Dentist slowly killed wife by poisoning smoothies and tried to recruit daughter to cover tracks

A US dentist, who has been found guilty of fatally poisoning his wife, attempted to recruit one of the couple's daughters to help cover his tracks, she testified in court.

James Craig, 47, has been sentenced to life in prison without parole after a Colorado jury found him guilty of murder and other charges. He was accused of lacing his wife's smoothies with arsenic before giving her a fatal dose of cyanide while she lay ill in hospital.

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Angela Craig, his wife and mother of their six children, passed away in March 2023. She was found to have died by poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a substance that's found in over-the-counter eye drops It comes after a man died when his wife ran him over in car park in 'tragic accident'.

Defence lawyers had argued that Angela died by suicide because she was heartbroken about her husband's "constant" affairs.

But during the trial, Craig's daughter testified that he had asked her to make it seem like Angela had requested the ingredients that led to her hospitalisation and eventual death. She said that her father asked her to create a deepfake of her mother asking to order the toxic ingredients, via CNN.

Craig allegedly began plotting his wife’s murder in late February 2023, when investigators said he searched 'how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human' and 'is arsenic detectable in autopsy?' online.

Angela was initially hospitalised on March 6 after complaining of dizziness and weakness. She again became ill and returned to the hospital on March 9, staying for six days.

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She died during her third hospital visit after being taken off life support on March 18, following a seizure.

Prosecutors alleged that while visiting his wife in hospital, Craig - who was in financial difficulty - coldly poisoned her with cyanide.

Footage from a security camera showed the dentist holding a syringe before entering his wife's hospital room. Her condition rapidly deteriorated and she was declared brain-dead several days later.

The jury found Craig guilty of first-degree murder, along with other charges including solicitation to commit murder - resulting from his attempts to get a fellow inmate to kill a detective working on the case.

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Arapahoe County District Judge Shay Whitaker sentenced Craig to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder charge, plus 33 years for the additional counts.

"The evidence, the crime, the verdict and the sentence all speak for themselves," Judge Whitaker said during sentencing. "Dr. Craig unleashed a path of destruction as wide as a tornado and just as devastating - damage to his children, damage to Angela's family, damage to his own family."

One of the couple's six children delivered a victim impact statement. "I was supposed to be able to trust my dad," Miriam Meservy said, according to US news reports. "He was supposed to be my hero, and instead he'll forever be the villain in my book."