Hidden True Crime - Poison, Lies & Control: Psychologist Breaks Down James Craig’s Chilling Mindset | LIVE

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

** This episode was recorded live** He was a respected dentist, a father of six, and a devout Mormon—but behind closed doors, James Craig was plotting his wife’s murder with arsenic and cyanide. In this episode, we sit down with a clinical psychologist to break down Craig’s disturbing behavior, his manipulative actions, and the chilling psychology behind the smiling husband-turned-killer. About Hidden True Crime: What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/Hiddentruecrime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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See if you qualify at weight watchers.com. I'm not reviewed or approved by Novo Nordisk. Hello, everyone. For those that are new to hidden true crime, I'm Laura Matthias. I am a journalist. I was a broadcast journalist for 10 years. And Dr. John Matthias is a criminal and forensic psychologist who has worked for nearly three decades assessing criminals.

And he also just happens to be my husband. So this is a case that you and I have been. talking about. It's the reason we wanted to cover this case and trial, which is why I have been in Colorado covering the trial every day until this weekend where I came home to see my family. And we have questions. James Craig has been charged with murdering his wife of 23 years, the mother to his six children using arsenic, cyanide, and bisonin eyed eyed. And the stuff that I've been hearing in trial each day is horrendous. I have so many questions about him. Only you can answer so, it's so confusing to me, so upsetting. He has become more and more upsetting each day in trial

where he acts as if he's this loving husband while slowly killing her and making her suffer. I've wondered everything from someone being sadistic to what this is. And I think these are questions, only you can answer. You have been, you have actually been studying and to understand this case now for days. You said there was something that wasn't so obvious about this case. Yeah, I think this case has so many elements that come together that make it unique. I think the two most unique elements of this case are you have the intersection of what I would call health care criminality. So I'm sure most of our viewers will know that there's all these health care crimes where doctors and or nurses essentially murder patients.

And so I think you have elements of that at play here. And then you have a straightforward domestic violence or interpersonal violence, that this is someone who essentially murders his wife because he wants to begin another relationship. And so what's interesting about this case is that, you know, It's a very atypical case of domestic violence in the sense that statistically, for example, with cases of interpersonal violence when there's homicides. So in interpersonal violence, homicides, roughly 70% of those homicides are committed with a firearm or a gun, right? Almost none of those, very, very few of those. And very few domestic violence cases that result in

homicide involve poisoning, and especially poisoning by men. So mal poisoning, and domestic violence cases is highly unusual. And I think that's where this case really starts to cross over into some of the medical or the healthcare criminal side is that on that side of the equation, poison is probably the preferred method of murder. So you have this healthcare, M.O. or modus operandi, which is poison, and you have a guy trying to kill his wife, which is domestic violence. And, you know, typically most domestic violence cases,

as I said, they don't involve poisoning. In fact, I look at the statistics from the National Violent Death Reporting System from 2015 to 2019. And roughly, the number of interpersonal violence cases that involve poisoning and males was less than 1%. In fact, it was one-third of 1%. So, the number of cases where husbands are poisoning their wives to kill them, to murder them, is extremely low. It's very rare. So you have, you, you've got all these bizarre elements here. You have witness tampering. You have evidence tampering, right? You've got like, you've got a guy who, after he's arrested, he tries to kill the lead detective. It's like this guy doesn't stop. And, you know, let me just say, too, at the beginning here that, you know, he's being tried.

So this is still alleged. There's no conviction here. So this is all alleged. This is, in that sense, this is all speculation. We don't know. for sure if he committed these crimes. We're going to present a lot of evidence that certainly points in that direction, but we don't have a definitive answer on that. So this is typically poisoning is much less common with males, and it's even more uncommon in cases of domestic violence. So I think right away, that's kind of interesting.

You have a doctor, you know, he's a dentist. So you mentioned at the beginning that there was something that really kind of stood out to me that was interesting about this case that really, I think there's a couple of things here that really will help us unpack this case. But let's start with one. And that is, this is not something by the way that the prosecution is going to really, they're going to glom onto here. They're going to point out too much. They've done it a little bit. But one of the observations I've made about the trial so far is that this guy shows up in scrubs everywhere, right? Like, wherever this guy goes, he's in scrub. You know, I picture him like coming home from

work and like, you know, getting into bed with his scrubs on. Like, this is a guy who doesn't want to take off his scrubs, right? And so the question, yeah, but this guy's in scrubs everywhere. He's in scrubs at the office. He's in scrubs in the shower. I don't know. Like, he loves these scrubs. So what does that say about James Cray? What is it? What can we learn about? You might say, well, who cares? You know, the guys, the guy's a dentist, he's a doctor. He loves a scrubs. So what? Well, I think if we look at this issue of the scrubs, it's going to be important. because the scrubs are symbolic. I'll tell a story from when I worked at the VA.

So when I worked at the VA, you know, I'm a psychologist. I work with a group of psychologists at the VA. Most of us would come to work in professional attire, you know, professional casual attire, typically. You know, in my case, like, everybody knows my wardrobe is from Costco. Like, I don't, you know, I don't know. There's a book out there called Dress for Success or something. I'm like not only did I not read that I missed that whole movement like I don't I don't know I don't know what that means I I I get it we love we love I get at the dressing dressing sends a message about someone you know but my take on that is essentially that whatever respect I have or obtained from someone it's earned right it's built from the relationship so I'm building for me I'm trying to in my relationships I'm trying to build social capital I'm not trying to like put on a really expensive outfit and become an expert because I'm wearing a 3B suit, right?

But the scrubs serve that purpose. The scrubs send a message. The scrubs are symbolic here. They send a message that this is someone that's a doctor. This is someone's in the medical profession. The message this is sending is an authority figure with a lot of credibility in the medical profession. And because of that, he's naturally being accorded a certain amount of trust.

he's being accorded a certain amount of trust in this role as a medical professional, especially being a doctor. So let me elaborate on that even a little more. So every doctor, when they become licensed and they enter the profession, and this is true of me as well, we're beholden to something called the Hippocratic Oath. And the Hippocratic Oath essentially says that our goal is to further the well-being of our patients. It's to do no harm, right? The main purpose of the Hippocratic Oath is essentially to help.

our patients. That's the basis of all medical professionals. And I think because of that and because of this authority that doctors obtain, that there's the sense that most doctors, and this is true, you know, I'm sure 99 plus percent of most medical professionals are interested in the well-being of their clients and their patients. And in that sense they're less likely to harm them. Right. And so what's important here about the scrubs is that this guy is showing up in scrubs all the time to send the message that he can be trusted to send the message that he knows what he's doing and if there was something amiss or a skew like poisoning that he would know that and he would catch it so you have this underlying assumption here this underlying level of trust and authority

that he's getting just by being a doctor, that he's really exploiting in this situation. When I listened to all the evidence about how sick she was, one of the questions I kept asking is, why doesn't anyone see this as a function of poison? And the answer, obviously, yeah. Right. Like Angie, who's his wife that's murdered, she's Googling her symptoms, right? She's going into WebMD, and she's going into Google, and she's saying, what do these symptoms mean? She's coming up with things like diabetes, right?

