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Hey, I just Venmo'd you for rent. Nice. Now I can instantly spend it, whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card. Say more. More. Exactly. Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get, like, earning up to 5% cash. Back with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brands. So order more pizza. The meth demands it. Get the Venmo debit card. Venmo Stash bundle. Terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo Me Stashterm. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank. Na. Hi, my beautiful, gorgeous, incredible, fantastic, spectacular people. How are we all doing? That's kind of a weird intro. Sorry. But we're in it now. We're in it. Cameras rolling. Okay, anyway, for today's case, you guys may have seen a very recent. I think it is fairly recent. I do think that it just came out. A recent true crime documentary on Netflix. It's called A Toxic Love Story. And toxic would be the nicest word that you can use to describe this case. To be quite honest with you, I think that this case quite literally invented the phrase plot twist. Because if you have not heard of this story before, I promise you that just when you think you know what is going to happen next, you don't. So picture this. You're a woman living in Anaheim, California. You had a relationship with a man by the name of Ian Diaz and a United States Marshal, a federal law enforcement officer, someone with a badge, someone with a gun, with a title and the full authority of the federal government behind him. You are in love. So much so that you move in together into this beautiful brand new condo that you purchased. You get engaged, and you really start to think that this guy might be the one. But that things fall apart, you break up, and the relationship ends. You moved on. Or you tried to. And Ian did the same. He moved on. And he got into a relationship with a new woman. A woman by the name of Angela Connell. And then in 2016, your life suddenly starts to fall apart in ways that you cannot explain and you cannot stop. There were a plethora of threatening emails sent. It appeared by you. Craigslist ads appeared online, posted again. It appeared by you. And these were no casual Craigslist ads, okay? No. There were ads posting a rape fantasy, inviting strangers to come to an address, a specific address, and act it out. What address, you may be wondering. It was Angela and Ian's so different men began showing up, all while Angela Connell, Ian's new wife, is filing police report after police report saying that you were the one who was not only stalking her, but you were threatening her life. And all of that leads into a restraining order being issued against you. Law enforcement was completely on Angela's side, which means they were completely and utterly on Ian's side, and you had no idea what was happening, let alone how to stop it. You end up getting charged with stalking and making criminal threats, and then you end up spending 88 days, nearly three months in custody while this massive case against you is being built. It sounds made up, does it not? And that's only scratching the surface, the tip of the iceberg, if you will. The. But this case grew to be. But that was the case. For a woman called Michelle. The evidence looked to be completely overwhelming because after all the emails were coming from her accounts, the ads were traced back to her. She had a motive, and she was painted out to be this scorned ex fiance jealous of a new wife. The story wrote itself, except for the fact that. That none of it was true. But to understand how this case unfolded and all of the different twists and turns and everything about this entire mess, for lack of a better word, you need to understand exactly who these three people were and what ties them all together and what brought each of them into this story. With all that being said, we don't really have any time to waste, do we? Let's get into it and do. If you haven't heard about this case and if you have not watched the documentary, please comment your thoughts throughout the video. Video, like time stamp them so I can see what thoughts you were having on exactly what parts. Okay. Because I'm very curious. Anyway, welcome to this episode of I wish you were here. I'm your host, Michelle Cuervo. Michelle Hadley was Ian Diaz's former fiance. By all accounts, she was an ordinary young woman who had been in a serious relationship that ended when Ian met and married somebody else. She had no prior criminal record. She had no documented history of stalking or harassment. She was, before all of this began, simply a woman who was trying to move on from a broken engagement until the email started and her entire world collapsed. Ian Diaz was a United States Marshal. And that detail, in itself, it's kind of central to everything, so keep that in mind. But he was a federal law enforcement officer, a man whose job was to protect the courts, the judges, and the embassies of the United States government. He wore the authority that he had Naturally, he had this sort of confidence about him that framed him like a very serious, smart guy, but also like the nice guy next door. He was kind, he was funny, even at times, friendly. He was composed. He. He was, according to all of the people who were closest to him in his life, exactly the kind of person that would be your first call if something was to ever go wrong. And him having this job also meant that he understood how things worked. He understood how investigations worked, how evidence was gathered, what made a case look solid, and what classifies a person to be either a victim, a criminal, or. Or maybe even something in between. But naturally, because of what he did day to day, he dealt with the law frequently. You know, he was