This murder was always going to shake the community.
But would this case have still come in at all if she hadn't opened that package by accident?
And so it's really thanks to that employee Good Samaritan who saw this and said wait a second, is this what's causing the problem?
And tried to do something to help.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
Arapahoe County Colorado, is an area that blends the pace and complexity of a big city with the beautiful stillness of nature.
And a part of that county is Aurora.
And even the tallest buildings in downtown Aurora look tiny in the shadows of the towering Rocky Mountain peaks that surround them.
And for the men and women working these cases, those surroundings aren't just beautiful, they're grounding.
A reminder that solving a case is like hiking the mountain trails.
You don't see the whole path from the start.
You get there by finding small pieces, one step at a time, until the bigger picture finally comes into view.
It's a lesson that has also resonated with Arapahoe County Deputy D.A.
Osama McRobbie.
Throughout his years as a prosecutor he has seen firsthand, and too many times, the devastation that violent crime brings to so many and the importance of accountability.
It was what kind of drew me to the law in the first place that you know.
It's a way to help people and see that the right outcomes are happening.
Someone who's committed very serious events and you want to make sure that they're held accountable.
This is a career that lets me do that and really help the victims who have been affected by crime.
Osama also knows that not every crime is obvious from the start.
Even a homicide can be obscured or hidden in ways many of us wouldn't consider.
And that's just what happened in this case a murder that robbed six children of their loving mom, Angela Craig, at the age of 43.
Angela Craig seems, by all accounts, to be an absolute wonderful person.
She was family-oriented and focused.
She cared deeply for their children.
They had six children.
They were fairly religious in the Mormon church.
We've heard from neighbors that she was very sweet and wonderful.
She was into genealogy.
She was into woodworking.
She was also homeschooling two of the children.
Angela and James were doting parents to more than just their children.
There were a number of pets.
There were a couple of dogs.
They had a bird, a lizard, all sorts of animals that had gone through that home over the time.
So we have this image of someone who is caring and loving to people and to animals.
The Craig family was athletic and health conscious.
Their home filled with activity, just the way Angela and James had planned it when they first got together.
They were married for about 23 years.
She was with him as he went through dental school and they met some of their close friends around that time in the dentistry field.
He started to practice in Aurora, Colorado, Overwhelmingly, people had a positive image of them as a couple and that things were going well and that they were, you know, a loving family.
In March of 2023, the Craigs seemed to have it all.
James's dental practice provided a solid income and allowed Angela to be the perfect stay-at-home mom.
At that point, their two oldest kids were already off to college and the four still living at home were doing well.
Their home was large, essentially a three-story home.
It was big enough for their six children.
The home itself is situated in a very suburban area, kind of a nice, sprawling neighborhood.
But that peaceful, seemingly idyllic family life was about to be upended shortly after Angela returned home from a vacation.
She had just gone on a trip to see her sister and go to a genealogy conference.
She gets home, she's fine.
The next day, while she's working out in the morning, as she often did, she was suddenly ill.
She describes almost falling off of her exercise bike, with no indication of why or how she became sick.
The illness was surprising.
Angela was in great shape and worked out regularly.
She ate right and had no prior health issues.
Both she and James were baffled and could not come up with any potential cause for the sudden attack.
Healthy habits were always part of the family's routine, and they were careful about what they ate.
And Angela had started that day like any other with her daily protein shake.
The whole family was big into shakes.
She was also big into exercise.
She was very fit.
She's texting with James Craig, her husband, and mentions that she's not feeling well.
And he references.
Oh, you know, when I made your shake this morning, maybe I put in too much of the caffeine or too much of the B vitamins.
And they're discussing what she usually puts in the shake.
That might be different from what James Craig had done.
So she thinks, well, maybe she's just had too much of the caffeine.
Her body's not liking it.
And this will all go away.
It doesn't.
She ends up going into the ER that day.
But the trip to the emergency room didn't provide any answers.
Luckily, in only a few hours, Angela started to feel better and soon was released to go home.
There's no indication throughout this of what could be the problem.
She's searching on her computer, her symptoms, she's typing them in.
She's got shakes, these tremors.
She's generally unwell or even nauseous, but nothing specific enough to figure out what's going on.
