Secrets of Exam Room 9

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tonight on Dateline.

Every Friday was date night.

She would always dress up so beautifully.

She was so young and they had so much still to do.

The seemingly healthy female came in and within two, three hours, she crashes.

They did CT scans.

They did MRIs.

I received a call that she had passed.

Just disbelief.

The medical staff doesn't know what caused this.

We have to figure out what's going on here.

You go onto that computer and you find...

How to make murder look like a heart attack.

Top five undetectable poisons.

The hospital surveillance showed that he was holding a small object that looks like a syringe.

This man was literally killing their patient in front of them.

You find something almost mind-blowing.

Yes, I called it a manifesto.

He's hiding in plain sight.

Nobody suspected a thing.

I started to think I could be next.

He's just on a rampage.

Yeah, I mean, we'll stop at nothing.

What began as a medical mystery ends in a chilling diagnosis, cold-blooded murder.

I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Here's Andrea Canning with Secrets of Exam Room 9.

The life of a typical family captured on home security cameras.

Husband and wife sharing an affectionate moment.

Juggling the chaos of parenthood.

Why are you yelling at your sister?

Well, the girls should be up for prayers in about five or ten minutes.

Getting the mail.

And like any busy household, everything swirled around the kitchen.

But hidden in James and Angela Craig's ordinary moments were clues to a medical mystery.

The hospital staff were like, we've done all these tests and we can't find a medical reason for this rapid decline.

Or was it something much darker?

He did ask if I could help him with his problem.

Just absolute disbelief.

We would have never, in our wildest dreams, have expected any of that to be their story or part of their lives.

Aurora, Colorado, known as the Gateway to the Rockies, was where James and Angela Craig called home.

You moved into Angela's neighborhood?

Yes.

From South Africa?

Yes, when we first arrived in 2012, they were the first family that we met and they loved on us, accepted us and all our funny accents and funny words.

They just were there for us as a family.

Vivian Funder Merva felt an instant connection with Angela, a history buff who loved tracing her family's genealogy in her spare time.

She wasn't full of airs and graces.

She was who she was.

And that, for me, was probably the most beautiful thing about her.

She was just very authentic and genuine.

Staying fit was also a priority for Angela.

She would go biking on the trails and just always active doing something.

Together, they navigated motherhood.

Vivian with her three girls, Angela with her half-dozen who ranged from elementary school age to young adults.

Angela and myself, we have in common six kids, five girls, and a boy.

It's not easy raising that many girls.

I can speak to that.

You know, I want to know her secret.

Well, I don't know what her secret was, to be honest.

She seemed like she had it always together.

The Craigs were active members of the Mormon church.

While Angela was the parent who kept the kids in line, James, or Jim, had a different role.

Jim was always the fun dad, just like the perfect cool dad.

He was a family dentist, highly regarded around town.

Jim was a really nice guy.

He was always so

carefree.

He seemed always very successful, and he was very generous.

And here's the tooth fairy.

And he had a sense of humor to help put his patients at ease.

His office even posted this video of him dressed up as the tooth fairy.

He seemed to like being the center of attention.

Looking he's gonna go visit a patient!

Tama and Jessica are two of Vivian's daughters.

They remember James throwing impromptu pizza parties for all the neighborhood kids.

Their house was kind of like a train station.

There was always kids coming and going, and everyone was welcome in their house.

They would just open the garage up and have all the kids out and put food out and drinks and everything, and we would just all hang out.

So from the outside, everything looked great with the Craig family.

Absolutely.

They both seemed besotted with each other.

They just seemed like a power couple.

They insisted on date night every week?

Every Friday was date night.

That was a sacred time for them and an intimate time for them.

On Friday, March 10th, 2023, the Funder Mervas and the Craigs had plans for a double date night, something they hadn't done in a while.

So you were looking forward to this, catching up?

It was always fun.

They would always choose a great place to eat at and there was something always just fun to be around them and laugh.

The day before their scheduled dinner, Vivian texted Angela to see if they were still on.

Jim actually responded.

Angela didn't respond and he kind of just said, hey, Angela's having this weird medical thingy, he called it.

