234: Obsessive Love Triangle with Insane Twist | The Bizarre Case of Michelle Hadley

Picture this: You're walking into your garage one night. And up until now, you’ve had a totally normal day. But then, a few moments later, out of nowhere, you notice someone else is in the garage with you. And they’re there to attack you. This case will have you at the edge of your seat because as soon as you think you know what’s really happening, the plot twists. Get ready for another deep dive with your true crime bestie @_annieelise! Wildgrain Head to https://wildgrain.com/ae and use promo code AE for 30% off your order Helix Visit https://helixsleep.com/serialously and get 25% off plus 2 free dream pillows with your mattress purchase CBDistillery Visit https://cbdistillery.com and use code AE for 20% off Shop the Merch: www.annieelise.com Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ Serialously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/ About Me: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [email protected] Sources: NBC News Buzzfeed News Washington Post Dateline KCAL News

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Annie Elise?

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• 0:55Annie Elise?

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• 1:39Annie Elise?

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Sleep.

• 2:02Annie Elise?

  Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistically with me, Annie Elise. I hope you guys are doing well today. It is like so windy outside right now. I'm wearing my sweatshirt. I'm like freezing cold, even though I have nothing to complain about. It's like 60 degrees here. I'm being such a baby. But anyway, I'm just like in my comfy's and I am, I don't even know what to say. This case, I don't even know how to tee it up because I thought I knew where it was going, okay? When I was researching it and like even though there were a couple twists along the way, I was like, "Okay, I like to consider myself like a true crime sleuth. Like I can foreshadow who it's going to be or who's involved in this." When I tell you that, like when I had my big aha moment, I was like,

• 2:47Annie Elise?

  "Yeah, see, I knew it. I had a feeling." Then there was like this whole other twist that came out from like a hard left and I was like, "What? Like what? People are truly capable of this?" Like it blows your mind and it's gonna blow your mind. And as soon as I was researching, I was like, "I need to talk about this case with my true crime besties. I need someone to talk about this with besides my sister because it is truly insane."

• 3:13Speaker 02

  With a restraining order, stalking, criminal threats, attempted rape, assault with intent to commit rape.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  She tricked us.

• 3:21Annie Elise?

  Now, let me set the tone for you, okay? Picture this, you're walking into your garage one night, whether you're coming home from work, from school, whatever it is, and up until now, you've had, you know, a pretty normal day. You're just arriving home, but then a few moments later, out of nowhere, you notice that somebody else is in the garage with you and they are there because they are planning to attack you. That's what happened to Angela Diaz in 2016 in her home in Anaheim, California, which, not for nothing, that's where I went to high school. It's like a stone throw away from where I live and it makes this whole case all the more eerier. So she arrives home and gets in the garage and notices that somebody's there to attack her. Now, after she called the cops and they- Came to help her, they found her covered in bruises.

• 4:06Annie Elise?

  She had cuts and scratches all over her neck. She had been very badly beaten, and that was just the beginning. Angela told the police that somebody had in fact been harassing her for months. They had been posting ads posing as her online, claiming that she had some sort of rape fantasy. So basically, this other person online had made these fake posts and had invited strangers to come to her home and assault her. And the men who were there to attack her would believe that all of this was just totally consensual, that they were helping her, you know, live out this kinky fantasy that she had. Now, as wild as all of that sounds, Angela knew exactly who was behind all of this,

• 4:48Annie Elise?

  who had been setting her up, making these fake posts online, everything. She also knew why they were doing it. But to explain how she knew all of this, we need to talk a little bit about Angela, who she is and how she got here. Now Angela was friendly, and she was very well put together and worked as a lawyer. She came across like one of those people who, you know, as soon as you meet them, you want to get to know them, you want to be around them all the time. And Angela was married to a man named Ian Diaz. Now Ian was a deputy US marshal, which is a very serious job, okay? I mean, it means that he was responsible for things like enforcing federal laws, tracking down fugitives, handling all sorts of high stakes situations. It definitely wasn't your normal, average nine to five job.

• 5:32Annie Elise?

  It came with a lot of pressure and also a lot of risk, and it definitely isn't a job for the faint of heart. So when Ian met Angela, they hit it off right away. At the time, he was living in a condo that he owned in Anaheim, and things between them moved super quickly. I mean, just a month after they began dating, they ended up getting engaged, and before you know it, Angela had moved in with him into that condo. Then they got married and they started building their lives together. And from the outside, it looked like they were just your typical couple with big dreams for their future. And Angela's dreams were coming true. I mean, soon after moving in with Ian, she ended up finding out that she was pregnant. Not only that, but she was expecting twins. Life could- Not be better. So just when it seemed like everything was falling into place for Angela

• 6:17Annie Elise?

  and for Ian, things started getting a little weird. And it all started with some weird emails. And when I say they were getting weird emails, that actually might be understating it. And I'm just going to read some of these out loud because I don't think that you really get the full impact unless you hear the actual words from these emails. So here's part of one. "I hope you are scared of death tomorrow. Be prepared. Don't sleep. Be watchful of the daughters of God. We will steal your child and we will watch as it dies. He is using you for everything. Don't you see this? He is obsessed with me. I am his treasure princess. You are nothing. Watch your back tomorrow."

• 6:59Annie Elise?

  Now, as if that's not unsettling and unnerving enough, right? The person who sent these also attached really sick photos to the emails. I mean, I'm talking stuff of like, women with their heads chopped off, being cut off, being sexually assaulted, aborted babies. I mean, very disturbing graphic images. So you get the picture. This was for sure scary and unsettling. And I've also got to imagine that anytime someone sends that unhinged of an email, it's natural for your first question to be like, how can somebody even say something like this? Who would send this? Like, what is wrong with this person? Yet, that wasn't a question that Angela or Ian were asking. Because the moment that they got that very

• 7:42Annie Elise?

  first email, they knew exactly who they were from. Later on, they told the police that they were positive that those letters came from a woman named Michelle Hadley. And Michelle was Ian's ex. Now, on the surface, Michelle seemed pretty normal. She had a good job, and at one point, she even worked at Disneyland, which is kind of cool, right? I mean, apparently, Ian loved going to Disney, so that was a major plus for him when they had been together. But it seemed like she had like, a relatively normal life. Now, before Michelle and Ian began dating, Michelle had been in another serious relationship. She had actually been married to her high school sweetheart. It, for whatever reason, didn't work out, and they ended up getting divorced. And it had hit Michelle Pretty hard, but she also knew that she was still young. She had a lot of time ahead

• 8:27Annie Elise?

