Dentist faces charges for asking daughter to help cover up crime
An Aurora dentist charged with fatally poisoning his wife last year is now accused of asking his daughter and another person to help cover up the crime, court records show.
James Craig, 46, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Angela Craig, 43, who died March 18, 2023, from lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant found in over-the-counter eyedrops.
Investigators allege James Craig bought arsenic and cyanide days before his wife was poisoned to death, searched online about how to poison someone, was having an affair and faced financial difficulties.
Prosecutors on Wednesday outlined two new charges against Craig — two counts of solicitation to commit tampering with physical evidence — in an amended complaint filed in Arapahoe County District Court. The charges will become official once a judge approves the amended complaint.
In addition to first-degree murder, he also is accused of attempting to persuade one of his daughters to tamper with physical evidence to facilitate a crime between March 18, 2023, and March 31, 2023, the amended complaint states.
He also is accused of attempting to persuade a second person to cover up evidence between March 18, 2023, and June 15, 2023, the complaint states. The document does not include any additional detail on the nature of the requests, and the second person’s connection to Craig was not immediately clear. Craig was booked into the Arapahoe County Detention Center at about 9 a.m. March 19, 2023, and has remained in jail since.
“James Toliver Craig unlawfully and feloniously commanded, induced, entreated or otherwise attempted to persuade (name redacted) to commit the felony of tampering with physical evidence, with intent to promote or facilitate the commission of that crime and under circumstances strongly corroborative of that intent,” the complaint reads.
James Craig pleaded not guilty to his wife’s murder and is scheduled for a jury trial in August. The couple were married for more than two decades and shared six children, according to Angela Craig’s obituary.
An attorney for the children, Lara Baker, declined to comment Thursday.
Authorities believe James Craig poisoned his wife to death by first dosing her with arsenic, which sent her to the hospital, and then dosing her with cyanide.
He ordered arsenic from Amazon.com on Feb. 27, 2023, police allege. He received the package on March 4, and two days later, his wife was admitted to a hospital with symptoms that aligned with poisoning.
She was released that day but returned to the hospital March 9 and stayed through March 14, 2023.
A blood sample taken March 9 showed she had toxic but not lethal levels of arsenic in her blood. While she was hospitalized, James Craig ordered two additional poisons — cyanide and oleandrin — from medical suppliers, according to an arrest affidavit. (He never received the oleandrin because the package was intercepted by police.)
The cyanide was delivered March 13, 2023.
Two days later, on March 15, Angela Craig returned to the hospital with additional symptoms, authorities said. She then suffered a heart attack and was placed on a ventilator. Her condition rapidly deteriorated until her death March 18.
James Craig used a communal computer at his workplace in Summerbrook Dental in Aurora to search for information on poison in the weeks before Angela Craig’s death, police allege.
The searches included: “how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human,” “Is Arsenic Detectable in Autopsy,” “Top 5 Undetectable Poisons That Show No Signs of Foul Play,” “how to make poison,” and “The Top 10 Deadliest Plants (They Can Kill You),” according to his arrest affidavit.
An attorney for James Craig, David Beller, did not return a request for comment Thursday.