Dateline revisits Michelle Hadley: how to watch for free
NBC's Dateline airs Simply Diabolical on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, at 10 p.m. ET, revisiting the Michelle Hadley wrongful-arrest case. Cord-cutters can watch live for free with DIRECTV's 5-day trial; Peacock streams it the next day. Hadley spent 88 days jailed in 2016 before evidence showed she was framed.
Key Takeaways
- Dateline's Simply Diabolical airs Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT on NBC.
- Michelle Hadley spent 88 days in jail after a 2016 wrongful cyberstalking arrest tied to her ex-fiancé and his wife.
- Prosecutors later found the case against her was built on falsehoods; she was exonerated after being framed.
- Cord-cutters can try DIRECTV's 5-day free trial for live NBC; Peacock streams the episode the next day.
- Netflix's A Toxic Love Story helped renew public interest in the case.
Who is Michelle Hadley and what happened in 2016?
A California graduate student's life was upended in 2016 when she was arrested for cyberstalking her former fiancé, U.S. Marshal Ian Diaz, and his wife, Angela Connell. Investigators initially blamed Michelle Hadley for a disturbing campaign of threats and online harassment.
She spent 88 days behind bars and faced the possibility of decades in prison. As new evidence emerged, the case flipped. Prosecutors later determined the case against her rested on falsehoods. She has since been exonerated, and reporting on the Dateline broadcast notes she was framed while others involved in the scheme faced criminal convictions. Federal investigators later expanded the probe and transformed how the story was understood.
What is Dateline's Simply Diabolical about?
NBC correspondent Dennis Murphy reports from Southern California in Simply Diabolical, a one-hour Dateline installment on the cyber-revenge case. Coverage of the Friday broadcast says the episode also amends prior Dateline reporting on the arrest. It is listed as season 34, episode 35.
Interest spiked again after Netflix's documentary A Toxic Love Story introduced the saga to a wider audience. That film recounts how Anaheim police were convinced they had the right suspect, how threatening emails arrived from an account called Lilithistruth, and how dating sites and Craigslist were used to send men photos of Angela with her address and rape-fantasy instructions that said her fighting should be ignored. Angela was attacked in her home. The documentary shows why viewers should not rush to judgment once the framing was exposed.
For more stranger-than-fiction true crime, browse BlasterPost's Bizarre News & Florida Man coverage.
How can you watch Simply Diabolical for free?
The episode airs Friday, Aug. 21, at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT on NBC. New customers can watch live through DIRECTV's 5-day free trial on eligible packages that include local NBC stations in most markets.
Some guides also list Fubo free trials, though separate reporting on Aug. 21, 2026, cited an ongoing NBC-Fubo dispute that left DIRECTV as the clearest free-trial path that night. Peacock streams the episode the next day and does not offer a free trial for that library access.
The Michelle Hadley case matters because digital evidence and early police certainty put an innocent woman in jail for months. Dateline's Simply Diabolical returns that reversal to national TV as true-crime viewers rediscover the story through Netflix.