The Netflix documentary “A Toxic Love Story” covers the bizarre case of a love triangle that spiraled into email threats, wrongful imprisonment and fake pregnancy tests.
In June 2016, Michelle Hadley, then 29, was arrested by the Anaheim, California, police and held in jail for 88 days.
Her ex-boyfriend, US Marshal Ian Diaz, and his then-wife, Angela Diaz (née Connell), accused Michelle of sending threatening emails, stalking them and luring men to their home to sexually assault Angela, who was allegedly pregnant at the time.
In 2017, Michelle was exonerated, after it came to light that Ian and Angela framed her. Now, Page Six is breaking down everything to know about the wild story.
The threatening emails from “Lilith”
In May 2016, after Ian and Angela tied the knot, he told his friend Leslie that the couple had allegedly been receiving emails from an anonymous account with the user name “Lilithistruth,” aka “Lilith.”
The messages had a “biblical undertone,” Leslie noted onscreen in the doc, adding that they were “super threatening.”
Some of the alleged messages read, “You must be gone” and “You have stolen my treasured home.”
Another email shown onscreen read, “An eye for an eye, you are finished.”
The messages escalated to threatening Angela’s allegedly unborn child.
They also featured disturbing images such as “decapitated people” and “aborted fetuses,” according to “A Toxic Love Story.”
The dispute over a condo
Ian and Michelle dated from 2013 to 2015, before he began his relationship with Angela in 2016. The married couple was living in a condo that Ian had originally bought with Michelle.
Leslie claimed in the doc that she and Ian “were both thinking the same thing,” which was, “Holy s–t, it’s Michelle sending the emails,” amid Ian’s dispute with his ex over the condo.
Reporting Michelle to the police seemed “necessary,” Leslie said onscreen in the doc.
The Craigslist “rape fantasy” ad
Michelle was arrested in June 2016, after Ian and Angela falsely told police that Michelle posed as Angela and responded to a Craigslist ad from a man soliciting a “rape fantasy” encounter.
They accused Michelle of trying to lure him to “show up at the condo, to rape Angela,” Leslie claimed.
Rick, the man who posted the ad, appeared in the doc anonymously and said onscreen that he received a message from the email address “Lilithistruth,” in response to his ad.
The “Lilith” email account sent him photos of Angela, and gave him Ian and Angela’s address. He noted that “Lilith” told him to “just show up” for a tryst with the woman in the photos, and that she would leave her door open for him.
However, after seeing the name Ian Diaz on the door, he got cold feet and left, because he didn’t want to enter a “situation where the boyfriend or husband doesn’t know,” he said.
Michelle gave odd answers when police questioned her
During Michelle’s interviews with police after she was taken into custody, Michelle was shown one of the “Lilith” emails from September 2015 that said, “God’s law is above all law, including the law of man, Lilith.”
At the time, Michelle seemingly confessed to writing the emails.
“Yeah, that was me. I don’t even understand where it came from, or why I wrote it,” she said in interview footage that was shown onscreen.
She added that it felt like an “alternate persona,” and she thought, “I really am losing my mind.”
Years before Angela’s relationship with Ian, she allegedly faked having cancer
In 2013, Angela was dating a man named Jason Rayburn.
“One night, she divulged that she had cervical cancer, Stage 4,” Jason claimed onscreen in the doc, noting that Angela allegedly blew him off every time he asked to accompany her to chemo appointments.
Angela’s former friend Mary Bukovskis also spoke in the documentary. She claimed that after meeting Angela in 2014, she began noticing discrepancies in her story about her alleged cancer battle.
Mary noted how Angela would be wearing a hat, feigning losing hair. However, she allegedly observed her tucking her hair into the hat at times.
“This b—h has more hair than I do!” she exclaimed while recounting the story.
In the doc, Mary also revealed that she called the facility where Angela claimed she was getting treatment at one point — and discovered that she wasn’t even a patient there.
Jason also quickly caught on, he revealed in the doc.
After Angela allegedly texted him a photo from a “first person perspective” that supposedly showed her view from sitting in a chair while receiving chemo treatments, he later found it on Google Images.
Both Jason and Mary then confronted Angela in 2014. According to Jason’s video camera footage shown onscreen, Angela doubled down and refused to admit she was lying to them.
Additionally, in police audio played onscreen from 2016, cops later asked Angela if she’d ever gotten chemo, to which she replied, “No, absolutely not.”
