Lovesick: A Tale Of Poison
In March of 2023, an office manager at a dentist office in Colorado received a package that would make her blood run cold. It was cyanide, and it was addressed to her boss, whose wife had been in the hospital with a strange illness...
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SOURCES
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-craig-wife-poison-charged-trying-have-detective-killed/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/01/us/colorado-dentist-james-craig-murder-case/index.html
TRANSCRIPT
On March 15th, 2023, a Colorado man named James Craig sat by his wife’s hospital bed. There, 43 year old Angela Craig, mother of six, was hooked up to machines that were gently beeping and whirring.
About a week and a half prior to this, Angela had started feeling strange. She texted James in the middle of the day that she was feeling dizzy and cold, and it was like her eyes couldn’t focus. He was concerned enough to bring her to the hospital, but her symptoms had improved quickly and she was sent home.
just a few days later, however, things took a turn for the worse. A wave of severe nausea and headaches washed over her, and so she was brought back to the hospital.
The second time she was there, she stayed for about a week, and once again the symptoms started improving. The doctors ran a bunch of labs and nothing really jumped out at them, they weren’t really sure why these symptoms started but Her vitals got stronger and she wasn’t feeling as horrible, and so, she was released.
But withing 24 hours she was back, laying in a hospital bed once more with severe nausea, dizziness and headaches. And no idea where it was stemming from.
In the room with James and Angela, was a man named Ryan, who had known the couple for a long time. He had gone into business with James to start their own Dental Office, and now they were well respected Dentists in their community. James was particularly liked, his patients had really nothing but nice things to say about him, and Ryan couldn’t help but think what a shame it was that his wife was so sick. Why did bad things happen to good people.
Ambience- tense
Just then, the steady quiet beeps of angela's machines started screaming (SFX, Beeps intensify), and within seconds nurses were flocking to her room. Ryan felt like that was his cue to leave, he didn’t want to be in the way of the doctors, and plus, he had to get back to the dentists office. He was keeping operations running so James could spend time while Angela healed.
But when Ryan arrived back at the office, the young woman who worked the front desk had a panicked look in her eyes, and she stood up the second he walked in the door. Um, I have to show you something, she said, and she brought him behind the desk where she showed him a package that she had torn open.
That day, while Ryan and James were in the hospital with Angela, James was supposed to be getting an urgent package delivered to the office. “I thought it would be helpful if I opened it for him” the girl said, nearly hyperventilating. The package was a foil square with no markings on it other than a Biohazard warning label. Inside was Potassium Cyanide.
She said she didn’t know what it was got nervous at the word cyanide, so she googled it. Maybe it had some dental use she wasn’t aware of. But the first things that came up were Cyanide poisoning. The symptoms? Dizziness, headaches, nausea. All symptoms that sent Angela to the hospital three times.
Ryan was stunned, he didn’t know what to do. All he could get out was, Call The Cops
Welcome back to heart starts pounding, I’m your host Kaelyn Moore.
I’m going to tell you a story today about poison, a theme that felt fitting as we approach valentines day here in the US. Throughout history, poison is often linked to lovers quarrels, used by sneaky husbands who want a fresh start, and women looking into cashing in on their husbands insurance policies.
But that’s not always the case, and so I want to provide some additional context to poisoning cases. Like what does a typical poisoner look like, and what does the type of poison they use say about them?
If you’ve been listening to the bonus episodes on Patreon, you might recognize this case from an episode two years ago, but there’s been a lot more information that’s come out and some pretty shocking updates, so it’s worth it to stick around for those
Before we get to that, You guys have been sending in a lot of your darkly curious jobs and hobbies, so this episode i want to shout out the listener, Erin, who let me know that they were actually the real estate agent who sold count Orlok his home in Wiborg. Congrats girl! That sounds like huge sale and I hope Orlok is loving the new place.
You can always let me know the darkly curious things you do for work or pleasure in reviews or comments, and I’ll be sure to shout you guys out in episodes.
Ok, let’s get back to it.
So What followed, after the shocking discovery the very astute front desk worker made, was a police investigation. Police arrived at University Hospital where Angela was being treated at 12:30am on March 16th, but it was already too late. Her condition was quickly worsening, and she was suffering from seizures and increased cranial pressure. By 2pm, she no longer had any brain activity. And on March 18th she was declared brain dead.
James requested that no autopsy be done on Angela, which didn’t sit right with hospital staff. Someone pleaded with him to allow Angela’s body to be autopsied. What if she died of something that is genetic, wouldn’t you want to know in case it could affect your children?
But James wasn’t budging, he said if they couldnt’ figure out what she was sick with while she was alive, then he didn’t want them poking around her body when she was dead.
This seemed suspicious, especially because The hospital and police had both been made aware of James’ odd purchase, and they pulled him aside to ask him some questions. What was a guy like him doing ordering Cyanide? To his office?