knowledgeable in that field, and that makes sense. And Ian had a decent amount of people in his life that would vouch for him. But the biggest one was probably his best friend. His best friend, longtime best friend, a person that he had known for years, a woman by the name of Leslie. Leslie sounds like the kind of friend that you would feel blessed and privileged to have in your corner. She sounds like the type of person that would stand up for you in any situation. Say, if, for example, there was a group of people talking badly about you behind your back and you were not there, Leslie would be the first person to stand up and. And stand up for you. And she was also the type of person that One thing,ousand percent had Ian's back. And not even in a dramatic I would do anything kind of way. There was no romance to it, according to her, but more so in a we have known each other for so long that my friendship loyalty lies with you sort of way. Lessie described Ian to be dependable, kind, and present. She, I mean, had absolutely no reason to say anything other than exactly what she believed to be true, because she did believe every single word of it. She had no reason not to. But she did have every reason to back Ian time and time again, because he also was the kind of friend that would do the same for her. So the year was 2015 when Ian proposed to his girlfriend, Michelle Hadley. They had been together for a while, and things had gotten to be pretty serious. Serious enough for the two of them to buy this condo together in Anaheim, California. The condo was a new construction property that Michelle pretty much put all of her life savings into, because at the time, at that stage in their life, Ian wasn't financially in a place that he needed to be in to be able to afford a condo as beautiful as this one. But he was all in. In this relationship, I mean, he kind of proved that to Michelle when he got down on one knee and promised her forever. And Michelle really saw a future with this guy. She thought truly and deeply that she was on the right path to finding her happily ever after. And when Michelle talks about what life for her was growing up and the kind of person that she grew up to be throughout different stages of her life, she was the kind of person that did see the world as it having a rule book, I guess. Obviously there is no normal and there are no expectations. There is no right or wrong way, because life looks different, differently for everyone. But depending on the person, you could look at life and think, okay, you got a car, you get a partner, you start dating, you get engaged, you get married, you get the house, you get the kids, and so on and so forth. Michelle was that type of person to a degree. She has been described to be a rule follower and a very wholesome person who just wanted to be happy. So when Ian walks into her life and then they fall in love, they're having this beautiful, great, healthy relationship. And then he pitches the idea about buying this condo. She agrees to do it. And she puts all of her money in her savings account towards the down payment for this place. This is how serious their relationship was. This is how much she trusted her fiance, Ian. And things were going good, but then they were going okay. And. And then gradually it started to feel like things were then just fully going downhill and there was no coming back from it. So the relationship ended. Michelle and Ian went their separate ways. The specifics of why exactly they broke up, whether it was a gradual unraveling or a sudden decision, are not completely clear off the bat. But what is known is that Leslie, his best friend, was one of the first people that Ian called when the relationship ended. If not the first person, no shock there. Like I said, they had a very close relationship. And without asking any questions, she showed up for him massively during this breakup. All while Michelle, she ends up moving out of the condo with her name still on the mortgage. She had put all of her savings into a home that she no longer lived in for a future that no longer existed with a man that had already moved on. Because, yeah, within months of the breakup, Ian had already met someone new online. Her name was Angela Connell. She would later say that the reason why she was drawn immediately to Ian is because he offered her what people call the white picket fence life that she had always dreamt of having. He was handsome, he was funny, he was kind. But more than that he had stability, a federal salary. He was a man who knew how to protect people and a man who wanted to. And the next thing that, you know, within only weeks of meeting each other, Ian got down on one knee and he proposed. By February of 2016, only a month or so after they met, the two of them were married. Angela then moved into the Anaheim condo, the one that Michelle purchased with her life savings. She walked in there, she put her clothes in the closet, started to spread out her decorations in every single little corner of the place, making it her own, putting her toiletries in the bathroom. I mean, she really walked in and she made herself right at home, as anyone would, I guess. You know, like, you are under this impression that you have met the man of your dreams. He is offering you everything that you could have ever wanted on this silver platter. Who is Angela to reject this man that she loves of giving her the life that she'd always wanted, the life that she had always dreamt of? Angela moved in. And shortly after, she announced that she was pregnant with twins. I mean, blessing after blessing after blessing. It was like the two of them had gotten the happy ending that they had both wanted all along. It maybe came a little bit tiny bit later in their lives than expected, but now they were at this stage, a stage