Angela was troubled that the doctors or any of her own research pointed to any of the answers for her sudden sickness.
Hospital personnel were equally as mystified.
But one thing soon became clear.
Whatever had been bothering her wasn't going away anytime soon.
Angela's symptoms soon returned and got even worse.
Some of her symptoms are coming and going, the severe headaches.
At one point she's passed out, fell to the ground, at times even crawling, to avoid standing up because she's not sure if she's going to fall over again.
She describes internal tremors like not even the outside of her shaking, but it felt like something inside was just wrong.
And she never gets any answer to what was going on from James Craig's perspective.
Angela went off to Utah to visit family.
And then the very next day is when she falls ill.
Could it have been a virus or some type of bacterial infection that Angela picked up while she was traveling?
Testing failed to confirm anything, but there are thousands of viruses that don't show up in a basic screening.
And so, while everyone did what they could to help her feel better, no one in the Craig family, nor any of Angela's doctors, could figure out what was causing her symptoms.
So at the same time, Angela herself continued to try and figure out what was happening.
So she's continuing to look at Google and try to figure out what her symptoms could mean.
She's looking at seeing her primary care physician.
There's another trip to a different urgent care, just nonstop throughout the course of this trying to figure it out.
She also thought it could be diabetes.
She has some family history of that.
And so she asked a friend who had diabetes testing equipment to come over and check her blood sugar.
Maybe it's diabetes and she can get it under control and get better.
But for all the research and even home remedies, nothing seemed to work.
In fact, her condition seemed to be getting progressively worse.
She's admitted to Parker Adventist Hospital, where she's at for the bulk of the time there.
And then, when that wasn't working and she was released, she's at home for one night taking antibiotics.
And then the next day when she's ill, she goes back into a different hospital.
So she tried... three different hospitals.
And I think many people are familiar with that, at least some aspects of this type of frustration.
You know something's wrong with you, but the doctors conduct tests after tests and still can't find out anything.
And, you know, you can start to second guess yourself.
You start to feel like maybe you're just imagining the symptoms.
But at the very least, you hope that whatever's going on will eventually go away on its own.
And that was the case with Angela.
As she struggled with a recurring illness.
The extended Craig family remained in touch and they banded together.
Angela's family is rather large.
They had a group chat.
And so they were communicating, talking about what was wrong.
And James Craig was keeping them all posted.
There was an earlier crash at one of the hospitals where she was not doing well and then recovered.
They're all trying to keep it lighthearted, find humor in the situation rather than making it seem too dire.
Like, oh, this is something passing.
We'll get it figured out.
And then Angela's brother came into town with his wife and was going to stay there to help out with getting her to doctor's appointments and also help out with watching the children.
But Angela's loved ones were not able to keep their concerns low key for very long.
She was getting worse and quickly.
And that had her doctor's attention as well.
She's got mostly the same symptoms.
Nothing's gotten better.
She's having trouble with her vision, having trouble keeping any food down.
So it's stomach issues as well as the sort of full body tremors and shakes that are going on.
The severity of her symptoms led Angela back to the hospital.
This time, doctors admitted her for several days.
But again, luckily, after about 48 hours, she seemed to be doing better.
She was lucid and able to speak.
Then, suddenly, another reversal.
It was becoming a frustrating and more concerning cycle.
There's actually a crash while she's there in the hospital and then improves again, but she's still not better, still not well.
No answers.
They really don't know.
They were at a complete loss.
The treatment is minimal.
It's mostly to make her feel better rather than to actually treat anything, because they don't know what's wrong and they don't want to make anything worse.
They do obviously blood testing.
They do urine testing.
They're looking at every possibility for what could be causing this and they're not reaching any answers.
And part of the challenge here in trying to find a cause for what was happening with Angela was that her symptoms kept changing.
Her tremors came and went only to be replaced by painful stomach issues.
At one point, she has very high blood pressure.
At one point, she has very low blood pressure.
So at this point, her brother and his wife are in town.
They're helping her out.
The arrival of her extended family seemed to raise her spirits.
In fact, Angela's condition began to improve.
In fact, doctors were comfortable with her progress and once again released Angela from the hospital.
The whole thing was odd and baffling.
Like, how did this strong, fit 43-year-old get so sick and then recover so suddenly?
