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We’ve got big things planned for this week, so stayed tuned. If you’re just finding us, catch up on the fascinating cases we’ve explored thus far.
The Fake Stalker — Anaheim, California, 2016.
A 29-year-old grad student named Michelle Hadley was arrested in Orange County and charged with stalking, criminal threats, attempted rape, and assault. The charges added up to a potential life sentence.
Her ex-fiancé Ian Diaz was a Deputy U.S. Marshal.
His new wife Angela was a lawyer pregnant with twins. For months, someone had been sending Angela threatening emails. Posting rape fantasy ads on Craigslist with their address. And one June night, Angela stumbled out of the garage saying a stranger had just attacked her.
Michelle had motive. She and Ian had bought the condo together. She’d paid the down payment. She was still on the title.
When detectives traced the IP addresses behind the threatening emails — the call was coming from inside the house. The emails were being sent from inside Angela’s own condo.
That’s when investigators turned the lens around.
Angela Diaz wasn’t a lawyer. She’d never passed the bar. The twin pregnancy was fabricated — the ultrasounds were $7.50 on Etsy.
Security footage showed no one entered the garage the night of the attack. Angela had bruised herself, torn her own clothes, and let an innocent woman sit in jail for it.
She was sentenced to 5 years.
In 2023, federal investigators convicted Ian Diaz of perjury, cyberstalking, obstruction, and conspiracy. He got 10 years in federal prison — twice as long as his wife.
Michelle got the condo.
A federal agent and his wife built a fake case against an innocent woman, and an entire police department ran with it for months. Have we done enough to reckon with how easily people in power are believed — and how rarely they’re held accountable when they’re wrong?
@bycoopermoll and I get into the story of The Fake Stalker this week on @thebingecrimescene
#truecrime #scam #truecrimestory
The Fake Stalker case, 2016. A pregnant lawyer was being terrorized by her husband’s deranged ex-fiancée. Almost none of that sentence was true.
The ludicrousness of this week’s crime is outmatched only by the injustice that it caused its victim.
This week on @thebingecrimescene , @bycoopermoll and I dig into the case of the “Fake Stalker”. #truecrime #scam #truecrimecommunity
Things she packed for the murder:
– Duct tape
– Pine-Sol
– Garbage bags
– One (1) potato
This week on @thebingecrimescene@bycoopermoll and I get into the story of “The Evil Twin”.
On August 28th, 2003, Brian Wells drove his beat-up Geo Metro to the end of a dirt road in Erie, Pennsylvania to deliver two pizzas.
We don’t know exactly what happened at that transmission tower at the end of the road. What we know is what came after.
Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank at 2:30 in the afternoon with a crude metal collar bomb locked around his neck and a homemade shotgun cane in his hand. He handed a teller a handwritten note demanding $250,000 and warning that if anyone called the police the bomb would go off.
Within minutes police had him on the ground. He sat on the curb in the parking lot and begged them to help him. “It’s going to go off,” he said. “I’m not lying.”
Three minutes before the bomb squad arrived — the collar detonated.
Brian Wells was blasted onto his back. There was a giant gash in his chest. He died a few minutes later. The news cameras were already there. All of it was captured on live television.
What investigators eventually pieced together — through years of interviews, confessions, and testimony — was a criminal conspiracy so convoluted it almost defies belief. At the center of it was a 54-year-old woman named Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong. Before 2003 she had already been connected to five suspicious deaths of men in her life. She’d shot and killed a boyfriend in 1984 and been acquitted on self-defense. Her husband died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1992 with questions remaining. Each death was treated as a separate incident. Nobody connected the dots.
Marjorie needed money. Specifically $250,000 — the exact amount she’d promised a man named Kenneth Barnes to kill her father for his inheritance. To get that money she devised a plan to rob a bank. She needed someone to walk in there. Someone gentle. Someone gullible.
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was ultimately convicted in 2010 on all three counts — armed bank robbery, conspiracy, and using a destructive device in a crime of violence. She died in prison in 2018.
Brian Wells died on a parking lot curb in Erie, Pennsylvania begging police to save him.
Does that sound like a criminal, or perhaps, the victim of his own crime?
We’ve been busy in our first month on @thebingecrimescene
From cold cases to murder-conspiracies, to family dramas and bizarre bank heists, each week we’re digging into a fascinating crime story and asking big questions.
So join us.
What’s your favorite case so far? What should we cover next?
Zankou Chicken Murders — Los Angeles, California, 2003. This week’s case on Crime Scene is a mortifying tale of the American dream gone awry.
Mardiros Iskendarian drove to his mother’s house. He put on a silk suit he hadn’t worn in years. He sent his son away on an errand.
And after it was over — the coroner found no salt beneath his eyes.
There were no signs of tears 👀.
Full episode is out now. Link in bio.
How do you solve a murder in a town where everyone has a secret?
Oak Grove, Kentucky, 1994. Two women murdered in a brothel. Everyone has secrets, and they're all connected.
Out tomorrow. Watch and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
#CrimeScene #TrueCrime #OakGrove #KentuckyMurders #BrothelSecrets #Mystery #Investigation #UnforgettableCrimes
I stand accused 🙋♂️😆
This is a story that has stayed with me. As a parent I continue to wonder what I would do in Kent’s situation. Could I forgive my son for trying to kill me?
This week on @thebingecrimescene we explore the story of The Sugar Land Murders.
#truecrimecommunity #crime #truecrimepodcast #texas
How do you forgive the unforgiveable?
In "The Sugar Land Murders," out now, Jonathan and Cooper grapple with this very question.
#TrueCrime #CrimeScene #CrimeandPunishment #SugarLandMurders