  of her, you know, to have another shot at love and meet her soulmate and her, you know, next person that she was going to be with. So then Michelle met Ian and they hit it off, but they decided to take things pretty slowly. I mean, they first met in 2013 and it was a little while before they decided to move in together. And in 2015, two years later after they met, they took the next step of buying a condo together in Anaheim. And remember earlier when I said that Ian was living in a condo when he met his now wife Angela? It was the same condo, the one that he had bought with Michelle, his ex. And here's where things get interesting. Michelle paid the entire down payment herself. She fronted all of the money for their condo while Ian didn't pay a single dime. It's

• 9:11Annie Elise?

  also worth mentioning that Michelle was a little bit younger than Ian. She was in her late twenties when they met while he was 34 or 35 years old. Yet despite that age gap, their relationship seemed to be going really well, at least for a little while. But eventually they broke up. And when I tell you this was not a clean break, it was not a clean break. In fact, it got downright ugly. And one of the biggest issues was that condo. Even though Michelle had paid the whole down payment herself and had fronted all of that money, the problem was both of their names were on the deed, on the title. And that meant that Ian was the legal owner as well. So now they were in this really messy fight over who was going to get this condo. Eventually, they ended up settling

• 9:54Annie Elise?

  the issue in court in 2015. And the decision, it was that Ian could stay in the condo, but he had to pay Michelle back some of what she had chipped in already. And if he ever sold it, he was going to have to split the profits with Michelle, which I have to say, that obviously seems fair. So when all was said and done with the court case, Ian and Michelle went their separate ways. Now, for most people, that would probably be the end of it, right? But that's not how it worked out with the two of them at all. See, after the breakup, it was like Michelle had completely changed her entire personality. She turned into a whole different person. Before she had met Ian, Michelle's friends and family had seen her as this like, super happy person. The type of person who saw the world through an Instagram filter. Just everything was perfect and nothing could go wrong.

• 10:39Annie Elise?

  But now, the rose colored glasses were gone. Happy, cheerful, optimistic Michelle was nowhere to be found. Needless to say, she was not taking this breakup well. She was feeling burned by the whole situation. Like, she had fronted all this money for the condo. He now was getting to live in it and would she would only get profits from it if he ever sold it. She also was now like separated from this guy. I mean, it felt like her world was falling apart. And this once optimistic woman was now pretty pessimistic about life. And I guess you could even argue downright angry. So at one point, Michelle had sent Ian a couple of emails just to let him know how she was feeling and also what she hoped would happen to him.

• 11:21Annie Elise?

  Now, these were some very strongly worded emails and they also kind of had this odd sounding religious undertone to them that was really intense, which let me read them to you. "Your sins are many, including defiling me and my family with your wicked and evil sexual acts, your financial coercion and irresponsibility, your gluttony, your greed, your lust, your sloth, your wrath, your envy, and most of all, your pride. I will bring the full force of the law into the word of God against you to judge you." Again, like, kind of bizarre and would definitely make me pause and be like, what's going on? Who would write something like this? But as for Ian, he was kind of just left scratching his head when he got these, feeling like, what the heck does our mortgage have to do with the Bible? And these emails didn't stop there. Here's another one.

• 12:06Annie Elise?

  "Your end will come and you will relinquish the keys to the earth. Earth is mine and the title deed to earth belongs to me. There will be no resolution outside of court unless you are willing to bow before the Lord your God. If you are not, then prepare yourself, Satan. So let it be written, so let it be done. Please explain to your real estate attorney that God's law is above all laws. Prepare yourself and prepare your armies." I'm just gonna say this, I mean, different strokes for different folks, but it has given me some like, serious Lori Vallow vibes a little bit in those emails that she used to send to Charles Vallow in the early days before he was killed. I mean, everybody- Has their own religious practices, which is great and fine and good.

• 12:47Annie Elise?

  But when things get so extreme and there's like this sense of like radicalism, it gets a little, I don't know, it's a little uncomfy to me at least, just personally. I don't know, what would you, how would you react if you received one of these emails? So eventually it just became all too much for Ian, which I totally get, okay? So he went to the police and he also confronted Michelle directly, telling her that he was now gonna get the authorities involved. He had even sent the police copies of her emails and he had also sent them to the US Marshal Service, where I'm sure he had a lot of connections since he worked there, right? He also said he was going to work on taking out a restraining order against her. But as all of this was happening, then his new wife Angela was also starting to get these emails. However, these emails weren't from Michelle.

• 13:31Annie Elise?

  These emails were from a bunch of different guys who said that they were responding to a Craigslist ad that she had posted. The ads were super explicit and said that Angela was looking for men to come to her house and let her live out a rape fantasy. And these posts were basically an invitation for men to come over and force themselves on her, to ignore her if she ever said no or tried to fight back. I mean, truly just awful, every woman's worst nightmare, right? And according to these ads, if she said no, it didn't really mean no. It was all part of her fantasy. Now, obviously, this wasn't really a fantasy that she had at all. And I can only imagine what that would feel like being in a situation like that, seeing that there are Craigslist ads posted that look to be from you, where you're saying,

• 14:16Annie Elise?

  "Come to my house, here's my address, if I say no, don't stop." I mean, that is terrifying. You would always be watching your back and being on alert, right? And this was like the last straw for Ian and Angela. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. I mean, after that, they went back to the Anaheim Police Department and they finished the last few steps that they needed to get that restraining order against Michelle. And in June of 2016, it was luckily granted. Now, for those of you who don't know, when you get a restraining order, the police do have to notify the person who the restraining order is against. Because again, how can they know not to come within a certain distance of you unless they're notified? So a few officers reached out to Michelle to tell her what had happened.

• 14:56Annie Elise?

  And here's where things started to get very interesting because her reaction wasn't exactly what you would expect. She claimed that she didn't send any threatening emails. Yeah, she admitted that some of the emails looked like they were coming from her main email account, but she insisted that she wasn't the one writing them. In fact, she seemed totally shocked at the language in them. Michelle also said that she had started getting those login alerts from Google. You know, the kind where they pop up on your phone if somebody's trying to access your account from a new device? And she said that she was getting these alerts like somebody was trying to hack into her account. She said the same thing about those Craigslist posts. Apparently, someone had used her email address to put at least one of those posts up. And we know that whoever did also used Angela's email address at some point, since she was

• 15:41Annie Elise?

  getting responses directly to her inbox. But someone had put one of those ads up using Michelle's address, too. And I don't know if any of you guys have ever posted anything on Craigslist, but basically when you do, if you sign up for something or sign up to do a post or whatever, you get this automatic confirmation email. And to hear Michelle tell it, she just signed into her email one day and saw this automatic reply saying that she had gone onto Craigslist and asked men to assault Angela as part of this like greater fantasy. And according to Michelle, she said that that was really upsetting and very disturbing because she hadn't done anything like that. Apparently, she even reported the posts and straight up told the people who were working at Craigslist, "I didn't write that." So at this point, the police had heard two different sides to this story.

• 16:25Annie Elise?

