1 Clean Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series “Dirty John” | 3 In the last of three special episodes, Alexandra Cunningham, showrunner of the new Bravo series, offers insight into how she approached the writing of the show and its titular psychopath. Jeffrey Reiner, who directed all eight episodes, discusses the creative team’s ambition to transcend the conventions of a traditional thriller. Free View in iTunes 
 
 2 Clean Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series “Dirty John” | 2 In the second of three special episodes, Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights,” “Nashville”) talks about playing Debra Newell in the new Bravo series, and why the story feels timely. Julia Garner and Juno Temple, who play Newell’s daughters, discuss how they came to inhabit their roles, and the show’s production designer and costume designer share details of how they helped create the characters’ worlds. “Dirty John” premieres on Bravo at 10 p.m. on Sunday, November 25. You can also find the original LA Times series, plus 14 other pieces of narrative journalism, in a new collection called “Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders,” by Christopher Goffard, published by Simon & Schuster. Free View in iTunes 
 
 3 Clean Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series "Dirty John" | 1 In the first of three special episodes about the making of the Bravo limited series, Christopher Goffard talks with actor Eric Bana about his portrayal of John Meehan, and the parallels between actors and con-men. “Dirty John” premieres on Bravo at 10 p.m. on Sunday, November 25. LA Times Studios is participating as a producer on the Bravo series. You can also find the original LA Times series, plus 14 other pieces of narrative journalism, in a new collection called “Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders,” by Christopher Goffard, published by Simon & Schuster. Support us by supporting our sponsors! Squarespace - Need a professional looking website? Get started today at squarespace.com/dirtyjohn and use the offer code DirtyJohn at checkout for 10% off. Free View in iTunes 
 
 4 Explicit Introducing Dr. Death | 1 A year ago a listener of Dirty John emailed Wondery which produced Dirty John with the LA Times, with a tip about a surgeon. He said the surgeon appeared to have a lot in common with John Meehan. This is a story not just about a surgeon and the 33 patients he hurt, but about a system that failed to protect those patients at every possible turn. And It's the same system that supposed to protect you and me today. I hope you help us spread the word because it’s a story that everyone should listen to. Subscribe to Dr. Death on Apple Podcasts or visit www.wondery.com/drdeath Free View in iTunes 
 
 5 Clean Dirty John: Live at The Theatre at Ace Hotel | 7 In the months since “Dirty John” was released, more of John Meehan’s victims have told their stories. Carolina Miranda from the LA Times interviews Christopher Goffard, Debra and Terra Newell, and John Meehan’s first wife. Plus, a panel on coercive control and a special live performance by Tracy Bonham. Recorded live at the Ace Theatre. Thank you to our sponsors: Hunt A Killer - Get 10% your subscription when you use the code DIRTY JOHN at checkout when you visit www.huntakiller.com/dirtyjohn Quip - Get free shipping and your first refill pack free when you buy a toothbrush at www.getquip.com/dirtyjohn Free View in iTunes 
 
 6 Explicit Terra | 6 Jacquelyn and Terra Newell suspect that John has been watching them. When Jacquelyn tells her mother that he is in town, her mother believes she is mistaken. Jacquelyn warns Terra to carry her pocket knife. But Terra is preoccupied by a country-music concert, and she is watching for the wrong car. Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode: https://smarturl.it/dirtyjohn Do you like the music from Dirty John? To find out more, as well as find other podcasts to listen to, go to Wondery.com Free View in iTunes 
 
 7 Explicit Escape | 5 John finds a lawyer and plots to unleash a blizzard of lawsuits against his enemies, with the aim of proving to Debra that he is the victim, in case after case. The lawyer believes her life is in danger. As her painful isolation from her family deepens, she secretly plans her escape from the marriage. Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode: https://smarturl.it/dirtyjohn Do you like the music from Dirty John? To find out more, as well as find other podcasts to listen to, go to Wondery.com Free View in iTunes 
 
 8 Explicit Forgiveness | 4 Debra is in hiding, living out of hotels and disguising herself with a wig. Debra fears she will meet the fate of her sister Cindi, who was killed by her husband as she tried to escape a bad marriage. John has explanations for the accusations against him. He weeps and apologizes. Three decades earlier, that had helped Cindi’s killer walk out of prison. Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode: https://smarturl.it/dirtyjohn Do you like the music from Dirty John? To find out more, as well as find other podcasts to listen to, go to Wondery.com Free View in iTunes 
 
 9 Explicit Filthy | 3 Debra grapples with the question, “Who did I marry?” The story of John’s mysterious past unfolds through the eyes of his sisters, his law-school housemate, his ex-wife, and an Ohio cop who hunted him. The origins of John’s nickname are revealed. Bed-ridden in an Orange County hospital, he pleads with Debra to take him back. Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode: https://smarturl.it/dirtyjohn Do you like the music from Dirty John? To find out more, as well as find other podcasts to listen to, go to Wondery.com Free View in iTunes 
 
