Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I have ADHD. Joy is autistic and we are letting our hyper fixations fly. Today I am fixating on Michelle Hadley and Micah Miller.
Speaker: Music
Speaker: yeah everyone, it's just Nikki this week. Joy is traveling and we did not manage our time well enough to get a recording in before she left. We talked about skipping this week again, but I said I had an idea for a bonus episode I could just throw together so we didn't need to miss a week. As always, I wildly underestimated my powers of hyperfixation and a quick bonus episode turned into a 5,000 13 page script.
Speaker: So I watched a toxic love story on Netflix last week, and I couldn't stop thinking about Micah Miller. So much of what Ian Diaz did to Michelle Hadley, J.P. Miller did to Micah.
Speaker: Allegedly. Then I asked myself how much of the document created by Micah's family and attorney, Regina Ward, entitled Micah's List, is applicable to Michelle's experience.
Speaker: Let's start by talking about everything that happened to Michelle, then we'll explore the patterns that repeat in Michelle's and Micah's experiences. My sources are Serialesly podcast, Case File podcast, Moms and Murder podcast, I Think Not podcast, A Toxic Love Story on Netflix,
Speaker: Micah's List via Fitz News, the websites Court Listener, SportsKedia, BuzzFeed News, Oxygen, NBC News, People Magazine, Courthouse News, and Time Magazine.
Speaker: And as always this summer, please forgive any background noise from air conditioning. It's not even that hot this week. It's so humid. It's insane. I'm sweating just sitting in the basement. That's the coldest place in the house.
Speaker: So let's do a quick overview of what a toxic love story went over in the documentary. i highly recommend watching it. I actually watched it twice. It's horrifying, but it's it's like twist and turns abound.
Speaker: We're in Anaheim, California in 2016. A woman named Angela Connell Diaz reported violent, threatening emails being sent from an unknown sender using the name Lilith is Truth.
Speaker: Quote, the reference seemed related to a figure from Jewish mythology who, after refusing to submit to Adam's authority, transformed into a revenge-seeking demon.
Speaker: Lilith was thought to be Adam's first wife, who was banished from the Garden of Eden for refusing to submit to her husband. In the story, she went on to have an affair with Satan.
Speaker: Angela immediately suspected her husband, Ian Diaz's ex-fiancee, Michelle Hadley, and the couple reported the threatening emails to the Anaheim Police Department. Michelle Hadley and Ian had met online in 2013. They got engaged and moved in together in 2015.
Speaker: Michelle emptied her savings to make the down payment on the condo, while Ian would help with the monthly payments. Michelle says that domestic abuse started when they moved in together almost immediately.
Speaker: She moved out just a few months later after ending the engagement, and Angela moved in really quickly after, and she and Ian, again, really quickly got married.
Speaker: After Michelle and Ian's breakup, Michelle did send some emails using biblical language, quote, to describe how he would be held accountable for his actions. We'll get into this more later, but she would later describe sending those emails during a dissociative episode due to complex PTSD from the abusive relationship.
Speaker: Michelle said, quote, I don't even really understand where a lot of it came from or why I wrote it. I listened to a lot of sermons growing up. It was almost like some weird brain dump from childhood. It's hard to explain because it's not really like anything I've ever experienced. I thought, oh my God, I'm really losing my mind.
Speaker: Angela and Ian met online in January 2016 and married just a month later in February. Angela moved into the condo, still co-owned by Michelle.
Speaker: Angela announced very soon after that she was pregnant with twins. Ian Diaz was a deputy U.S. marshal. His job was to protect federal judges as well as transport federal prisoners.
Speaker: He was described as easygoing, kind, and loyal. In June 2016, Michelle was served a restraining order against Angela. Despite the order, the emails and threats escalated.
Speaker: a post appeared on the website Craigslist of someone posing as Angela, soliciting men to break into her home and participate in a rape fantasy.
Speaker: This escalated to the point that Angela was actually attacked in her garage, but the man fled when she called 911. This event led to Michelle's arrest. Michelle initially bonded out, but the emails continued when she was released, so she was taken back into custody and her bond was increased to a million dollars.
Speaker: Michelle was charged with stalking and harassment, and she was held in jail for 88 days. Eventually, the IP address of the emails was traced back to the condo and linked to Angela's devices.
