James Craig, a Colorado dentist, is on trial for murdering his wife Angela in 2023. Craig allegedly poisoned her by spiking her smoothies with a mix of arsenic, cyanide, and tetrahydrozoline. After she was hospitalized, he allegedly poisoned her again with a cyanide pill. In his defense, he tried to paint his wife as a deeply troubled and depressed woman who poisoned herself. But more details are emerging that show Craig apparently created a web of deception to murder his wife. And it seems that he tried to get his daughter to be an accomplice.
On July 17, 2025, one of Craigâs daughters testified that her father asked her to make it seem that her mother wanted him to order the ingredients that led to her death, CNN reported. James Craig allegedly gave his daughter a letter filled with a detailed list of instructions on how to create a deepfake video of his wife, his daughter claimed in her testimony.Â
Deepfakes are AI-generated images, videos, and audio files made to appear real but that are digitally manipulated.
âI love you ⌠Iâm sorry to even have to ask you for this help,â Craig reportedly said in the letter read aloud by prosecutor Michael Mauro in court. His daughter testified that the handwriting was that of her father.
Additionally, the letter included instructions to buy a âcheapâ laptop and to install a private network and dark web browser. All of this was to be paid for with a prepaid Visa card, according to the daughter, CNN reported. She was also to make the video appear as if it had been made in the weeks before Angela Craigâs death. The daughter was also told to burn the video onto thumb drives and tell investigators she had found them in her motherâs bag. Then, she was told to destroy the laptop.
According to the letter, she was chosen to execute this plan because she was âstoic and practicalâ like her mother and the most adept at technology. She admitted that the letter was âdisappointing, confusing, and made her feel a lot of emotions.â
During her testimony, the 20-year-old woman explained that she acted as a caretaker when her mother began getting sick, per CNN. She drove her to the emergency room multiple times, and she cared for her younger siblings.
People obtained a probable cause affidavit that showed Angela Craig was first hospitalized on March 6, 2023. She complained of dizziness and weakness. Three days later, she returned to the hospital, staying for six days. On March 18, she died after suffering a seizure during her third trip to the hospital.
According to the probable cause statement, Angela Craig had told her sister that James Craig had recently lost more than $2,000 gambling. She also claimed that he had ârun the dental office into the ground.â He was allegedly also having a relationship with another woman.
Craig pleaded not guilty to charges that include first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder, solicitation to commit perjury, and solicitation to commit tampering with physical evidence, CNN reported.
