A narcissistic psychopath, John Meehan conned women out of countless thousands by acting
the part of the perfect partner.
You might have watched the TV show starring Eric Bana, but here's what you need to know
about the real Dirty John.
It's always tempting to blame a wayward adult's misbehavior on their parents, and sometimes
enough damage gets done in the formative years to produce a monster.
According to John Meehan's sisters, that's exactly what happened.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, they claimed that their father, William Meehan,
mentored his son in criminality.
Daily lessons in deceit reportedly included con artistry, from insurance scams to trumped-up
lawsuits and other fraud.
William Meehan reportedly instilled in his son a calculating mentality to destroy those who wronged you.
While John Meehan attended high school, his parents separated, igniting rage in the young man.
But John kept up appearances.
At Prospect High School in Saratoga, California, he received good grades, played sports, and
had no trouble in the lady department.
"Hey.
How you doin'?"
At the University of Arizona, Meehan received a bachelor's degree in 1988.
He also honed the skill of fraudulent lawsuits, jumping in front of moving cars and putting
glass in his fast-food order to help him extort the owner.
He even dabbled in cocaine, got arrested, and snitched on a friend for a plea deal.
People started calling him "Dirty John" or "Filthy John" at the University of Dayton
School of Law in Ohio, after Meehan bragged about luring women to his college apartment.
And it seemed that no-one was safe from his cons.
New credit cards bearing pseudonyms filled his mailbox.
However, in his second year, Meehan dropped out of law school.
By 1990, John Meehan had resurfaced in Ohio and was cultivating his next con: marriage.
Meehan's victim was a 25-year-old nurse anesthetist named Tonia Sells.
And unbeknownst to Sells, Meehan had lied about everything.
At the time, he went by Johnathan rather than John, and lied about his age, claiming to
be 26 rather than 31.
He described his parents as addicts who would ruin their wedding if invited.
But Meehan couldn't keep every skeleton in the closet.
A handful of law school classmates attended the nuptials, and the nickname "Dirty John" slipped out.
According to the Los Angeles Times, when asked to elaborate about it, they offered the same response,
"It cannot be divulged on camera."
Sells and Meehan had two daughters, Emily and Abby, and John reportedly appeared to be a devoted father.
In other words, Sells had no reason to question their veracity.
John Meehan and Tonia Sells appeared to be a happy marriage for a decade, until out of
the blue, John demanded a divorce, with no explanation and little history of tension in the relationship.
It would seem that Meehan had gotten all he wanted from the relationship.
In the 12 years they were together, Sells put her husband through nursing school.
She even urged him to go into her area of specialization, anesthesiology, an act she would come to regret.
Once Meehan completed his education and gained a firm career footing, he excised Sells and
their daughters from his life.
Blindsided by the divorce, Tonia Sells wanted answers.
In July 2000, she called her mother-in-law, Dolores Meehan, for the first time.
The conversation began with Dolores Meehan saying,
"I always knew you would call me."
As her mother-in-law rattled on about John Meehan's actual age, name, and criminal history,
the nickname Dirty John finally clicked.
Shaken to the core, Sells realized that the last 12 years of her life were based on lies.
After hanging up, Sells scoured their home, and on her husband's side of the closet, found
high-powered prescriptions stolen from vulnerable patients.
Sells contacted the cops, and her report launched a full investigation resulting in John's termination
from Good Samaritan Hospital.
In retaliation, he left threatening messages on Sells' phone.
She recorded the most ominous one for authorities, in which he said,
"When it happens, Tonia, and you see it in your eyes, remember it was me, OK?
[...] Tonia, you enjoy your time left on this earth, OK?
Because that's what it's gonna come down to."
After Sells turned the recording over to authorities, Meehan received a suspended sentence for menacing,
finally leaving her alone.
Drug task force investigator Dennis Luken of the Warren County Sheriff's Department
looked into rumored drug thefts by the nurse anesthetist at multiple hospitals.
Over the next year and a half, authorities stockpiled evidence against John Meehan, and
one of his colleagues even turned him in for bringing a firearm into an operating room at Good Samaritan Hospital.
Police officers seized a loaded handgun and 45 empty medicine bottles from Meehan's house.
Luken even stumbled across email exchanges between John Meehan and his brother, Daniel.
In the messages, John discussed sending various drugs to his brother and provided detailed
instructions on how to use them.
Daniel Meehan died from a drug overdose on September 4, 2000, in Santa Cruz County, California, at 44.
Luken didn't have enough evidence for a criminal conviction related to Daniel Meehan's death.
But by 2002, he charged John with felony drug theft, pressuring the con man into a guilty plea.
The disgraced nurse anesthetist got stripped of his medical licenses in each state where he worked.
Rather than turning himself in to authorities, John Meehan made a run for it.
Police apprehended him in a Michigan hotel room, semi-conscious with a stolen anesthesia kit.
While getting rushed to the hospital by ambulance, Meehan jumped from the moving vehicle.
He disappeared into a nearby department store, stolen drugs from the ambulance in hand.
Squeezing into a cargo elevator shaft, he attempted to disappear.
However, officers spotted his footprint on the roof of the elevator.
While attempting to handcuff him, a police officer got kicked in the face by the fleeing criminal.
But agents eventually managed to pull him from the cargo elevator.
In the process, Meehan knocked himself unconscious.
Meehan spent 17 months in a Michigan clink.
After leaving prison in 2004, John Meehan's sister Donna paid off his child support debt
and saved his home from foreclosure.
She got the yard landscaped and the interior cleaned.