Nobody is stopping to think, oh, maybe the guy wearing the scrubs around all the time has something to do with this. And the reason they're not is precisely because he's wearing the scrubs. Yeah. Because they see him as a figure to be trusted as a medical professional that's based. The medical profession is based on the very notion of trust in the Hippocratic Oath. And because of that, I think he goes a long. way until Caitlin, until some of these people and kill Caitlin opens the package with the cyanide

in it and his partner Ryan learns about the cyanide, he's gone day. Like she's, his wife is laid in, in a hospital bed for days. Yeah, I have to read this. Missouri Mama 3 says, I have to say Craig was well known at the dental school in Kansas City. He was an instructor. He made it clear. He was the doctor, not the student. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. That's a great example of what I'm talking about. So it's the scrubs, right? It's running around in the scrubs and going to bed in his scrubs all the time. The scrubs are really sending this message that, look, and he's teaching. I forgot that, right? He's teaching. He's an authority. He's an expert. And so people aren't questioning him. And that, you know, if this is just, if this is a guy who's not a doctor and he's, he's just showing up in, you know, Costco attire.

Hey, hey now, you make Costco attire look good. So, oh, I didn't finish my VA story. I didn't finish my VA story, by the way. So, so let me finish that. So because it's humorous. So, you know, there's a, there's a group of psychologists at the VA. Let's say 12 psychologists. I don't. remember the exact number. But there's a couple of us. So most of us just show up in our, you know, casual professional attire. But there's a couple of the psychologists who, who demand that they get white coats. And so like at the VA, there's certain doctors, there's a lot of doctors who, they have an option, they can get them or not. But they, I don't know if they still do this. This is years ago, by the way. But they demanded that they get white coats. And they have, like, their name is like Dr. Jane Doe, Dr. Dr. Jane Doe. Dr. Dr. Dr. John. though it's knitted on the sleeve of the white coat. So you look, you know, you look like you're like

a legit doctor, right? And so, and I'm not saying psychologists aren't legit doctors, by the way, but we're mental health professionals. We do something different. You know, we're not taking out kidneys. So, you know, so, and so I, like, my colleagues and I would always find that so humorous, that there were a couple of psychologists who always demanded the white coat with their names on. And so they would walk in with patients and just by virtue of the fact that a psychologist is putting on a coat that some of the, a lot of the family practice physicians at the VA, they're wearing the white coats, right? And so there's a certain level of authority and respect that is going to be placed upon these people just because they're wearing the white coat.

and, you know, of course, it's their choice. They can wear the white coat if they feel like that's going to help their relationships with their patients. Personally, I think they have to earn that in the room, in the consulting room. But, you know, I don't know. I didn't wear the white coat, but at least not physically, right? Like maybe my title, you know, and my ability to build some social capital in the room eventually earn that white coat symbolically. But that's basically what he's doing here. By putting on these scrubs, he's putting on that white coat and he's sending the message that he knows what he's doing, that if there was something, like I said, if there was something to miss with his wife, he would get to the bottom of it. He would have figured it out. And I think that gives him a lot of leeway. I think he really believes that because of that he's going to get away with this murder. You know, it just so happens that this fluke of one of the

of his office people opening this package with cyanide and it changes the whole equation. You have to wonder that if Caitlin doesn't open that package and see the cyanide, does this become a different story? Does this become, right? Does this become a story where nobody's looking for poison? Right. I agree. I've wondered that too.

If Caitlin had not opened that invoice and seen potassium cyanide. Would. Yeah. She'd be cremated and no autopsy. Yeah. She could have been cremated right away. Exactly. Just, you know, Chad Daybell had Tammy Daveo buried almost instantaneously, had a funeral service right away, right? He was trying to get rid of any evidence that she was strangled. To your point, I also want to say something else I have been stating from trial. I know that there is no live stream for trial, so I try to share what everything looks like in the courtroom as well. And I have actually stated that James Craig might be the best dress defendant I have ever seen. His suits are nice. He wears suits

and ties every day and they are nice. And his hair, his silver hair is slicked back. And he has sort of this scruffy beard that I would call it more of like a professor-style beard. I guess they allow these beards while in jail. I have said that, that he is one of the best dressed defendants I have come across. So he's not wearing Costco is what I'm trying to say while he's not trying. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't wear Costco. And I think that goes to your point as well.

He's not in scrubs, clearly. You know, that time has passed. But right. The context has changed. Obviously, even if he's acquitted, it would be highly debatable about whether he would ever get his license back to practice, I'm sure. Right. But to your point, he is looking the part. He is looking distinguished. You're on a GLP1. Your appetite is changing. Your cravings quiet down. And food noise is finally fading. But now you're wondering, how do I manage my side effects? What do I eat to stay strong? How do I break? How do I break? break through a plateau because reaching your weight loss goals can take more than meds.

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Real people, real results. Weight Watchers Core Plus. Get started at Weight Watchers.com. In a six-month clinical trial of over 370 people, those using Weight Watchers saw significantly better results than those following standard nutritional advice alone. See the 2025 study published in the AJCN. I'm going to read a paper here that was put out by faculty

at Jerusalem University College. I actually don't have a date. It was a faculty paper published on the internet by a group of faculty members there, led by Dr. Carolina Diamandis, and I'm just going to read a little bit. So the title of this paper is why some doctors murder their patients due to subconsciously driven malpractice.

We've got research papers for everything. Okay, keep going. This is on page seven of this white paper. Quote, The medical profession also has a culture of authority and power where physicians are often seen as experts and their decisions are not questioned, which can create an environment

where sociopathic and sadistic physicians can easily exploit. I think the scrubs speak to this issue. And there's not a huge number of medical professionals. There are some medical professionals that have become serial killers. Probably the most famous of those would be Harold Shipman.

Harold Shipman was a British MD who, it's believed murdered somewhere between 250 to 300 patients. He was convicted of 15 of those. There's been a lot of podcasts about Shipman, by the way. It's a really fascinating story, which I won't get into too much here. But one of the elements of one of the elements that I think applied to Shipman was this idea that Shipman could have been a psychopath, right?

Like this is a guy that had no empathy. the, this is a guy who exploited his position as a physician. He exploited trust and authority as a physician. There's an element with Shipman where you could argue that a lot of it was about power, that Shipman really, in some peculiar way, there was almost kind of this godlike sense that he could take lives and not pay a price. And so that that sort of speaks to this idea of psychopathy potentially. Some of the elements that come into play with medical professionals that murder are personality disorders. So someone who would be a psychopath would be a personality disorder, even though psychopathy is not officially a diagnosis in the DSM at the moment. People have pushed for

that, but it's still not. Some of the other elements that we see with medical professionals who murder are typically there can be mental health problems. And so with somebody like James Craig, James Craig himself said that he told his daughter that he suffered from some anxiety, that he was having problems with anxiety. Now, whether that was to gain her sympathy or whether he actually experiencing that

is a bit of a question. But let's say for the sake of argument that he did have some mental health problems and that there were some issues with anxiety. Anxiety is often, aligned with depression, by the way. And so it's not inconceivable. I'm not diagnosing to hear me by the way.

I'm just pointing out that some of the factors that seem to be at play in these types of murders are mental health issues. And potentially, you know, anxiety and or depression can be factors. With Shipman, so again, I'm not talking about James Craig here directly, only indirectly. With Shipman, there was a sadistic element. that Shipman, and again, this would be consistent with someone who might be a psychopath, that there was this pleasure that Shipman seemed to take. Given this godlike power to murder so many people,

Shipman really seemed to take pleasure in harming these people. There seemed to be the sadistic element, which goes hand in hand with this idea of power, of assuming power. And so power, power and dominance often go, are closely aligned with these types of murders. With James Craig, I can argue strongly that there's this sadistic component. His wife is, she's in a hospital, she's on her deathbed, she's suffering immensely, right? He knows exactly what's going on, but he's not doing anything to stop it. In fact, he's exacerbating it.