 10 Explicit Newlyweds | 2 After an intruder appears in John and Debra’s livingroom, John insists that they install security cameras. Debra begins to wonder whether he is spying on her. Her nephew, Shad, looks into John’s background and confronts him with what he finds. Debra’s vision of an idyllic marriage is shattered when she discovers a stash of paperwork in John’s home office. Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode: https://smarturl.it/dirtyjohn Do you like the music from Dirty John? To find out more, as well as find other podcasts to listen to, go to Wondery.com Free View in iTunes 
 
 11 Explicit The Real Thing | 1 Debra Newell, an interior designer in Southern California, meets John Meehan on an over-50 dating site. His profile looks exciting: Anesthesiologist, divorced, Christian. She falls in love fast. But her children dislike him and warn her that his stories don’t add up. A psychologist advises Debra to set firmer boundaries with her kids, saying she has a right to be happy. Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode: https://smarturl.it/dirtyjohn Do you like the music from Dirty John? To find out more, as well as find other podcasts to listen to, go to Wondery.com Free View in iTunes ||||| Their first date was at Houston’s, a restaurant in Irvine, where he opened the door for her and put her napkin on her lap. Candles flickered along the polished-mahogany bar; jazz drifted from speakers; conversation purred. 
 
 Debra Newell had taken pains to look good. Her cornsilk-blond hair fell in waves over her shoulders. High black Gucci heels, designer jeans, Chanel bag. At 59, married and divorced four times, she had begun to worry that she was too old for another chance at love. Her four kids were grown, she ran a flourishing interior design firm, and she was looking for a man to share her success with. 
 
 Houston’s, an eatery in Irvine, where Debra Newell and John Meehan had their first date. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 Her date was 55, 6 feet 2, with hard-jawed good looks and a gym-sculpted frame. He looked a little weathered, and he dressed lazily — shorts and an ill-matching preppy shirt — but he might have once been an All-American quarterback on a trading card. 
 
 His name was John Meehan. He had thick dark hair and a warm, friendly smile that invited trust. His eyes were hazel-green, with the quality of canceling out the whole of the world that wasn’t her, their current focus. 
 
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 It was October 2014. They had found each other on an over-50 dating site, and she thought his profile — Christian, divorced, physician — seemed safe. She had been on three other recent dates, but the men were less handsome than their profile photos, and the talk was dull. 
 
 John was different. He showed keen interest in the details of her life and business. He didn’t want to talk just about himself, even though his stories were riveting. He told her all about being an anesthesiologist in Iraq, where he’d just spent a year with Doctors Without Borders. 
 
 John told Debra he was the best thing that would ever happen to her. This is the first photograph of herself she sent to John. John told Debra he was the best thing that would ever happen to her. This is the first photograph of herself she sent to him. 
 
 He said he had a couple of kids. That he owned houses in Newport Beach and Palm Springs. That he happened to worship at her church, Mariners. That he would love to meet her grandkids. 
 
 And he told her that she stopped his heart, she was so beautiful. She was just his type. Her last serious boyfriend had wounded her, in parting, when he said she wasn’t. 
 
 John began caressing her back. She thought this was moving a little fast, but she decided to allow it. The intensity of his attention was flattering. 
 
 She brought John back to her penthouse, just up the block. They kissed. He wanted it to go further. “This feels incredible,” he said, stretching out on her bed. 
 
 She thought, “It’s just a mattress.” 
 
 She became uncomfortable. It turned into a fight. He just didn’t want to leave, and she had to insist. 
 
 She went to bed thinking, “Jerk.” 
 
 She thought, “Cross off another one.” 
 
 The next day she was back at her office, a little sad, trying to lose herself in work. Over the 30 years that she had built Ambrosia Interior Design, it had been her refuge amid many romantic disappointments. Work was the realm in which her success was unqualified. 
 
 She designed model homes and clubhouses. She liked to hire single women and mothers because she could remember how it felt to be alone, with one child and another on the way, after her first marriage broke up. 
 
 When people walked into one of her exquisitely arranged rooms, they were invited to imagine their futures in them. She called them “approachable dreams.” They were like glossy ads in upscale lifestyle magazines — purged of kids’ toys and dirty dishes and other real-world complications. 
 
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 In her big Irvine warehouse, among the vases and mirrors and other decorative bric-a-brac, stood shelves of color-coordinated hardback books — aqua, navy, gray, brown — because books made nice furniture in perfect homes. She hunted at weekend library sales. The titles didn’t matter, as long as they omitted the words “sex” and “death.” 
 
 Her perfect rooms were like the face you presented on dates, inviting people to fantasize about the piece that may complete their lives. If your eagerness or loneliness or desperation showed too soon, you were done. Maybe that had been John’s mistake. 
 
 That day he called to say he was sorry. He knew he’d overstepped. He just wanted to spend every minute with her. 
 
