Episode 375

Sort and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences listener discretion is advised I am in a relationship that it got into a point where it was kind of like a game of chicken as far as oh You won't do this. Oh, yes. I will know you won't it become probably fairly toxic If you've ever wanted a t-shirt or a hat or some other shit from our store now would be a really really really good time to get it In fact, it's probably your last chance And if you buy something now you're probably gonna get a little bit of a benefit because we're trying to get rid of all this shit in the garage All this stuff this merch that I don't want so we're giving out free extra shit when you order anything while supplies last So head on over to our store. You can find the link on the top of the page at swordscale.com And if you order anything we're gonna throw in a bunch of extra free shit in your size Incentive tia also so Get cracking as they say , so You Jim Craig arrives home to find its surrounded by police Say Brian we got the husband right here After a day like today It's the last thing he needs With his six kids most of his wife Angie's nine siblings and members of his church In his family were gathering To grieve It's just after 11pm And that day had been emotionally exhausting for everyone Over nine days Angie went from suddenly ill to critically sick And then suffered a seizure and was declared brain dead Okay Uh, they're back in it awesome Well we got we got the dogs out because that's them other than that Nobody else can go inside How long am I last time? Uh, I don't know how long it'll be So we got her detectives coming out so The police were seizing the house as part of the investigation into Angie's death No one could enter until further notice After suffering a tragic loss the family now had nowhere to stay They huddled together in the chilly Colorado night And tried to decide where everyone should go Most of them came from out of town as soon as Angie's condition worsened They were staying in borrowed apartments and hotel rooms Angie had six kids who needed a place to grieve While the police would later make sure everyone had a place to stay At the time they had other things on their minds So I'm down at the Robert Stale address And I have the husband here Do you guys need him? I would assume I'm still on the way to office to get the briefing but The brief briefing that I did get yet still need him to come to headquarters If you will Okay, I think he's willing to do me just send him up there This is only two of us sitting on the officer Send him off Yeah, I think the officer's going to uh you yeah, you're Jim, right? Yeah, the other officer's going to have some information for you It sounds like you're going to have to go to headquarters To talk to detectives, yeah Okay, we'll give you the address So officers are giving the address So I have some information that I think you guys have been looking for But just wait for the detectives I know, but I'm saying if I get down, I don't want to answer any questions Probably lower up, they still want me to go The police had only been informed of Angie's mystery illness After she coded Hospital staff had also reported that Angie's husband wanted to terminate her care To hospital staff, Jim seemed oddly Okay With taking her off life support Eager even In other words, the police already suspected him Then for him to spontaneously say I have some information I think you guys are looking for And I'm probably going to lawyer up That didn't make him look any less suspicious Put it to you that way So you don't want to go down there right now? I don't want to Okay, okay Can you just say I'm talking one second? Sure And then Brian Did he tell you that he made a simultaneous statement to me that he was going to lawyer up Yeah, he just said to you that's okay Jim waited to hear back from detectives and route He had information, but he wanted a lawyer He paced around and made odd small talk about how at first He thought the gathering at his home was for a vigil Eventually he stood awkwardly nearby hands and pockets Staring at the ground like a dork He stood in the front porch of his large home on a Nice subdivision of Aurora But he couldn't go inside I already told that you know he's been talking to me right now Yeah, I am very interested in talking I'm very interested in talking But just not right now, right? Right? Okay Yeah Okay So you're free to go Okay But do you know when we'll be able to get back in our house? No, I'm sorry What can you tell me what the Like what to what end I mean I don't get enough It's a death investigation right now Yeah Okay So they got to protect all the crime scene Yeah Just in case you know this is uh there is It is a crime scene I don't know Okay, anyway right now we can't see anybody Yeah, I mean you're free to go You know you're not under arrest for anything like that So um They'll be they'll be in touch with you Over the next few days The detectives did get in touch with Jim And they didn't hide the fact that the investigation seemed to be solely focused on him They seized his phone His computers his Home surveillance system They even seized computers from his dental practice In that time he grieved the loss of his wife After three days in the ICU they took her off life support They crafted the obligatory Facebook announcement They planned the funeral It was difficult to bear Jim would often leave his kids with his extended family for long periods of time But after those few days The lead detective had called Jim and told him he could come pick up his phone They didn't seem to need it anymore After the kids went to bed Jim's brother drove him down to the police station to get it Oh, how are you? Okay, how are you doing? Well Yeah Hi Hi, Bob You are under arrest Okay, okay First clue murder How are you? How are you? Jim was met in the parking lot by both detectives and several patrol officers It was a ruse Before Jim even realized what was going on they had his hands behind his back His brother had no idea what was happening For you and the family I mean obviously this is shocking From our standpoint he's responsible for Angela's death Okay, no doubt in our mind Okay, it's hard to wrap your mind around that I understand especially for these poor kids But You know we would obviously take him in the custody this quick if we were not sure in our minds from our investigation If he's responsible for her death Okay Okay, so In this case then do we discuss the The seat for the funeral without him? Yeah, he's not going to be able to get out of the chair I mean, if you guys would be able to attend to him? No No No And I think if you really sit back and wrap your mind around it I don't think he should be at the funeral when he's the one that calls the funeral to a half Okay Still innocent He's up for the bill It's true It's true But I just want to give you heads up that that's that's why we're here and that's why he's got a warrant What ever detectives had learned in those few days, they believed it strongly enough to ask a judge for a murder warrant almost immediately after Angie's death. "I was