And he just said that they were doing so many tests and that she was in hospital and that we would have to reschedule.

Was there any reason to be alarmed?

You know, or did you just think, oh, she's just, she's fighting something and she'll be fine in a week?

Definitely.

There's no reason.

Just everybody gets sick every now and again.

That was the last Vivian heard from James or any of the Craigs for six days.

And then on March 15th.

We got a desperate call from one of her children just saying, I don't think my mom's going to make the doctors have said she's not going to make it.

Oh my gosh.

I was in disbelief and I was like, what do you mean she's not going to make the evening.

Nobody's told us how critically ill she is.

Angela had crashed in the hospital and would not recover.

We just gathered friends and people we know just to pray for Angela and we were just praying that the Lord would just, yeah, do a miracle in this situation.

Vivian and her daughters also went over to the Craigs house to see James.

He was very emotional and crying and kind of slumped in his body posture and he was just like kind of shaking his head in disbelief and just saying, oh, all the tests, all the tests.

I mean, at that time, it's like so hard to find words on what to say or how to console someone.

So we just hugged him.

Angela was brain dead.

Her family said their goodbyes before doctors took her off life support.

Soon, Angela was gone.

Our concern is how are they going to cope with this tragic loss?

What you knew was a very strong love.

You called them a power couple.

And now he's without her.

The friends couldn't understand what had happened to Angela, a healthy, active 43-year-old.

They were even more confused when they saw something at the Craig house they didn't expect.

Investigators.

I think it was strange that they were putting the crime scene tape up and like no one was in the house.

I would imagine you're thinking when you first hear that she's died, that this is some type of natural death.

She had a virus or something that you didn't know about.

And then to see police cars,

those two things.

They just don't go together.

Exactly.

Angela Craig, Craig, a mother of six, was dead, leaving those who loved her puzzled and wondering why.

She was healthy and vibrant, with no previous medical issues.

It just didn't add up.

She was always looking forward to speaking of weddings like any mom.

Any, you know, seeing children graduate.

And now here you were about to go to her funeral.

It's just so unfair.

Yeah,

it's...

It's hard.

A life taken too soon.

But what friends like Vivian didn't know was that Angela's medical team had been equally puzzled and suspicious.

So suspicious that on the day she crashed at the hospital, a nurse was on the phone with police.

We respond to University Hospital frequently.

Detectives Bobby Olson and Molly Harris, the only two women in Aurora's major crimes homicide unit, got the case.

So I've heard that people refer to you as the twins sometimes?

We are deemed the twins because of our general work ethic and kind of how we operate together.

Our whole unit is amazing and works crazy hours and does all sorts of things, but we are especially

crazy, maybe some people would say, where we just don't stop.

And so really on the onset of this case, that was, we have to figure out what's going on here.

While Angela was still on life support, detectives spoke with the doctors and nurses treating her.

They were like, we've done all these tests and we can't find a medical reason for this rapid decline.

There was this seemingly healthy female who came in and within two, three hours of arriving at the hospital, she crashes and is

basically brain dead.

It's a medical mystery, it appears.

Yes.

Yes.

The detectives discovered that Angela first went to the emergency room nine days before she crashed.

She had shakes,

overall dizziness, having a hard time focusing.

Doctors ran tests but could find no answers.

So she went home.

That's frustrating for the patient.

Very frustrating.

So you know something's wrong.

The next day, she went to urgent care.

No answers there either.

Soon after, she was back in the emergency room.

She had complaints that she was vomiting, ultimately even describing having passed out at one point while at home.

And that same ER doc happened to be working and she again ran a bunch of tests.

They did CT scans.

They did MRIs.

I mean they ran every test I think possible.

And because it was that same ER doc she had said

I don't know what's going on.

I really think we should admit you because these symptoms has been going on and they're increasingly getting worse.

And so that doctor admitted her.

She spent five days in the hospital.

What is happening to Angela Craig, you know, during these days as she's lying there in this hospital bed?

She just kept saying that she had children at home and she wanted to get home to them.

I think that every specialty doctor came over and assessed Angela, and not one doctor could figure out what was causing her symptoms.

So not just frustrating for Angela, but all the people trying to save her.

