PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. (DC News Now) — A woman accused of killing her mother and burning her body on a barbecue grill was found guilty of murder on Friday.
The Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office (PGSAO) said in a post that Candace Craig was found guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and disposing of a body in an unauthorized place.
State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said that the case “rocked this entire region.”
“Words cannot express how devastated I was when I heard about this case, how angry I was, how committed my office was to getting justice,” Braveboy said in a press conference Friday evening after the ruling was announced.
Craig was accused of killing her mother, 71-year-old Margaret Craig, in May of 2023 over a dispute about fraudulent credit card charges. Officials said that Candace Craig then cut up her mother’s body with a chainsaw and grilled it.
“It was insulting for this 71-year-old woman who was a hard-working woman,” Braveboy said.
Prosecutors said that Candace Craig tried blaming two of her daughters — one of whom was “severely disabled,” the other of whom was only 19 years old at the time.
On Wednesday, one of those daughters — now-21-year-old granddaughter, Salia Hardy — gave graphic testimony before a jury describing how she found her grandmother dead in a blue storage bin. She testified as part of a deal with prosecutors where she pleaded guilty to one charge of accessory to murder after the fact.
Candace Craig told Hardy that they had to hide the DNA by “using acid, burning the body or chopping it up.”
“It’s disgusting. It’s horrible. We look forward to the sentencing. We look forward to asking for the appropriate punishment at sentencing, and we hope that justice will continue to be in the favor of Miss Margaret Craig and her surviving family members who were innocent in all of this,” Braveboy said Friday.
