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- [00:00]
Mike Morford
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states.
- [00:22]
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- [02:17]
Mike Ferguson
Deserve Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
- [02:57]
Mike Morford
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 394 of the Criminology Podcast.
- [03:02]
Mike Ferguson
I'm Mike Ferguson and this is Mike Morford.
- [03:05]
Mike Morford
Mr. Morford, how you doing this week man?
- [03:07]
Mike Ferguson
I'm doing pretty good, how you doing?
- [03:09]
Mike Morford
I'm doing great. Families here got a full house which I love. You know it kind of takes me back to and you haven't experienced this yet, but you know when your kids go off to college. Man, it is such a transition, but now we're starting to get them back and it just, it's a great feeling. I know they'll leave again, but, you know, I'm soaking it in while I have it.
- [03:37]
Mike Ferguson
And that'll leave you some free time to do your basketball game that you love to play.
- [03:42]
Mike Morford
Oh, I'll always have time for that because everybody goes to bed early in my house except for me.
- [03:46]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. We're celebrating our 29th anniversary this year. We're getting ready for that and going to go out as a family. And that's what I'm working on for the weekend.
- [03:55]
Mike Morford
Oh, congratulations. Yeah. My wife and I will hit 30 this year, so.
- [03:59]
Mike Ferguson
Wow.
- [04:00]
Mike Morford
Y all good stuff. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Dwayne Andre Davidson and Karen Amaria. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it.
- [04:13]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. Thank you so much. That support really goes a long way to helping out the show. And for anyone else that wants to help, head over to patreon.com criminology to get started.
- [04:23]
Mike Morford
All right, let's jump into this week's case and it's one that some listeners may be familiar with because it made headlines in 2025. It's one of those kind of attention grabbing cases that captivates a lot of people because the people involved in this case seem to have had it all. A happy family, great marriage, successful careers. They were very involved in their faith. But behind all that was what we see in a lot of cases that we cover. Lust, greed, and eventually murder. And the murder victim in today's episode is named Angela Craig.
- [05:03]
Mike Ferguson
James and Angela Craig were married in the year 2000. Over the next 20 years, they built a beautiful life together. They had six children, five daughters and one son. Around 2008, they moved to the Denver, Colorado area. Their faith was important to them and they were well known in their local community of fellow Latter Day Saints. Some people might describe the Craig family as literally picture perfect, with huge smiles, full of straight white teeth. Part of that was not just because they were happy, but James was a dentist and a partner in his own practice while Angela worked there as the office manager. They were described by co workers in People magazine as two peas in a pod who seemed like the perfect couple. But sadly and Quite suddenly, in March 2023, Angela began to experience serious health issues. She didn't know it then, but she had just days to live. At 43 years old, Angela lived a pretty active life and regularly exercised. She didn't have any kind of documented health issues. So this sudden turn in her health was unexpected.
- [06:05]
Mike Morford
On the morning of March 6, James and Angela worked out together and drank pre workout shakes with vitamins and caffeine in them. After the workout, Angela wasn't feeling well. She sent a text to James that read, my, my stomach feels fine, but my head feels funny and dizzy. It's very weird. Later that night, James took her to the emergency room at Parker Adventist Hospital. She was still experiencing the same symptoms and said that her eyes were not focusing. As far as any of the hospital tests could tell, there was no diagnosable reason for her symptoms. So she went home the same day. Back at home, Angela didn't improve. And after a few days, she got even worse. She went back to the hospital on March 9. Her main symptoms were vomiting and low blood pressure, and at points she required an oxygen tank.
- [07:02]
Mike Ferguson
Once again, doctors administered different tests but still weren't able to figure out what was going on with her. She tested negative for diabetes and any adrenal insufficiency, as well as autoimmune disorders. And her A1C and all of her blood work seemed within normal range. MRIs and CAT scans showed no signs of anything that would be causing her symptoms. She was released on March 14, but she still wasn't feeling any better overnight. She continued to feel worse. On the morning of March 15, it got so bad that her brother Mark took her to the emergency room at the University of Colorado anchors. By that point, she had a splitting headache and was feeling incredibly dizzy. James rushed to be by her side. Just three hours after she was admitted, she had a severe seizure and was moved into the intensive care unit. She would never recover. After three days, Angela was declared brain dead and taken off life support. She passed away on March 18, 2023 and more.
- [08:00]
Mike Morford
If this is just, you know, just a nightmarish, scary situation. I mean, we all experience things in our life, you know, from time to time where we're just not feeling that great and we can't really figure out what it is. Sometimes, you know, you might schedule a doctor's appointment, Sometimes you might go straight to the emergency room. And I know based on my own experience, there are times when the doctors, they don't really know what's wrong with you. They, they can make educated guesses based on their experience. But there's not a test that is actually saying here, this is exactly what's wrong. And that can be very frustrating.