She even put a shiny new credit card in his hands.
However, Dirty John proved set in his ways, and Donna caught her brother victim-browsing
Match.com within 24 hours of his release.
When she asked him to leave, he refused.
John hired a lawyer to go after Donna and even threatened to kill her, per Refinery 29.
In a desperate effort to escape her brother, Donna went to court, securing a monetary court
judgment and a restraining order, which thankfully did the trick.
Before they went their separate ways, things took a much darker path in 1997, when their
father, William Meehan, lay dying of cancer in a Southern California hospice.
John reportedly grew more impatient by the minute, as according to Donna, he wanted an insurance payout.
The first time she briefly left her father alone with her brother, it proved his last.
Dead within moments, Donna had a sneaking suspicion her brother had something to do with it.
She hypothesizes that he injected a fatal dose of morphine into William Meehan's IV line.
Nevertheless, Stewart could never prove it.
John Meehan had a long list of victims.
The Los Angeles Times reports that when Meehan met his next wife, Debra Newell, three ex-girlfriends
had standing restraining orders against him, and three more had requests in.
He threatened to send explicit photos of one woman, from Porter Ranch, California, to her family.
Another victim recalled how Meehan posed as her anesthesiologist, looming over her hospital
bed as she awakened groggily from brain surgery.
Coercing her into a relationship, he played the charming suitor role to a tee, until he
suggested she deposit money into his bank account.
When she realized what was happening, Dirty John sent compromising photos of the woman to her loved ones.
But his long-term objectives appear far more sinister.
Officers investigating charges of harassment and stalking seized ammunition, a gun, a pocket
saw, cable ties, cyanide capsules, and binoculars from his house.
"Do you like scary movies?"
"Uh huh."
Meehan pled guilty to possession of a firearm as a felon, as well as stalking and extortion charges.
He headed briefly to prison in 2013.
Based on his investigation of John Meehan, Dennis Luken told the Los Angeles Times,
"[Dirty John was] [t]he most devious, dangerous, deceptive person I've ever met."
As Meehan's behavior grew increasingly menacing, desperate, and unpredictable, he lashed out
at anyone within striking range.
By 2013, while serving time in prison, he went after the female detective handling his
case, Julia Bowman of Orange County, California.
In an interview with People, Bowman recalled,
"He put [a] hit out on me.
Once he knew my name and recognized me as one of his targets, I never felt safe."
Meehan set the reward at a whopping $10,000 to kill Bowman and another female officer
that had crossed his path.
Trying to figure out what motivated John Meehan proves both fascinating and terrifying.
In June 2012, he crafted a letter to a friend, in which Meehan excused his past indiscretions,
shared experiences in prison to garner sympathy, and asked for help in regaining his nursing license.
Throughout the letter, Meehan argued that he was the victim of everything that had happened
to him, an astonishing claim for a man who exploited, manipulated, and damaged so many lives.
This skewed perspective suggested narcissistic personality disorder.
According to Psych Central,
"People high in narcissism may see themselves as victims of interpersonal transgressions
more often than people not living with the disorder."
Clearly, he knew how to use the victim card, had a convenient excuse for everything, and
kept a long list of grievances.
Meehan changed little over the next handful of years, although he became hardened by the
revolving door of prison.
When he met Debra Newell in October 2014, he'd been out of prison for just two days.
But he immediately reverted to old ways.
With a new and affluent victim in his sights, John Meehan moved in for what would prove
to be his final con.
He met Debra Newell, a successful SoCal interior decorator, via an online dating site.
Claiming to be an anesthesiologist with Doctors Without Borders, Meehan transformed into Newell's
perfect lover, executing coercive control.
Laura Richards, a criminal behavior analyst, noted per Oxygen,
"You're talking about a grown adult female that is being almost undone psychologically
so that they lose their sense of self, what they love, what they like doing, their very essence of being."
Following a whirlwind romance and a quickie marriage, the terror truly began.
"I decided that I had it all.
Except love."
Meehan learned the psychological ins and outs of his new wife, filing away her vulnerabilities for future use.
Newell eventually became suspicious of Meehan and decided to leave.
According to Richards,
"She knew that if he found her, he would probably kill her."
Reflecting back, Newell now realizes Meehan was too good to be true, and she recognizes
that his constant acts of devotion provided a way to control her.
As for what helped her come to this realization, Newell reflected on the 1984 murder of her
sister, Cindi Vickers, by her husband, Billy Vickers.
Newell noticed similarities between Meehan's increasingly controlling behavior and that
of her former brother-in-law.
The thought of ending up like her sister proved too much for Newell, and after more than a
year together, she decided to escape.
Losing control of Debra Newell pushed John Meehan over the edge.
He attempted to kidnap his stepdaughter, Terra Newell, at knifepoint in a car park.
But Terra fought back as he ambushed her from behind, biting his hand, and struggling free.
Meehan stabbed her multiple times with a knife hidden in a Del Taco bag.
Fortunately, Newell's obsession with the "Walking Dead" reportedly kicked in.
After tumbling to the ground, Newell kicked Meehan repeatedly with thick rain boots until
the knife slipped out of his hand.
Remarkably, it landed just inches from her.
Grabbing the weapon, she transformed into a zombie killer, stabbing Dirty John 13 times.
In an interview with ABC News, she explains,
"The last one was in the eye because that's the softest point of entry so I wanted to
kill his brain [...] like a zombie, essentially."
She still suffers from PTSD, but her heroic actions stopped a malevolent madman.
Dirty John finally met his match.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
That's 1-800-662-4357.