Speaker: Angela was arrested and pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, falsely reporting crimes, and kidnapping for trying to send Michelle to prison. She was sentenced to five years in prison.
Speaker: In 2019, Michelle sued the Anaheim Police Department and the city of Anaheim. She claimed that, quote, officers ignored loads of exculpatory evidence in their possession that would have exposed Diaz's attempts to frame her.
Speaker: The lawsuit claimed Anaheim failed to implement appropriate policies and training that would have prepared officers to adequately investigate the case. The lawsuit also said, quote, at its heart, the case is about the blue wall of silence, law enforcement officers and officials enabling fellow officers to violate civilians' rights.
Speaker: The Anaheim Police Department settled for an undisclosed amount. Ian was arrested four years later in 2021. In 2023, he was convicted of cyberstalking, perjury, and obstruction of a federal matter.
Speaker: He was actually convicted the same day that Michelle gave birth to her daughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. So let's rewind a bit. Let's talk about Ian and Michelle's relationship.
Speaker: Michelle said that Ian swept her off her feet when they met. They both loved Disneyland, and Michelle really believed in that, like, fairy tale romance. She said he was intense with his feelings from the beginning, telling her he loved her on their second date.
Speaker: He was 35 and she was 26 when they first got together. Despite the age difference, she thought he was as wholesome as she was. They got engaged and purchased the condo together.
Speaker: As I said earlier, Michelle drained her savings to make that down payment with the promise from Ian that he'd take care of the monthly payments. She put down about $14,000 on the home, which, listen, I'm turning 41 next week.
Speaker: And the idea of having $14,000 in my savings account at the age of 26, it just makes my graying hair go even grayer. I'm fine. Everything's fine.
Speaker: You know, if anybody has a spare, like, $100,000 check laying around, DM me, and I will take it off your hands for you. With Michelle's down payment, her savings were gone, and now she was tied legally to this property.
Speaker: Once they started living together, Ian started doing small tests of Michelle's boundaries that began escalating over time. She said, quote, it felt like anything he found where it was like, I clearly set a boundary, for example, around my sexual boundaries.
Speaker: That for him, he honed in on it, and then it became, how do I break it down? And he kept working at it and working at it. This emotional rollercoaster trapped her in like a trauma bond with him.
Speaker: He started demanding that she change her appearance. He would pick out her outfits. He wanted her to get a belly button piercing and had her start wearing fake nails. She said that he would deprive her of sleep.
Speaker: She said if she left the house, he'd call her repeatedly. he seemed to know when she wasn't near their home, her job, or her university where she was studying for her MBA. He even installed security cameras in their home to watch her when he was gone. and I'm not talking like outside of the house, like there were those two, but he put them like in the kitchen to watch her doing dishes and things like that.
Speaker: He spied on her computer to monitor her online activity and downloaded the contents of all of her devices. The abuse continued to escalate. Ian used his status as a U.S. Marshal to keep her too scared to leave. He would threaten to call the police if she left.
Speaker: He always carried his gun, and he obviously had law enforcement training. He once physically restrained her and threw her on the bed when she was trying to leave one night, leaving her questioning if it would be safer for her to stay or to flee.
Speaker: Ian even pressured her to take a marketing job at Disneyland Resort that paid $20,000 less than she had been making at her former job. He used to work there and it was his favorite place. She believes that this was a way for him to like get his former colleagues to keep an eye on her and spy on her.
Speaker: Once he canceled her car insurance, making it so obviously she was unable to drive. Another time during a fight while he was driving, he pulled over on the freeway and told her to get out of the car. When she opened the door to get out of the car as he was screaming, he pulled it closed and yelled, what's wrong with you? Are you crazy?
Speaker: He took her engagement ring and said he'd give it back to her when she learned how to behave. He, all the time, turned his behavior around on her, painting her as the crazy one.
Speaker: Throughout the relationship, Ian was forcing his sexual fantasies on Michelle. He would, like, drop little things at first, but then it would get larger and harder to ignore. He was harping on her to fulfill his desire to watch her have sex with a stranger.
Speaker: He claimed that a former girlfriend had done this for him in the past. She cried, telling him over and over that she didn't want to do this. She begged him to stop bringing it up, but he kept sending her links to Craigslist ads. And she was naive. She was young. This was her first like really serious relationship. And she wondered if this was normal for serious relationships.