- [08:46]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, when, when you get sick or you've got something wrong. With you and you go to the hospital, you hope that you're going to get a quick diagnosis and be treated and you're going to get better. But it's got to be very frightening to go there, have this battery of tests, CAT scans, MRIs, blood test, everything else under the sun, and then not be able to say, here's what's going on and here's how we're going to treat it. So I have to imagine that Angela's pretty frightened and upset after not being able to find out what's going on with her.
- [09:19]
Mike Morford
And to lose a wife and mother at 43 years old, someone who was said to have led an active lifestyle, who, you know, exercised regularly. Not to say that it doesn't happen, because it does, but it's not the norm. I mean, most women don't die at the age of 43. And those closest to Angela were obviously devastated by her death. But almost immediately, James started acting oddly, not like you would expect a grieving husband to act. And most surprising of all, he refused to allow an autopsy for Angela. Her sister Tony begged him to have an autopsy so they could get an answer as to what happened, but still he refused. According to court documents, he said that if they couldn't figure out what was wrong with her when she was alive, he wouldn't let them poke her more when she was dead. And, you know, you and I have done so many cases, people listening or into true crime. They've watched shows. Obviously police are going to look at the husband. You know, that's just a given. I think when a husband says no, no autopsy, even against other family members wishes, that is going to be viewed by many as suspicious.
- [10:52]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, you know, if I was in here, his shoes, and God forbid something happened to my wife, I'd want to know immediately what happened. Please try and give me some answers. I think most people probably would think the same thing. So the fact that he didn't want answers and didn't want an autopsy done, I think that would jump out and strike some people as odd.
- [11:14]
Mike Morford
Well, yeah, especially given how young she was. Just the fact that they hadn't been able to figure out what was wrong with her. Now, the flip side of that is I can understand how some people wouldn't want their loved ones to, you know, for the lack of a better term, I don't know how to say it any easier way to be cut up because let's face it, what's involved in an autopsy is, you know, fairly gruesome.
- [11:47]
Mike Ferguson
And I certainly understand that. And get that point. But, you know, if this was somebody that had a terminal illness and they had battled it and they finally succumbed to it, then an autopsy might not be warranted. You would say, okay, she was sick, we knew this was coming, this is the end of it. But here she's a healthy 43 year old woman with no medical issues that were known. You know, how could you not want to try and figure out what happened here? The first person to really sound the alarm and suspect that James Craig had something to do with his wife's death was a man named Ryan Redfern. He was James's business partner at the dental practice and his longtime friend going back to dental school. In fact, Ryan raised concerns about Angela to James even before she passed away. Ryan confronted him and began to ask a lot of questions. Apparently some of them were accusatory or suspicious of James. According to court docs, on March 15, three days before Angela died, James sent a very long text message to Ryan asking him basically to keep his mouth shut. The text read, if we were ever friends, please do this favor for me. He also basically tried to guilt trip Ryan for being truthful to authorities instead of trying to talk to him privately about it, or as he put it personally, man to man. But when Ryan tried to talk to James, he lied and danced around the subject.
- [13:12]
Mike Morford
And it wasn't just Ryan Redfern who was feeling uneasy after Angela died. A woman named Caitlin Romero, who worked at the dental practice, was also upset. James had told her that he expected a personal package for him to be delivered to the dental office and told her not to open it. On March 13, the package did arrive, but a different employee, not Kaitlin, saw it first and accidentally opened it. When Kaitlin found it, she didn't realize it was the package James had been talking about since it was already open and she looked inside. The box had a packing slip labeled potassium cyanide inside of it at the time it happened on the 13th, and Kaitlin wasn't that concerned about it. But looking back on it after Angela's strange death, it really jumped out. And that's not all. Kaitlin also remembered that on March 6, the day Angela first went to the hospital for her symptoms, James was in one of the exam rooms after the office had closed, using the computer with the lights off. This stood out to her, first of all because the lights were off, but also because James didn't usually use the computer in the exam room. He had a work laptop that he took home with him and there was Another computer in his private office. She didn't know what he was up to, but to her it seemed shady.
- [14:43]
Mike Ferguson
Kaitlin also remembered seeing James carrying a metal cylinder shortly after the computer incident that she had never seen before or after. There was a thought nagging at her. When Angela was hospitalized again, she looked up potassium cyanide online since they didn't use it at the practice to see what it was, she saw that symptoms of cyanide poisoning perfectly lined up with Angela's symptoms. Kaitlin called a co worker who called Ryan Redfern, who ended up alerting medical staff at the hospital to the possibility that Angela had been poisoned. As a partner in the practice, he could confirm that there was no medical use for potassium cyanide. Hospital staff immediately called authorities as required by their status as mandated reporters, which got the investigation rolling even before Angela passed away.
