James Craig, 47, a dentist from Aurora, Colorado, is accused of killing his wife, Angela, 43, by giving her poisoned protein shakes. Prosecutors allege that Craig Googled “Top 5 Undetectable Poisons” and gave his wife arsenic, potassium cyanide and tetrahydrozoline.
After three visits to the hospital, Angela died on March 15, 2023. The couple had been married for 23 years and had six children.
James Craig was immediately arrested, based on a tip from his business partner. Craig’s behavior, as described by the police and in news accounts, appears to show 8 signs of psychopathy.
Police affidavit
The most complete account of what happened is probably in the arrest warrant written by Detective Bobbi Olson of the Aurora Police Department. Here’s a summary:
Angela Craig went to visit her sister in Utah on March 1, 2023. She was physically and mentally healthy. Angela returned home on March 5.
On March 6, Angela went to the hospital. She complained that she was dizzy, her eyes did not want to focus, her body tingled. She had extreme headache, eye discharge, and altered mental state, high and low blood pressure. She was weak, shaky and vomiting. The hospital couldn’t determine what was wrong and sent her home.
Angela fell ill again and went back to the hospital on March 9. Doctors were still unable to determine why she was sick. She was released on March 14.
The next day, March 15, Angela’s brother brought her to a different hospital at 11 am. By 2 pm she suffered a seizure. Doctors struggled to help her. She quickly declined and was placed on life support. On March 18, she was pronounced brain dead.
In the meantime, employees in James Craig’s dental practice saw him engage in strange behavior. Instead of using his own computer, he used one in an examination room. He told an employee that he was expecting a personal package and not to open it. A different employee opened the package by mistake and found cyanide. There is no reason for a dental practice to have cyanide.
The employees told their boss, Ryan Redfearn, who was Craig’s business partner. Redfearn told hospital staff, who told the police.
Detective Olson investigated the office computer and found Google searches for poisons. She found orders indicating Craig bought poisons from Amazon and other websites.
Detective Olson also found emails between Craig and a woman who was not his wife. The woman had booked flights to visit him in March — while his wife was in the hospital.
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“Based on the totality of the investigation, James has shown the planning and intent to end his wife’s life by searching for ways to kill someone undetected, providing her poisons that align with her hospitalized symptoms, and working on starting a new life with [a new woman],” Detective Olson wrote. She concluded that there was “more than enough preliminary evidence sufficient to arrest James Craig with premeditated first-degree murder.”
James Craig has pleaded innocent.
8 Signs of psychopathy
The police affidavit and news reports include multiple incidents that reveal typical psychopathic behavior. Here are eight of them:
1. Poor financial history
Ryan Redfearn took over Craig’s dental practice in August 2022. The practice was struggling financially — since when do dental practices fail to make money?
Redfearn described Craig as a risk taker and found out he had filed for bankruptcy in 2021 and was on the verge of bankruptcy again.
2. Blaming anyone but himself
Redfearn relayed his suspicions that Craig had poisoned his wife to hospital staff, according to the affidavit. Craig found out and told his partner that the personal package was a ring for Angela. Redfearn knew it wasn’t a ring — it was cyanide. So then Craig changed his story, claiming Angela asked him to order it.
After Angela died, Craig blamed Redfearn for getting him in trouble with the police and asked him to stop talking to them. He said Redfearn should have talked to him personally.
3. Blaming the victim
Craig told a child protective services case worker that his wife had been suicidal and was intentionally overdosing on opioids or another substance. But no one else, including the children, saw any sign that she was thinking of suicide.
4. Tumultuous marriage
Angela’s sister told the detective the victim’s marriage was always tumultuous. Craig had multiple affairs. He’d been addicted to pornography since he was a teenager. He’d previously drugged Angela, then claimed it was because he wanted to commit suicide himself. All of this is classic psychopathic behavior.
Angela planned to leave her husband several times over the years, but he always convinced her to stay. Angela told her sister that Craig had “run the dental office into the ground” and that their finances were dire. She complained that Craig recently traveled to
Las Vegas, where she said he gambled away over $2,000.
5. Cheating husband
Prosecutors alleged that Craig wanted to kill his wife so he could be with another woman, an orthodontist from Texas he’d met at a conference a few weeks earlier, according to Fox News. Craig told the woman he was getting divorced and had moved out of the family home.
Craig had also allegedly used the website Seeking.com, claiming he had a net worth of $10 million in search of “sugar babies.”
Craig’s defense attorney argued that he had a history of extramarital affairs, so there was no reason to conclude that he killed his wife to be with the orthodontist. In other words, his cheating was no big deal.
6. Victim was emotionally unstable
Defense attorney Ashley Whitham portrayed Craig’s deceased wife as emotionally manipulative and mentally unstable.
Whitham described Angela as an “extremely private” stay-at-home mom of six who, due to her deeply held Mormon faith, was reluctant to share the couple’s marital issues, according to the New York Post. She claimed Angela was isolated and someone who was “not about to tell people about her marital struggles” and who was “broken.”
Ya think? Doesn’t that precisely describe any victim of a psychopath?
7. Blame the victim
CBS News reported that because Angela was so “broken,” the defense attorney said, her death may have actually been a suicide.
CBS also reported that Craig was charged with solicitation to commit murder for allegedly asked a jail inmate to murder an investigator. And, he was charged with solicitation to commit perjury for allegedly asking people to lie for him.
8. Manipulating others
Craig asked his daughter to create a deepfake video that made it seem like her mother asked him to order the poisons, according to CNN. He wrote a handwritten letter that gave step-by-step instructions.
If James Craig did, in fact, murder his wife, that is certainly psychopathic behavior. We’ll see if he’s convicted.
But in the meantime, his other behaviors, as described in the police affidavit and news coverage, is typical of a psychopath. If you ever see behavior like this in your relationship — be careful and get out.
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