The Women & Dirty John

Speaker 1 Grand Canyon University is one of the largest universities in the country.

Speaker 1 Praised for its community and impact, GCU integrates a welcoming Christian worldview and open discourse into over 300 online programs.

Speaker 1 Redefine your online education through GCU's industry-driven, academically rigorous programs. In 2024, online students received over $161 million in institutional scholarships.
Find your purpose.

Speaker 1 Private, Christian, affordable. Discover available scholarships at gcu.edu/slash slash myoffer.

Speaker 3 It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year.

Speaker 3 Enjoy huge savings on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core ultra-processors and with built-in advanced features. It's the PC that helps you do more faster.

Speaker 3 Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support.

Speaker 3 They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC and make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com/slash deals.

Speaker 5 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 6 It was a whirlwind love affair. He was the total package.
A doctor, very intelligent.

Speaker 6 Maybe it was too good to be true. Did he love me or was this all a game?

Speaker 7 I had lots of suspicions.

Speaker 8 She thinks his fingernails are dirty and this does not look to her like the hands of an actual doctor.

Speaker 9 I started snooping and I found everything. His nickname was Dirty John.

Speaker 10 The story that became a hit series and podcast.

Speaker 8 This is Dirty John.

Speaker 11 It was the number one podcast in the country. Millions of people heard it.

Speaker 9 Yeah, people were fascinated by it.

Speaker 8 He had knives, he had camouflage duct tape. Some people have called it a murder kit.

Speaker 6 She was in a panic. She said, I saw John.
And I said, where? She goes outside in a car.

Speaker 12 There's no way he gets away with this unless he kills her.

Speaker 10 A dirty plot turning deadly, but not the way anyone predicted.

Speaker 13 I've never heard anybody scream like that before.

Speaker 12 The odds of this ending the way it did,

Speaker 12 it's almost impossible.

Speaker 14 I'm Lester Volt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 10 Here's Keith Morrison with The Women and Dirty John.

Speaker 16 In the beginning was desire.

Speaker 17 Natural human desire for connection, for love.

Speaker 20 And so she aimed her arrow at that online ocean of intimate strangers and found

Speaker 23 him.

Speaker 24 What do you need police fire or paramedics?

Speaker 25 I need our ambulance right away and the police.

Speaker 26 It was summertime when the awful climax came.

Speaker 14 A late afternoon, a marmalade sun beating down on the parking lot of a rental apartment complex in Newport Beach, California.

Speaker 33 That's when they heard it.

Speaker 24 She says this woman's just screaming. All right.

Speaker 17 Whole complex must have heard it.

Speaker 30 Terrified, howling, desperate.

Speaker 24 Is she okay?

Speaker 19 There was a man down there. They could see him.

Speaker 35 He had a knife.

Speaker 30 He was stabbing the screaming woman, and nobody was helping her.

Speaker 24 It's really bad. All right, I understand.
We have officers on the way.

Speaker 17 Too late.

Speaker 17 Too late.

Speaker 37 The bloody ending.

Speaker 32 But the story, the whole terrible tale, is much deeper than that one thing, dreadful though it was.

Speaker 15 A story Christopher Gofford of the Los Angeles Times spent months unraveling, strand by disturbing strand.

Speaker 8 It's a story about trust and betrayal and story about family.

Speaker 41 About a woman, two protective daughters, and what those daughters did when the man came into their mother's life

Speaker 2 before the death in the parking lot.

Speaker 42 Devil's got your boyfriend.

Speaker 43 He's got the one who's...

Speaker 8 Hi, I'm Christopher Gofford, reporter.

Speaker 29 The story became a podcast produced with the podcast network Wondering, the number one podcast in the country for a time.

Speaker 26 Voted by Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, and The Guardian is one of the best of 2017.

Speaker 45 Downloaded 28 million times in the first year of its release.

Speaker 2 The story and the man at the heart of it was called Dirty John.

Speaker 47 He was very creative, super manipulative, charismatic, handsome, charming, intelligent.

Speaker 12 He was a nightmare to everybody.

Speaker 18 But not to her. her.