And it was happening over and over.
Why was this happening on repeat?
Now it definitely begs the question, was there something unnatural going on?
Or even worse, was there someone behind Angela's decline?
43-year-old Angela Craig was suffering through a frustrating and debilitating nightmare.
The mother of six had suddenly become ill, and nobody knew what was going on or how to treat her.
Angela had visited multiple doctors and three different medical facilities, and none of them could pinpoint the cause of her fluctuating symptoms.
And things only seemed to be getting worse.
It was those morphing symptoms that had doctors really scratching their heads.
There had been dangerously high blood pressure, followed by low piercing headaches that then vanished and were replaced by the inability then, to hold down food.
There was no known medical condition following that pattern and every test was coming back negative.
And it was about that time that the office manager of James Craig's dental practice started to think more about a package that had been delivered to the office soon before this all started.
And knowing how sick Angela was, this package now concerned her.
There was an order that was ordered directly to Mr. Craig's business, and it was opened by accident.
And what the office manager knew was that this package, it contained cyanide.
The office manager didn't think much of it at the time.
Certainly there's substances that arrive at a dentist's office all the time, and she wasn't familiar with this one.
But as Angela's illness worsened, the package started to stand out.
Angela had fallen gravely ill, and she's at the office, and James Craig rushes off and leaves.
And she thinks again about the cyanide and, wait, is this connected?
At some point, she Googles the symptoms.
Some seemed to align with what was happening to Angela, but it wasn't clear-cut.
Now, what a spot to be in.
You have this terrifying suspicion, and it's still not really conclusive.
And let me just say, this is one of these moments that really makes you stop and think.
I mean, imagine Anastasia being in that office, realizing that something might be terribly wrong.
But the person you're worried or suspicious about isn't is your boss.
And if you're wrong, you could lose your job.
But if you're right, staying quiet could mean someone's life could be at risk.
And from a law enforcement perspective, that's the kind of crossroads we often talk about fear versus duty.
And the truth is, you just have to speak up.
Bring what you know to investigators because it's possible that that silence could be deadly.
But you know, so often it's hindsight that puts those things together, where at the time you're not really sure but you're not really overly concerned.
Like, and so here, Scott, the office manager took a measured approach.
She didn't take the information to police, but she did speak up.
She took it to her other boss, James Craig's partner in the dental practice.
She passes it up the chain to James Craig's business partner.
He's headed to the hospital to be there for his business partner and friend, James Craig.
And he learns that cyanide was ordered to their business office.
It was also the point where Angela's condition had become dire.
She was near death.
And Dr Craig's business partner found himself trapped in an even worse situation than his office manager.
Because he's at the hospital now, face to face with Angela's husband, who's also his partner and his close friend.
So he's armed with this information that potentially at least pointed to James being involved in the poisoning of his own wife.
But there was another possibility as well.
He might have been making an unfounded allegation to a devastated friend in the midst of losing his wife of 23 years.
That's when James's business partner decided to do the most important thing first.
The business partner thinks that information is something that the hospital should know and passes that information along.
It is now after the point when she has fully crashed.
And so the hospital called in a toxicologist and they actually administer an antidote to cyanide.
It's relatively uncommon, but it's just too late at that point.
By the time the information gets to them, there's nothing that can be done.
On March 19th, 2023, 43-year-old Angela Craig died.
A hospital explained to us her intracranial pressure.
The pressure in her brain was so high that there was no survivability, no way to repair that damage.
She was gone.
And that's exactly where the suspicious death investigation began.
It turned out that during those painful moments, James' business partner had also summoned the courage to contact police and told them everything he knew.
And he also confronted James about the unusual package that had come to their office.
He said, what was ordered to the office?
And James Craig said, nothing, what are you talking about?
And then it evolved.
Well, we know that there was a package order.
What was it?
And James Craig said, well, it was a ring for Angela.
That's why it was ordered to the office.
It was going to be a surprise for her that lie.
It was a huge tip-off for James' business partner and ultimately for police as well.
If there was an innocent explanation for the cyanide, one would have expected James Craig would have given it right then.
But with the story about a mystery ring being all that was offered, James' partner confronted his friend and pressed for the truth.
And then he said, no, the package was open.
It was cyanide.
