Colorado dentist drugged wife years before alleged poisoning murder, friend testifies

Fox News

3 days ago

Angela Craig's lifelong best friend took the stand Monday as the Colorado murder trial of dentist James Craig entered its second week, telling jurors that the mother of six was never the kind of woman who gave up easily.
"She wasn't a risk-taker. She wasn't manipulative," Nicole Harmon told the court. "And she never said anything — ever — about wanting to die."
Dr. James Toliver Craig, 47, is charged with first-degree murder in the March 2023 death of his wife, 43-year-old Angela Craig. Her cause of death was determined to be lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline.
On March 9, 2023, approximately one week before the 43-year-old was pronounced brain-dead, Angela texted Harmon asking for help checking her blood sugar. When she arrived, she found Angela curled up.
"She hadn't eaten. She couldn't stand," Harmon said, telling the jury that James had made his wife a shake that morning.
When the friend texted and asked what was going on, she testified, James brushed it off.
"Post-COVID," he texted. "Not diabetes."
Not once, she told jurors, did he mention poison.
"Angela never knew what was killing her," the witness said. Harmon shared that she and her husband, Mike, had known the Craigs since the 2000s.
Angela was hospitalized for five days. Through Angela's prolonged hospital stays, Harmon said that she never expressed that she wanted to die.
Harmon's testimony went back to 2019, when the witness said James made a confession to her and her husband.
He told them in 2019 that he planned to inject himself with a lethal substance and had drugged Angela first so she wouldn't stop him.
David Gelman, a criminal defense attorney who has been following the case, told Fox News Digital that the drugging incident could help the prosecution "because it shows that James was predisposed to drugging Angela before."
"It required intent and thought. The same motive that the prosecution has now for James," he said. "That is an aspect I would really hammer if I'm the prosecution."
James also admitted to the Harmons that he, in 2019, was dealing with a "sexual addiction," and told them that he was in therapy, she testified.
Angela, her friend said, never brought it up. Harmon testified that she sent Angela a message later: "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were dealing with this."
Angela replied: "You weren't there when I needed you."
From that moment, the decades-long friendship fractured.
"She was angry," Harmon said. "Really mad at her life and how it was turning out. And I was OK with that. I was OK with her taking it out on me."
Gelman said the years-long gap in communication between Angela and her best friend doesn't undermine the witness's reliability.
"It doesn't hurt her credibility. She can only testify by what she has observed and her conversations with Angela," he said. "Obviously, she is not privy to the inner workings of the marriage with James since the relationship fractured, but her credibility is still intact since she was not confused or crossed up on the stand."
The longtime friend testified that Angela never opened up about the inner workings of her marriage.
"She had all the chances," the witness said. "She never told me. She didn't want me to see her husband differently."
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Investigators alleged in court documents obtained by Fox News Digital that, in the weeks before his wife's hospitalization and death, James used a dental office computer to search for "undetectable poisons" and how to obtain them (later purchasing arsenic and cyanide by mail), "how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human" and "is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?"
Alongside these online searches, investigators alleged he made YouTube queries such as "how to make poison" and "Top 5 Undetectable Poisons That Show No Signs of Foul Play."
Fox News Digital has reached out to James Craig's lead attorney, Lisa Fine Moses, for comment.