Angela allegedly faked her pregnancy
After Michelle’s arrest, Ian called his friend Leslie to inform her that he had found out the sonogram from Angela’s pregnancy was fake, Leslie recalled onscreen in the doc.
Upon searching the condo, Leslie and Ian found pregnancy tests that Angela had drawn on with “blue markers” to make them look positive.
Learning about her deception caused Leslie to wonder, “Holy s–t, did any of these emails actually come from Michelle? Is it possible that Angela sent all of these emails to herself?” she recalled onscreen.
She felt an “immense responsibility” to tell the police that there were some “doubts,” she added.
Angela’s arrest
Angela was arrested on Jan. 6, 2017.
She pleaded guilty to all charges including fraud, false imprisonment and falsely reporting a crime. She was sentenced to five years in prison.
Ian annulled their marriage in April 2017.
Michelle described her relationship with Ian as a “daily roller coaster ride”
After Angela’s arrest and Michelle’s exoneration, Department of Justice investigator Jason Higley and his team “had an obligation to look at the case again,” he said onscreen in the doc.
During their interviews with Michelle, she divulged that after she and Ian bought the condo together – and she put all her savings in it – Ian’s behavior allegedly turned controlling.
“He’ll pick out outfits for me, and tell me when he wants me to wear them,” she said onscreen in the doc.
Ian also installed security cameras, she claimed, but not outside the condo — they were “inside, facing the kitchen, where I cook.”
Michelle described being with Ian as a “daily roller coaster ride” in the doc.
“One minute, he’d be taking me to a fancy dinner and telling me how beautiful I was,” she recalled, “and the next minute, he’d be flirting with another girl and screaming in my face.”
After she left him, Michelle claimed his “end game” was to find a way to figure out “how to keep the condo, and destroy [her] life at the same time.”
Ian allegedly pressured Michelle to participate in a cuckold fantasy
During their time together, Michelle alleged that Ian told her that he had a cuckold fantasy.
Her “heart dropped” after hearing that.
“We’re not compatible in this area,” she said onscreen in the doc.
However, she claimed Ian would bring” it up “over and over, multiple times a week” and that he even sent her profiles of men on Craigslist that he wanted her to sleep with.
It made her so “uncomfortable” that she “would cry,” she recalled.
Michelle explained to cameras that she hadn’t dated a lot in the past, so she thought, “Maybe this is what women have to do in relationships.”
She alleged that she let Ian pressure her to sleep with another man, so that they could “move past this,” but it made her feel like “a beautiful part of [herself] had died.”
Michelle admitted that she wrote the first two “Lilith” emails
After Michelle left Ian, she felt like she was “losing” her mind and confessed to writing “a couple very angry emails,” she explained onscreen in the doc.
She explained that she felt like her brain was “detaching” and claimed she had an “out of body” experience. A doctor later told her that she was experiencing a “dissociative episode” — due to “complex PTSD” from her relationship with Ian.
“I only ever sent these [first two] emails, but I was framed for all this horrible cyberstalking,” said Michelle.
“Michelle’s story did sound crazy,” investigator Higley recalled in the doc. “She effectively had a nervous breakdown.”
However, after fully interviewing Michelle, Higley and his team started to find Angela suspicious.
But upon further investigation, they speculated that “Angela might have only been a passenger, and this was Ian’s scheme.”
He added that investigators suspected that Ian “seized on those [first emails] to create the ‘Lilith’ [email] account and language.”
Investigators found proof on Ian’s computer
“Ian tried to cover his tracks, but in digital forensics, there’s always another place to look for evidence,” Higley explained onscreen in the doc.
Investigators eventually found evidence on a laptop “that Ian Diaz is Lilith.”
Where are they now?
After serving her sentence, Angela “moved away from California” and declined to participate in the documentary, per text that appeared onscreen in the doc.
Meanwhile, Ian was dismissed by the US Marshal service in 2023. After pleading not guilty to all charges, he was convicted of stalking, perjury and obstruction of justice. He’s currently serving a 10 year federal prison sentence in Texas.
For Michelle’s part, she sued the Anaheim police department after spending 88 days in prison. She was awarded damages for an undisclosed sum in 2021.
Flash forward to present day, she began dating again and gave birth to a daughter — on the same day that Ian was convicted. “Raising this beautiful little girl is my fairytale ending,” she said in the doc.
“A Toxic Love Story” is now streaming on Netflix.
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