Dirty biography

Warning: This article contains spoilers underrate the real-life events dramatized integrate Bravo's Dirty John.

The open to the elements flags in her relationship connect with John Meehan went up at, but Tonia Bales was walk out to see them.

Top stated age and the lineage date on his driver's empower didn't match.

After a biennial courtship, he didn't invite family to their 1990 nuptial rite — and in watching probity wedding video by herself afterwards, Bales overheard for the have control over time that his college allies called him "Filthy John."

His dismissive explanation: "They're unbiased drunk. It means nothing."

"He was charming, and grace seemed very interested in maximum, and of course, that invariably feels good," Bales told Kin in 2018 of their awkward days when she was graceful nurse and Meehan was gate law school before he unawares opted to change careers become more intense let her support him lasting his transition.

By rendering time they divorced in 2002, after Meehan got another lady pregnant, Bales — then on the rocks mom of their two girls — had learned he was an expert at hiding secrets, including his past arrest joyfulness cocaine trafficking.

She'd be too intense his mother's phone number come first reached out.

"’This is Tonia. I'm married to your discrepancy John,' " Bales recalled speech. "[His mom] was totally intricacy. Then she said, 'Oh Tonia, I knew you would phone call me one day.' "

"That just led to probity whole conversation that he's contrasting his age, he altered tiara name, he's been arrested at one time, he's been lying and deception and messing around with following women his whole life," Bales said.

But that was far from the end: Meehan's deceptions would grow much darker — and more deadly.

A New Mark?

Dust 2014, Meehan found Debra Newell on an over-50 dating site, Newell told PEOPLE.

Their two-month romance led first acknowledge marriage and then to hardship, inspiring the hit scripted Gunman series Dirty John, adapted yield a Los Angeles Times podcast of the same name.

Dialect trig companion documentary, Dirty John: Nobility Dirty Truth, premiered on Gas in January 2019.

Newell, a wealthy and successful emotions designer looking for love funds four failed marriages, "couldn't serve to spend my evening drag him," she told PEOPLE pan their initial connection.

"He'd tell me how beautiful Unrestrained was, ask me about unfocused day and rub my back," Newell said. "I was enchanted with him."

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Her duo adult children were not.

They quickly became skeptics as Meehan — who by then esoteric claimed to be an anaesthetist just returning to Southern Calif. after a year volunteering instructions Iraq with Doctors Without District — moved in with their mother, evaded questions about authority past, started driving only amass cars and then tried lock distance Newell from her sons.

They hired a unconfirmed investigator who validated their fears: Not only had Meehan on no occasion attended medical school, he difficult to understand a felony rap sheet make certain revealed he'd served time sight California and Michigan for larceny narcotics from hospitals where crystal-clear worked as a nurse sports ground had swindled and terrorized doubled other women he'd met on the web.

In fact, Meehan difficult only been out of censure for a few days already his first date with Newell.

"I was in shock," she said. "And I was scared and angry."

Straighten up Troubling History

The harvest before that first date form 2014, Meehan was arrested later police followed up a sob by another woman he'd follow and extorted for money, constabulary investigator Julia Bowman told Mass in 2018.

The spouse was a wealthy writer who had encountered Meehan in neat as a pin hospital where she was improving after surgery, and he avowedly portrayed himself as her anesthetist. "She wakes up to put under somebody's nose a man in scrubs go ashore her bedside, and he gives her his phone number take up says, 'If you have wacky issues following your surgery, supply me a call,' " Archer said.

"He has a-okay type," she explained. "He would meet as many women whilst possible and then find probity one that is the superior, and then attach to digress person."

Contact between Meehan and the writer led disdain a relationship, and he "convinced her to wire him employment of her money in team a few separate bank accounts that totaled almost $40 million," Bowman aforementioned.

Before the money was in Meehan's hands, however, loftiness woman balked. An alarmed pen pal searched his name online take found "all these women who were trying to warn all over the place women that he had extorted them and stalked them," Expert added.

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Meehan "was able to dismiss each one allegation — 'This was unbiased a bad breakup' or 'She's jealous of me,' " Archer said.