- [15:29]
Mike Morford
Now, it's not clear exactly what happened medically to Angela after the hospital staff was alerted to possible poisoning or if they tried any specific treatments or additional tests related to cyanide poisoning. There are drugs that can be used to treat cyanide poisoning, including amyl nitrate, sodium nitrate and sodium thiosulfate, but we don't know if any of these drugs were administered. Also, since we're not doctors or trained health professionals, it's not clear what the protocol would be in this situation. How fast would they try to use those medications if they had an inkling cyanide poisoning was to blame and would they have been able to give it in time? We do know that Angela died, so if any of those treatments were used, they clearly didn't work. But again, at this point, and right after Angela died, the cyanide poisoning was just a possibility. And James fought the autopsy being done and more, if we always have limitations in any case, right, you can look through documents, you can go through as many different articles as you can find. You're never going to find everything. And this is one of those situations, right? If hospital staff was alerted, which it seems they were, well, then what did they do? Could they test for cyanide in her system before she passed away? Did they test? And if so, did they try to use any of these drugs? Maybe they did and. And they just didn't work. But, you know, it's just not out there. We couldn't find it.
- [17:15]
Mike Ferguson
And it could be that they did try some of these things, but she was just too far gone. Maybe it was past the point of saving her and, you know, her body was shutting down. So it may have been that that caused them not to be able to save her.
- [17:29]
Mike Morford
But I think the one thing that we do have here is suspicion falling very quickly on James. Right. We have this very suspicious package being delivered to the office, something that is not used in their dental practice. Everybody confirmed that. And then, you know, him being seen using this computer in the exam room that he never uses with the lights off. Okay. I mean, I think, you know, it's all looking very suspicious, very shady.
- [18:12]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. If your wife dies mysteriously, suddenly, and lo and behold, the husband received poison in the mail and didn't want an autopsy, red flags are jumping out all over the place to me, and kudos to his office staff that work with him because they immediately voice their concerns, reported to the hospital, talked to police, they mentioned the things they saw. You know, so many times we talk about these cases, people didn't say anything until after the fact, but it seems like as soon as they thought something was up here, they. They went to the authorities.
- [18:51]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I think that's a real good point, because for me, it's almost two different things. Right. First of all, they had to be very observant to even notice the things that they brought up. But then they also had to take the extra step of bringing them up.
- [19:08]
Mike Ferguson
Now.
- [19:09]
Mike Morford
They had a duty, which most people don't have in cases that we're talking about. But still, it seems like everything happened very quickly, so you have to give them credit for that.
- [19:23]
Mike Ferguson
Ryan Redfern later spoke to James, confronting him directly and asking him about the cyanide point blank. James claimed that the package he asked Kaitlin not to open contained a ring he was going to surprise Angela with. But Ryan told James he knew he was lying and what the contents of the package actually were. He knew it wasn't a ring. James, not knowing that the box had been opened and that Kaitlin had looked inside of it, first tried to play it off, saying no one knew what was inside since he hadn't opened yet. But Ryan told him that he knew it was potassium cyanide and that he knew it wasn't a legitimate business purchase. James eventually admitted that he had ordered it, but tried to tell Ryan that Angela had asked him to order the cyanide for her since he had the necessary credentials for purchase. James hinted that Angela was going to take the poison willingly and that it was her choice. According to court documents, James said he was basically playing chicken with her, but that he didn't think she would actually take it. At this point, Ryan was shocked and refused to listen to anything Else James had to say and advised him to get an attorney. Ryan then passed this information on to police.
- [20:30]
Mike Morford
When talking to investigators, Ryan revealed to them that James had filed for bankruptcy in 2021 and was nearing the need to file again. James was bleeding money. He had traveled to Las Vegas and lost more than $2,000 gambling. Police immediately began to look closely at James and to dig into his finances and purchases. And what they found was very troubling. He hadn't only bought cyanide, but he had also purchased arsenic and another poison called oleandrin. By the time police were on to James, he had already received the arsenic and cyanide. But police were able to stop the delivery of the oleandrin when confronted with the purchase of these poisons. James told police that his wife had been having suicidal thoughts since he asked for a divorce in December, a few months before she died, but that since then, she had attempted to take her own life multiple times and that he had to save her each time, usually from an opiate overdose. However, there were no reports of any 911 calls or hospital visits, no therapy, no nothing. There was nothing that backed up what James told police. So my thought morph is, even if that was true, how does that in any way explain the purchase of these poisons? I mean, what husband is going to make those purchases for his wife when he's saying, hey, she's trying to kill herself. I had to save her. It's just not making any sense to me.