Speaker: She even described herself as naive and very straight laced. And she used the word wholesome a lot in the documentary. She finally relented with the understanding that this would never happen again. Ian posted a Craigslist ad trying to find a man to have sex with her while he watched.
Speaker: The encounter happened on Valentine's Day. Michelle was actually sick and on cold medication, meaning she was already somewhat impaired, but Ian gave her three shots of whiskey on top of the medication.
Speaker: The encounter happened, but she was not aware that Ian had recorded it. When she learned this, she asked him to delete the recording. He responded, quote, no one put a gun to your head.
Speaker: He was angry when she expressed regret and feeling that she had been violated. He even taunted her about the footage, threatening to share it. The couple went to a single joint therapy session after, and after the session, Ian screamed at Michelle for bringing up the Valentine's Day encounter and drove recklessly to scare her.
Speaker: She started to realize how wrong the situation she found herself in was. One night while his best friend was over at his condo, she decided it was her time to escape.
Speaker: She didn't think he would make a scene in front of his friend. She got out and ended up moving back in with her parents and started recovering, but his behavior was still abusive. He called and texted incessantly. He accused her of cheating.
Speaker: He threatened her over the phone, calling her derogatory names. Her parents actually got alerts that background checks had been performed on them. At one point, he filed for a restraining order against Michelle, claiming she drank heavily, that she berated him and was volatile.
Speaker: She had tried to blackmail him. She was emotionally unstable and had a, quote, history of fits of rage. The judge dismissed this petition really quick.
Speaker: Michelle believed that she saw SUVs that were identical to Ian's but without license plates. It got to the point that she had to report the stocking to her university, and he was banned from her campus.
Speaker: She felt like he was always watching her, and she knew he was always carrying his gun. She didn't feel safe anywhere, and she said she felt like a, quote, hunted animal. She doesn't remember those two emails she sent to him using that biblical language.
Speaker: The emails were very emotional and they expressed that she'd make sure he was held countable. She was struggling with disassociative episodes. What Ian did was he would go on to take these emails, these two emails, to construct fake Michelle in the emails to Angela.
Speaker: As things were, again, escalating in Ian's abusive behavior of her even after they broke up, Michelle drove for 24 hours. And what she now knows was a disassociative event.
Speaker: She deliberately left any traceable devices, like her phone, her laptop, things like that. She left them at home because she thought Ian would follow her. As she drove, she described feeling her mind slipping away.
Speaker: Eventually, she was found in Arizona by a family who brought her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with complex PTSD from the abuse. But because of Ian's connections to law enforcement, Michelle was on the police's radar.
Speaker: He would tell his cop buddies about being banned from her university and how crazy Michelle had been since they broke up. Through all of this chaos, Michelle still had to settle the huge issue of their shared condo.
Speaker: Six months after they broke up, she retained property attorneys to untangle it all. They drafted a contract that gave him six months to take over the mortgage. And if he couldn't do that, he would have to sell the condo and they'd split the proceeds.
Speaker: In a turn of events that shocks no one, he was unable to do this and did not follow the contract. When she began to enforce this contract is when all of a sudden Angela started getting these threatening emails.
Speaker: Once they had signed the contract, Ian emailed Michelle and asked to see her again. This was a huge red flag to her. She was afraid he would do something to harm her, so she ignored the message.
Speaker: Reports of harassment started the same month Ian was supposed to assume full mortgage payments. All right, let's talk about Michelle's arrest, incarceration, and spoilers, exoneration.
Speaker: Michelle had no idea about the emails Angela was receiving until she was served with the restraining order that Angela had filed against her. At the court date for the order, Angela walked up to Michelle and handed her a stack of the printed out emails and just kind of walked away.
Speaker: But when Michelle started looking through them, she knew Ian was behind it and was trying to frame her. Michelle went to the police with evidence of what Ian and Angela were doing, but she was dismissed.
Speaker: Michelle even reached out to internal affairs at the Department of Justice, Ian's employer, to present them evidence of Ian's scheme. After Angela was attacked in their garage, Michelle was arrested. and she actually was facing a life sentence.
Speaker: She reported being confined to her cell for 23 hours a day because she was had been arrested on rape charges, so she was with the sexual predators. During her incarceration, Ian sold the condo.
Speaker: They had purchased the home for $470,000, and he sold She did not get any money from the sale, not even her returned.