What were you doing with cyanide?
Craig appeared to be stunned.
He had no idea the package had been opened, and he was even more surprised when his partner told him that the police knew as well.
And James Craig reacted to that, saying something like, oh, what have you done?
What have you done?
Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office picked up the case and quickly brought in Osama.
And you know, if you're thinking right here on the surface, this looks like a simple case.
A husband poisoned his wife.
Case closed.
But everyone involved was about to discover this investigation was anything but that.
And for Osama, it would be extremely challenging.
I can say I don't know of anyone else in our office who's handled a poisoning homicide.
And investigators were at least two weeks behind.
And now they had to try to track down potential evidence, some of which would have been difficult to find even at the beginning.
And remember the dentist.
He had medical training and he had unfettered access to the potential crime scenes, being his office in the family home with more than enough time to cover his tracks.
This case broke open before it even came to the police.
And that was because there was an order of cyanide that was ordered directly to Mr Craig's business.
Would this case have still come in at all if she hadn't opened by accident?
And so it's really thanks to that employee, Good Samaritan, who saw this and said wait, a second is.
Is this what's causing the problem?
And tried to do something to help.
That was the key.
But now investigators and prosecutors needed to figure out, was the cyanide given to Angela?
And if so, how did Craig administer it?
And they'd also need to prove if the cyanide had actually caused her death.
So the investigation's next steps were a flurry of search warrants.
Yeah, so that same day, the police are heading to the hospital.
They're letting the hospital know to preserve some of the blood samples that had taken from Angela.
Those are blood vials that would not otherwise be tested for cyanide.
We are looking at the types of objects here.
We're talking about blood vials in a medical facility that are often destroyed at a certain point right.
You're not going to keep those items around if there's no reason to after the tests have been performed.
But for the police, of course, they're looking at potential evidence.
So it really comes down to this race against time.
You know, can they get to the hospital in time before the hospital potentially gets rid of something?
Police just can't walk in and test it, right?
I mean every minute that passes.
As you said Anasiga, the sample risks being mislabeled, discarded or even destroyed as part of the normal hospital process.
So investigators, as you said, also had to really move fast, drafting a warrant, finding a judge and securing that blood before it disappeared.
And those searches at the hospital led to more searches at James Craig's dental office and home.
The home search didn't turn up any obvious foul play.
There's a lot of items around the home that are photographed and reviewed.
There's shaker cups which, at that point, is the only item that we were aware could be a problem, because Angela had fallen ill after drinking a shake one morning.
So some shaker cups are collected.
And the cups were clean, so they didn't seem to provide the hard evidence that law enforcement was hoping for.
But, at the same time, the fact that those cups were clean, it didn't mean in any way that they had not been used to poison Angela.
Right.
And let's just say James would have had plenty of time to wash anything he may have used to carry out the crime.
So it just means investigators are going to have to dig deeper.
So they turned to Angela's phone to see if it would provide any clues.
Reviewing her phone again, it became clear pretty quickly that she was not aware of what was going on.
We're seeing her searches, her communications with friends and family about trying to figure out what's wrong.
But the close inspection of James' dental office did provide important new leads.
That included the interview with the all-important office manager who had jump-started this investigation.
She gave deputies a timeline and a description of some other odd behavior that she had noticed around.
The same time, Craig had gotten this package.
James had been on a computer in their office that was not his usual computer.
Each exam room has its own computer that's for you know, reviewing dental photos.
That's not really for the personal use of the dentists.
And the office manager said that James Craig had been in one of the exam rooms and it was after hours and dark when she saw him there.
So it was unusual to her.
Shortly after.
That was when he had mentioned that he'd be getting a personal package ordered to the office.
And please just put that on his desk just to keep an eye out for that.
We now know that package was the cyanide she had seen.
So detectives then went to that computer she had seen James Craig on and got it into the digital lab for examination.
They wanted a forensic extraction to pull all the data off of that computer.
At the same time, they also looked at Craig's personal office computer, which quickly indicated to detectives that they were on the right track.
They did the non-forensic initial review of that computer, and it turned up James Craig's searches.
It turned up a profile for a dating site.
It turned up some messages with a romantic interest.
And there were tickets for that romantic interest to arrive in town as well.
So the detectives are putting the pieces together.