never really getting my phone back, was I?" "Yeah, I mean it's done, it's downloaded, I had to bring it back to the lab, but because we have old people, but it's not why I was coming here tonight, though, was it?" "Nope." "Tonight, no." "I thought that's why I was coming." "Right." "So, um, now you're here, so they do have the arrest warrant for the murder of Angie on." "Oh my gosh." "My gosh?" "Everyone grieves in their own way, I guess. Everyone reacts differently to bad news, but responding, my gosh, to the news that you've been charged with murder, kind of undersells the surprise a little bit." "So, and I know that, you know, you've expressed a few times, but you have the answers and want to tell us, um, I just wanted to give you that opportunity to tell us so you know. And if you have insight on kind of what happened or, I mean, I know you've talked at DHS Department of Human Services, and you've kind of alluded when I've talked to you, I just wanted to just give you that opportunity, I really want that. I haven't had my phone, so I haven't been able to talk to the attorney that I reached out to, because as you can imagine, this is terrifying for me. And you both seem very nice, I'm like, you're on my side, but I know how this works, and I don't want to incriminate myself for saying anything stupid, or there are answers, there are answers, and this makes a lot of sense, once those answers come out, but I don't have to give this, I've never done this before, and I'm scared to death, and that's understandable. Jim again dangles the idea of having all the answers, as wife died suddenly and mysteriously. What answers could he possibly have, and he can't just share? What happens if, right now I say, I just really need an attorney with me, and I can't talk to you, then what happens next? Then uniformed officers here will just take you down to the jail. Okay, and then what happens if I talk to you and tell you, you know, then what? I still go to jail, and I wait for 30 to 60 days to see if I can change that. Well, I don't know, I mean, but you have a warrant, you're going to go to jail today, I can't, I can't change that, is you have something to say and maybe I can verify it, and that'll clear you and take away all the evidence that I have, but again, nothing will change the fact that you're going to go to jail today. Even the detective seemed confused by Jim, but a confusing odd, awkward character, he seems to be, his voice is low and raspy, as if he's been crying for days, or as if he's playing the Kevin Spacey character in seven. He didn't behave like a typical murder suspect, he was polite, but frightened, agreeable, but creepy. At times he seemed almost naive about what was going on, but then he'd say something as suggested he understood far more than he was letting on. He said he wanted to cooperate and tell them everything, but he couldn't. And he kept letting little bits of his story slip out. He just could shut that yapper, you know? Some of y'all have that same problem. I have all of the answers that you need, but I can't, I can't talk, I can't, I can't. The one attorney that I've talked to has said don't say anything because you could just depriminate yourself and I'm totally naive, that's what I'm doing, and you both seem very nice, but I know that your job is to hope you away. Well, our job is to figure out what happened. Our point is not to put you away, it's to put the person away that caused this to your wife, and that's where our person is my life. We don't have that information though. One interesting hypothetical question. What if the person responsible for my wife's death was my wife? Huh? What, what, what? Philosophy. Jim kept saying he had all the answers, but every time detectives gave him an opportunity to provide them, he stopped short. He seemed desperate to know what they knew without telling them what he knew. I feel for you, I really do. So what do you do? I can't give you your advice and I can't tell you what to do. Yeah, I mean, it's really just getting down to the truth. You know, I'm only being careful because I know how this looks, and I know exactly how this was going to look. Has the toxicology report come back? For, for what? For Angela, I know they're running toxic on her. I mean, there's a ton of toxicology. I mean, they just don't know what happened. They don't know what caused any of this. Toxicology? Angie had spent nine days suffering from a mysterious illness. Doctors couldn't identify. Why was Jim already talking about toxins? So then, what, what rounds did you arrest me after then? Again, I'm going to default to kind of what the site said. I mean, we have a lot of questions as I'm sure you do, and I can't, so it's kind of when we get into talking about the actual specifics of the case, that really can't occur until we're either going to talk or we're not. I would like to contact the attorney that I was thinking of using, and I reached out to him, and then you guys took my phone and I don't know if they're trying to reach you. Back out to me or not, and there's basically a straight up written, here's everything that happened from my iPhone that I wrote the night before you took my phone. I wanted to sit down and figure out the timeline so that I could remember exactly what happened and when, I mean, that's all there, but there's, and so I don't, I don't, I don't know, I'm so sorry. I don't know exactly what this means. You know what I said? You want to be sorry? I mean, this is a scary situation. And I didn't, I didn't do this. I don't know how to explain it myself. I don't know what to do. I'm scared to death. I want desperately to talk to you because I trust you, but what happens if, what happens if you guys just put me on, you know, what happens if you're not really on my side or I could say something that makes me look horrible and then some extra journey with an axe to grind puts me away. I don't want that. It was a good idea for Jim to contact a lawyer because they were not on his side. They never are. Which Jim didn't know was how much of the final weeks of Angie's life detectives had already reconstructed. And while he tried not to speak to the police, pieces of another explanation kept appearing in what he said. What a chatty catty this guy is. He sounds like Adam Bush. Before police ever arrested him, Jim had already typed out a detailed timeline of the days leading up to Angie's collapse. In the interview, he wanted to know about toxicology. He made a cryptic remark about wishing he'd let her go through with this years ago. And again and again, he insisted there were answers that would eventually make everything make sense. To the police, the story was already clear. They believed they already knew who killed Angie. What they still needed to understand was why. Now we take you to Aurora. We're gathering new information on what investigators are calling a heinous, complex and calculated murder. An Aurora dentist and a father of six is in jail tonight. Crazy, crazy story accused of murdering his wife. The only thing more shocking than the sudden death of a loved one is their spouse being arrested in connection. The