What happens when a woman repeatedly seeks medical help, but the person responsible for her illness is someone she trusts most?

This week on Pushing Up Lilies, I’m examining the tragic death of Angela Craig, a 43-year-old Colorado mother of six whose husband, dentist James Craig, was convicted of poisoning her. What began with dizziness, repeated hospital visits, and unexplained symptoms developed into a murder investigation involving arsenic, cyanide, suspicious purchases, and evidence that raised disturbing questions about what happened both at home and inside the hospital.

As a nurse and retired forensic death investigator, I’ll walk you through the medical and investigative evidence, the importance of toxicology testing, and how a concerned dental office employee and a nurse helped bring critical information to investigators. We’ll also discuss the challenges of recognizing poisoning, the difference between medical findings and criminal responsibility, and why Angela deserves to be remembered as more than a victim in her husband’s story.

* Listener Discretion Advised

Products Mentioned in Podcast:

Invisawear

The Nok Box

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

 00:06

Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson.

 00:10

Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.

 00:24

Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey, y’all. I’ve had to restart my video a couple of times.

 00:35

If you are listening and not watching on YouTube, I have the cutest new puppy, but he was literally attacking my feet, and it hurt so bad, and I had to start over.

 00:45

So welcome back to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m Julie Mattson, a registered nurse and retired forensic death investigator. Today, I wanna talk to you about James Craig.

 00:55

So, Craig is a Colorado dentist, and he was convicted of poisoning his wife, Angela.

 01:00

But as I always do, I wanna begin with her because when you hear about this case, you hear the dentist’s name, and you hear about protein shakes and poison and an affair.

 01:11

Before long, the woman who died just becomes a detail in a story about her husband, and we try to avoid that here. Angela deserves more attention than her cause of death. She was forty-thirty.

 01:23

She had six children, and she had people who loved her and expected many more years with her. And in March of twenty twenty-three, she became seriously ill, and she sought medical care repeatedly.

 01:34

Her family and medical team needed an explanation for what was happening to her. But that explanation unfortunately involved the person that she had married.

 01:44

Now, as a nurse, I think about her vulnerability as a patient, and as a forensic death investigator, I think about how the investigation moved from unexplained illness to evidence of deliberate poisoning.

 01:57

Those are different perspectives, but both definitely matter. Now, this happened in Colorado. I wasn’t involved in Angela’s investigation.

 02:06

I’m looking at the public evidence and explaining the questions that I would bring as an investigator to a death like hers. But some of those questions start before an autopsy.

 02:15

They start with a conversation, a medical record, or someone noticing something unusual and deciding to actually speak up. So, let’s start with Angela’s life before the hospital visits.

 02:28

Angela and James had been married for twenty-three years, and they lived in Colorado, where James practiced dentistry in Aurora. Now, Angela, again, was the youngest of ten siblings.

 02:38

Her family described her as dependable and very organized.

 02:42

Apparently, she took responsibility for the family’s genealogy, which is an important part of her faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 02:52

Now, I like knowing details about this because we all know keeping track of family history takes a lot of time, and it tells us something about how she spent her life beyond the final days.

 03:03

Now, her brother remembered a positive, happy sister, and other testimony said that there were very serious problems in her marriage, including James’ infidelity. Now, both belong in the account.

 03:17

A person has a life outside her relationship, even when problems inside the relationship take up enormous emotional space.

 03:25

And I don’t want us looking backward and asking why Angela didn’t make different choices. She didn’t have the evidence that we have today.

 03:33

She was living her marriage, and we’re examining it after a murder conviction, and those are very, very different positions. Now, James’ profession definitely adds another concern for me.

 03:46

Dentistry, as we know, just like nursing, requires a lot of clinical education, and so patients depend on the dentist’s judgment about medications and their health and procedures.

 03:57

So, I wouldn’t assume that professional training makes someone honest. I also wouldn’t assume that it makes someone guilty.

 04:03

His credentials belong in the background of the investigation, but they don’t replace evidence.

 04:08

Still, there is a particular betrayal in a health professional that uses his knowledge against a member of his very own family. So, let’s move into March.

 04:19

According to the arrest affidavit, Angela first went to the hospital on March sixth of twenty twenty-three.

 04:25

She felt faint and dizzy, and she had worked out with James that morning, and then he fixed her a protein shake. She went home, but her illness continued.

 04:34

She returned to the hospital on March ninth, and she remained there until the fourteenth.

 04:39

And on the following day, the fifteenth, she needed hospital care again, and this time she went to University Hospital. But unfortunately, she deteriorated.