- [22:20]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, this is already sounding to me like one of those cases where the. The person's caught and they're just firing off random Hail Mary excuses. You know, there's no documented history of anything where she attempted to take her life or was treated for nothing to back his story up. So at this point, why would police even believe him? Why would they not think that he's just trying to spin an excuse for why he bought those poisons?
- [22:48]
Mike Morford
Yeah, and unfortunately, we see it in a lot of cases. Right? It's easy to slander the victim because the victim can no longer tell their story. They're not around to refute all of these statements. Now, that doesn't mean that the things that are being said will be believed. But people go out of their way to try to paint a picture that makes the victim look bad, which, to me, is just another indignity on top of what people already do.
- [23:26]
Mike Ferguson
Police also talked to Angela's family and friends and found no evidence that she wanted to take her own life. And as far as the divorce, that was a lie too. According to Angela's sister Tony, it was Angela who had wanted to end the relationship in the past. And it hadn't been just a one time thing. Multiple times she talked about ending the marriage, but each time James was able to talk her into staying and convince her that things would change every time. A closer look at their lives also revealed that James had a long history of extramarital affairs fueled by an addiction to pornography that started sometime in his teenage years.
- [24:02]
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- [25:43]
Mike Morford
Police then began looking at James online activity and they found a lot of incredibly incriminating Google searches. One search he made was how to make murder look like a heart attack. Other troubling searches included Is arsenic detectable in an autopsy? How many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human? And where can I buy arsenic? In the end, James was able to buy arsenic in its metal form on Amazon. It arrived right in his mailbox. On March 4, while Angela was in Utah visiting her sister. James also searched on YouTube for how to Make Poison and watched videos called Top five Undetectable Poisons that Show no Signs of Foul Play, and the top 10 deadliest plants. They Can Kill you and more of you and I probably have very strange search histories, Right? We've talked about that before. But I'm always shocked that people do not understand how their Google search, YouTube, you know, all of that's kind of tied together anyway, how it's not going to, at some point later in time, be revealed that they're searching for these very strange, troubling things that will ultimately connect them to a crime.
- [27:15]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. And when your wife dies mysteriously, no discernible cause, and you fight to have, you know, no autopsy done, then you have witnesses that saw you purchase poison. And then on top of all that, you've got a zillion searches for poisons and, you know, ways to possibly murder someone. What else are the police here left to think about? This guy.
- [27:43]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I mean, obviously he doesn't look good at all. Right? You have the financial trouble, extramarital affairs, addiction to pornography. But this is, I'm assuming, not an unintelligent individual. Right? James was a dentist. I'm sure he had some smarts. It just doesn't. It doesn't seem like he either used them, or maybe he was just so arrogant that he would get away with it. I think sometimes smart people can be like that. They're so smart, right? They're smarter than everyone else, so how could they get caught?
- [28:27]
Mike Ferguson
And thankfully, a lot of times, you know, many times they're not smarter. And they do get caught because of these. These things they overlook or. Or are too high on themselves to. To think they need to hide. Ultimately, due to the mounting evidence, the authorities were able to have an autopsy performed on Angela over James's objections. Testing verified that it was a combination of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, which is an ingredient in eye drops, that killed Angela. Investigators believe that James injected the cyanide and eye drops directly into Angela's iv. At the hospital, he had access to syringes through his dental practice. And the hospital security system apparently caught footage of. Of James holding a syringe before he walked into Angela's hospital room, which wasn't long before her condition rapidly deteriorated.
- [29:18]
Mike Morford
On March 19, the day after Angela died, James was in a hotel room with the woman he was having an affair with, a woman named Karen Kane. Their time together was interrupted by a loud knock at the door. It was the police looking for James. It was 2 in the morning, so you have to imagine that James knew exactly what was happening when he heard that knock. He was arrested and charged with Angela's murder. His mistress, Karen, was shocked and in disbelief. It looks like James was in a rush to get rid of Angela after meeting Karen Kane, an orthodontist from Texas, at a dental conference in Las Vegas two weeks earlier. This was the Vegas trip where James had lost a lot of money. Karen knew that James and Angela were still married, but as far as she understood it, their divorce was nearly fine. And James told her he lived in an apartment on his own. Neither of which was true. So we've talked a lot about James. Right. We know he was not looking good in this whole situation. But I think, morph, when you're caught in a hotel room with another woman the day after your wife dies, man, if that doesn't make you look bad, I don't know what does. You know, if you've got any type of soul, an ounce of empathy, well, you're grieving. Even if you did want a divorce, even if the marriage was on the rocks, if this person who you had built your life with over decades, passed away, there has to be some kind of mourning, a period of grief. What most people don't do is, you know, jump into bed with another woman the next day in a hotel room. It just doesn't work like that.
