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A Colorado dentist charged with killing his wife by poisoning her shakes upped the ante on his criminality from behind bars while awaiting trial, prosecutors say.
James Craig, a father of six living in the Denver suburbs, has been in custody since March 2023 in connection to the death of his wife, Angela Pray Craig – who died from “cyanide and tetrahydrozoline poisoning,” according to the coroner’s report.
A shackled and handcuffed Craig, his growing grey hair tied up in a ponytail above his orange jumpsuit, appeared Wednesday in a Colorado court for a preliminary hearing on an amended perjury charge.
Angela Craig had been repeatedly hospitalized before her death on March 18, 2023. Witnesses came forward after connecting her symptoms to the effects of poisoning by potassium cyanide, which dental practice employees noticed Craig had delivered to the office.
Investigators also discovered the dentist had been having an affair with a Texas orthodontist, who went public hours before his preliminary hearing last year to say she’d met Craig just weeks before his wife’s murder and had no inkling of his nefarious alleged intentions.
James Craig had googled murder methods on a work computer, ordered cyanide to his office and told staff not to open it, among other damning missteps, investigators have said.
He was back in court this week for his latest legal development, not for the murder charge, but for alleged perjury and allegations of a scheme to try and cover up the alleged murder.
During the hearing, prosecutors detailed a letter discovered in April 2023 – just weeks after his arrest – in the mailroom of Arapahoe County Detention Facility. A mailroom employee contacted police detective Bobbi Olson after opening a letter that had been returned to its sender, Craig, at the facility.
Addressed to “William and Becca,” the letter had been sent to the mailing address of a man who had briefly been incarcerated in the same wing of the detention center as Craig, Olson testified on Wednesday.
The letter outlined how Craig would complete dental work for the inmate’s mother, which could cost up to $60,000, Olson testified. It also laid out a plan where the inmate would find one or two “attractive 25- to 45-year-old females” to participate in a scheme seemingly designed to exonerate Craig, instead indicating his murdered wife had somehow framed him.
After the inmate found the other women, they would agree to say they’d met Craig through him in 2021, then “had an affair on and off for about a year” with the dentist, the detective testified.
The women would then claim that, in the spring or summer of 2022, they’d received a “phone call or a zoom from James Craig and Angela where James allegedly called the affair off,” Olson continued.
Then, around the 2022 holidays, the woman was supposed to say she received a call from Angela saying that she caught James cheating again and that she was going to divorce him – and ask if the female would help frame James ... in the sense of an assault or an attempted homicide or something.”
The letter included a description of Angela Craig so the women could accurately describe her, the detective testified – since they were agreeing to say they’d seen her in a video call. The letter specified that these women would be asked to testify to the story, Olson said.
While the inmate never received the letter, he said in a later interview with Olson that Craig had asked him while they were incarcerated together to “fabricate a witness,” she testified.
The inmate said he told Craig he’d think about the offer – but told the detective “he knew falsifying a witness was a felony so he did not want to partake in it,” she testified Wednesday.
Craig’s defense counsel pointed out that the inmate never agreed to any scheme and also that he’d offered details of his “10-second” jailhouse conversation with Craig, as the inmate was a fugitive on another warrant.
The detective told the court handwriting samples had been sent to the lab but investigators were still awaiting results.
Judge Shay Whitaker found on Wednesday that prosecutors had met the burden of proof and set an arraignment date on the amended perjury charge for October 15.
Craig’s murder trial is scheduled to begin on December 2.