Speaker 35 To Deborah Newell of Orange County, California, the man who presented himself on the dating website, Dr.

Speaker 18 John Meehan, anesthesiologist, looked very promising.

Speaker 6 He was the total package. A doctor, a very intelligent family man, loved his kids.

Speaker 42 Not that attracting men had ever been difficult for Deborah or any of the women in the family, according to her daughter, Tara.

Speaker 7 Men kind of

Speaker 7 flock to them.

Speaker 51 Really?

Speaker 52 What is it about the women of your family?

Speaker 7 Well, they have really great hearts, and they're

Speaker 7 pretty decent looking.

Speaker 3 Good women, happy, successful, attractive.

Speaker 6 I love those bar stools.

Speaker 14 Deborah owned a thriving interior design firm and a moving company.

Speaker 32 and a silk flowers business, had dozens of employees, certainly no money worries.

Speaker 19 But she was in her 50s, marriages behind her, and she was looking.

Speaker 50 Each potential mate carefully vetted by her watchful daughters.

Speaker 7 We were very judgmental of all the men that she dated.

Speaker 48 A little too judgmental?

Speaker 23 Maybe.

Speaker 7 Me and my sister could go over the top sometimes. Just very protective over my mom.

Speaker 30 But now Deborah wanted a romance just for her. On her terms.

Speaker 6 I had always done everything for my children, so I felt like it was me time.

Speaker 19 And this guy on the website was me time to a T.

Speaker 8 He's just back from a year in Iraq, where he's volunteered with Doctors Without Borders.

Speaker 2 He was charming, kind of old-fashioned.

Speaker 41 When he asked her out, he didn't just meet her somewhere or wait in his car.

Speaker 6 He insisted on coming upstairs to get me.

Speaker 6 So that's what a gentleman does. Yes.

Speaker 56 He took her to a fancy place for dinner and, all courtly manners, paid the not inconsiderable bill.

Speaker 41 On their second date, he arrived in medical scrubs.

Speaker 36 He'd come straight from an operation.

Speaker 15 And he was handsome and tall and very fit

Speaker 23 and very into her.

Speaker 6 He swept me off my feet, said everything right, took me everywhere that I wanted to go.

Speaker 56 Did you have that walking-on-air feeling that you get when you're calling?

Speaker 6 I did. I fell in love.

Speaker 7 She called me one day and told me that she met someone amazing and that she really liked this guy. She wanted me to meet him.

Speaker 32 But true to form, perhaps, Deborah's daughters reacted just as they often did to a new man in her life, especially Tara's sister.

Speaker 6 She didn't like him immediately. And I thought, oh, she'll eventually like him.
He's a lot of fun. He'll win her over.

Speaker 31 Deborah rented a house, part of her new start, in a picturesque part of Newport called Balboa Island.

Speaker 55 And she ran her business with a new lightness, and at night was loved by this accomplished doctor, this sensitive man.

Speaker 53 What did he do for you?

Speaker 6 Everything. From run errands for me to back rub every night, just would listen to my day.
We would take walks every night. He held my hand.
I mean, he was everything that you would want.

Speaker 11 Pinch yourself.

Speaker 30 You've got it finally.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Then, just before Thanksgiving, as Tara helped her mother move into the Balboa house.

Speaker 7 He started moving his stuff into.

Speaker 40 Tara didn't like it.

Speaker 21 Not a bit.

Speaker 56 She confronted her mother.

Speaker 7 I told her it looks fishy. I don't get it.
She told me I needed to mind my own business. And he came up behind her.
What did he say?

Speaker 7 He was saying that you're just trying to get your mom all to yourself. And I started screaming back at him.
No, John, that's what you are trying to do.

Speaker 40 The next day was Thanksgiving.

Speaker 16 And Deborah, quite fed up, told her suspicious daughters not to bother showing up for dinner.

Speaker 23 Neither one of you.

Speaker 7 Neither one of us.

Speaker 18 What was that like?

Speaker 7 Really hard.

Speaker 44 Hard for Deborah, too.

Speaker 40 But she needed her own life.

