DENVER (AP) — The trial of James Craig, a Colorado dentist accused of killing his wife Angela Craig by gradually poisoning her, is wrapping up. Lawyers are set to deliver closing arguments Tuesday before jurors begin deliberations.
Jurors have heard from some of Angela Craig's relatives and also women James Craig had been having affairs with, all called by prosecutors. James Craig didn’t testify and his lawyers didn’t present any witnesses, which they’re not required to.
Angela Craig, 43, was a mother of six children who friends and family say was devoted to her family. She was the youngest of 10 siblings herself and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Described as organized and dependable, she had taken over her mother’s role as the genealogist for her birth family, an important role in their faith. Her older brother Mark Pray said she had been “happy and positive” since she was a child. But her sister Toni Kofoed testified that her sister had confided in her about struggles she was having in her marriage. However, pushing back against defense suggestions that her sister may have killed herself, Kofoed said her sister had a “broken heart” but not a “broken mind.”
Angela Craig died in 2023 during her third trip to the hospital in a little over a week. Toxicology tests later determined she died of poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient found in over-the-counter eye drops. Early on, James Craig had purchased a variety of poisons before his wife's death and had put some in the protein shakes he made for her, according to police. During the trial, prosecutors alleged that he also gave her a dose of cyanide as she lay in her hospital bed on March 15, 2023, as doctors tried to figure out what was ailing her. She was declared brain dead soon afterward and never recovered.
In a notes file later found on James Craig’s phone by police, he said Angela Craig had asked him to help kill her with poison when he asked for a divorce after having affairs. In the document, which was labeled “timeline,” Craig said that he had eventually agreed to purchase and prepare poisons for her to take, but not administer them. Craig said that he had put cyanide in some of the antibiotic capsules she had been taking and also prepared a syringe containing cyanide.
According to his timeline, Craig wrote that just before she had to go to the hospital on March 15, 2023, she must have ingested a mixture containing the tetrahydrozoline, the eye drop ingredient, because she became lethargic and weak, before then taking the antibiotic laced with cyanide that he said he prepared for her. Mark Pray, who was visiting to help the Craig family because of his sister's mysterious illness, testified that he gave Angela Craig the capsules after being instructed to do so by James Craig, who was not at home. Pray said his sister bent over and couldn't hold herself up after taking the medicine. He and his wife then took her to the hospital.
The lead investigator, Detective Bobbi Olson, testified that James Craig's timeline account differed from statements he had made to others about what had happened, including accusing Angela Craig of setting him up to make it look like he had killed her.
Craig is also charged with trying to hire a fellow jail inmate to kill Olson.
The defense argues that the evidence doesn't show that James Craig poisoned and killed his wife and have seemed to suggest that Angela Craig may have taken her own life. They introduced into evidence Angela Craig's journal in which she talks about the struggles in their marriage in previous years and her husband's infidelity. In one entry she wrote, “He doesn't love me and I don't blame him.” The journal ended in 2018 and did not include any mentions of suicide, Olson said.
In opening statements, one of Craig's attorneys, Ashley Whitham, repeatedly described Angela Craig as “broken,” partly by Craig’s infidelity and her desire to stay married, since they were part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Ryan Brackley, a lawyer for the prosecution, delivers his opening arguments during the murder trial for James Craig, accused of killing his wife, at the Arapahoe District Court, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Centennial, Colo. (Stephen Swofford via Denver Gazette, Pool)
James Craig talks with his family from his seat before opening arguments in his murder trial, as he is accused of killing his wife, at the Arapahoe District Court, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Centennial, Colo. (Stephen Swofford via Denver Gazette, Pool)
James Craig wipes his face during opening arguments in his murder trial, as he is accused of killing his wife, at the Arapahoe District Court, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Centennial, Colo. (Stephen Swofford via Denver Gazette, Pool)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
Here's the latest:
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
