Talking Dateline: Secrets of Exam Room 9

0:03Hi, everyone. I'm Lester Holt. We're talking Dateline today. I'm here with Andrea Canning to talk about her episode Secrets of Exam Room 9. There's a catcher for a title if I've ever heard one. If you haven't seen it, you can find it at the Dateline podcast feed. Go over there, listen to it, and then come right back here. We'll be waiting for you to talk about this episode. All right, to recap, in 2023, the sudden illness and death of loving mother and wife Angela Craig left her doctors and loved ones stunned. But detectives soon discovered a sinister explanation. explanation. She had been poisoned by none other than her husband, Dr.

0:43James Craig, and that wasn't the only crime he committed. And for this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip we'll be playing for you, Andrea's interview with the two lead detectives on the case, and then we'll answer some of your questions from social media. So now, let's talk Dateline. Well, Andrea, I'm a first timer on the Talking Dateline, although I talk at the beginning of the show a lot, so this is fun, and it's fun to do this with you. This was quite an hour. Congratulations. Thanks, Lester. Good to see you. I should mention here, and you mentioned in the program, that Angela was the mother of five daughters and one son.

1:20Yeah. Sounds familiar. You mentioned, yeah. Sounds very familiar. Yeah, I mean, it's not, this is a first for me in Dateline. I don't think I've ever met anyone, to be honest with you, who has five daughters and a boy. I know it exists out there, but I've never personally met anyone. And then to have a victim in a dateline have five girls and a boy, it was really surprising when I heard that. Did it help you relate at all to Angela in terms of her day-to-day routines and what it's like to be a mother of so many kids? There were hundreds of hours of footage from that house, from their home surveillance cameras in the house.

1:59and we start the whole show where you see, you know, these moments from a daily, you know, daily life. It's like when I saw her in those videos, when I saw her in the kitchen and the kids are fighting or she's welcoming her husband home or whatever it may be, that's when I really related to her, you know, because that's like our kitchen here in my house with all these children and all the chaos of daily life with six children. It's a lot. People obviously have security cameras, doorbell cameras, that sort of thing. This was a camera over the kitchen with audio. With audio. I know. It's like. What was that about?

2:39You know, I don't know why. I think from what I understand from a conversation that I had is that they didn't even realize that it was actually like saving the videos. You know, that it wasn't like intentional where every video needed to be saved and it was some kind of weird thing. I think they didn't even realize that it was. Yeah, and there's a scene in there where Angela is confronting her husband over, I guess, his availability while she was in the hospital. Yeah. She somehow was—you felt like there was something more to this argument, that this was coming down the pike for a while. Yeah, you could see them.

3:18They had some testy moments in the videos. And I'm sure, honestly, any parents might have some testy moments when you have six kids. I mean, that's always possible. But these ones were pretty specific about, you know, him. It was like him not having her back or something in the hospital or not acting the way that he should have from her perspective with what she was going through. So, Andrea, I mentioned that the title of this is a real grabber right away. What happens in exam room nine? He is a dentist, of course. Mr. Craig is, Dr. Craig is a dentist. And ultimately, it was his wife falling sick very, very quickly that sent detectives and this whole thing into motion.

4:05Yeah, and Lester, as to the title, I called it during filming. I said, this title will have exam room nine in it. And I had nothing to do with coming up with the title. So I just felt like that was the sort of the pivotal point in the story, you know, where everything kind of came to a head was exam room nine, right? That's where they figured out that he had the secret email address, that he was ordering the poisons, that he was communicating with other women, you know, having these affairs. And this all came from exam room nine. Yeah. And the thought was that he believes, well, if I just log on to a random computer, they'll never search it.

4:45They'll never find the history. Yeah. But they did. They absolutely did. And, you know, he said he was charting patients. He was, of course, doing a lot more than that. But it's the woman at the office, you know, that figured this out, right? That's like, hey, something is up here. Yeah, but she did it very quickly. So it made me think that she was already suspicious. Yeah, maybe. I mean, you know, it all starts with the package comes in. he's told people, do not open this package that is coming for me. So a woman working in the office didn't get that message, not to open the package. So she opens the package and then she goes to her manager and she says, you know, it seems kind of, you know, when you hear the word cyanide, right?

5:32Like most people, right. And it's not something that you hear in a dental office, right? Cyanide. And then once these symptoms start happening to Angela, this office worker, to her credit, is like, Googles the symptoms of potassium cyanide. And she's like, wow, that sounds a lot like what Angela has. And so she tells the business partner and then he tells the doctors and nurses. And so there's so much credit really that needs to be given to this office worker, you know, who started the domino effect of all of this. Can you imagine that conversation, though? I think my boss may have been poisoning his work.

