The Netflix documentary “A Toxic Love Story” explores the bizarre case of a love triangle that escalated into email threats, false imprisonment, and fake pregnancy tests.
In June 2016, 29-year-old Michelle Hadley was arrested by police in Anaheim, California, and held for 88 days.
Her ex-boyfriend, U.S. Marshal Ian Diaz, and his then-wife, Angela Diaz (née Connell), accused Michelle of sexually assaulting her, who was pregnant at the time, by sending threatening emails, stalking them, and luring men to their home to sexually assault them.
In 2017, it was revealed that Ian and Angela had framed Michelle, and Michelle was acquitted. Now, Page Six is uncovering everything you need to know about this outlandish story.
Threatening email from “Lilith”
In May 2016, after Ian and Angela married, Ian told his friend Leslie that the two had allegedly been receiving emails from an anonymous account with the username “Lilithistruth”, also known as “Lilith”.
Leslie noted on screen in the document that the message had “biblical overtones,” adding that it was “very threatening.”
Some of the messages said, “You should have disappeared” and “You stole my precious home.”
Another email that appeared on the screen read, “An eye for an eye, it’s over.”
The messages escalated to threatening Angela’s alleged unborn child.
They also included disturbing images of “decapitated people” and “aborted fetuses,” according to A Toxic Love Story.
dispute over apartment
Ian and Michelle dated from 2013 to 2015 before he started dating Angela in 2016. The couple originally lived in a condo that Ian had purchased with Michelle.
In the documents, Leslie claims that while Ian was arguing with his ex-girlfriend over the apartment, she and Ian were “both thinking the same thing,” which was, “Oh my god, it’s Michelle who’s texting me.”
It was “necessary” to report Michelle to the police, Leslie said in the on-screen document.
Craigslist “rape fantasy” ad
Michelle was arrested in June 2016 after Ian and Angela falsely told police that Michelle had responded to a Craigslist ad from a man posing as Angela soliciting a “rape fantasy.”
Leslie accused Michelle of trying to seduce her into “showing up at the apartment complex and raping Angela.”
Rick, the man who posted the ad, appeared anonymously in the document and said on screen that he had received a message from the email address “Lilithistruth” in response to his ad.
The “Lilith” email account sent him a photo of Angela and gave him Ian and Angela’s address. He noted that “Lilith” told him to “just show up” to a secret meeting with the woman in the photo, and that she said she would hold the door open for him.
But after seeing Ian Diaz’s name on the door, he said, he got cold feet and left because he didn’t want to get into “a situation where my boyfriend or husband didn’t know.”
Michelle gave strange answers during police questioning
During a police interview after being detained, Michelle was shown one of the Lilith emails from September 2015, which read, “God’s law supersedes all laws, including the human law of Lilith.”
At the time, Michelle appeared to admit to writing the email.
“Yes, that was me. I don’t even understand where it came from or why I wrote it,” she said in the interview footage shown on the screen.
She added that she felt like it was “another personality” and thought she was “really losing her mind.”
Angela is said to have lied about having cancer years before dating Ian.
In 2013, Angela was dating a man named Jason Rayburn.
“One night, she revealed that she had cervical cancer (stage 4),” Jason claimed onscreen in the doc, saying that Angela got mad at him every time he asked her to accompany him to her chemotherapy appointments.
Angela’s former friend Mary Bukowskis also spoke in the documentary. She claimed that after meeting Angela in 2014, she began to notice inconsistencies in her story about her alleged cancer battle.
Mary notes that Angela pretends to lose her hair and wears a hat. However, she is said to have been observed sometimes tucking her hair into her hat.
“This BH has more hair than me!” she exclaimed as she narrated the story.
In the documents, Mary also revealed that when she called the facility where Angela claimed to be receiving treatment, she learned that she was not even a patient there.
Jason also understood immediately, he said in a written statement.
He said she texted him a “first-person” photo of Angela, who was supposedly sitting in a chair while undergoing chemotherapy, and later found the photo on Google Images.
Jason and Mary then confronted Angela in 2014. Jason’s video camera footage on the screen showed Angela acting up and refusing to admit she was lying.
