werking withdrew from the case himself this month after being charged with arson of his own home, leaving his wife and law partner, Lisa Fine Moses, to defend Craig. Werking’s attorney, David Beller, said he was getting mental health treatment and asked the public to show him grace.
Moses did not immediately return telephone and email messages seeking comment.
Prosecutors plan to show video of couple’s argument
Over the objections of the defense, prosecutors plan to show the video of the argument in the kitchen to jurors.
“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,” Angela Craig told her husband after her first trip to the hospital.
Prosecutors convinced the judge jurors should see the video because they said it disproves potential claims that Angela Craig poisoned herself — possibly while trying to dissuade him from divorcing her — or to frame him and gain an advantage over him if they did divorce.
“Her mental state is anger and frustration, not suicidality or desperation to keep the defendant in the marriage,” Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Mauro wrote in a recent court filing.
One of Angela Craig’s siblings, Mark Pray, said last year that James Craig not only orchestrated the “torment and demise” of his sister but had shown disregard for others, including their children.
An online search
Prosecutors say James Craig searched online for answers to questions such as “how to make murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?”
After Craig’s initial attempts to kill his wife failed, prosecutors allege, he ordered a rush shipment of potassium cyanide, supposedly for surgery. The shipment was accidentally discovered by an employee at his dental practice in the Denver suburb of Aurora on March 13, 2023. The employee reported it to the office manager two days later when Angela Craig returned to the hospital for a third and final time.
Craig’s business partner, Ryan Redfearn, told a nurse treating Angela Craig that he was concerned she could have been poisoned with the cyanide. The nurse reported that to police, who began their investigation the same day.
Angela Craig died days later.
Colorado dentist accused of poisoning his wife’s protein shakes going on trial for murder
https://arab.news/vvk5c
Colorado dentist accused of poisoning his wife’s protein shakes going on trial for murder
- After his initial attempts to kill her failed, prosecutors allege he ordered a rush shipment of potassium cyanide, saying it was needed for a surgery
- Craig’s attorneys have argued that testing of his wife’s shake containers did not turn up signs of at least one poison blamed for killing her
These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday.
Pangolins or pangolin products outstrip any other mammal when it comes to wildlife smuggling, with more than half a million pangolins seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES, the global authority on the trading of endangered plant and animal species.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that over a million pangolins were taken from the wild over the last decade, including those that were never intercepted.
Pangolins meat is a delicacy in places, but the driving force behind the illegal trade is their scales, which are made of keratin, the protein also found in human hair and fingernails. The scales are in high demand in China and other parts of Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine.
There are eight pangolin species, four in Africa and four in Asia. All of them face a high, very high or extremely high risk of extinction.
While they’re sometimes known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are not related in any way to anteaters or armadillos.
They are unique in that they are the only mammals covered completely in keratin scales, which overlap and have sharp edges. They are the perfect defense mechanism, allowing a pangolin to roll up into an armored ball that even lions struggle to get to grip with, leaving the nocturnal ant and termite eaters with few natural predators.
But they have no real defense against human hunters. And in conservation terms, they don’t resonate in the way that elephants, rhinos or tigers do despite their fascinating intricacies — like their sticky insect-nabbing tongues being almost as long as their bodies.
While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the COVID-19 pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.
Nigeria is one of the global hot spots. There, Dr. Mark Ofua, a wildlife veterinarian and the West Africa representative for the Wild Africa conservation group, has rescued pangolins for more than a decade, which started with him scouring bushmeat markets for animals he could buy and save. He runs an animal rescue center and a pangolin orphanage in Lagos.
His mission is to raise awareness of pangolins in Nigeria through a wildlife show for kids and a tactic of convincing entertainers, musicians and other celebrities with millions of social media followers to be involved in conservation campaigns — or just be seen with a pangolin.
Nigeria is home to three of the four African pangolin species, but they are not well known among the country’s 240 million people.
Ofua’s drive for pangolin publicity stems from an encounter with a group of well-dressed young men while he was once transporting pangolins he had rescued in a cage. The men pointed at them and asked him what they were, Ofua said.
“Oh, those are baby dragons,” he joked. But it got him thinking.
“There is a dark side to that admission,” Ofua said. “If people do not even know what a pangolin looks like, how do you protect them?”