6:14Yeah. What if you're wrong, right? And you're implicating your boss in a possible murder? I mean, or you're implying that at least that it's possible. And then can you imagine if we said something like that about one of our bosses and we were totally wrong. Like, yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, it's the ultimate, you know, see something, say something. But, you know, you don't want to get it wrong in this case. Right. What's life like at the office after that, if you're wrong? Yeah. No, I mean, that's one of the things I thought of as I was watching this. I'm like, you know, someone's got to step forward.

6:49All right, when we come back, we'll have some of Andrea's interview with the two lead detectives in the case.

6:59Can we talk about the police in this case, the two female detectives? They smelled a rat right away. They did. And a lot of it was, we go back to exam room nine, you know, because they're trying to sort it out. Like no detectives know exactly what's going on in a case right away, right? They don't know these people's backstories. They don't know anything about them. They're just learning. But they were exceptional detectives, Bobby and Molly. They were really, really good. And they're called the twins, which we mentioned, because not only do they kind of look alike, but they have the same work ethic.

7:37And it was funny, because our producer, Haley Barber, who was on the shoot, actually looked a lot like them as well. So we were like, well, I guess we have the triplets on set today. And we have some more of the interview you did with the detectives in this case that didn't air. And I think we're going to play it now. And you are the only women in the Aurora PD homicide unit. Yes, there's 14 of us total, and we're the only two girls. What is that like, being the only two women? I think naturally, as women, we have a different perspective. We typically have a background different than our male counterparts.

8:16We've had instances where a luxury purse was taken, and the guys are like, I have no idea what you're even talking about. and that's just like a random aspect that we know, but also just kind of like the ins and outs of communicating with other females on our scenes. I think they feel more comfortable when they're talking to a female who's like, you understand what I'm saying. And when you're dealing with domestic violence, which a lot of females, women, are victims of domestic violence, this is a case that really had a lot of those, you know, aspects, right, of domestic violence. No doubt. Bobby actually came from the Special Victims Unit prior going to homicide, and then I was from the domestic violence unit.

8:58And so watching this unfold, it's just a different caliber of domestic intimate abuse. I mean, I think everyone thinks of domestic violence as being physical. And this was not physical, but again, that years of manipulation and her just staying to fight, fight for kids, fight for marriage, and be the best she could be for Jim. In another time, I would have made a Cagney and Lacey reference, but that would date me. No, I know exactly what you're talking about with Cagney and Lacey. No worries, Lester. All right, good to know. But clearly they were, I don't want to say obsessed, but they were clearly focused on unraveling this mystery.

9:41And it seemed to become clearer and clearer that this was a person, this Dr. Craig, who thought he could cover his tracks. And the story doesn't end there. the story continues into when he's locked up awaiting trial. Yeah. And essentially, I guess you'd call it witness tampering, you know, working his daughter. Right. James Craig asked his daughter to get this letter from this inmate. And in this letter, he asks her to make a deep fake video of Angela. So what the deep fake video that he wanted was to entail was Angela saying that she wanted to end her life, essentially, that she was suicidal.

10:22So he wanted his daughter to create this video of her mom suicidal. Like, it just was, it's crazy. It's crazy, and it seems to cross over lines. We normally hear in these cases, you know, a spousal murder. This goes to a whole new level of thinking that you can manipulate, you know, from the inside the outcome of this case. Yeah, and I think that was James Craig, right? like that's what they said about him was that he was manipulating everybody all the time. You know, and that's from the prosecutors, that he was the ultimate manipulator. And then, of course, he tried to have, according to prosecutors again, he tried to, and he was convicted of this, tried to have Bobby killed, the detective, you know, which is really scary for someone who has already carried out a murder.

11:14And at this point, you know, when he's doing this, he's not been convicted yet, but they believe he murdered his wife. So why wouldn't he murder somebody else? Like, you know, you should feel very afraid for your life if someone has already been accused of killing one person. Yeah. Did the police feel there were areas where they couldn't quite nail down? I mean, as I'm watching it, I'm thinking this is open and shut case. Clearly, you know, He poisoned his wife to death. For detectives, was it that simple? You know, you still have to put a case together, and you still have to do it right. And these things are never easy.

11:50And they had a lot of material to go through, all those hours of surveillance footage and, you know, getting tests for her blood. And, I mean, there was so much that they needed to gather and put together for their case. So while, yes, he looked very guilty, it doesn't mean that their job was, you know, a slam dunk or easy. They had a lot of work to do on this. Andrea, there's an assistant DA here that you're familiar with that's involved in this case. Yeah, Ryan Brackley. He was in a very early Dateline that I did, Secrets of Cottonwood Creek, and he's been in four Datelines. So, yeah, he just seems to get the more diabolical cases in his career.

12:31I didn't feel, you know, the little bits of the trial that you included in the hour. it didn't feel like the defense had a good case or a strong case. I mean, personally, I don't think they did because you would have to believe that Angela wanted James Craig to help her kill herself. Like, this is a woman who was, you know, active and was, you know, on her Peloton and was present for all of her children's activities. I don't think anyone bought that, that this was a woman who wanted to end her life and she was asking her husband for help. I thought it was remarkable the way that the kids chose to deal with this.

