Cyanide, an affair, and a jailhouse murder plot: The case against a Colorado dentist accused of poisoning his wife

CNN

2 days ago

Angela Craig was complaining of severe headaches and dizziness. She had been to the hospital three times in 10 days, yet doctors in Colorado couldn't explain what was causing her illness.
'I feel drugged,' she texted her husband, James Craig, during her first hospitalization. She told him the only thing she consumed that morning was her protein shake, according to court records.
Three hours into her third hospital visit, the mother of six began seizing and was transferred unresponsive to the hospital's intensive care unit. Three days later, on March 18, 2023, 43-year-old Craig was declared brain dead, court records show.
More than two years after her death, her dentist husband is due to stand trial for her murder. Jury selection begins Thursday.
A probable cause affidavit containing more than 50 pages of evidence investigators compiled against James Craig includes witness accounts, screenshots of text messages and computer search histories, and the discovery of a secret email account used to order a multitude of poisons and carry out an affair with another woman.
Between Angela Craig's death and the start of her husband's trial, the defendant has cycled through a carousel of lawyers – including one who withdrew due to Craig's alleged actions and another accused of setting fire to his own home – and the dentist himself has been accused of plotting a jailhouse murder against the case's lead investigator.
Craig has pleaded not guilty to six felony charges, including first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder, solicitation to commit tampering with physical evidence, and solicitation to commit perjury.
He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of murder.
James Craig's dental partner, Ryan Redfearn, was the first person to sound the alarm to authorities that Angela could have been poisoned, according to the affidavit.
While he was en route to the hospital the day of Angela's final hospitalization, a colleague called Redfearn saying an office manager had seen a package of potassium cyanide delivered for Craig to the office days prior, the affidavit says.
When he arrived, Redfearn alerted a nurse about the package, telling her there would be no medical reason for a dentist's office to need potassium cyanide. The nurse subsequently contacted law enforcement, according to the document.
Craig called his colleague later that night asking if he had spoken with the medical staff. Redfearn said he had and that he knew about the package, the affidavit says.
Craig allegedly tried to fabricate a story before eventually admitting to ordering the potassium cyanide, but said his wife had asked him to buy it – purportedly the first of several unsubstantiated claims that she was suffering from suicidal ideations.
By that point in the conversation, Redfearn had only one more thing to tell his colleague, the affidavit says: 'Stop talking and get a lawyer.'
Michelle Redfearn, Ryan Redfearn's wife, has previously declined CNN's requests for comment, saying the couple expects to be called to testify at trial.
Text messages between Craig and his wife during her hospitalizations suggest she may have suspected she was being drugged leading up to her death, according to the affidavit.
'It feels more like I feel when I take heavy meds and everything adjusts and moves slowly,' she texted Craig during her first hospitalization.
When she said she felt drugged, her husband replied, 'Given our history, I know that must be triggering.'
'Just for the record, I didn't drug you.'
One of Angela Craig's sisters told investigators James Craig had drugged his wife several years prior, so she wouldn't be able to stop him from attempting suicide, the affidavit says.
And Craig's wife directly accused him of poisoning her when she was discharged from her second hospital stay, the dental employee who saw the potassium cyanide package told investigators, according to the affidavit.
Angela's cause of death was acute cyanide and tetrahydrozoline poisoning, with subacute arsenic poisoning listed as a significant condition, according to the coroner's report.
Investigators later discovered an email account that had only been accessed using a computer in an exam room at Craig's dental practice, according to the affidavit.
Within the account history, investigators uncovered numerous searches related to poisons, including 'how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human,' and 'Is Arsenic Detectable in Autopsy?' along with YouTube searches for 'how to make poison,' and 'Top 5 Undetectable Poisons That Show No Signs of Foul Play,' the affidavit says.
Investigators found the account had been used to place online orders for some of the poisons from those searches, including arsenic and potassium cyanide, according to the affidavit, which provided a timeline.
