It all began with an email — and it quickly turned into a case that would upend the lives of three people, expose years of lies, and send investigators down a twisted trail of harassment, fake identities, and accusations. Netflix’s new documentary A Toxic Love Story revisits the saga of U.S. Deputy Marshal Ian Diaz, his wife Angela Connell, and Diaz’s ex-girlfriend Michelle Hadley, a story that looked one way at first and something entirely different once police began digging deeper.
What started as a complaint about threatening messages eventually expanded into allegations of stalking, fake rape ads, and a bizarre web of manipulation involving each of the central players. Here are five major things the documentary reveals about the case.
Angela Connell and Jason Diaz in ‘A Toxic Love Story.’
NETFLIX
1. Diaz and Hadley’s relationship moved fast — and turned toxic
Before any police reports, arrests, or accusations, Michelle Hadley was a 26-year-old woman living near Anaheim and searching for a boyfriend. In 2013, she matched with Ian Diaz on a dating app, and the two connected quickly over a shared love of Disneyland. They took trips together, met each other’s friends and family, and soon moved in together.
But Hadley says the relationship changed when Diaz told her he fantasized about watching her have sex with other men. She says the two argued about it before she eventually went along with his request. Even then, the relationship continued, and Hadley says she used her savings to help buy a condo for them, hoping to build a future together. “I thought that if I let him scratch this itch, that we could move past this,” Hadley says in the documentary. “I thought if we got engaged, that maybe the relationship was going to be on the right track after this.”
Instead, Hadley says Diaz became increasingly controlling, criticizing her nails and clothes, tracking her location, installing security cameras inside the home, and calling her whenever she deviated from her expected route. She describes the relationship as a “rollercoaster ride,” with lavish dates followed by violent, screaming outbursts. At one point, she says, he drove erratically until she feared for her life.
After several months, Hadley left and went straight to her parents’ house, where she says Diaz continued to stalk and harass her. So she sent him some emails.
2. Hadley did send the first “Lilith” emails — but says that was only part of the story
After breaking up with Hadley, Diaz entered a fast-moving relationship with Angela Connell. The two met at a Starbucks in Anaheim, California, got engaged after only a few months, married, and then announced they were expecting twins. They lived in the condo Diaz had originally purchased with Hadley.
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Months after Diaz had allegedly harassed her, Hadley says she sent two emails containing religious imagery, including the name Lilith. She says Diaz’s alleged stalking and harassment pushed her into a nervous breakdown. Fearing for her safety and her parents’ safety, she drove into the desert, had a dissociative episode, and was eventually found wandering miles from her car by a family that called paramedics. Hadley was hospitalized and diagnosed with complex PTSD from her experience with Diaz.
When police arrested her and asked about the emails and the meaning of Lilith, Hadley said she had sent the first two messages but was not responsible for the threats or the rape hoaxes that followed. In the documentary, she says she believes she sent those initial emails while dissociating. She says she wanted to tell police, but feared they would not believe her, so she stayed quiet while waiting for her court date and hoping the evidence would clear her.
3. Connell’s own history of deception complicated everything
Angela Connell also had a dramatic relationship before Diaz. In the summer of 2013, she met police officer Jason Rayburn at a bar in Huntington Beach, and they quickly fell in love. Connell claimed she was an attorney for the Department of Justice and said she was battling Stage 4 cervical cancer.
Rayburn, along with her family and friends, supported her through what they believed was a serious illness. She wore wigs, scarves, and hats to hide her scalp and used medical tape and tubing to imitate a port. But when Rayburn pushed to attend one of her doctor’s appointments, the story began to unravel. He later found that a photo Connell sent of chemotherapy medication had been taken from a cancer patient’s blog on Google. After a close friend confirmed she was not a patient at the medical center where she said she had been treated, Rayburn and several friends staged an intervention. Connell denied lying, then ran out of the room and cut off contact with Rayburn and her friends.
That history resurfaced when Connell admitted to Diaz that her pregnancy was fake. After Hadley’s arrest, Diaz told a friend the twins’ sonogram was fake, and the couple allegedly found pregnancy tests around the home that had been marked with blue ink to look positive.
4. Diaz eventually turned on Connell
After learning about the fake pregnancy, Diaz began cooperating with police and shared details about the relationship, including his belief that Connell had staged her own attempted rapes. “She’s behind all this,” he said in a recorded police interview. “It seems like I’ve been sleeping with the enemy the entire time.”
On Jan. 6, 2017, Connell was arrested and later pleaded guilty to fraud, false imprisonment, and falsely reporting a crime. She was sentenced to five years in prison. Diaz annulled the marriage that April, and Connell’s arrest cleared Hadley of the charges. Hadley was released after spending 88 days in jail.
“Obviously this has been a huge nightmare for me. Probably the most traumatic experience of my whole life,” Hadley told reporters as she left jail. “I’m glad it’s finally over and I finally get to move on with my life.” In the documentary, she says she believes Diaz manipulated Connell and was also part of the effort to frame her.
Michelle Hadley in ‘A Toxic Love Story.’
NETFLIX
5. Investigators later say Diaz helped drive the case against Hadley
After Connell’s sentencing, Jason Higley, a criminal investigator for the Department of Justice, reviewed the case. Body camera footage from multiple police visits to Diaz and Connell’s home showed Diaz coaching Connell through many officers’ questions.
Higley also said Diaz’s body language raised concerns. A major part of the investigation focused on the night Diaz and Connell told police that Hadley had sent an unsuspecting Craigslist user to their home to rape Connell. The man, identified as Rick in the documentary, said he responded to an ad about a housewife seeking to participate in a rape fantasy. He drove to the house, grew uncomfortable, and left.
Diaz and Connell called police and said they had received an email saying Hadley was sending a man to their home. In body camera footage, Diaz is seen opening Craigslist, clicking on Rick’s account, and starting a conversation without searching through profiles first. He also encouraged Rick to come to the house, opening the front door and unlocking the gate. Higley says Diaz used his position as a U.S. Marshal to win over responding officers, answering the door with his gun and badge. When investigators examined metadata on Diaz’s devices, they found “fragments” of the anonymous email account that sent the Lilith messages.
“This is Ian pretending to be Michelle pretending to be Angela catfishing someone to the condo,” Higley says in the documentary. “This is a very complicated case.
Diaz was arrested on May 13, 2021. In 2023, he was convicted of conspiracy, cyberstalking, perjury, and obstruction. He is still serving time. Connell was released from prison in July 2020. Her public Instagram account describes her as a survivor of federal agent abuse.
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Diaz sold the condo while Hadley was still in prison, and she never got her down payment back. She later sued the city of Anaheim in 2019, saying officers found evidence that the emails and IP addresses tied to the messages came from Diaz’s own home but arrested her anyway. Hadley and the city reached a settlement in 2021 for an undisclosed amount.
“Ian got everything he wanted, but it actually cost him his freedom,” Hadley says. “But now I’m on that other side of this journey. I gave birth to my daughter on the same day that Ian was convicted. Raising this little girl is my fairy-tale ending.”