13:07They kind of stood back and let the legal process go forward. But yet they were very, very much involved. They were. And I was there for the verdict and for the sentencing. And I have to say, like, when the kids got up to read their victim impact statements, I was bawling because it was just so sad. And the son, the only son, you know, he said, it was this crazy thing that he said that But he set an alarm. I don't know if he still does. But he set an alarm every single day at the same time to think about his mom. And it was an interesting little anecdote of how he was dealing with it. But that's what he said.

13:50Every day at that time, the alarm would go off. Did I get it correctly, though, that they purposely held back judgment early on? I think that's probably right. They haven't been very vocal. I know the family's having a really hard time dealing with this. And I think some days they sat on the dad's side, some days they sat on the mom's side. But as far as how they're all really thinking, I don't know. Because other than the two children giving the victim impact statements, we haven't heard from them. Well, we'll take a break. After the break, Andrea and I will be back to answer some of your questions from social media.

14:31Okay, Andrea, we've got some questions coming our way via social media. You ready for a couple of them? I'm ready. All right. This is from Marissa3232 who said, for Andrea Canning, what would you say is the episode slash case that most affected you? Oh, my gosh. This question is so hard. I mean, you know, I've done almost 200 datelines. Oh, Marissa. I will say, I will answer this question generally. When there's a teenage girl involved, those ones hit me really hard because I'm the mom of teenage daughters and younger. And also there's something about dads when they're talking about their daughters.

15:15And yes, moms are just as devastated. there's something about a dad who loses their composure in the interview that just like, I just fall apart. Yeah. It's a hard question to answer. I recognize. All right. This is from CRW or CRWolf13. It says, how do you select the stories you'll cover? It's fascinating how some are more recent, but some go back decades. I think we can both answer that question. And it's a lot of combing through newspapers from what's happening in local communities. It's crimes that we've been, you know, crimes or stories that we've been watching develop over a certain amount of time.

15:57And sometimes we do peel back for decades. And a lot of that is because new information becomes available or a key character emerges and expresses a willingness to go before the camera. So there's no formula for it. I don't know. I would say sometimes, Andrea, it's like, you know when it's our kind of story. Yeah. And we also get tips from law enforcement who will tell us about a story, connections that we've made over the years. They'll call us up or we get stuff from social media. Or it could come from missing in America, where somebody has reached out that their loved one is missing and then that turns into a dateline.

16:37So there's many different avenues of how a show gets on the air. We've got an audio message, some audio messages here. This one is pretty interesting. It comes from a listener named Leslie. Hi there. My name is Leslie, and I love listening to your podcast. I have a question for you. Have you ever thought about going through all of your shows and podcasts, etc., and looking at the original or the polygraphs and comparing that to the outcome that happened? I'm just curious to see over your 23 years that you've been doing this, could you go back and say how the polygraph aligned with your outcomes?

17:21Usually the polygraph seems to get it right. So even though they're not admissible in court, as we know, I would say usually these people fail, right? Or it's, and some polygraphers will say, oh, it's not a fail thing, but it's like a deceptive, right? Deception has been detected. Some will outright say fail. Some will say that. And I think that usually it matches. Gosh, I don't know if I've ever had anyone who failed or was deceptive and then turned out they were innocent. Maybe I have, but I can't think of one. Yeah, interesting thought though. Interesting thought. We've got another audio question.

18:00It comes from someone who didn't leave their name, but here's their message. Hello, this message is for all of the Dateline correspondents. I would like to know when y 'all are going to have a book release. I want to hear the background and how your life has been affected by your reporting on Dateline. I would definitely buy it. So, looking forward to hearing the answer. Thanks. Oh. Let's get to work, Andrea. Here we go. I love that. Yeah. I think Keith should write that book. Like, I don't know. Keith just came to mind. I feel like he would be. And then he could read it. He could do the audio book.

18:39Right, the audio book. And more people would buy the audio book than the book. Right? No, he'd be great at it. It's actually kind of an interesting thought. I mean, collectively, we all have a lot of stories of what it took to put these things on the air. Maybe it should be then like different chapters. Like with all of us, somebody can like ghost write it. and we can all be a part of it. Well, we may not be writing a book, at least not one that we're willing to talk about right now, but you can hear more about the stories, our stories by coming to Nashville for the Dateline live event. That is Sunday, September 28th.

19:16It is creeping up on us. It'd be fun to have you be a part of it with us. Yeah. Tickets are on sale now at datelinembc.com slash event. And you can also find a link in the description of this episode. thank you Lester thank you this was a great conversation well that's it for talking Dateline this week we're glad you were here if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline you know you can reach us 24-7 on social media at Dateline NBC and if you have a question for talking Dateline leave it to us as a voicemail at 212-413-5252 or send us a video on socials for a chance to be featured on a future broadcast We will see you Fridays on Dateline NBC.

20:02In the meantime, thanks for listening.