Yes.

All of a sudden, her oxygen level dropped, her heart rate dropped, her blood pressure went through the roof.

Detectives learned Angela fought through it and returned home one day before she crashed.

They sent her home with oxygen, and that wasn't helping either.

By then, Angela's brother was in town to help out.

He told police that her husband James, the dentist, prescribed her the antibiotic clindomycin to help with a sinus infection.

He said James asked him to give her a dose the next morning, two capsules.

And then once she consumed that antibiotic is when she got violently sick again.

Her brother took her to a different hospital this time.

Thinking, let's try somewhere else.

Maybe they might have an avenue of, you know, progressing this in a good direction.

So she got there at 11 o'clock.

She was speaking when she came in.

She was lethargic.

Did she say anything when she came in that offered any type of a clue?

No, she had went into the hospital and again, just looked sick, right?

Not feeling good.

This is torturous for her because everyone has been really sick in their life, but this is just, this won't stop.

Yes.

Three hours later, she took that devastating turn.

Whatever was wrong had caused Angela's brain to swell.

That inner cranial pressure in her brain had spiked and was so high that there was really no coming back from that.

The detectives had their work cut out for them.

You never got the chance to talk to Angela.

No.

I mean, she could have given you so much information about how she was feeling and what was going on in her life, but you got none of that.

No.

The detectives asked James Craig for his cell phone and Angela's, which he provided.

That was a start.

But they were about to dig much deeper into her life, her illness, and some strange activity at the dentist's office.

This is not a regular delivery to the dental office.

This is not a normal delivery.

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While Angela Craig fought for her life in an Aurora, Colorado hospital, detectives Bobby Olson and Molly Harris learned about a strange delivery to her husband's dental office.

That was addressed to Jim Craig personnel.

An assistant opened the package.

Opened it and then saw the biohazard sticker and then looked at the invoice and saw potassium cyanide and again nothing that they had ever seen before.

This is not a regular delivery to the dental office.

This is not a normal delivery.

The office manager resealed the box, but after hearing about Angela's symptoms, on a hunch, she did a search.

She herself went on Google and Googled what would be the symptoms of someone ingesting potassium cyanide.

Dizziness, trouble focusing, and weakness.

All symptoms of potassium cyanide poisoning.

And Angela had all of them.

Word of the delivery got back to James Craig's business partner.

He alerted Angela's medical team.

Is he thinking, well, maybe there's an antidote or if it is this potassium cyanide that maybe we can save her?

Yes, and that's his whole reason for going to that forensic nurse was just hoping that the doctors could find a reason that was causing this and or reverse it.

Did he say if there would be any need for potassium cyanide at a dentist's office?

He did and said that there is zero reason to have potassium cyanide.

Angela was still on life support at that point.

Doctors administered the antidote through an IV for six hours.

But it was too late.

Detectives wondered if Angela had been deliberately poisoned.

They served search warrants on the dental office and family home.

Anything in the house that was pointing in the direction of, you know, this might explain what happened to her.

When Angela first got sick, Jim had mentioned to one of the office managers that he had made Angela a protein shake and that he had put too much caffeine or too much B vitamins in it, and that's maybe why Angela wasn't feeling well.

So

we kind of had an idea or a thought maybe that Angela had ingested something through her protein shakes.

What do you end up taking?

from the house?

We took a handful of shaker bottles, some of which still had some remnants in it.

Any pills or anything that were significant or could be?

No, and we, again, we didn't know what we were looking for other than potassium cyanide.

The detectives also found a security camera in the house.

It is still, even in this camera society, somewhat rare to have a camera, especially one with audio.

In a house?

Yes.

That camera was in the kitchen.

As the detectives poured through hundreds of hours of footage, some moments caught their attention.

James Craig mixing up protein shakes in plastic bottles.

And a heated conversation between James and Angela after she got back from her first hospital stay.

You weren't there for me

because you were too concerned about what you were concerned about.

It appeared Angela was frustrated that James wasn't advocating for her at the hospital.

You asked all the details of every medical, everything, everywhere we go, and you didn't even ask.

The only thing that saved my life last night was God.

