Netflix’s A Toxic Love Story tells the true story of how Ian Diaz and Angela Connell (previously Angela Diaz) framed his ex Michelle Hadley of stalking and harassing them. The documentary shares an inside look into the investigation and included never-before-seen police bodycam footage, which director Alexandra Lacey said was “crucial” to the storytelling.
“It was a crucial piece of the puzzle for us to try to understand a bit more of the detail and to give the audience the ability to be there and see the story unfolding with this couple who are feeling like they’re being stalked,” Lacey told People of the bodycam footage in an interview published on Thursday, July 23.
The documentary featured bodycam footage of officers’ visits to the Diazes’ home, in which they claimed Hadley, 39, was stalking and threatening them.
Producer Emma Supple also told the outlet the bodycam footage was invaluable to the filmmaking team.
“What you see with that bodycam footage is obviously the scheme being enacted in real time,” she said. “One thing that we were aware of is that much of this takes place behind closed doors, and there’s so much that we don’t know and we’ll never know, but that footage does give you a window into what was going on inside the condo that we’ve never seen before. And we do think it sheds new light.”
A Toxic Love Story breaks down Hadley and Diaz’s romance after they began dating in 2013. The pair took a major step in their relationship when they bought a condo together, and Hadley covered a lot of it by paying the down payment.
Hadley and Diaz split in August 2015, and he married Connell soon after in February 2016.
Diaz and Connell began receiving messages from an online account called “Lilithistruth” in May 2016, and they told police they believed that Hadley was behind the messages.
In June 2016, Connell called 911 for a second time and claimed that a man entered her garage and tried to rape her. At the time, she told police she believed the incident was arranged by Hadley.
Hadley was then arrested and charged with felony counts of attempted forcible rape and stalking. She spent 88 days in jail before investigators learned that the couple framed her so that she would give up her half of the condo she bought with Diaz.
Hadley was released from custody in January 2017 and her charges were dropped. Connell was arrested that same month.
Connell later pleaded guilty to 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.
She was then sentenced to serve five years in prison in October 2017 and was released in July 2020.
While Connell was immediately arrested once Hadley’s name was clear, Diaz wasn’t arrested until May 2021 on federal charges of cyberstalking, conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and perjury. He was found guilty on all counts in 2023 and is currently serving a 10 years and one month prison sentence at FMC Fort Worth.
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