only thing more shocking than that is the whole country, knowing about it. The story of the Aurora dentist plotting to kill his wife made national and eventually international news. Angie's family and even Jim's relatives couldn't believe it. Angie had been married for more than 20 years. They lived a privileged life. They had all the material things, you know? They also raised six kids, two of whom are now adults. Their oldest son was starting a family of his own. The crags seemed happy. Their group of family and friends was tight and had been for years. Jim's best friend from childhood was still his best friend. They had grown up together and even their wives became best friends. Angie's nicky's best friend has been always will be. She's the best, she's the greatest friend that nicky's ever had. We went to dental school in the same place, and so we lived close to them. We lived like three doors down from Jim and Angie. Red friends lived in our house, on our street. They were in our wedding. We raised 10 kids together, so-- we'd hang out a lot, okay, yeah. Our kids were at their house all the time. Our kids still went to their house. To Mike and Nikki Harmon, Jim and Angie's relationship was great. They had spent years as each other's best friends. Jim met Angie in college. They got married in December of 1999 when she was only 20, and Jim was 22. Jim was ambitious and charismatic, and Angie loved that. He even started his own business during his first year of dental school. He created a business and actually made some pretty good money. Like, who's doing it out of his little town home to dental school, right? And it's like, who has time to do that? He does. He types like 100 words a minute. He has a photographic memory. Jim made about $100,000 that year before he was sued and had to take his product off the market. After dental school, the friend stayed in touch. Jim graduated in '06 and moved to Aurora, Colorado to start his own practice. When my carman graduated and was considering moving to Colorado also, Jim offered him a job. They needed health insurance. And Jim said, "Well, I'm looking for an associate. I've got group insurance. I'll put her on day one if you want to come work for me." And it was kind of like, right? Yeah, I mean, like, that would be an answer to kind of our problems right now. Like, you get a job, you get insurance, like all the things. So that's what we did. So they worked together for two years, a little over two years. He would help anyone do whatever, like, really generous. And life unfolded from there. Between the crags and the hormones, the best friends would raise 10 kids together. You couldn't tell where one family started and the other ended. That's how close they were. And the hormones were witness to their love. They entertained all the time, you never see parties. You know, like, making dinner you got into cooking for all of them. So that was a hobby. That was one of them, like, he was making Crumberlay and Crublay. And they went on to cruise with them. And Jim was just, he was filming Angie like I love you and he was very over the top of everything. To anyone looking on, Jim and Angie were deeply in love. They raised a family, enjoyed life, and even worked together. Angie ran the front office and Jim did the dentistry. But behind the facade of a loving couple and happy family, Angie was struggling to keep it all together. Very few people knew about Angie's struggles. One who dead was her older sister, Tony. About five years before her death, Angie called her sister one day, a day they normally wouldn't talk. And so I was cooking dinner and I pick up the phone and I'm like, hello, you know, like something, what are you doing? And she was crying, and I said, what's wrong? And she said, I should probably start from the beginning and I'm thinking, the beginning of what? I mean, if I could help you understand how much I might spend with them, our kids are the same age. I'm 13 years older than her, but we got married three months apart. We saw each other all the time. And yeah, my baby was 10 months when she was having her first and, you know, so I'm thinking and he was always very nice, very, you should come and we should this and we love having you. And so she said, she told me that he had multiple kind of cookups back then. Okay. That's the conversation she and we had that he'd had a bunch of cookups and said he'd been addicted to porn for 17 years. And then he told her that he'd had an affair or had a fling or whatever with somebody at a dental conference and that he came home and announced that he'd been having an affair and he was leaving her. And she was distraught, of course, because she'd been trying to hold their family together for all these years. And she was trying to figure out whether she should just leave or try to fight for it or see if he's serious. Angie was deeply religious and highly devoted to her family. She wanted to keep it together at almost any cost. But Jim's multiple affairs were just the tip of the iceberg. Hidden beneath the glossy exterior of their life were more secrets. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Jesus Saint, see us too. And so is Angie. And so he lost membership privileges a couple of years ago for adultery. I didn't know this at the time and he approached me and him and Angie came to our house to sort of like tell us what was going on. The precipice for it, I guess, was not like we need to get this off our chest. It actually was more that within our church he was going through a council, like a disciplinary council for what has happened, and my husband was going to be sitting on that disciplinary council. So he was like, before you show up on Thursday night for this meeting, let me tell you what's been going on. He's like, he got so bad at one point, I drugged her one night, I just can kill myself. Here he goes. I gave Angie this so she could sleep. So she could sleep to the night. He didn't say drug. I was going to inject myself with this. I didn't want her to wake me up because I knew her wake up, so I knew she would stop me, you know, I want to protect Angie, I wanted to protect Angie. Jim's act and his confession to it shattered the image that their best friends had of them. They drifted apart after that. Angie felt alone. I think part of it was like now that you know all our crap, it's weird, you know, like Angie had confided in her sister, Tony, too. Tony started to see through Jim's behavior. And then she called me in one day and she was mad and I'm like, of course, nature of life with when someone's cheated on me, right? And she said that he had sedated her and his reasoning behind that was that he sedated her so that she wouldn't wake up so he'd go in their bathroom and kill himself. And she was just angry that he had sedated her and she didn't know that she was being sedated because she takes lots of allergy meds and, you know, she's got all kinds of, you know, she's got sinus infections, I mean, it depends. So it's not unusual for her husband who can prescribe medicine to give her something, right? But it was a paradigm shift because now she's not focused on the