  Anna and Angela said that it was Michelle who was sending them these intense threatening emails, but meanwhile, Michelle was like, "Wait, wait, wait. Hang on a second. That's not me. Somebody is out there pretending to be me." Now, from the sound of it, the police didn't really believe her story about being hacked or being impersonated online, not for like a single second. I mean, I'll be honest, how many times have I covered a case where someone gets caught harassing someone and then later pretends it was somebody else who broke into their account, right? It's the number one go-to excuse for all kinds of like creepy nasty people. So the police didn't listen to her excuses and they pretty much didn't give her the time of day. They just said, "This restraining order is gonna stay." In place and now you've been formally notified. So that's that. Stay away from them.

• 17:08Annie Elise?

  And the hopes in these kinds of situations is always that once you file a restraining order, the person who has been harassing you will kind of like back off, right? They'll be a little bit spooked. You've put them on notice. They know that you know what they're doing and you're not going to take it anymore. I mean, in theory, that's what we hope happens. And for a month or so, that's how Ian and Angela felt. They didn't get any more disturbing emails. They didn't hear from Michelle at all. But then that's when things took a seriously terrifying turn.

• 17:40Annie Elise?

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• 18:23Annie Elise?

  But here's the thing, it doesn't have to. Mint Mobile is making it so much easier to stop overpaying for wireless with plans starting at just 15 bucks a month. And you're not sacrificing quality either. All plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and access to the nation's largest 5G network. You can also use your current phone and your current phone number. You just sign up online and you are good to go. Now, I changed carriers probably a year and a half ago at this point to Mint Mobile. And when I tell you, not only was it the best decision of my life, I now have like service in places my husband doesn't even have service, but it was so easy. It took me 15 minutes, kept my phone, kept my phone number. It was the best.

• 19:04Annie Elise?

  So for a new wireless plan, starting at 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/ae. That's mintmobile.com/ae. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

• 19:28Annie Elise?

  Angela was heading back to the condo on the evening of June 24th, 2016. As she later told the police, she was walking into the garage, you know, the garage for the condo that Michelle had bought with Ian, and somebody was inside waiting and attacked her. According to Angela, she didn't recognize the man that was in the garage with her. She had never seen him before. But even though there was no connection, no bad blood between them, no beef whatsoever, the attack that he inflicted on her was brutal. I mean, she was lucky to get away. So afterwards, right away, she called the police. And when they got there, that's when they saw that Angela had clearly been through something pretty horrific. She had visible marks on her face, cuts on her skin, she had other injuries that made it clear that she had been through some kind of struggle.

• 20:09Annie Elise?

  And let's also not forget, Angela was pregnant, not just pregnant, but carrying twins. The cops also said that there was bruising around her eyes, marks on her neck, and cuts on her chest. So it was clear that this was a serious attack. And to all appearances, Angela was lucky to be alive and not more seriously injured. So the police didn't waste any time once they saw the scene and saw Angela's injuries. And in a surprise to no one, they zeroed in right away on Michelle. She had a motive, she had a history with Ian, they already had those bizarre threatening emails that had come from her, so she was arrested. But by the next day, thanks to her parents, she was able to post a $10,000 bond and get out of jail. And guess what? When she got out, those emails picked up again.

• 20:54Annie Elise?

  But this time, some of them weren't signed by Michelle. They were signed by somebody named Jason. Now, apparently, Jason Rayburn was Angela's ex-boyfriend from a couple of years earlier. He was a state highway patrol officer who lived on the East Coast, and they had met at a bar before sort of jumping into a super quick relationship. So it was a little odd now for some guy from years ago, who had nothing to do with any of this, to get involved in this situation and start sending these emails. So was he jealous and was he wanting to frame Angela's new husband's previous girlfriend, hoping that it would like cause a wedge between Angela and Ian and he could work his way back in? Or was it Michelle who was now

• 21:35Annie Elise?

  And knowing that they're on her trail and she was looking for a scapegoat and so she quickly Googled whoever Angela's ex-boyfriend was. The weird thing was, these new messages all had the same tone and similar wording to those from Michelle's account that were sent earlier. So right away Angela was like, no, these aren't actually from Jason. It made more sense that someone, namely Michelle, was impersonating this Jason guy to cover their tracks. And then, three weeks after Michelle's arrest, another Craigslist ad went up. Once again, it asked for someone to come to Angela's house to attack her. And it said that no matter how much she fought back, Angela did not want them to stop what they were doing and to keep going through with the fantasy.

• 22:15Annie Elise?

  And as it turns out, someone did actually respond to this new ad and they showed up to attack Angela. It was a 17-year-old boy. Now, the good news was Angela spotted him right away while he was still outside in the yard and she called the police immediately. So they were able to come stop him before he did anything. And of course, this 17-year-old kid, he had no idea that these ads that had been posted were posted by somebody else or that he was like caught up in this messed up situation. I couldn't find any record either of him being charged with anything and I'm guessing he wasn't because he was a minor. I don't know. But also, so far as he knew, he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just responding to this like kinky Craigslist ad.

• 22:54Annie Elise?

  However, I've got to imagine that this whole situation might have like spooked him a little bit and might have left him feeling like in the future, he would have to be a lot more careful about who he's trying to hook up with or what kind of ads he's answering on the internet. I mean, I hope so at least. So after this, the very next day on July 14th, Michelle was once again arrested for attempted sexual assault. Now, even though Michelle hadn't attacked Angela herself, the evidence told a pretty clear story. She was the one who set everything into motion. She was responsible for the attempt, even though it was a 17-year-old kid who was doing her dirty work for her. The police also claimed that she posed a serious threat to public safety, especially with Angela being pregnant with twins. They weren't taking any chances and I don't blame them.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  And Ms. Hadley was charged in a felony complaint with stalking with a restraining order, stalking, criminal threats, attempted rape, assault with intent to commit rape, assault with intent to commit rape during a residential burglary, violating a protective order and a crime bail crime enhancement. These charges carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  It can take months for us to get an IP address back, particularly if the company doesn't believe it's an emergency.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  As the DA mentioned, we tried to do those emergency search warrants, but when those were coming back, those were coming back blocked through virtual private networks and third-party proxies. So we didn't have that information. And we had to then go through and unwind all of that stuff. And so we may have to serve a search warrant on several different companies. All of those take weeks to months to get back to us.

• 24:30Annie Elise?

