Every once in a while, a real story takes the Zeitgeist by storm. It leaves the world shocked at the possibilities of association of events possible for one person or group of people as the rest of the world lived their lives, forgetting the jaw-dropping series of events that occurred to others. people. Simply put, every once in a while we get a shocking reminder that the world is a big place and our corner is just a tiny fraction. One story that has recently achieved this effect is the real-life account of John Meehan, a sociopath and alleged con artist whose story became a national phenomenon in 2017 after Wondery and the Los Angeles Times launched a podcast titled ‘Dirty John’. .
The podcast, which was released in six episodes, tells the story of John Meehan, focusing on his life and exploits as a con artist and his relationship with Debra Newell. The story began like any other criminal story. A reporter, Christopher Goffard, was sent to cover a murder in Newport Beach. During his investigation, the deception and abuse John Meehan suffered came to light.
The popularity of the podcast rejected a limited number of The series on Bravo was downloaded more than 10 million times in 6 weeks and was number one on the iTunes podcast chart in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom for three weeks. So who is John Meehan, whose life took the world by storm? Read below to find out more.
Who is John Meehan from Dirty John in real life
John Meehan is a con artist who lived a life of scamming and grifting, he was born into a family with two sisters and a brother. When it comes to analyzing sociopaths, opinion is divided between nature and diet among psychologists as the true catalyst for mental disorder. If those in the nurturing corner are correct, John Meehan’s behavior is said to be the result of his parents’ divorce when he was a teenager.
No longer protected by his mother, John Meehan was left behind by his father who ran a series of scams, including a sleazy casino in San Jose, California. John Meehan was by no means a boring kid who didn’t know what was right, he was an intelligent, sociable being who was popular at Prospect High School. Seduced by the allure of his father’s lifestyle, he simply taught him to execute frivolous lawsuits and insurance scams.
Before John met Debra Newell and started a chain, he reportedly lived through more than 25 years of scams and crimes that landed him in jail multiple times. In the 1980s, at the start of one of his fights with the law, he was arrested for drug trafficking and banished from California.
He struggled to maintain a college admission, was bounced back and forth before settling on the University of Dayton Law School, after graduating from the University from Arizona in 1988. While in Dayton, he met Tonia, who was in her twenties, and they married. shortly after they met in 1990. With Tonia’s help, John enrolled in nursing school and earned his license as an anesthesiologist. The couple had two children but ten years into their relationship, John filed for divorce from Tonia in 2000.
The same year he filed for divorce, Tonia discovered he was stealing surgical anesthetics, selling them and using them. She reported the problem to the police and Meehan subsequently lost her job at the hospital. Two years after filing for divorce and getting caught as a thief, he pleaded guilty to stealing drugs. Bizarrely, he fled Ohio to escape from prison, but fell into his due addiction, getting caught in Saginaw, Michigan after resorting to surgical anesthetic. He was eventually sentenced to 17 months in prison.
After being released from prison, John Meehan was obviously not rehabilitated when he visited Match.com, the dating site looking for female victims, on the first night of his release. He would spend the next few years (2005 to 2014) seducing and scamming numerous women, most of whom he found online, posing as a doctor. He continued to scam multiple women until 2014 when he met Debra Newell.
The beginning of the end for John Meehan
Debra Newell is a wealthy Southern Californian Ambrosia Interior Design, a businesswoman who spent years building her business, moved to Nevada as Ambrosia Home Furniture & Decor. At the age of 59, when she met John Meehan, he was a single woman who had been married four times and had given birth to four children – a son and three daughters.
Having been seen as a good man and decentr in online interaction, Debra Newell accepted a date. They had their first date at a restaurant in Irvine, California at the time. John Meehan had claimed to be an anesthetist who worked in Iraq and worked for Doctors Without Borders. Despite suspicion and warnings from Debra’s daughters, Debra and John Meehan were married just two months after meeting and moving into a new home in Newport Beach in 2014.
After months of lingering suspicion from one of Debra’s daughters, Jacquelyn Newell, who went so far as to install a GPS tracking system in John’s car and hire a private investigator who searched his criminal record and his criminal record. Debra finally broke up with John Meehan in March 2016. As expected, Meehan took the news of the breakup to be terrible, even going so far as to harass and threaten Debra while setting her car on fire.
As part of the methodology of his scam, he filed for divorce, demanding half of Newell’s wealth. He had done the same with a female writer he had met before meeting Debra. He was a wealthy writer whom he had met at the hospital when he claimed to be an anesthesiologist. After the woman clung to her schemes, Meehan began a financial tussle with the woman, threatening to wreak havoc in her life. For this particular incident, he was arrested and pleaded guilty to criminal harassment, burglary and possession of a handgun as a convicted felon.
So when Debra caught on to the scam and was threatened, Meehan unveiled her perfected plan, divorcing her and threatening to extort money from her victim.
The death of John Meehan
Jacquelyn Newell has been described as having always been curious, questioning and rebellious; her sixth sense which alerted her to the fact that John Meehan did nothing right the first time she met her, also helped her alert one of her sisters, Terra, that John Meehan was in town and on the prowl. The alert and warning came in handy when John Meehan attacked her in the parking lot of her apartment complex.
Why he decided to attack her remains unknown but as Terra herself told her, he grabbed her from behind and whispered in her ear, “Do you remember me?”. Already aware of her presence in the city and prepared for a confrontation, she jumped into her defense state. He tried to push her into the trunk of a car, hitting her with a bag containing a knife. Unable to scream because he had his hand over her mouth, she bit her hand and pulled the knife out of her hand before grabbing it from the ground. She looked him in the eyes and stabbed him in the chest, forehead and eyes.
Police soon arrived on the scene and Meehan was taken to hospital. He was, however, pronounced dead four days later.
Everything You Need To Know About The Bravo Miniseries – Dirty John
As with every compelling story set in the world, Hollywood is making a live-action adaptation of the story by John Meehan and Debra Newell. The show is set to run for two seasons. Eric Bana will play hustler John Meehan, Debra Newell will play Connie Britton, Jacquelyn Newell will play Juno Temple. part of the show, Terra Newell is played by Julia Garner.
The show explores other aspects of the life of those involved in particular, Debra Newell, who was further investigated, revealed that she suffered the tragedy of losing her older sister from the following a shot fired by her husband, Billy Vickers. He killed his sister at close range and was only sentenced to two years in prison for intentional homicide. His conviction was furthered by Debra’s mother, Arlane Hart, a deeply religious Christian who testifies on Billy’s behalf after forgiving her daughter’s murder. Since the death of her sister, Debra takes care of her nephews, Shad and Shane. Arlane Hart and Shad Vickers are portrayed by Jean Smart and Kevin Zegers on the show, although Shad Vickers is nicknamed Toby Vickers on the show due to his reluctance to have his name featured on the show.