affair. She's focused on, oh my gosh, she's going to kill himself. And I know at the time they were both going to multiple or had begun going to multiple counselors, right? She was in therapy, individually, to deal with the effects of his affairs and the years of betrayal and because she wanted to keep her family together and, and then she was in couples therapy with him and then he went to three different therapists, like a sex addiction therapist, individual therapy, like mental health and then couples. Both Jim and Angie would start going to therapy and things seemed to be getting better. But soon Jim would have to file for bankruptcy after COVID. Because he had done severe damage to his practice. He wasn't going to work for real, he was counseling patients, he was spending money, he spent money, like it's going out of style. We thought they were so well off, it's like, oh yeah, like they were working really hard to make it look that way. I think for a while, they were probably okay, financially it was probably okay. I think for a lot while Angie probably didn't know, but for sure there came a day where it was like, do we have money? They still have like a ton of cars and all kinds of things, I was like, yeah, I don't know what they're doing, but it's not good, like it's all fake. But I think after a while it became, everyone thinks that it were this thing, like keeping up with the Joneses. Yeah, and they were like, people think that we're happy and people think that we're well off and all the things and it was like, it's all the house of cards. They looked like they had money, but didn't really. They looked happy, but Jim admitted to having multiple affairs. They were gonna need therapy together and individually, except Jim still thought they should get divorced. "So he continued to press. You need to leave me. I'm not good for you." I was in the kitchen and he said, "I've decided the best thing for you to do is to divorce me. I'm not good for you ever in your life, and I think that is the best." He didn't flat out say like, "I am leaving you. I fell for divorce." No, it hurt to leave him, so it was kind of just leave me. "You need to leave me. You need to divorce me. It's the best thing." Angie tried to fix her marriage to help her husband and maintain her life. Then on December 9th, just three months before her death, she had caught Jim doing something odd. "So on December 9th at 1 o'ap and that's a Friday. I'm not ready to talk yet, just yet, but I need to reach out because I'm feeling really broken and really alone. I'm leaving Jim, not until after Christmas, but he's made it impossible to stay. I don't really have a plan yet. Mostly I'm just alternating between crying in them. I hope you're there for me, or I know you're there for me, and I love you for it. I'll talk when I can." And I miss my mom, so it was 10th, how are you holding up? I'm exhausted. I'm hungry in my headharts and I need a nap. It wasn't what I thought it was, so here's where he shifted the narrative. It wasn't what I thought it was, and I'm staying. But it's something and it's a mess, and I'll have to call and explain. It's all just so broken and stupid. December 11th, I don't even know what to explain, or how to explain what happened, so I'm going to give you the short version. I thought Jim was cheating again. He wasn't. He was lying and talking to other people, mostly women online. But none of it was even emotional, sexual or personal. What it boils down to is Jim needs to finish digging into his broken relationship with his mom. He needs his need for validation from and control over women in whatever way he can get it is strong and I don't doubt if I hadn't found out this would have eventually gone the way it did last. He found a website for people who are struggling financially and need help where they're supposed to be able to find odd jobs for money. But it has really turned into a site for predators who give money and expect sex. He was giving money and feeling like the best human ever when he didn't demand sex, but he was lying to me and talking to other women frequently. His explanation, it was in order to get them to like him and think he was amazing and then he moved on to the next person. Jim was spending money, they didn't have, giving it to women he didn't know, just so he could get that warm fuzzy feeling. Weird. Time would pass. Angie and Jim would stay together and Jim's new partnership with Ryan Redfern was helping him work his way out of debt. They seemed to be through the rough patch in their marriage. The weekend before her mysterious illness started, Angie spent time with her sister Tony and Utah. They attended Roots Tech, a genealogy convention. You guys went in normal things, it was a normal I picked her up, we went downtown, we got dinner, we went to the hotel, my other sister and I was waiting for us. Of course, Tony asked Angie how things were going with Jim. And she said I think it's been good for him to just be there with the kids. It's a good distraction. He said to you know, just take their kids sounded. I never spoke to him, but it sounded like he was in good spirits. She felt confident. She wasn't overly anxious, she was leaving all the classes to call and she didn't come back after. She came back and we'd all sit around and talk and eat all the snacks we brought and probably shouldn't be eating. Right. That's what we do. We do sleep. She'd set her alarm and set her white noise and go to sleep and she was up first, taking a shower and normal 100% normal. They had a great weekend and to Tony, it seemed like Angie and Jim were working through their issues. The next day, Monday, March 6th, the happy, joking, carefree Angie was gone. I can't really explain because my brain doesn't want to work. Something feels really weird in my head and my body is sluggish and Jim's going to take me to the doctor this morning. I said well that's not good and a little scary and when are you going in? You took the girls to a friend and you should be home soon. I said well what do you think it is? She said no idea. You going to the ER? You have? Do you have an appointment? I said keep me posted or I'll check in in a while to see if there's an answer, are you nervous? She was not necessarily nervous. I just don't understand why I went from perfect because she rode her bike like she did every morning. How the protein shake that she said Jim made for her and then went to what's not feeling well. Yeah. And then she just went to not feeling well. Angie's illness was sudden enough then severe enough for her, Jim to take her to the emergency room. She would be released that same day with no explanation of her symptoms. The following day, Tony texted to check in on her. So she says Tuesday morning, a 43, I said okay, spill it. How are things this morning? She said bad. Now I'm stuffing and seeing spots. Honest thing though, I think I'm sick and this is one of those lovely side effects. So she goes immediately to some kind of ear infection or something and her ear infection and everything that comes with it. Angie suffered from almost chronic sinus and ear infections. She had severe