A Colorado dentist’s colleague became suspicious he was poisoning his wife when he got potassium cyanide delivered to his office while he insisted she was sick, his murder trial heard on Wednesday.
Office manager Caitlin Romero said Dr. James Craig was acting strangely in the weeks before his wife of 23 years Angela died in March 2023, and ordered staff not to open the package addressed to him.
Romero testified in the Centennial court that Craig told her to put the box on the desk his desk with strict instructions: ‘Don’t open it’.
Mother-of-six Angela, 43, was declared brain dead on March 18 in an intensive care unit after going to hospital three times, complaining of dizziness and weakness.
Prosecutors say Craig, 47, was poisoning her protein shakes because he wanted to get out of their marriage to be with his mistress.
His murder trial also heard he frequented so-called ‘sugar daddy’ websites, where he claimed to be worth $10million.
He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder – as well as other charges stemming from his alleged activity from jail, where he’s been held since his arrest one day after Angela’s murder.
Romero wore a red blazer and sparkling black flats as she walked by a gray-suited Craig on her way to take the stand.
She related a series of events beginning on March 6 which eventually led her to raise the alarm about Craig’s suspected criminal activity.
The dentist’s wife had been at a conference in Utah in the days beforehand, and Craig arrived late to the daily ‘morning huddle’ with staff, she said.
‘He apologized for being late and said that his wife was not feeling good,’ Romero testified. ‘They’d worked out together, he made her a shake after, she drank that, she started to not feel well.’
Craig also ‘made a comment that maybe he’d added too much protein, more than she was normally used to, and maybe that’s why she wasn’t feeling well.’
Craig left the practice after getting a phone later that day that Angela was going to the hospital, Romero testified.
He returned to the office later that evening, however, when Romero was the only person remaining – and instead of using his office, she came upon him working in the dark on an exam room computer.
Romero was on her way out of the office and thought he’d left when she passed the exam room and was ‘surprised’ by his presence.
She asked how his wife was feeling and what Craig was doing in the exam room, she testified.
The dentist told her her Angela was ‘doing okay,’ saying ‘it was a stressful day, and that’s why he came back to the office – just to get away for a minute.’
As she was driving home, Romero testified, ‘I got a text from him saying that he was having a personal package delivered to the office, and when it got there, put it on his desk, don’t open it.’
Such a request ‘had never happened before while I had worked there,’ she said.
She liked the message and Craig repeatedly texted her to ask if had arrived – but it wasn’t delivered until March 13.
In the days leading up to its delivery, however, Angela was getting sicker. Craig was in and out of the office but also concerned about the practice, Romero testified.
‘He had called and spoke with me and he basically, in one sentence, was concerned about his production and his patients but then also concerned that he wasn’t going to make it through the night,’ she said.
On March 13, Craig’s personal package arrived at the dental practice in Aurora – but a front desk employee opened it before it got to Romero, she testified.
Romero told the employee not to open items marked ‘personal,’ then tried to put the foil package back into the box, noticing biohazard stickers and checking the invoice because the office was expecting a delivery of fentanyl.
The invoice noted it had been ordered by ‘Jim Craig personal,’ she said – and the contents were marked ‘potassium cyanide.’
She put it on the dentist’s desk, then returned to her computer to google the substance.
She said she never brought it up with Craig and had seen him enter an exam room after she left it on his desk.
‘I thought maybe there was some reason for potassium cyanide to be needed, because he was taking into an exam room,’ she said.
As Angela got progressively sicker, however, Romero did search ‘symptoms of potassium cyanide poisoning.’
Craig had told her about Angela’s symptoms, and she realized they were ‘the same symptoms that appeared in the Google search.’
Despite that, however, Romero didn’t initially tell anyone else.
‘Thinking that somebody was capable of possibly poisoning somebody else…it was not something that I was taking lightly,’ she testified.
But she finally decided to share her concerns after Craig made a second comment about Angela ‘not making it through the night’.
It was March 15, and he’d begun seeing patients again but told Romero Angela was being re-admitted and he had to leave early.
‘Shortly after he left the practice, when he was on his way to go see Angela …that’s when he made the same comment: I don’t think she’s going to make it through the night,’ she said.
Later that afternoon, Romero called a superior about the cyanide delivery, who told the wife of Craig’s dental partner, Ryan Redfearn.
Then she spoke with Redfearn himself, and later police, she told the court.
Before Romero’s bombshell testimony, an ER nurse who treated Angela testified how the mother of six crashed just after midnight March 12 as her husband was in the room.
She was declared brain dead on March 15, the same day Craig returned to work.
Alarms sounded as Angela’s oxygen levels plummeted to the 50s and her heart raced to 130, Blaine Cullen testified.