John Jefferson
Inset: Angela Craig (Facebook). Background: James Toliver Craig (KUSA).
The trial for a Colorado dentist accused of killing his wife by allegedly poisoning her protein shakes was halted during jury selection when the defendant’s attorney suddenly quit, citing a professional conflict.
James Toliver Craig, 46, faces first-degree murder in the death of his 43-year-old wife, Angela Craig. His then-attorney, Harvey Steinberg, cited two sections of The Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct as reasons for withdrawing, the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office announced on X.
One was “the client persists in a course of action involving the lawyer’s services that the lawyer reasonably believes is criminal or fraudulent” and the other was “the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.”
The judge held over the case for an appearance of counsel hearing on Dec. 16 after Craig declined to represent himself, prosecutors said.
Steinberg declined to comment Thursday, the Denver Post reported.
Angela Craig died in March 2023. James Craig was arrested days after his wife went to the hospital on March 15, 2023, the third such visit over nine days for severe headaches, the Aurora Police Department said.
“Shortly after arriving at the hospital, the wife’s condition deteriorated rapidly, and she was placed on a ventilator in an intensive care unit,” authorities said. She was declared medically brain-dead a short time later.
Before additional details came out about the state’s theory of the case, locals were stunned that their Summerbrook Dental dentist had been booked for his wife’s alleged murder by poison.
As Law&Crime reported at the time, the dentist called himself and Angela “the proud parents of six great kids” on his dental practice website.
Authorities later alleged that Angela Craig’s mysterious illness and sudden death were caused by poison and that her husband was the prime suspect, using his dental profession to order arsenic and potassium cyanide.
An affidavit alleged that James Craig was possibly on the verge of bankruptcy and had been planning a life with another woman in the weeks before he Googled things in February 2023, such as “how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human” and “Is Arsenic Detectable in Autopsy?”
“The search history provided YouTube searches for ‘Top 5 Undetectable Poisons That Show No Signs of Foul Play’, ‘how to make poison,’ and ‘The Top 10 Deadliest Plants (They Can Kill You),”” the affidavit continued.
Starting on March 6, 2023, and continuing until her death on March 18, 2023, Angela Craig experienced symptoms that authorities concluded were traceable to the protein shakes her husband allegedly made for her.
An unnamed witness who knew the victim and spoke with her “almost daily” told investigators on March 17, 2023, that the Craigs’ marriage “had always been tumultuous” and that James Craig had “multiple affairs with several women,” plus a pornography addiction.
The witness also said that the suspect had drugged his wife years earlier.
Authorities said this must have been why James Craig texted his wife in March 2023, “Given our history, I know that must be triggering. Just for the record, I didn’t drug you.”
Investigators said evidence showed the dentist appeared to have been carrying on a “sexually intimate relationship” with another woman he flew to Denver “as the mother of his children was dying in the hospital.” Craig was accused of trying to start a “new life” with the other woman.
Law&Crime reported in April that while he was in jail, he was charged with a second offense for allegedly trying to get a family member and a second unidentified person to tamper with evidence.
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
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