28 Just deserts? The girl who stabbed her stepdad to death
It’s a real-life story that really is stranger than fiction. Here, best investigates the truth behind the latest box set sensation…
It’s a series that has got Netflix viewers hooked and the world talking. And it’s no wonder. The real-life story behind Dirty
John is a fascinatingly horrific one, with (spoiler alert) a gruesome ending.
Debra Newell could have been any one of us. Wealthy and divorced four times, at 59, she was looking for love online and was, so far, unimpressed with the men she met. Then, in October 2014, she arranged a date with John Meehan.
Although sloppily dressed, the 55-year-old oozed charm. He listened intently to everything she said, asked questions about her interior design business and told her he was an anaesthesiologist who’d served in Iraq. He was every inch the dashing doctor! Engaging, charming, clever...
Their relationship moved quickly, John wooing Debra at every step.
By their third date, John told Debra he’d fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her. Within five weeks, they’d moved into a $6,500 (£5,000)-per-month house on Balboa Island, in Newport Beach. Debra was so in love that she put down a year’s rent in advance.
She also didn’t mind John’s strange quirk of wearing his hospital scrubs everywhere, even to formal dinners – she found it endearing. She also chose to overlook the views of two of her daughters, Jacquelyn and Terra, who both had severe reservations about their mother’s new man. Jacquelyn, then 24, didn’t like his interest in their safe, while Terra, 23, wondered why a doctor would have no car, and spent so much time playing computer games. They both had loud confrontations with John, but Debra – blinded by love? – sided with him.
Swept up in her whirlwind romance, Debra agreed to marry John when he accompanied her on a work trip to Las Vegas in December 2014. They’d been together for less than two months, and no one else was invited to the wedding.
By now, sisters Jacquelyn and Terra were so concerned that they hired a private investigator to look into John’s background – and the results were worrying. He had been declared bankrupt, had registered at addresses all over America, and had a nurse’s, not a doctor’s, licence.
Yet Debra’s suspicions were only aroused when she found a letter to John from a former jail mate. Although he denied having been imprisoned, she searched his personal papers. They threw a whole new light on her dashing doctor.
John had indeed been a nurse anaesthetist – until he’d
become hooked on surgical painkillers and lost his career. From 2005, when he’d got out of prison in Michigan for drug theft, to 2014, when he met Debra, he’d seduced, swindled and terrorised multiple women. Detectives described him as a ‘ticking bomb, capable of unpredictable violence’. Three women had restraining orders against him, while at least another three had requested them.
He’d even saved printouts from the website DatingPsychos.com, where numerous women had posted about him. Do not let this man into your life… He is a parasite… stay away at all costs… he grabbed me by the throat.
He’d earned the nickname ‘Dirty John’ at the University of Dayton’s law school because of his womanising, Debra discovered. The nickname summarised his general behaviour – he took money for roofing jobs he didn’t complete, he rented a housemate a truck with no brakes, he applied for credit cards with fake names.
John had also been married before, to Tonia Sells, in November 1990. He lied to her about his age, even his name. When she finally discovered the truth, she also found a load of drugs he’d stolen from patients. She called the police in September 2000 and, although John pleaded guilty to felony drug theft, he fled the state of Ohio.
When he was finally caught by police, he was sentenced to up to six years in prison. Investigator Dennis Luken described him as ‘the most devious, dangerous, deceptive person I ever met’. Yet, he only served 17 months in all.
Even when Debra found out about his dangerous past and tried to break up with him, John talked her round. It was all a mistake, the nickname is a joke! Plus, he had multiple sclerosis – he needed her.
Debra’s family were stunned that she was standing by her man – and furious. And even Debra was worried. Her sister, Cindi, had been murdered by her husband, Billy Vickers. Debra didn’t want to suffer the same fate. She started hiding money and eventually, in March 2016, she decided that enough was enough.
When she tried to annul the marriage, John turned nasty. He posted naked pictures of her on her nephew’s Facebook page, threatened her and her family and accused her of assaulting him. Debra became so scared that she began living in hotels and wearing a wig.
The whole saga came to a terrifying conclusion on Saturday, 20 August 2016, when Debra’s daughter, Terra, returned home from her work at a Newport Beach dog kennel. John was waiting for her in the car park outside her apartment, with duct tape, cable ties and a set of kitchen knives. What the police would later call a ‘ kidnap kit’.
When John attacked her with one of his blades, the chances were Terra wasn’t going to come out of the fight alive. He was a foot taller than her, was armed, and had the element of surprise.
He probably didn’t expect 5ft 2in Terra to fight back, but fight back she did – so aggressively that she managed to knock the knife out of his hand. Luckily for her, it landed on the ground, just inches from her grasp.
Without thinking, she grabbed it and plunged down, again and again and again – 13 times in total. She stabbed John in his shoulder, his chest, his tricep. And, finally, into his left eye, through his brain.
After a neighbour had wrapped the wound Terra had sustained in a beach towel and called the police, Terra rang Debra, ‘I’m really, really sorry. I think I killed your husband.’
Yet, she hadn’t, not just then. It was only four days later, when John’s sister, Karen, turned off his life support machine, that the monster was finally dead. He was cremated with no memorial service.
When the news hit the papers, an ex-girlfriend called the police to get confirmation that he was dead. She wept with relief when they said yes.
It was decided that it was a clear case of self-defence on Terra’s part. ‘Ninety-nine times out of 100, the nice person is the one that is dead,’ said prosecutor Matt Murphy. ‘But, every once in a while, good guys win.’
He earned his nickname due to his womanising