 By the second or third date, he was telling her he loved her, that he wanted to marry her. She didn’t mind his idiosyncrasies, like his habit of wearing his faded blue medical scrubs everywhere, even to a formal-dress cancer benefit she invited him to. Some people snickered, but she thought, “Busy doctor.” 
 
 Debra Newell and John Meehan attend a formal-dress cancer benefit in Orange County. He arrived in his faded blue medical scrubs. He seemed to wear them everywhere. 
 
 “So you are the real thing,” she texted him after one date. 
 
 “Best thing that will ever happen to you,” he replied. 
 
 He began spending the night regularly at her Irvine penthouse. Her 24-year-old daughter, Jacquelyn, who lived there with her, made it clear she thought he looked like a loser. Maybe even homeless. 
 
 She said she didn’t like the way his eyes roamed around the place, among their velvet chairs and jewelry and fine art. Or the way he seemed so curious about the contents of her safe, where she kept her collection of Birkin and Cartier bags. Get this creep out of here, she told her mom. 
 
 Jacquelyn’s reaction didn’t shock Debra, since her taste in men often exasperated her children. She thought they’d find something bad to say about anyone she dated. Her friends sometimes joked about her being a “bad picker.” Where other people saw red flags, she saw a parade. 
 
 Soon Debra and John were quietly looking for a place together. They found a $6,500-a-month house on the boardwalk on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. She put down a year in advance. He didn’t want his name on the lease. Tax problems, he said. They’d known each other five weeks. 
 
 Debra wasn’t about to tell her kids that John would be moving in with her. She knew what they’d say — that she was moving too fast, acting with her heart, repeating old mistakes. 
 
 What her kids didn’t see was how well he treated her. How he brought her coffee in the morning. Got her groceries. Took her Tesla and Range Rover in for maintenance. Carried her purse. 
 
 She was convinced that her kids would understand how wonderful he was once they got to know him. She thought that if any of her kids would give him a chance, it was Terra, her youngest. 
 
 Terra Newell, here with her then-boyfriend, Jimmy, was Debra’s youngest daughter. She felt protective of her mom and wondered why a guy who sounded as good as John would still be single. 
 
 The family’s quietest, most docile member liked to daydream about the end of the world. 
 
 At 23, Terra watched and rewatched every episode of “The Walking Dead.” She spoke of the series less as entertainment than as a primer on how to survive apocalyptic calamity. 
 
 She made careful note of why some characters lived and others perished. It had to do with vigilance and quick reflexes and the will to fight. “The world ends,” she would say, “and those who are fit to survive will survive.” 
 
 She was as nonconfrontational as her sister Jacquelyn was assertive. The first word people used to describe her was “sweet.” 
 
 She was living in Las Vegas with her boyfriend, Jimmy, and studying to be a dog groomer. She knew her mom liked to take care of people, and that she saw the best in men, at times against all evidence. Sometimes they pretended to be sincere churchgoing Christians. Terra had seen her scared, screamed at, hit, taken for money. 
 
 She felt protective of her mom and wondered why a guy who sounded as good as John would still be single. Her skepticism only deepened when she and Jimmy drove out to Southern California and met him. 
 
 John towered over her by a full foot, and a coldness came off him. He barely made eye contact. He cut her questions short. As he helped Debra move into her new house, he huffed and strained and wrestled her queen mattress down the stairs single-handedly, a show of ludicrous machismo. 
 
 Terra’s three dogs seemed anxious around John. She thought maybe they were picking up on her own unease. 
 
 She brooded on some questions. What kind of doctor had no car? Why had no one seen John’s houses in Newport Beach and Palm Springs? Why did he seem to spend all day playing “Call of Duty” on the 70-inch plasma TV her mom had bought? 
 
 Terra and her boyfriend moved into the spare bedroom of the new Balboa Island rental for a few days. This made it hard for Debra to maintain the illusion that John wasn’t really living there, though she tried. 
 
 Terra discovered the truth the day before Thanksgiving, when she opened a closet and found a nursing certificate bearing John’s name. Her mom said she was getting his certificates framed, but Terra knew, and she did something uncharacteristic. She confronted her loudly. 
 
 How could you let this guy talk to me like this?! 
 
 Here came John, instantly transformed by rage. Why was Terra snooping through his stuff? Why was she trying to steal Debra from him? Did she realize that kids should be smacked for this? 
 
 Terra screamed at her mother: “How could you let this guy talk to me like this?!” 
 
 Terra left, badly shaken, with the sickening feeling that her mother was choosing John over her. 
 
 “They’re jealous.” 
 
 That was John’s explanation for her kids’ hostility to him. They didn’t want her to be happy. They just wanted her dead, so they could collect. 
 
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 He had an explanation for why he had a nursing degree but called himself a doctor. He said he had a PhD, which earned him the title, plus advanced training in anesthesiology. 
 