Yes. He's exacerbating it by pretending, by essentially deceiving her and saying, you're going to be fine. You're going to write. He's writing her the kind of these love texts and these texts that are reassuring her. And all of that is deceitful. All of that's a manipulation. He knows very well what's going on. And he knows that she's not going to probably get out of there alive. And yet, not only does he continue the charade, but when she's released from the hospital and maybe even when she's in the hospital, we don't know. We haven't seen this evidence yet. But there's some speculation. that he's still obviously poisoning her. So she'll be released for a little bit, and then she gets sick again and goes back. He goes and visits her in the hospital with soup. Is he poisoning the soup?

Right. Like one of the things about poison, by the way, so clearly if you're going to commit a crime, and if you're medical professional and you think you're going to, and you're going to commit a crime and you want to get away with it, you're going to want to use something that's not detectable,

ideally, which shows up in his searches. It shows up in his Google searches. He's searching things like, how can I kill someone without being detected? Right. Like, that's a classic reason why somebody would use poison to kill someone because it's not super detectable. It's easy to administer.

So he can bring her soup in the hospital to try to add to her pain and her suffering and to try to expedite her death, essentially. the other thing about poison is there's some poisons that, you know, that are, it's more difficult if you poison someone to use that as physical evidence. If somebody, obviously, if somebody's in a domestic violence or interpersonal violence relationship and they want to harm somebody and use a gun, that's pretty clear evidence that you killed someone, right? Like, murdering a spouse with a firearm is the opposite of all of that. It's detectable, right? You're going to have very clear evidence in court that you did this.

And the other thing about poison is, you know, and the defense is trying to exploit this, by the way. Like, it's hard to draw a causal connection. That's exactly what the defense is up to. It's hard to draw a causal connection between the poison and how it gets in the person that's deceased. Right? Like one of their arguments is you have that the defense,

the prosecution case is circumstantial because there's no direct proof that whatever poison he had was in his hands and that he somehow transferred that poison directly to his deceased wife. Right. So those are all reasons. Those would all be reasons why James Craig would engage in poisoning rather than pulling out of gone and harming his wife or murdering his wife in that fashion. So, and again, yeah, go ahead.

I have to jump in. I appreciate that you brought up the sadistic quality of this. One of the most current poisoning cases that we know of besides this one is the ongoing case of Corey Richens. Corey Richens has been charged with killing her husband with a fentanyl-l-laced Moscow mule. But it happened within, I mean, we don't know. That night, she poisoned him. He died that night. I mean, there was an attempted poison allegedly before, according to the state, but didn't work.

She was trying to kill him. It seems as if Dr. James Craig, who knows. well about medicines and poisons and how they affect the body didn't want her to die right away, that he was watching her suffer for days, four weeks, watching her not go crazy trying to figure out what was going on, wanting her to go back. She wanted to take care of her children, the littles, as they called them, watching his children suffer, watching her suffer. So I just want to say thank you for bringing up the sadistic quality because there's something so disturbing about this case that is unusual compared to other poisoning cases. They're all horrible. They're all

awful. It seems as if the suffering part of this case was something that he participated in and enjoyed while he sent her love text, even one text suggesting he had a dream about sleeping with her while she's dying in the hospital because of him. So I just want to say thank you. for bringing this up, keep going to, you know, bring your point home. Yes. Right. And when his wife is clearly suffering and in pain and dying in the hospital and he's talking about having, you know, physical contact with her, it's so objectifying, right? I mean, that's the other part of this is that is not the moment when you want to talk about intimacy with someone, right?

She's fighting for her life. To objectify her in that fashion shows the extent to which she's dehumanized her. That's also a big part of this. For the Harold Shipmans and the medical professionals that kill hundreds, in his case, that murder hundreds of patients, you have to get to some type of dehumanization. You have to see these patients as objects, as a means to an end.

And the end is his own pleasure or satisfaction. his own sadistic pleasure. And so I think, yes, I think you have that. But also ironically, like this is, nobody's talked about this on this case, but there's an irony here about the defense's argument is going to be that Angie was suicidal and she wanted to harm herself, right? That's essentially their argument. Yeah.

And when you think about it, so let's just think about this. idea of poisoning and how in this particular case, in most cases of poisoning, it's drawn out. It occurs over time. It's painful. It's horrible. It involves a lot of suffering. Like she was suffering immensely. Their argument is that she harmed herself deliberately and ended her own life, right?

And here's the problem with that argument when you think about it. Like, in fact, everything in their argument goes against what's occurring here, which is that self-harming is basically, in almost all cases, self-harming is an all-or-none phenomenon. Meaning, like, when people self-harm, they do it because they want to end their pain. They don't do it because they want to draw it out over weeks. I've never seen a case of self-harming where someone's like, oh, you know what, I'm going to self-harm over the next three months because I'm really going to like this process of suffering immensely and being in pain. And by the way, when I'm suffering, I'm going to Google ways to solve this problem. I'm going to Google ways

to engage in self-care, which is what she did. Right. Like, it's such a contradiction. People that self-harm, they want to do that quickly. If you're going to self-harm with poison, you're probably going to take a lot of it so that you can self-harm quickly. And so that you can self-harm quickly and end it quickly, which is this, so the defense's argument and James Craig's argument here is so absurd. It is. It's so absurd. If you think about and you look at the statistics on self-harming, this is not how it happens. It's, it's all or not. It's not drawn out like this. And I, you know, I hope the prosecution, I don't know their argument at the end or how they're going to dispute, you know, rebut the defense. But I hope they make that argument at some

point that this is so absurd on its face that this person was self-harming and wanted to, since they enjoyed suffering so much, they wanted to draw it out over a period of weeks. It's absurd. Like, again, if that was accurate, number one, I presume Angie would have gotten the sign. Number two, I presume she would have taken a lethal dose all at once. But it's a game of chicken. That was the stupidest. Yeah. Right.

I don't. That's, again, it's, there's an absolute absurdity. I mean, for a jury to buy that, I don't think, I don't think they're going to buy it. Yeah. It's going to, it's, it's, this is, if the jury buys that, this is going to be one of the most gullible juries that I've ever seen. Probably the most go. I mean, and not only that. I mean, of course, like.

The prosecution is bringing up witness after witness that's saying she wasn't suicidal. Her children have taken the stand and said she loved us. She wanted to be with us. She looked forward to her future. Dr. Pico takes the stand and says when she was sick, she was terrified and fearful, meaning she was afraid she was going to die. She didn't want to die. She was afraid of it.

In fact, it's the quite opposite. She was terrified of dying. She wanted to live. She Googled ways to resolve this problem. She Googled attempts at self-care. There was a real desperation here to save her life, not to take it. Yeah. Her children both said she wasn't depressed.

Her children both said that she loved her children. She wanted to be there for her children. She looked forward to the future. She was happy. Again, all of this, all of this is building towards. towards, it's building towards this tearing down this absurd argument that she wanted to self-harm. And then if you throw in, if you take all of that and you throw in this idea that somehow she just loved being in pain, right? And she just wanted to be in pain for a long time.

