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
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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
Nodding off is dangerous. Some animals have evolved extreme ways to sleep in precarious environments
Nodding off is dangerous. Some animals have evolved extreme ways to sleep in precarious environments
- Tiny trackers and helmets that measure brain waves have allowed researchers to glimpse ways that wild animals snooze
- Animals that navigate extreme conditions and environments have evolved to sleep in extreme ways
Every animal with a brain needs sleep — and even a few without a brain do, too. Humans sleep, birds sleep, whales sleep and even jellyfish sleep.
Sleep is universal “even though it’s actually very risky,” said Paul-Antoine Libourel, a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon in France.
When animals nod off, they’re most vulnerable to sneaky predators. But despite the risks, the need for sleep is so strong that no creature can skip it altogether, even when it’s highly inconvenient.
Animals that navigate extreme conditions and environments have evolved to sleep in extreme ways — for example, stealing seconds at a time during around-the-clock parenting, getting winks on the wing during long migrations and even dozing while swimming.
For a long time, scientists could only make educated guesses about when wild animals were sleeping, observing when they lay still and closed their eyes. But in recent years, tiny trackers and helmets that measure brain waves — miniaturized versions of equipment in human sleep labs — have allowed researchers to glimpse for the first time the varied and sometimes spectacular ways that wild animals snooze.
“We’re finding that sleep is really flexible in response to ecological demands,” said Niels Rattenborg, an animal sleep research specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany.
Call it the emerging science of “extreme sleep.”
Chinstrap penguins and their ‘microsleeps’
Take chinstrap penguins in Antarctica that Libourel studies.
These penguins mate for life and share parenting duties — with one bird babysitting the egg or tiny gray fluffy chick to keep it warm and safe while the other swims off to fish for a family meal. Then they switch roles — keeping up this nonstop labor for weeks.
Penguin parents face a common challenge: getting enough sleep while keeping a close eye on their newborns.
They survive by taking thousands of catnaps a day — each averaging just 4 seconds long.
These short “microsleeps,” as Korea Polar Research Institute biologist Won Young Lee calls them, appear to be enough to allow penguin parents to carry out their caregiving duties for weeks within their crowded, noisy colonies.
When a clumsy neighbor passes by or predatory seabirds are near, the penguin parent blinks to alert attention and soon dozes off again, its chin nodding against its chest, like a drowsy driver.
The naps add up. Each penguin sleeps for a total of 11 hours per day, as scientists found by measuring the brain activity of 14 adults over 11 days on Antarctica’s King George Island.
To remain mostly alert, yet also sneak in sufficient winks, the penguins have evolved an enviable ability to function on extremely fractured sleep — at least during the breeding season.
Researchers can now see when either hemisphere of the brain — or both at once — are asleep.
Frigatebirds snooze half their brains in flight
Poets, sailors and birdwatchers have long wondered whether birds that fly for months at a time actually get any winks on the wing.
In some cases, the answer is yes — as scientists discovered when they attached devices that measure brain-wave activity to the heads of large seabirds nesting in the Galapagos Islands called great frigatebirds.
While flying, frigatebirds can sleep with one half of the brain at a time. The other half remains semialert so that one eye is still watching for obstacles in their flight path.
This allows the birds to soar for weeks at a time, without touching land or water, which would damage their delicate, non-water repellent feathers.
Frigatebirds can’t do tricky maneuvers — flapping, foraging or diving — with just one half of their brain. When they dive for prey, they must be fully awake. But in flight, they have evolved to sleep when gliding and circling upward on massive drafts of warm rising air that keep them aloft with minimal effort.
Back at the nest in trees or bushes, frigatebirds change up their nap routine — they are more likely to sleep with their whole brain at once and for much longer bouts. This suggests their in-flight sleeping is a specific adaptation for extended flying, Rattenborg said.
A few other animals have similar sleeping hacks. Dolphins can sleep with one half of the brain at a time while swimming. Some other birds, including swifts and albatrosses, can sleep in flight, scientists say.
Frigatebirds can fly 255 miles (410 kilometers) a day for more than 40 days, before touching land, other researchers found — a feat that wouldn’t be possible without being able to sleep on the wing.
Elephant seals slumber while diving deep
On land, life is easy for a 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) northern elephant seal. But at sea, sleep is dangerous — sharks and killer whales that prey on seals are lurking.
These seals go on extended foraging trips, for up to eight months, repeatedly diving to depths of several hundred feet (meters) to catch fish, squid, rays and other sea snacks.
Each deep dive may last around 30 minutes. And for around a third of that time, the seals may be asleep, as research led by Jessica Kendall-Bar of Scripps Institution of Oceanography revealed.
Kendall-Bar’s team devised a neoprene headcap similar to a swimming cap with equipment to detect motion and seal brain activity during dives, and retrieved the caps with logged data when seals returned to beaches in Northern California.
The 13 female seals studied tended to sleep during the deepest portions of their dives, when they were below the depths that predators usually patrol.
That sleep consisted of both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep. During REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, the seals were temporarily paralyzed — just like humans during this deep-sleep stage — and their dive motion changed. Instead of a controlled downward glide motion, they sometimes turned upside down and spun in what the researchers called a “sleep spiral” during REM sleep.
In the span of 24 hours, the seals at sea slept for around two hours total. (Back on the beach, they averaged around 10 hours.)
The winding evolution of sleep
Scientists are still learning about all the reasons we sleep — and just how much we really need.
It’s unlikely that any tired human can try these extreme animal sleep hacks. But learning more about how varied napping may be in the wild shows the flexibility of some species. Nature has evolved to make shut-eye possible in even the most precarious situations.