 04:48

She had a seizure, and then she had to be admitted into intensive care. But on the eighteenth, Angela was pronounced brain dead. Now, think about the progression from the patient’s perspective.

 05:00

You feel sick, you go to get help, you go through evaluations, you go home, and then you need help again.

 05:07

So, I’m not gonna invent what Angela said in a hospital room or pretend to know her private thoughts, but that sequence is very upsetting.

 05:16

For me, the first investigative task would be getting the sequence correct. I would want the records from every facility and the initial symptoms in Angela’s own words.

 05:27

I would wanna distinguish what she reported from what someone else reported about her.

 05:33

So, if a spouse says a patient’s been vomiting all morning, I document that that was said by the spouse, and all you nurses know that’s just what we do.

 05:41

If the patient describes a different account or an onset, I preserve both accounts. Those are both important. Now, an inconsistency isn’t automatically deception.

 05:53

People remember times differently, and families are sometimes frightened, and a person who feels miserable also isn’t keeping a perfect log.

 06:00

But an investigator shouldn’t smooth out conflicting accounts to make the narrative easier to write. I would rather leave a question open and then give it an answer the evidence doesn’t support.

 06:13

So, when repeated hospital visits happen, I’d wanna know what happened between the visits. Where was the patient? Who was present? What changed? What medications were prescribed, if any?

 06:24

And who helped them? Who were they with?

 06:27

Those are questions about access and timing, and asking them doesn’t accuse everyone who brought a meal or helped a sick relative, but it means the investigation includes the hours outside of the hospital, ’cause that’s important.

 06:41

The original concern about poisoning actually came through James’s workplace. According to the affidavit, a package containing potassium cyanide arrived at the dental office on March thirteenth.

 06:53

Now, an employee opened it, and office manager Caitlin Romero became aware of its contents and later raised concerns about Angela’s illness.

 07:03

James’s business partner, Ryan Redfern, told a hospital nurse about the package delivery, and he said that the substance had no medical purpose in their dental practice, and they contacted the police.

 07:16

Now, I wanna stay with this moment because I think it deserves attention.

 07:20

A person outside the treatment team had information that the treatment team needed, so a nurse received that concern and acted on it, and detectives then had a reason to investigate beyond the medical presentation.

 07:34

Nobody in this sequence needed to arrive with a completed murder case.

 07:39

The office staff didn’t need a toxicology report before describing the package, and Ryan didn’t need to prove who administered anything before telling the nurse what worried him.

 07:51

They needed to report what they knew accurately, and that’s what was important. So, if I were interviewing those witnesses, I’d ask what each person saw firsthand. Did they see the container?

 08:03

Did they see the label, the box, or did someone else actually describe it to them? And I’d separate those answers very carefully.

 08:11

Three people repeating one observation aren’t three independent observations. I’d also ask when the concern began. Before Angela’s final hospital visit? After hearing about her deterioration?

 08:24

After discussing the package with a coworker? The order matters because later information changes how people are gonna interpret the earlier events.

 08:35

Now, I respect the seriousness of speaking up about someone you know.

 08:39

Reporting a concern about a colleague or a longtime friend carries a lot of personal consequences, and silence also carries consequences.

 08:47

But here, the information reached the people that were in a position to actually investigate.

 08:54

So, detectives began examining James’s online activity and purchases, and trial reporting described searches about poisons and their effects and whether investigators could detect them.

 09:06

Authorities connected poison purchases to the period before and during Angela’s illnesses, and the prosecution’s account was poisoning through substances that James provided to her, including her shakes.

 09:20

The case involved arsenic, cyanide, and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient that are in some eye drops. Now, the search history matters because I wanna explain how I think about it.

 09:32

And if you listen to true crime, you’ve likely searched something disturbing. A nurse, writer, student, or investigator definitely has reasons to research an unfamiliar poison.

 09:43

But that search alone doesn’t really mean that you murdered somebody.

 09:46

We used to search for things all the time at the medical examiner’s office, and there for a while, our IT department would cut us off, where there were certain things, we couldn’t look up, and it’s like, we need access to that information.

 09:57

So, my question would be how the searches fit with independent evidence. Was there actually a purchase or a delivery? Was there access to the person that became ill?

 10:07

Did the laboratory findings support exposure to the substance that he was looking up? Each question tests a different part of this allegation.

 10:17

So, I would also like digital specialists to address attribution. So, a computer sits in a room and a person uses it.