Speaker 30 She and John asked a counselor for advice.

Speaker 6 And the counselor suggested that I have rules for the girls.

Speaker 27 Boundaries.

Speaker 8 The therapist said, look, you have a right to be happy. This is your relationship.
And John's position was, this therapist is absolutely right.

Speaker 37 So Deborah weighed the options, listened to her family, or embrace what felt like the best thing to come along in years.

Speaker 31 She chose love,

Speaker 32 or what certainly felt like it.

Speaker 31 What's the old expression?

Speaker 11 Till death do us part.

Speaker 10 When we come back.

Speaker 10 The bond between mother and daughters, already fraying, might just break thanks to a startling decision by Deborah.

Speaker 6 I knew my family would be not very happy with me.

Speaker 61 The daughters fight back by doing some digging into John.

Speaker 7 She bought these trackers for cars and she put one on my mom's Tesla so she found out where John was going.

Speaker 49 Las Vegas, Nevada.

Speaker 28 The great glittering temples to gambling will happily take your money, of course, and perhaps you'll leave the city a little poorer.

Speaker 51 And if you want to bet your heart in Las Vegas, well, You can put that on the line too, if you're in a betting mood.

Speaker 42 And Deborah Newell was.

Speaker 6 I felt very adored and very loved and I thought, oh, well, if he's the love of my life, I'm ready.

Speaker 41 They'd been dating two months when she went to Vegas on business in December 2014.

Speaker 52 John Meehan went along and

Speaker 6 we went to a courthouse and just got married before a judge.

Speaker 62 Like that. Just like that.

Speaker 16 Married. Nobody there but them.

Speaker 41 And their secret, they decided, said Deborah, they wouldn't tell anyone.

Speaker 6 I knew my family would be not very happy with me.

Speaker 42 What did it feel like?

Speaker 6 Very mixed emotions. A little empty, knowing that they're not on board with this.

Speaker 30 But that's all on that one side. On the other side, there's this rush of happiness and good feeling.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 32 So Deborah's daughters, protective as usual, had no idea that their mother was a newlywed.

Speaker 41 The therapist Deborah had seen recommended she keep her relationship separate from her family.

Speaker 58 But of course, Christmas was coming.

Speaker 14 And there were very important family traditions, like the one where Tara would have her own special time with the nieces and nephews of her extended family.

Speaker 11 So they made a deal.

Speaker 17 John would stay in a different room while Tara had the kids to herself.

Speaker 6 She was going to be able to enjoy the kids, and he had to sort of stay away.

Speaker 63 Didn't work out so well.

Speaker 52 What actually happened?

Speaker 6 Well, he walked in with all the presents and of course the kids congregate all around him.

Speaker 7 He went straight up to them, he gave them the gifts.

Speaker 2 Like being Santa Claus or something.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean that kind of

Speaker 15 sort of role. Yeah.

Speaker 41 Did he do it on purpose?

Speaker 34 Of course, thought Tara.

Speaker 6 That made me so upset. Tara was very emotional.
I thought, just suck it up. You know, it's Christmas.
Have fun.

Speaker 30 Instead, she felt that that man had come and usurped

Speaker 6 something. Yes.

Speaker 41 He had not only stolen their Christmas, thought the daughters, but both of them worried he was stealing their too trusting mother, taking advantage of her.

Speaker 17 She just let him drive her car.

Speaker 17 But why would he need to?

Speaker 41 Wasn't he a prosperous doctor, an anesthesiologist?

Speaker 38 Couldn't he afford a car?

Speaker 29 Well, there was a reason, Deborah told them, that while John was in Iraq working with doctors without borders, he was robbed.

Speaker 6 His house, his clothes, his cars. He was working with an insurance company of getting the claim.
So I let him borrow my car.

Speaker 56 John would get all his money back soon enough, said Deborah.

Speaker 2 Didn't wash with Tara.

Speaker 41 Sounded like a shaggy dog tale.

Speaker 7 At that time, I had lots of suspicions.

Speaker 31 And that's when she and her sister decided to do some snooping.

