The After Show: 21 Days to Murder

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Hi there, everybody, and welcome to 2020 The After Show.

I'm Deborah Roberts, and as always, today we are going to take you not only inside but behind the scenes of one of our stories that we've been covering.

And this one involves a case that is really truly bewildering.

An affluent couple from Colorado, James and Angela Craig, seem to just have the life that people would envy.

James is a well-known dentist in his community, and the couple lived in a million-dollar house and had six children.

But upon closer examination, it wasn't everything that it seemed to be.

They weren't exactly the happy family everybody may have thought they were when James is convicted of murdering his wife of 23 years, poisoning her with protein shakes.

Our 2020 producer Lindsey Schwartz and our team, along with Matt Gutman, covered this case in the episode called 21 Days to Murder.

And of course, you can listen to it right here on your podcast feed or watch on Hulu and Disney Plus if you haven't already, but I certainly hope you have.

Lindsay, you and I have worked together.

We just most recently worked together out in Colorado where you are.

And it's always great talking with you, but you've always got these intriguing stories that you delve into.

You've been with us for about six years, but you've been in true crime for a long time.

I have a very long time, and I find it to be the greatest job in the world just because you get to meet incredible people.

And I'm very lucky to live in Colorado, but we do have some interesting crime here in Colorado.

The stories like this one, where you really see a very different side of someone.

Yeah, and they really resonate too.

Before we get to the story, though, let's talk a little bit about you, because one of the things I've observed, you really have this way of sort of getting not only inside the story, but you sort of get in with the family members too and find a level of trust.

They trust you.

And you really

have this knack of just connecting with people.

I'm sure that that's something you've developed over time, but it's just naturally who you are.

Well, thank you, Deborah.

I really love talking to people and figuring out what you have in common with people because at the end of the day, that's why people watch our show is because they can connect with the people in the stories.

And it's really important to me that we get to know the families and all the people involved so that we can help to show their loved one and show who they were in life.

And the best way to do that is through the people that knew them the best.

So when you get involved with a family and you really understand what made this person so special to them, you can report on it in a deeper way.

So I really love that part of my job.

Being here in Colorado, it's a natural fit because I do know a lot of these people.

I've been covering crime here, as you said, for a long time.

Yeah, and in this case, it's Aurora, Colorado, and you know the area.

That's what's so interesting.

So you know what we're going to be looking at and looking for when we're digging into these stories.

So let's talk about when you heard about this particular case.

Tell me about this case and how it struck you.

When this case first hit the news, it was immediately.

intriguing on so many levels.

I mean, here you have this dentist who is fairly well known.

I meet people all the time who say, oh, James Craig was my dentist.

And so it immediately captivated the people here in this community just based on the fact that he was this well-known dentist and that this family was just a great family by all accounts.

And I think

well regarded.

He was just someone that people liked.

And still, even after the fact, we still hear people that say, I really liked James Craig.

He was a really nice guy.

So that is immediately intriguing to people.

Well, you and Matt Gutman, of course, talked to a number of people in the community.

And this is a case about lies and deception.

And James Craig, what was that like for you and Matt to unravel his life with

the neighbors?

I think they were heartbroken.

I think the neighbors looked at the Craig family as the place where everybody would convene, not only in the church, but in the neighborhood.

They were the couple that everyone looked up to.

They had date night every Friday night.

They spent all this time together and as a family, and everyone looked up to them.

So when the neighbors talked to us, at first they were just completely shocked.

It got deeper and deeper as they realized the deception and how James Craig was living one life

in this neighborhood.

and then a completely different life behind the scenes.

He had a lot of trust from people as a dentist, and you trust them, right?

A medical professional, yeah.

Right.

But then when you learn how he's presenting himself to different people outside of the community, it's really a blow to those people that knew him.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Let's talk about his wife, Angela, before we get to the actual crime.

What was that like to learn a little bit more about this woman who was his prey, essentially, as opposed to just, you know, a loving wife to him?

Yeah, I feel like we got to know Angela a little through her friends and family.

And she was, first and foremost, a mother, a mother to six children, ranging in ages from eight to 23.

So a pretty big range of children, and she was a great mom.

So she was a very religious person, and she believed very strongly in her faith.

She also was really interested in genealogy.

And she took trips with her sister.

She was very interested in history.

And they would take trips around the country and try to understand other cultures and food and

geography.

But then she was also into her own personal family genealogy and she was really exploring that.