  So now with charges like that, Michelle's bail was set at $1 million. And that's not exactly the kind of money you can just pull out of your back pocket, right? Even with help from your parents. So obviously, the hope now was that she was going to finally leave Angela and Ian alone for good. If she couldn't get out of jail, she couldn't post any more disturbing ads online, she couldn't email them, and hopefully, everything would get under control. But still, even after all of the emails and all of the Craigslist posts, and now two arrests, Michelle still said she was innocent, completely innocent. According to her, she never sent Angela a single email, not a threatening one or otherwise. She had no reason to talk to her at all. Apparently, Michelle's family thought she was innocent too, and they wanted to do what they could do to help her,

• 25:14Annie Elise?

  but they didn't really have many options, so they gave her a choice. They said, "We can either bail you out, or you can get a really good lawyer, but we can't afford to do both." And meanwhile, the media coverage was just shredding Michelle to pieces. So Michelle knew that a short-term solution, like getting out on bail, wouldn't help. Even if she paid the bond amount and got out, everybody hated her, and she still was gonna have to face the court system. And like I said, the public had turned on her. Everybody thought she was this criminal mastermind who was setting up her ex's new wife to be attacked in a sexual way. There was no way that she was gonna be able to live a normal life with that hanging over her head. So she made the decision. She told her parents to skip the bail and to get a lawyer instead,

• 25:57Annie Elise?

  which I have to say was probably a smart move on her part, considering how serious these charges were. Now, as a random side note, Michelle was lucky and Did not get a scary cellmate. In fact, she was staying with an elderly woman who she became very close with over time. The woman was in jail on kidnapping charges and I wish I knew more about her backstory, but that's really all I know. But all to say that it makes sense that Michelle was making friends, making connections on the inside because it looked like she was gonna be in there for a long time. Meanwhile, the police were about to learn a lot more about Angela. Now, let's talk about Angela's ex, Jason. You'll remember, he was also apparently sending her weird emails. He was the one who lived on the East Coast, but then after the first arrest, the emails started being signed from him, even though they were in the same tone as Michelle's

• 26:42Annie Elise?

  emails. And Angela was also pretty sure that those emails were not from him. So when she and Jason had been dating, it started out like a lot of relationships. They realized that they had a lot in common and things moved very, very fast. But to be fair, there was a reason for things to move so fast between them because Angela didn't feel like she had any time to waste. Early on, not long after they started dating, Angela confided in Jason that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. She was very sick and she was not in a state to take care of herself. So because of that, she and Jason decided to move in together. It wasn't necessarily a case where they said, "Hey, we've been together for a while, let's take things to the next level." But it was more of a situation where Angela literally couldn't be on her own anymore.

• 27:25Annie Elise?

  So this new guy who really cared about her decided to step up. And I mean, Jason actually seemed like a really nice guy. He even had a special needs son, which that would have been a lot of work for him to take on even without Angela in the picture, but he made room for her in his life as well. Now, right before her treatments were supposed to get started, Angela made the brave decision to shave her head herself. And according to her friend at the time, someone named Mary, Angela tried to be this happy, upbeat person that she had been before because she didn't want this serious illness now getting in the way of that or stopping her from living her best life. So she decided, you know, "I'm gonna just take things into my own hands. I'm not gonna wait for the medication to make my hair fall out. I'm gonna shave my head myself and I'm gonna kick cancer's ass, basically."

• 28:09Annie Elise?

  But here's where things started to get weird. Even though she was in the middle of chemo, which can be so incredibly Intense and hard on your body. Angela didn't seem to be making the kind of lifestyle changes that you might expect. She was still drinking wine, she was eating sugary foods, she had none of that loss of appetite or severe fatigue that people usually go through. And of course, everyone's body is different and people are allowed to process things however they need. So even though Mary thought it was odd, she didn't want to say anything or risk coming across as overly critical of Angela. I mean, her friend had cancer after all. But then one day, when Angela and Mary were hanging out, Angela said something totally out of left field. It was a complete bombshell. Angela said that Jason had been abusing her.

• 28:54Annie Elise?

  Now, something about that statement didn't sit right with Mary. I'm not sure what exactly it was that tipped her off and had her feeling like she couldn't believe Angela, especially because the sad truth is, there are a lot of guys who seem nice in public but are violent and dangerous behind closed doors. But for whatever reason, she kind of had a little bit of pause and hesitation with this. It doesn't sound like there was anything specific in Angela's story that was automatically a red flag, but between the alleged violence and the fact that Angela didn't act the way that Mary would expect a cancer patient to act, Mary was starting to wonder if, for some reason, Angela wasn't being totally honest with her about what was going on in her life. Certain pieces of the puzzle just weren't fitting.

• 29:35Annie Elise?

  It also didn't help that not long after Angela shaved her head, her hair began growing back, and it was growing back super quickly. Now, I am absolutely not a cancer expert, okay? But I Googled this to check, I fact-checked it a little bit, and apparently, it usually doesn't grow back until after chemo ends. Sometimes, it can even take up to 12 months or more. It's even possible for hair to look different when it comes back in, you know, thinner, straighter, patchier, that sort of thing. But Angela's came back in much faster than it normally would, and it also looked the exact same as it had before she had shaved it. And I'm not saying it's impossible, but it was all kind of starting to be this bigger pattern with everything else, and it was notable. It was weird.

• 30:19Annie Elise?

  And Mary wasn't the only person who was starting to second-guess what Angela had told her. Jason was also starting to pick Pick up on some things. The biggest one being that Angela never asked him to drive her to the doctor's appointments or to pick her up afterward. He would have been happy to do it, and since they lived together, it made more logical sense for Jason to do that than for Angela to reach out to some friend or someone else. And of course, it's not like she would have been able to get herself home from chemo. I mean, she was feeling exhausted or nauseous, right? But never, not once in their entire relationship, did Angela ever have Jason take her to or from the doctor. Now, when Mary was having these doubts about Angela, she sort of just let them nag at her. She didn't act on her suspicions. But Jason? He took things to another level

• 31:03Annie Elise?

  once he was doubting on what Angela was telling him. And frankly, he kind of took them to a pretty intense degree. But I guess when you have big doubts, you've got to make big moves to address them. I don't know. But he reached out to a friend and told them the date of Angela's next appointment, the date she was scheduled to go in and receive chemo. And then he asked that friend to stake out Angela's house all day, see when she left, who she left with, what was really happening. And guess what? Angela never left the house that day.

• 31:37Annie Elise?

  It's officially holiday season, which also means it's hosting season, right? So it's time where you look around, you notice things if you're like me, where you're like, oh, that little area could use a little bit of a refresh, or, ooh, I think I need a little bit more decorating over in this corner. And for all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home so that you can host and celebrate without having any of the stress. Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with thousands of products across every style and budget, plus trusted reviews that make shopping just way easier. Think colorful serving bowls, flameless votive candles, a holiday embroidered cotton napkin set. Just the little touches that make everything feel a bit more elevated and cozy.

• 32:23Annie Elise?

  For me, it's my turn to host this year. So I already knew, looking around, I'm like, okay, my dishes are not going to cut it. My napkins aren't going to cut it. So I was able to get actual holiday dishes at a great Cute embroidered napkins. I got an amazing net new like wood cutting board that you can leave out on the counter. That's decorative too. So many amazing things and the reviews really sold it for me. So when you're refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 33:06Annie Elise?