that a lot of people hope to be in, and they were both over the moon. Ian got what he wanted, Angela got what she wanted, and Michelle Hadley was still left with nothing but a broken engagement, her savings tied up in a property that she no longer had access to, and a man that she completely trusted to start this life with, now starting a life in the home that they were supposed to share, but things were not as straightforward as they seem to be from the outside world, because even though Ian and Angela were supposed to be in the happiest stages of their life, thriving, enjoying their engagement, thinking about starting to plan a wedding, soaking up this beautiful pregnancy stage. It was not that way. And there was one constant, one thing that started one day that just kept happening over and over and over again until it felt like it started to take over their lives. And that were the emails. The email started arriving in early 2016. Angela went to the Anaheim Police Department, and she told them that she was being harassed by an anonymous sender through an email using the alias Lilith is truth Lilith. In Jewish mythology, Lilith is described as a demoness, a woman who, after refusing to submit to Adam's authority in the Garden of Eden, escaped and became a creature of darkness and revenge. If you are only Listening to this, you're not watching the YouTube video of it. Look up images, Google images. Lilith. It's like a scary female figure. But anyway, that was the username, right? So what does that mean? Probably means that whoever had chosen that username had thought about it. This did not feel random. It. It clearly was not. Or at least it felt like it wasn't. It felt like this was supposed to be a message of what kind of woman was sending these emails. Dangerous, disobedient, furious, Obsessive. The emails that Angela was receiving were extremely violent in nature and they were escalating by the second. They were not innocent emails whatsoever. They first started as threatening and harassing messages referencing Ian's previous relationship with Michelle and. And making claims about Angela's marriage. And they all carried this weird tone, strong tone of obsession and fury, I guess you could say. So like any normal person would. Angela reported them to Anaheim PD immediately. And these emails were so extremely strange for a different number of reasons. Partly because whoever was writing them seemed to have this previous knowledge of not only Ian, but also Ian's ex fiance, Michelle, as well as Angela. In fact, they were actually written in a way that sounded like they were written by the jealous, obsessive ex girlfriend. It sounded like they were being written by Michelle from the things that were written in them. This Lilith is true person they had. They. It felt like they had this extreme jealousy against Angela from. For stealing a life that was not hers to steal. There was such a strong hatred about them and the emails. Like I said, I feel like I sound like a broken record, but they just kept getting progressively worse over time. They did not stay at a consistent level whatsoever. They grew progressively into more threats and more harassment and worse and worse every single time. First it was threats only to Angela and. And then it was threats to Angela and Ian, and then it was threats to all three of them, actually four of them, because they started also harassing the twins, the unborn twins. Each time that Angela filed a police report, more emails followed. And very quickly investigators noted that the pattern that fit this profile, it felt like someone who was encouraged almost by the lack of consequences, if that makes sense. And it felt like whoever was behind these emails was an obsessive sender who was escalating precisely because the harassment was continuing to generate a response. There was a reaction and they were seeing that, and they liked that. They made threats against Angela, saying things such as, you must be gone. Calling Angela a sinner, calling her actually every bad name in the book and including other statements such as Ian does not love you and you have stolen my life. These emails would often describe what Angela wore to work, mentioning their regular schedules and activities that she attended near their Southern California condo. And they kept escalating until they eventually got to threatening to kill their unborn twin babies. They started attaching images to these emails of seriously disturbing things such as decapitated human heads, decapitated babies. They were absolutely insane and they were too much. So it was June 1, 2016, when Ian and Angela Diaz approached the local authorities about this case. And again, their main thing was concern. They were worried not only about their safety, but also about their children when they were eventually born. And they were also getting really worried because like I said, this person knew their day to day schedules. They knew what Angela was wearing, meaning that they were watching her. And that was really scary. And again, it felt like there was a very clear culprit behind them. So Ian and Angela told the police that they believed that this Lilith is truth was really his ex, Michelle Hadley, saying that this religious language and different references to Lilith in the emails that did match a specific similar language that Michelle had used and expressed to Ian in the past. And from the time that the email started to the time that an arrest was made, there were three important significant things that happened. Okay, taking a very quick break to thank today's sponsor. I want to talk to you guys again about what? 