 At the big Thanksgiving party the next day, it was impossible to ignore the sudden fissures in the family — impossible to ignore Terra’s absence. But others were willing to give John a chance. 
 
 Debra’s mother, Arlane, thought he dressed tackily, especially for Thanksgiving. But she made allowances for a busy professional. And he was so nice and courteous. “I think he’s a great guy,” she told Debra. 
 
 When Jacquelyn showed up, John asked for a private word with her. She announced that he was the devil, that anything he had to say he could say in public. 
 
 To John, this was more evidence that Debra’s kids were spoiled and out of control. His words tugged at her anxieties. 
 
 She wanted a professional’s objective advice. She found a therapist, who assessed the family dynamics and told Debra she needed to establish firmer boundaries with her children. 
 
 If they wanted to come over, they had to be invited. They couldn’t yell at her. They couldn’t try to run her life. 
 
 They couldn’t sabotage her happiness — she had a right to it, just like anybody else. If John was the man she had chosen, it was her business. 
 
 Absolutely, John said. 
 
 Their house on the boardwalk had floor-to-ceiling windows, and from the rooftop deck they could watch the sailboats and the great yachts slide over Newport Harbor. Water lapped against a ribbon of sand yards from their front door, and they could hear the tall, wind-rustled palms and the muted creaking of the boat docks. 
 
 They were living inside a postcard. They walked the island hand-in-hand. He doted on passing babies and dogs. He liked to play-wrestle her grandkids. He acted like a kid himself, vulnerable and sweet, and single-mindedly besotted with her. 
 
 Homes on Balboa Island, the neighborhood where Debra Newell and John Meehan shared a bayfront rental. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 He liked to pose shirtless and take selfies of his washboard abs. She smiled when he’d stop in front of a mirror and say, “Damn! I’m good-looking.” 
 
 Wardrobe-wise, she thought he was kind of a mess, with his baggy pants and University of Arizona sweatshirts. He said his clothes had been stolen while he was in Iraq. 
 
 “Dress me,” he told her. “I want to please you.” 
 
 She took him to Brooks Brothers. She bought him shoes, dress shirts, slacks, a tweed sport coat, form-fitting cashmere sweaters — deep burgundy, navy blue. He looked good in darker tones and pastels. It felt like having a new doll. 
 
 He kept begging her to marry him, and she kept resisting, until she couldn’t. In early December, she was driving to Vegas on business, and he was tagging along. Why not drop by the courthouse? 
 
 The ceremony was in a plain room with a plant-covered trellis. He chuckled a little as he tried to get the ring on her finger. They celebrated with lemon-drop martinis. They had known each other less than two months. No one had been invited to the wedding. 
 
 John had repeatedly begged her to marry him. In December 2014, while she was on a business trip in Las Vegas, they exchanged vows. 
 
 Debra would say, “I felt this was an opportunity to love again.” 
 
 She kept it a secret as the weeks passed and Christmas approached. The family planned to have their traditional Christmas get-together at the Orange County home of Debra’s eldest daughter, Nicole. 
 
 Jacquelyn refused to go. Terra was torn. She desperately wanted to spend the holiday with her little nieces and nephews, but she didn’t even want to look at John. 
 
 Terra went to a therapist with her mom. They came to an understanding that Terra and John would keep their distance during the party. 
 
 The day came, and John bustled in with his arms full of presents for the children — dozens of presents Debra had bought. The kids surrounded him. Terra began crying hysterically. It became a scene. 
 
 “You promised he wouldn’t hang out with the kids,” Terra told her mom. 
 
 I don’t like him. There’s something about him 
 
 Terra’s grandmother found her in the family room, trembling and crying. 
 
 “I just want to leave,” Terra said. “I don’t like him. There’s something about him.” 
 
 Terra knew what people were thinking: “There she goes again, being overemotional.” She was the youngest in the family, her parents split up when she was young, and she’d been looked after by nannies during the years her mom built her business. 
 
 She knew some people still thought of her as the little girl who needed attention. It was sometimes a fight to be taken seriously, and she would question the intensity of her own feelings. 
 
 In early 2015, Terra was back home in Vegas, with Jimmy and their dogs. Terra wasn’t talking to her mom. She just hoped John would go away. 
 
 Back in Orange County, Jacquelyn was thinking about John’s fingernails. They were dirty. 
 
 She had spent time around doctors, during the time she worked in sales for a plastic surgeon. Their nails were meticulously clipped and scrubbed. 
 
 Plus, the doctors she had known did not go everywhere in their scrubs, as John did. She thought he looked like a man wearing a costume. 
 
 Something else was wrong with John’s scrubs: the bottoms were frayed around the heels as if they belonged to a medical-office receptionist who ran errands in tennis shoes. 
 