 10:24

Connecting those two requires evidence, especially in a workplace, if it’s a computer that multiple people have access to.

 10:31

So, as an investigator, I don’t get to replace technical analysis with a feeling about who seems suspicious. So, the more serious the accusation, the more disciplined I want the work to be.

 10:44

Now, tetrahydrozoline isn’t a word that most people use in everyday conversation. I can barely say it.

 10:50

But it’s associated with certain products intended for use in the eyes or nose, and swallowing those products is dangerous.

 10:57

Serious poisoning includes changes in consciousness, breathing, blood pressure, and even heart rate. And being sold without a prescription doesn’t make a product safe for everyday use.

 11:09

We gotta remember that. Now, from a nursing perspective, the ingredient matters more than how the bottle looks. A familiar product can still contain an active drug.

 11:19

And reporting on the medical findings identified cyanide and tetrahydrozoline as lethal agents, and arsenic also figured in the prosecution’s account of her earlier poisoning.

 11:32

So, when we discuss a death like Angela’s, three different questions sometimes get combined. What caused the death? What were the consequences? And who bears that criminal responsibility?

 11:44

The underlying cause identifies the disease, injury, or poisoning responsible for the fatal sequence. Saying a person’s heart stopped doesn’t really give us a reason why.

 11:55

We need to establish why a heart stopped. So, manner of death classifies the circumstances. The usual categories include natural, accident, suicide, homicide, and undetermined.

 12:07

Now, medical classification of homicide is different than a criminal conviction for murder.

 12:12

The death investigator’s office addresses the medical and investigative findings, and a criminal court addresses the charges and their legal requirements.

 12:21

I think that distinction kind of helps you understand why an investigation involves a lot of different professionals.

 12:27

A pathologist’s finding and a jury’s verdict answer related but different questions. Totally different. Now, in my work, I would be careful with those terms when speaking to a family.

 12:39

They’re trying to understand this enormous loss. They deserve an explanation in ordinary language, including which answers are available and which decisions belong to someone else.

 12:49

I would never want a family leaving a conversation with me believing a medical opinion had already resolved a criminal case.

 12:59

There’s a tendency to hear toxicology and imagine one simple result answering every question. So, I’d wanna read the actual report and discuss the interpretation with a specialist.

 13:10

But what specimen was tested? When was it collected? Which findings explained the illness? And which questions remain unanswered? A laboratory result deserves its full context.

 13:22

I definitely would not use a number from a headline to give an independent opinion about someone’s cause of death.

 13:29

I’d also ask exactly what testing had been performed, because different panels actually examine different substances.

 13:37

A negative result doesn’t mean a laboratory examined every possible chemical exposure and ruled out every chemical exposure. This is a general laboratory limitation.

 13:48

So rather than a statement about a particular negative test on Angela’s records. For a family, the phrase, “The tests were negative,” definitely sounds reassuring.

 13:58

But for an investigator reviewing records, it begins another question. Negative for what?

 14:04

I want the laboratory to explain the scope of the test and whether the clinical concern called for additional testing.

 14:11

I would avoid asking a report to answer a question it wasn’t designed to answer.

 14:16

Now, one of the most significant parts of this trial involved blood collected while Angela was still receiving treatment. Toxicologist James Brouwer actually discussed samples from different times.

 14:27

A March ninth sample supported arsenic. Now, samples from March fifteenth showed additional toxic substances, and a later sample had more cyanide than an earlier sample from the same day.

 14:40

And Brouwer testified the pattern supported another administration of cyanide actually in the hospital. Now, the prosecution argued that James gave Angela a final dose there.

 14:51

And as a nurse, I find the hospital allegation really disturbing. A patient arrives for help and actually depends on others when she’s very vulnerable.

 15:00

But as an investigator, I would focus on what the available evidence establishes about access, timing, and the change in her condition.

 15:09

So clinical records are important, just not only witness accounts.

 15:13

I would want specialists interpreting the laboratory findings with their reasoning, and I would want the relevant video reviewed in its original context. That’s important.

 15:24

The question isn’t whether a hospital seems like an unlikely place for an assault. The question is what happened in her case.

 15:31

And I wouldn’t automatically turn a delayed diagnosis into an accusation against the people that were treating her.

 15:39

Looking back with knowledge of the poison is different from evaluating a sick person before anyone actually reported an exposure.

 15:47

But if I were reviewing the care, I’d ask what information was available at each decision point, and when the team learned about the package, and what they knew before they found out about it, and what did they do when the information changed.