Speaker 7 She bought these trackers for cars, and she went and put one on my mom's Tesla, so she found out where John was going.

Speaker 19 Where was he going?

Speaker 7 He was going to multiple doctors' offices.

Speaker 19 Not so unusual, perhaps, for an anesthesiologist.

Speaker 58 But the sisters noticed something.

Speaker 7 He was there for not that long of time.

Speaker 32 Not long enough to conduct any medical procedure, so what were those quick visits all about?

Speaker 35 Seemed more like a man trying to get access to something, like...

Speaker 39 Maybe drugs.

Speaker 2 It was just a hunch, but they went to Deborah with that, said, maybe he's an addict.

Speaker 56 And Deborah refused to entertain their wild suspicions.

Speaker 28 This is more like, stop interfering in my life?

Speaker 6 Somewhat, yes.

Speaker 6 But I'd fallen in love.

Speaker 30 Deborah's daughters were not about to be put off.

Speaker 8 One of her daughters is particularly suspicious. She doesn't know why he wears surgical scrubs everywhere.
It seems to be a costume he's wearing.

Speaker 8 She thinks his fingernails are dirty, and this does not look to her like the hands of an actual doctor.

Speaker 48 And so they started digging an investigation that would be halfway across the country to the depths of evil to an appointment with death.

Speaker 10 Coming up, troubling revelations about John.

Speaker 8 They learned that he was not a doctor.

Speaker 10 Discoveries that were about to go from disturbing to terrifying.

Speaker 47 I said, he's very, very dangerous.

Speaker 10 When dateline continues

Speaker 62 some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 62 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 62 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 62 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 66 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 43 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 69 Zen is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 71 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 72 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 70 Check out zinn.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 74 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 62 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 75 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy.

Speaker 62 Sriracha?

Speaker 75 Sounds pretty spicy to me. Um, a little spicy, but also tangy and sweet.
Maybe it's time to turn up the heat. Or turn it down.

Speaker 75 It's time for something that's not too spicy. Try Doritos Golden Sriracha.

Speaker 6 Spicy,

Speaker 75 but not too spicy.

Speaker 36 Tara Newell and Cash, her miniature Australian shepherd, were inseparable.

Speaker 7 He has unconditional love, and he wants to be there. No matter what.

Speaker 19 Tara went to cosmetology school, but chose to work with four-legged clients instead as a dog groomer.

Speaker 39 What do you like about dogs?

Speaker 7 I really like that they're innocent. They don't have any evil in them unless they were taught to have evil in them.

Speaker 56 And Tara was something of a student of evil. She was a fan of the TV show The Walking Dead.

Speaker 27 Zombies.

Speaker 35 She had a feeling that evil was lurking in the life of John Meehan.

Speaker 4 So did her sister.

Speaker 56 They knew he was hiding something, said reporter Christopher Gofford, and they were determined to find out what it was.

Speaker 8 They hired a private investigator to look into his past.

Speaker 57 Deborah, meanwhile, was in love.

Speaker 30 The newlyweds had settled into a simple life on Newport's Balboa Island.

Speaker 21 Deborah, convinced she'd found the perfect man, even when sometimes things didn't quite make sense.

Speaker 41 Like Like the time she picked up the mail and saw a strange return address on a letter to her husband.

Speaker 28 You opened a letter to him?

Speaker 6 Yes, I did. I was so curious.
And he was irate. That's fraud.
You know, I can't believe you did that.

Speaker 63 But what had caught her attention was that letter was from an inmate of the Orange County Jail.

Speaker 11 Did you read the letter?

Speaker 51 I did. What was in it?

Speaker 6 It was talking about how lucky he was that he had found love and that his life had turned around and I'm thinking life had turned around.

Speaker 23 Hmm.

Speaker 6 So I questioned him and he said that he writes and sends care packages to people in prison.

Speaker 60 Sounded plausible enough to Deborah, but not to the sisters.

Speaker 56 Especially not once their private investigator began reporting his findings on John Meehan.

Speaker 8 They learned that he was not a doctor. He was not an anesthesiologist.

