Toxic

Are there patterns in toxic relationships that you see over

and over again in the cases that you take on?

There are patterns. So, I've created a taxonomy.

It's basically four categories, and we see this playbook over

and over and over again.

Psychos, , pervs, and trolls.

Every single case that we get is at least one of these.

But this case has a little bit of all four categories.

It's often said that true life is stranger than fiction.

The facts of this case make that statement spot-on.

Super strategic and malicious .

Angela deserves what is waiting for her.

Her suffering and death is the only way.

-Acted anonymously - troll. -

They were using a VPN to hide their tracks.

And then a lot of what happened had this dark sex undercurrent,

- -which, you know, ticks the perv box.

Dead babies, beheaded children.

- -Psycho - ticks that box.

They were engaged, but now he's moved on months later.

Somebody has stolen your fairy tale.

It's the jealous ex.

And when you're fed a story and it takes root in the media,

it's very hard to get away from that.

Oh, my God.

To this day, I still can't get justice, when they're looking at

the same evidence I'm looking at.

That becomes reality. The perception becomes reality.

When it comes to love,

betrayal is the death of a thousand dreams...

Elizabeth! Over here!

...and the unraveling of countless lies.

You can spend years picking up the pieces, examining them,

rearranging them.

[instrumental version of "Toxic" by Britney Spears playing]

Digging through the past to make sense of it all.

Navigating through my personal heartbreak took me back to my roots

as an investigative journalist.

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Chambers. Elizabeth Chambers.

Elizabeth Chambers, outside

the Los Angeles Police Department.

It ignited a curiosity inside of me about love that fractures,

Oh, my God.

inflicts lasting trauma... -

Hi, I wanted to see if I could ask you some questions.

Absolutely not.

...and can lead to tragedy.

And that's when my world ended.

I feel that it's part of my calling to meet with

the victims, the survivors, to listen to their stories,

show how it can happen to anyone, and expose the truth.

I'm Elizabeth Chambers, and this is "Toxic."

[instrumental "Toxic" by Britney Spears concludes]

When a relationship ends,

a person can become unrecognizable.

The humiliation, loss of power, the pain can all drive someone

to their breaking point.

Sometimes when that mask comes off, things can escalate beyond

just heartbreak, showing there's no limit

to what some people will do for revenge.

OK, cool, this is AB camera mark.

- Let's roll some sound. -Roll.

There's so much media coverage of this case.

Why do you think people are so interested in it?

Any crime of passion is gonna attract the media,

because that becomes relatable to people.

Everybody's had an argument with a significant other.

So, Ian and Angela had a whirlwind romance.

Can you tell me how they met and how their relationship

developed so quickly?

Ian and Angela seem like like-minded, kindred spirits.

They met online in January of 2016.

They both, in a very kind of Orange County way,

they love the outdoors, they're into health.

They were married inside of a month, which, if you think about it,

is crazy. But it does happen sometimes.

They're taken with each other.

They had a great place to live.

He had a thriving career -- a respected US marshal.

They're newlyweds. They're madly in love.

They really have everything you could want.

And then all of a sudden,...

out of the blue, Angela begins receiving these emails

four months into the marriage.

Beyond just threatening.

They're foreboding,

they're, um -- they really seem to be predicting

a very dark future for Angela.

Some of the emails would show pictures of dead women

who'd been brutally injured, and...

you know, decapitated, and it was all very, very confusing.

Ian's automatic reaction is that the emails

were coming from his ex, Michelle.

Michelle and Ian had not been broken up long at all.

It was a very fresh thing.

He had gone ahead and gotten married very quickly,

so he assumed she was jealous.

He assumed because Ian and Angela were living in a condominium

that Michelle and Ian had actually purchased together,

that maybe she felt that somebody had moved in,

kind of stolen her dream, living in her castle

with her prince.

It's every morning and every night.

Yeah, she wants me dead.

We're asking you guys, is there a way

to put this girl in cuffs tonight?

So what does Angela do in response to the emails?

Angela does what I think most people would do at that point.

She goes to the Anaheim Police Department, and files for

a restraining order, which she gets very readily.

After Angela files and gets the restraining order,

the emails...

not only do they not stop, but they escalate.

And they become more threatening, more foreboding,

and more perverse.

She calls the Anaheim Police Department,

they come in,

puts out the puzzle pieces of what's been going on.

Angela's getting what would be any woman's worst nightmare, right?

Dozens of emails from her husband's crazy ex

detailing horrific threats against her life.

But then she gets a link to a Craigslist post.

That post is in the section of Craigslist where you can solicit sex.

It's somebody pretending to be Angela,

posting that she wants someone to come to her house and rape her.

She says, "Hi there.

I've been dying to have a rape fantasy while walking my dog.

If you can fulfill this tonight, please let me know.

I am thirty, tall, gorgeous, and ready...

So Ian and Angela are convinced

that it's Ian's ex, Michelle,

pretending to be Angela, posting on Craigslist

that she wants somebody to come to her home address, break in

and rape her.

But they don't necessarily have enough proof

for the cops to come that night to arrest her,

because the emails in the Craigslist post are from different fake

or anonymous accounts.

At what point is this girl put in handcuffs?

Anaheim detectives spend weeks reviewing all of these threats,

trying to build a case.

And throughout all of this, the harassment continues.

This whole nightmare has been orchestrated,

arranged at the hands of his former girlfriend.

Then there's a fateful night

where it goes beyond just email.

A man shows up at the home answering the rape fantasy

Craigslist post, and brutally attacks Angela.

Grabs her by the hair,

slams her up against the wall, beats her.

And in her head, she must have been thinking,

this is just the fruition of those e-mails.

This is all of that coming true.

Within the Craigslist community,

there's a subculture of people,-

you'll get an address and you will show up there

with the expectation that somebody there

wants to take part in a rape fantasy.

And it means that if you've had enough and you say no,

well, it's a rape fantasy, so that really doesn't matter.

There are no rules.

So it's the darkest of the dark.

It's the most evil of the most evil.

But then somehow she manages to fend this guy off.

He flees.

With this growing mountain of circumstantial evidence,

and the attack, police finally decide, OK, it's time to make an arrest.

And on June 24th, Michelle Hadley is finally

taken into custody.

The emails and threats immediately stop.

Michelle faced multiple felony counts,

including attempted forcible rape and stalking,

facing life in prison if convicted on all counts.

It felt like a happy ending for Ian and Angela.

Right, so it was very cut and dry.

There was no question, and the police department

moved very, very swiftly. -This was it. The case was over.

Slam dunk it was Michelle, because, I mean,

who else would it have been?

That was the story then, that Michelle

was the worst kind of criminal imaginable.

And we were fed that script for months.

And then all of a sudden, it became obvious

that we'd all been asking the wrong questions.

It's the ultimate plot twist.

It stops on a dime, and the entire thing

flips around.

Hi, Michelle.

Hi.

Talk to me about the day you were first served

with a restraining order. -So I'm at home.

All of a sudden, there are police at the door.

- -

So I see Lesley Carlson there.

She is a US Marshal, and a good friend of my ex-boyfriend, Ian.

Lesley serves a restraining order on me.

And it didn't have much information in it,

but it did have Angela's name, and that they were married.

And I see them basically saying that I'm sending harassing emails to her.

I don't know who this woman is.