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Search whatnot wh a t n o t in the app store, sign up and start finding the best deals on the products that you love with $20 off in free shipping on your first purchase. Thank you so much, whatnot, for sponsoring today's episode. So later that month, Angela accused Michelle of posting photos of her posting photos in online ads soliciting men to come and rape her in Ian's condo to fulfill this sexual rape fantasy that she had. The ad was on Craigslist and it was there, I mean, fully there, with pictures of Angela describing in detail exactly what she was looking for and inviting these men to come for to come to the condo. She was describing her dream scenario, acting like she wanted to role play, I guess, being a victim. So she wanted these men from Craigslist to sign up for this and then just show up at the condo and rape her. A rape fantasy. It's exactly what it sounds like. And men did see these posts and they did want to participate. In fact, one man replied to the ad. He asked for a phone call to make sure that this rape fantasy was mutual and that it really was what she wanted. He got confirmation, the confirmation he was looking for from a female voice on the phone. And then he started making his way over to the condo. He arrived, he got out of his car and. And the only thing that stopped him actually from actually walking inside was seeing Ian's name on the. I guess you would call it like an intercom. He saw that a man lived there or assumed so because the condo number matched up with Ian's name. And he decided that he was just. He wasn't going to go through with it. He got scared that maybe there was a husband or A man that may not have been completely looped into the situation. So he. He just wanted to get back in his car and leave the situation entirely because he didn't want to risk getting caught up in the wrong thing. But the point is that he was willing to do it. He was completely under this impression that this woman online who he believed to be Angela, even though it wasn't her name, he believed her to be Angela because Angela's pictures were attached to this ad, and he really felt like she wanted to go through with it. That was a massive point in this investigation because now it was taking things to a completely different level. Now, this wasn't only online, but it was a situation in real life outside of a computer. She could. Angela could no longer just close her computer and not look in this emails. No people were now showing up to her house. This was now real life. And her life felt like it was in danger. The second significant thing happened when Angela called the police and to come and rush over to the condo, and they did. She looked completely disheveled, shaken up, terrified. She had called in to report that she had just been attacked in the middle of the day by a man who had approached her and pushed himself onto her, telling her that today was the day that she was going to finally be getting raped. She had small defensive injuries on her, a few scratches to prove that it did happen. And in fact, there was a dent in the wall of her garage saying that that's where this man came up behind her and pushed her into. It was very, very scary. You could see the fear all over her face. There is body camera footage of this, and it was awful. And the third thing that happened was that Ian and Angela had served a restraining order to Michelle Hadley. Because Ian was in law enforcement, he had the means to make this happen. And he actually just ended up calling his best friend Leslie, to be the person to serve the papers to Michelle. Because Leslie knew Michelle and she also knew in detail everything that had been going on. Because any time that anything crazy happened, which there was nothing subtle that ever happened, everything was like, to the craziest degree that it could get. But every time something did happen, Ian would call Leslie. It was a natural thing. They were best friends, even if it was in the middle of the night. And Leslie would pick up every single time. But the restraining order obviously had not been enough to stop Michelle. So after Angela alerted authorities about that time that a man came up to her in the middle of the day and attacked her in the garage, that was the tipping point. That was enough. That July police arrested Michelle on felony counts of stalking and attempted rape, among other charges. She was taken into custody, she was processed, and she was jailed. And when authorities showed her a couple of these emails, Michelle did confess. And she said that those were written by her, meant to go, or I guess written for Ian, her ex, but her dad, Michelle's dad at the time, and frankly, every single person who knew her and was close to her in her life, they were so confused. Actually, Michelle herself was a little bit confused because she did know that she did type out these emails to Ian. But then you have the rape charge and you have other details stacking up in this case building around her. And some things were simply just not making sense. Michelle Hadley and her family very quickly became to be everything that anyone was talking about. It was just terrible as well, because her parents and her family as a whole, they were such genuine people. They had lived in the area that they lived in for a long time. They had a lot of friends, very social people. And now they were looking at their daughter to be this horrific person who was attacking a mom who had done nothing wrong but fall in love with her ex fiance. Nobody would have expected that this path was the path that Michelle would have gone down. Because remember, like I told you, she was this rule follower. She was a sweet person, she was friendly, she was kind to strangers. And the entire thing, it was just all very, very, very out of left field. It made no sense. It was an insane time period of her life. Michelle did admit to a couple of the emails, but she didn't know anything about Lilith is true, she