48 Hours - Post Mortem | Who Poisoned Angela Craig?

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Correspondent Natalie Morales and Producer Sarah Prior go behind the scenes of the 2023 death of Colorado mother of six and wife, Angela Craig. Police believe her husband, dentist Dr. Jim Craig, poisoned her. They discuss how Craig used his license to order potassium cyanide, the suspicious “jimandwaffles” email address he created just weeks before Angela's death, and arguments the prosecution and defense might make when the case goes on trial.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Welcome to Postmortem. I'm Anne-Marie Green. And, you know, it might be hard to imagine someone you know possibly being involved in a crime, let alone a murder. What if it was your dentist?

When Colorado dentist James Craig was accused of poisoning and killing his wife, Angela, it shocked the community. It shocked his family. It shocked his patients. With me to discuss their reporting on the alleged murder of Angela Craig is correspondent Natalie Morales and producer Sarah Pryor. Hi there, Anne-Marie. Hey there. So after watching this hour, there's something that kind of occurred to me, even though it's very obvious, that dentists are doctors. And just like doctors, just like many medical professionals, they have access to things that you and I just don't have. And they can choose to use that power to harm others.

Yes. I mean, we certainly don't want to think of our medical professionals that way, but obviously people like you or me, we can't just order potassium cyanide to our doorsteps. But in this case, James Craig is accused of doing just that. He was a dentist at Summerbrook Dental Group in Aurora, Colorado, where he worked along with his wife, Angela Craig. She would help in the office.

Married for 23 years. They had a beautiful family, six children. On March 6, 2023, Angela texted her husband saying she wasn't feeling well. She was saying that her eyes weren't able to focus. She felt like she was drugged. Over the next two weeks, what followed was a journey of her illness and her body just starting to break down. Angela was in and out of the hospital twice. Her system began failing. And then on March 15th, she was admitted into the hospital for a third time. And on March 18th of 2023, she was declared brain dead and taken off life support.

And it was then that James was arrested and accused of poisoning her. But why would James want to kill his wife? It's a question that remains unanswered and one that prosecutors will have to answer when this case goes to trial in August of 2024. And it's where we begin our reporting in 48 hours. So she died almost exactly a year ago. This case has not gone to trial yet, but family and friends, they've only had a year to sort of digest all that has unfolded. Was that challenging for you guys? Yes, absolutely.

I would say it was. You know, it's a year today as we're talking, but obviously we started our reporting a long time ago. So there was a preliminary hearing then in July, which is when Angela's autopsy was released. And so I think all of that has obviously affected her friends and family and, of course, law enforcement. It's pretty normal that police and prosecutors won't talk about a case when trial is still coming up. And that was the case here, too, similarly for the defense. Also, to get family members, very difficult to get them to want to speak with us because it is such

an emotional time still dealing with the death of, in this case, she has six children. So they're dealing with the death of their mother. And also, I think they want to see the course of the legal system carry on here before they comment on the case. And I can only imagine sort of the shock of wondering what was real, what wasn't real about the relationship, which seems so loving. I mean, as far as what we've gathered from people who worked with them and from business partners who were involved with them, I think outward appearances is that they were a couple who worked right alongside each other and they got along very well.

So you guys interviewed a podcaster, a podcast host. His name is Stephan Tubbs. He created a podcast about this case called Arsenic DDS. He was a patient of Dr. Craig's. He actually did radio ads for Summerbrook Dental.

So he knew him. He also met Angela as well. Stefan seems like your standard radio guy. He's got personality. And he remembered that the last time he actually saw Dr. Craig, he gave him a root canal. What a lasting memory. It's not uncommon to be afraid of dentistsists i definitely do not feel at ease when i know that i gotta go to the dentist but most people are not afraid that their dentist could be a potential killer no certainly not um i would heartily agree with you ann marie unfortunately i've had a couple of root canals myself none from dr jim craig um but these are shocking allegations to hear about any human being. But someone who you trust with your medical care, that's really kind of reverberates. And I do think there's

another level to that when we think about dentistry itself. I was remembering when we were chatting about this case, the Broadway show Little Shop of Horrors, where the dentist is this evil character. There's a little bit of that out there in the culture, maybe. But when you think about it, they're in your mouth. I mean, that is a very intimate space. Maybe some of us, I certainly have had dreams where your teeth fall out. You know what I mean? There's something about teeth, the mouth, this whole space and relationship that's very intimate. I have that same dream with my teeth falling out. You don't wake up happy when you have that dream. Yes, no.

