A former office manager at James Craig’s dental practice told jurors that she had engaged in an “emotional” and “intimate” relationship with the former dentist during her cross-examination in an Arapahoe County courtroom. 

Wednesday was the second day of testimony in Craig’s murder trial on felony charges alleging he killed Angela Craig, his wife of 23 years, with poison.

Caitlin Romero, who was employed by Craig’s Summerbrook Dental Group in Aurora during the time of his wife’s hospitalizations and death, said that the dentist would text her from an alternate cell phone number, with those messages being more personal than the correspondence with his main number. She added that he talked to her about struggles he was having, including how they related to his marriage.

Taking the stand, Romero recounted how she met with detectives at the Aurora Police Department station in the early hours of March 16, 2023 — the day after Angela was pronounced brain dead — but did not disclose the personal relationship between her and the dentist.

Romero was cross-examined on Thursday by defense attorney Lisa Moses. It was the first time Craig’s lawyer spoke on the record during the trial proceedings. Ashley Whitham, another member of the defense team, had been the lead attorney during the opening statements and initial witness cross-examinations.

Moses’ husband, Robert Werking, was originally on the case as well before he allegedly attempted to set fire to his own home on June 28 of this year and faces felony charges. Whitham was brought in to replace him on the eve of trial, which is expected to last three weeks.

Craig, 47, faces six felony counts related to the 2023 death of his wife, including first-degree murder, solicitation to tamper with physical evidence and solicitation to commit perjury.

Prosecutors allege that the former dentist poisoned his wife with a protein shake containing several poisons and then asked former fellow inmates housed with him to help cover up the alleged crime once they were out of jail.

Craig also asked one of his own children to plant evidence, prosecutors said in opening statements.

Seated on the left side of the courtroom, Craig — dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, his hair slightly less kempt than the day before — smiled at faces he recognized as they entered into the gallery. At one point, he gave a small wave with his right hand.

A week before Angela’s death, the dentist told Romero about a “personal package” that would be delivered to his office in the coming days, and asked her to place it on his desk without opening it beforehand, a request she found unusual as there hadn’t been any personal packages delivered to the office during her time working there, she testified.

When the package was delivered on March 13 — a foil-wrapped bundle that a coworker had removed its shipping box — Romero looked at the invoice, which the coworker also handed her, that listed the recipient as “James Craig – Personal,” the exact format he had previously told her it would appear, Romero said.

The invoice also listed the contents of the package. It contained potassium cyanide, she said.

Angela died on March 18, 2023, at Denver’s University Hospital from lethal doses of several toxins, including cyanide, arsenic and tetrahydrozoline — the active ingredient in red-eye removing products like Visine. In the week leading up to her death, she had visited the hospital multiple times, feeling weak and dizzy.

Three days before she was taken off life support, Angela was rushed to the hospital after collapsing, where she lost consciousness, was placed on a ventilator and later pronounced brain dead that night.

Romero testified that Craig told her on two separate occasions — March 9 and March 15 — leading up to Angela’s death that he did not believe his wife would make it through the night, a statement that she found troubling. She also had looked up what the symptoms of cyanide poisoning were and thought they were similar with what he had told her his wife was feeling.

“Thinking that somebody was capable of possibly poisoning something else, it was not something that I was taking lightly,” Romero said when asked why she only went to police days after the cyanide had been delivered.

Romero was excused after nearly three hours of testimony and cross-examination.

Michelle Redfearn took the stand next. She had known the Craigs since her husband Ryan was in dental school with Jim. Ryan Redfearn owned Fit2Smile, the practice that co-partnered with Summerbrook Dental.

In her testimony, Redfearn recounted the night Angela was admitted to the hospital before going brain-dead. She testified that she got a call from another member of the practice, as well as Romero, who told her about the cyanide delivery.

After leaving the hospital that night, Redfearn and her husband took a call from Craig while sitting in their car, she said. She recounted them confronting the dentist about the contents of the package — contents which Craig initially refused to identify.

“You got a package delivered to your office two days ago. What was in the package Jim?,” she recalled her husband Ryan asking him. Then, after they told him they knew it contained potassium cyanide, she said Craig repeated one sentence over and over.

“Oh Ryan, what have you done?,” Redfearn heard Craig say.

During the cross-examination, when the defense pressed Redfearn to define the exact nature of her relationship with Angela as of March 2023, the witness got heated with Moses.

“You told detectives that your relationship with her was ‘fringe’,” Moses said.

“That was 28 months ago. I’ll take your word for it,” Redfearn responded. “That interview took place from 3:30-4:30 a.m. on a very stressful day.”

Redfearn did admit that her relationship with Angela had not been as strong in 2023 as it had been two decades prior, but maintained that the change was mostly due to both of them having children and lives outside of one another — rather than any disagreement.

That reasoning was why she only reached out to Angela once after hearing she was sick and instead relied on Craig for information about her condition, despite knowing that the two of them had been experiencing troubles in their marriage that Angela hadn’t discussed with her, Redfearn said.

“I did not want to make a bad situation worse,” Redfearn said. “I had heard there were struggles in her marriage, but I respected the fact that she and Jim could work on those things, and it could be embarrassing, and I didn’t want to make a bad situation even worse.”

Craig was arrested on March 19, 2023, on suspicion of first-degree murder in connection with her death. The arrest affidavit said that Craig’s dental business was in financial trouble and he was beginning a relationship with a Texas orthodontist named Karin Cain.

Cain is scheduled to testify during the trial that she fell in love with Craig after only three weeks, but that he lied about the state of his marriage.

Both the prosecution and defense admit that Craig’s extramarital affairs go back years with several different women, though they disagree on whether his relationship with Cain was a motive to kill his wife.