ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. — The lead detective in the criminal case against the Aurora dentist accused of murdering his wife by poisoning her workout smoothies in 2023 testified in court Friday.
James Craig is on trial for one charge of first-degree murder, two counts of solicitation to commit tampering with physical evidence, two counts of solicitation to commit perjury in the first degree, and one count of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Five of the charges were added to this case during his time in jail.
He is accused of killing his wife, Angela Craig, 43, in part by poisoning her workout smoothies. Her cause of death was determined to be lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant found in over-the-counter eyedrops. She suffered through several bouts of sickness before her passing, and doctors struggled to determine why she was ill.
He was arrested on March 19, 2023. His bond was set at $10 million on June 28, 2023. That October, he pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
James Craig's trial began on Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
You can read Denver7's previous reporting on this trial here:
- Opening statements/day 1 - Tuesday, July 15
- Day 2 - Wednesday, July 16
- Day 3 - Thursday, July 17
- Day 4 - Friday, July 18
- Day 5 - Monday, July 21
- Day 6 - Tuesday, July 22
- Day 7 - Wednesday, July 23
- Day 8 - Thursday, July 24
Denver7 reporter Danielle Kreutter is in court Friday and we are summarizing the ninth day of the trial in this story.
Lead detective in the case testifies about evidence she retrieved during the investigation
Court resumed Friday morning with testimony from the lead detective in the James Craig case, APD detective Bobbi Olson. Olson testified last week as the trial was just getting underway.
Olson started her testimony discussing a letter she received from someone alleging that Angela Craig had paid someone $66,000 to frame James Craig for her murder.
After a brief back-and-forth about some evidence presented in court, Olson then spoke about the evidence he found inside the couple's home, including the shaker bottle that was latter tested for toxins and which tested positive for tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant found in over-the-counter eye drops.
Olson also touched on the life insurance policies that the couple had — one from Kansas City Life records and Lincoln Life insurance, where the suspect was listed as the beneficiary. Combined, the total life insurance coverage was worth $4 million, according to Olson.
Prosecutors then presented surveillance footage collected from the Craig home as part of their criminal investigation, which spanned over 1,000 hours of video taken between February and March of 2023.
Defense attorneys took issue with the surveillance video as they argued the footage skips in certain parts, noting there were large clips that have lapses of time that were not recorded by the cameras.
Next, Olson testified about some of the web searches retrieved from James Craig's dental office, and some of the surveillance video that showed the suspect picking up a box from Amazon which allegedly contained the arsenic prosecutors say was used to kill Angela Craig.
Olson then talked about a piece of surveillance video recorded in the early hours of March 6, 2023, which showed James Craig microwaving and mixing something, with prosecutors calling attention to a cup with a pink lid on the counter, which they said the court will see again in a different clip.
The footage then jumps to Angela Craig drinking something and then another one shows the couple chatting in the kitchen.
"You look kinda pale, you feel OK?" James asks Angela.
Prosecutors then hand Olson another exhibit admitted earlier as evidence — text messages between Angela and James Craig. These texts show the beginning of their conversation where she communicates that she's not feeling well.
The prosecution the presents a conversation recorded on surveillance footage between Angela and James Craig, in which Angela accuses James of trying to cast her as someone with suicidal ideations. Denver7 is publishing portions of that conversation:
Angela: "It was your fault that they treated me like a suicide risk and nothing I was going to say was going to be believed."
James: "I wanted a drug panel because you were accusing me."
Angela: "You just brought me home, you didn't try to call my PCP, you didn't do anything."
James: "I don't want you to pass out, dead on the bathroom floor."
Angela: "I can never tell if your memory is really intact or not."
Olson then talked about another piece of evidence in the case — phone data that showed James Craig going from this dental office to Midland Scientific, a distributor of lab supplies, chemical and equipment, to pick up an order for cyanide.
"Hopefully this is in stock and I can pick it up on March 9," read a note allegedly from James Craig.