Speaker: One time when Michelle and Ian were still together, they like it was something like they drove by a prison and a conversation came up where he described to her what jail was like for sex offenders. He described not being allowed to go outside, not being able to use the bathroom with any sort of privacy, and being hated and harassed by other inmates, just horrible things like that.
Speaker: And he asked her how she would feel in that situation. She said, quote, that would be my worst nightmare. I told him not being able to run free outside, having people believe I'd done something so horrible.
Speaker: So there was a bit of a ah bright light in the situation. While Michelle was in prison, she got close to her cellmate, an 85-year-old black grandmother. She was able to persuade her parents to help her cellmate by getting an attorney for this woman.
Speaker: Michelle's actually written, i think it was just one essay, but she's done some writing since then about how her whiteness and her womanhood and her, I believe it was even like her young age and her looks, like that all served her well in prison and the systematic injustice of all of that. It's really turned her into kind of a, a warrior for those who are incarcerated and the rights that they don't have.
Speaker: Michelle told the police over and over that she was being framed, but they didn't take her seriously. During the questioning, they asked her why she never reported Ian during the relationship if he was really abusive.
Speaker: They even asked her about her sex life after the breakup. Police and media framed the whole situation as a, quote, catfight and a, quote, love triangle. Michelle was made to look like a woman who was insane from jealousy.
Speaker: Once Angela was arrested, authorities just stopped looking at Ian for anything. At one point, Michelle had been released from jail, but not yet fully exonerated, and she had to wear an ankle monitor.
Speaker: She was embarrassed by this, and even though she was out of jail and away from Ian, her movements were still being restricted and controlled. Even after she was fully exonerated, she had a hard time finding work because employers would Google her after showing interest in making contact, and then her name would come up as this big case.
Speaker: Her family lost about 70% of their business throughout Michelle's incarceration. In the documentary, her dad speaks about her family's relatives and friends believing that she had done it.
Speaker: Physical symptoms of PTSD manifested for Michelle after she was exonerated. She even describes bouts of inexplicable vertigo, even while just sitting down at a desk.
Speaker: When she was out, the Department of Justice wanted to meet with her for an interview after she was freed, but she was terrified of law enforcement. She had no trust, but she did speak with them.
Speaker: When they asked her why she didn't report him, she said that she had researched online about abusive relationships with police officers, and she thought he'd be protected by fellow law enforcement.
Speaker: She wasn't wrong. The DOJ followed through and did get to work trying to get Ian. Special Agent Jason Higley was assigned to the case.
Speaker: His job at the DOJ was to investigate cases that involved Department of Justice employees. He started by watching the body cam footage of the many visits of the police to Angela and Ian's condo. He noticed that Ian seemed really anxious and that he spoke over Angela as if he was coaching her.
Speaker: He also noted and quote extreme animosity for Michelle as well. He also noted how quickly Ian was able to find the ad for that rape fantasy on Craigslist.
Speaker: Agent Higley in watching the footage realized that like Ian had to click one thing and he knew how to access this ad. And he also, knowing as much as he did about the ad, had to somehow have access to this conversation.
Speaker: So this is kind of confusing. He basically, like, I guess back in the day, I was never an avid Craigslist user at all. So I don't really know what I'm talking about. I guess to have access to a conversation on Craigslist is He would have had to have access to the email that corresponded with the account. So Agent Higley questioned how Ian knew certain things in the kind of private conversation between like the fake Michelle and the person who responded to the ad. He would have had to have access to it.
Speaker: In the body cam footage, Ian would always remind officers that he was a U.S. Marshal. He always wore his badge when police came to his home, and he even had his gun drawn when they arrived responding to the rape fantasy ad report.
Speaker: Agent Higley realized that a U.S. Marshal manipulated the Anaheim PD. Ian even managed to get helicopters sent out looking for the man who had set up the rape fantasy encounter Ian and Angela had seen the man who showed up believing this was a consensual encounter on their door camera.
Speaker: In the documentary, the man is actually in it. And he explains that when he got to the condo, he saw Ian's name on like the bell to to buzz to the condo. And he was like, I didn't, this lady might be married. they might This might be a setup. I'm i'm leaving.
Speaker: So he very wisely left before not even knocking. Agent Higley saw that Ian was riling the officers up against Michelle, convincing them that she was dangerous and crazy.