- [31:19]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. This is the mother of his children. You think. Think he'd have some compassion even if their relationship was in a good spot and, you know, he didn't want to be with her anymore, you know, still, you think he would have compassion and empathy for. For the mother of his children? And it was clear that he didn't. And I think it's just another red flag for police that. That this happened.
- [31:40]
Mike Morford
Yeah. And, you know, obviously they're going to have a lot of evidence, right, to. To throw against James, present to a jury. I think anyone on a jury just hearing this part, it would sink in what type of person that we're dealing with, because most people on the jury would have either, you know, some type of significant other or someone who they loved, and they couldn't imagine themselves doing that. So I think it really says a lot.
- [32:16]
Mike Ferguson
James set up a secret email address Through Gmail on February 27, which he used to communicate with Karen without Angela finding out. It's also the Google account he was logged into when he made all those incriminating searches. He still used his real name for the secret murder research account and his actual credentials to buy the cyanide in order to buy the potassium cyanide. James made up a story about doing an experiment and that he planned to publish his research. And as a paper in the National Institutes of Health, he claimed it was for electroplating over other metals that cause inflammatory responses in certain patients.
- [32:53]
Mike Morford
And now we're back to Google, right? Google. I'm not sure if everybody realizes it, but it's wrapped up into a lot of different things. And you know, how most people find that out is when they do a Google search about a, let's say, a product, and then you go on YouTube and watch a video, and the very first ad that pops up is for the product that you searched for. That that's kind of what tips you off, that everything is kind of connected. But my other thought morph was that, you know, being a dentist, could he make up a story easier than most people could to be able to get his hands on this potassium cyanide? And my thought is, yes, whether it's believable or not, he is a professional in that world and was able to do it. Most of us wouldn't be.
- [34:05]
Mike Ferguson
And if you're the people, the company or whatever that's selling that cyanide and you don't know, dentistry, maybe you buy that story that he provided that he was working on some kind of, you know, medical paper and some kind of use of it, you know, when, at what point? What's the protocol for asking questions or doubting the story somebody's telling? Telling you.
- [34:28]
Mike Morford
On February 28th, James and Angela got into an argument because she noticed on their banking statement that James had spent money to cover two people at a restaurant. She undoubtedly thought James was having another affair. When James told Karen about Angela getting upset, she started to become more distant, because when she opened herself up to dating James, she thought he was single, completely separated, and just waiting for the divorce to be legally finalized. According to Fox News, Karen told James, this is scary. I didn't want to be part of breaking up a marriage. But he continued to reassure her, saying, I didn't tell her anything about you. I don't think she understands what it means to be getting divorced. And I think you have to feel really bad for Karen and people like her who, you know, kind of get into relationships built on a lie. They believe they're not doing anything wrong because in this case, James is telling her that he's separated, legally separated, and that the divorce is just not finalized. I think to find out later on, obviously, that there was a murder involved, but that you were dating this person who Wasn't legally separated, was still married. I think that's gotta. That's gotta be a blow. That's gotta be hard to take. But I don't blame her. I don't. I don't know how she could have known.
- [36:10]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, there's no indication that she was aware of what he was doing or planning, but I think it's got to be frightening for her that she wanted to start a relationship with him, and this is the person that he turns out to be. Somebody that if he would lie to his own wife and the mother of his children, potentially poison her, what might he lie to her about or what might he do to her in the future? So this is, for her, it's probably relief in the end that she's. This guy is not going to be with her. Karen revealed that on March 6, the day Angela first got sick, James told Karen that Angela had accused him of drugging her and joked with Karen about it, assuring her, I would never drug you. Just for the record, it turns out that around 2018, James had drugged Angela. She recovered, and James admitted to drugging her. He claimed that it was only to incapacitate her so that she wouldn't be able to interfere with his plans to take his own life. This is why on March 6, when Angela first started feeling sick and said she felt like she had been drugged, James texted her. Given our history, I know that must be triggering. Just for the record, I didn't drug you. All right.
- [37:27]
Mike Morford
My wife and I, you know, we send a lot of texts throughout the week. That's one that I don't think I've ever had to send. Just for the record, I didn't drug you.
- [37:38]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I mentioned earlier that my wife and I are celebrating our 29th anniversary, and there's never been any conversation in our 29 years of drugging each other or anything like this. So definitely unusual.