And so that's very interesting to the detectives who are looking for what is happening.
What possible motives he could have?
And while this is definitely pretty blockbuster stuff and certainly could provide possible motive on its face alone, it was not going to be that proof they needed of murder.
In fact, all it showed was that Dr. James Craig was unfaithful.
But the deeper they dug, the more cracks started to show.
I think there were signs of trouble and discontent that people who were closer would have realized.
So family members were aware.
Some people in their church were aware of some of the difficulties that they had stemming from infidelity.
Nothing sort of dangerous or concerning.
It was that James Craig was not faithful periodically throughout their marriage.
And so there were some people who were aware of that.
It was an important thread that had to be pulled to see if this obscure drift in the marriage had led to something else, something bigger.
Had Angela gotten sick of the philandering and threatened divorce?
Or could it have been something more sinister that James Craig alone wanted out of the marriage and had decided to get his wish by murder?
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office and prosecuting attorneys were investigating the suspicious death of Angela Craig.
By this point, they believed she'd been poisoned with cyanide.
And the man they now suspected of killing Angela was her husband of 23 years local dentist, James Craig.
Investigators had uncovered a long history of infidelity, eyeing it as a potential motive for murder.
It was now Deputy DA Osama Maghrabi's job to determine if the clues that had been uncovered could be built into a case.
And so they looked more deeply at the extramarital relationships Craig had been having.
The other relationships, the women he met on Seekingcom.
They were aware that he was in a marriage and wasn't looking for a long-term relationship with them.
And he spent a lot of money on these women, sometimes buying them erotic gifts, sometimes buying them jackets.
He would take trips up to the mountains.
One woman, he bought a car for her daughter.
He was spending a lot of money on the women.
There's lots of communications between them, lots of text messages.
He was kind of prolific in texting.
But it was James Craig's most recent affair that seemed like the most promising lead.
But with that last relationship, there was actually planning for the future.
The women from Seekingcom understood that this was a romantic or sexual relationship, whereas what he's talking with the very last affair is long-term.
And, you know, Scott, that is really such an important piece.
You know, yes, many people have strayed outside of their marriage and some are repeat offenders.
But now where you have this guy who is having relationship after relationship, but then this one seems different.
It seems more long term and lasting like.
Was that the thing that makes him want out?
And again, some people just don't want to get divorced, whether it's because of the economics and the money they may have to pay out.
Or in this case, you know, it's a religious family.
Maybe there's some religious pressure or at least self-imposed pressure.
You don't know, but it's definitely interesting.
And you wonder if he's decided to take his wife's life rather than leave the marriage by legal means, by divorce.
True.
I mean that motive may not just have been taking the person out who's standing in your way of this new relationship.
But what about financial?
Because we all know that love and money often leads to murder.
And you know, it really is like this change in pattern, which is the thing that makes them look at this part of his life more closely.
And you know, even though many in Craig's inner circle knew that the dentist had had these dalliances, no one had ever heard him even discuss the idea of a divorce.
And investigators believed they had figured out why James Craig had come up with the murder plot versus just a simple divorce as a more permanent end to his marriage.
And it did have everything to do with money.
Angela Craig was the insured person on multiple life insurance policies to the tune of 4 million that.
This is money that would go to James Craig on her death.
There's nothing ambiguous about a multi-million dollar life insurance policy or policies as a potential motive, especially when you also think about the division of money and property he'd likely have to pay if the couple divorced.
Now, as you're probably realizing, motives are great, but they don't alone lead to arrests.
So investigators still had to find more concrete evidence to connect James Craig to the poisoning.
And that's when they noticed something that was crucial.
When the officers were in the Craig home doing searches for cyanide, they saw that there were cameras throughout the home and there was no way to access them.
There was no video panel that you'd be able to see what was happening.
So they were looking into this, trying to figure out if there was an app that you'd be able to see it.
And in the dark corners of the Craig's basement they hit PayDirt, a recording box for those cameras.
They figured out, it wasn't visible anywhere except on the actual DVR box that was tucked into the basement.
And those are hidden on purpose so that if an intruder comes in they're going to not be able to find that box.
We don't think that James Craig even knew that this was still recording.
This was an old system that had been in the home sometime prior.