Was that

because nobody else did anything for me?

The detective sent the shaker bottles for testing and headed to search the dental practice.

We searched high and low in that office trying to see anything that might constitute a poison bottle, if you will, or even a substance.

Detectives also spoke with one of the office managers.

She said she'd recently noticed her boss, James Craig, working on a computer late one night in exam room nine, not in his office.

She had asked him what he was doing because he has his own office with his own computer and he said he was following up on patient charting.

But when they took a closer look at the hard drive, they discovered he was doing a lot more than that.

James Craig had created a secret email address and used it to place an order for potassium cyanide, arsenic, and oleander.

This is just a plethora of poisons.

Correct.

I was just hitting the table and I was just, I mean, that was the aha moment.

Detectives felt they had enough evidence to make their move.

On March 19th, 12 days after Angela first got sick, and one day after she was taken off life support, they asked James Craig to meet with them.

He was under the impression that he was coming to the police department to meet with me to get his cell phone back.

And ultimately, we had an arrest warrant for him and arrested him when he arrived.

You were waiting for him.

Waiting for him.

What was the expression on his face when he was not there for what he thought he was there for?

He said, this is really shocking.

This is not what I expected.

And there were more surprises to come.

Investigators would learn that James Craig was leading a complicated life.

It really went from zero to 100 very fast.

The sensational arrest of dentist James Craig, accused of poisoning his wife Angela with cyanide, made headlines far beyond Aurora, Colorado.

To Colorado now, where police have arrested a dentist there, accused of killing his wife.

It's just very surreal to see somebody you had traveled with, somebody that you knew, being arrested for

the death of his wife, your friend, a mother.

It was

really hard.

The investigation into Angela's death was just heating up.

Aurora homicide detectives Bobby Olson and Molly Harris now had her latest blood results.

And ultimately found that there was a fatal dose of potassium cyanide and a fatal dose of tetrahydrozoline.

Tetrahydrozolyline, a drug typically found in over-the-counter eye drops.

And it wasn't just in Angela's blood.

Tests on one of the protein shaker bottles came back positive too.

Detectives were also diving into James Craig's digital life.

and they discovered something truly stunning.

He wasn't just hiding purchases.

You've learned that James Craig is living essentially a double life with other women.

Yes, several other women.

About six months before Angela got sick, James met Carrie Hegaseth, a single mom of three, trying to pick up the pieces after a difficult breakup.

It is still hard being a single mom.

Also, financially, it must have been a struggle as well.

That's been the hardest part.

Carrie says she dealt with abuse in the past and at times felt desperate.

How did you get by?

Well, I've had to be really creative.

I actually started by selling my panties, my used panties.

From there, I started doing sugar dating.

Sugar dating, a mutual arrangement with financial strings attached.

Carrie, a sugar baby, was looking for sugar daddies on a website called Seeking.com.

Who are you hoping to find as your sugar daddy?

I was hoping to find somebody that I could have like friendship with, and then I was also hoping to get financial assistance.

And that's where she first connected with Dr.

James Craig.

Oh my gosh, he seems so amazing.

I hadn't really known what a good guy looks like before that.

And so to me, I just remember thinking that, like, wow, he's a catch.

The two started talking regularly.

We're just like basically filling each other in on our entire lives, how he struggled and then how I've struggled with my past relationship and our kids and work.

And, you know, it really went from zero to 100 very fast so we were talking about the future and he overstepped the boundaries of what a sugar relationship was supposed to be.

What is it supposed to be?

It's supposed to be an agreement that you fill each other's needs, whatever those might be, but that you also respect that we each have our own lives and give each other space as well.

And Carrie says James Craig did fulfill some of those needs.

He even bought her daughter a car.

About how much did he end up giving you?

He didn't necessarily give me money, but helped provide.

And support, not just for me, but for my daughter.

I think it was maybe around $15,000 in gifts.

So not only was he, you know, essentially providing for his actual family at home and Angela and the children, but also,

you know, maintaining these relationships through a financial means.

Eventually, their relationship ran its course, as had several others.

Detectives discovered Angela was aware of her husband's multiple affairs, but still fought to save their marriage.