allergies to all animals. So whenever she felt bad, she would default to that diagnosis. Tony wasn't convinced that an ear infection fit. I said someone gave me a good remedy for a headache, for every proffin in a myel. She's like yeah, I took them about three hours ago, but I think I need sleep for the rest of it. I said and food so I sent them deliver panera. So I said she's like I'm alone with the babies for an hour or so and then I can sleep. I've been slowly snacking. I also punched myself in the nose trying to wrangle the wrap off my hair yesterday so that's not helping. So do you feel like you need some help? Is your dissonance ready or is your dissonance really bad? Jim just told me he passed out this morning. Be honest. How are you feeling? She said he's such a bum. I did, but that wasn't that wasn't not long after I woke up. I still felt a lot yesterday, a lot like yesterday, visions to blurred and stuff as well as spots in my eyes in a huge headache. I got up and tried to feed the bird and got dizzy so I put my hand on the island. I have no memory of falling. I'm much better now. No spots. No blurriness. It's just tired. I said it's good that you're at least feeling somewhat better and she said I worked. I worked out on Monday for crying out loud. I was fine until all of a sudden I wasn't. No diagnosis seemed to fit. Her symptoms came and went and their severity fluctuated. It didn't make any sense. She hoped she would get better but then suddenly she got worse. Wednesday 6/23 did you get an app to get help? Hi, she didn't respond, which is highly as you can see unusual. Wednesday at 6/23 I said she didn't get an app to get help. Hi. Yesterday was a rough headache and nausea day and I took this Thursday at 6/56 AM. Yesterday was a rough headache and nausea day and I took him out to bed as soon as someone big got home. I'm dizzy and tired and my muscles don't want to work today but I'm hoping that will go away. The headache seems to be gone. I'm drinking a protein drink and lots of liquids, listen to me. Angie would go back to the emergency room on Thursday. Three days after her symptoms started. As hospital staff started administering tests, they uncovered another more troubling symptom. She goes, "I will absolutely admit that my blood pressure has been lower than usual. But I wonder if it is something to do with how sedentary I've been. Just now it was 78 over 55. Super young nurse. I even hear her, I don't know, let's just say I even hear her panicking and she release the info to the other nurse." The hospital ended up admitting Angie to observe her overnight. They thought it would be just one night but she was still there through the weekend. "So he texted us at 108 AM and just crashed tonight, that's how he started. I was sleeping by her in the hospital and I was still next to the bed and suddenly a couple of nurses came into the room and said that our oxygen saturation was down in the 50s and they were trying to revive her to get her awake and breathing. She was super lethargic, difficult to arouse. They were finally able to get her stabilized on oxygen and they just came in and took a bunch of blood samples to see if there's an infection in her blood. And they are also going to check for tropinins, tropinin levels, which is something I think to do with her heart. The doctor has ordered an EEG this morning in case she's had a seizure. I didn't know anything was even wrong, it just seemed like she was stirring really loudly next to me and my inner bed. Anyway, she's stable now and I hope this message doesn't wake anybody up. Just wanted you all to know." With yet another sudden symptom, family and friends were starting. getting really scared. No one knew what was going on with Angie. All of a sudden her oxygen levels were low. By Tuesday, her symptoms had improved and she was discharged from the hospital. Still with no diagnosis. She returned home with an oxygen tank and a blood pressure cuff. But when I got home, I went and agreed her and she was sucked out on the bed and looked super tired and pale. She was cold and she asked me to put my hand on her back and tell her if she was shaking or not. She wasn't but I guess she felt like she was. So she was having these internal tremors and she felt like she was shaking outside but you couldn't feel it but she could feel it on the inside. And all my research says that's central nervous system damage. And she said and then she talked to me a little bit about the tremors and I'm like that's really weird and she goes I don't know what it is but I'm hoping it's like about her. I'll just go away and then Jim says hey, I'm here. Take your cleanse of my son and I said why should I cleanse of my son? And he's like oh it's for her sinus infection. Angie made it through the night. But by the next morning Wednesday March 15th, nine days after her illness started, she went back to the hospital. She was really dizzy and had trouble standing in addition to her other symptoms. Jim was at work so Angie's brother took her. Jim would arrive later and relay information to the rest of the family. How are things? Super lethargic stats? He sent me a picture. I said he said VP is low. Well I can clearly I can see that. I know how to read it. I said I see that. You're probably like you guys are so smarty. I said I see that. What's the plan? Did she take anything different yesterday when she got home? Then she has been taking. He said clendomiasin for sinus infection. They don't think that had anything to do with it. And I said what are they saying? A bunch of nothing. They want physical therapy to evaluate her. They tried but she was too a toxic. They want to keep her overnight and try again tomorrow. The next thing I get he says hang on crash. And I'm panicked. I'm five minutes from my oldest sister's house. I'm driving. I'm thinking oh my gosh I'm going to die trying to get there because I'm shaking profusely said what crashed him? Are they able to bring her back? I don't know what's going on. They think seizure. Are they looking? Are they still working on her? Lots. Intubating her. Why? Now I know it's really bad because they're intubating her. Can't get the tube in. Emergency anesthesia team has paged. What? Why? She's not maintaining her airway, bagging her. Cannot get the breathing tube in. What does the anesthesia team do? Get the tube in. Are they there yet? I mean I'm just panicking. He's like chest x-ray to make sure the tube is in. There's 16 people in the room. BP is low. How low? Systolic 60s. I'm assuming they're not saying much. Is Mark back? No, no. Another picture. What are they doing? I don't know talking frantically a lot. The doctor stepped out to talk to me and they called her back in. 57 over 45. Anything? No news. She came out and said she heard me say the word stable. She said she is not stable. She used the word genus and said she's very, very worried and should be responding right now but she's not. Angie took a turn for the worse and it wasn't looking good at all. Doctors seem to be really worried about her brain. The news spread through family and friends. There was a rush to get to the hospital. Ryan