 Other things unsettled Jacquelyn, like the slangy, misspelled texts she received from her mom’s number that were clearly not from her. And the way her mom kept calling to complain that money was missing from her wallet. Had Jacquelyn dropped by her office to borrow some? 
 
 Jacquelyn told her to think about the loser she was dating. She thought her mom, so nice and trusting and naive, had no idea who he was. 
 
 What if he hurts her? 
 
 Jacquelyn bought a magnetic tracker and put it on her mother’s Tesla to monitor John’s movements when he left the house. He said he traveled between clinics and operating rooms, doing anesthesiology work as needed, but who knew? Debra would not remember agreeing to the tracker, but Jacquelyn insisted she asked. 
 
 From her iPhone, Jacquelyn began studying the strange routes he took around Southern California, looking for patterns and clues. He went to doctors’ offices in Irvine and Mission Viejo and San Diego, a warehouse, a post office, fast-food joints, Tesla charging portals. 
 
 Jacquelyn knew she had to be careful about what she told her mom — it could get back to John. She didn’t want to be dismissed as a meddler. And none of what she found was necessarily incompatible with his story. These were fragments of a puzzle. 
 
 When she told Terra what she was doing, Terra asked, “What if he hurts her?” 
 
 In Debra Newell’s family, the question carried a freight of unspoken dread, because the worst had happened before. 
 
 In 1984, her older sister, Cindi, had been trying to escape a husband she described as controlling and possessive. One day he pressed a handgun against the back of her neck and pulled the trigger. 
 
 It was the reason Debra hated firearms. It was the reason she refused to have one around, long after people began warning her that she needed one. 
 
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 About Dirty John This series is based on multiple interviews with Debra Newell, Jacquelyn Newell, Terra Newell, Arlane Hart, Shad Vickers, Tonia Sells Bales, Karen Douvillier, Donna Meehan Stewart, investigators, attorneys and other sources. Christopher Goffard also reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, police reports, restraining orders and prison records, as well as text messages and emails. Learn more about the podcast. Times Community News reporter Hannah Fry contributed to this report. Contact the writer: Email, Twitter 
 
 Credits: Produced by Andrea Roberson ||||| Show Info: 
 
 Debra Newell is a successful interior designer. She meets John Meehan, a handsome man who seems to check all the boxes: attentive, available, just back from a year in Iraq with Doctors Without Borders. But her family doesn’t like John, and they get entangled in an increasingly complex web of love, deception, forgiveness, denial, and ultimately, survival. Reported and hosted by Christopher Goffard from the L.A. Times.Read more » 
 
 Debra Newell is a successful interior designer. She meets John Meehan, a handsome man who seems to check all the boxes: attentive, available, just back from a year in Iraq with Doctors Without Borders. But her family doesn’t like John, and they get entangled in an increasingly complex web of love, deception, forgiveness, denial, and ultimately, survival. Reported and hosted by Christopher Goffard from the L.A. Times.Read Less ||||| After church one Sunday, Debra Newell walked into the living room with her husband to find a woman she did not recognize. 
 
 The stranger sat trance-like before the big window that overlooked Newport Harbor, a thin, weathered woman in her late 30s or early 40s. She had just used the shower; her curly blond hair was wet. She was dressed all in white; she had taken Debra’s clothes. She held a tiny Bible and sipped Ovaltine. She acted like she belonged there, though she wouldn’t meet their eyes. 
 
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 John pushed her head onto the countertop and pulled her arms behind her back. He ordered Debra to leave the house and call the police. Debra didn’t want to press charges. She figured the woman was homeless, maybe a drug addict, and had climbed in through the third-floor skylight. 
 
 John denied knowing her, but Debra wondered. Had he said something to the woman before police took her away? Had he warned her not to reveal their connection? Had she been to the house before, and learned of its unlocked entrance? 
 
 John announced they needed to ramp up security. Even in a $6,500-a-month bayfront rental they couldn’t be too careful about drifters. Soon the home bristled with cameras that he monitored on his smartphone. He also insisted on cameras at the Irvine office of her interior design firm. He just wanted her to be safe. 
 
 Is he watching me? Debra wondered. 
 
 And she thought: I can watch him, too. 
 
 She didn’t know where he went all day, when he kissed her goodbye and disappeared in her Tesla. He never brought home a paycheck, but that was easily explained — as a freelance anesthesiologist who traveled between operating rooms, he was paid in cash by the uninsured. 
 
 One day, she pulled up the security footage and saw that John wasn’t going off to work like he said. She watched him leave the house in his blue scrubs, return a little later, climb into bed and go to sleep. 
 
 She debated whether to confront him. He could become so volatile when challenged, as he had with her children. 
 
 She decided to ask, but not in an accusatory tone that might upset him. Gently. 
 
 “The patient failed a treadmill test and they had to cancel the surgery,” John explained instantly, nonchalance itself. 
 
 She didn’t press him any further. Questions might puncture the dream. 
 
