Simply Diabolical
Dateline NBC
This Dateline episode explores the shocking and twisted case of Michelle Hadley, a former Disney employee and self-described 'princess' who was wrongfully
Key takeaways
- The case reveals how emotional manipulation and fabricated evidence can be weaponized in personal relationships with devastating real-world consequences.
- Ian Diaz orchestrated a complex scheme to eliminate his financial obligations by falsely implicating Michelle, using her past relationship as leverage.
Main topics
- False accusations and cyber-stalking
- Love triangle and emotional manipulation
Notable quotes
I don't think there's anything more evil than finding a girl who believes in the best in humanity and who loves other people deeply and making her question who she is, making her question her faith in humanity.
Conclusion
Michelle Hadley's journey from a fairy tale romance to wrongful incarceration and eventual vindication underscores
Transcript preview
Speaker 6 (0:00) I really love the Start Today app. They Speaker 2 (0:02) care about how I feel. Speaker 6 (0:04) It's the staff on the app. It's the connections you make. Speaker 2 (0:08) Without good mental and physical health, you have nothing. Speaker 4 (0:12) It tells me how to cook to keep myself healthy. Speaker 2 (0:17) I look at my app and I'm like, wow, I didn't know I did 7,000 steps Speaker 8 (0:20) today. Speaker 1 (0:20) Start Today meets you where you are. Download the Start Today Wellness app now on your Apple or Android device. Terms apply. See app for details. Speaker 6 (0:30) Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. This month, I'm sitting down with actor, writer, producer, Brendan Hunt. Most of you know him as Coach Beard from Ted Lasso, but there is so much more to his story. We sit down, we talk about all of it, from his bumpy upbringing to his years in improv comedy and how a Hollywood rejection opened the door to co-creating Ted Lasso. It's an open, funny conversation about perseverance, creativity. and the winding road that brought him right here. We hope you'll join us for the drink. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (1:08) Tonight on Dateline. I Speaker 5 (1:10) would wake up and I would see the white jail cell wall and I would think this is just a nightmare. And it wasn't. It was for real. Speaker 4 (1:21) There's some sort of a love triangle. Two women, one guy. You Speaker 2 (1:25) have the U.S. Marshal. He has a former girlfriend named Michelle. He has a new wife. Speaker 4 (1:31) The new wife went to authorities and said that she was being harassed. She was receiving emails threatening her life. Strange men appeared at her door and tried to attack her. She Speaker 1 (1:43) had a torn shirt. She had bruises on her neck. Speaker 4 (1:46) She immediately points the finger at Michelle. Speaker 1 (1:48) The evidence looks very clear that everything is originating from Michelle Hadley. The guy said, we just arrested Michelle. It's Speaker 6 (1:56) very hard to see your daughter being placed in handcuffs. Speaker 8 (2:00) You're incarcerated. Speaker 5 (2:01) For potentially the rest of my life. I was scared to death. Speaker 8 (2:04) It's a story captivating the country. There's something not right here. A toxic love triangle and a dangerous game with someone playing for keeps. Diabolical was the word you used. Absolutely. Something that the devil might do. Speaker 5 (2:20) I just remember thinking, how did I get here? I didn't do anything. Speaker 8 (2:23) I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Speaker 8 (2:36) Here's Dennis Murphy with Simply Diabolical. Speaker 2 (2:43) locked in a cage. The shrieks of women howling in the night. Speaker 5 (2:47) This isn't real. This is like something you would see in a movie. This doesn't happen in real life. Speaker 2 (2:52) How did a self-described goody two-shoes, a Disney princess, get swept away in a conspiracy so convoluted, so twisted? Speaker 1 (3:00) This is one of the most well-thought-out, well-executed plans, and it's scary. Diabolical. Absolutely. A tangled Speaker 2 (3:09) web? You bet. an altogether bizarre plot. Speaker 4 (3:13) This is the most shocking form of love rivalry that I've ever seen. Speaker 2 (3:19) There would be allegations of harassment, cyber stalking, assault, and attempted rape. Someone was going to get hurt. Someone was going to jail. And at the end of the nightmare, a twist no one saw coming. Speaker 7 (3:34) He's a liar! Speaker 2 (3:38) You decide whether it was a love rivalry, but in the beginning, it was clearly a boy-meets-girl love story. Speaker 5 (3:46) It was a very intense period of my life in the sense of just a very kind of whirlwind type of romance. Speaker 2 (3:54) August 2013, 20-something Michelle Hadley met a U.S. marshal named Ian Diaz over a cup of coffee. Things move fast. He told you that he loved you? You were beautiful? Speaker 5 (4:06) Yes. He sort of Speaker 2 (4:07) hit you with a thunderbolt, huh? Speaker 5 (4:08) Yeah, kind of early on, actually. Yeah, about the second date, he was telling me he loved me. Did Speaker 2 (4:13) you think, slow down, buddy? Or did you welcome him? Speaker 5 (4:17) You know, I think when you're a young girl who's kind of been raised on the fairy tale princess dream, it's very exciting and flattering. Speaker 2 (4:25) Could this be her Prince Charming she was meeting over a cappuccino? The man she dreamed of since she was a little girl. Speaker 6 (4:33) She was very imaginative. very intelligent, and she just loved to play and create. Speaker 2 (4:40) Michelle's mother, Suzanne, and father, Michael, raised her and her younger sister in this modest home in Ontario, California. She was a cross-country runner, good student. Speaker 5 (4:50) I was an overachiever, you know. You were the Speaker 