Simply Diabolical

**Lester Holt** (0:00)
Tonight, on Dateline...

**Michelle Hadley** (0:02)
I 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.

**Suzanne Hadley** (0:11)
It was for real.

**Kate Bricolet** (0:13)
There's some sort of a love triangle. Two women, one guy.

**Dennis Murphy** (0:17)
You have the US. Marshal. He has a former girlfriend named Michelle. He has a new wife.

**Kate Bricolet** (0:23)
The new wife went to authorities and said that she was being harassed. She was receiving e-mails threatening her life.
Strange men appeared at her door and tried to attack her.

**Darren Wyatt** (0:35)
She had a torn shirt. She had bruises on her neck.

**Kate Bricolet** (0:38)
She immediately points the finger at Michelle.

**Darren Wyatt** (0:40)
The evidence looks very clear that everything is originating from Michelle Hadley.

**Michael Hadley** (0:46)
The guy said, we just arrested Michelle.

**Suzanne Hadley** (0:48)
It's very hard to see your daughter being placed in handcuffs.

**Dennis Murphy** (0:52)
You're incarcerated.

**Michelle Hadley** (0:53)
For potentially the rest of my life. I was scared to death.

**Lester Holt** (0:57)
It's a story captivating the country.

**Darren Wyatt** (0:59)
There's something not right here.

**Lester Holt** (1:01)
A toxic love triangle and a dangerous game with someone playing for keeps.

**Dennis Murphy** (1:07)
Diabolical was the word you used.

**Tony Rakakis** (1:08)
Absolutely. Something that the devil might do.

**Michelle Hadley** (1:12)
I just remember thinking, how did I get here? I didn't do anything.

**Lester Holt** (1:16)
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with Simply Diabolical.

**Dennis Murphy** (1:35)
Locked in a cage, the shrieks of women howling in the night.

**Michelle Hadley** (1:39)
This isn't real. This is like something you would see in a movie. This doesn't happen in real life.

**Dennis Murphy** (1:44)
How did a self-described goody-two-shoes, a Disney princess, get swept away in a conspiracy so convoluted, so twisted?

**Darren Wyatt** (1:53)
This is one of the most well-thought-out, well-executed plans, and it's scary.

**Dennis Murphy** (1:59)
Diabolical.

**Darren Wyatt** (2:00)
Absolutely.

**Dennis Murphy** (2:01)
A tangled web, you bet, an altogether bizarre plot.

**Kate Bricolet** (2:06)
This is the most shocking form of love rivalry that I've ever seen.

**Dennis Murphy** (2:11)
There would be allegations of harassment, cyber-stalk, 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.

**Allison Margolin** (2:26)
She's a liar!

**Dennis Murphy** (2:31)
You decide whether it was a love rivalry, but in the beginning, it was clearly a boy meets girl love story.

**Michelle Hadley** (2:38)
It was a very intense period of my life, in the sense of just a very kind of whirlwind type of romance.

**Dennis Murphy** (2:46)
August 2013, 20-something Michelle Hadley met a US. Marshal named Ian Diaz over a cup of coffee. Things move fast. He told you that he loved you, or you were beautiful?

**Michelle Hadley** (2:58)
Yes.

**Dennis Murphy** (2:59)
He sort of hit you with a thunderbolt, huh?

**Michelle Hadley** (3:00)
Yeah, kind of early on, actually. Yeah, about the second date, he was telling me he loved me.

**Dennis Murphy** (3:05)
Did you think, slow down, buddy, or did you welcome him?

**Michelle Hadley** (3:09)
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.

**Dennis Murphy** (3:18)
Could this be her prince charming she was meeting over a cappuccino, the man she dreamed of since she was a little girl?

**Suzanne Hadley** (3:25)
She was very imaginative, very intelligent, and she just loved to play and create.

**Dennis Murphy** (3:32)
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.

**Michelle Hadley** (3:42)
I was an overachiever.

**Dennis Murphy** (3:43)
You were the kid who ruined the curve for everybody else.

**Michelle Hadley** (3:45)
Yeah, actually, sometimes.

**Dennis Murphy** (3:47)
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 US. 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?

**Michelle Hadley** (4:23)
I said yes, yeah. I said yes.

**Dennis Murphy** (4:26)