Speaker: he had told them that she was violent at the end of their relationship. She had been suicidal and she said that she would burn the condo down with her, Ian and their dog inside. He told Anaheim PD that the week before she left, she was in an emotional rage He described her as having, quote, eyes wide open, but tears streaming down her face. It was freaky.
Speaker: He and the police were on the same side, and she was going after them by going after him. The escalation forced the police to act quickly as well. Agent Higley searched Ian's government-issued laptop, which contained backups of fragments of correspondence between, quote, Lilith and the man who responded to the Craigslist rape fantasy post.
Speaker: He also discovered that Ian had wiped his cell phone and deleted two email accounts. Agent Higley said, quote, it boils down to Ian wanting to control someone. He wanted to control Michelle and she got away and that made him angry. So he designed this scheme to frame his ex-girlfriend.
Speaker: Michelle didn't understand how far Ian would go until she was arrested. She blames him more than Angela. She actually didn't even attend Angela's trial or write a victim impact statement.
Speaker: She believes, quote, this is a case where a bunch of cops were looking out for each other. In all, she lost her job, possessions, reputation, and nearly her sanity. But Ian's conviction restored her faith in the justice system and vindicated her.
Speaker: Today, she sees it as a bookend to that part of her life. She believes that financial abuse is present in 98% abusive relationships, A huge reason this all happened was the condo, but the condo was a condition of Ian's control.
Speaker: She said, quote, a huge part of the abuse dynamic is how do they lock those resources down, access to those resources so you cannot get out, or so in some way that you are trapped and tied to them.
Speaker: She's also seen patterns in abusive relationships of abusers pushing women to move in together quickly as a means of isolating her and as well as holding a massive investment over her.
Speaker: So as I had said, as I was watching this documentary and Michelle describing her life while she was engaged to Ian Diaz, I couldn't stop thinking about Micah. So much of what happened to Michelle has been alleged to have happened to Micah.
Speaker: And listen, I think J.P. Miller and Ian Diaz would probably be best friends. So this is why in this episode I wrote, I speak so much about Michelle's account of the abuse in the relationship and not focus on like the fake emails or like the stuff Angela did, including faking her pregnancy with twins, faking a miscarriage, and faking cancer.
Speaker: Watch the documentary, y'all. I also didn't talk about Ian's quote best friend, who I think her name was Leslie, obviously in love with Ian. So for that whole saga, go watch the doc.
Speaker: So after I watched it, I printed out Micah's list, the list of quote, abusive control behaviors and actions Micah suffered at the hands of her husband and compared it to Michelle's story. Similarities are startling.
Speaker: I'll put the link to Micah's list in the show notes. Not every item on Micah's list matched Michelle's experience and not all of Michelle's experience matched Micah's, but I think it's important to see the patterns that these abusive men follow, especially once they've lost control.
Speaker: So I'm going to walk through the list and identify when Michelle's and Micah's experiences are similar or even match up. The first half of Micah's list are behaviors that have been proposed in a coercive control bill in South Carolina. Side note, look up some information about Micah's law and the hoops that lawmakers are making Micah's family and attorney jump through to get this signed into law.
Speaker: So I'm just going to basically ah list out the items and each item I'm going to talk about the similarities and how Micah's list can be applied to Michelle's case.
Speaker: The first item on Micah's list is isolating her from family and friends. So once Michelle was in the condo, she was stuck financially and physically.
Speaker: The abuse created a trauma bond. And when Michelle got away, she immediately went to her parents where where she felt the safest. JP insisted that Micah's family made her mental health worse.
Speaker: JP claimed that Micah and her family were harassing him via text and social media, and he pressured Micah to stop talking to her family completely. Next is the deprivation of basic needs. Michelle alleges that Ian kept her sleep deprived.
Speaker: And in Micah's list, it says that JP would pull the blankets off of Micah when she fell asleep to wake her back up. Sleep deprivation is one of the, it seems like simplest, but causes the most, some of the most damage. Like just imagine how or easily controllable you are when you're sleep deprived.
Speaker: Next is stalking slash tracking her whereabouts. Ian would text and call when Michelle left the bounds of her home, work, and school. He set up cameras in the house to watch her. Michelle said that she felt hunted by him.
Speaker: JP allegedly stalked his ex-wife Allison before he married Micah. After Micah left, she said that she always felt like she was being watched or followed, and she found multiple trackers on her car.