As a woman, I think we read through messages and a lot of the aspects of the case, and you understand why she remained in a fight to keep her family alive and keep everybody, you know, cohesive and some sort of family foundation at home.

In the weeks before Angela's hospitalization, James Craig continued to cheat.

We ultimately learned that he had a business trip to Las Vegas for a dental convention.

While he was there, he met another Orthodontist from Texas

and

began a pretty steamy relationship with her.

Her name was Karen Kane.

Does it appear to be serious?

It appears to be serious.

It's, I love you, you know, can't wait to

get to know you better.

Is this feeling like a possible motive to you as you're reaching out?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

He's telling Angela in their communications, there's no other woman, there's no one else, I swear to you, that's not what's happening.

And then sending emails on the flip side that we're finding in these searches that are,

they're racy, they're explicit.

Detectives discovered that Angela was desperately texting her husband about her symptoms while he was making plans to bring Karen to Colorado.

We found airline tickets, and so I ultimately believe that he's trying to buy these substances to put Angela in the hospital on the dates that his new love affair is coming into town.

And what happens while she's there given the circumstances?

He's with her spending time,

not at the hospital with his wife.

Even on March 18th, the day Angela was taken off life support, James Craig was nowhere to be found.

He had told his family that he was going to go stay in a hotel because he couldn't sleep in their bed.

He couldn't, Angela just passed away.

He couldn't bear to sleep in their bedroom.

And so.

And he's with Karen?

And he's at the hotel with Karen.

To the detectives, it was a head-spinning turn of events.

But they'd soon find out there was one more chilling scheme.

The target?

One of them.

He's just on a rampage.

Yeah.

I mean, we'll stop at nothing.

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James Craig, the dentist, the fun neighborhood dad, was now sitting behind bars at the Arapahoe County Jail.

Just days after his arrest, Assistant DA Ryan Brackley says Craig made a phone call to one of his daughters with a strange request.

He asked her to bail out one of the fellow inmates and to tell the jail that the fellow inmate was a cousin of hers.

She just lost her mom.

Her dad is in jail.

Really didn't know what to do.

But she went to the jail and posted the bail.

Once released, the inmate handed her a letter.

And that letter was from her dad,

essentially asking her to create fake false evidence.

Prosecutors say he wanted his daughter to create a deep fake video of Angela that would get him off the hook.

This is straight out of a movie script.

Yeah, yeah.

Senior deputy DA Michael Morrow says the family turned in the letter right away.

They said, well, we're obviously not going to do any of what he's asking us to do.

We don't even want to touch this letter.

But it didn't stop there.

These letters kept coming from the Arapahoe County Jail.

At some point, he had to go even a step further.

More like a giant leap further.

Deputy DA Osama McGrebi says Craig's letters and conversations with inmates began to target witnesses in the case, including lead detective Bobby Olson.

He asked a fellow inmate to find a way to kill her.

He's just on a rampage.

Yeah.

I mean, we'll stop at nothing.

How fearful were you?

I mean, it's definitely concerning.

In addition to first-degree murder for poisoning Angela, James Craig was charged with five counts of solicitation, including solicitation to commit murder, tampering with evidence, and perjury.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

His trial began in July 2025.

I remember just like so often just saying to my girls, that's Jim.

That's Jim sitting there.

And it's just a hard thing to try and wrap your mind around.

It's like, that's Jim.

Vivian and her daughters, Jessica and Tama, attended the trial almost every day.

The first day of trial, he like looked at me and he was crying and he like hit his chest.

He's like, thank you for being here.

Like as if you're there for him.

Yeah, we were not there for him.

The Craigs' three oldest children were there too.

Some days they sat behind the prosecution, other days behind their their father.

They never said to us, we know he did it.

They always said, we're going to wait and listen to the evidence and then we'll and then we'll let you know.

Despite experts and exams and blood tests, they couldn't figure it out, but they fought and they fought to save life.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Ryan Brackley described the steps medical professionals took to save Angela's life.

But it was the actions of someone else he wanted the jury to focus on.

There was another doctor in University Hospital that day, Dr.

James Craig.

