A jury has convicted a 47-year-old dentist of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison without parole for poisoning his wife with arsenic and cyanide.
James Craig was accused of plotting to kill his wife, Angela Craig, 43, in March 2023, after he began having an affair.
Prosecutors alleged that Craig laced his wife’s protein shakes with arsenic, and later gave her a fatal dose of cyanide while she lay ill in hospital.
Investigators found that Craig had searched online for information on poisoning, including “how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human” and “is arsenic detectable in autopsy?”
A shipment of potassium cyanide was also delivered to his dental practice.
Surveillance footage showed Craig holding a syringe before entering his wife’s hospital room.
Her condition rapidly deteriorated, and she was declared brain-dead several days later.
The Arapahoe County coroner determined that she died from a combination of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a chemical used in eye drops.
Craig was also found guilty of solicitation to commit murder, stemming from his attempts to get a fellow jail inmate to kill a detective working on the case.
He was acquitted of manslaughter.
During the sentencing, Arapahoe County District Judge Shay Whitaker handed down a life sentence without parole for the murder charge, plus 33 years for the additional counts.
“This was a deliberate act, not something done in the heat of passion,” District Attorney Amy Padden said.
In a victim impact statement, one of the couple’s six children, Miriam Meservy, said, “I was supposed to be able to trust my dad…
He was supposed to be my hero, and instead he’ll forever be the villain in my book.”