- [37:51]
Mike Morford
Yeah, most people who have those kind of issues don't make it to 29, 30 years, things like that. After the incident in 2018, when James drugged Angela, she was treated and released by a hospital. After they released her on the same day, she was angry at James. According to cpr.org at least one fight was captured on their home security system. Angela was upset with him in that fight. She screamed at James, it's your fault. They treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and. And like nothing I said could be believed. At James trial, his defense team would try to paint Angela as troubled and suicidal. At times, Angela seemed to Doubt herself when she was poisoned. Before she was about to die, Angela wrote, I'm a crazy person. Dismissing her own concerns that James was misleading the medical team at the hospital and that no one on staff seemed to be listening to her needs, she wrote, I realized I could be reliving the past. It's just hard. Angela seemed too confused or upset, thinking about the time James had drugged her. But this time he had poisoned her.
- [39:11]
Mike Ferguson
Karen arrived in Denver on March 8th and stayed for two days. This was while Angela was in the hospital for the second time. Then, two days before Angela died, Karen flew back out and James spent most of the day with her. They went hiking and went out for sushi. James stayed at her hotel that night, and in the morning, he went to pick out Angela's burial plot and make other funeral arrangements. When he was done, the two had dinner. To everyone that heard this, these were not the actions of grieving loving husband. On March 18, Angela was taken off of life support. While staff circled around Angela's hospital bed struggling to intubate her and do everything they could to save her life. James took photos of the scene which he sent to Karen.
- [39:55]
Mike Morford
And again, I just imagine myself being on a jury and hearing these details. I mean, number one, they're cringe worthy, but I think they paint a very vivid picture of what type of guy James Craig actually was. You know, he was all about himself, what he wanted.
- [40:19]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, we're talking about this hospital scene where the staff is doing everything they can last second, trying to save Angela from dying. And this guy, instead of, you know, crying, not being able to compose himself, maybe going off in a corner and not able to watch, he's taking pictures. This is just a. Seems like a cold hearted and dastardly person.
- [40:45]
Mike Morford
This affair between James and Karen was a whirlwind and moved very quickly. And we talked about it earlier, right. They had only known each other for just a few weeks after meeting in Vegas, but in that time, they sent each other more than 4,000 text messages. In one of the messages, James texted, I could see myself asking you to marry me. Karen responded, I could see myself saying yes. Karen was drawn to James because she thought they were in the same kind of situation. She had been with her husband for almost 30 years and was finalizing a divorce of her own. This is part of why their relationship got so intense so quickly. It felt like they had a shared understanding. When you get divorced at their age and after being married for so long, you would know what your priorities were in life and you would know what you wanted from your future.
- [41:46]
Mike Ferguson
Karen wasn't even the only woman that James was seeing behind Angela's back. On the same business trip where James and Karen started the relationship, James was hiring sex workers. He also met a woman named Carrie Hagseth online and entered into an agreement where he would give her money toward her daughter's car payment. Every time they had sex, Karen makes it clear that she had no idea what James was planning and that she did not approve of it at all. They had only known each other for three weeks when Angela died. It had been even less time when James decided to poison his wife. According to an AP News article, Karen said, there's no way I'm motive. If I had known what was true, I would not have been with this person. When Angela was sick, Karen tried to cancel her trip, but James asked her not to cancel. And after Angela died, he actually asked Karen to attend Angela's funeral while still keeping the relationship a secret from everyone. According to court documents, Karen pushed back on his idea, saying, I don't feel it's right for me to mix in with all those gathering to mourn Angela.
- [42:51]
Mike Morford
James appalling behavior didn't end when Angela was dead, and it didn t end when he was arrested. He continued to lie, trying to cover his tracks. In his brilliant mind, the way to get out of this situation was to plan yet another murder. This time, he actually offered a fellow jail inmate $20,000 to kill Aurora police detective Bobby Olsen, the lead investigator on the case. Another fellow inmate claimed that James offered yet another $20,000 for him to place fake journal entries in the Craig home that would make Angela seem suicidal. He also asked around for anyone who knew women who would pretend to have been caught by Angela having affairs with him in the past. He wanted to make it look like Karen was no big deal because Angela knew about a bunch of affairs. And he also wanted them to claim that Angela had tried to get them to help her frame him for her own death. He offered free dental work for a family member in exchange, but the inmate declined. At one point, James actually tried to ask one of his daughters to create a deep fake video evangelist saying that she wanted to be poisoned. I mean, there's no level this guy would not stoop to in order to get out of his predicament. And this is another thing we often see, right? Especially when you have a person of means. I mean, this guy was a dentist. He had money, even though he had money issues. But to just go around to a bunch of inmates saying, hey, can you do this. Can you do that? How many times have we seen it morph? These inmates, they will turn very quickly because they think, and sometimes rightfully so, that it'll help them out to give somebody up. But the one that really jumped out at me is wanting to have the lead detective killed. Okay, what's that going to do? Did he not think another detective was going to take over? Like they were just going to drop his case, drop the investigation? It just didn't make any sense at all.