Speaker: Next is communications being monitored. Ian downloaded information from Michelle's devices. JP took control of Micah's devices. Next is taking control over aspects of her life.
Speaker: Ian tried to get Michelle to change her appearance, her clothes, wearing the fake nails. JP pressured Micah into getting a breast enlargement when they were first married and was very concerned about the control of her weight and what she ate.
Speaker: Next is depriving her of support services. After their only therapy session, Ian screamed at Michelle and they never went back.
Speaker: JP took control of Micah's devices, took away access to a car, and allegedly stole her notary's stamp. She had become a notary, I think, in an effort to make some money separate from JP, start her new life. Allegedly, he took that from her car.
Speaker: Next is expressing her worthlessness. Ian changing Michelle's appearance is a huge example of this, and his emotional and verbal abuse led to Michelle's dissociative episodes.
Speaker: JP would use his position as Micah's pastor to tell her over and over that she was a sinful woman who needed him. Next, humiliated, degraded, and dehumanized.
Speaker: The coerced encounter with another man left Michelle feeling all of these things humiliated, degraded, dehumanized. Ian made her feel crazy. And even Ian's cheating accusations against Michelle after they broke up humiliated her. She was also embarrassed about wearing the ankle monitor when she was initially released from jail.
Speaker: After Micah was released from the hospital, JP called the police to report that Micah was trying to break into his house. He said she was trying to get a gun to kill herself. He said she was not taking prescribed medications.
Speaker: He would later say, quote, basically, I lived seven years with a person who had to take a pill every day or she would threaten to kill me or someone else. JP continually claimed that Micah was mentally unwell even after her death.
Speaker: Next is preventing disclosure to authorities. Ian's position as a federal U.S. marshal made it so Michelle was not believed or was dismissed as the crazy ex.
Speaker: And we saw in Micah's case, she did disclose to authorities over and over, but kind of in the same way, JP's status in the community and as a pastor made it so she was also dismissed as being crazy or being dramatic.
Speaker: Next, we have financial abuse. Michelle was trapped by the condo. She was left with limited resources, especially after taking a job that paid $20,000 a year less. Ian sold the condo while Michelle was in jail to ensure she didn't get any of the profits from the home.
Speaker: JP was the primary breadwinner of his and Micah's home, and he withheld finances from her. He moved assets out of Micah's name without her knowledge, leaving her with nothing.
Speaker: Next is threats to hurt her, her family, or himself. Ian drove recklessly when angry. Michelle's family lost money and business. Ian would threaten to call the police on Michelle if she left.
Speaker: JP threatened suicide to Micah in 2022 if he didn't come back home from her sister's house. Next is threats to a child, um not applicable to either case.
Speaker: that we know of. Next, threats to reveal or publish private information. Ian held the Valentine's Day video he recorded without Michelle's knowledge over her head. While Micah was hospitalized, she called the police to try to recover her devices so JP couldn't share sensitive images of her, and he did end up posting a naked photo of Micah on social media.
Speaker: Allegedly. Next is assault. Ian had access to guns as a U.S. Marshal. There was also the incident that Ian did pin Michelle down.
Speaker: Micah reported that JP had physically assaulted her in February 2024. Next is rape. Michelle had sex to appease Ian frequently. The Valentine's Day incident was absolutely coerced and non-consensual.
Speaker: Allegedly, JP forced Micah to engage in sexual activities that she was not comfortable with and did not want to do. Next, preventing her from having transportation.
Speaker: Ian canceled Michelle's car insurance, making it so she couldn't legally drive. And JP withheld Micah's car when she was released from the mental health hospital that she had been sent to involuntarily.
Speaker: Interfering with her work. Ian coerced Michelle into leaving her job for a lower paying one at his former place of employment. She suspected this was so his former co-workers could keep tabs on her for him.
Speaker: and Michelle struggled to find work after she was exonerated. After Micah had left JP and had moved into a new apartment, he called her job at a restaurant repeatedly in an attempt to get her fired.
Speaker: So the first half of Micah's list are the behaviors that have been proposed in the coercive control bill in South Carolina. The second half are additional behaviors that were reported or Micah had wrote written about in diaries, things like that, that weren't actually in the proposed bill, but they're still part of Micah's list.
Speaker: First is emotional abuse. Ian terrified Michelle about the idea of being a sexual predator in jail. He would gaslight her and twist her words.
