Michelle Hadley went to jail for cyberstalking. In fact, she was the victim of “A toxic love story” (exclusive)

The California mother of one tells her story in the twisted new Netflix documentary “A Toxic Love Story”

NEED TO KNOW

• Michelle Hadley was accused of cyberstalking her ex’s new wife by sending threatening emails and impersonating her on sex ad sites
• Hadley was arrested in Anaheim, Calif., in 2016 and spent 3 months in jail before she was fully exonerated in 2017
• The story of Hadley’s ex-fiancé’s bizarre revenge plot is told in the new Netflix documentary “A Toxic Love Story”

Michelle Hadley had never been swept off her feet before she met Ian Diaz in the summer of 2013. Clean- cut, strong and wholesome, the then-34-year-old U.S. Marshal showed his tender side when he took Hadley to Disneyland for their first date. “It started out as this total fairy tale,” recalls

Hadley, 39. Together, the couple, who were soon engaged to be married, bought and moved into a condo in Anaheim, Calif. “The idea was that I would front the money for the down payment, then he would help with the mortgage payments,” she says.

But the white-picket-fence lifestyle was just a mirage. Diaz installed surveillance cameras in the couple’s home to monitor and control Hadley’s movements, she says.

Feeling disillusioned and angry, less than two years later in August 2015, Hadley decided to leave her fiancé and stop answering his relentless calls. “I felt like I could finally move forward,” she says.

That turned out to be wishful thinking. Diaz’s refusal to let Hadley go peacefully led him to devise a bizarre plot to seek revenge on his ex as he fought with her for sole possession of their condo.

In February 2016, just six months after Hadley broke off the engagement, Diaz married Angela Connell, then 30, a woman he met on a dating site, and moved her into the contested condo.

Within weeks the newlyweds claimed their lives were disrupted by ominous emails Connell began receiving that were signed mysteriously by “LilithIsTruth,” a moniker derived from the name of the rebellious first wife of Adam, who, according to ancient Jewish folklore, turned evil and sought to upend his life. 

In another deceptive twist, Connell falsely claimed she was pregnant with twins at the time.

As seen in the new Netflix documentary A Toxic Love Story, Connell and Diaz accused Hadley of being behind the chilling emails and reported her to local police. They claimed she was also posing as Connell on Craigslist and making plans for men to come to the couple’s home to enact rape-fantasy scenarios with Connell.

“We will steal your child and watch as it dies,” “Lilith” wrote in one email.

It would eventually result in Diaz’s arrest and conviction—and full vindication for Hadley, who fought hard for justice and to reclaim the life Diaz stole from her. “Ian thought he was the smartest of them all,” Hadley says. “But I don’t think he really knew what I was made of.”

In July 2016 Hadley was arrested and charged with stalking and threatening sexual assault and was facing life in prison if convicted. But during the three months she spent in jail awaiting trial, the truth about the real identity of “Lilith” began to surface as authorities continued to investigate the cyberstalking case.

Hadley remembers shaking in disbelief when officers came to her door with an arrest warrant in 2016. “It was shock. Complete shock,” she says. “I knew Ian was going to do something, but I just didn’t know how far he would go.”

When she and her future fiancé first met on a dating site in 2013, Hadley was a 26-year-old marketing manager for a risk-services company in Orange County, Calif., looking to settle down with a solid, family-oriented man. Instead, she says, “our relationship followed the classic abusive cycle.” Diaz picked out suggestive clothes for her to wear and pressured her to have sex with other men. 

Hadley now regrets that, after initially refusing, she finally gave in to his demands on Valentine’s Day and had sex with a stranger while Diaz filmed the encounter and watched from another room. Hadley was traumatized and told her fiancé she felt she was raped.

With her dreams of a happy marriage in tatters, Hadley lived in a perpetual state of fear. “Ian always had his [police] gun with him,” she recalls. “I just felt like he was constantly there watching me. I have never felt fear like that before, like I was a hunted animal.” In August 2015 she left Diaz and drove for miles through the desert into Arizona before moving back to her parents’ house in Ontario, Calif.

Diaz’s elaborate revenge plot began shortly after that. Using false names and multiple computers to avoid detection, he became “Lilith”—a nickname Hadley had once used in an angry email message—and terrorized his former girlfriend by impersonating her online and framing her for purported crimes, including an attempted rape falsely reported by Connell.

Although Connell was in on the plot, when Diaz learned that she was using a fake sonogram to pretend she was pregnant, he turned on her. In the documentary he is heard in a recorded police interview telling officers investigating the emails, “[Angela] is behind this. It seems like I’ve been sleeping with the enemy the entire time.”

In 2017 Connell pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts and was sentenced to five years in state prison. 

But Hadley’s biggest threat, of course, was not Connell. After her breakup with Diaz, Hadley hired property attorneys to draw up a contract stating that he had six months to assume the $459,745 mortgage or they would sell the condo and split the proceeds.

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At the end of the six months Diaz was unable to take on the mortgage by himself, says Hadley. “They denied him because of his finances. And that’s when they started the activity to frame me,” she says. “I think his endgame was to figure out a way to keep the condo and destroy my life at the same time.”

Hadley took steps to protect herself. She contacted Diaz’s employer, the U.S. Department of Justice, and told them one of their officers was framing her. “I was scared to death because you can imagine at that point I didn’t trust cops at all,” she says.

An eventual investigation uncovered Diaz as the true mastermind behind the framing of Hadley. In 2023 he was convicted of stalking, perjury and obstruction of justice. He is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence in Texas. “As much as the condo is part of this, and he didn’t want to lose his home, to me, it boils down to Ian wanting to control someone,” says DOJ Special Agent Jason Higley, who investigated the case.

While Hadley never got her down payment back, she did gain her freedom. These days she continues to build on her 15-year marketing career and is caring for her 3-year-old daughter as a single mom while continuing the hard work of healing.

“This was a domestic abuse story,” says Hadley, who is now an advocate for other survivors. “I want people to know there are women on the other side, and we are ready and willing to help.”

If you suspect domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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