The prosecution told the jury that James Craig left behind an incriminating search history on the computer in exam room nine at the dental office.

How to make murder look like a heart attack.

Top five undetectable poisons that show no signs of foul play.

You think he's thinking they won't look

on this computer.

I mean, there were nine exam rooms in that office.

Each one had a computer.

I'm sure he was thinking nobody's going to look at this.

They presented his credit card records and receipts showing that Craig had bought dozens of bottles of over-the-counter eye drops or tetrahydrozoly at a supermarket near his house.

Why are you yelling at your sister?

In the age of CSI, juries like to see things on tape, so prosecutors pressed play on those videos from the home security system.

Just minutes after the mailman delivered the arsenic order, James Craig walked over to the mailbox to get the package.

Days later, Craig was captured on camera preparing a protein shake for his wife in the kitchen, where prosecutors said he continued to experiment.

It shows that he keeps going back and back and back, trying different poisons, as you allege, that he's desperate and determined.

He's relentless.

It's like trial and error in the worst way.

Right.

The jury saw that profile James Craig had on the dating website, seeking.com, and heard from the women he met, including Carrie Hegaseth.

When she took the stand, Carrie revealed how their relationship took an alarming turn.

I started to believe that he was maybe using me to harm his wife.

Wow.

What did he

say that led you to believe that?

That he needed to

get rid of his problem.

He needed to get rid of his wife or, you know, get rid of the marriage.

He's essentially telling her, I'm not happy but I can't get divorced right now.

He didn't want to be that guy getting a divorce given their lifestyle and their religion.

Absolutely.

Personally I think that is the strongest motivation he had to commit the crime is his image.

Jim Craig is all persona.

Prosecutors argued that his relationship with Karen Kane was different from his other affairs.

And a countdown began once she had that plane ticket to Denver.

Every day he did something

to kill his wife.

Do you believe Karen Kane was the catalyst?

I think he used her as a catalyst.

I think he had been thinking about killing Angela and he would finish what he intended to do by a certain day in time.

She's a pawn and all this.

Right.

Karen testified that James told her he was going through a divorce.

She knew Angela was sick, but she never suspected he was involved.

It was clear she had no idea.

Then prosecutors turned to perhaps the most damning part of their case.

A strange note Detective Olson found on Craig's phone.

Jurors were about to hear James Craig in his own words.

Craig called it a timeline.

Detective Olson called it his manifesto.

We believe that part of that manifesto is truly what happened, right?

In the note, he admitted to having affairs with at least six different women and that he had researched different poisons and how fast they kill.

He then went into incredible detail, describing how he filled clindamycin capsules with the poison.

Remember, he had asked Angela's brother to give her the antibiotic, which made her violently sick.

Investigators photographed the prescription bottle, but did not collect it during their search of the home.

You believe those pills were filled with poison?

Yes.

And we went back to try to get them after he had had access to the house and they were gone.

There was another sinister admission in that manifesto.

Craig wrote that he put cyanide in a syringe.

Prosecutor showed the jury video of that moment.

He was actually holding a small object that looks like a syringe in his hand in the hospital and heads over towards her door.

That's Angela's room.

Goes inside, shuts the door.

What we believe happened next is that he used her IV line that had been placed by the hospital.

He put the cyanide directly into her veins.

Disconnected, stepped out and told the staff that she was complaining about her arm hurting.

And that was the end.

It's unbelievable.

You could see all of the nurses jumping up and huddling into that room to try to save Angela's life.

He didn't go into that room to fight for her life, to support her.

He went in that room to murder her.

The manifesto seemed to the prosecutors like a clear confession.

But Craig's defense team was about to turn that theory on its head, using Angela's own words.

James Craig may have been a cheater, said his defense attorney Lisa Moses, but he was not a killer.

It's not as simple as they would like it to be because the reality of it is their marriage was not simple.

Their marriage was complex.

She explained to the jury that his infidelity was nothing new, but Angela couldn't handle it anymore.

At the end of the day, 23 years of marriage,

20-some years

of him cheating on Angela Craig.

He broke her.

And we see it in her journal.

The defense showed the jury entries from Angela's journal, including this one, where she wrote, I am literally physically ill and it just seems to be getting worse.

