In March 2022, Bridgeton police investigated pediatrician Craig Spiegel for a possible sexual assault after the mother of a patient accused the doctor of forcibly putting his hands down her pants. The patient’s mother was in an exam room where, moments before, Spiegel had been performing a check-up on her son.
That investigation fizzled after five months, with no charges being filed. But in the course of looking into the matter, law enforcement got permission to search the doctor's phone. Its contents would become fodder for the 25-count federal indictment that the U.S. Attorney's Office hit the pediatrician with last month, accusing him of a long-running scheme of swapping sex for controlled substances. Prosecutors say that Spiegel illegally doled out over 1,200 individual prescriptions, amounting to 73,000 pills, to at least two dozen women.
The 67-year-old Spiegel is a graduate of the prestigious Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. He had a courtesy appointment to medical school at Washington University. Publicly available photos of Spiegel show him wearing colorful suspenders and bowties, posing with young patients whom he saw at the Bridgeton pediatric clinic which, according to his LinkedIn, he opened in the early 1990s.
How an investigation into an alleged assault at that clinic turned into a federal prosecution alleging years of illegal behavior is detailed in a 57-page application for a search warrant unsealed in federal court in St. Louis earlier this week.
According to that document, Spiegel sat for an interview with detectives investigating the assault allegations made by the young patient’s mother, identified only as A.M. On August 30, 2022, they also searched his office. Office staffers were reportedly surprised that the search was in relation to a sex crime, as they told authorities they assumed it pertained to "the adult drug users” who came by the pediatric office.
By that time, authorities were also investigating Spiegel for possibly molesting A.M.'s daughter and for spanking a former employee.
The next day, Spiegel was taken into custody by Bridgeton police and he spent 24 hours in jail in St. Charles.
Ultimately, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office opted not to file charges on the assault. Surveillance video from the hospital contradicted aspects of A.M.'s story. She'd also made comments to authorities about having busted out of a window of his office, a fact that the investigation didn't support. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office spokesman Chris King says the decision not to file charges came down to too many conflicting and incredible statements by the victim.
But on August 31, 2022, prosecutors were still mulling charges, and Bridgeton detectives went to the jail where Spiegel was being held and offered him a ride back to his office.
During the ride, Spiegel began to ask what would happen next in the investigation. He also asked detectives when he would get his iPhone back.
The detectives told the pediatrician he'd get his phone back more quickly if he'd consent to it being searched, thereby preventing the need for authorities to secure a warrant. Spiegel agreed. The contents of the iPhone were downloaded by law enforcement and the device was returned to the doctor the next day.
And while the allegations from the patient’s mother were complicated, what investigators found on Spiegel’s phone was unambiguous — and evidence of crimes that had gone on for years. That includes hundreds of text messages between Spiegel and numerous women he prescribed controlled substances to in exchange for sexual favors and sexually explicit images, many of which were found on the phone as well.
Spiegel regularly replied to nude photos with messages like, "You have great boobs!!!!” and "I want to suck on those nipples!!!” followed by confirmation that their prescriptions for drugs like Percocet and Lortab and in one case even an antibiotic had been sent to pharmacies.
At least two women Spiegel texted with later told investigators they met the doctor at his Bridgeton clinic numerous times where they performed hand jobs on him either in his office or an exam room, with the understanding they could get "any prescription [they] wanted" from in exchange for the sexual favors.
The application for the search warrant indicates Spiegel did take some steps to avoid detection, including using other people's identities to prescribe medications and altering which pharmacies the prescriptions were called into.
Many of the women the pediatrician prescribed medications to appear to have been hard up in one way or another; texts show several women struggling to arrange a ride to see Spiegel. In other cases, when law enforcement finally interviewed these women, one interview was conducted at a probation office, another as a state prison.
Despite the brush with the law in August 2022, Spiegel appears to have continued apace swapping drugs for sex. The application for the search warrant, which was filed in April 2023, says that in the previous three months, Spiegel exchanged more than 1,400 text messages with women he was illicitly prescribing controlled substances to.
That would prove only the beginning of Spiegel’s unwillingness — or inability — to stop even while knowing he was under investigation.
His practice was searched for a second time, this time by federal investigators. In June 2023, at the behest of federal law enforcement, Spiegel came to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and listened as federal prosecutors conveyed to him the seriousness of the charges he was facing. Prosecutors stressed to him the "wealth of evidence in this case," chief among that evidence thousands of Spiegel’s own text messages.
Yet according to court filings, he continued writing illicit prescriptions.
It wasn't until November 1 that Spiegel announced his retirement and closed his Bridgeton practice, according to a post made to the practice's Facebook page.
However, even after that, it's not clear if Spiegel stopped writing prescriptions, as he refused to surrender his DEA registration.
The doctor was charged federally March 7 and taken into custody shortly thereafter.
At a March 11 detention hearing to determine whether Spiegel should be kept in pre-trial custody, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Sestric said that Spiegel's ability to prescribe illicit substances combined with his history of "preying on vulnerable women" makes him a poor candidate for bond.
U.S. District Judge John Ross agreed, ordering the doctor to remain locked up as his case works its way through the courts.
In a motion arguing against Spiegel's pretrial release, Sestric referenced the story of N.L., which Sestric said demonstrated the extent to which the pediatrician was "undeterred by any consequence to his actions."
The data pulled from Spiegel's phone indicated that one of the many women he texted with was an Illinois resident named N.L., with whom he met in person and swapped explicit pictures with in exchange for Xanax and mixed amphetamine salts, the generic description for Adderall.
Spiegel's texts show him being petulant with her. In September 2021 she messaged him that she had no way to get to his Bridgeton clinic. "You can't even send pictures," he wrote back.
Later that month she texted him, “I’m completely out of medicine and I am not sure how we can do this. I want to see you[.] can you make it to my place this weekend.”
On April 1, 2022, N.L. asked Spiegel to send in her prescriptions to a Walmart pharmacy. Spiegel texted he'd done so the following day. He also asked N.L if her girlfriend was around the coming weekend. N.L. replied, "No."
The following month Spiegel texted her, "Haven’t heard from you in a while.” N.L. didn't reply.
The pediatrician followed up in June, "What happened to you?” and again got no answer.
By then, N.L. had been deceased for more than two months. She was found dead in her St. Clair County home on April 4, two days after Spiegel confirmed he'd sent her prescriptions into Walmart.
A coroner determined the cause of death to be an accidental overdose, finding in her system norfentanyl, amphetamine, and methamphetamine. She was 40 years old.
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