Speaker 36 John had worked as a nurse anesthetist, but not recently.

Speaker 30 And he had certainly not been in Iraq with Doctors Without Borders.

Speaker 8 Instead, just before he met Deborah, they learned that one of his recent addresses was the Orange County Jail.

Speaker 30 John was not a sender of care packages.

Speaker 40 He had been an inmate.

Speaker 35 And then in March 2015, four months after John moved in with Deborah, the sisters snooped around the Balboa house and jackpot.

Speaker 28 They found a stash of paperwork John had left there.

Speaker 17 Legal documents, police reports.

Speaker 7 Reports that he stalked other women and that other women had restraining orders on him.

Speaker 27 John's papers outlined a long criminal history.

Speaker 48 multiple arrests and incarcerations, drug convictions, alarming stuff.

Speaker 8 And Deborah was hesitant to believe the stuff. She believed John.

Speaker 55 Even after her daughters told her what they'd found, Deborah went straight to John.

Speaker 27 And he said they had the wrong guy.

Speaker 6 He said, there's going to be allegations that other John Meehans did. And I thought, well, okay, you've got a point.

Speaker 56 John said he was a victim of mistaken identity in some cases.

Speaker 28 And in others, He was framed.

Speaker 6 And he said, I was set up. And I said, but you lied to me.
He goes, because I knew you would never date me if you knew the truth. And I said, you're right, I wouldn't have.

Speaker 41 Thing was, John was so sad, seemed so sincerely contrite.

Speaker 6 He started crying and crying and crying. And he said, please forgive me.
I love you so much. I can never live without you.

Speaker 41 And it was true that he made her feel like she was the only woman in the world.

Speaker 59 And when they were alone together, she felt truly loved.

Speaker 6 And I'm thinking, okay, 90% of me doesn't believe him, but there's that 10%

Speaker 6 that maybe he's right. And I'm going to throw away the person that I fell in love with without trying to work it through.

Speaker 32 And so she accepted his explanations and she forgave him. There's always a reason.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 31 In March 2015, soon after they found that stash of papers, Tara and her sister discovered their mother was married to the guy.

Speaker 18 That was it.

Speaker 59 They were fed up, refused after that to speak to her.

Speaker 50 This is a very big, bad problem in your life.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Just how big and how bad, they didn't know yet.

Speaker 22 But buried in that stash of John's papers was the name of someone who did.

Speaker 15 A detective way off in Ohio.

Speaker 56 One of the sisters picked up the phone, called him. What'd you think when you got her call?

Speaker 12 I said,

Speaker 47 he's very, very dangerous. You need to talk to your mother.
You need to have her call me.

Speaker 47 I will tell her everything.

Speaker 4 That is a strange and disturbing tale that begins with her.

Speaker 10 Coming up.

Speaker 10 Thousands of miles away, this woman also had questions about John.

Speaker 9 I started snooping. And I found everything.

Speaker 10 And when she spoke up, that's when things got really scary.

Speaker 77 Tanya, you enjoy your time left on this earth, okay?

Speaker 77 Because that's what it's going to come down to.

Speaker 36 Who was this man who'd stolen Deborah's heart, this John Meehan?

Speaker 26 Tanya Bales had no idea either when he stole her heart heart decades ago.

Speaker 9 He was playful, he was interested, engaging, smiley.

Speaker 56 It was the late 1980s. Tanya was a young nurse anesthetist in Dayton, Ohio.

Speaker 44 John was in law school there, until he met her, that is, and said he had a kind of epiphany.

Speaker 9 He said, you know, I'm not even sure I'll be happy being an attorney. I think I want to be a nurse anesthetist.

Speaker 9 And I think my jaw fell to the ground because I thought he was, you know, a second-year law student.

Speaker 26 In fact, he wasn't.

Speaker 39 He had been kicked out, though he didn't tell her that.

Speaker 77 All the days of my life, all the days of my life.

Speaker 26 So in her blissful ignorance, she married him in her family's church in 1990.

Speaker 61 And Mr. and Mrs.
John Megan.

Speaker 2 And she helped put him through nursing school.