  So as soon as Jason's friend told him that Angela had not left the house, she had not gone to that cancer appointment, he was even more confused. I'm not sure what he had been expecting his friend to say. I mean, if maybe he thought that Angela had been going to these appointments, but a friend was driving her or something. But either way, Jason was totally shocked to learn that apparently the treatments weren't happening at all. Now, when Angela was supposed to be getting chemo, she would always send Jason these photos of what was happening, you know, like her hooked up to IVs, things like that. But these were always photos of her arm or a piece of the equipment, something like that. Her face never showed up in any of these photos. So now he did some Googling, probably some reverse Google search image searching.

• 33:47Annie Elise?

  And as it turned out, those photos of Angela were not of Angela. She had been stealing other people's pictures, going to different websites or strangers' social media accounts, and then sending those photos to Jason to make him think that it was her who was receiving the treatment for cancer. And I think the evidence is clear now that she wasn't being treated for anything. She didn't have cancer. So Jason and Mary finally sat down and compared notes with each other. And that's when everything really started falling apart. Because you may remember how I told you that when Jason and Angela started dating, she told him that she was a lawyer. Well, Mary worked with Angela and she knew Angela's job title. And while it was true, she did, yes, work at a law firm, it wasn't as a lawyer. She was a paralegal. And there's nothing wrong, of course, with being a paralegal, certainly not,

• 34:32Annie Elise?

  but it was just one more lie, one more lie to add to this massive stack of other lies that Angela had been telling both Jason and Mary this entire time. So next, Jason and Mary went to finally confront Angela with What they knew and when they did Angela doubled down. She swore, of course I have cancer. What are you even talking about? She even told them that they could call her mom and ask her and that she would show them the papers that she had from all of her different doctors visits. But Jason and Mary did not take the bait. And I also wonder if she had maybe forged some doctor's notes or if she had lied to her mom. And that's why she offered that specific evidence so quickly? I don't know, but whatever the case, Mary knew better than to let Angela kind of set the agenda and tell her what was what.

• 35:15Annie Elise?

  So instead, Mary asked her if she could see her chemo port, which is this small kind of little catheter type thing that lets the chemo drugs get right into your body. But Angela refused to show it. Of course she wouldn't because it should be pretty clear now that she didn't even have one. She didn't have cancer. So that's how Jason learned that Angela was a liar and it should be no surprise that the two of them broke up. And then after that, she eventually got together with Ian. But speaking of Ian, Ian, her new husband was about to drop a bombshell himself. Because on September 30th, 2016, while Michelle was still in jail and while Angela was fearing for her life, everything changed because that's when Ian finally sat down with the police and offered to clear everything up.

• 35:59Annie Elise?

  He said he was ready to tell the truth. He was going to tell them everything. And Ian told the investigators that he believed that his wife Angela was actually framing his ex Michelle. Which yes, you heard that right. The guy walked into the Anaheim Police Station and was like, I think my wife is behind all of this. And then he kind of just like unloaded a massive list of lies that Angela had allegedly told him. First being her pregnancy with twins. It was total fake news. Apparently she was never pregnant at all. Apparently Angela even showed him a sonogram, but then later Ian found out that she had bought it off of Etsy for like less than $10. And he said that when he figured that out, he was totally done with her. He even annulled the marriage since they had been married for less than a year.

• 36:41Annie Elise?

  And get this, that wasn't even the biggest lie that Angela had ever told him about herself, which we will get into in a moment. And like I said, guys, just when you think the twists are done coming, they are not because we have still got a ways to go. Ian came in and said that Angela had framed Michelle. The police didn't know yet about Angela's past with Jason and that entire fake cancer thing. But now they knew that she had been faking a pregnancy. So with that, they kind of unraveled a whole knot of lies. It wasn't just the framing, or the pregnancy, or the cancer. Angela had lied about basically every single thing that had ever happened to her. And I wish that I was exaggerating, I truly do, but for her whole life, Angela had been constantly saying things that weren't true.

• 37:26Annie Elise?

  She told people that she had certain jobs when she wasn't working at all. She told people she had a law degree, which she never got. And when the police ended up getting a search warrant to check out her devices, things got even crazier. Angela had apparently been sending these threatening emails to herself the entire time, using a VPN to try and cover her tracks. Which a VPN is, it's kind of like a tool that makes it look like you're accessing the internet from a different location, hiding your actual IP address. It's meant to protect privacy, but in this case, Angela was using it to make it look like she was someone else, Michelle, and that Michelle was the one sending those crazy emails.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  It's, it's pretty much automatic. We start, in this case Anaheim Police Department started with getting a search warrants, like emergency search warrants, right away to start verifying the, where the emails came from. And then you start, you know, once you go into that, it's not so easy to verify, here there's something wrong because, you know, because the, the IP addresses were, were disguised. So that, that obviously required a substantially more, much greater kind of investigation.

• 38:39Annie Elise?

  This was all just insane. There was no other word for it. I mean, truly just insane. So after Ian turned Angela in, Michelle was finally released from jail. However, by that time, she had already spent nearly three months behind bars. Three whole months of her life that she lost because of Angela's just crazy vendetta against her. Because as it turns out, Angela had been Googling the movie Gone Girl. I mean, you know, the one, the one about a woman who- Fakes her own death and then frames her husband for it? It's not exactly the same story as what happened between Angela and Michelle, but the broad strokes were the same and everything. And remember the time that she claimed that she was attacked in the garage and then called the police who showed up and found her with bruises and scratches and marks?

• 39:21Annie Elise?

  Well, yeah, it turns out that whole thing was fake too. Angela had staged the entire thing. Remember when Angela supposedly got attacked that first time? She said that somebody jumped her in her garage and that she managed to get away, you know, by the skin of her teeth. And she called the police and she was covered in all of those cuts and bruises when she got there. Well, it turns out she really did fake that attack. And when she did that, she forgot to keep in mind that there were security cameras all over the condo. Now, the police didn't check them at first. I mean, they believed Angela's report and they didn't think to question it. But now, after her husband Ian gave that statement and said that she had been lying about everything, they decided to go back and review that footage. There was no sign of anyone coming in or out of the house except for Angela.

• 40:05Annie Elise?

