Doctor guilty of killing mother and grilling her body parts

HYATTSVILLE, Md. — A Maryland woman has been found guilty of killing her mother, whose dismembered and burned body was discovered by police in trash bags in the basement of her Hyattsville home in May 2023.

Jurors deliberated for a little more than an hour before finding Candace Craig, 46, guilty of first- and second-degree murder in the death of her 71-year-old Margaret Craig, Prince George's County Prosecutor Aisha Braveboy announced Friday known.

Craig was also found guilty of tampering with evidence and improperly disposing of her mother's body.

“Words cannot express how devastated I was when I heard about this case, how angry I was, how committed my office was to pursuing justice,” Braveboy said during a news conference outside the courthouse. “And as in any case, it’s not easy. There was an enormous amount of evidence in this case. It took a lot to put everything together.”

According to prosecutors, Craig killed her mother by suffocating her with a trash bag after an argument over fraudulent credit card charges and discrepancies in the elderly woman's bank account.

To dispose of the body, Craig and her daughter, 21-year-old Salia Hardy, purchased barbecue equipment and a can of gasoline, but when Craig attempted to burn the remains behind the house, the fire spread and neighbors called the Hardy Fire Department during of the process.

Hardy and Craig brought the remains into the house the next day. Craig bought a chainsaw on Amazon and cut up her mother's body in the basement, Hardy testified. She then grilled parts of her, using spices to mask the smell, prosecutors said.

On June 2, just after 1:30 p.m., Prince George's County Police officers were called to the home in the 200 block of Hill Road in Landover for a welfare check. The family member who contacted police said he had not been able to contact Margaret Craig for several days and was worried about her.

Another family member noticed a foul smell in the basement when she came by that day. As police conducted a welfare check, officers noticed the smell of decomposition and saw what appeared to be brain matter and what were believed to be dismembered human remains in trash bags, WUSA reported.

Court documents revealed that “upon entering the basement, officers immediately smelled the odor of decomposition and noticed blood and tissue on the floor near three white plastic trash bags.”

In an interview with police, Craig blamed the murder on her two younger daughters, both of whom are disabled, The Washington Post reported.

“You have three young girls who knew – and now know – that their mother killed their grandmother, dismembered her body, tried to set her on fire and then tried to blame them,” Braveboy said. “This – it's almost unbelievable, but it.” happens. It happened.