Deputies seized the equipment and rushed it over to the lab.
The DVR held a treasure trove of information.
It had recorded everything that had taken place in the home over the last month.
And that's how we were able to get footage of the interactions between James and Angela within their home.
As police watched the video, it now seemed clear that James Craig didn't realize the cameras were working.
Because if he was aware, he certainly would have erased at least you'd think the audio and video of him doing this.
It showed James Craig mixing substances in their kitchen in a very strange way.
So early on, prior to that incident, very first shake he's using the microwave to heat a substance and he's stirring he's off screen so he can't necessarily see what substance was going into that but we hear the stirring noise as he's mixing something vigorously and he does that the night before angela first becomes ill it was the first real piece of evidence that points directly to james craig giving his wife the poison And it was clear that Angela didn't suspect that her husband was involved in her medical issues at all.
The video shows the couple leading normal lives in the days leading up to her first becoming ill.
They're kissing, they're hugging, they're carrying on as if nothing is wrong.
And then we start to see Angela sick, and so we're able to see what's going on with her at different times, coming and going from the home, lying on the couch very ill, getting more drinks and shakes provided to her by James.
But the fact that he's off camera doing that mixing means we still can't even be 100 certain.
Based on those videos, at least what he's giving her is poison in those shakes, because you can't see what it is that he is putting in the shaker cup.
And, you know, this is one of those things that can be so incredibly frustrating.
You know every piece that they're obtaining.
Everything they're hearing it is pointing to this man murdered his wife by poisoning her.
But these pieces, they're not giving them that one piece that they need to pull the rest together.
That'll get them over that line.
Let me just say, when you spend weeks, months or even years in the weeds of an investigation, you become really attached to everything about it.
You believe in your evidence.
You're committed to the family of your victim.
But then sometimes it's the harsh reality that comes in.
Often you're asking yourself this really important question.
Is it really enough?
What is the prosecutor going to say when you knock on that door?
And, you know, the answer sometimes is a difficult one.
And, Anastasia, you talk about it all the time.
Don't tell me about what you know.
Tell me what I can prove.
And there are still plenty of other avenues for them to explore, including the forensic search of the other computer that had been taken from James Craig's office.
And perhaps even more important were the records from the hospitals where Angela had been admitted, including the results from several blood tests leading up to her death.
The thorough testing had paid off.
We were able to see that her toxicology results showed a low level of cyanide when she first arrived at the hospital, and then spiking to a very high level of cyanide.
Investigators were stunned.
Visitor logs indicated that James Craig had been alone with his wife just before that deadly last spike.
As shocking as it may seem, it now appeared that James Craig had administered the lethal dose of cyanide to Angela while she was still in the hospital.
Inspection of the videotape from the Craig's home revealed the likely method Dr Craig had been able to use.
Towards the end, we also see what certainly appears to be a syringe.
We froze that footage so you could look closely at it.
The video of the syringe was recorded just before Angela was admitted to the hospital for the final time.
Investigators spoke with nurses on duty during Angela's last moments alive, who also shared chilling details of her husband's activities.
The nurses told police about an interaction they'd had with him that connected dots about when he may have used that syringe.
James Craig steps out of the room, goes to the nurse's station.
We actually have some surveillance from the public areas of the hospital.
And he gestures to his arm and he tells the nurses, she says her arm hurts.
And the nurses kind of stand up and then rush into the room to try to save Angela.
And she's crashing.
They do everything they can.
But at that point, she essentially falls into a coma and she's brain dead.
Investigators were now convinced Angelo's crash was triggered by the murderous actions of James Craig.
It was believed that he had given his wife a massive dose of cyanide via that syringe.
The evidence now appeared conclusive and inescapable.
The office package of cyanide, the timing, the blood test results, the video evidence plus the forensic evidence from the second office computer, added even more on his own computer in a dental practice, not his personal one in his office.
But in this other exam room he's on a computer searching for how to kill someone undetected.
What substances show up in an autopsy?
Even more damning was the documentation of other poisons.
They included arsenic and tetrahydrosine, which is found in over-the-counter eye drops.
The discovery now made clear that James had likely utilized multiple deadly cocktails consisting of various ingredients, probably administered at different times, to kill his wife.