  No one broke in, no one tried to assault her, and the police didn't actually see how she got all of those injuries either, but their assumption was that she had done it to herself. Now, the second time around, when the 17-year-old boy showed up, that probably was real. He was an actual person. And the police talked to him, he was on the security cameras, all of those things. But the officials knew that the only reason he came to the house is because he had seen that Craigslist ad. He thought that Angela wanted to hook up with him. And as we now know, Angela did, in fact, lure him in, even if later she said that it was something that Michelle had done to her. It was really her who set that trap. It's also worth noting that this teenager never laid a hand on Angela. She saw him approaching before he even got anywhere near the house, and then that's

• 40:49Annie Elise?

  when she called 911. And that's when the cops got there, he was still in the yard, and that's when they started talking to him. So he had never even made it inside. So she was never in any real danger from him whatsoever. Now, with all of these lies kind of like coming to the surface, the biggest question was, why? What the hell was Angela's motive for all of this? Well, when the police searched Angela's computer, they found two Word documents.

• 41:15Annie Elise?

  One was titled "The Angela Diaz Story", and the other was "Daughters of God: The Angela Diaz Story", and these two documents, guys, they were movie pitches. As in, she wanted to have her own Lifetime movie. She literally staged all of this, sent another woman to jail, all of this complex craziness, so that she could be famous. Now, guys, that's not the twist I was talking about either. Just you wait, because we're going to get there. Now, in all fairness, aside from the Lifetime movie, it does sound like she did have one other motive. It's still not a good motive, I mean, what would be in this awful situation, but it was at least a little bit more understandable, something a little easier to wrap your head around.

• 41:57Annie Elise?

  And it all stemmed from that dispute between Michelle and Ian over that condo, the condo that Michelle had purchased. Ian was desperate to stay in it, but he couldn't afford to. The terms that they had settled in court also meant that Ian would have to pay the entire outstanding mortgage, the amount that hadn't been paid off yet. And he'd also have to pay Michelle back for some of what she already paid. But if Michelle was in jail, or, say, in prison, she couldn't come after him for any of that money. So, once Ian and Angela were then living in that condo together, they kind of both were in agreement that they didn't want to lose their home or move out. So, because of that, the natural conclusion to them was they needed to get rid of Michelle, which is why Angela pulled off what she thought was going to be the perfect crime. Instead, after months of police investigations,

• 42:42Annie Elise?

  the truth finally caught up to her. So, on January 6th, 2017, Angela was arrested and finally charged with 10 felony charges and 22 misdemeanor charges, including a kidnapping charge.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  I'm here to announce the filing of a felony complaint against Angela Marie Diaz by the Orange County District Attorney's Office. The charges include numerous felony charges, including two counts of kidnapping, two counts of false imprisonment, perjury, two counts of forgery, two counts of possession of a forged instrument, grand theft, one misdemeanor count of filing a false report with an agency, and 21 misdemeanor counts of filing false police reports. As important as the filing of charges against Ms. Diaz is,

• 43:32Speaker 02

  The dismissal of the previous complaint and the exoneration of Michelle Suzanne Hadley is every bit as important. I wanted to make sure, however, that Ms. Hadley is cleared in every possible way, in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. It needs to be made clear in the media and in cyberspace. Ms. Hadley is an innocent victim of a diabolical scheme. The kidnapping charge is based on Angela Diaz's, her activity in getting Ms. Hadley arrested.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And the police are actually operating as her agent, in a sense, they're operating because of her. She's causing them to make the arrests and to take her to jail. So that's essentially, that's what it's based on.

• 44:29Annie Elise?

  Later that year, Angela went to court and she eventually pleaded guilty to all of it. And somehow, get this, she was only sentenced to five years. That's right, five years. I truly do not get that. And that was in 2017, if you remember, which means that the five years have gone by. And this woman is now out there and free, the mastermind behind this whole thing. And the fact that she lived in Anaheim freaks me out. Don't come for me, Angela, don't come for me.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Thirty-one-year-old Angela Diaz is accused of 10 serious felony crimes in a scheme to get her husband's ex in big trouble. Prosecutors say Diaz placed disgusting sexual posts and threats online while pretending to be Diaz. She then reported Diaz to police, who arrested her. Police say it was a sophisticated plot with fake IP addresses and special software.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  She tricked us. So we had all the evidence that we had had at that point pointed at Ms. Hadley. But as we found out, it now appears that Angela Diaz was the one behind everything.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Michelle Hadley was cleared of all charges on Monday.

• 45:36Annie Elise?

  Well, that's not exactly the end of the story, because it is not nearly the end of what was really going down in this situation.

• 45:49Annie Elise?

  You guys know I am all about finding easy ways to get more nutrition into my day. Between recordings, school pickup, after-school activities, you name it. My schedule gets really busy. I definitely don't have time to like cook a meal. And so I love Kachava because I can just quickly grab a shake. It is so easy and also tastes like a little delicious treat. With just two scoops, you're getting protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. And it's all in one delicious shake. Plus, what I love is there are no artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, and it is completely plant-based. So I mean, hello, good for everybody. And can we talk about the flavors for a second? They have everything from chai and matcha to chocolate mint and even their new salted caramel,

• 46:33Annie Elise?

  which that has become my new favorite, especially in the morning. I know you're not supposed to have dessert in the morning, but for me, it feels like I am having a little sweet treat to start my day. And I think it's great when you're craving something sweet and salty, but for me, it's like a great way to start my morning routine. I love it. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use code AE for 15% off your first order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code AE. Okay, can we just talk about holiday gifting for a second? There's nothing like having those pieces in your closet that you absolutely love, that you know you can count on for any occasion. For me, it's like this nice little silk two-piece jumpsuit. It's like a pant and a nice little like top blouse,

• 47:17Annie Elise?

  because I'm not really a dress person. And I feel like the best part is like, maybe give somebody else that feeling. Having that staple to go to in their closet that is high-quality, that looks great, that they can wear for any occasion. So this holiday season, I've not only found those pieces for myself in the past at Quince, but I am paying it forward and I am gifting the gift of Quince this season. Everything there is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, because they work directly with ethical factories and they cut out the middleman. So you're giving luxury quality, but without that luxury price tag. I've told you before too, if like you want to maybe not branch out and do clothes. Because that's a little bit personal of a gift, their cashmere thrill blanket.

• 48:01Annie Elise?

  I'm telling you, you will be the favorite daughter-in-law, favorite son-in-law, favorite friend. It is the best gift you could give. Cashmere thrill blanket, mark my words. So go ahead, go check it all out at quince.com. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was Serial Sli that sent you. It is the best way to support the show.

• 48:41Annie Elise?

  So what about Angela's former husband Ian? Well, the police and Michelle both think that he knew way more than what he let on when he went to the investigators and turned on Angela and turned on his wife. In fact, to all appearances, he was in on the scheme right up until he turned on his wife. Remember earlier how I said that Michelle thought that somebody hacked her email to send those threatening emails to Angela? Well, it turns out she was half-right. The truth was that Ian had created new email accounts in Michelle's name. And then he was the one who sent those emails to Angela for Angela to receive. And this is how crazy this case is because apparently he and Angela even created an email account, which they claimed Michelle had created to impersonate Ian.

• 49:24Annie Elise?