I think it would be very hard to reach the conclusion that this was deliberate on her part. her self-arming was was deliberate on her part, or as you say, that this game of chicken was somehow enjoyable to her. It's, it's, and again, that's, that's, that's another part of this case that's so absolutely crazy is, you know, I don't know if, I don't know if he wanted to run with that defense, but like, I've never seen a defense like this. I've never seen a defense where somebody's like, yeah, you know what? Yeah, she was poison. and yeah, she went through. Like, basically all of this is true. It's just that you've got the motive wrong.

The motive is that she wanted to do this to herself, obviously, right? And her husband knew about it and was like, okay, I'll play along. The game of chicken. Right, right. Right, because he obviously, like, knowing, and again, let's get back to the Hippocratic oath. As a medical professional, he actually has a moral, maybe not illegal, but he has a, a moral obligation. He certainly has a legal obligation if she dies to inform the other medical professionals that she's poisoning herself and he gave a chicken. So best case scenario, he has

a moral and legal obligation to say to the doctors, you know what, this has gone too far. This is a game of chicken. My wife is poisoning herself. We need to end this. Give her the antidotes. Like, let's get her better. Right? He never does that. Never. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I have so many questions. I've written down. Why poison her that? I mean, why does he even want to end her life, too? I mean, I get it.

This is domestic violence. We had a Patreon episode earlier today. For those of you, we did an hour and 20 minute Patreon episode today. For those that are interested in more bonus behind the scenes episodes, John and I talk in more personal ways. on patreon.com slash it into crime. You mentioned about fantasies,

a few other things, intimate terrorism, but, but, you know, you mentioned women poisoned more than men, but he did this.

Yeah, I think of the, you know, the song goodbye, Earl, by the chicks. But this is a male, a doctor,

over a long period of time, something sadistic, 23 years married, 23 years. Six children. I know that he was in a lot of debt and he was having affairs. But why this? Right.

So that brings us to the second half of this equation, which is the domestic violence half. And I'm going to refer, I'm going to read one of the exhibits. This was Exhibit 46 presented by the prosecution. This is a text from James Craig in December of 2020. James is trying to explain to Angie about Angie basically says he has an affair back then. I get he's prosecution argues that he's had affairs for 23 years, which is as long as they've been married. This is another affair in December of 2022.

She found out about it. They were talking about divorce. She says, was it worth it? He says, quote, it absolutely wasn't worth it. it. I wasn't even emotionally attached. I just used her to build up my ego. Yeah. That text says so much about James Craig. So let's unpack that a little bit. If you, it, so a lot of domestic violence

relationships are from a failure of communication. And if we go even deeper, it's a fundamental, I think what's going on with James Craig is you have a fundamental failure of relationships in general. You have someone here who, he says it himself. He says, I wasn't even emotionally attached. I mean, the problem with James Craig is that I don't think he was ever emotionally attached to anyone. Right. So I think if you dig deep enough with James Craig, where you land is that you have

what I would call unmet attachment needs and unresolved attachment injuries. If you go back to those earliest years of life when we're attaching, we're trying to find some security and safety with our primary caregivers. We're trying to develop some sense of trust, right, and some ability to feel safe in the world where we can go out and explore the world a little bit as we get older. I think what's going on here is that none of that is happening with James Craig. And again, I don't know, I don't know much about his childhood. I don't know anything about his childhood. I don't know what those earliest years look like.

But it seems to me he's telling us here, he says, even though he says, I wasn't even emotionally attached, meaning in the affair, I think if you look at his history, it seems like a reasonable assumption to say that he probably wasn't emotionally attached ever to anybody. And I could be wrong about that. You know, I'm just speculating here a little bit, but we know there's a lot of research now showing that these attachment deficits often show up later in criminality. That if we're looking for that sense of safety and security, and we can't find it with anyone ever because we have these attachment injuries, or let's call them attachment fears,

then we'll keep reenacting those traumas over and over again until we try to resolve those issues, but they never get resolved because we keep doing the same thing over and over, right? So James Craig is engaging, he's engaging in a fair after a fear after affair because he thinks somehow one of these relationships is going to be the golden ticket. One of these relationships is somehow going to resolve these people. past traumas and these past attachment injuries and that somebody you know um the latest one was was Karen Kane right like he thinks that every one of these women is going to somehow heal him and make him whole and that's not going to happen because that's not how it works the only way he's going to get

whole is if he somehow steps back and engages in a lot of self-reflection and a lot of work on himself a lot of emotional work, right? Until then, this is going to keep repeating itself. But so much more. Go bananas for banana ball with ESPN on Disney Plus. The greatest show in sports. Are you kidding me? It's the phenomenon everyone's talking about.

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See, site for more details. And so the problem here is you have a guy who's trying to solve a problem that has no simple solution, and he's doing it in all the wrong ways. And it's going to continue because he's looking in the wrong places. When I met you, you're like, you've made me whole. No, just kidding. You never did that. Never.

Right, yeah, because the only person who can make me whole is me. There is no Jerry McGuire, you complete me with our relationship. Yeah, that's a little misleading. I mean, I do think in the healthiest relationships, I do believe that we have, if we're really lucky, we get partners that help us heal. They don't heal us because that's up to us, but they, they understand those traumas and they understand those wounds and they're, they're sensitive to that. they're receptive to it.

They're willing to engage with you in a way that makes, that, that, that's safe. So in a really healthy relationship, you're, you're, this is what therapists do, by the way, you're creating a safe space to really explore those traumas and those wounds. There's no safe space for James Craig because there's no, in his mind, in his psyche, there's no safe space ever. He thinks that by engaging in all these affairs that some, somehow he's going to find that safe space. You know, the irony is that Angie probably offers him that safe space.

He just doesn't want to look there. Right. Exactly. And then the other part of that, of course, is he says, I just used her to build up my ego. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

What he's saying is that he has so much shame. He has so much shame around who he is and what he's done with his life, that he's not content with, he's not, there's no self-acceptance. He can't accept himself. Flaws and all, right, good and bad. He can't accept it. So he says it, it's probably the only insight I've seen from James Craig in this whole case. Like, he used her, he's using all of these women to build up his ego.

That is not a healthy relationship, right? That is, if you're using people, if you're dehumanizing and objectifying people, to build up your ego, you're not doing it for the right reasons. No. And again, getting back to this idea that it's, again, in a health, so we know, we know what an unhealthy relationship looks like here. It's James Craig engaging in affairs over and over. But in a healthy relationship, again, it's going to be a reciprocal interaction where even if you have some insecurity around your ego, your partner's going to help you with it.

Your partner's going to support you, right? You're not just using someone to build up your ego. It's going to be more of a mutual process. It's going to be more reciprocal. That your partner, if you're lucky, your partner will understand some of your wounds. And if you have issues around your ego, they will help you with that or they will be sensitive to it. Yes. Yes. What about his children, though? Six kids. I mean, I'll just say the day that two of them testified was heartbreaking, but it seems as if he used them too. I actually thought that if there was going to be a plea deal, and I don't know if the state offered him anything by the way. I don't know. I don't know either. Yeah, I don't know if the state offered him anything, but I thought if there was going to be a plea deal,

it would have been because of his kids. I can't imagine any father with empathy, right, in a conscience or remorse that a typical father would want to see his kids take the stand. Well, how about a father wanting his daughter to bail out a dude who then gives him a letter, gives her a letter, this young daughter, a teenager, gives her a letter who says, make a deep fake of mom on the dark web using a VPN and get her to say she wanted to self-harm.

