Transcript for Dentist suspected of fatally poisoning wife due in court
- --to the Colorado dentist suspected of fatally poisoning his wife, allegedly lacing her protein shakes after buying arsenic and cyanide. He is due in court today. Kayna Whitworth joins us now with more. Good morning, Kayna.
- Yeah, Robin, good morning. So authorities say that he used his credentials as a dentist to have cyanide delivered to his office, telling a staffer the package contained a surprise ring for his wife, when instead it was a deadly poison.
The couple married more than two decades, former employees of James Craig say their relationship seemed perfect.
- Their relationships seemed like right out of a fairy tale. It's very hard. It's devastating. I still can't wrap my head around it.
KAYNA WHITWORTH: According to the arrest warrant, a family member says it was anything but, calling the marriage tumultuous and alleging Craig had previously given his wife, Angela, the mother of their six children, a substance without her knowledge.
According to the warrant, Angela's sister told investigators James drugged Angela five to six years ago, allegedly because he had planned to take his own life and didn't want her to wake up and find him before he was dead. Investigators say Angela's own words to her husband are a part of the case they're building against him.
In a text message sent on March 6, they say she wrote, "Had my protein shake," adding, "I feel drugged," to which James allegedly responded, "Given our history, I know that must be triggering. Just for the record, I didn't drug you."
The once-beloved dentist, seen in this promotional video for his practice--
- I also have a very strong philosophy that a happy team makes happy patients.
KAYNA WHITWORTH: --also allegedly facing financial troubles, James' co-workers saying he was on the verge of bankruptcy. And according to the arrest warrant, investigators believe he was having an affair and wanted to start a new life with an orthodontist from Texas.
Emails showing a flight confirmation to Denver on March 8 for his alleged mistress, just one day before Angela was hospitalized for a second time seen, in these photos that James texted a friend. A week later, she was back at the hospital complaining of dizziness and a severe headache, then suffering a seizure, eventually put on life support before passing away.
Now, in the meantime, authorities say he had already booked yet another flight back to Denver for his mistress. He is set to appear in court this morning, where the DA will likely formally charge him. Robin.
- Kayna, all right, thanks to you. We're going to bring in our chief legal analyst Dan Abrams. What do you make of this. Dan?
- So this is an easily understandable case for a jury, right? You have Google searches, one which includes "top five undetectable poisons that show no signs of foul play." You've got, "how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human?" I mean, these aren't ambiguous searches that are happening on Google.
You combine that with the fact that he is actually ordering poisons. Put that together with the affair, and the problem for him is it's not complicated, right? It's not battle of medical experts, even though that may exist here to some degree with regard to cause of death. It may end up being secondary.
- How about the alleged previous attempts of drugging his wife that we heard in Kayna's report? How important is that?
- I would think it's going to be critical in conjunction with what we see here. You know, what makes this case a little different-- and we were talking about this before-- than some of these other high-profile cases involving, for example, antifreeze, right? That's the sort of thing where someone tries to hide the fact that they're effectively killing someone over time. They want to cover their tracks. They don't want people to know.
Here he's ordering poison to his work. These are just poisons. I mean, his partner's saying, in effect, what is this for? And he has to respond, well, you know, my wife, she wanted it. She's been depressed, et cetera. I mean, it kind of makes no sense. So that's the problem for him, at this point, based on the affidavit.
- Do you expect that the woman he's involved with will possibly testify?
- I do. I expect that she'd be called. We don't know exactly what she'd say, right? We don't know if she'd say she became suspicious, et cetera. But I would expect that she would be called to talk about, what was he telling you? How was he acting? Did you find anything suspicious, et cetera.
ROBIN ROBERTS: OK.
- It's a crazy one.
ROBIN ROBERTS: It really is.
- Yeah, yeah.
- All right, Dan, thanks so much.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.