Speaker 50 They had two daughters before things stopped adding up.

Speaker 9 And I found out that he was having an affair.

Speaker 56 Tanya wondered, what else did not know about her soon-to-be ex-husband?

Speaker 59 Like, why did he refuse to invite his family to their wedding?

Speaker 44 Why not let her even meet them?

Speaker 17 She decided to call his mother.

Speaker 9 I said to Lores, this is Tanya. I'm married to your son, John.
And the phone was quiet for a minute. And she said, oh, Tanya, I knew you'd call me someday.
Wow.

Speaker 9 And so then, of course, my heart was racing and my knees were shaking just to make the phone call. And then she just unloaded on me, you know, all the details of trouble in the past.

Speaker 27 According to his own mother, John had been cheating and stealing and lying for years.

Speaker 53 Even lied to Tanya about his age, lopped off five years.

Speaker 56 Oh, and he had been convicted of cocaine trafficking.

Speaker 9 She said, you know, is he still using drugs? And I said, what?

Speaker 19 So, in something like shock, Tanya became a sleuth.

Speaker 50 Who was this man?

Speaker 9 I started snooping and I found everything. It was under my nose all the time.

Speaker 40 Evidence of a criminal double life.

Speaker 57 And something else.

Speaker 9 A cedar box full of fentanyl and Versed and some other things that aren't controlled substances.

Speaker 41 She started watching that cedar box.

Speaker 9 And things did come and go. So now I thought.

Speaker 14 It's a stash. It's a stash.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 61 Was he using his position as a nurse to steal drugs?

Speaker 56 Like getting a ticket to be in the candy store all day long.

Speaker 9 Right. I mean, it's like putting an alcoholic as a bartender.

Speaker 59 She told the authorities she had to. It was the law.

Speaker 9 He had to be stopped. He was going to hurt patients.

Speaker 41 And on a dime.

Speaker 9 He turned on me. He flipped like a switch.

Speaker 58 Now, the man she once thought she knew turned scary, threatening.

Speaker 14 She began recording their phone conversations.

Speaker 77 Listen, Clay Tanya. I'm listening.
I got a big smile on my face, and you know why?

Speaker 77 Because it's going to get done.

Speaker 77 What's going to get done? You're not making any sense. Well, it don't happen.
You will understand when the time comes.

Speaker 77 And that's all I got to say. When it happens, Tanya, and you see it in your eye, you remember it was me, okay?

Speaker 77 Remember what, John? Keep that in mind. It was me.
Tanya, you enjoy your time left on this earth, okay?

Speaker 77 Because that's what it's going to come down to.

Speaker 16 He was arrested for making threats against Tanya in June 2001, was convicted of menacing, and put on probation.

Speaker 4 He wasn't the man she thought he was.

Speaker 65 That's exactly right.

Speaker 47 There was another version of John.

Speaker 50 Dennis Lucan was a police detective back then.

Speaker 45 He investigated the source of those drugs Tanya found in the cedar box.

Speaker 35 He started at John's house and found a gun.

Speaker 33 Illegal because John was on probation.

Speaker 19 So he was arrested again and sent to jail.

Speaker 47 When he went to Montgomery County Jail, I called a supervisor. I said, you've got an individual there, John Mehan, and he's going to try to con you out of drugs.

Speaker 65 He says he already has.

Speaker 47 He claimed he fell out of the top bunk and he got pain medication.

Speaker 41 You're dealing with an incorrigible person here.

Speaker 36 Yes, sir.

Speaker 47 You're dealing with an addict, a very smart, articulate addict.

Speaker 58 Eventually, thanks to Lucan, John did jail time for stealing drugs in Ohio and Michigan.

Speaker 63 And Tanya felt guilty, wondering if she'd missed warning signs, wondered what else John might have hidden from her.

Speaker 56 Never thought about the clue way back at the beginning on her wedding video.

Speaker 9 And the groomsmen, who'd had some drinks and had their arms around each other, and they're talking about how they met him. We're here to celebrate the John Mohammed.

Speaker 9 One of the groomsmen said, John Meehan's nickname is Filthy John Meehan.