And I think when you go to the dentist, you're particularly vulnerable, maybe because you're lying back, because you have to trust when they say you have a cavity because you can't see it, you can't feel it. And so you really have to put yourself in their hands and hope that they treat you gingerly. So, you know, even though he's a dentist, he has access to a lot of things that medical professionals have. But potassium cyanide, you would think it would be a lot tougher to get your hands on potassium cyanide, a lot tougher than, you know, just making an order. Yeah. And according to police, Dr. James Craig was able to place his order through a medical supply company. And the reason he was able to place it through this company is that he stated that he needed it for a complex dental procedure. So that is how he was able to get it.

But Sarah, you looked into this. What was the actual procedure that he stated that he needed it for? And is it something that would really use potassium cyanide? I definitely don't know. We reached out to the ADA and a couple of other dentists. No one wanted to talk to us about our alleged murder story, unfortunately. So he needed a DEA number, which he had and provided. And what he said on this form that he needed it for, there were a couple explanations, but the one sentence version was electroplating a dental prosthesis. So I looked up, what's a dental prosthesis? Well, that's kind of easy. It's either like a fake tooth or a crown or something. Okay, prosthesis, got it. know what that is. So I put into Google electroplating and cyanide, and apparently cyanide can be used to do electroplating. Now, again, no conversation with any dentist that I

was able to have to find out if that's really something any dentist is ever doing. You know, speaking of Little Shop of Horrors, I'm picturing gloves and smoking Bunsen burners or something, but it did come up in Google that this could be a thing cyanide is used for. I will say, and this was important to us reporting this story, Jim Craig had a business partner, another dentist, Ryan Redfern, who said, according to the warrant, there was no use for cyanide in their practice. And Natalie, you also spoke to the poison expert that you knew already about the use for cyanide, medical use for cyanide also, right? And he also said that there is no reason to his knowledge why a medical professional would need potassium cyanide either, especially in the dental field. So his only explanation is the number of poisons that were allegedly searched by James Craig and purchased would be for somebody who was looking to collect poisons. Those were his words.

Yeah. And now again, we don't know what the defense will say at trial. They were very friendly and accessible with us, but very clear that they're not chatting about the case. They're going to talk to the jury when that time comes, which is not till August, at least scheduled right now. So we'll have to wait and see if they elaborate further on this. We don't know. We don't know what we don't know. And unfortunately, we couldn't find a bunch of dentists to talk to us about cyanide. We did try. So this season of 48 Hours alone, we've seen quite a few poisoning cases. Natalie, just a few weeks ago, we had you on postmortem and you were talking

about the Corey Richens case. In this broadcast, you mentioned that some call poisoning a recipe for a perfect crime. Is it? Well, you know, we did speak with Dr. Jeff LaPointe. He is the director of the Division of Medical Toxicology at San Diego's Kaiser Permanente Hospital. And he said they are seeing more cases involving poisoning. And in fact, I know Dr. LaPointe from a previous poisoning story that I worked on in the San Diego area. And in that case, that involved a husband who was poisoning his wife. She thankfully survived thanks to Dr. LaPointe who figured out she was being poisoned. He was able to get her the antidote and treat her. And thank goodness she's healthy now. I think you are starting to see more of these cases. A lot of people believe that it's the

perfect weapon because it's somewhat undetectable to the victim. It can be odorless, tasteless. And Sarah, I believe you looked up some of the statistics on where these cases are today. There was, when I looked this up earlier this week, the NIH reported that poisonings did increase a little bit, at least between 2017 and 2019, went back down again in those pandemic years. But Natalie, I think it was when you were talking to Dr. LaPointe that he was telling you he's also seen an uptick. Is that right? Yes, but he did say, and this is the key thing, is that even though people may think that poisons can be the perfect weapon, all poisons are detectable after the fact. So you're not going to get away with murder. That's a key point. That is fascinating. Did he say why all

poisons are detectable? It will show up in the body or it will be traced. And that's in fact what happened with Angela. Fascinating. Arsenic is a heavy metal, so that accumulates in your body. I did a story years ago now where they tested the victim's hair and found the arsenic. You know, it's actually not a rare chemical. A lot of us are exposed to it all the time in very small amounts, obviously not lethal doses. But in this case, because police were investigating what was happening to Angela so quickly while she was on life support. But before she had officially and legally died, they had her blood from the hospital. So they found the cyanide right in her blood.