Receipts showed the arsenic was purchased on February 24 and delivered to the Craig home on March 4, just two days before Angela Craig's first hospitalization.
The potassium cyanide was ordered on March 8 and delivered to James Craig's office March 13 – the same date the dental employee saw the open package of potassium cyanide there.
Investigators also uncovered 'sexually explicit' email exchanges between Craig and a woman named Karin Cain who traveled from Texas to Colorado to visit Craig while his wife was hospitalized, the affidavit says.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News in 2023, Cain said she met Craig at a dental convention that February and he told her he was amid a divorce.
'If I had known what was true, I would not have been with this person,' Cain said.
Cain denied investigators' assertions that she was part of Craig's motive to allegedly kill his wife, saying they'd only been together for three weeks at the time.
Since his arrest, Craig has cycled through a litany of lawyers in the case, at times causing court delays.
He initially hired a team of three attorneys to defend him against the charges. In May 2024, Craig replaced them with well-known Denver attorney Harvey Steinberg.
But November 21, 2024, the day jury selection for the rescheduled trial was set to begin, Steinberg abruptly requested to withdraw from the case, citing two rules of professional conduct, according to prosecutors.
The first states, 'The client persists in a course of action involving the lawyer's services that the lawyer reasonably believes is criminal or fraudulent,' and the second says, 'The client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.'
Steinberg has not responded to requests for comment.
Craig's next attorneys, Lisa Moses and Robert Werking, were appointed for him by the court and the trial was rescheduled for July.
But one of those lawyers, Werking, soon found himself in legal trouble: On June 14, he was cited for a misdemeanor weapons violation, court records show. Then on June 29, he was arrested for felony fourth-degree arson at his home, according to Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office spokesperson John Bartmann. When deputies responded to the house fire, Werking was sitting on the porch, Bartmann said.
Last week, Werking filed a motion to withdraw from Craig's case, which was granted on July 2, prosecutors said.
To defend himself against his own alleged crimes, Werking retained Liz Delay and David Beller – two of the attorneys who originally represented Craig.
'Being a defense lawyer necessarily means bearing the burden of living at all times in other people's trauma,' Beller said in a statement to CNN, adding that Werking is seeking mental health treatment. 'I'm asking the public give him and others like him grace, compassion, and withhold judgment, knowing that the constant fight for justice takes out soldiers, but others are always lined up to ensure that constitutional protections are spared for no one.'
Werking has not entered pleas.
Moses remains as counsel for Craig, and an additional attorney, Ashley Whitham, has also joined his defense team.
One day after Steinberg withdrew from the case, prosecutors added a solicitation to commit murder charge and an additional solicitation to commit perjury charge against Craig, alleging he plotted to kill four people from behind bars while awaiting trial.
'The worst, dirtiest detective in the world is on my case. Her name is Bobbi Olson, we have to discredit her,' the defendant wrote in a letter from jail, referring to the lead detective investigating his wife's murder. Prosecutors introduced the letter during a February preliminary hearing on the new charges.
Craig tried to convince a fellow inmate, Nathaniel Harris, to kill Olson, along with an officer referred to in court only as Officer Hillstrand, who investigators say they have not been able to identify, and two other inmates housed in the detention facility's medical unit with Craig, prosecutors said.
Craig also wrote letters to Harris' ex-wife, Kasiani 'Kasi' Konstantinidis, in an attempt to convince her to 'fabricate evidence,' according to prosecutors.
Law enforcement intercepted one of the letters during a cell search and testified during the hearing that Craig offered 'essentially a blank check' for Konstantinidis to fabricate texts, phone records and photographs to back up a fake story about her being friends with Angela Craig.
Another investigator testified that they retrieved a second letter to Konstantinidis – unopened – which indicated Craig believed his case hinged on 'being able to find someone to say Angela was suicidal.'
Craig allegedly wanted Konstantinidis to sell the story not just to the district attorney's office, but also to his own attorney at the time, Steinberg, who then withdrew from the case.