- [45:18]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, it seems to me like James is living in some kind of fantasy universe here where he can just do all these things and nothing else is going to happen. Nobody else is going to take over. What I found despicable is that he's even trying to enlist his own daughter to make a deep fake of his wife saying she wanted to be poisoned. I mean, did he think his daughter would just say, sure, dad, let me make a video like that and. And help you? I. It's like he doesn't it. To me, the only thing I take away from is he's not living in reality.
- [45:51]
Mike Morford
Well, and I. I think what all of these things do is they help to strengthen that notion that you. This is a guy who just doesn't care about anyone but himself. He doesn't even care about his daughter. We obviously know he didn't care about his wife.
- [46:10]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, he's only out for. For number one. According to Fox News, when James sent Karen love letters from jail, she was so disgusted that she set them on fire. He wrote sappy lines like, karen, you have ruined me, ruined me in all the best ways, and I die a new death every day. I cannot be near you. The letters kept coming, and Karen started giving them right to detectives instead of even looking at them, but did eventually send him back a letter with one written request. Do not write me anymore.
- [46:39]
Mike Morford
And some of those lines, they kind of made me want to throw up in my mouth. But I don't know, again, what this guy thought was going to happen, that Karen was going to find all of this stuff out about him, but still be madly in love with him, still want to marry him. I mean, it's just delusional. Some of the thoughts and ideas that James Craig had. Investigators never found any trace of arsenic or cyanide in the Craig home or in the dental office. But his Amazon purchase of the arsenic and the cyanide package that was accidentally opened, as well as the emails James sent about electroplating with potassium cyanide, link him to both poisons. There was also the oleandrin that authorities were able to intercept. They believe that he put the arsenic in the shape he made for Angela before they exercised. Because when she first started explaining that she wasn't feeling well. He also claimed that the pre workout had made him shaky, but he wasn't feeling anywhere near as bad as Angela was. It was like he was trying to explain why the shake may have made her feel weird. But like, in any case, right. It's up to the jury to digest all of the information present at trial and come up, you know, with a decision. James attorney Ashley Whitam told the jury, you may not like him, you may not think he's a good husband, but that's not what you're here to decide. This case, from the very beginning, started with blinders.
- [48:26]
Mike Ferguson
James didn't take the stand in his own defense. Instead, his attorney focused on the fact that investigators seemed to only lock in on him and no other suspects, including Angela herself. They didn't look at him because he was the husband or because they had tunnel vision. They looked at him because there were reports that he had purchased and acted incredibly shady about a poison that could cause the symptoms Angela was experiencing. Investigators didn't just decide to focus on James as her suspect. There was basically a neon sign pointing right to him.
- [48:57]
Mike Morford
The prosecution laid out for the jury all of the troubling searches, the purchases of the multiple poisons, a history of James drugging his wife and his affairs, including one that was ongoing when Angela died. They also pointed out that James was the beneficiary of a multi million dollar life insurance policy. Ultimately, the jury came to the same conclusion as investigators. James Craig had murdered his wife. On July 30, 2025, he was found guilty of one count of first degree murder, two counts of solicitation to commit tampering with evidence, one count of solicitation to commit murder, and two counts of solicitation to commit perjury. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. My thought morph is this was not probably a real tough one, Right. For the jury. There are trials, murder trials, that are incredibly nuanced, where I think juries have a really tough time deciphering through all of the evidence, especially when a lot of it is circumstantial and trying to figure out whether or not they can say, but beyond a reasonable doubt, that this person was guilty. I can't imagine they had a lot of trouble in the case against James Craig. Like you said, it was almost like there was a neon sign above this guy's head that said murderer.
- [50:42]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. And if you're his attorney, his defense attorney, I imagine it was an uphill battle right from the beginning. And, you know, they probably did their best. But a lot of stuff to overcome in this case as a reminder of just how far reaching this murder was and how many people were victims of it. The Craig's oldest daughter said at his sentencing, I was supposed to be able to trust my dad. He was supposed to be my hero. And instead will forever be the villain in my book. One of the most heartbreaking aspects of this case to look back on is the fact that Angela went to the hospital three times. There were chances for her to survive and chances for someone to figure out what James was doing before he was able to kill her. But because the chemicals he used were so rare, it was missed. If someone had figured it out just even a few days sooner, she may have recovered. Honestly, if James hadn't been able to visit her that final time, she may have survived. It's that last dose of whatever investigators believe James gave her while she was in the hospital that ultimately killed her. Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley told the courtroom. He went in that room to murder her, to deliberately and intentionally end her life with a fatal dose of cyanide. And after this, she spends the next three days dying.