And that allowed prosecutors to explain Angela's wildly fluctuating symptoms.
Arsenic poisoning was likely responsible for her stomach pains and her high blood pressure.
While ingesting tetrahydrozoline can cause violent headaches and low blood pressure, it now seemed clear Dr Craig had actually attempted to kill his wife on multiple occasions using a variety of poisons.
The discovery of this latest evidence also meant investigators were now ready to arrest James Craig for murder.
With the added information of what was on his computer, they were able to determine probable cause to arrest James Craig.
The searches that he was running, the orders that he had placed, they were able to see that cyanide was ordered from his computer.
And what the coroner's conclusion was was that that was the only explanation for Angela Craig's death.
That was the only explanation for why this otherwise healthy woman would die.
At trial, prosecutors used the documents, the computer files, the phone records and the video evidence to demonstrate that Craig had carefully planned his wife's death.
And then executed his deadly and heartless plot over the course of more than a week.
He kept trying a substance.
It didn't quite kill her.
And so he moved on to another.
He's putting these substances into her, apparently mixing them at times.
This one always had that aspect of deliberation, of planning ahead of time.
And it took him 10 days to get it right, to keep poisoning her over this extended period of time.
Usama also explained to the jury that Craig had used his medical training and knowledge to choose ingredients to poison his wife that he believed would go undetected.
Another thing to note is that he's not looking for painless ways to kill someone.
These are sort of the substances you might expect someone to take if they wanted to fall asleep and pass peacefully.
He is specifically looking for substances that will kill quickly and undetectably.
That's his focus.
He wants to stay hidden in the fact that he's administering these.
He has no concern for Angela.
He has no concern for anyone else involved.
And that cruelty resonated with the jury.
The overwhelming evidence led to a quick and decisive verdict.
The jury found James Craig guilty of every count that we charged.
So that's murder in the first degree.
The sentencing was the very same day that the verdict was handed down.
And the reason is that murder in the first degree carries a penalty of life in prison without parole here in the state of Colorado.
So there was not much debate about what his ultimate sentence would be.
This is a story of overwhelming selfishness that ultimately sentenced everyone who loved Angela Craig to a lifetime of pain and suffering.
This murder was always going to shake the community.
I think to anyone who knew the Craig family, who knew Angela, it was heartbreaking.
It's a betrayal.
And that betrayal is deepened when it's the spouse.
It's shocking somebody could plot and plan and do this and betray a loved one in this way.
Six children between the ages of 8 and 21 who lost their mother and, in many ways, their father as well.
It was devastating to hear the victim impact statements of those who shared their grief.
There were a number of family members who spoke, and those statements were heartbreaking.
The family obviously loved Angela so very much.
They wanted to make sure that he understood, that they knew he had done it, he had done a horrible thing and that he was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
James Craig's actions didn't just impact him, obviously.
He took Angela Craig away from her family, away from her children.
It's absolutely unconscionable.
From a law enforcement perspective, the trail James Craig left behind tells the story of a man who thought he could outsmart everybody around him.
On the surface, he was a caring husband of a woman who kept mysteriously getting sick.
But behind that image, he was quietly orchestrating her death.
Every search on his computer, every order of poison shipped to his dental office, every message he sent while she lied dying, all of it painted a picture of intent and control.
He used his medical knowledge to disguise murder as illness.
But in doing so, he created a breadcrumb trail that investigators could follow straight to him.
And in the end, what unraveled his plan wasn't just science or technology.
It was the persistence of detectives who refused to see Angela's death as anything less than suspicious.
So many things to say about this case, but it's betrayal that stands out the most to me.
To add insult to injury, at trial, James Craig had even concocted some evidence to suggest that his wife had taken her own life.
And just think about that from the perspective of his kids.
To me, it's additional evidence of a man who thought solely of himself.
Angela Craig lost her life painfully and somewhat slowly.
The mental anguish on top of the physical is almost too much to think about.
But Angela would most likely want us thinking most about her children, the six people she adored and loved with all her heart.
Angela lost her life way before her time.
And we hope that her children all six have support and lots of love around them as they now try to navigate the rest of their lives without her.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original.
Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
This episode was written and produced by Larry Israel.
Researched by Kate Cooper.
Edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande.
I think Chuck would approve.