What kind of father does that? And I want to say this was a girl who you could tell she believed in her father until this moment, did what he said, until this very moment. and then she realized and turned him in. There's something called the dark triad, and one of the elements of the dark triad in addition to psychopathy is machiavellianism. And Machiavellianism is essentially, in psychological terms,

machiavellianism is essentially when people, where anything justifies the end. So in other words, Machiavellianism is when you don't care what the means are, You can use people, you can abuse them, you can exploit them, you can chew them up and spit them out. All of that's fine, as long as the end makes sense to you. So in other words, you're using people for, you're exploiting people for your own gain. That's Machiavellianism.

That's what he's doing here. Even if the means involves your own kids. So, yeah, so it's not surprising that he doesn't care if his kids testify. Yeah. Because he, he's, he wants to. win at all costs. Like he obviously, I mean, he doesn't, I get it. He doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison, but. Well, doing a hit list from, from jail, is it going to help him not spend his life, life in prison? I know, but that's, that's part of, that's part of this. And again,

I'm not, I'm not saying this to diagnose, but that's part of his hubris. There's, there's obviously a lot of hubris here thinking that he can get away with this, thinking he's a smartest one in the room, thinking that he's three steps ahead of everyone else. Right. Clearly, this is a guy who thinks that he's outsmarting all of law enforcement. He's thinking nobody's going to see this stuff. The poisoning. I will say, though, personality disorders do do that a lot.

Personality disorders do often think that they're three steps ahead of everyone. Right. And the reason they think that is because their version of reality is so distorted. Because personality disorders generally live in this. fantasy world. They create this fantasy world. They live in it. And they, they can't imagine that everyone else doesn't, you know, somehow believe their fantasy world. Interesting. And so if you think your, if you think your fantasy world is supreme and superior, so that's the other thing is that like there's, there's clearly the sense of superiority here. Like he thinks, James Craig thinks

the rest of us are just idiots. I know. And that we're, and that we're, You know, that we're, that we're, we're just going to believe everything he says or, you know, that we're like, or that, you know, we're not going to see what he's doing because he's three steps ahead, that somehow his fantasy world takes precedence over reality. You know, unfortunately, for him in a court of law, reality usually, usually reality is much more salient in a court of law. Not always, but oftentimes reality wins most of the time. And so that's what he's up against. He's up against the reality that a lot of the, that his argument is flawed. Right? His version of reality is flawed.

Yeah. And I think, by the way, what makes this case so fascinating, it's just all of these components. You know, you and I have covered a lot of domestic violence cases. we haven't really covered a lot of medical murders, but like all of this stuff, hit men, right, poisoning.

This case was more than I think anybody realized because of how private so much of it was. Right, this case has it all. Keep going. Hitman. Hit men, evidence tampering,

like exploiting your kids. Like it just goes on and on. Cyanide, arsenic, Vizine, right? I know what's up with the three, with the three poisons too. Like you couldn't just pick one like all of them.

Well, he, I think he wanted to be, he wanted to, like it was insurance. He wanted to make sure that she was going to die. So he did, he was overkill. Oh, geez. He used,

he used multiple types of poison because he didn't want to leave any loose ends. He wanted her to die. I mean, unfortunately for him, Caitlin opens the box of cyanide, saw the invoice. Yeah, we learned. I think, by the way, they would have, I think they would have put this together eventually. I think it would have been a lot more difficult because they, because they knew what was happening so quickly,

they were able to intervene and get all of his electronic devices, right? They stepped in early, which made this much more compelling. But I think if he had time, you know, if he had like six to 12 months to start covering some of the stuff, up. I don't, you know, I don't know. Or even like, even if they didn't run a toxicology right away, it's, it's frightening. And by the way, that's one of the reasons why, I think that's one of the reasons why poisoning crimes are so underrepresented, because a lot of them are never found. They're not discovered. You know, one of the things Harold Shipman did was he prayed on the elderly. And the reason he prayed on the elderly is because he knew they were easy, they were, a lot of the

elderly were easy targets. If an 80-year-old dies, you're probably not going to run an toxicology screen. You know, Shipman would say, oh, this person died and it was from heart failure, right? And people accept it. So nobody's going to question whether that 80-year-old or 85-year-old or whatever is being poisoned because they're just assuming its natural causes. So Shipman Shibman understood that. I'm not even sure here that they would have run a toxicology screen at the end if they didn't find the cyanide.

I mean, I just, there's just so many things about this guy. He's LDS, he's Mormon, and, I want to say, quite active in his LDS congregation, he was what is called the Elder's Quorum President. That's, that's an important calling in the church. you're over the all of the adult men it takes a lot of time um he has six children a large home um a family to take care of he's traveling a lot he's a dentist he has a practice it's overspending i mean there's just so many things about this man that confuse me on the backstory, the backstory, I started with Mormon dad charged with poisoning his wife.

And a lot of people got upset at me. Would you start another headline with a Catholic? Or would you say Coburger was, you know, Catholic or whatever? No, because Coburgers' religion doesn't come into play. And I have started headlines, I want to say, with that. Recently we did pastor because that stuck out to me because it is a position of power and trust. When you are elders, core, and president and active in whatever religious congregation you are active in, and you do something like this, I hold you to a higher standard.

And I think it points to the manipulative nature of the person and how they are using this religion to pretend they are someone there. absolutely not and it makes it puts them more in to you know a wolves and sheep clothing and that is how I answered those of you that wondered why I headlined the full story this way because I do think it matters and that's also why I'm bringing it up right now because he is everything he he in his life he is everything that is not what he's charged for and it just really throws me. I think psychopath. And I know you're not going to diagnose John, but like, I think an absolute psychopath or someone so extraordinarily manipulative to say he is this person when in actuality, he not only did this to his wife and made her suffer and then did a hit

list behind in jail and then tried to involve his children. Like what is going on with that? And speaking of that, there's something else that really kind of speaks to that issue of how he's creating this really false facade of who he is. This really, he's this deceitful facade of who he is. And that is, this was brought up in court that he was on this website called Seeking Arrangement. dot com, which is where he was looking, he was essentially looking for women to engage in relationships with them, affairs. And in his profile, apparently, I don't, I don't know if the details of this profile have been revealed yet in testimony, but you and I know this because you found this information before for our backstory that he said on his seeking arrangement.com profile,

he said he was worth $10 million, and he presented himself as this really wealthy, successful business person, doctor. And what's interesting about that, right, it speaks to this issue that you're talking about, which is we now know that he was several million dollars in debt. And obviously, so greed and lust, which are two of the most common components of all true crime, like anybody who follows true crime knows that, you know, greed and lust drive a lot of, are the surface motives or a lot of crimes. And here you have a guy getting on this website looking for affairs, saying that he's this really uber successful guy worth $10 million. He is presenting this image of himself as highly, this fantasy, let's call it a fantasy, he's presenting this fantasy of himself as really successful and really wealthy.