Redfern, Jim's boss and friend from dental school cancelled the rest of his appointments that day and went to support Jim. But as I'm pulling into the campus, Jackie, our director of operations calls and she says she says, "Dr. Ryan, I have Caitlin on the phone as well. I just want to let you know. Caitlin, can you tell Dr. Ryan what happened on Monday?" And Caitlin is the office manager for some of our dental for Jim's practice. She said that two Mondays ago. So the first Monday, the March 6th day when Angie initially got sick. So Dr. Jim had to leave the office early, early early in the day, obviously to go get his wife and take her to the hospital for the first time. And Jim came back to the office after being with his wife all day at the hospital and she's getting admitted. He came back at some point. He was on a computer in one of the operatories in the dark. She was, she thought it was weird because he's got an office while I was in the on his office computer. And she walked by and said, "Hey, is there anything I can do for you?" And he said, "No." And then after she left, like 30 minutes after she left, she said that she got this text message. It said, "There's a package that's going to come. It's personal. Don't open it. Package income." It came on Monday, this Monday, two days ago. Yeah. And Katie, the other one of the other front desk gals at the office started to accidentally open the package. And soon, like I said, she was opening that Caitlin realized that that was the package that the doctor Craig had said, "Don't open." Caitlin said that she did look inside. And what she saw, whatever was, was labeled potassium cyanide. Potassium cyanide is highly toxic and is not used for dentistry. It prevents the body from properly using oxygen, which can cause confusion, seizures, loss of consciousness, coma, and even death. Ryan knew this as he arrived at the hospital. Jim's actually outside and we hug and we cry and we both cry and we go upstairs. Jim gets a phone call from one of the doctors. I don't know which doctor. And as Jim was on the phone looking out the window, I followed the nurse and gave him what I just learned. Once the nurse heard about Ryan's suspicions, hospital staff immediately contacted the forensic nurse. They tried to give Angie the antidote, but the damage was already done. And so, when the doctors came, I was just like, it comes a whole slew of doctors. There's like five of them. I was like, this is not good. And I knew that was going to be bad news. And as soon as the door opened, after, you know, 10 minutes, Jim came out and was just blown and they basically told him that she's not going to make it. The forensic nurse, a mandatory reporter, called 911. We have a suspected cyanide potassium cyanide with me. She doesn't know what cyanide you guys either. Cause a lot of issues. Because she's wanting to understand it was to withdraw care on her pretty quickly. And so we're trying to, you know, get you guys involved in a try to figure out medical decision and all that. And as his name is Jim, Jerry and Martin Craig, C-I-A-I-G. So he's urgently trying to withdraw care. Yes, he's trying not to believe it. Angie was brain dead and unlikely to survive without the machines keeping her breathing. While Jim cried and grieved with his family, Ryan left. A short time later, Jim called him. He says, Ryan, I got some disturbing news. And I said, did you say something to somebody? And I said, yeah, I did. And I told him exactly what I said to the nurse. And I said, Jim, what was in the package? I said, did you order a package? He said, kind of pausing. He said, yeah, I did. I said, what was in the package? He goes, no, it was a ring for, it was a ring for Angie. It was going to be a surprise. And I said, Jim, that's not what was in the package. And he goes, what do you mean? And I was like, the package was opened. And he's like, no, it wasn't. I said, yes, it was, Jim. Jim, I know what's in the package. And he wouldn't admit to what was in the package. And I said, Jim, potassium cyanide was in the package. Why do you have potassium cyanide? And I said, why do you need potassium cyanide? And then he said, he's like, there's a lot of causes with deep breaths. And then he said, he goes, I ordered it for her. And he basically said that he had ordered the potassium cyanide at her request. I said, why did you order potassium cyanide? I was like, if she wanted to kill herself and commit suicide, then why didn't you let her do it her way? Why didn't you, if I just get a divorce, it was that bad. You know, I'm asking these questions and he's done having really many answers. He said, I bought it. I didn't think she would, I actually didn't think she would use it. He starts saying things like, Ryan, what have you done? Ryan, what have you done? Yeah, Ryan, what have you done? And then he starts saying things like, this is going to come back on me. They're going to think I did this. This looks bad. I said, Jim. I said, yeah, it does. And I said, I think you should stop talking to me. And I said, I think you need a lawyer. turn home later that night to find it surrounded by police. Detectives believed they understood what Jim did to Angie. In time, they would build a theory for why. But what they could never have known was how far Jim would go to keep them from proving it. [MUSIC] Jim Craig was arrested for the poisoning of his wife, Angie. To most her knew the Craig's, it was unbelievable. To his kids, it was unfathomable. >> She tried really hard to protect him. Her oldest boy might know like this much, and you can tell by the way they're reacting to what's happening. They can't believe, they don't believe that he would do that. Their statements are, he loved my mom so much, he would never do this. They had it all wrong, someone else must have done it. >> And when Jim said Angie killed herself, his kids couldn't make any sense of it. So when she asked me that, it was maybe somebody else did it. What was the poison? And I had decided that if the older kids asked me point blank, if they asked me a straight up question, I was going to answer straight up. So I asked her, I said, do you really want to know? >> And she said that? >> And I said it was cyanide, and she looked at me and she said, what is cyanide useful? I said nothing medical, it's plastics, metal, you have to have a specific license. If you just have it, but how would he get it? I said he ordered it, and had it sent to his office. So why would he do that? What if someone's setting him up? What if someone sent it to his office and it wasn't him? And what if someone else gave it to my mom, and I said, tell me who? You tell me who and I, I'm all over it. And she's like, but my dad wouldn't have done it. And then she asked about the suicide and I said, Nira, if your mom was going to commit suicide. She wouldn't take something slowly to put herself in absolute pain and fear for 10 days. That's not how people that are doing this suicide do that. And she's like, but my dad wouldn't do that to her, he wouldn't do that. And it's hard because I know why they feel that way, because the morning my sister's told me that