In 2013, Michelle Hadley started dating a man named Ian Diaz, a former U.S. marshal. Two years later, they bought a condo together near Disneyland. A month after that, they broke up — but Diaz stayed in the property.
Within months, Diaz had a new partner: Angela Connell. They married in February 2016.
Then, according to court and news records, Angela began building a case against Hadley that would nearly destroy her life. Posing as herself, Angela created fake Craigslist ads soliciting men for encounters at her own home, complete with her real photos and address — then reported the ads to police and blamed Hadley for posting them. She sent threatening emails, supposedly from Hadley. She claimed to be pregnant with twins. She forged a doctor’s note claiming she had cervical cancer. She filed police report after police report about strange men showing up at her door.
On June 24, 2016, Hadley was arrested and released on $100,000 bail. By July, she was facing felony charges that could have sent her to prison for years.
Then investigators did something simple: they traced the IP addresses behind the threatening emails and fake ads.
They didn’t lead to Hadley. They led straight back to Angela’s own condo.
In January 2017, all charges against Hadley were dropped. Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas put it plainly: “Ms. Hadley is an innocent victim of a diabolical scheme.”
Angela pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts and was sentenced to five years in prison. She and Ian later divorced. In 2021, Ian Diaz was separately arrested on federal cyberstalking charges; he was convicted in March 2023 and sentenced to more than 10 years in prison — on the very same day Hadley gave birth to her first child.
Hadley later settled a lawsuit against the City of Anaheim. Her story is now the subject of the Netflix documentary “A Toxic Love Story.”
Source: Biography.com, Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Netflix.