 Debra knew so little about her husband, beyond the way he made her feel. At 59, she’d never been happier with a man. 
 
 He ran her errands, the way her assistants usually did. Made sure her bills were paid. Sat beside her at doctors’ appointments. Brought her bouquets of peonies, her favorite flower. Held her all night, breathing against her neck, his weightlifter’s body draped over hers. 
 
 Debra Newell and John Meehan took a trip to San Francisco early in their relationship. (Photo provided by Debra Newell) 
 
 She wondered about the scars that crossed his abdomen and back, legs and ankles. He said he’d been in a chopper crash as a medic in the war zones of the Middle East, just before meeting her. He praised the accuracy of “American Sniper,” the film about a sharpshooter in Iraq. 
 
 During his time in the desert, he said, he had learned something about himself. Five or six times, he’d had to kill. It was easy, if you had to. 
 
 Ruthlessness was in his genes, he explained. He bragged that he was a blood relation of the notorious Mafia hit man who once ran Murder Inc. He didn’t show a violent side himself, except the time he grabbed the shirt of a homeless guy who said something rude to Debra on a Seattle street. John screamed in his face, and Debra had to pull him away. 
 
 He told her she made him a better man. They attended Mariners, an evangelical megachurch in Irvine, with modern worship music, keyboards and guitars. John always seemed excited to go. 
 
 He said he’d attended the church before he met her, though once he slipped up and called the pastor a priest. She thought it was because he’d been raised Catholic. 
 
 She watched him inject testosterone. He said this was for his kidneys. She watched him pop OxyContin. He said this was for his bad back. 
 
 Debra had been telling her nephew, Shad Vickers, all about the handsome doctor who seemed to live only for her, and when Shad met him he thought, “A good, fun guy.” He was impressed with John’s confidence and tales of battlefield derring-do. Most of all, he was glad to see his aunt happy. She’d been looking for so long. 
 
 Shad and Debra had always been close. For years he had thought of her as a second mother. Their bond was forged by a shared experience of unhealable horror. When Shad was a boy in 1984, as his parents were splitting up, his father shot his mother to death and went to prison. The victim was Cindi, Debra’s older sister. 
 
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 Debra treated Shad like one of her own kids. She brought him on family vacations. She paid for his football and track leagues, which gave the traumatized boy some focus and release. She gave him a job in her furniture warehouse. She stuck with him during the years his rage and confusion were at their worst, during the brawls and scrapes with the law. 
 
 Now he was a single father in his 40s with three daughters, gregarious and sweet-tempered, with a job at a trucking company, and he loved his aunt and hoped John would make her happy. Shad brought his kids over to the beachfront house, and John was great with them. 
 
 Shad knew some people in the family disliked John — Debra’s daughter Jacquelyn had sized him up as a con man and been especially vocal in her contempt — but he was willing to give him a chance. He tried not to judge people too soon. 
 
 Shad Vickers, Debra’s nephew, initially thought his aunt’s new husband was “a good, fun guy.” (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 He did have some questions. Like why had he come into Debra’s life with only a few old clothes? Why did he play video games all day long? Did doctors really jump out of helicopters with machine guns? 
 
 Then John said something that didn’t sit right. It was at Debra’s place in late February 2015, and John was making margaritas in the kitchen when Jacquelyn’s name came up. 
 
 “I could take her out from a thousand yards,” John said, and Shad would recall that Debra laughed, not taking it seriously. 
 
 Shad thought it wasn’t a thing to joke about, even if you’d been to a war zone and had a war zone sense of humor. It seemed kind of sick, actually. 
 
 He began to fear for his aunt. So when he got word that some of Debra’s kids had hired a private investigator to look into John’s past — when he learned that a preliminary report had come back — he wanted to know everything. 
 
 He studied the report. John had a bankruptcy. A nursing license, not a doctor’s license. Addresses in Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and across California, including a recent one at a trailer park in the desert of Riverside County. 
 
 His curiosity gnawing at him, Shad called the trailer park. A woman answered. Shad thought up a lie, saying his mother had married John Meehan, and could she tell him anything about him? The woman said John had lived there. They’d had a relationship. He had disappeared. She hung up. 
 
 There was another address linked to John Meehan: 550 N. Flower St. in Santa Ana. The Orange County jail. 
 
 Shad wanted to warn Debra without telling her too much. What if he was wrong? What if the man in the report was a different John Meehan? 
 
 Even if it was true, I wouldn′t care, because I love him 
 
 In early March 2015, Shad called Debra and reminded her that he’d lost his mom, and he didn’t want to lose her too. He said, “What if he isn’t who he says he is? What if he isn’t an anesthesiologist? What if I could prove to you he was in jail, and not Iraq?” 
 
 Her response would stay in his memory: “Even if it was true, I wouldn’t care, because I love him.” 
 
 And because she loved him, Debra relayed Shad’s remarks right to John. And John decided that Shad was his enemy. 
 