I looked at Jim today and I couldn't feel any love.

All of the things I loved about him, about us, were a lie.

I feel abused, worthless, unwanted, and unloved.

That entry was from 2009.

And by 2023, the defense said it was Angela who planned to do something tragic.

James Craig wrote in his Timeline that while he was the one who had researched the poisons, he only did that because Angela was planning to take take her own life.

But that she needed help from him because she didn't have credentials to purchase these poisons.

That Angela had asked him to find fast, painless, quick poisons to kill herself.

He also wrote, while I did prepare all the concoctions for her, I did not administer any of them to her.

Broken investigation.

His attorney argued the investigators had blinders on, focusing focusing on James Craig and never looking at any other possibilities.

Why not take those blinders off?

The search of the home wasn't thorough, she said.

Key evidence was left behind, like some of the shaker bottles, the clindamycin prescription, and also Angela's laptop.

Why not take that perception off and look

and look deep?

Look deep into what she was actually doing on that that laptop.

Why?

What were they so afraid of?

But there were allegations the defense couldn't ignore.

Craig's shenanigans behind bars, asking his daughter and other inmates to tamper with evidence, and his plans to murder Detective Olson.

While in jail, that man made some really horrible, awful decisions.

They want this as proof that somehow that this is admissions.

This is also the acts of the desperate, scared, innocent man.

The defense for James Craig said that Angela was suicidal.

That's not who Angela was.

She was so strong.

She stood up for herself and knew who she was.

So I don't think that was even a thought that crossed our mind or that we ever accepted.

No, we didn't buy it for a second.

And hauntingly, the jury heard Angela herself dismiss the idea that she would end her own life.

It was a conversation with her husband caught on their kitchen security camera.

Nobody in their right mind would ever think I would kill myself before I killed you.

Nobody.

No, no.

There was so much evidence.

It was dense evidence too.

I mean, hundreds of pages of text messages with multiple different people, handwritten letters.

I'm sure they wanted to make sure they read every word of what this man wrote.

Jurors resumed deliberations the next day and by lunch sent word they had their decision.

And at this time then I'll ask Dr.

Craig and his team to please stand for the reading of the verdict.

We, the jury, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt find the defendant James Craig guilty of murder in the first degree.

Guilty of first degree murder and five other other charges.

That must have been a big moment for both of you to be sitting there in court.

I saw you.

I was there.

Yeah.

From the beginning, I wanted this over.

I wanted the family to get peace.

Hearing guilty of first-degree murder, that's, you know, kind of the first checkbox.

And then, you know, ultimately waiting for her count, it was a relief.

After a short break, everyone filed back inside the courtroom for an immediate sentencing hearing.

Even some of the jurors returned to listen.

It's very unusual.

Shows that they were clearly emotionally invested in this.

Right, they were, and they got to hear about the impact of what this man did to this family and this community.

The Craig's son Tolliver spoke to the judge first.

It's hard to lose your mom.

And three days after that, lose your dad.

And,

you know,

have to spend the next two and a half years trying to untangle whatever he tells you and whatever anybody else tells you and whatever might be going on and she was my best friend their oldest daughter miriam

he was supposed to be my hero and instead he'll forever be the villain in my book

and

it hurts so bad every day

and i miss her so much

while not all of the craig children have spoken publicly about the case Vivian says they are finding a way to move forward without their mother.

I think think she would be very proud of her children.

I think

they carry such a special piece of her within them.

They carry a resilience and

a fighting spirit.

Dr.

Craig unleashed a path of destruction as wide as a tornado and just as devastating.

The judge sentenced James Craig to life in prison for murdering Angela.

No chance of parole.

Plus, an additional 33 years for the other counts.

Was this worth it?

It just seems so absurd that you would make a decision to do this.

He stole a beautiful mom and friend and sister and daughter from this world.

Yeah, it's affected so many lives and just...

I don't know how it'll ever, it'll never be the same.

And that's all for this edition of Dateline.

Check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Andrea Canning and I will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you again next Friday at 10 9 Central.

I'm Lester Holt, for all of us at NBC News.

Good night.

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