way. I thought there's no way, and then I started to think about it. Oh, I have never built out, but I just, this case, I feel so, I just tragic, I hate this case. The whole case was so tragic and unbearable that even the detectives struggled to get through the conversation. And Angie's kids were left trying to understand how any of it could be true. The autopsy found that Angie's cause of death was acute cyanide and tetrahydrosoline poisoning, with subacute arsenic poisoning as a significant contributing condition. Jim's search history suggested that he thought about this long and hard. It suggested he planned it. Like a roob, this guy's search history included things like, how many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human? Is arsenic detectable in an autopsy? And how to make murder look like a heart attack? What an amateur. He also watched videos about deadly poisons and substances that could kill without obvious signs of foul play. It's incredible to me that in 2026 a grown-ass adult doesn't know the very basics of information technology. There's a record, people, and you can't delete it. It's called the internet. It's called the cloud. It's a glorious digital cage and we're already in it, you get it? Detectives also found that Jim created a new email address. Jim and Waffles at gmail.com. He attached this newly created Amazon account with a seeking.com account. With a new Amazon account, he ordered 99.9999% pure crystalline arsenic. Another highly toxic substance. It was delivered on March 4, two days before Angie became ill. Speaking of the cloud, that Amazon man. That's a real convenient service, you know? I use it all the time. Not for this though. His seeking.com account included a tagline, by the way, explaining the name Jim and Waffles. It's because they're both nice to wake up to, he said. You can stop gagging now. Evidence also showed he ordered Oliander. It's almost like he was checking off every box. The Oliander plant is a poisonous shrub, but it had not yet been delivered, so you didn't get around to using that, too. And of course, there was the potassium cyanide order and delivery, which outed him in the first place. It was delivered just two days before she was declared brain dead. Waffles looked for evidence that James had purchased a product containing tetrahydrosoline, and they found it. They found it. It's pretty easy, actually. It's right there in the history. Digital fingerprints have proven to be much more useful than actual fingerprints, case you haven't noticed. Over two days, Wednesday, March 8, and Thursday, March 9, the day Angie was hospitalized the first time he bought 19 bottles of vizene. You see, the active ingredient and vizene, the chemical that takes the red out of your eyes, is highly toxic if you ingest it. And it'll give you the shits, boy. I'll tell you that, but don't try it, it will kill you. To prosecutors, the combination of poisons helped explain the way Angie's symptoms changed over time. They believed Jim first poisoned her protein shake with arsenic on March 6. She became sick and almost immediately went to the hospital, and was sent home without a diagnosis. Over the next few days, investigators believed tetrahydrosoline was also introduced, which helped explain some of her shifting symptoms. Her condition worsened until she was admitted to the hospital where she gradually improved. Then the cyanide arrived on March 13. Angie was discharged the next day, and within 24 hours she was back at the hospital and even worse condition. Then there was the surveillance footage from the hospital. It showed Jim entering the frame with what appeared to be a syringe concealed in his hand. It showed him entering Angie's room, and seconds later, come out to tell the nurse, Angie was complaining about arm pain. She coded within seconds after that. That syringe was never found. Then there was his ongoing affair. He met an orthodontist from Texas at a convention, and had been seeing her for weeks. How boringly predictable. It wasn't evidence that he poisoned Angie, but the timing was suspicious. He had, after all, arranged for her to come to Colorado, and she arrived while Angie was on life support. He at no point seemed stressed or anxious, or I mean, really, I had to drag it out. I'm like, are you sure you're okay because he seemed okay. We met on a Thursday and then went home on Saturday, so we spent this Thursday evening getting to know each other, and then we texted until like, you know, 4 a.m. that night. Then the next day we, you know, spent pretty much the day together. They told me they hadn't been living together. He had an apartment. If I had known what was true, I would not have been with this person. They were in constant communication after they met, but they'd only known each other for three weeks. There's no way I'm motivated. There's been no planning a future together. The evidence seemed overwhelming, but there was still something prosecutors could not show the jury. No camera, witness, or physical evidence captured James actually putting poison into something Angie consumed. But before they could go to trial to argue their case, Jim had other plans. The second daughter told a completely different story about a different episode. She described getting a phone call from the jail from her father who asked her to come down and bail another inmate out. He told her the inmate was a cousin of hers. She didn't know this person, but she has a big family, and so she said it was believable. She bailed this man out, and he handed her a letter from her father. It asked her to buy a burner laptop and create a deep fake video that would show her now now dead mother saying that she got it's James Craig to order these poisons and that she took them herself. He described how she should use the dark web to make this happen and how she should destroy the laptop afterwards. Instead of doing any of that, that second daughter took the letter to police. Craig wanted police to find letters at his house that suggested his wife, Angela, was suicidal and found out about an affair. Police say that James Craig tried to persuade a former inmate to help him find women who would give false testimony at his murder trial. She said Craig wrote a letter to a former jailmate in April asking him to find one or two attractive women, people who would be willing to lie to the district attorney and his attorneys. The prosecution also called another former inmate who testified Craig wanted him to find someone to kill the detective in the case and to get pictures of a deputy's son. Jim would eventually face five additional charges for his actions behind bars. Two counts of solicitation to commit tampering with physical evidence, two counts of solicitation to commit first degree perjury, and one count of solicitation to commit first degree murder. And those alleged efforts did not come out of nowhere. Even before his arrest, Jim had been hinting that Angie might have taken her own life. He had written out a detailed timeline asked about toxicology and suggested he had answers that would eventually explain everything. Prosecutors would later argue