Trial delayed for man accused of fatally poisoning wife
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Inset: Angela Craig (Facebook). Background: James Craig in court (KUSA).

The Colorado dentist accused of killing his wife by slowly poisoning her experienced another lawyer shakeup last week — his second since November — as his new attorney withdrew from the case after being arrested for arson, with cops saying he burned his own house down and then sat on his porch waiting for firefighters to arrive.

Robert Werking, 59, reportedly withdrew as counsel for murder defendant James Craig on Tuesday after being charged with fourth-degree arson for allegedly setting his home ablaze just before midnight on June 28, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff”s Office and South Metro Fire Rescue.

“When Deputies arrived at the house fire on Caley, they found Werking sitting on the porch,” ACSO spokesperson Anders Nelson told Law&Crime on Monday.

Werking’s arrest affidavit and charging documents have been sealed, according to The Denver Post, which cites a motion filed by prosecutors to suppress the information as it could “jeopardize” Craig’s jury trial scheduled to begin on July 10.

“The release at this time of the affidavit could result in disclosure of information that could result in destruction, disposal or secreting evidence and tampering with identified and unidentified witnesses, which could jeopardize the ongoing investigation,” the motion states, per the Post. “Further, release of the information could result in harassment of a witness and jeopardize a jury trial.”

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Werking’s withdrawal marks the second time an attorney has dropped out of the Craig case, with his previous lawyer Harvey Steinberg pulling his hat from the ring in November.

Craig, 46, faces a first-degree murder charge in the March 2023 death of his 43-year-old wife, Angela Craig.

James Craig was arrested days after his wife went to the hospital for severe headaches, the third such visit over nine days, the Aurora Police Department reported.

“Shortly after arriving at the hospital, the wife’s condition deteriorated rapidly, and she was placed on a ventilator in an intensive care unit,” authorities said. She was declared medically brain-dead a short time later.

As Law&Crime reported at the time, the dentist called himself and his wife “the proud parents of six great kids” on his dental practice website. Authorities later alleged that Angela Craig’s mysterious illness and sudden death were caused by poisoned protein shakes, and that her husband was the prime suspect — using his dental profession to order arsenic and potassium cyanide.

An affidavit alleged that James Craig was possibly on the verge of bankruptcy and had been planning a life with another woman in the weeks before he Googled things in February 2023, such as “how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human” and “Is Arsenic Detectable in Autopsy?”

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