 16:02

But I’d want the records before making a judgment about an individual clinician. A tragic outcome alone does not tell me whether someone failed to meet a professional standard.

 16:13

My nursing background makes me really sensitive to this, because I would want accountability when evidence supports it.

 16:20

But I also want fairness towards professionals working with incomplete information during an emergency.

 16:26

So, at trial, the defense disputed the prosecution’s interpretation of hospital evidence, and the press actually described a blurry image and the defense’s argument about recovered syringes testing negative for poison.

 16:42

Those details, they belong here, but they may or may not be important. The jury heard competing interpretations. A guilty verdict doesn’t turn every disputed image into a clear image.

 16:54

It tells us the jury found the required criminal elements proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

 17:00

And I want my listeners to understand the difference between describing the verdict and overstating a particular exhibit.

 17:07

Now, forensic work should withstand careful questions, and if an item has limitations, they need to be explained.

 17:14

If a witness is uncertain, you have to preserve that uncertainty, because accuracy is gonna strengthen the account.

 17:21

And another point I think about is the distinction between the place someone dies and the places relevant to the death. Now, for Angela, the investigation extended beyond her hospital room.

 17:31

She was at home. She was in the dental office. There was digital activity, deliveries. There was a lot of different information provided.

 17:39

So, if I were assigned a hospital death with a suspected exposure somewhere, I wouldn’t treat the hospital address as the entire scene history.

 17:48

Now, I’d wanna know where the person became ill and which locations required follow-up, and I’d coordinate with the pathologist and law enforcement while keeping my own documentation very precise.

 18:00

Now, the National Institute of Justice’s death investigation guidance actually emphasizes independent work alongside collaboration, and I appreciate both sides of that approach.

 18:12

A medical legal death investigator and a criminal detective have related responsibilities, but they aren’t interchangeable.

 18:19

Neither is a substitute for a forensic pathologist or a laboratory specialist.

 18:24

So, I bring my observations and records to the people responsible for interpreting them, and I would ask questions when information didn’t fit.

 18:32

But I wouldn’t claim expertise outside of my role to make an explanation sound more certain.

 18:38

And I would pay attention to who’s handling the evidence, who collected an item, how was it identified, and then where did it go?

 18:45

Because chain of custody is very important, and those questions sound routine until someone has to explain a gap in court. And good documentation gives another person a way to check the work.

 18:58

I want a reviewer to understand how an observation became a conclusion without needing to take my word for it. We need to talk about the prosecution’s explanation for James’s motive.

 19:10

Prosecutors presented his affairs and financial concerns as reasons that he wanted out of the marriage.

 19:16

Now, their argument was that he wanted the benefits of leaving without the personal and financial consequences of divorce.

 19:23

Of course, the defense challenged the financial picture and disputed the claim that he murdered Angela altogether.

 19:30

So, I’m careful about motive because it’s easy to let a bad marriage stand in for proof of a crime. We’ve probably all done that before.

 19:39

Infidelity establishes infidelity, and financial trouble establishes financial trouble, but neither on its own proves that a person committed murder.

 19:49

But in this case, the prosecution presented those issues alongside the poisoning evidence and James’ conduct. So, for me, motive helps explain the allegation.

 19:59

The physical, digital, and testimonial evidence still has to support that. I also wouldn’t diagnose James from news coverage. I don’t need to assign him a psychiatric label to discuss his actions.

 20:11

The documented conduct is serious enough without an unsupported diagnosis. The defense’s alternative account was Angela wanted to end her life, and James helped her.

 20:22

Public reporting described a note on his phone laying out his version of events, and it attributed requests for poison to Angela.

 20:30

Her journal and the emotional strain of the marriage also became a big part of the trial, and the jury rejected the defense account and convicted him of murder.

 20:40

Now, this part of the case raises a difficult issue for me as a death investigator.

 20:45

If someone tells me a deceased person was suicidal, I need to investigate the statement, and I need to know who said it, what they observed, and whether independent information supports it.

 20:56

I would not dismiss the possibility because the person had children or seemed happy. I also wouldn’t accept it because a spouse described a painful marriage.

 21:06

But neither shortcut serves the deceased person. A journal entry deserves its date and context.

 21:12

We need to know who wrote it, what was happening to them, what did it say, and what are others assuming that it means.

 21:19

I would be uncomfortable taking one vulnerable sentence from years of someone’s private writing and treating it as a complete explanation for her death.

 21:28

People deserve careful examination of their lives, particularly when they no longer have the opportunity to explain it in their own words. So, there’s another distinction here.