know nothing. She knew nothing about Craigslist and she knew absolutely nothing about any rape fantasy. And for 88 days, nearly three months, Michelle sat in a jail while this case against her was being built by evidence that she had not created, by people that she had not harmed under the guidance of a federal marshal who understood exactly which pieces of the legal machine to push and exactly in which direction. Meanwhile, Ian and Angela, while they continued their life in the condo, they were at peace now. The person behind the email, she was gone. They could move on and live their happily ever after. Angela was building her narrative. The stress on the pregnancy, the fear, the escalating danger Michelle posed on her and her life. She talked about it often because it was such a traumatizing thing, but at the same time, she was very excited that now it was all behind her and she was happy to move on. Ian was cooperating with Anaheim PD as a federal officer, willing and wanting to help the local law enforcement. He was helpful, he was professional, he was composed. I mean, he was the most credible person in any room that he walked into, because he had made sure to be his entire career. But the lie that was this entire thing, it began to fall apart from the inside investigators. When taking a closer look at this case and the people involved in it and looking at exactly what role everyone played, they began looking into Angela in connection with separate irregularities, like little details in her stories, little things that she said here and there that were not quite adding up. And they began finding more and more things that were not quite adding up. Angela had previously told people that she had a job. Come to find out she did not. Angela had previously told people that she had cancer, but when the truth came out that she did not, she fled the relationship that she was in at that time, and she never looked back. Angela had a pattern in her adult life that showed that she was exactly the kind of person who. Who would fabricate a story so out of pocket that it can't be explained with anything other than a mental illness, in my opinion. Because when Angela made up lies such as the cancer one, she would take them incredibly far. And I'm talking like, she would go as far as looking up pictures of people receiving chemotherapy on Google, and she would send them to her boyfriend at the time to let him know how chemotherapy was going. She would wear a beanie out and about with her friends, with people, to public places, because she would say that she was insecure since she was losing her hair to cancer because of the chemo, when in reality, she had a perfectly healthy head of hair and she didn't have cancer. It was just clear that Angela was this person that you could not trust. And when the narrative started to become a possibility of the emails and her relationship with Ian all being a lie, Ian himself then started questioning everything. And then Ian found out that Angela hadn't been pregnant at all. The ultrasound of the picture of the twins. Fake. The positive pregnancy test, Fake. When he started having these suspicions of her, he started digging around their condo, and he found the positive pregnancy test that Angela had shown him. When she announced to him the. That she was pregnant, that they were pregnant, he found those tests in these. This little plastic baggie with blue markers Because Angela had gone as far as to write the little blue line on them herself. Ian, of course, confided in the only person that he had been able to trust his entire life, his best friend, Leslie. And both of them together. I mean, it felt like a movie Leslie came over when it was only Ian Holm, and. And both of them came over and started digging around the condo, trying to find out different lies, trying to figure out everything that had not been true, trying to put the pieces together and trying to figure out what the truth was when it came to anything at all about Angela. And then they took all of that, all the physical evidence, for example, the fake pregnancy test that they found. They took all of that to the police station, both absolutely and completely in shock of this new information that they had discovered that Ian and Angela's life, basically their entire relationship, had been fabricated and it had all been a calculated lie. Police officers and investigators were also in shock. I mean, can you imagine? Here you have this woman who has told everyone that would listen to her that her unborn twins were being threatened by a jealous stalker. Twins that did not exist, mind you, with a history of lies and deception, it flipped this entire case on its head. If Angela had lied about the pregnancy, what else had she lied about? If she had fabricated a cancer diagnosis, created a fake job, manufactured evidence of a fake pregnancy, what else specifically, when it came to the case against Michelle Hadley, had she made up? Because all the evidence that they had against Michelle, it had come from Angela, and she had used her US Marshal husband at the time to help her out, because when he was at her side, it only made her that much more believable. But that was no longer. And it was finally time for the truth to come out. When investigators trace the IP address behind the Lily is Lilith is true emails in the Craigslist ads, not where they appeared to come from, but where the data physically showed that they had been sent from. The answer did not lead to Michelle Hadley. It led to the condo, the Anaheim condo. The home where Angela and Ian lived. The home where Angela had reported receiving these running emails. The home where men were showing up responding to Craigslist ads about her. Every single email sent by Lilith is true. Every Craigslist posting that had invited strangers to