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
