On June 1, 2016, Ian and Angela Diaz approached native authorities in Anaheim, Calif. to report a case of on-line harassment that appeared to have a transparent offender.
For weeks, Angela had been receiving emails from the handle “Lilith is Fact.” In some folklore tales, Lilith is a girl who ran away from Adam within the Backyard of Eden to dwell a extra unbiased life. These emails referred to as Angela a “sinner” and included statements like “Ian doesn’t love you” and “you’ve stolen my life.”
Ian and Angela informed police they believed “Lilith Is Fact” was actually his ex, Michelle Hadley, saying the non secular language and references to Lilith within the emails matched what she had written to Ian previously. Later that month, Angela accused Michelle of posting images of her in on-line advertisements soliciting males to rape her in Ian’s apartment to meet a sexual fantasy. She informed police that males had come to her house in response to the advertisements and claimed that on one event, a person had tried to assault her in her storage.
That July, police arrested Michelle on felony counts of stalking and tried rape, amongst different expenses. Michelle spent almost three months in jail till authorities realized that she hadn’t been concerned within the harassment in any respect. After tracing the IP handle for “Lilith is Fact,” they discovered that every one of it—the emails, the advertisements—had really come from Ian and Angela’s house.
This unusual and layered case is the topic of the documentary, A Poisonous Love Story, out July 22 on Netflix, which recounts the occasions that led to uncovering Ian and Angela because the true sources of the harassment. A former U.S. marshal, Diaz was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2023, for framing Michelle to make it appear to be she was going to hurt his then-wife, Angela. Authorities first related Angela to the emails, and in 2017, she was sentenced to 5 years in jail for framing Michelle. Neither Ian nor Angela participated within the documentary.
A Poisonous Love Story gives a timeline of the case utilizing police interviews, bodycam footage, texts of the harassing emails, and interviews with Michelle Hadley. Right here’s what to know concerning the twisty case.
Tracing the harassing emails
In 2016, Angela and Ian had been dwelling collectively in a apartment that Ian had owned along with his ex-girlfriend Michelle. They informed police that she can be essentially the most logical sender of the emails, portray her as a jilted lover.
However within the documentary, Michelle says she had been over him for some time. Michelle and Ian met in 2013, however she left him after two years as a result of she stated he turned too controlling and tried to drive his sexual fantasies onto her, like demanding she have intercourse with a stranger on digicam. Shortly after Michelle left him, Ian met Angela on a courting website, and so they married in 2016.
Although it had been years since Michelle despatched Ian the non secular emails referencing Lilith when she was at her angriest after their breakup, they resembled the 2016 emails a lot that she was arrested, accused of arranging for somebody to come back to the apartment to rape Angela.
Michelle spent 88 days in jail earlier than authorities traced the IP addresses from the emails again to her previous apartment, the place she not lived. Because the Washington Put up reported in 2017, authorities linked the emails to Angela, saying she despatched them from the apartment the place she was dwelling with Ian, her cellphone, and her father’s house in Arizona. In 2017, Angela pleaded responsible to expenses together with false imprisonment, falsely reporting crimes, and kidnapping—primarily based on her try and ship Michelle to jail. Michelle was fully exonerated of all expenses.
It will be one other 4 years till federal authorities found Angela had a co-conspirator: her personal husband.
How Ian Diaz bought caught
Whereas the case began out with the Anaheim police division, the Division of Justice (DOJ) did their very own investigation of the case as a result of it concerned a U.S. Marshal.
Whereas Michelle was in jail, DOJ particular agent Jason Higley examined police physique cam footage and seen that Ian sounded anxious and gave the impression to be teaching Angela on what to inform police.
In backups of Ian’s government-issued laptop computer, Higley discovered Ian’s private e mail linked to correspondence between Lilith and the person who responded to the Craigslist rape fantasy advert. Higley discovered fragments of “Lilith is Fact” emails on the laptop computer, proving that Ian was behind these messages too.
“Michelle admits that she did ship a pair non secular emails with point out of Lilith,” says A Poisonous Love Story director Alexandra Lacey, “And both Ian or Angela—and we’ll by no means know who precisely did what—drew on that and was capable of then create these lots of of emails from this character referred to as Lilith.”
In 2021, Ian was arrested, and in 2023, he was convicted of cyberstalking, perjury, and obstruction of a federal matter and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
The thriller of Ian Diaz’s motivation
Why Ian wrote these emails, and why he harbored a lot animus in direction of his ex-girlfriend, is unclear.
“We are going to by no means know precisely what occurred within the apartment,” Higley says within the documentary, arguing that solely Ian and Angela know and “they’re not dependable witnesses.” Nonetheless, Higley believes that Ian craved management: “It boils right down to Ian wanting to regulate somebody. He needed to regulate Michelle, and she or he bought away. And that made him indignant, so he designed this scheme to border his ex-girlfriend.”
Michelle explains that shortly after she and Ian purchased a apartment collectively, he put in safety cameras so he may watch her within the kitchen. At any time when she was outdoors of the home, he’d repeatedly name her, asking the place she was and what she was doing.
He additionally tried to alter the way in which she appeared, selecting her outfits, plus making her put on faux nails and pierce her bellybutton.
As producer Emma Supple sums up the remaining questions on this case: “We are going to by no means actually know who the puppet grasp is, who was doing precisely what, who despatched which e mail at which period.”
What occurred to Michelle?
Michelle sued the Anaheim police division in 2021, arguing that the division didn’t put together officers to adequately examine the case, in accordance with Courthouse Information.
“I’m on the opposite aspect of that journey,” Michelle says in A Poisonous Love Story.
She will get the ultimate phrase on the finish of the documentary, speaking about how she’s rebuilt her life as a mother of a younger daughter, born the identical day Ian was convicted.
“Elevating this stunning little woman is my fairy story ending. I believe it’s ‘fortunately ever after.’ I’m not a princess however I get to be the hero in my very own story.”