And it's just the pinnacle of success, right? And we now know, of course, that that is all a lie. The guy's immensely in debt. He's married, right? Like, he's got six kids. Like, everything about that is false, right? And I think that's part of what you're trying to say. The other thing I think it's important to point out about religion here and why that's

important is because I think, like Chad Daybell and Lori Valo Daybell, there's this antagonism towards divorce. That in some religions, and this would be true in the Mormon faith, divorce is really frowned upon no matter what. And so I think that creates more desperation for James Craig because he doesn't want to get divorced. He's got this family. He's got this family, in his mind's eye,

this beautiful family that he kind of shows off to the world. And that too represents his sense. success. That too represents how well he's doing. That he's got this really, you know, wonderful wife and these beautiful kids, right? That's all part of this errated image that he's trying to cultivate. It's all part of this fantasy that he's trying to cultivate. And behind all of that facade is a guy who's engaging in fares. He's massively in debt. We have some sources that have told us that he had some big time gambling problems. He liked to come to Vegas a lot and gamble, apparently.

He, not only the affairs, there's some spec, that we've heard some sources that went beyond the affairs, that he also had potentially some issues with pornography. And all of that, right? All of that is, so in other words, and arguably you could say that there was some type of sex addiction, even though sex addiction isn't really considered, according to the DSM, it's not really considered an addiction. A disorder.

Or a disorder, right? It's not considered a medical disorder. It's a question, by the way. There's groups out there that advocate for sex as an addiction. So it's a gray area. But the point is he's not only is he live in this double life, but he's on the razor's edge with all these. let's call them addictions or faux addictions or pseudo addictions, whatever.

He's on the razor's edge all the time with like the gambling, right? And the affair. The risk taking. It's not how he's trying to portray himself. And on the addiction issue, by the way, I should point out, assuming that that's accurate, assuming our sources are giving us, because that hasn't been discussed in court,

there really would be no reason, by the way, for I don't think, for the prosecution to bring up some of those issues. The affairs obviously are important in making their case. But like the gambling, it's sufficient for them to show that there's debt. Right. That a motive is that he had debt. You know, his wife has this massive insurance life insurance policy. That's sufficient.

They don't have to show you that he's coming to Vegas and blowing $20,000 a crack. They don't have to show you how. Right. But what's important to me, so this is another layer here. And given, let's assume that some of these addictions are, that our sources are giving us some valid, accurate information here. I always see addiction as a form of self-medication. Okay. In particular with substance abuse, you know, typically substance abuse is a way to self-medicate negative affect.

It's a way to not feel, essentially. It's a way to really blunt our feelings. And that seems to be consistent with this entire case. That I think this is someone, he says it. He says it, I wasn't even emotionally attached. I'm not sure he knows what it means to be emotionally attached. I think this is someone who's really uncomfortable with who he is. He's really uncomfortable with his emotions.

He can't express those emotions. And so at least some of this, like the affairs, the sex, maybe sex addiction. pornography, the gamely, all of it is a way for him to self-medicate all those negative emotions that he's being flooded with shame, anger, sadness, depression, right? He doesn't want to feel any of that. And so he curates this image of the perfect family, the perfect wife, right? All of this stuff. And none of it is true. Right. And I think that too is an important part of this story that in And that, by the way, is consistent with these attachment issues, these attachment needs and

attachment injuries that I speculated could be true earlier, is that insecure, people that are insecurely attached have a much more difficult time with their emotions, feeling their emotions, expressing their emotions, dealing with negative emotions. All of that seems to follow this insecure. Attachment style. And so I think you have a lot of that here as well.

And trying to heal that with addictions, whatever they are, and other relationships and fantasies. Talk to me about fantasy. Because on our Patreon episode earlier today, you got into the fantasies that James Craig, and again, for those that want our

weekly behind-the-scenes episodes that do at our kitchen table or sitting on our couch, Patreon.com slash shouldn't you crime. We posted an hour and 15 minute one today, but you talk or maybe you talk to me about fantasies. Well, I actually, I was actually talking about some reality shows that have to do some of the reality love shows, by the way, which I'm not, I'm not going to rehash here. If anybody wants to hear me discussing Love is Blind and Temptation Island and some of those shows, I talk about it on Patreon and Apple subscriptions, which are relevant, by the way, to this case.

But you'll have to, I can't, we don't have time to get into that. The fantasy component here is exactly what I talked about. The fantasy here is this fantasy of unlimited wealth that he's portrayed or trying to present, this fantasy of unlimited success. this fantasy of him being the perfect dad and so, you know, completely lovable, right? Like, he's, I'm sure in his profiles, you know, he's revealing that he has children. He's, it's this fantasy of perfection that he's really trying to cultivate here. And obviously, you know, there's, anytime someone tries to cultivate an image of perfection,

you know it's flawed because we're all flawed. So it's, it's, when you, when there's no vulnerability with any, like if someone is incapable of vulnerability, that's potentially a problem. Right. And I think he's trying to kind of fit into that mold. He's sort of the perfect human being that's got it all. You know, he's got all this money. But again, none of it's true. There's a lot of shame.

Ultimately, when you create these types of fantasies and you can't live up to them, you're just going to be immersed in shame. You're going to be just swallowed by shame. Because you're not going to live up to that. And when you don't live up to it, when you don't live up to that, you feel inadequate. You feel ashamed. You feel like at some level, I mean, he would deny that, right? Like consciously he's going to deny it.

But he knows at some level, at some deeper subconscious level, he knows that he's not living up to that image he's cultivated. and that's creating a lot of shame. And then he's just chasing his tail. Once he's in that shame, for him, there's really no way out. He's just, he's trying to chase his tail to get out of it. And it's not working, obviously. Right. There are a few questions here.

Did you have anything else, John, before we get to some questions? I think those are my main, those are my main, talking points for tonight. Yeah. This isn't a question that someone said, didn't one of the texts mention a prior attempt at poisoning? That is true in our backstory. It shows that.

And I guess he clarified that one as in he was wanting to self-harm. And he wanted her sedated while he did that. That was how they clarified it. But do you think he had tried to do this? previously, John? Or what's that about? Or does he have a thing? I wouldn't doubt it.

I wouldn't doubt it. That sounds like a, right, I remember, that sounds like a pretty crazy justification that he was poising her because he was, he wanted to self-harm and she didn't want her to experience any pain around that, which, I don't, you know, again,

that's, that's like a really peculiar argument. but yeah, I could see him making it. Yeah. Haley is saying she hates her white coat. I love it. Right. Yeah.

I agree. That's why I never wore the white coat. Yeah. Tiffany is saying she remembers how much she misses our Saturday night lives, that's SNLs, like we used to do. And it is true. We shared a little bit earlier today why we have not done them as much, why only I go live is now more than John.

But there is a reason. I guess I just want you to know. We miss them too. So we are really happy to be here tonight with all of you. Even though it was last minute and a little impromptu, we always love connecting with our viewers and listeners. And so thank you for joining us. Troublemaker Baker actually has a great question.

Okay. Has there ever been a serial K who wasn't a psychopath? Serious question. Well, first of all of them. You haven't assessed all of them. First of all, yeah, right. That's a good. My instincts would be no, probably not.

But I think in thinking about James Craig, though, technically he's not a serial K, right? He's... Right. However, I think it's interesting with him, though, because he wants to be. So he clearly, he allegedly murders one person, but then he tries to, from jail, he tries to murder other people. So in that sense, like his intent, he really intends to be a serial killer.