And ditto the arsenic. She had been in the hospital, as Natalie said, three times total. And they had blood samples and tissue samples from all of those hospitalizations. So that's reported in the autopsy for sure in this case. So the autopsy tells it all. The autopsy tells it all. Well, when we get back from the break, we're going to dig into something else

that's really important here, the timeline. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours. And of all the cases I've covered, this is the one that troubles me most. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the trouble case against Carlsley Green, early and ad-free on Wondery Plus and the Wondery app. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still

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Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Well, evidence of poisoning was found during Angela's autopsy, as you guys point out. But another piece of evidence is the timeline of events. Sarah, can you explain? Yeah. The timeline is really interesting here, and I think critical to the case the police presented when they wrote up their warrant and arrested Jim Craig. They arrested him just a few hours after Angela was declared dead. It was quick, but the warrant was nonetheless very substantial. And the timeline that they lay out there is that he had made a trip at the very end of February, which we all remember is a short month.

So he's back from his trip in Las Vegas on February 27th. Police present evidence in that warrant that he was researching poison, that he searched for videos about poison, and they say he ordered arsenic on that same day, February 27th. Now, Angela goes into the hospital March 6th, a week later, and she is dead on March 18th, which is 12 days after March 6th. So all of this unfolds in a three-week period, which is either a very short time, if you think about, you know, what happened in Las Vegas, or it's a very short time, if you think about, you know, what happened in Las Vegas, or it's a very long time, I think, if you're Angela Craig

fighting to feel better. One of the things that did surprise me was how quickly they arrested him because I thought they haven't even done a toxicology report or anything. I mean, how do they know she was poisoned? But I guess that's all sort of laid out in this 52-page arrest warrant. And for people who don't know, arrest warrants are not typically 52 pages long, right? Definitely not. No, a few pages is usually great.

A 52 is a lot. No, this was a very detailed arrest warrant. And really, it follows the digital footprint. Really, a key piece of evidence is the package that was delivered to his office. Police said he had instructed people at his office to not touch the package. His business partner was alerted by one of the associates at the office. Well, that package was the potassium cyanide. was the potassium cyanide. And according to the 52-page arrest warrant, Ryan Redford is then alarmed because he knows that Angela Craig is in the hospital. She has all these symptoms that

they can't explain. And he knows she is very sick. And he puts this all together. And he's wondering in his mind, could this have something to do with her illness? And so he alerts the nurse at the hospital and she has the responsibility to tell police and police then arrest James Craig. Police said there were sort of some digital breadcrumbs, evidence that kind of got investigators thinking about him. According to that arrest warrant, he also makes a brand new email address

just a few weeks before Angela dies. Jim and Waffles, I don't know if you have any insight into where Jim and Waffles came from, but he sends this really surprising text to his friend, Michelle Redfern. And I quote, if it wasn't my wife,

this would be a kind of fun puzzle to try and work out. Exclamation point. What do you what do you make of the test? What do you what do you make of Jim and Waffles? I mean, what do we know about that? Jim and Waffles, we can only speculate about that was that email was one police say he created on February 27th when he's just back from Las Vegas. We also know that in Las Vegas, he met someone who became important to his life. Did they eat waffles together? We don't know. We have certainly wondered what waffles means. And so then this text message, you know, if it wasn't my wife, it would be a kind of a fun puzzle.

I mean, this is the kind of thing that you say, not when you're, this horrible tragedy is happening to you. Maybe if you're watching a movie and you're trying to figure out the plot, but this is his life. This is his wife. Yeah, I mean, I think it's poor taste for sure. It's not something any of us would say if it were our spouses who are crashing

and having these medical incidents for sure. We'll have to wait and see how the defense tries to explain that one away. But it's a bad joke. That said, I don't think we can really explain that away ourselves. Yeah, I would agree with that. They were texting, Michelle Redfern is trained as a nurse, and she's Ryan Redfern's wife. She and Jim were texting quite a lot about all of the various, you know, Jim is texting her BP this and blood sugar that. There's a lot of back and forth in that very long arrest warrant. A lot of it's quoted in there, at least. So the

former prosecutor whom Natalie interviewed does say, you know, in fairness, people who are under stress do a lot of things that can look strange from the outside or seem suspicious. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're guilty of a very serious crime. So I can see that side of it, too. He's trained as a doctor in dentistry. She's trained as a nurse. So they're sort of collaborating on this professional level. He was sending her pictures as well when she was crashing and her medical tests and all of that.