 “Why don’t you simply go away,” John texted him. “You’re not invited here. You come near and I call the cops. … Worry about your own miserable life and I’ll worry about Debbie, who is a lot closer to me than you can ever imagine. You won’t win this.” 
 
 Shad replied: “You told my grandma and I that you are a doctor. Prove it. You told my grandma and I that you own two properties. Prove it. Once you prove those two, you are good in my book.” 
 
 John: “I couldn’t give a s—- about being in your book.” 
 
 Shad said he hoped his aunt would open her eyes and dump him. 
 
 John: “Boy, are you in for a big surprise.” 
 
 Shad: “My mom is looking down on me making sure I don’t give up on her sister and making sure I know her sister [knows] the truth about your lying ass.” 
 
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 John: “Good thing your mom ain’t here. She’d be embarrassed.” 
 
 Shad: “It’s not a good thing. It’s not good at all.” 
 
 John: “You don’t have an aunt anymore. Get it? … I ain’t going nowhere and neither is she. Stay away from the house. Accidents do happen. Again, Deb wants nothing to do with you and if you were on fire I wouldn’t piss on you to help you out.” 
 
 Shad: “If I hear of you threatening my aunt or harming her, you will see me.” 
 
 John: “Please show up. … And she ain’t your aunt anymore. Just ask her.” 
 
 John got a lot nastier. He insulted Shad’s girlfriend and his little daughters. 
 
 John: “It isn’t about me or what I’ve done. It’s about you harassing her to the point where she fears for her life. … And by the way, we’re married. That makes your threat my threat.” 
 
 Shad: “I pray you’re not married.” 
 
 Now the whole family knew the secret. 
 
 Shad was a former football player, 5 feet 10, a burly 195 pounds. But John had 4 inches on Shad, and probably 25 pounds, and Shad had seen boxing gloves and a heavy punching bag in the garage. Shad thought John would be able to overpower him, if it came to that. 
 
 Shad wanted to warn his aunt about John without telling her too much. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 And there was a single-minded viciousness about John, a sense that he’d stop at nothing. For now, Shad decided to keep his distance. 
 
 The beginning of Debra’s own disillusionment came in the mailbox, in the form of a letter from the county jail. 
 
 It was addressed to John, from a former jail mate saying hi. Debra tore it open and began reading, there in the walkway. 
 
 She stood there frozen for a minute or two, trying to make sense of it, and then she looked up. John was rushing toward her. 
 
 She realized that he had been watching her on camera — that maybe he’d been watching her more than she realized. 
 
 He snatched the letter out of her hand. She asked him what this meant. She told him she thought he’d been lying to her. 
 
 He demanded to know why she was looking at his mail. Didn’t she know it was a felony? 
 
 John said his jailhouse correspondent was just a guy he was helping out — sending him care packages and a little money. He wouldn’t admit he’d been in jail himself. 
 
 The next day, when John left on one of his mysterious errands, Debra walked into the home office they shared and began hunting. John was messy, and his papers were scattered everywhere. 
 
 Who exactly had she married? 
 
 The answer, she learned with apprehension that crept up on her and then came in a flood, lay in piles of documents he had made no effort to hide. 
 
 They told a story of a former nurse anesthetist who became hooked on surgical painkillers and lost his career. Of a con man who took nasty pleasure in the mechanics of a dark craft he had mastered, and who seemed obsessed with humiliating anyone who defied his will. 
 
 Some of John’s prescription drugs. Debra had watched him pop OxyContin, which he said was for his bad back. (Photo provided by Debra Newell) 
 
 From 2005 to 2014 — from about the time he got out of prison in Michigan for drug theft to the time he met Debra Newell in California — he had seduced, swindled and terrorized multiple women, many of whom he had met on dating sites while posing as a doctor, court records showed. 
 
 “You are my project for years to come,” he wrote to a Porter Ranch woman after allegedly suggesting — in an anonymous letter — that he had raped her and taken photos while she was unconscious. 
 
 “This I promise. Do you think I joke? Every breath I take will be to ruin your surgically implanted life. Thanks for the pictures!” He described his planned campaign against her as “my masterpiece.” 
 
 In another case, according to court records, a 48-year-old Laguna Beach woman said she had been recovering from brain surgery at a San Diego hospital when she awoke to find Meehan standing over her bed. He said he was her anesthesiologist. 
 
 They dated. She said her family had millions. He suggested she transfer money into his account, to hide it from her estranged husband. She balked. He sent intimate photos of her to her family, and wrote: “You’re in way over your head on this one. Make it happen and I walk away. If not, I will be your nightmare.” 
 
 John Meehan served prison time on a conviction for stalking and being a felon in possession of a firearm. (Photo provided by the California Department of Corrections) 
 
 Police began investigating, and when they searched his Riverside County storage unit, they found a Colt .38 Special. Binoculars. GPS units. Ammunition. Heavy-duty cable ties. Syringes. A pocket saw. A bottle of cyanide powder. Eight cyanide capsules. 
 