  So in reality, it was Ian impersonating Michelle impersonating him. I mean, it's like you need a Venn diagram and like a flow chart to keep track of all of this. And get this, Ian was also the one who posted on Craigslist. All of those ads asking men to come over and attack his wife, his pregnant wife, he was the one posting those. So in 2023, he was also sentenced to over 10 years for cyber stalking, conspiracy to commit cyber stalking, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Which, I gotta just say, the fact that he got a bigger sentence than Angela, she only got five years, I don't know if that really equates. I don't know how I feel about that and I'm curious to know your thoughts. But honestly, it probably

• 50:07Annie Elise?

  Probably shouldn't be all that surprising that Ian was in on this. Especially when you hear about his history with Michelle and what their relationship was like before they broke up. Because the details are disgusting. Now, at first, it seemed pretty good, kind of like dreamy, actually. Just after a couple of dates, they were apparently in love with each other. Eventually, Ian proposed to Michelle, and to do it, he took her to New York City. He got down on one knee, right in front of Rockefeller Center, in front of that Christmas tree. I mean, just insanely beautiful, insanely romantic. Then, they moved in together, as we know, and sometime after that, in 2014, Ian started to get a little weird. Kind of controlling, at least according to Michelle. She claimed that he started asking her to dress differently, as in, wear more revealing clothing.

• 50:52Annie Elise?

  Apparently, Ian had a thing for crop tops, and he wanted Michelle to wear crop tops more often. Then, he wanted her to get her belly button pierced. And it's not like this was a case where Michelle had already, you know, been thinking about getting a piercing or toying with the idea, and then he encouraged her to do it because it's what she ultimately wanted. No. Michelle, in her own words, was a self-proclaimed goody-two-shoes. She wasn't into body piercings. But Ian wanted her to make this one very specific change to her body, because it was something that he says he would like. So things were kind of getting a little weird. And then, after a while, Michelle started to get this odd feeling that Ian might be tracking her. I guess he was sending her these messages, asking her why she wasn't home on time for something, or where she was, or

• 51:36Annie Elise?

  things like that, even if she was literally only running a couple of minutes late. There would really be no reason he would even know that she was late somewhere. It's not like she was a late person, and that that person would have been reaching out to Ian, asking where Michelle was. It wasn't anything like that. There was really only one way for Ian to have so much information on where she was going and when. And in Michelle's mind, Ian had to be tracking her somehow. But that's not even the worst of it, not by a long shot. Apparently, Ian had a fetish where he thought that it would be hot if Michelle had sex with random men. Men that she didn't even know. And that was not Michelle's jam. She didn't want to do it. But even after she told Ian no, and that she was very clear- And the fact that she didn't want to do it, he just kept asking her, kept pursuing it,

• 52:21Annie Elise?

  sort of pushing her boundaries. And it became very high pressure and the message was clear. He didn't care about what she was comfortable with. He only cared about what he wanted. Well, on Valentine's Day in 2014, literally on Valentine's Day, things changed. See, Michelle had a really bad cold that day and she was taking all sorts of medicine to try and get it under control. And I'm sure a lot of us have been there, right? You're on the strong stuff. It affects your judgment. It affects your thinking. There's a reason you're not supposed to operate heavy machinery when you're drinking cough syrup. There's also a reason why they sell it behind the counter now. And Michelle was kind of in this sort of cloudy mental state. And once again, Ian asked her to have sex with a stranger and to let him watch.

• 53:02Annie Elise?

  And even though Michelle felt like literal garbage and the last thing that she wanted to do was just hook up with some other guy, she was also sort of worn out and tired from constantly shutting Ian down and constantly telling him no. So this time she was like, okay, sure, we'll do it. Well, Ian did not waste any time at all. He didn't even want to give Michelle a chance to get over her cold and sober up from all of that cough medicine and change her mind. So that very same day, he posted on Craigslist, which, God, this guy loves using Craigslist, right? So he found someone who would let him live out his fantasy. And he gave this guy his address and made all of the plans about when this guy should come over. Then before the guy could even come over and, you know, do his thing,

• 53:47Annie Elise?

  Ian gave Michelle three shots of whiskey. Maybe he tried to convince her that it would help her relax, maybe take the edge off of her nerves. I don't know. But it's important to remember that Michelle drank the whiskey while she was already woozy and out of it because of the cough medicine. So when she added alcohol to the mix, she definitely felt like she was not in a position where she could consent. Not that Ian cared at all. He even set up cameras in the bedroom so that he could record the entire hookup and re-watch it later. I mean, so that he could get to relive this whole fucked up situation over and over again. Truly gross. And it was messed up. I mean, no question there because Michelle had already made it crystal Clear to him that she didn't even want to do this in the first place. It just wasn't her thing.

• 54:31Annie Elise?

  But Ian had ignored her boundaries and had pushed her when she was sick, when she was vulnerable, when she was impaired. And not only just like getting her to do it, but then going so far as to wanting to record it so that it was something that he could revisit and re-watch over and over again. So, once the stranger was done with her, they had had sex, had it all on tape, you know, all the things. Michelle felt sick to her stomach. She eventually went back to Ian and told him that for her, it wasn't this dirty, naughty fantasy fetish thing like it was for him. For her, she felt like she was a victim of a sexual attack. Which, I gotta say, yeah, she was. She was drugged. She was out of it. She certainly didn't give enthusiastic consent.

• 55:12Annie Elise?

  But when faced with the reality of what he had done, do you think that Ian was apologetic? No, of course not. When Michelle told him how she felt, Ian became angry. He lashed out at her for even daring to feel violated. Which, to me, I don't know the inner workings of their relationship exactly, just what Michelle has alleged and what he was doing in terms of tracking her and then the sex with random men, the Craigslist posting, all of those things. But to me, it seems pretty indicative of escalation. And who knows where things could have gone had Michelle stayed. But luckily, it should be no surprise that after all of this, the relationship eventually broke down. So, that's when they broke up and that's when they ended up fighting in court over the condo.

• 55:57Annie Elise?

  Then, after that settlement, Ian emailed Michelle one time, telling her that he needed to see her, but he wouldn't say why. All he would say was that he wanted her to come see him at the condo. But something about this email kind of set off all of the alarm bells in Michelle's head. She had this gut feeling that if she went to the condo and went alone, and nobody else knew that she was there with Ian, that something bad would happen to her. So, she ignored the invitation and she still couldn't shake the feeling that Ian had some kind of violent intention against her, that he wanted to hurt her. So, she basically uprooted her entire life to put as much distance between herself and Ian as possible. She quit her job, she dropped out of the college program that she had been attending and then she moved in with her parents.

• 56:41Annie Elise?