He was sending her minute by minutes on how she was doing. Yeah, definitely. Those pictures almost to me are more shocking than the joke about the puzzle. Because it's like, that is definitely emotional. There's no puzzle anymore. She's crashed. I thought those pictures were striking. Yeah, if your wife is crashing,

you're not in that moment, here she crashed. I wouldn't be sending a picture of my wife. Haven't we all thought about this as journalists when you see a video of some terrible incident and you think, oh, I should have the training to record that, but I probably wouldn't. Because I tend to get swept up

in the emotion of something. So that to me- Especially if that's your loved one.'t, you know, because I tend to get swept up in the emotion of something. So that to me- Especially if that's your loved one. Yeah, I think that to me was notable. Yeah. The woman you love. And, you know, speaking of that, as I'm watching this hour, I'm thinking, why? Why? Everything about this life is perfect. It's a perfect marriage. And then you hear in the preliminary hearing of the case that according to James Craig's defense attorney, they raised the possibility that both James and Angela had contemplated suicide. What do you make of that? The warrant actually says that her family members anyway didn't know Angela to be depressed or have thoughts of suicide.

But yeah, the defense did bring up that Jim Craig had had depression. They asserted that Jim Craig had attempted suicide before. We don't know what their evidence is. They sort of mentioned some things that support that assertion, whether that is true or just something that's said. We only have it in the context of the questions the defense asked the detective at this hearing. But they did ask the defense at that preliminary hearing a lot

of questions referring to his past suicide attempts, which was curious. So that's one possible sort of crack in their facade. But then we find out some other stuff. There's other stuff going behind the scenes. They seem like such a perfect couple. But then you start to ask yourself, well, what's the motive? Why do you kill your wife? And then you find out that, you know, they were in trouble. Yeah, they were certainly there was some financial issues going on. There were financial problems at the dental practice. There were liabilities in excess of over $2 million. So the dental practice went into bankruptcy. Her life insurance policy was apparently over $3.4 million. And then, you know, we alluded to the fact that he had met a woman in Las Vegas at a dental conference, and they had a very brief relationship. And they had a very brief relationship. That woman, we received an email from her,

and she believed, you know, when they met, he had told her that he and Angela were already getting a divorce, that they were living separately already, and she said she had no knowledge whatsoever of what James Craig may have been allegedly planning at that time. That seems completely out of character based on those loving text messages, the way people witness them interacting with each other. I just, I'm still sort of at a loss how after a week of knowing someone, it could spiral the way that it did. Yeah. I mean, it seems like it was an intense connection that they had. The police, again, at that preliminary hearing, talked about

emails back and forth. We only saw one of those emails they exchanged, but they seemed to have really connected very intensely and, of course, under false pretenses. She was deceived and she was lied to. You know, and if these accusations, you know, turn out to be true, then that would, you know, fit the same profile. You know, this is not her responsibility. She barely knew him. And she did tell us she is cooperating with the police and prosecutors. cooperating with the police and prosecutors. I think she was as shocked as any of us, probably way more so, because I think she trusted him and cared for him. And then she learned all of this. It's really, I can't imagine how this has affected her on so many levels so horribly.

You know, we do these stories every week, but there's always layers of people. It's kind of like the ripples in a pond. You know, you know about the children and the devastation. They've lost both parents now effectively. You know about her family members. She has a big, close family. You know, but there's person after person who are affected by this. I can't imagine what all of these communities are going through right now. So true.

Was 48 Hours able to talk to James Craig? We were not. We tried. As I think I mentioned, we did, you know, have contact with his defense, but they're not speaking about any of the substance of these accusations. He's pleaded not guilty. And obviously, we are all glad to live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty, and that will all come out at trial. So right now he's an innocent man accused of some serious things. Most certainly. So James Craig's trial is scheduled for August 8th, 2024. It's right around the corner. So we'll see what a jury decides.

Natalie, Sarah, thank you so much for joining me again for another postmortem. Thank you so much, Anne-Marie. It was great to talk to you. Thank you. So join us next Tuesday for another Postmortem and watch 48 Hours, Saturdays, 10, 9 central on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. And if you are liking the show, please rate and review 48 Hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free on the Amazon Music and Wondery app or with a 48 Hours Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.

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