come and act out this scenario at their address. Every piece of digital harassment that had been attributed to Michelle Hadley for an entire year, all of it had been generated from inside the house of the very people reporting the harassment. Angela Connell was arrested on January 6th of 2017. She pleaded guilty to fraud, false imprisonment, and falsely reporting a crime. She was sentenced to five years in prison. Ian then annulled their marriage in April of 2017. And during the criminal proceedings, he still was cooperating fully with investigators, still presenting himself as the second victim of his wife's Deception. Angela went to prison and Ian remained free for now. Well, actually also because you're probably wondering at this point, and rightfully so. So Michelle Hadley was released, and now things started to make sense. It was never Michelle. But you're probably confused because. Let me explain. In the middle of their breakup, when Ian and Michelle separated, in the heat of the moment when Michelle had actually written these angry emails to Ian, those emails, which I think were two, three, max. Those emails were the ones that were showed to her when she was being accused. So she did type out some emails. Not any of. Like the ones including the decapitated heads and the Craigslist ads. Like, nothing like that. Just angry emails that, honestly, an average person would probably send to their ex. She had typed at least two out of many, and those were the ones that were showed to her. So she did confess. She confessed that she had written them because she had. But that was all that she was guilty of. Writing a couple of angry emails to an ex fiance. Everything else had not been her. It had been Angela. It was the hardest thing that Michelle had to go through in her entire life. But when Angela got arrested and she confessed and she was sentenced, Michelle was just happy that she could finally walk out of prison and she could put all of this behind her. She could go back home to her family and. And she was thankfully exonerated of all of the charges. But investigators were not finished because Angela, she had not done this entire thing alone. The emails had come from their home. Ian lived in that home. Ian was a federal law enforcement agent who had guided the Anaheim PD investigation from the beginning, who had identified Michelle as a suspect, who had vouched for Angela's credibility at every single stage, and who had been the most influential presence in a case that he was helping secretly construct. But it would be another four years until federal authorities actually discovered the truth. Because while the case started out with the Anaheim Police Department, the Department of justice, the doj, they did their own investigation on this case because it involved a U.S. marshal, I think, legally, the DOJ, to review everything because of Ian's role as a U.S. marshal. And while Michelle was in prison, DOJ Special Agent Jason Hingley examined police body cam footage, and he started to notice little things that the average person probably would not have been able to notice. Because looking through the camera footage, the body cam from footage from every police encounter, every single time that Angela and Ian called them to their condo to report yet another email, and he was reviewing this footage. And even though it seemed like, or I guess, Even though it was Angela calling Angela, describing the emails, and seemingly appearing to be the primary target in every piece of footage, in any of the different situations, Ian was always there. But that was in the weird part, because of course he was there. He lived there. But the weird part came when this DOJ agent started to pay closer attention to Ian's demeanor throughout all of this, because he seemed to be weirdly anxious. And not only that, he also appeared to be almost coaching Angela on what to say to the police officers, even when police officers were standing right there in the middle of both of them. Like, if Angela couldn't remember a specific detail about the threatening email, Ian would step up immediately in the middle of the conversation and say, oh, this is how it happened. This is what it said. This is how it made us feel. Like he was this silent ringleader to Angela. It felt like. And at first glance, you probably wouldn't think that, but having years and years and years of experience, it was something that quickly stood out to the doj. So he kept on digging. And then, in backups of Ian's government issued laptop, Jason Hengley found Ian's personal email linked directly to correspondence between Lilith and the man who had responded to that Craigslist rape fantasy ad. Jason also found fragments of Lilith is truth emails on the laptop, proving that it was Ian behind these messages, too. What the federal investigation ultimately established was that Ian Diaz had not been deceived by his wife, Angela. He had not been this innocent husband manipulated by a fraudulent wife who had pulled the wool over his eyes. He had been an architect. He had used his badge, his knowledge of the average law enforcement procedure, his understanding of what makes a credible witness and what makes a credible suspect, and his access to the Anaheim PD investigation to shape this case against Michelle from the inside. He knew which details to give investigators and what details to hold back. He knew how to sit across from detectives and sound like a victim. He had spent his entire career on that side of the table. He knew every move before they made it, because he had trained to make those same moves himself. And he had been the ringleader in this entire thing. And Angela just so happened to agree to be a part of this sick and twisted lie? I guess. Because the truth of it is that two crazy, insane, manipulative control of liars found