A Charming Grifter Goes Down Conning
Watch Dirty John online, hear the podcast, and read the stories
The story of John Meehan would have made a great Forensic Files episode.
The show always did an efficient job of sorting through the truths and lies con men incorporate into the life histories they present to their victims.
Unfortunately, the grand denouement for Meehan, a handsome 6-foot-2-inch ex-con posing as a hopelessly romantic doctor, didn’t happen until 2016, five years after Forensic Files stopped production.
If you’ve heard about the popularity of the Dirty John podcast but have never listened to it or read or watched anything else about the case, you might feel as though you’ve missed your chance, too.
But you haven’t — there’s still time to join the Dirty John party.
The story, first brought to mass audiences by the Los Angeles Times, has been keeping writers and producers of true-crime entertainment busy and probably will for years to come.
Here are a few options for getting some Dirty John into your life pronto:
• Dirty John (podcast that started it all).
LA Times journalist Christopher Goffard persuaded a wide array of people connected to John Meehan to give interviews for the six-part series, which has racked up 30 million downloads. First and foremost, there’s Debra Newell, the wealthy interior designer who married John two months after meeting him on OurTime.com. She believed his story about being an anesthesiologist who participated in Doctors Without Borders missions. In reality, he was a Mortal Kombat-playing gigolo with a string of restraining orders in his wake. Unbeknownst to Newell, his previous residences included an RV park and a Michigan prison. Newell, 59, found out the truth only after Meehan, 55, had burrowed deeply into her finances and started making threats, like the time he told her half-orphaned nephew, Shad, he deserved to be shot. Shad gave an interview for the podcast, as did Newell’s daughters. The producers even tracked down such far-flung associates as a classmate of Meehan’s from the University of Dayton, where Dirty John flunked out of law school.
How to listen: If you don’t want to download the podcast, you can listen to it on your computer via the link above (and read some of Goffard’s reporting on the case). Otherwise, you can get the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher (iOS or Android), iHeartRadio (iOS or Android) or TuneIn (iOS or Android).
• The True Story Behind Dirty John (article)
This People magazine piece starts with the story of Meehan’s first wife, Tonia, a nurse who discovered that the charismatic father of her two daughters had earned money via staged personal-accident lawsuits and dealing cocaine.
• Dirty John: The Dirty Truth (Oxygen TV documentary)
If you’ve listened to the podcast and want to see what the cast of characters looks like, you’ll enjoy this production. It’s packed with photographs and even has some old-time home-movie footage of John Meehan, who started out as a cute tyke and progressed to a popular school athlete before becoming a nurse who stole Versed and fentanyl from hospitals to feed his own habit. The link to the program on YouTube no longer works, but Oxygen is offering it online for cable subscribers for a limited time.
• Dirty John (Bravo TV miniseries)
After looking at John Meehan’s full record, Bravo decided it needed an eight-part dramatization based on the real events. The 2018 offering, starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana, got mixed but mostly favorable reviews. You can see the series on Netflix. Watching on Amazon costs $1.99 an episode (even if you’re a member). You can see previews on the Bravo site and then decide whether to take the plunge.
• A Complete Timeline of the Events of Dirty John (article)
Harper’s Bazaar ran this chronology of the real story behind the fictionalized miniseries on Bravo TV. It includes such milestones as the murder of Debra Newell’s sister in 1984, Meehan’s loss of his nursing license, and his attempted incineration of his wife’s Jaguar. It’s meant as a companion to the miniseries.
By the way, please don’t consider this post a spoiler. The sources above offer volumes more to discover about Dirty John and the lives he tried to ruin.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Thanks, Rebecca. He sounds like a ‘right one.’ The slight temptation in dramatisations of the bio’s of perps like him is to make it lighthearted: the so-called ‘rogue.’ I mustn’t pre-judge – but those involved in the lives of these nasty narcissists found nothing amusing…
One has less sympathy for the Ms Newells of this world, taking the very significant step of marrying someone they could hardly know (after eight weeks!) She certainly doesn’t deserve what she gets – but she is a fool, probably driven by both desperation (aged 59) and acquisitiveness (physician’s salary).
I was spellbound and horrified listening to the podcast when it first came out. I appreciate all the links you provided – I just finished reading the 6 part LA Times article which was unbelievably even more horrifying to read than the podcast.