Speaker 56 Filthy John, over the years, became Dirty John.

Speaker 40 And the nickname stuck.

Speaker 28 You found out later on, there was a story to that.

Speaker 9 Yes. He was basically conning little old women out of money for jobs that he didn't do, and also that he had a way with the ladies.

Speaker 41 Lucan discovered darker secrets as well.

Speaker 48 John supplied the opioids that killed his own addicted brother.

Speaker 2 He was alone with his sick father when the old man died rather suddenly.

Speaker 30 John wasn't charged in those cases, but there were others, said Lucan.

Speaker 41 And as the years went on, he developed a certain criminal specialty.

Speaker 47 He would go on dating websites. He would find women that usually had good financial backing.

Speaker 64 He always told people he was a doctor.

Speaker 36 He seemed like an ideal catch, I suppose, for a lot of these women.

Speaker 47 He was a true con man. He'd take their money, and when they would find out about him, John would threaten them.

Speaker 36 He would terrorize them.

Speaker 17 How bad was he?

Speaker 47 John was

Speaker 47 most dangerous, treacherous, manipulative, deceitful criminal that I'd investigated in four years of law enforcement.

Speaker 30 Once Tara learned about John's past, she was consumed with worry.

Speaker 15 I was

Speaker 7 very

Speaker 7 distraught at the time.

Speaker 30 Because this dangerous man was now married to a very successful businesswoman.

Speaker 27 who happened to be Tara's mother.

Speaker 6 You couldn't get enough of me.

Speaker 56 That's a good feeling.

Speaker 6 It is.

Speaker 65 The trickery of love.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 34 Trickery.

Speaker 58 But something far worse than that was coming soon.

Speaker 10 Coming up, one of Deborah's daughters is about to make an ominous discovery.

Speaker 6 She was in a panic. She said, I saw John.
And I said, where? She goes outside in a car.

Speaker 10 Are this terrified family's worst fears about to come true? When Dateline continues.

Speaker 62 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 62 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 62 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 62 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts.

Speaker 78 So, why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why my biz plan from Verizon Business is so perfect. Now, I can choose exactly what I want, and I only pay for what I need.

Speaker 76 Right now, with my biz plan, get our best price as low as $25 a line. Visit Verizon.com/slash business to get started today.

Speaker 79 New lines only, price per month with five plus lines.

Speaker 79 Includes autopay and pay for free billing and promotional discount, taxes, fees, economic adjustment charge, applicable add-ons prices, and terms apply.

Speaker 79 Guarantee applies to base monthly rate and stated discounts only. Add-on-prices additional.
Offers in January 5th, 2026.

Speaker 66 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 43 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 69 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 71 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 72 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 70 Check out Zen.com/slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 74 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
chemical.

Speaker 35 Deborah Newell had fallen in love with a con man.

Speaker 31 And when her daughter spoke with a detective who'd been investigating John Behan for years,

Speaker 47 says, this guy is bad news. You need to get your mother away from him.

Speaker 30 Deborah had bought a house near Las Las Vegas where John could live away from her family. She split her time between there and Orange County.
But the daughters went into rescue mode.

Speaker 63 One thing they found especially alarming was yet another police report about Dirty John, this one from just two years earlier and much closer to home.

Speaker 36 The police in Laguna Beach had arrested John Behan for stalking a woman, and they discovered he'd rented an office space.

Speaker 56 in which they found zip ties, cyanide, and two-loaded guns.

Speaker 3 What did all that say to you?

Speaker 7 He might be a killer, and she has to get out of this.

Speaker 14 Hashtag.

Speaker 9 Has to.

Speaker 56 John had an explanation, of course, even for that cyanide.

Speaker 8 He says he has multiple sclerosis and that he kept the capsules around in case he needed to kill himself if it got too painful for him.

Speaker 41 This time, however, John's story didn't ring true.

Speaker 30 Not even to Deborah.

Speaker 6 He still continued to treat me incredibly well, but he tried to isolate me from everyone.

Speaker 27 Especially your family.