Well, James had a very quick response to that. He said that yes, he had ordered Cyanide, but it was because his wife, Angela, had asked him to.
He told the police that he had told Angela the previous December that he wanted to get a divorce, and after that her mental health had rapidly declined. It got so bad, James told the officers, that he had to revive her on multiple occasions due to her attempts to take her own life. She had recently asked him to buy her Cyanide online. He didn’t think she would actually take it, he told the officers, he thought it was like a game of chicken, he explained.
If your wife was asking you to buy poison, was severely depressed, and had attempted her own life MULTIPLE TIMES why didn’t you tell the hospital that she may have poisoned herself? Why didn’t you try to get her help? There were no police reports confirming Angela’s attempts on her life, and a quick questioning of her friends and children indicated that James may be fabricating that part.
The police launched an investigation, which included confiscating James’ phone, and things quickly started looking worse and worse for James.
What they found was that the first day that Angela started feeling ill, she texted her husband “I feel drugged” and his response is, well, pretty damning.
He wrote back “Given our history, I know that must be triggering. Just for the record, I didn’t drug you.”
Given our history? What history was James referring to? Well, lets go back to the beginning of the story.
James and Angela Craig lived in Aurora colorado with their 6 children. They married in 2001, and while on the outside it seemed like they had a perfect life, James being a successful dentist and all, people close to them knew that their marriage had long been tumultuous.
James was known to have multiple affairs while married to Angela. James had filed for bankruptcy in 2021, things were not going well at the Dentist office, apparently, word on the street was that he was close to having to declare it again. And Angela had recently complained to a friend that James had gone to Vegas and Gambled away over $2000.
But the most devastating thing to occur in their marriage was 6 years prior to Angela’s death. When she was drugged by James the first time.
Now, there’s not a ton of details about this drugging, but Angela had confided in a friend that James had slipped her something, we don’t know what, and when Angela found out what was happening, James claimed that he was planning on taking his own life, so he drugged Angela so she wouldn’t be able to stop him.
After that, the couple stayed married. Which maybe now is a good time to underscore that if you stay with someone who hurt you, you do not deserve to be murdered. Just wanted to make that clear.
But James had joined a club, a club that throughout history has had members from every demographic. Jealous Men, vengeful sons, angry mothers, and bored wives. The poisoners club.
In many ways, James fit the profile of a poisoner. There’s a long standing myth that women poison more than men, but that’s not true. At least, its not on paper.
The idea is that poison is a woman's weapon of choice comes from the nature of it. It requires no grotesque violence, no strength. There’s no need to overpower your victim. The stereotypical poisoner was a woman who knew she couldn’t take her husband in a fight, so she’d slip something in the dinner she’d prepared for him, as did Tillie Kilmek, a polish woman in Chicago who killed multiple husbands with her famous stew, and then cashed in on their life insurance policies.
Poison is also not something that can be done in the moment, it has to be carefully planned. It has to be procured, which was easier to do at some times in history. Your victim also can’t know they’re being poisoned, which takes some manipulation. Arsenic, for instance, is a poison that can take multiple doses over time to kill as it accumulates in the victim's body. And as the victim gets sicker and sicker and starts to wonder what is happening, the poisoner may have to convince them that they are not, in fact being poisoned.
Take for instance, the case of the Belews in California in 1897. Susie Belew lived with her Brother Lewis, and was just days away from her wedding when she came down with a horrible stomach ache.
A doctor was called to check on her, but by the time he arrived, Susie’s brother Lewis and the Boarder who lived with them were also sick. The doctor said it must have been the meal they had all shared the night before, told them to rest, and then went on his way.
But their condition kept worsening. It got so bad that Susie and Lewis’s other brother, Frank Belew, came over to take care of them. He brought them cups of tea and soup broth, but the group could hardly eat, and within a few days, all three of them were dead.
Their condition sounded suspiciously like arsenic poisoning, but the Belew’s had no enemies, and tests were done on the food in the house and the water in their well and it all came back negative for the poison.
But one afternoon, an investigator was walking around the Belew’s home looking for anything that would indicate how the trio died, when he saw the teakettle was still sitting by the fire. He went over and lifted the lid, and he saw that all around the lid of the kettle was a white powdery substance.
He called for the kettle water to be tested for arsenic and it came back positive. There was so much arsenic in the teakettle, actually, that when the water boiled off the arsenic caked onto the lid in a powdered form.
The question then became, well who put the arsenic in the kettle?
Well, the night the trio had dinner, the dinner that seemed to start all of their symptoms, there was actually a fourth person there. One who didn’t come down with any symptoms afterwards. Frank, the brother that came back to help his siblings.
Frank was a jealous man with a criminal past, who was cut out of his parent will. When they passed, it seems like he was upset that susie and Lewis received inheritances, but he did not.