And she would come and make, she would make family trees and really try to understand her own family and how they came together.

So she was just, she was also a strong person.

She was a very strong woman.

She had a lot of depth to her and people talked a lot about her humor and the whole family, her siblings, they all talk about how they all joke with each other.

And Angie was just part of that, really

fun-loving, smart, and a great mom.

Yeah, and that really came across too in the piece, which is so important to us to be able to convey who these victims are.

She's not just the wife who was poisoned.

So we really got a sense of who she was in the episode.

Lindsay, the video, and it's always the video for us that just tells the story.

And in this case,

lots of videos that were kind of incriminating.

First of all, you get shots of James Craig.

You know, talk to us about the twists and turns and also why, because often people are asking in our stories, why?

Well, I think,

you know, from watching it in court and from what friends and family and the prosecutor said, James Craig was very,

he was living a double life and it sort of caught up with him.

He was lying to cover his lies.

And so in, you know, he was seeing, he was having issues way back.

Angela, according to her family, knew that he was having affairs for years and years and years.

And I think that he, this started to catch up with him.

In 2018, prosecutors say he was attempting to take his own life.

People testify in court that he did.

try to take his own life and drug Angela so that she wouldn't stop him.

So that shows a real side to James Craig that the public wasn't seeing.

Never, never saw.

You know, and that's what's always so interesting.

And we've done a number of these stories, and I've certainly covered stories where, you know, somebody was leading a double life.

It's catching up to them.

They are feeling cornered and they decide to do something that is really unthinkable.

Well, you and the team worked so hard on this story and alongside Matt Gutman, as I said.

And we're going to take a quick break because when we come back, we want to talk about exclusive interviews that you were able to get, including Dr.

Karen Kane.

It was her first time speaking publicly about this case, and she has some pretty astounding things to say.

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We are back now with 2020 The After Show, and we're talking about our most recent episode called 21 Days to Murder.

With editorial producer Lindsey Schwartz, we are talking about the evidence against James Craig, who was a well-regarded dentist in the Aurora, Colorado area and was later convicted of killing his wife, Angela.

Police uncovered that he was making some concerning searches online, how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human.

I mean, this happens so often in these stories, a digital trail, right?

Yeah, the digital trail was incredible, the searches online to the text messages.

And he was not shy about things in his text messages.

So, but you have these searches, which are pretty incredible.

I'm not sure why you would search how much arsenic you need to kill someone or can it be found in an autopsy.

But then he had these text messages, one to a woman, Carrie Hagaseh, who he was seeing.

He had gone through a website called seeking.com.

But Carrie Hagaseh is key to the case because of these text messages, because of this digital trail.

He was talking to her about his, quote, problem.

And And it seemed to prosecutors that he was directly meaning Angela was his problem.

So he was putting this all into text messages.

How do I get rid of this problem?

I can't get rid of this problem.

And so that digital trail really gives you an idea and helped prosecutors to show his deception and his lying.

And also, and sort of a motive there, too.

Well, there are a massive number of text messages associated with this case, authority said.

And some were between not only that woman and James Craig, but another woman named Dr.

Karen Kane.

And to remind listeners, James and Karen met at a convention weeks before Angela was murdered, but she had nothing to do with the murder.

It was established.

But there were references to a romance between the two of them, and she said she believed he was in the process of getting a divorce, and she shared that with all of you.

It's the first time she's spoken publicly about this case, the trial and the impact, and she sat down with Matt Gutman.

Let's take a listen.

I've tried really hard not to become cynical, and

you know, one of the things I've always liked about myself was that kind of

tendency to believe you are who you say you are until I have proof otherwise.

That definitely felt like

excess naivety, you know, coming out of this.

It's like I look back at

the time, the three weeks getting to know him, and how much I leaned in and how much I just accepted truth, you know, his words as truth.

And so yeah,

it's a hard thing to decide what you take away as a lesson and

without letting it change your heart and your personality and like who you are as a person.

Lindsay, just seeing her on camera, but also even just listening to her, you can hear the nervousness in her voice.

You can hear that this is a woman who probably is dealing with the emotion of this.

Well, I think that you hit the nail on the head.

When we first met Karen Kane, she was nervous.

She, you know, it was very soon after this happened.

And she was just trying to untangle the web of lies.

She had met this person, and she thought that he was getting divorced, and he was.

all that she had been looking for.

And she thought he was going to be available to be a love interest.

Absolutely.

And it was quick.

There's 4,000 texts between them.

They start talking all the time.