 21:39

The presence of a poison tell us about exposure, but we also have to determine who supplied it, who gave it, and with what intent. That requires additional investigation.

 21:51

So, I’d want the evidence addressing each question rather than allowing one answer to stand in for all of them.

 21:58

James’ behavior after his arrest introduced even more evidence and more criminal charges.

 22:04

Apparently, there were efforts to create false evidence and testimony, and one involved asking a daughter to arrange a fake video of Angela saying that she had actually requested the chemicals.

 22:16

And I have a hard time with this part as a mother and a grandmother. A child who lost her mother should not be asked to help manufacture a version of her mother’s final wishes.

 22:27

I won’t pretend to know the daughter’s private feelings, but I think about the position such a request creates.

 22:34

The surviving parent is asking for help, and the requested help involves falsifying something about the parent who died. There is no fair reason to put a child in that position.

 22:45

I mean, that should never, ever, ever happen. And the request creates a separate investigative question: Where did the evidence come from?

 22:52

If a video suddenly appeared in a disputed death, I would want to establish its origin and whether or not it was authentic. Who supplied it? Where was the original file? When was it created?

 23:04

And what actually supports that history? Seeing a familiar face on a screen would not be enough for me. Here, the reported issue was a request to produce fabricated material.

 23:17

I’m not describing an authentic recording of Angela asking for poison. The case also included a solicitation to kill the lead investigator, Detective Bobby Olson.

 23:29

So, James was convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in connection with the effort involving a fellow inmate. Think about the scope of conduct being addressed.

 23:42

Angela’s death was the original investigation, and then the person investigating it became the subject of a murder solicitation.

 23:51

From my professional perspective, a threat against an investigator needs its own evidence and its own response. It should not become background drama in this original case.

 24:01

I would want the statements preserved and corroborated, and I would want the people responsible for safety informed, and I would want investigators to evaluate the threat without assuming that it meant nothing, because you never know.

 24:15

People are crazy. Now, at the same time, the information from someone in custody deserves scrutiny. What did the person hear firsthand? Was anything recorded or written? Did they expect a benefit?

 24:27

What independent evidence actually supports their account? But taking a threat seriously and checking the source thoroughly are compatible responsibilities.

 24:37

By the end of the trial, jurors had heard evidence about Angela’s illness, James’s activities, and the later attempts to interfere with the case.

 24:45

And on July 30th, 2025, the jury found James Craig guilty of first-degree murder. And the other sentences added thirty-three consecutive years.

 24:56

On August 7th, 2025, court order granted his request for an appointed appellate counsel and permission to proceed without paying appellate fees because of indigency. Poor fella.

 25:08

For this episode, researched November 11th, 2026, I found no published appellate ruling changing the conviction.

 25:16

The confirmed outcome is the murder conviction and the sentence that I actually described. So, the sentencing hearing gave Angela’s family an opportunity to describe their loss.

 25:26

I always like when they do an impact statement, and the sister spoke about the future that she no longer had, and James did not address the court at sentencing according to reporting.

 25:38

I don’t interpret a dependent silence as additional proof, but the conviction rested on evidence presented at the trial.

 25:45

So, what I take from the family statements is the life continuing around an absence. A criminal sentence establishes a punishment, but it doesn’t restore the daily relationship that someone lost.

 25:58

I think about the ordinary conversations that a family expects to keep having, calling your sister, asking your mother a question, sharing news about having to think about whether she’s available to hear it.

 26:11

Those losses don’t have a convenient ending on sentencing day. And children from a case like this deserve privacy as they grow, and they have to decide how to live with it.

 26:21

They definitely don’t owe the public a particular response to their father or a continuing account of their grief. My own focus would remain on the person who died. What happened to her?

 26:34

What supports the explanation? Have we represented her words and her family history? Those questions do matter even when the conduct surrounding a death makes us angry.

 26:46

Angela Craig sought help while she was ill, and her life ended at forty-three. So, her husband was convicted of murdering her.

 26:55

She deserves to be remembered as a woman with her own family, and her identity belongs to her.

 27:01

So, I definitely appreciate everyone spending time with me, and if you value these conversations about death investigations, share this episode and follow the show.

 27:12

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 27:16

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 27:25

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 27:31

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 27:38

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 27:44

Both links are in the episode notes, and I do earn a commission on qualifying purchases through my affiliate links.

 27:51

Thank y’all so much for supporting Pushing Up Lilies, and I’ll talk to y’all next time. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.

 28:02

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 28:12

Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.