Speaker: JP certainly did this to Micah as well. He made her fear being away from him and how that sin would quote sin would reverberate to their shared church family.
Speaker: Next is ignoring requests and commands to leave her alone. Ian deliberately made settling the condo situation terribly difficult and then didn't do anything he said he would do. And Micah consistently begged JP just to leave her alone after she had left.
Speaker: Next, cruelty to dog. So this one, like we don't, I've never seen anything that definitively says either man abused an animal or were cruel to a dog. There's certainly been like rumors and things, but so for Ian and Michelle, Ian had a dog and he used the dog to make the police suspect Michelle even more by claiming she would have burned the condo down with the two of them and the dog in it.
Speaker: And pretty consistently, there was a text message between JP and Micah demanding her to come and get her dog. That's the only thing I've really seen Like I said, there have been rumors. You can give it a goob yourself. I have concerns that if there's an animal involved in an abusive situation, that there was some cruelty to the animal.
Speaker: Next is destruction of property. Michelle never got a lot of her property returned after she fled the condo. And we know that JP withheld Micah's belongings, including her electronic devices when she left. Both women had to kind of flee, leaving so much behind.
Speaker: Next is destruction of supporting evidence. Ian attempted to delete traces of writing that those emails, and he deleted two email accounts and wiped his phone. JP, regularly, and I bet still regularly, allegedly,
Speaker: deletes evidence of texts, emails, and phone calls. Next is adultery and promiscuity. For Ian's and Michelle's case, this is a maybe, but we can't be sure when Angela and Ian began dating, but their relationship moved lightning fast.
Speaker: JP allegedly had an affair with Susie Skinner, and we have definitely seen him inappropriately texting other women. There was even a server after Micah's death that she came forward with some not appropriate text that a husband, let alone a grieving husband, should be sending.
Speaker: Next is stealing her identity. This whole thing is Ian stealing Michelle's identity to frame her. ah JP actually posed as Micah via email. She had texted some close to her, quote, if you get an email from MicahMiller777 at iCloud.com, it's a fake email recently made up by someone. Please do not respond.
Speaker: JP posed as Micah on social media. He called people from Micah's phone. He texted and emailed from Micah's devices and then deleted the evidence. Next is cyber and technology abuse. I mean, this whole scheme in concocted is cyber technology abuse. He also installed those cameras in their home to monitor her and he downloaded the contents of her devices so he could keep an eye on them.
Speaker: JP controlled Micah's devices and posed as her in communications with her friends and family. Next is misuse of legal documents. Ian filed a frivolous restraining order against Michelle, and he ignored the condo contract that would allow Michelle to move on with her life and get her money back.
Speaker: JP filed false restraining orders and various legal filings to keep Micah in court, and there are a lot of questions around a power of attorney document that JP claims Micah signed.
Speaker: Next is misuse of law enforcement. Ian took advantage of his role as a U.S. Marshal to manipulate the Anaheim Police Department, He told his cop buddies about Michelle's two emails, that those were the ones that she used the biblical language while she was having a mental health crisis.
Speaker: And he shared with them that he had been banned from her university. He would threaten to call the police on Michelle if she left him. Ian's influence made it so the police didn't take Michelle seriously. He always made sure to have his badge out or on him when the police responded to calls to his and Angela's home.
Speaker: JP regularly did and still has called the police, making himself out to be the victim in all kinds of situations, not just with Micah, but since she, since her death and protests and all the things.
Speaker: He had connections to local authorities, and this is evident by how many traffic infractions he got out of and getting his previous convictions expunged. He just like, I don't know why people find him so charming.
Speaker: Micah was not taken seriously when she reached out to law enforcement for help and was painted as the crazy ex-wife. Misuse of legal process. Ian attempted to take out a restraining order against Michelle. He ran background checks on her parents. And as we've said, he he used his role as a U.S. marshal to get her arrested.
Speaker: JP filed and withdrew divorce papers. He also attempted to take a restraining order out against Micah, and he used the court system to keep her tied to him.
Speaker: He even attempted to frame Micah for stealing money from the church. Next is medical abuse. Ian's behavior led to a complex PTSD diagnosis for Michelle.
Speaker: He had her and others questioning her own sanity. JP had Micah involuntarily hospitalized, spoke publicly about her, quote, mental health struggles, and claimed that she was violent during her, quote, psychotic breaks.
