Murder trial begins for Colorado dentist accused of poisoning wife’s protein shakes

People enter the Arapahoe County Justice Center in Centennial, Colo., on Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)

DENVER — A financially-troubled Colorado dentist who had long been cheating on his wife but didn’t want a divorce killed her by giving her poison including in protein shakes, prosecutors said Tuesday as the murder trial against James Craig got underway in suburban Denver.

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 Aurora, Colorado.

He gave Angela Craig a final dose of the poison after she had already been admitted to the hospital and as doctors scrambled to figure out her mysterious ailments, Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley said.

“He went in that room to murder her, to deliberately and intentionally end her life with a fatal dose of cyanide,” Brackley told jurors during opening arguments.

Craig has pleaded not guilty to several charges, including first-degree murder.

His attorney, Ashley Whitham, said James Craig loved his wife but had cheated on her throughout their marriage. Whitham rejected prosecutors’ suggestions that Craig became so enamored with one of those other women -- a fellow dentist from Texas -- that he was motivated to kill Angela Craig.

“That’s simply not the case,” Whitham said. “She knew Craig was cheating....He was candid with Angela that he had been cheating.”

Whitham said Angela Craig had insisted that the couple -- members of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints -- stay together despite his infidelities.

The defence attorney described Angela Craig as being “broken,” seeming to suggest that she may have taken her own life.

Prosecutors say Craig allegedly purchased arsenic around the time of his wife’s symptoms -- dizziness and headaches that perplexed doctors -- and that after his initial attempts to poison her failed, he ordered potassium cyanide.

They also 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, 43, who had six children with James 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 offered a fellow jail inmate US$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.

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’s attorneys have questioned the reliability of the inmate’s claims, said the police were biased against the dentist, and that tests of the protein shake containers didn’t reveal signs of poison.

Around the time of his arrest, prosecutors said Craig was experiencing financial difficulties and appeared to be having an affair with a fellow dentist, though they have not yet described a motive in his wife’s death.

Craig remains in custody, according to jail records.

Jesse Bedayn, The Associated Press