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The six men showed up at her apartment, one by one. Each threatened Angela Diaz with rape or assault. One even ripped open the 31 year old’s shirt and left red marks on her throat, before she was able to free herself and dial 911.
They were shocking encounters – made all the more horrifying by the fact that all the men claimed to be responding to a Craigslist ad that Ms Diaz herself had posted.
In the ad, Ms Diaz supposedly claimed to fantasise about rape, and invited men to have “forcible sexual intercourse with her, even if she screamed or resisted”. The Craigslist post even included Diaz’s address and details of her daily routine.
There was just one problem: Diaz said she never wrote the posts.
The case made headlines in the US – and around the world – especially after Ms Diaz told police that her husband’s ex-girlfriend Michelle Hadley was behind the fraudulent Craigslist posts.
Ms Hadley was duly arrested and charged with stalking and attempting forcible rape.
But now there’s a new twist in what is already a bizarre case.
Late last week authorities revealed that the allegations against Ms Hadley were all false; Ms Diaz was behind the Craiglists ads all along.
Ms Hadley was an “innocent victim of a diabolical scheme” the Orange County District Attorney’s Office told the Washington Post.
Prosecutors exonerated Ms Hadley – who spent 88 days in prison altogether – of all charges, and instead charged Diaz with kidnapping, false imprisonment, perjury and other crimes.
“It’s often said that true life is stranger than fiction,” District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a news conference. “The facts of this case make that statement spot on.”
Mr Rackauckas speculated that the case was part of a twisted “love triangle”. Ms Diaz is married to Ian Diaz, a US Marshal, who dated Ms Hadley for two years between 2013 and 2015.
The police realised that Ms Diaz was the mastermind behind the Craiglists post when “after months of painstaking investigations” they realised that emails supposedly sent from Ms Hadley to Ms Diaz had in fact been sent by Ms Diaz herself using a complex web of virtual private networks and third party servers.
Diaz was arrested in Phoenix on Friday. Meanwhile Michelle Hadley’s lawyer has said that the development was a “huge relief” to the 29-year-old student. This has been a huge nightmare for me..probably the most traumatic experience of my life,” a weeping Ms Hadley told the LA Times.
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