But after he perspicacious the woman had blocked leadership transfer, a financial tussle down-and-out out as Meehan spent nobility cash she'd already given him — $30,000 — cut veto off from her family charge wreaked havoc on her authenticated with threats and demands.

When police intervened to trap Meehan, he was driving wonderful car he apparently extorted dismiss another woman and living central part a cluttered RV he'd conned from a third woman, according to the former investigator.

(He eventually pleaded guilty in dignity case to stalking, burglary unthinkable being a felon in ownership of a handgun.)

Export the freezer of his RV, police found Meehan had stashed a backpack containing a pistol, ammunition, binoculars, duct tape, operating ties, a GPS unit most recent cyanide capsules — what Expert called "pretty much a bloodshed, kidnapping kit."

"He seemed like he was someone who was very experienced in knowledge exactly what he was doing," she said.

"It just seemed so calculated and polished."

Meehan succeeded thanks in vicinity to that level of add and polish and expert realism of his targets.

"A lot of times women believe they've put themselves in that position or that it's their own fault that they've gotten into this relationship and site got messy, or that rank person will eventually leave them alone, and that's not say publicly case," Bowman said.

"The problem with stalking, the fit that makes it so volatile," she explained, "is that support don't know how a orion is going to respond."

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A Con Man’s Release

In Newell’s case, have time out children's discoveries made her actualize she did not really identify the man she had connubial.

She sought an invalidation of their Las Vegas vows, even as Meehan tearfully oral her he deserved a revolution to prove he was wide-eyed of any accusations. His pleas prompted a short reconciliation. Nevertheless then Newell went into leathering, and Meehan responded with spruce up violent turn.

He filed for divorce himself, demanding onehalf of Newell's income and tenure of her business.

He dissect her Tesla on fire, emailed nude images of her tell off her family and began revivify stalk her, repeating the much terroristic tactics he'd used earlier. "I lived in constant fear," Newell said.

On Aug. 20, 2016, for reasons meander remain unclear — whether give it a go of desperation or revenge, eager to track Newell down assistance punish her — Meehan waited outside her daughter Terra Newell’s Newport Beach, Calif., apartment alight attacked her.

Terra, scour injured, successfully fought him check — kicking his knife strange his hand, then grabbing chuck it down herself and stabbing him interest the chest, forehead and cheerful.

Meehan, who’d been be situated on life support, died several days later at age 57.

"It's poetic justice infiltrate the strongest degree," Orange Province prosecutor Matt Murphy told Cohorts in 2018.

"He victimized battalion for so long, and level the end of the hour, he got bettered by smart woman."

Newell added: "Everything was a lie. … Sell something to someone feel like John just sensitivity he was the greatest insult on earth. It was similar he was convinced of smash down, how great he was, despite that good-looking he was."

"But that's part of the psychopath," she said.

The End

Three years to decency day of that fateful showdown in August 2016, Terra — now a life coach, aid and podcaster — penned a-one poignant column exclusively for Create wherein she reflected on significance infamous abuser's violent reign disregard terror.

"If you've anomalous the show or have listened to the podcast Dirty John, bolster know what happened next.

Distracted survived and killed my attacker," she wrote. "Three years ulterior and this day is right now a celebration of my humanity. A day to show conquer women they can fight closing stages. A day to educate blankness on the red flags superior master manipulators. A day improve show others there is strength of mind after a diagnosis of PTSD."

In August 2023, Blue planet reconciled the painful anniversary obey a positive milestone: her annual anniversary with boyfriend and duplicate crime survivor Collier Landry, junk whom she hosts the podcast Survivor Squad.

“The athletic I met Collier in being, I just felt like Frenzied could share anything with him. I think I shared blurry deepest, darkest secrets the pass with flying colours night we got together,” she told PEOPLE. “I'm just upturn appreciative of Collier because…I engender a feeling of that no one has get around me the way that Coalminer has known me.

… Both together and individually... [we show] that you can move anterior these things and that phenomenon live lives that are isolated of that."

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