 “A treacherous, cunning and very manipulative person who uses fear and intimidation as a means to control and coerce his victims,” police called him. 
 
 As John Meehan awaited trial in the Orange County jail in late 2013, an inmate reported that he was offering $10,000 each for the murders of two Laguna Beach detectives, plus five other potential witnesses against him, including several ex-girlfriends and his ex-wife. His philosophy: “With no witnesses, there is no trial.” 
 
 To the detectives, one of whom described him as “a ticking bomb, capable of unpredictable violence,” the threat felt real enough to request a restraining order. But the jail informant refused to be a witness, no charges were filed for murder solicitation, and the restraining order was denied. 
 
 Meehan pleaded guilty in February 2014 to stalking the Laguna Beach woman and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was out that summer, but jailed again for violating a restraining order against another woman he had threatened. 
 
 A ticking bomb, capable of unpredictable violence 
 
 He walked out on Oct. 8. He met Debra online two days later. By the time they married in December 2014, three separate women around Southern California had standing restraining orders against him; in recent years, at least three others had requested them. 
 
 “He threatened to leak nude pictures of me if I did not give him money,” wrote one woman. 
 
 “He was choking me, telling me if I tell the police anything else he’ll kill me,” wrote another. 
 
 “He told me once he was obsessed with me. And I am VERY afraid of him,” wrote a third. 
 
 Debra thought, “I am going to be killed like my sister.” 
 
 She took Ativan for her nerves and called a lawyer, who told her to cut her husband out of her will, so he would derive no profit from murdering her. 
 
 She knew she needed to get out of the Balboa Island house, even if she lost $50,000 she’d paid on the yearlong lease. She had some time to maneuver, since John had gone to Hoag Hospital for back trouble and — because of vague complications that necessitated painkillers — had checked himself in. 
 
 During a search of the Balboa Island home, Debra Newell and her family found a stack of paperwork in John’s possessions, including restraining orders from other women. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) 
 
 Her family helped her pack. In John’s possessions they found papers on which he’d scrawled gun names, codes, phone numbers, jail-inmate numbers, bank routing numbers. 
 
 He’d saved printouts from websites on which women posted warnings about scary and unfaithful men. Datingpsychos.com had devoted multiple pages to him: 
 
 He conned me out of money … He is very persuasive. Emotionally needy… slick liar… 
 
 He grabbed me by the throat … 
 
 Do not let this man into your life … 
 
 Don’t be fooled by his good looks and prince charming personality … 
 
 He is a parasite, a leech, an infection that festers on anyone he comes in contact with … 
 
 Trust your intuition, ladies. He is a pathologically rotten apple! 
 
 Stay away at all costs! 
 
 Classic psychopath… 
 
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 About Dirty John This series is based on multiple interviews with Debra Newell, Jacquelyn Newell, Terra Newell, Arlane Hart, Shad Vickers, Tonia Sells Bales, Karen Douvillier, Donna Meehan Stewart, investigators, attorneys and other sources. Christopher Goffard also reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, police reports, restraining orders and prison records, as well as text messages and emails. Learn more about the podcast. Times Community News reporter Hannah Fry contributed to this report. Contact the writer: Email, Twitter 
 
 Learn more What Dirty John reveals about domestic abuse 
 
 Credits: Produced by Andrea Roberson
– At 59, Debra Newell had found professional—but not romantic—success. Divorced four times, the Irvine, Calif., interior designer hadn't totally given up on love, and then it found her in a whirlwind. She met John Meehan via an online dating site in October 2014, and he seemed too good to be true: a 55-year-old anesthesiologist with washboard abs prone to obsessive flattery and so attentive he carried her purse for her. She spotted a few red flags—he wore tattered scrubs to a formal evening event—and her kids spotted far more: He called himself a doctor but had no car and dirty fingernails; he played Call of Duty constantly. And, unbeknownst to them, by that December he had married their mom. So begins a tale of "love, deception, forgiveness, denial, and ultimately, survival," told in six parts by Christopher Goffard for the Los Angeles Times (parts one and two out thus far). "Dirty John" recounts how, after knowing John just five weeks, Debra rented them a $6,500-a-month Newport Beach home. He later outfitted it in security cameras he could monitor from his phone, which is how he ended up spotting her opening a letter addressed to him from someone who said he spent time with John in county jail. He had an answer for it, as he did for everything, but while he was out, she began to chip away at the truth, as told by papers sitting in plain sight in their shared home office: Court records painted the picture of an alleged conman who had served time for drug theft and had a history of seducing and then taking advantage of women. He had met Debra two days after leaving jail after violating a restraining order. Printouts from DatingPsychos.com logged women's complaints about him. She began packing her things. Follow the story here or listen on iPhone or Android.