Now, she looks back and says, Sen says it was love bombing, right?

He was sending her these texts.

He figured out what moved her, what she needed to hear, and then just went in and sent these texts about vulnerability.

And so he figured these things out.

And they're going back and forth and talking about their life.

And a lot of it was just an absolute lie.

He was getting divorced, he said.

He was living in an apartment and switching out with Angela to take care of the kids.

And all these things were lies.

So in the first few months when we started talking to Karen, she was just trying to unravel this.

She was in a state of shock and that lasted for a while.

We have had the benefit of getting to know Karen over the last two and a half years.

And she now can kind of say, okay,

now I understand that I was deceived in this too.

And that obviously there's a family that has it far worse than I do, but I was deceived in this too.

Well, she learns the truth from it from police.

And they said it was apparent that she had no idea what was happening and she had been manipulated by him.

She spoke with Angela's family.

And we're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, we're going to talk about what she said and about the outcome of James Craig's trial.

We'll be right back.

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We're back with Lindsey Schwartz talking about the trial of James Craig, a story that just not only captivated people in the Colorado area, but all around the country.

A case that had so much evidence.

Craig really worked to alter the course of the investigation, though, even from behind bars.

And in this case, he was trying to enlist his daughter in the scheme, bribing fellow inmates with dental work.

And investigators

were just blown away by this, weren't they?

They were absolutely blown away by this, Deborah.

I mean, he was, as you said, asking his daughter, who was 18, to create a deep fake video that would say that, that would be of Angela saying that she wanted to kill herself.

He then tried to take a hit out on the lead detective in this case, Bobby Joel Olson.

And

he went on and on and on, asking inmates to help him and, like you said, offering dental work, telling them that he had all this money.

So it the depth of what he did and the deception, it just went on and on and on.

Yeah, yeah.

They called it the depth of the depravity.

You know, when you think about this.

Well, he was eventually found guilty of murder and other charges.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

You learned that when you saw our piece.

And at the trial, after testifying, Dr.

Karen Kane actually met Angela's family.

And that was a pretty powerful moment for everybody, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think when it first happened, the family would say that they were worried that did she know, was she involved in this?

They quickly realized that she did not.

But then meeting her in person and hearing her on the stand was pretty amazing for all of them.

Karen was up there on the stand saying she had been married for 28 years with her husband for 30.

She had never even had a text conversation with a man that her husband was not on.

James Craig was the first person that she dated.

So this was someone who was not out dating a lot of people.

So they hear all this in court and then they get to meet her.

And it was really unbelievable for all of them.

For Karen, she talks about with us how she thought she would come off the stand and have this weight lifted off her.

And she said she just couldn't shake seeing those kids and meeting what a lovely family and really realizing that

these people will have to deal with this for the rest of their life.

For the rest of their lives.

How do the family members want people to remember her?

Well, I think they want people to understand that Angela was a strong person.

She was a very smart person.

And she was involved in a case of domestic violence.

But as far as her personality goes, what the family has sort of has told us is that they would like people to remember Angela as an incredible mother, as an incredible loyal person to her family, to her friends, to her children.

She was loyal to the end.

She was a person of great depth.

She had hobbies.

She had a strong sense of herself.

She had a lot of faith.

She was part of the Mormon faith.

And something that really struck me at the end was her brother, who stood up, Mark Pray, for the victim impact statements and talked about how in his, in the Mormon community, they believe that they will see their family member in the afterlife, that it is not goodbye, that they will see them.

And he stands up and says, James Craig, you won't be part of that, but we'll see Angela again.

And that love she had will remain.

It will still be as strong.

And they want people to know that Angela will be with them.

She is with them.

And that love will be with them to the end.

Yeah,

that definitely comes through with this family.

What heartache.

Well,

well done on this story, Lindsay, and not only helping bring it to us, but also just sort of shining a light on something that is so important, as you said, looking at domestic violence and thinking about families and how they're affected.

Appreciate having you here today.

Thank you, Deborah.

It was great to be here.

Thank you.

Well, that does it for us today on the After Show.

We appreciate it, Lindsay.

We'll look forward to more from you.

The 2020 After Show is produced by Susie Liu, Emily Schutz, Katie Schiffer, and Trevor Hastings of ABC Audio.

With Colleen Halpin, Brian Mazurski, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020.

Theme music by Evan Viola.

Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020.

Josh Cohen, the director of podcasting at ABC Audio.

Laura Mayer is the executive producer.

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