Prosecutors then presented more surveillance footage from inside the Craig home on March 9, 2023, showing kitchen video of James Craig handling a shaker bottle and a white cup at around 5 a.m. that day. Another clip then showed James Craig bringing the shaker bottle to Angela Craig, who was sitting on the couch, about an hour later.
Following the presentation of this evidence, court then took its lunch break.
After the lunch break, Olson continued with her testimony, talking about evidence which has been submitted and presented before the court previously.
One such piece of evidence was an email James Craig sent from the account Jimandwaffles@gmail.com, inquiring about an order from two nights prior regarding a purchase of oleandrin, a drug that is used in folk medicine to treat congestive heart failure, but which National Institutes of Health says "exhibits various toxicities, especially typical cardiotoxicity, which is often fatal."
Another email from that account read, in part: "Your website says overnight delivery. I'm very disappointed that it sounds like it hasn't even shipped yet..."
Olson then testified about another piece of surveillance video, this time from the hospital where Angela Craig was admitted on March 15.
Part of the video shows James Craig in the hospital as he walks into a restroom after leaving Angela Craig's room and then walking out with a small clear object in his hand as he walks back towards Angela's room. About a minute later, the suspect is seen leaving her room and going to the nurse's stations, where he points at his arm before the nurses rush into her room.
Prosecutors then presented a four-page iPhone note written on March 16 at 1:03 a.m., which Olson said was the first written statement James Craig presented to investigators about what supposedly happened to Angela Craig.
The note references James Craig opening a Seeking.com account, and asking asking Angela Craig for a divorce, which according to the note James wrote, she responded by saying, "she said she was just going to end her life."
In the note, James alleged that Angela Craig "talked about driving her car into a pylon but was worried she wouldn't die."
The note also says that Angela allegedly "started talking about poisons" and that she reportedly asked James Craig "to research poisons for her that would kill fast with high accuracy."
Prosecutors then asked Olson if Angela Craig's search history showed any such queries in her browser history, which Olson denied.
"It was at this point, I had a change of heart, I was not trying to back her out of it," the note from James Craig's phone reads. "And so I bough a bunch of eye drops and arsenic online."
The four-page note then walks through a timeline of how Angela allegedly poisoned herself before dying. Denver7 is publishing those notes as they were presented in court below:
"I told her there was no way I was going to administer these to her, this was her idea.... all I would do is prepare the dosing so she could chose what to do."
"I told her our next conversations needed to be loving and sweet and we had to put on a show in public that we were a happy loving couple and she agreed."
"Two Mondays ago she tried the eye drops, that was our first ER visit. I must not have calculated the dosage correctly or she didn't use all the eye drops."=
"A couple days later she decided to try arsenic."
"She told me to put it in her protein shake in the morning so she wouldn't taste it, and she chugged it down."
"I did not want to tell the physicians what she had taken because she wasn't telling them what she had taken either."
"In the hospital she asked me to research what the fastest acting poisons was and what the maximum dosage was."
"I figured it was potassium chloride, but that would hurt a lot going into the IV or it would be cyanide."
"She said she wanted to try cyanide next, but read somewhere it tasted awful."
Prosecutors then asked Olson about the timing of the timeline in his four-page iPhone note, and questioned her about the date he allegedly purchased arsenic, which Olson said happened on March 8.
Court then went into recess for the day.
Testimony is expected to resume on Monday morning.
Editor's note on July 25 at 5:45 p.m.: A spokesperson for Seeking.com provided the following statement: "We do not comment on ongoing legal matters. If you'd like to know more about us, Seeking.com [seeking.com] is the premier dating site for successful and ambitious singles searching for a partner with whom they share a genuine and authentic connection. Our dating platform helps members build meaningful relationships based on shared ambitions and what truly makes them happy, be it romance, travel, luxury, freedom, or whatever it is they aspire to in their connections."