that some of what he did from jail was aimed at making the suicide story look real. As those allegations piled up, several attorneys requested removal as counsel. The repeated changes delayed the case, but eventually the trial did begin. This case is really about broken people, broken marriage, broken perceptions, broken investigation. You may not like him, you may not think he's a good husband, but that's not what he was. This case from the very beginning started with the Linder. As a defense, we're going to ask you to remove the Linder from this case and to look at everything. It was over for one. They had tunnel vision. It was all about the husband, Dr. Craig, who worked at the Stennis Office, where sign language delivered. She didn't own his wife constantly. They proved beyond the reasonable doubt that he was not faithful. That's they proved. But this idea that somehow this was some sort of motive. He's just like all the rest of the women. That cheating, that wanting her husband to be better, it broke her. The defense argued that the investigation had focused on Jim so much that they never considered any other possibility, like Angie being suicidal, for example. Instead, they thought Jim's affairs were not a motive for him to kill his wife, but an emotional weight on Angie that finally broke her. The prosecution didn't need to prove a motive, but Jim had them all. Of course, he was in dire financial straits, and Angie did have life insurance. Of course, he was having an affair and was dissatisfied with his marriage. But why not just divorce her? Why spend days slowly poisoning her to death? Jim wanted the marriage to end, but he didn't want to be the one to end it. He wanted Angie to divorce him so that he could maintain some semblance of the life he had. He didn't want to be viewed as a bad husband or bad father. The optics of it, you know? So why not just kill instead? He didn't want to expose his financial problems or his affairs. He didn't want his family, his friends, his colleagues to view him differently. He didn't want to lose his standing in the church. There's so many people that are so focused on the optics of something that they never look at their own fucking actions, objectively. It happens to everybody, I guess, to some extent. But boy, is it apparent these days? The defense would arrest, calling no witnesses. The jury would deliberate for eight hours over two days before returning with a verdict. Jim was guilty on all charges. At his sentencing, his eldest daughter delivered her impact statement. I was the sick child of my mom and dad, her oldest daughter, and although I may not have been hers, she was my best friend. I want people to be telling me that my mom is here with me, but I hope more than anything that she's not. I hope she scores so much better. I was supposed to be able to play on my sister's wedding, so I won't even know. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less than learning. I was supposed to be able to share with her the stories and the things happening in my life. And the projects that I started at number finish didn't. I was supposed to be able to dress my dad. He was supposed to be my hero, and instead it'll forever be the villain in my book. And it occurs so bad every day, and I miss her so much. And I know there were so many more people that love to be able to stand up and say a lot about my mom, and how wonderful she was, and some people who went to stand up and were my best. Some of the stupid things she did instead, and some of her crazy moments. But I think I get it. I speak for everyone when I say that life and the world will truly never be the same, that will never be as bright as it was when my mom was here with us. I miss her. I don't want my mom. I don't want more than anything to go from at the end of the day. I just give her a hug and call her and tell her about all the crazy stuff that's happened. I didn't get her hurt twice. Well, they're asked for not. The loss, the six children of Jim and Angie felt is hard to imagine. They didn't just lose their mother, their friend. They lost their father too. Jim Craig was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Additional time was added to be served consecutively with the other charges. There isn't a single satisfying answer as to why he did it. There were affairs and financial problems. There was a life and reputation he had spent years trying to maintain. Any one of those things might explain part of what happened, but nonexplain why divorce wasn't enough. One way to understand it is that Jim wanted a way out without losing the life he had built. But when things stopped going the way he wanted, he kept trying to control the outcomes. First he tried to control his marriage, then he controlled Angie's illness. Then he tried to control the outcome of the trial. But everything he was trying to preserve, he lost anyway. His wife was dead. His children were left without their mother and their father was in prison for the rest of his life. They would later file a civil suit against their father, his practice, and the company that supplied the potassium cyanide. When the sentence was announced, there was no applause. There was nothing to celebrate. The trial was over, but life for the Craig children would never be the same. And the clearest contradiction in the entire case had already been captured years earlier, inside the Craig home. Nobody in the right mind would ever be going to kill myself before I killed you. Nobody, name one person. It may not be your fault that they didn't use their due diligence or anything like that. But it's your fault that you didn't need it really. It's your fault that you didn't need life out of it. It's suicide works. Look, it did it to myself. Nothing I said could be believed. Because I didn't say where I'm afraid she is to herself. I just said, "Are you going to do a drug problem?" And how do you think it was done every time that you were actually suspended? Well, I also wanted to drug that because you were accusing me. I wanted that for me too. Yes, well, everything about that whole interaction was never something that nothing to have been there for me. You are there for me because you were too concerned about what you were concerned about. Well, the end of the year is both very close and very far away. So we got plenty of time here, we got a lot of more episodes to come until we finally shut the lights down in the studio. Forever, yes, I do actually intend to do what I said I was going to do, I don't know why you would think otherwise. I've never lied to you, I've never said I'm going to do something and not do it. We are shutting down at the end of the year, that is a fact, and I'll let you know why and all that later on. For now, we still have a little time together, baby, before you have to go back to your family and your life and all that, let's just enjoy the time we have here, I'm not that. Thanks everybody, that's stuck around this long, thanks to everybody that has ever bought a membership and even if you've just supported us for one month, we so much appreciate all of you, we are all in my heart for all eternity.