Speaker: He attained a suspicious power of attorney document that appears to have Micah's signature. He allegedly gave her testosterone against her will. And he convinced people, people that loved Micah, that she was mentally unwell.
Speaker: Next is spiritual abuse. Ian used the biblical language in Michelle's two initial emails against her. Just the name, the lore of the name Lilith and what it connotates being used was definitely a form of manipulation at the very least for those reading the emails.
Speaker: Micah was pressured to stay with JP by church members, citing the belief that divorce is a sin. Next is church abuse. I don't think this is applicable to Michelle, um besides kind of what we just talked about with the the taking advantage of her mental health state in those emails. But JP certainly weaponized Micah's love for her church against her. Micah sought help from church leadership, but she was ignored.
Speaker: JP had ingrained into the church that he was to be believed over anyone else. After all, wasn't Micah crazy? Next is phone calls to everyone. i don't think this is applicable to Michelle, except that Ian was posing as her having communications with people. But JP let everyone and their mother know how, quote, crazy Micah was.
Speaker: And finally, physical abuse without marks. There was the incident that Ian pinned Michelle down to the bed, and Micah reported that JP had physically assaulted her in February 2024. And just based anecdotally about my knowledge of domestic violence situations, it had to have happened quite a bit before Micah actually reported.
Speaker: Just statistically and anecdotally, that is normal for women in abusive situations. There has, it, it happened before. Allegedly.
Speaker: So that's the end of Micah's list, but I want to talk about some other similarities between the cases that aren't listed in Micah's list. First, there is an age gap. JP, i don't even remember how many years older than Micah he is, but he, they met because he was her youth group leader. Like there's definitely grooming there. And Ian was, I forget,
Speaker: what I said, maybe 10 years older than Michelle. And age gaps like that lead to a power dynamic issue. Not all the time, of course, not always.
Speaker: But in these two cases, that was definitely a thing. There's also toxic childhoods shared by the men. Michelle said that Ian had a hard childhood and a very strained relationship with his father, but didn't go into too much more.
Speaker: and we know from how deep we dove into Micah's case that JP's childhood was wackadoo and his father is even wackadoo-er, wackadoo-ier.
Speaker: Next are ah the men shared public and private personas that were different. Michelle said, quote, it felt like he was actually two totally different personalities and you never knew which one you were going to get. Were you going to get this like sex obsessed fiend or were you going to get the wholesome boy?
Speaker: And we know that JP could be this dynamic, charming man of God and a monster. Ian claimed that Michelle was violent and unhinged at the end of their relationship. And JP said that Micah got violent during her, quote, psychotic episodes.
Speaker: So let's talk about those emails that Michelle wrote. So she wrote those two emails in this PTSD-induced dissociative episode that she had never experienced before.
Speaker: Ian's treatment of her led her to having some of the mental health issues that he had claimed she had the whole time. I think this was true for Micah as well. A voicemail from Micah to JP was discovered that showed she was questioning who she was. This is one of those things that Joy has talked about being perhaps coded language. I kind of lean a little bit more toward, I think she was in a mental health crisis,
Speaker: from her husband harping that she had mental health issues. Michelle described being with Ian as being on a roller coaster, and Micah's family described JP's energy as being on a roller coaster.
Speaker: And those roller coasters of energy and trauma developed trauma bonds. And finally, the biggest glaring similarity for me was both of these men had their romantic partners incarcerated against their will.
Speaker: Michelle went to jail and Micah went to a mental institute. So that is what I've got for you. I apologize that the bonus mini-sode is actually probably a full-length episode and you just had to hear my voice the whole time and wasn't the conversation everyone's used to or whatever. and Yeah, so i I hope this was okay. It was just kind of something I accidentally stumbled into the hyperfixation as I do. And, you know, i texted ah I texted our team here and was just like, you know, I always ask myself why I'm so tired. And then I accidentally write 5,000 words in a week that I wasn't planning on doing. And, you know, ADHD is weird, but I lean into it.
Speaker: So I hope everybody has a wonderful week. We will hopefully, barring any travel issues for Joy and her family, have the next JFK episode ready for you next week. If not, who knows? Maybe I'll write 5,000 extra words this week about something completely unrelated to the current series again.
Speaker: I'm not even sorry. All right. We will talk to you guys again soon. Have a great week. See you next time.
Speaker: Bye.
