Before Michelle Hadley’s horrific story of being framed for stalking by ex Ian Diaz was depicted in Netflix’s A Toxic Love Story, she wrote an emotional letter asking the judge who oversaw his case to give him a harsh sentence.
“I was a captive of Mr. Diaz long before I ever ended up in a jail cell. In fact, while the experience of being falsely arrested and imprisoned amounted to my worst nightmare, I have often told friends and loved ones this chilling truth: that I would take three months in jail over a single day spent in his company,” she wrote in the letter to the judge, which was obtained by TMZ on Monday, August 3.
In 2016, Hadley, 39, was arrested after Diaz, 48, and his then-wife, Angela Connell (previously Angela Diaz), accused her of stalking and threatening them. She spent 88 days behind bars as a result of the couple’s elaborate scheme.
Hadley was charged with felony counts of attempted forcible rape and stalking, and she remained in jail until it was revealed that Diaz and Connell, 41, were behind the threatening messages they claimed they received from Hadley all along. She was released in January 2017 and all of the charges against her were dropped.
In her newly published letter, Hadley added that she believed it was “important for the court to understand the impact that Mr. Diaz has had on my life.”
She explained that she was a “confident, happy and optimistic young woman who saw her whole life ahead of her” when she met Diaz in 2013. However, her relationship “with a man so dark, twisted and malicious” completely changed her life.
“Your honor, I didn’t have shadows in my eyes before Ian Diaz, but I certainly did after what he put me through,” she wrote.
While it’s not exactly clear when Hadley wrote the letter, she penned the message before Diaz was sentenced to serve 10 years and one month in federal prison in June 2023 after he was convicted of conspiracy to commit cyberstalking, cyberstalking, perjury and obstruction of a federal proceeding. Once he finishes his time in prison, Diaz must complete three years of supervised release.
On the day that Diaz was sentenced, Hadley told NBC News that she was “grateful” to the Justice Department for prosecuting him. She added that the verdict “brought so much peace to my family and restored some of the faith we lost in the justice system as a result of Diaz’s crimes against me.”
While Diaz wasn’t arrested for his involvement in the crime until 2021, Connell was arrested in January 2017.
She pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts, including kidnapping, false imprisonment by menace, fraud or deceit, forgery, possession of a forged check over $950, perjury and grand theft, falsely reporting a crime to a police agency and falsely reporting a crime to a peace officer in 2017.
Connell was sentenced to five years in prison and has since been released.
