Ian Diaz, a former United States Deputy Marshal, and his wife Angela Connell reported a campaign of harassment to Anaheim police in 2016. Emails from “Lilith Is Truth” threatened Angela and her unborn child. Craigslist ads invited strangers to their home for rape fantasies. The couple pointed the finger at Ian’s ex-fiancée, Michelle Hadley.
Michelle was arrested and spent 88 days in jail facing life in prison. But when investigators traced the IP address behind the emails, it led them directly to Ian and Angela. The real criminals were the ones who had made the complaint.
Michelle later described feeling like a “hunted animal” during her relationship with Ian. “Ian always had his gun with him. I just felt like he was constantly there watching me,” she said. Court findings revealed Ian had forced Michelle to have sex with a stranger while he filmed it, a detail she described by saying, “I just remember feeling like a beautiful part of me had died.”
Where Is Ian Diaz Now?
Ian Diaz, 44, is currently serving a 10-year federal prison sentence. A jury convicted him in March 2023 of conspiracy to commit cyberstalking, cyberstalking, perjury, and obstruction of a federal matter. He is locked up at FMC Fort Worth in Texas, a facility that houses inmates with medical or mental health needs. His projected release date is January 31, 2031.
Even behind bars, Diaz has not given up. According to TMZ, he recently filed a petition claiming his conviction should be thrown out because his lawyer was ineffective. He argues that his attorney failed to file paperwork challenging the government’s claims, did not gather key evidence, and ignored evidence that was handed to him.
Diaz says reviewing his case file convinced him that prosecutors bent the truth and made false statements to secure his indictment. Whether any court will buy that argument remains to be seen, but his appeal efforts have been denied before.
He declined to appear in the Netflix documentary. Producers said they wrote him a letter asking for his participation, and he refused.
Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division summarized the case bluntly after Diaz’s conviction: “Ian Diaz abused his position as a deputy U.S. Marshal to execute an intricate cyberstalking scheme that framed an innocent person for sexual assault, leading to her unjust imprisonment for 88 days.”
Angela Connell served three years of a five-year sentence and was released on parole in July 2020. Her marriage to Ian Diaz was annulled in April 2017, and she has since reverted to her maiden name. She now goes by Angi Connell and has left California entirely.
Today, she works as the director of peer counseling services at Exhale Pro-Voice, a nonprofit in Arizona that offers emotional support by text. The role draws on shared personal experience rather than clinical training. She volunteered there before stepping into the leadership position.
She is also studying for a doctorate in psychology and has said she wants to become a licensed psychologist. According to the charity’s website, she earned a master’s in psychology and justice studies after leaving prison.
Despite pleading guilty in court to charges including false imprisonment, kidnapping, forgery, and filing false police reports, Connell now denies any wrongdoing. In a 2025 interview with VoyagePhoenix, she reframed her conviction entirely, saying, “In 2016, I faced 23 to life charges for a crime I did not commit, and subsequently spent five years in a California prison.”
She declined to participate in the Netflix documentary.
A Toxic Love Story producer Emma Supple said not a “huge amount” is known about what Angela is up to currently, but the details of her new life are public. She has built a career helping others while publicly maintaining her innocence.
Michelle Hadley, the woman Ian and Angela framed, has become an advocate for domestic violence survivors. Her focus is on financial abuse, and she is raising her daughter. After her exoneration, she said, “Let’s stop putting this on the shoulders of survivors to navigate and deal with, and let’s start, as a society, taking more responsibility for the fallout in these cases.”
The documentary has amplified her story, and the public response has been intense. Viewers have even called out one of Diaz’s friends, Leslie, who appears in the film insisting that no amount of evidence would convince her of his guilt.
For now, Ian Diaz remains in a Texas prison fighting to overturn his conviction. Angela Connell is in Arizona, building a new identity and a career in mental health. And Michelle Hadley is telling her story so others do not have to face the same nightmare alone...
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