The night of the dinner, he spiked the tea kettle, but as is often true with arsenic, one dose isn’t enough, so he came back to nurse his brother and sister back to health with cups of tea, all poured from the kettle.
Frank fit the profile of a typical poisoner. He was a man, for one. He was Manipulative, kniving, but also, he had a sense of inadequacy, something that is typical of poisoners, according to Dr. Joni Johnston, clinical/forensic psychologist and private investigator.
However, Dr. Johnston adds, it’s believed that only 1 in 5 poisoners are ever caught. So in reality we don’t have a profile on poisoners, we just have a profile on the ones that get found out. maybe women DO actually poison more, they just tend to go undetected…
In early March of 2023, the office manager at James’ dental office noticed that James was in the back of the examination room on a computer. That was strange, she thought, because James never really used the computer at the office.
An investigation of this computer showed that around this time James was making searches like “how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a person? And “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?” he even looked up a youtube video titled “Top 5 Undetectable Poisons that show no signs of Foul play” the video cited Polonium, Mercury, Botulinum toxin, Cyanid, and arsenic as undetectable poisons. Editors note: the poisons are all detectable. Just so we’re clear.
But James also did something that made me stop in my tracks while I was researching this, and honestly it probably put me on a list.
He bought arsenic for $13 on Amazon.
Now, I will say, when I first caught wind of this story in 2023, I did look it up and yes, the arsenic that James bought was still available for purchase on Amazon.com. However, I did look it up again, and it is no long purchasable there.
On March 6th, Angela began feeling ill after James made her a protein smoothie that morning. She was quickly released after she started feeling better, most likely because she wasn’t taking more doses of poison.
on March 8th, according to the affidavit, James flew a woman he was having an affair with out to Denver. James had also purchased a second flight for his mistress to visit him March 16th - 20th. He purchased those flights the day the Arsenic was delivered to his home.
And the following day, March 9th, 2023, James reached out to a company called Midland Scientific. The company is based out of Nebraska is described on it’s website as a one stop shop for all of your laboratory needs, including pH test strips, petri dishes, equipment and also chemicals.
Through the site, James placed an order for the potassium cyanide, a much faster acting poison than arsenic. Buying the cyanide was not as easy as buying arsenic on Amazon. It’s is actually very difficult to order in America, and for good reason.
in his book When We cease to Understand The World, Benjamin Labatut said
“If arsenic is a patient assassin, hiding ou t in the most recondite of the body’s tissues and accumulating there for years, cyanide takes your breath away.”
Cyanide kills in an instant. it does this by triggering a reflex in your body that almost instantaneously stops your ability to breath. The sound it causes people to make is known as an Audible gasp, because the victim literally gasps for air before collapsing from their heart giving out.
Cyanide kills so quickly that it’s said only one person who took it lived long enough to describe the taste. Acrid, they said.
To give an example of just how toxic Cyanide is, we can look at Jonestown. Now, Jonestown refers to the commune in the Guyanese forrest created by cult leader Jim Jones. Jones had brought his followers down from America with a promise of creating a utopia, but really he was just isolating them from their loved ones so he could have full control over them.
When his plan was not going accordingly and he feared that they were going to be shut down, he ordered over 900 people to drink Flavorade laced with Cyanide.
And though many of his followers were eager to drink the poison and go to the next life with their leader, others were not. But armed guards were standing by the flavor aid, watching to make sure everyone drank it.
So some had the idea that they would just hold it in their mouths and then maybe play dead until they could formulate a plan.
However, cyanide is so toxic, that merely holding it in their mouths was enough for the poison to take effect, and they died within moments.
This is probably why a rep from midland Scientific reached out to James to inquire why he was buying the Cyanide. And James responded that he was a dentist who did craniofacial reconstruction, and some of his patients were allergic to some of the metals he used. The cyanide was going to be used to help him layer new metals to use on his patients, and if successful, his findings would be published in a paper for the National Institutes of Health. He included his dental license number so that the rep could confirm what he was saying.
And I included these details so that people don’t think they can just email a lab supply company and order Cyanide, I guess unless you’re a registered dentist and then it’s fine.
The rep told James that because he was a new member in the system, it would take probably an extra day for the shipment to come. And he checked in every day with her to see where the package was. There were delays in the shipping, and by that point Angela was already back in the hospital.
But on March 11th, while Angela was in the hospital, James apparently waited in his office all day for the package. When it didn’t come, he shot off a pissy email to the rep that started with “Wow, its 730 at night and I have been waiting all day in my office for the shipment. Looks like it didn’t come.”
As a reminder, at this point in the investigation, as the police are reading through these email exchanges, James had told them that he ordered the poison at Angela’s request. So then why would he be so desperate to get the package quickly?