each other, came together, and then brought out the worst in each other. Like, seriously, what are the odds that two people like Ian and Angela would find each other in this world? Angela had a past of being a manipulative liar. She had Lied about so many things in her past. But so had Ian. Come to find out that when Ian and Michelle bought that condo together, everything went downhill very quickly because Ian's need of control. Need to control. I mean, as the relationship progressed, Ian started to get more and more controlling. Telling Michelle where she was or wasn't allowed to go, telling her who she was or wasn't allowed to speak to what she could or couldn't wear. He started tracking her, calling her, texting her over and over and over again. When Michelle went absolutely anywhere else that was not either school or work, he became so controlling to the point that Michelle described it to be like she felt like a prisoner in her own home. And the way that she managed eventually to get out of that relationship was by waiting for Leslie, Ian's best friend, to come over one night. When Leslie was over, Michelle left because she knew for a fact that Ian wasn't going to say anything. He wasn't going to try to stop her if Leslie was standing right there. So when she was, Michelle left and she booked it, got out of there as soon as she could, and she was so glad to leave all of that behind. She left all of her belongings in that condo, and she never looked back because she was terrified of Ian. But that is the headspace that she was in when authorities approached her and showed her these two emails that she did write. Ian had done such a scarily, incredible good job at manipulating her, bringing her down, making her a shell of the person that she once was, that when authorities confronted her with this information, she said that she did do it because she wasn't in a headspace to see things clearly at all. At that point, she was purely in survival mode. So you can imagine the feeling for Michelle when the actual truth finally came out. Ian was arrested, and for the first time in a long time, Michelle actually felt safe. Ian Diaz was convicted of cyber stalking and he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. He is currently incarcerated at FMC Fort Worth in Texas, and his release date is January 31, 2031. He has not spoken publicly about this case. He has not responded to any requests for comment. He is currently, I think, 58 years old, if I did the math correctly, and he will be in his mid-60s by the time that he gets out. Angela Connell went back to her maiden name after Ian annulled their marriage mid prosecution. She served approximately five years in prison following her 2017 guilty plea. She was released to parole supervision in mid 2020 and she moved out of California. But I believe she now lives in Arizona. And he. She also has never publicly addressed what part she played in what they did to Michelle Hadley. Michelle Hadley is free. She has spoken publicly about her experience, about the 88 days, about the helplessness, about what it felt like to know the truth and yet be unable to make it better. After her release, she did file a lawsuit against the city of Anaheim, as well as a lawsuit against Ian and Angela. And the city reached an undisclosed amount with her, a settlement in 2021, according to court records. But she went on to earn her master's degree. She moved to New York City to work in marketing for a little bit, I believe. Since then, she has relocated again, and today she's doing awesome things. And she. One of those awesome things includes advocating for survivors against domestic violence. And then Leslie, Ian's best friend. The best friend who always vouched for Ian without any hesitation, who described him as dependable and kind and present, who believed every single word of the story that he told her. She is left with the knowledge that the Ian that she knew was not real. And learning the truth for Leslie was extremely hard. I mean, that was her best friend. And that is something really heavy that she still carries with her to this day. So we'll never really know the truth. We will never know the real motive of what caused Ian and Angela to do such a thing. Because it's even weirder when you think about the fact that none of this was necessary. Even if their motive was wanting Michelle out of both of their lives completely. Michelle wanted to leave. She was terrified of Ian, and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him or with Angela or the condo. She was willing to give up everything just to have her freedom from Ian. Ian and Angela could have gone on to have a good life together like normal people, but instead, they both found themselves behind bars. For what? I'll end this video with a quote from DOJ Special Agent Higley. Quote. We will never know exactly what happened in the condo. It boils down to Ian wanting to control someone. He wanted to control Michelle, and she got away. And that made him angry. So he designed this scheme to frame his ex girlfriend. Yeah, absolutely nuts. If you haven't watched the documentary, go and watch it now and let me know your thoughts. And yeah, that is it for me today. Hope you guys are having the best day. If not, go do something to make it the best day. Thank you for spending time with me today. Also, by the way, for all of you headphone listeners, I am working on getting a new microphone. I just want to make sure that the one that I get works better than this one. Because this one I guess has a thing for not wanting to work with headphones. So I see all of your dms working on getting a new one and hopefully that'll fixed be fixed by next week, but we will see. Anyway, that's all for me today. Love you guys so much. And I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you.