The Aurora dentist gradually poisoned his wife over ten days in March 2023, lacing her protein shakes and antibiotic pills with arsenic, cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, according to prosecutors. Angela was hospitalized three times during this period, but her sudden, mysterious symptoms stumped doctors.
Craig administered the fatal dose of poison to Angela as she lay in a hospital bed, with surveillance footage showing him entering her room holding a syringe shortly before her condition rapidly deteriorated.
Leading up to her death, prosecutors say Craig researched "undetectable poison" online, searching "How to make murder look like a heart attack" and "How long does it take to die from arsenic poisoning?" A note found on Craig's phone laid out a story attempting to frame Angela's death as a suicide.
"Angela's death was not an accident, and it was not a suicide," said Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Mauro in a statement. "This was a calculated execution by a man who abused his professional knowledge, violated his marriage vows and believed he could escape justice."
Prosecutors argued that Craig killed his wife and the mother of their six children for financial reasons, as his dental practice was struggling and he had taken out $4 million in life insurance policies on Angela. Craig was also having an affair with another woman.
After his arrest, Craig tried to hire someone to murder the case’s lead investigator, offering a fellow inmate $20,000 to do the deed, according to the 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office. He also offered $20,000 to find people to falsely testify that Angela had planned to commit suicide.
A jury convicted Craig of first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder in the first degree, solicitation to commit perjury, and solicitation to commit evidence tampering on Wednesday, July 30. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
"Angela was a devoted mother and a woman of kindness, strength, and grace," said Deputy District Attorney Osama Magrebi in a statement. "She trusted the man she married. She believed in their future together. And yet, while she cared for their children and worked to hold her family together, her husband was indiscriminately plotting her death."
Angela Craig joins a long list of Colorado women killed by their own husbands. While that crime seems to be committed often in this state, it's a common phenomenon everywhere. Of female murder victims nationwide, more than one-in-three were killed by their intimate partner, according to FBI statistics from 2021.
Here are some of the most heinous cases to come out of Colorado:
Christopher Watts
Christopher Watts killed his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two daughters, three-year-old Celeste and four-year-old Bella, in August 2018, inside their Frederick home. Watts had been having an affair with a coworker leading up to the brutal murders. He strangled Shanann and smothered the two girls, hiding their bodies at an oil site where he worked.
Watts was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in November 2018.
The Watts family prior to the August 2018 triple homicide.
Family photo via crimeonline.com
Robert Spangler was a serial killer who admitted to murdering two of his wives and two of his children. In Littleton in December 1978, Spangler fatally shot his wife, Nancy, and their teenage children, Susan and David. He staged the scene as a murder-suicide, framing Nancy for the deaths. In April 1993, Spangler pushed his third wife, Donna Sundling, off a cliff while hiking in the Grand Canyon. Her death was ruled an accident. Spangler is also suspected of killing his second wife, Sharon Cooper, who died of a drug overdose in his Durango home in October 1994 shortly after the couple reconnected. He denied involvement in her death.
Spangler was sentenced to life in prison without parole in March 2001, confessing to the four murders after he was diagnosed with terminal lung and brain cancer. He died in prison five months later.
Reginald MacLaren
Reginald MacLaren killed his wife, Bethany, and their adult daughter, Ruth Jennifer, with an axe inside their Englewood apartment in March 2023. MacLaren put their partially dismembered bodies in trash bins, but the 83-year-old was not strong enough to move the bins out of the apartment, so he called the police and tried to blame the murders on an intruder. Prosecutors said MacLaren had recently been fired from his job and worried about his family becoming homeless.
MacLaren was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in July 2024.
Harold Henthorn
Harold Henthorn pushed his second wife, Toni, off a cliff to her death in Rocky Mountain National Park in September 2012. The couple had gone hiking to celebrate their twelfth wedding anniversary. Over those years, Henthorn took out $4.7 million worth of life insurance policies on Toni. Henthorn's first wife, Lynn, also died under unusual circumstances. In 1995 in Douglas County, Lynn was crushed under the couple's car while Henthorn was changing its tire. He received a $600,000 life insurance payout as a result.
Henthorn was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December 2015 for Toni's murder. He was not charged for Lynn's death; the original investigation ruled it an accident. Richard Kirk
Richard Kirk shot his wife, Kristine, in the head in April 2014, while the couple’s three kids were in their Denver house. Kirk blamed the murder on his consumption of a marijuana edible, attempting to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Kristine was on the phone with a 911 operator when Kirk killed her, telling them her husband was hallucinating, ranting about the end of the world and asking her to shoot him.
Kirk was sentenced to thirty years in prison in April 2017 after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
Michael Blagg
Michael Blagg fatally shot his wife, Jennifer, in November 2001. He reported Jennifer and their six-year-old daughter, Abby, missing from their Grand Junction home. Seven months later, Jennifer's body was found at the Mesa County landfill, dumped along with garbage from Blagg's office. Abby has never been found.
Blagg was convicted of first-degree murder in 2004, but the conviction was tossed in 2014 because a juror had failed to disclose she was a victim of domestic violence. Blagg was then re-tried and re-convicted in 2018, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Brian Hood
Brian Hood conspired with his mistress to murder his wife, Dianne, in September 1990. Hood asked Jennifer Reali to fatally shoot Dianne as she left a lupus support group in Colorado Springs in a staged robbery-gone-wrong, telling Reali it was "God's plan." Hood denied involvement in the killing, but a jury convicted him of criminal solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder.
Hood served 27 years and was paroled in March 2019. Reali was sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in December 2017, after Governor Bill Ritter commuted her sentence and made her eligible for parole. She died of pancreatic cancer three months after her release.
A booking photo of Brian Hood.
File photo
Daniel Krug ambushed his wife, Kristil, in December 2023 in the garage of their Broomfield home, knocking her unconscious before stabbing her in the heart. Leading up to the murder, Krug attempted to convince Kristil that she was being stalked by her ex-boyfriend, sending her threatening texts and emails in what prosecutors argued was an attempt to scare her into staying in their failing marriage.
Krug was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in April 2025.
Patrick Frazee
Patrick Frazee murdered his fiancée and the mother of their one-year-old daughter, Kelsey Berreth, in Woodland Park in 2018. Berreth's body was never found, but prosecutors say Frazee beat Berreth to death with a baseball bat inside her condo, then burned her body. Frazee's ex-girlfriend testified in court, claiming that Frazee repeatedly asked her to carry out the murder for him, and that she helped clean up the crime scene afterward.
Frazee was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in November 2019. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld his conviction in February 2025.
Hal Hebert
Hal Hebert shot his wife, Carol, in the back of the head in their Denver home in April 2001. Her body was found in the trunk of her own car, abandoned miles away. Hebert was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in June 2003.
Hebert never explained the motive for his crime, and has spendt the last two decades appealing his conviction and blaming Carol's murder on a serial killer. The most recent review of the case, conducted by the Denver District Attorney's Office in 2023, upheld the conviction.
A family photo of Suzanne Morphew, and Barry Morphew's booking photo.
Chaffee County Sheriff's Office/Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
Unlike the other entries on this list, Barry Morphew has not been convicted of murdering his wife, Suzanne, though he has been suspected of committing the crime for years. Suzanne vanished from the couple's Chaffee County home in May 2020, and Morphew was charged with her presumed murder one year later. The charges were eventually dropped amid misconduct from prosecutors and the ongoing search for Suzanne's body. But Morphew was once again arrested and charged with murder in June 2025, after Suzanne's remains were found in 2023.
Morphew is facing one count of first-degree murder. He is currently in jail awaiting his next court hearing on September 2.