I’ve been fascinated by con men ever since our country elected one. Please do some more stories of con men, RR!
Thanks — so glad you liked it! I’m big on con men and con women, too.
Would that be Clinton or Trump – one impeached, the other nearly?
Great synopsis of this tale! The story of John Meehan IS absolutely fascinating. I haven’t listened to the podcast, I have read Christopher Goffard’s series for the LA Times, and that’s an amazing read. It is a horrifying story, as Lilikoian says, but the writing is fabulous.
This is for Marcus: While I understand your feelings about Ms. Newell, you are quite off base on the money thing. I have watched the Oxygen special more than once, which is quite well done. She was a very successful businesswoman in her own right, she didn’t need the physician’s salary to keep up her lifestyle. HE wanted HER money, not the other way around. Her problem, sadly, was that she probably felt that she was nothing without a man. Watching the Oxygen special can be very frustrating, since she ignored red flags and warning signals all over the place. It’s clear to the viewer that she was in an extremely bad situation, but she kept giving him chances because she was convinced she loved him madly. Having said that, it is hard to be sympathetic with her because she put up with all manner of abuse so that she wouldn’t be alone. I always come away from watching this convinced that it is far better to take care of yourself on your own than be so desperate for companionship that you’d allow someone to abuse you six ways from Sunday. It’s a morality tale, for sure: as a forensic psychologist featured on the show put it, we need to be careful about who we let into our lives and how quickly we let our guard down in relationships.
Karen: Thanks: I’ll defer to your greater immersion in the case, as I’ve read very little. But if she wasn’t motivated by money it casts her judgement in a poorer light still, as foolish and desperate. In most life situations we pay – and should expect to pay – the price for our foolishness / bad judgment (which is absolutely not to suggest that those who prey on it aren’t absolutely wrong…)
Interesting, though, that she was a business/financial success but rather less astute in her ‘love life’: something I suspect is commoner than we might think (Joan Crawford in ‘Mildred Pierce’ comes to mind – a favourite film!)
Love ‘Mildred Pierce’ — smart in business, unwise in love.
Marcus: You nailed it. About Ms. Newell’s judgement and about adults having to pay the price for lousy choices. Toward the end of the documentary, Ms. Newell essentially makes the comment that she feels that she brought a horrible situation down onto her family, and of course the logical response is that she feels that way because, in fact, she did do that. I could completely run on in dime-store psychology style, but you do it better — Mildred Pierce is a great connection. (One of my favorite movies too.) Both seemingly smart women completely blinded by “love” for charming, good-looking schmucks who ran their lives into the ditch. And yes, sadly, it happens all too often.
I’m aware of MANY “Dirty Johns.” There is a website devoted to people who have been taken advantage of by “Dirty Johns” (or Dirty Janes- there are a few of them!). Visit lovefraud.com.
Patri: Indeed; FF features quite a few dirty/vicious Janes: the ones springing to mind are the poisoners. Antifreeze was used not just by the evil Stacey Castor (“Freeze Framed”) to kill, likely, two husbands horribly, but in a near identical case Lynn Turner (“Cold Hearted”) did the same with likely two husbands, also for insurance. Such cases are standouts because the victims suffered considerably and the Janes pretended concern and ministration while continuing slow poisoning in ‘favourite’ food/drink. Further parallel: both women died relatively young in prison for life sentences: Castor from natural causes, Turner by suicide.
I wonder if FF tried to be ‘anti-sexist’ by ensuring a goodly number of female killers? That might be hard, given that far more are men… but not necessarily many more men in the deceptively functioning, content, loving situations typically featured on FF… ’til forensics proved otherwise…
It was the Turner case, I understand, that elicited a law requiring bitter additive to antifreeze to make it detectable to taste.
Did anyone else notice how this story unfolded EXACTLY like the typical Lifetime movie! A long buildup of tension, drama,suspense,strange goings. A clear line between the good guys and the bad guy. Then (after the last set of commercials) the final showdown, the plot resolved, usually violent, and if the villian is male and the “good guys” female the woman will somehow improbably overpower the guy or perform some ridiculous sleight of hand magic to win the confrontation, finish off the baddie, and another happy ending!
It really lends itself to scriptwriting — very little embellishment required!