Additionally, police audio played on screen in 2016 shows an officer later asking Angela if she had ever had chemotherapy, to which she replied, “No, definitely not.”
Angela allegedly faked pregnancy
After Michelle’s arrest, Ian called his friend Leslie to tell her that Angela’s pregnancy ultrasound turned out to be fake, Leslie recalled on-screen in the doc.
Leslie and Ian search the condo and discover a pregnancy test that Angela drew with “blue marker” to make it look positive.
Learning about her deception, Leslie wondered, “Oh my god, did any of these emails actually come from Michelle? Is it possible that Angela sent all of these emails to herself?” she recalled on screen.
She added that she felt an “incalculable responsibility” to tell police she had “questions”.
Angela’s arrest
Angela was arrested on January 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 had his marriage annulled in April 2017.
Michelle described her relationship with Ian as a “roller coaster ride every day”
After Angela’s arrest and Michelle’s exoneration, Justice Department investigator Jason Higley and his team “have an obligation to take another look at the case,” the on-screen document said.
In an interview with Michelle, Michelle revealed that Ian’s behavior became controlling after she and Ian bought the condo together and put all their savings into it.
“He picks out clothes for me and tells me when he wants me to wear them,” she said onscreen in the doc.
Ian also installed security cameras, but she claimed they were not installed outside the condo, but “inside facing the kitchen where I cook.”
In the doc, Michelle described being with Ian as “like a daily roller coaster ride.”
“One minute he’s taking me out to fancy dinners and telling me how beautiful I am, and the next he’s flirting with another girl and screaming in my face.”
Michelle claimed that after their breakup, her “ultimate goal” was to find a way to “keep the apartment and destroy (her) life at the same time.”
Ian allegedly pressured Michelle into participating in his cuckold fantasy.
During their time together, Michelle claimed that Ian told her that he had fantasies of being a cuckold.
She was “heartbroken” when she heard that.
“We disagree in this area,” she said in an on-screen document.
But she claimed Ian brought it up “multiple times a week” and even sent her Craigslist profiles of men he wanted her to sleep with.
It made her so “uncomfortable” that she “almost cried,” she recalled.
Michelle explained on camera that she hadn’t been on many dates before and thought, “Maybe this is something women have to do in relationships.”
She claimed that Ian pressured her into sleeping with other men to “get over this situation”, which left her feeling like “a beautiful part of[myself]died”.
Michelle admitted that she wrote the first two “Lilith” emails.
After Michelle broke up with Ian, she confessed that she felt like she “lost” her mind and wrote “two very angry emails,” she explained on screen in the doc.
She described feeling like her brain was being “disconnected” and claimed to have had an “out-of-body” experience. Doctors later told her that she was experiencing a “dissociative episode” due to “complex PTSD” from her relationship with Ian.
“I’ve only ever sent these (the first two) emails, and yet I was caught up in this whole horrifying cyberstalking thing,” Michelle said.
“Michelle’s story certainly sounded crazy,” Agent Higley recalled in the document. “She practically had a nervous breakdown.”
However, after enough interviews with Michelle, Higley and his team begin to notice that Angela is suspicious.
However, upon further investigation, it was speculated that “Angela may have been just a passenger. This was Ian’s plan.”
He added that investigators suspect Ian “used them (the initial emails) to create the ‘Lilith’ (email) account and language.”
Investigators found evidence 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 on screen in the document.
Investigators eventually found “evidence that Ian Diaz is Lilith” on the laptop.
where are they now?
After serving her sentence, Angela “left California” and refused to participate in the documentary, according to text displayed on the doc’s screen.
Meanwhile, Ian was fired as a U.S. Marshal in 2023. After pleading not guilty to all charges, he was found guilty of stalking, perjury and obstruction of justice. He is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence in Texas.
After spending 88 days in jail, Michelle sued Anaheim police. She was ordered to pay an undisclosed amount of damages in 2021.
Fast forward to the present day, and she started dating again and gave birth to a daughter on the same day Ian was sentenced. “Raising this beautiful girl is the end of my fairy tale,” she said in a written statement.
“A Toxic Love Story” is available on Netflix.