  I mean, she was not the obsessive ex that just couldn't let go like Ian and Angela had made her out to be. She was the one who wanted to get away from her obsessive ex. So then after that came the harassing emails, the supposed Craigslist ads targeting Angela. I mean, this poor, poor woman. Nothing Michelle did was enough to keep her crazy, possessive, predatory ex away. And you can tell that this all had a huge impact on Michelle. I mean, I can't imagine anyone being okay after living through something like that. But she also spoke about how all of this made her feel in her victim impact statement. She said, "He purposefully deprived me of sleep, raped me, because yes, let's just call non-consensual sex what it is.

• 57:25Annie Elise?

  He stalked and spied on me, devalued and triangulated me, harassed me and scared me and pushed me beyond the limits of my sanity. I was left with complex post-traumatic stress disorder that was so severe, it caused deeply frightening and confusing disassociative episodes. Something that had never happened to me before dating Mr. Diaz and something that thankfully hasn't happened since 2016 when this ordeal occurred. And then, as if what he had done to my mind was not enough, he would turn around and he would use it against me to paint me as crazy and unhinged. What a classic move for an abuser, right? I still remember the day we were in his car driving to Los Angeles and he told me about R3s or Romeos in jail.

• 58:08Annie Elise?

  These were the rapists and the sex offenders. He described their conditions to me: not able to be outside or run, urinating and defecating without privacy, hated by the other inmates for what they had done. He asked me how I would feel about it if I were in that situation. That would be my worst nightmare, I told him. Not being able to run free outside, having people believe I had done something so horrible? Yes, the condo was at the center of Ian's attempt to frame me for sexual assault, but you've seen the video footage, Your Honor. This man did not just want the condo, he wanted to ruin my entire life." I mean, what a complete psychopath, am I right?

• 58:47Speaker 05

  Obviously, this has been a huge nightmare for me, the most traumatic experience of my life, and... I'm glad it's finally over. I have a lot of friends and a lot of family who know me very well. And when they saw this in the media, they already knew I didn't do it. And they believed it even before the truth came out. So I think as far as my close circle, it's not going to be hard to rebuild my reputation. And I'm hoping that that kind of, it just grows from there.

• 59:15Annie Elise?

  And after all of this, I really hope that Michelle is doing okay because what she went through was unreal. In late 2018, she filed a lawsuit against the city of Anaheim and also a few of its police officers. Because according to her, they should have seen right from the get-go that she was being framed. They should have never believed, not even for one second, that she had sent even one of those emails or that she had made those posts on Craigslist. According to Michelle, her innocence was obvious from the very beginning. Now, in law enforcement's defense, some of the emails that Michelle sent Ian right after their breakup, where she sounded intense and used religious imagery, those were from her. We talked about them near the beginning of this episode. And Michelle says, sure, she used more forceful language in those emails than she normally would,

• 1:00:00Annie Elise?

  but the fake emails had a completely different tone. And let's talk about the Craigslist posts, the ones about Angela's supposed fantasy. When you post on Craigslist, you have to give an email address. And the email that the poster used in several of these ads was Ian's. It wasn't Michelle's. They were also posted from Ian's home address, the IP address, which the police would have known if they had bothered to look into the IP address of those emails or if they had asked Craigslist for their records about who had put those ads up. But the investigators didn't even bother to look that far. They just took Angela and Ian at their word and they said, Michelle was the one who was doing everything. And you'll remember that Michelle got arrested after that first supposed attack against Angela.

• 1:00:43Annie Elise?

  Well, while Michelle was still in jail and while her phone was literally in police possession, Angela got another threatening email that she said was from Michelle. There was also a new ad that was posted on Craigslist during that time. Now, obviously, Michelle didn't have any way of sending that stuff from a jail cell when her phone was literally with the police officers investigating. The case, but once again, the police just believed Angela when she said that Michelle was still harassing her, even though it was literally impossible for Michelle to do that. I mean, Angela and Ian did a terrible job of covering their tracks and it's honestly a little bit funny, or it would be if this story wasn't so disturbing. But they went to the effort of setting up a VPN, crafting this huge elaborate lie, and

• 1:01:28Annie Elise?

  then they were emailing themselves and posting on Craigslist while Michelle was behind bars, literally incapable of doing anything to them. It makes no sense.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  The aha moment for us is in about September, we started getting a couple of these IP addresses back and we realized that they were returning to Ms. Diaz's condo. At that point, we realized, okay, we have something wrong here and our investigation really stepped up and went into overdrive at that point. But that was the, that was the real aha moment in the case.

• 1:02:04Annie Elise?

  It was a stupid move that truthfully should have gotten them caught, and it did, eventually, but not until after Michelle had sat in jail for close to three months for a crime that she didn't commit. And that's a big part of why she filed her lawsuit. In April of 2021, the suit was settled out of court. Michelle and the city of Anaheim both agreed to keep the details of the settlement under wraps, but I gotta say, after all that she went through and some pretty clear missteps from the police, my hope is that she came away with plenty of cash. I mean, she deserves it.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  She tricked us, so we had all the evidence that we had had at that point pointed at Ms. Hadley, but as we found out, it now appears that Angela Diaz was the one behind everything.

• 1:02:48Annie Elise?

  The Anaheim Police Department didn't really take a ton of ownership for their wrongdoing here, but they did release a statement that said, "We believe our actions were appropriate based on the evidence that was known to us at the time." In addition, it was the persistent efforts of the detectives who ultimately uncovered the truth that led to Michelle's exoneration, which I gotta just say, uh, no, it was actually not the detectives and their persistent efforts that led to the whole. Like, you know, conclusion and drumroll, everybody knows what the truth is. It was Ian giving them Angela right there on a silver platter, turning on his wife, probably trying to save himself. But like, that's what cracked this whole case wide open. Not your persistent work. It was him literally coming to saying,

• 1:03:31Annie Elise?

  "I'm ready to tell you the truth. It was Angela." And that's what untangled everything. I mean, give me a break. I don't know. I know that this one was for sure a wild one today. So I know it got a little confusing there for a minute, but I appreciate you sticking with me. I am just thankful that Michelle is away from these two nut jobs and hopefully happy, living safe, living, you know, her best version of her life. But the fact that Angela is already out and the fact that Ian will be out in just a couple of years, that scares me. They are like two diabolical humans to me. And who knows if they'll end up getting back together or if

• 1:04:11Annie Elise?

  they'll just prey on new people. Maybe Angela already has. I don't know. But it's literally in my backyard here and that kind of freaks me out a little bit. So, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I will be back on the mic with you on Thursday where we are going to go through all of the headlines of what's going on this week in the true crime world. And then I'll be back on the mic with you Monday morning with an all new deep dive into a case. So, thank you so much for tuning in. Until the next one. Stay safe. Do not use Craigslist. Just don't do it. And I don't know, don't lie. Don't be a psychopath. That's all I got. That's all I got, guys. All right. Take care and stay safe. Bye.

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