- [52:01]
Mike Morford
And we definitely don't want to blame the hospital or the staff. We mentioned it earlier. Morph. Right. We're not doctors, we're not trained medical providers, and we're not sure what the protocols are regarding suspected or possible poisonings. The situation was definitely complicated by the fact that James used multiple poisons to kill Angela. So even if they had found out about one, the treatment for that one poison may have not helped with the other. In the end, James inflicted a cruel and agonizing death upon his wife and shattered his family in the process. He's currently incarcerated at Bent County Correctional Facility in Los Animas, Colorado, and will presumably be there for the rest of his life. Hopefully, he'll reflect on what he's done and come to show remorse. But based on everything we've talked about, I don't think that's very likely, and I really don't. I think this guy was a classic narcissist. I say was. I'm sure he still is. Everything was about him, what he wanted, and he really didn't care who got hurt for him to get what he wanted. And that's. It's sad. It's sad that a woman lost her life, but then you think about it, they had a big family, so you have the kids. At some point, he tried to enlist his daughter in trying to cover it up. He just did not care about his family at all. He cared about sex. He cared about having sex with other women. I think we didn't talk about it a lot, but he probably also cared greatly about the multimillion dollar insurance because of the financial situation that, you know, he was in, probably due to his own making.
- [54:09]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, it's this guy. Just every thing we hit on, every bullet point was just about how narcissistic he was, about how everything was all about him. No remorse, just trying to cover his own tracks. He lied to his wife, he lied to his mistress, just all around shady. And I. I would bet you mentioned he still is a narcissist. I would bet that in prison, in his interactions with other prisoners and staff there, they could probably see some of the same characteristics, because I don't think a leopard changes their spots. So I would bet he's continuing to have those same type of traits behind bars.
- [54:55]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I would agree with you there. The issue is he's probably in there with a bunch of other narcissists. A lot of criminals are narcissists.
- [55:02]
Mike Ferguson
And what's frightening to me about this case is if the police, the hospital staff, the people that worked with him, if they all didn't come together and voice concerns and take action, if somehow no autopsy had been done at all and maybe he had her cremated, let's say, would this case have been ultimately solved and him convicted without her body being able to be, you know, autopsied? That's really frightening.
- [55:33]
Mike Morford
It is, it is. And, you know, it's sad that they couldn't figure it out in time to save her again. It's a little fuzzy as to what went on at the hospital. And I definitely don't want to blame the hospital or, you know, anybody there, but you just wonder, could it have been figured out? Could she have been saved if they were able to? And it's just sad that it didn't happen that way. Yeah. My thought is, you know, this is a guy who's never going to get out. Right. Even if somehow he were able to come up for parole, you would think the parole board would look at what this guy did and say, this is not someone that we ever want back out in society. But my other thought is, there's got to be a special place in hell for people like James Craig. Just. Just a special wing where. Where they keep the guys like this, because I, I, I really think, you know, it's just monstrous what this guy did.
- [56:40]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. One thing I was just thinking as we were wrapping up is if you're a patient of this man, what might he have done to you? Is he so sadistic that he could have done things to you? You know, obviously not poisoning, but might there have been things that he did that you wouldn't approve of or he shouldn't have done? Ethically, it's, that's frightening.
- [57:04]
Mike Morford
Oh, that's, yeah, we didn't even talk about that. I mean, could he have sexually assaulted women after knocking them out with, with gas while they were on his chair or whatever you want to call it? That's possible. I wouldn't put anything past a guy.
- [57:24]
Mike Ferguson
Like this or even, you know, inflicted some kind of unnecessary pain, you know, drilling teeth or whatever. You know, maybe he got excitement out of that. That's very scary.
- [57:35]
Mike Morford
But that's it for our episode on Angela Craig. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really.
- [57:50]
Mike Ferguson
Helps us out if you want to find us on social media. We're on every major platform. Just search your favorites for Criminology Podcast. If you want to join our Facebook discussion group about the podcast and the cases we cover, head over to Facebook and search for Criminology podcast discussion and fans. And for news about the show past episodes, check out our website, criminologypodcast.com so.
- [58:14]
Mike Morford
That'S it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morph, we'll talk to you next week.
- [58:25]
Mike Ferguson
Take care, everyone.
- [58:57]
Mike Morford
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