He just doesn't pull it off. Interesting. So that was the next question. Somebody asked, do you think he would have continued to do this to other people? Had he gotten away with it? Or do you think he has, there could be another victim? He certainly seems like the type of guy that would consider something like this. I mean, he, again, if you think of Shipman,

I know Harold Shipman's an extreme example because he murdered so many people, but Shipman really relished the act of killing. And I don't, you know, this is someone who doesn't seem super far from that. So I don't know. You know, on the other hand, he is confining it to his marriage. I don't know. It's a complicated question. I think it's possible that he's fantasized about it,

Maybe, like, given the sadism and the Machiavellianism and, you know, yeah, there's, there's a lot there that would be consistent with someone who might fantasize about harming people before. Yeah. I know you need to put on your I'm not diagnosing T-shirt for this next question. But do you think Dr. John that he has narcissistic personality disorder? I think he definitely has some personality disorder or disorders. I think he would definitely be in that cluster, which is cluster B, narcissistic personality disorder would be in that cluster, ads would antisocial personality disorder. There's so much overlap there that the closest I can come to answering that question is,

he definitely has narcissistic qualities. How about that? That doesn't mean I would diagnose him with that. In order to diagnose him, I would need to do testing and interview him and do a lot more. But he certainly seems to have some narcissistic qualities. Yeah. Here, here, clearly. Ashley Reese is saying, Dr. John, I just wanted to wish you both a belated happy anniversary and Dr. John a happy birthday.

That did happen this last week. I was actually in Colorado. And I missed it. But so I wanted to share that. Happy birthday to John and we happened to elope on your birthday as well. So happy Anna, happy birth anniversary. Yeah, something like that. Anna birthday.

I don't know. Thank you. Same to you. Happy anniversary. We still, we still need to celebrate that at some point when you're done with trial. Yes. complete me. You have healed me. Sorry. I mean, I really love you and I can't imagine life without you. So how about that? Thank you. Same here. Thank you. Dr. John, is there a connection with his gambling?

Yeah, I think so in the sense that I think gambling is, if we think of gambling, if we think of gambling, gambling is an addiction. I think gambling is a way to, it's an avoidance of certain emotions. It's probably, it's, it's a way to suppress or blunt certain negative emotions. And I, I think he, this is someone who definitely doesn't want to experience shame or sadness or fear. He doesn't, even though he, he says he's experiencing anxiety, he doesn't want to. So gambling is, is, is, is a good way to avoid in, you know, immersing yourself in the world fully. and feeling fully. It's a way to avoid all of that, as are all the addictions. Yeah. Do you think he was getting a high from all these actions? We spoke about that a little bit

with sadism, but do you think he actually got a high from this? I mean, that's another way to say it, right? Watching his wife suffer. Yeah, I think that could be part of this. You know, you and I talked earlier on our Patreon episode about how some of this may have been driven by boredom to some extent that, you know, that I think, I think that he gets married early and he starts affairs early. I think there's a part of him that it wasn't really cut out for kind of domestic life and that, you know, he is, I think, to some degree, stimulation seeking and that could be part of it, you know, that he's, he gets married and he, he, He kind of sets into this routine and domestic life.

And my guess is he's, it's not sufficient for him. He wants more. He's bored. He wants to get, you know, that's part of the gambling. He wants more stimulation.

And so, um, I think that's part of what sets him on this course. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is a great, I like that someone said that they keep seeing,

you know, Steve Martin as a dentist. in Little Shop of Horrors. He was a sadistic girlfriend, abuser. Yeah. Or just the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. Yeah. You know, one thing, I'll throw this out.

I'll answer this, but I want to know what you think. Some Sasha medical coders asking, what are your thoughts on how you would move forward with his relationship with his children if you had not been caught? Happy birthday and happy anniversary. I want to say this is actually a big question. because one thing we learned in court in trial was not only did he have life insurance on his wife, which it happens, you know, that's normal.

That's a smart thing to do in any relationship. And sometimes people do have life insurance on their children as well. And he did. He had life insurance on all of his children. And I have thought the worst and wondered about his youngest, his youngest children, because would he want to take care of them, you know? I just, it's made me worried to think of such a thing. But what were your, what would you think would happen?

Had he not been caught, would he have just, and maybe you don't even want to go there. If you don't want to go there and plead fifth, I'll let you. I think it would be hard to go there. It would be, it would be speculating a little too much. But I think the only thing, my only thoughts on that would be, we've talked a lot about this idea of him objectifying. his wife and kind of dehumanizing his wife and other people. And so that, to me, that sets a dynamic that's frightening. If you think about someone who has life insurance policies on all the kids

and someone who essentially is willing to use his kids to help him exit jail, right? He's willing to use his kids to, you know, to create this false narrative and deep fakes about himself. you wonder how far he's willing to go, right? It's, to me, I'd prefer not to think about it, but because it's frightening. But I'm not sure there's a limit. I'm not sure there's limits to what this guy would do at this point. Yeah.

So, you know, let's just say I'm glad that he's behind bars. Christine says, how does a psychologist interview a person who thinks they are smarter than everyone to gain rapport? That's actually a fascinating question because also are someone that thinks are the smartest person in the room or that they are three steps ahead. That really is something I've noticed. They think that they are two steps ahead of everybody else or trying to be. If you think they are smarter than everyone else in the room, how do you interview them to gain rapport? I've been in the room with so many people like that.

I've been in rooms with so many narcissists, so many psychopaths. The short answer is, my job is to enter their world. So if I'm entering a room with someone who's totally narcissistic and they think they're way smarter than I am, then I just agree with them. You know, I agree. I let them know, yeah, you are smarter than me. So educate me. Show me the error of my way. Show me what I don't know, right?

The way you deal with people like that is you try to suspend all your biases, and for me, I try to suspend all my biases and all my kind of knee-jerk emotional reactions to people I don't really care for. And then I dive into their world. I try to enter their world and I want them to show me around that world and teach me how they got there. teach me, like, show me why you're so much smarter than everyone, right? Like, by doing that, a lot of times they'll, because they're not used to people really interested in their worlds and like fully, you know, submerged or invested in their worlds,

they'll show you more than they intend to. They'll make mistakes. They'll slip up. They'll, they'll, if once they let you in, then I think it's pretty easy to develop a real understanding of where they're coming from. Or maybe not easy. That's not the right term. It's it's easier to see why they believe what they believe and why they act the way they act. Thank you. Thank you. And it is true. I want to point out that it is oftentimes normal just to get life insurance on children. So I'm not saying, I want to clarify, I'm not saying anything,

but it was chilling to have it to learn that because of what we're dealing with in court. But yes, it is a common practice. I get that. Yeah, but right. It's a common practice, but maybe not in this context. Right. It makes you wonder. Yeah.

In the context of someone that's being poisoned and in the context of someone that has immense debts that wants to pay off his debts and the context of someone who's willing to use their child, and children for his own ends, no matter what. Like, that's a different issue. And as Kay, Louise says, to ask your child to participate in a jail conspiracy is crazy. Right. He would go very far. Right.

Exactly. This case is very intriguing to me and to us, clearly. We're covering it. We're spending a lot of time to make sure the public understands what is happening in court. But of course, I was learning about it and doing all the research before John because that's what I typically do. We do all of the research, all of the journalism, and then we're able to present John with all the documents and everything he needs to know. So I always know about cases oftentimes before John does. And as you finally delved into everything after I was like, you've got to hear about this.

