Mistress of 'killer' Colorado dentist testifies he sent photo of his wife as she lay dying in hospital

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

The woman who met and fell in love with accused wife poisoner James Craig testified he sent her photos of his dying wife, lied repeatedly, and asked her to visit just hours after learning his spouse was likely brain dead.
Texas orthodontist Karin Cain, who met Craig at a dental conference in Las Vegas in February 2023, testified that he took her on a hike, out to dinner and spent time in her hotel room when she flew to Colorado to see him on March 16, 2023.
Angela Craig, 43, the mother of Craig's six children, was declared brain dead on March 15 and died on March 18.
Craig is charged with fatally poisoning the devout Mormon in the weeks after he met Cain. Prosecutors say he used cyanide, arsenic and tetrahydrozoline – a chemical found in eyedrops – to kill Angela amidst financial troubles and his budding romance.
The defense argues that Angela was 'manipulative' and 'suicidal' – and that Cain was just the latest in a long line of extramarital relationships. One of Craig's attorneys sensationally revealed in court on Tuesday that he'd hired a Las Vegas prostitute at the same dental conference where he met the orthodontist.
Cain spent more than four hours on the stand, her voice shaking with nerves as she occasionally cried, wiped her eyes with tissues and glared at the father of six sitting at the defense table. He appeared determined not to look back at her.
She was at the end stage of divorce and had been 'single for almost four years' when she met Craig the month before Angela's murder, she told the court .
He was in front of her in line for the bus to a dinner at the NFL stadium, she said – and it had 'felt intimidating to go to a big dinner by myself.'
She said they quickly began sharing personal details about their marital struggles, and she emphasized how hard it had been 'discussing it with my kids.'
Craig, Cain told the court, said he was in the 'same situation … also at the end of a hard divorce.
The dentist 'shared with me how he and his wife had told the kids that they were divorcing' and 'how the kids had responded,' Cain testified.
'That was the thing that drew me to him: The conversations were very deep and honest and vulnerable.'
She repeated 'honesty' ruefully as her voice trailed off, touching her forehead and blinking.
Her marriage, Cain told the court, had 'been a really not safe place, and so when I felt all this safety … I felt seen and heard, and it was extremely comforting and drew me in.'
The pair ate dinner together, she invited him to her room and they 'made out,' she said – but she felt the next day that it had been 'too much too fast.'
She told him that she wanted to avoid full physical intimacy 'until I know this is my forever person … that's pretty hard, being this age, so it's a difficult thing to bring up to people.
'But he was very receptive and kind and felt like that was reasonable … he understood and agreed with the gravity of what that kind of physical intimacy means.
'We just had that agreement that that would be a boundary for us.'
Cain and Craig went to the airport together on the final day of the event, kissed each other goodbye and boarded separately.
The Colorado dentist gave her a different number to use from the one he'd been texting her from in Las Vegas, also warning that he'd 'go dark' at times if taking care of his kids.
The next day, the father-of-six texted her: 'The problem is that I might be completely in love with you after three days, and that's nuts,' the court was shown.
Cain, for her part, believed she was embarking on a relationship with Craig.
'This is was the first man I had had a one-on-one conversation with in 30 years that wasn't my husband,' she said on Tuesday. 'If I texted a man, I would put my husband in the chat with me so … I don't just casually connect with people. So it was something that I felt like had a potential to be a long term relationship.'
She also believed Craig when he told her he 'was in a really difficult situation.'
She took his word for it but noted he had no social media – and was further drawn in by the way Craig cared for his children, she said.
'Some nights, we would be on a voice call, and he would put his AirPods in and do his nighttime routine with his girls - praying with them and talking them through their day,' Cain said on Tuesday. 'So I got to see a lot of the spiritual fabric of how he was raising the kids.
'And he was just sharing with me how difficult it was, because he was no longer emotionally in this relationship,' she said. 'They had been separated for so long, he had been living on his own in this apartment for several months. He was just back at the house when she wasn't there to help take care of the kids... he was just this amazing father.
'The way that he talked with them and handled their emotions ... it was the same way he had dealt with me - where it was just like he had this incredible gift of making people feel so understood,' she said, crying.
Craig falsely told Cain that he'd rented an apartment and was no longer living in the house with Angela. Texts shown in court revealed Cain repeatedly pressed him about the details of the divorce and he insisted that he and Angela's relationship was finished.
'She wasn't giving her whole self to me,' he texted Cain. 'It was fun, but I stopped feeling connected and vulnerable. I couldn't keep living like that. I needed full commitment, which means full vulnerability. I don't know if that makes sense; it's hard to explain that feeling adequately.'
The pair exchanged 4,000 text messages and more than 80 declarations of love in less than three weeks.
The pair repeatedly bonded over religion, prayer and discussions of God, and Craig often used flowery language - with words like 'celestial' and 'pulchritudinous.'
As Angela deteriorated, Craig told Cain about her mystery illness - and that Angela was blaming him, saying he'd poisoned her. In one bizarre test, he told his new love: 'Just for the record, I will never drug you, I mean, in case that was something you were ever worried about.'
He texted her a picture of her daughter comforting her in bed during one of her hospital admissions. At the same time, the court heard previously that he was still texting loving and encouraging messages to his wife as she grew sicker.
Craig and Cain planned for her to make her first trip to visit him arriving March 16 - and he still urged her to come, despite his wife's brain death - and despite being confronted about a delivery of cyanide he had ordered to the office.
The office manager at Craig's practice testified earlier in the trial that Craig had ordered a personal package, had it delivered to the office and told her not to open it - but she saw it contained potassium cyanide. She googled it, connected cyanide poisoning to Angela's symptoms and raised the alarm.
By the night of March 15, Craig knew that he was under suspicion.
He still urged Cain to come, and they enjoyed time together as the dentist and his family planned for her funeral and police searched his house. Craig told Cain she could just be introduced to friends and family as an orthodontist friend there to support him.
She initially defended Craig, she testified, when detectives knocked on her hotel room door hours after Craig left on that trip. They told her he'd been arrested, and she soon told them things he'd said about Angela's alleged previous suicide attempts and their pending divorce.
It was only later that Cain realized how much had been lies.
But Craig continued to write her handwritten letters from jail, she said. She burned the first two but 'got in trouble' with authorities, she said, making the court laugh; the rest continued to confess his undying love.
A fellow inmate who'd been behind bars at Arapahoe County Detention Facility followed Cain's testimony.
Kacy Bohannon said he'd already gotten out when he saw Craig on the news and decided to tell authorities how the dentist had offered to pay his bond and give him free dental work in exchange for help.
Craig wanted him to plant a fake Angela journal in his house or in his pickup for authorities to find, Bohannon said.