On March 13th the package was noticed by the office manager, and by March 16th, police had a search warrant for James’ home. They confiscated a water bottle, powder proteins, workout-mix shakers, a tablet computer and two bags of white powder they found.
An autopsy done on Angela found that she had consumed lethal doses of cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, a medicine found in eye drops that can be lethal if consumed. arsenic was listed as a “significant condition” relating to her death
James was arrested for the murder of his wife in 2023, and is still awaiting sentencing. His trial was actually supposed to start late last year, but his attorney abruptly quit his case.
And shortly after that two new charges were brought against James, one of them being for an attempt to solicit murder.
Yes, that’s right, James tried to order someone’s death while in prison. It hasn’t been released exactly who he was targeting, but it’s believed to be a detective that worked on James’ case. It seems like even though he didn’t get away with murder, he still believes that he can do whatever he wants without consequences.
And that’s proved even further by another plot he concocted while behind bars. He also tried to coerce another inmate into helping him plant evidence to make it look like Angela had in fact taken her own life. He tried this in April of 2023, shortly after his arrest.
But he approached another inmate to find some attractive women, between the ages of 25 and 45, James was very specific about that part, and have them pretend to be James’s mistresses. The story he wanted to concoct was that Angela had learned about the affair and had worked with the mistress to kill herself and make it look like James did it.
James offered the man free dental work for his mother. The inmate said he would think about it, and then immediately went to the authorities in the prison because he didn’t want to get roped into James’ dumb plan that was potentially going to implicate multiple other people.
Throughout all of this, even though James insisted he was innocent, that it was Angela who planned this entire thing, it just made him look more like the typical poisoner who gets caught. An impatient man with childish tendencies, who wants a quick solve to a problem and no consequences.
But, as is the case with many poisoners, getting away with the first crime only makes them want to do it more. It’s like they develop a god complex, and think that they’re so much smarter than authorities, which James was already showing signs of feeling. It’s lucky that he was caught before he could have done even more damage
And now, it’s time for ONE DARK THING
ONE DARK THING
Welcome to One Dark Thing, a segment where I tell you well, one more dark thing that’s been on my mind, and with all of this talk about poison, I wanted to tell you about a current poisoning case that’s unfolding in Brazil.
On December 23rd of last year, seven people gathered in a house on the North Coast of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil for Christmas celebrations.
There, a 61 year old woman named Zeli brought out a special christmas time cake, bolo de Natal, which is a bunt cake, often a fruitcake with white icing. So everyone sat down to have this cake, when Zeli’s grandson, a 10 year old boy, mentioned the cake tasted weird. And as everyone was eating the cake they started to kind of agree, there was like a spiciness to it that didn’t quite taste right.
And then, everyone started getting violently ill, including Zelli. Horrible stomach cramps, throwing up, it was like a food poisoning that set in immediately.
The group ends up going to the hospital where three of them sadly passed away, a woman named Tatiana Flores da Silva 43, Maida Flores da Silva, 58, and Neuza (Nayooza) Silva dos Anjos, 65.
Because of the immediate onset of symptoms as well as the strange tasting cake before three people died, police were brought in to investigate, and when they test the cake, it comes back positive for Arsenic. A LOT of arsenic. Like some reports suggested 350x the amount that would be needed to kill someone.
And the police looked at Zelli. She was the one who baked the cake, but she was also in the hospital as sick as the others, though getting better. But she tells the police that she didn’t bake the cake alone.
I baked it with my 10 year old grandson, she said. The one who also got sick. And his mother, my daughter in law, Desi.
So someone who knew one of the deceased spoke to police about the contemptuous relationship that Deisi had with her mother in law, Zelli.
But even more suspicious still, is Zelli’s husband had gotten food poisoning just a few months earlier in September and had actually passed away.
On september 2nd Deisi brought powdered milk to Zelli and her husband and both fell sick enough to go to the hospital. Zelli recovered, but her husband didn’t make it.
After the fact, she sent Zelli texts that seemed kind at the time, but now seem much more sinister. Like:
"I think we need to pray more, accept more and not look for someone to blame where there is none. Neither the police nor forensics can help us to unravel the matter,"
Because of the cake incident, police felt like they should exhume the husbands body and test for arsenic to. The test, came back positive.
And her in laws were not the only people who have fallen sick around her recently. Her husband and son had both gotten violently ill twice in the last six months, and officers believe that was also due to arsenic poisoning.
Deise was arrested earlier in January, but there is no official motive to this crime. Everyones best guess for now is that Deise didn’t like her in laws, but why go after her son and husband? and now officers are also looking into the 2020 death of Deisi’s father.
Ok, that’s all I have for you for this week’s episode, be sure to tune in next week, here or on the free audacy app, for tales of Backrooms horror. If you’re afraid of liminal spaces or glitches in the matrix, you’re really going to be creeped out next week. And until then, stay curious.