You said to me, wow, yeah, this case. You were like, this case, I can't remember your exact words, but I'm in. I am interested. And then you said, I am so surprised that more people are not talking about this case. So I want to know why. What was it about this case that as a criminal psychologist grabbed your attention? I know why I grabbed mine as a journalist, but why? What was it about this case that you felt good?

goodness, the public needs to understand this case. I think a lot of the cases we cover have some underlying similarities. But I think what makes this case interesting to me in particular is it's really about a massive relational failure. You know, we can call that, I can call that attachment. I can use terms like attachment to describe that or insecure attachment. But ultimately, this is someone, James Craig is someone who really can't do relationships. And he tries over and over again to repair that in all these affairs.

And he just can't make it work. He just fails over and over again. And he has such shame because of that that it perpetuates all of it over and over again. And so I think there's a lesson here, right? There's a lesson about if sometimes I'll say to you, we'll be talking about cases and I'll say to you, okay, you know, this is a wild crime. Like it's got a lot of plot twists, but why should we care? Right. Like what is it about you and I, I'll say this all the time.

I'll say, what is it about this case that every single person on the planet, like this is my litmus test for when we cover cases? what is it about this case that every single person on this planet should care about, right? What is it that what is it that every person? And I'm not being literal, right? I'm being metaphorical because I know not every person on the planet is going to care about your crime. But the point is we want to cover stuff that matters, that has something that people can learn from. And the question I always try to ask is that is what is it, what is it about this case that everyone should care about. And the answer to me is this is, if you care about developing healthy human relationships,

this is the case you need to look at. I mean, all cases, I say this many times to you, I think every criminal act is in some ways a failed love story. But this case is an immensely failed love story, right? And that's why we should care about it. Because the lessons here that we can learn are about developing healthy relationships. And so as a matter of fact, let me run through some of those. I know we've been on a while. How long have we been on? Like two hours? Hour and a half. John Gottman, let me talk quickly about John Gottman. John Gottman's a researcher that studied. He developed this thing called the Love Lab. He's at the University of Washington in Seattle. He studied hundreds of couples. I don't have thousands of couples. He gets him in the

Love Lab. They spend time there. He records their live interactions and then he analyzes it. And Gottman has found something, Gottman has found this, he has this finding that he says holds true, like over 90% of the couples he works with. And it's what Gottman calls the four horsemen of relationships. The four horsemen of relationships are four elements of a relationship that if a couple has all four of them, they're going to get divorced. You can take it to the bank, especially if there's no intervention. And so the four horsemen are related to, obviously, relationships are going to fail, bad relationships, relationships not working. The four horsemen, by the way, are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. So if a couple has

all four of those elements, Godman can predict with over 90% accuracy that that couple will, that marriage will end in divorce. Something Gottman doesn't talk about as much is what he does more recently, by the way, but what makes a successful relationship? And, you know, one way I look at that, one way I approach that, unlike Gottman, is to say, okay, what are the qualities that are the opposite of the four horsemen? If you want to know what makes a healthy relationship, just go look at the opposite of the four horsemen.

So if unhealthy relationships are based on those elements, then healthy relationships are based on the opposite. So criticism would be, the opposite of criticism would be praise. The couples like positive reinforcement. They like, you know, you use the term love language, right? That they like love language that's affirmative. But if you go a little deeper in terms of criticism, why is it that human beings are critical? And often the reason human beings are critical is because it's something about themselves.

They're critical because typically human beings are overly critical. When we feel somehow flawed or imperfect, a lot of times we're more apt to criticize other people because of our stuff. We're more likely to be critical because we feel insecure. we feel inadequate, right? And so if you want to solve the criticism issue, you have to look at something like self-acceptance, that if someone can be more self-accepting and more vulnerable and deal with their flaws

and their shame better, then they're less likely to be critical, right? So this issue of criticism isn't, it's not just being praiseworthy. it's also owning our own vulnerabilities and being able to accept those. So in a relationship, it's not just what I can do for you. It's also what I have to do for myself. And the reason I'm talking about this, by the way,

is because all of this applies to James Craig. And all of it applies to the way he's handling relationships and the way he's facilitating relationships. I don't know for sure if James Craig, Craig is critical of Angie, but it doesn't really matter. What I know is that there's no self-acceptance. What I know is that he's being critical of their marriage. Even if he's not critical of her directly,

what I know is he's been critical of their marriage because he's critical of himself, because he doesn't accept himself. So that's number one. Number two, defensiveness. The opposite of defensiveness is pretty simple. It's openness, it's honesty, it's transparency. Clearly we know that James Craig is not.

being open, honest, or transparent. As a matter of fact, one of the most interesting stories that Angie was very close to her sister, Tony. Yes. And James Craig told Angie essentially, you, they were having marital problems multiple times. And he told Angie, under no circumstances can you talk to Tony about our marital problems. In fact, you, if you do that, I'm going to be really angry, right? And so talk about defensiveness. Talk about the lack of openness and honesty and trust.

He's shutting down all open communication not only with himself, not only between himself and Angie, but between Angie and other people, which, by the way, is so typical of domestic violence relationships. Yeah. When you have coercive control, and I'm not sure, you know, I don't know their relationship. Well, I can presume there was some of that. But when you have coercive control, this is exactly. what you do. You tell your spouse, you can't talk to your sister about any of this, otherwise I will harm you in some way. I'll divorce you, whatever. Of course, you can't harm

someone worse than murdering them. So obviously, it would have been nice if she did talk to Tony and tell her a little more about what was going on. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to do that. So that covers defense. The opposite of defensiveness is openness. Being open, being honest, transparent. Those are all obviously really critical to healthy relationships. Contempt. The opposite of contempt in my mind would be respect.

I'm not looking at the camera now is, by the way, hold on. That's okay. You look great. Respect. Keep going. So the opposite, the opposite of contempt would be. respect, I wrote respect, affection, and kindness. So if you're, if you're, if you're showing contempt for another human being,

that's a bad sign. Obviously. The way to circumvent that is to show a certain amount of respect for your spouse or your partner or anyone, actually. And kindness, right? Just be kind. Yeah. And finally, on stonewalling.

So I noticed somebody said, by the way, that when I lost my connection, I was stonewalling, but it wasn't deliberate, I promise. I wasn't trying to stone, I wasn't trying to deliberately stonewall you guys. Okay. What's the opposite of stonewalling and how is this relevant to a healthy relationship? The opposite of stonewalling would be connection. It would be engagement. So I think having the capacity, when somebody shuts down, when they stonewall, when they refuse to talk to you or give you the silent treatment, the opposite and a healthy response to those types of situations would be connection and engagement and actually, you know, listening, hearing someone, connecting to them, right?

And so I think the lesson here for me, and the reason this is so important, is because all of these elements of not only the most dysfunctional unhealthy relationships come through, but also the antidote to those qualities, which are what I just talked about. So if the four horsemen are toxic for healthy relationships, then the opposite qualities are the antidote. And those are the elements that make a healthy relationship. And so why does this matter? Because these are the, I think these are the elements that show up with James Craig, and these are the elements that are really critical in understanding what makes a dysfunctional relationship and what makes a healthy relationship. And if I had any takeaway or any lesson from James Craig, it would be to understand that.

Okay. I'm glad I asked that. Thank you. for everyone wondering we are going to continue covering the James Craig case. Thank you, everyone, and we will see you soon again. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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