2 (4:51) kid who ruined the curve for everybody else. Speaker 5 (4:53) Yeah, actually, sometimes. Speaker 2 (4:55) Michelle was offered a scholarship to attend Dickinson, a well-regarded liberal arts college back east in Pennsylvania. You must have both been very proud of how your child was working out. Oh, yeah. Very proud. After graduation, she tried various careers before eventually landing a marketing job at Disney. And now she had met this man, Ian Diaz, the U.S. Marshal, her very own Prince Charming. In December 2014, for her 28th birthday, he whisked her off to New York. He took her to the sweeping vistas atop Rockefeller Center and proposed. And you said? Speaker 5 (5:30) I said yes, yeah. I said yes. Speaker 2 (5:34) It was time to find a starter castle to complete the fairy tale. Just minutes from her job at Disney, they bought into a new condo development in Anaheim. She would be able to watch the Disneyland fireworks from the roof. Speaker 5 (5:48) I put the hold down payment down. Speaker 2 (5:49) You paid the hold down? Speaker 5 (5:50) I paid the hold down payment, yes. Speaker 2 (5:52) They waited for the condo to be finished, and in June they moved in. But Michelle said that's when the relationship changed. Fell apart, actually. Two months later, she packed her Jetta with whatever stuff she could fit in and left. Showed up at her parents' doorstep. Surprised? Tell me about that night. Speaker 6 (6:11) Um, well, I had gotten a text from her saying, can I come home? And I said, you don't even need to ask. Speaker 2 (6:17) Why were you not suited for him, in your opinion? Speaker 5 (6:19) I didn't feel that the relationship was healthy for me. Speaker 2 (6:23) Not nurturing for you? Not Speaker 5 (6:24) nurturing for me, yeah. Speaker 2 (6:26) Were there tempers? Were there... Speaker 5 (6:28) Let's just say that I'm not a strong personality and so, you know, I have to be very careful the kinds of people I surround myself with. It's almost better for me not to be in a relationship than to be in a bad one. Speaker 2 (6:39) But there were still ties that bound the former couple. A mortgage, the deed to that condo in Anaheim, which became a source of tension. Both hired lawyers, but it got personal. Michelle claimed Ian was unfaithful, even abusive. And she sent him a strange email. The language laced with religiosity and references to the Bible, Satan, and a mythical demon called Lilith. Please explain to your real estate attorney. that God's law is above all laws, including the law of man. Lilith, you may try to hide behind the law of man, but it is a weak shield that will bend and crack against the sword of God. Ian denied her allegations and said he was so alarmed by Michelle's email that he applied for a restraining order against her. He accused her of infidelity and wrote, Because of her emotional instability, history of fits of rage, I fear for my safety. The request for the restraining order was dismissed a few weeks later, and the law of man prevailed, or so it seemed. The lawyers hashed out a compromise. We Speaker 5 (7:46) actually ended up getting a settlement agreement. Speaker 2 (7:48) Ian and Michelle signed it in November 2015. The deal allowed Ian to stay in the condo, but he had six months to get his own mortgage. Failing that, he'd have to sell the condo and split any profits with Michelle. Michelle stood to lose most of her down payment, about $10,000. But she said it was worth it. Speaker 5 (8:08) I moved on with my life completely. 100 % completely. I actually had started dating again. So you had Speaker 2 (8:16) this toothache of a problem with a condo, but that was not a major part of your life. Well, Speaker 5 (8:19) and once the settlement agreement was signed, it was just a waiting game. Speaker 2 (8:23) She went back to school, started an MBA program at Chapman University. Ian, too, moved on quickly. married a woman named Angela. But the nagging condo issue still wasn't resolved, and the six-month deadline was approaching. And that's Speaker 8 (8:39) kind of when all the fireworks started happening. Speaker 2 (8:52) By June 1st, 2016, tension over the Anaheim condo Michelle Hadley and Ian Diaz had shared was once again starting to peak. The deadline was fast approaching. Ian needed to take over the mortgage or sell the condo. And that's when some odd events began to unfold. Michelle's father, Michael, was at work. His youngest daughter was at their home in Ontario. I get a phone call from my youngest daughter saying, hey. Speaker 8 (9:20) Somebody's knocked, beaten on the door. And I said, look outside. Is there police cars? She says, yeah, there's two of them. I says, well, then open the door. Because it scared her, I guess. And so a woman throws down a restraining order. Here you've been served kind of thing? Yeah, here you've been served with the police, two officers there. Speaker 2 (9:37) And it was from Angela Diaz. The restraining order was for Michelle, who was still living at her parents' home. It came from Angela Diaz, Ian's wife of three months, who had recently announced she was pregnant. She took this selfie to chronicle the news. Speaker 4 (9:54) Angela came into the picture not long after Ian and Michelle had actually broken up. Speaker 2 (9:59) Reporter Kate Bricolet covered this story for The Daily Beast. She spent hours digging through the curious emails Michelle sent Ian during the condo dispute. Speaker 4 (10:09) One minute she's... very polite in thanking him for reminders on her car insurance. The next minute, you know, she's saying that he's Satan and the Antichrist. Speaker 2 (10:20) Even after they signed the agreement on the condo, the emails kept coming. Ian got this one on May 22nd. You told me I was your first love, but you did not treat me like the precious perfect treasure