Speaker 6 Especially my family.

Speaker 21 And now, chastened and afraid, she reconciled with her daughters and read everything they had uncovered about John Meehan's past.

Speaker 11 I assume by this time,

Speaker 42 you didn't feel in love with him anymore.

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 11 What did you feel?

Speaker 6 Confusion. I thought, how could this man fake it to this degree?

Speaker 6 Did he love me or was this all a game? And I realized I was his newest victim.

Speaker 36 In April 2016, 16 months after marrying John Meehan, she fled from the home they shared in Vegas back to Orange County.

Speaker 41 And from a safe distance, she filed for an annulment and soon discovered, just as Tanya Bales had discovered years before, that John could turn on a dime.

Speaker 19 He started by trying to ruin her reputation, sent weird, inappropriate emails to her colleagues or clients.

Speaker 11 Did he send photographs of you to anybody?

Speaker 6 He sent nude photos, yeah.

Speaker 23 That's a nightmare for any woman to be in. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 There are so many things that he did, but one of them, he burnt my car. He took it, stole it, and then set it on fire.

Speaker 68 Did he threaten you physically?

Speaker 6 Yes, but not in a direct way. He would say, boo, I know where you are.
It's not going to be for long.

Speaker 40 The same way he threatened Tanya.

Speaker 77 Tanya, you enjoy your time left on this earth, okay?

Speaker 77 Because that's what it's going to come down to.

Speaker 6 I went into hiding. I bought a dark wig, changed my clothes, got a rental car, stayed in different hotels.
I went everywhere that he wouldn't suspect.

Speaker 56 How long did that go on?

Speaker 6 Six months.

Speaker 15 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 36 Now, stories John had told her before she left played over and over in Deborah's worried mind.

Speaker 41 Disturbing stories.

Speaker 16 He'd told similar ones to Tanya years before.

Speaker 32 Stories about the mafia.

Speaker 9 If they want to get back at you, say you took money from them or something, they don't kill you.

Speaker 9 They kill someone you love because then you live in pain the rest of your life, knowing that your actions caused the death of a loved one and now you don't have them. I learned that from him.

Speaker 50 And the man Deborah once loved, she now feared.

Speaker 36 That had to be a very, very strange feeling.

Speaker 6 Very much, yes. Scared for my life.

Speaker 30 And not just her own life.

Speaker 7 i was afraid he would kill my mom i was also afraid he would kill me or my sister or someone after all they'd ruined all his plans in the summer of 2016 deborah began staying in secret with her other daughter hoping she was safe there

Speaker 6 and then it was the night of august 19th She came home and she was in a panic. She said, I saw John, I saw John.
And I said, where? She goes outside in a car

Speaker 35 watching them he was supposed to be in las vegas why was he back in orange county she didn't have to wait long to find out

Speaker 25 someone's been stabbed someone's been stabbed

Speaker 10 coming up

Speaker 10 the evil that had been gathering for almost two years explodes in broad daylight he's planned this out this was a revenge killing and the shattering end that would stun even the cops.

Speaker 41 August 20th, 2016, 5 p.m.

Speaker 16 A 14-year-old named Skylar Sepulveda was returning home from her junior lifeguard training when she heard a woman screaming.

Speaker 31 out of the parking lot of her Newport Beach apartment building.

Speaker 13 I've never heard anybody else scream like that before.

Speaker 60 Now, a lot of people would just dive under the covers and say, I hope that stops. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Once I found out what was going on, I knew what I had to do.

Speaker 59 She raced to the parking lot.

Speaker 22 Her mother called 911.

Speaker 24 She's like, Mommy, somebody's been eating somebody's treating. And then she saw this guy just raising his hand up and down, up and down.

Speaker 24 Okay, we have officers on the way with lights and sirens. So she said that she saw blood.
I don't know. Somebody yelled.
She's bleeding. She's bleeding.

Speaker 26 Skylar reached the parking lot, saw a man and a woman she didn't know.

Speaker 13 As I was running, I could see everything that was going on, so I saw him actually stab her.

Speaker 60 That woman being stabbed was Tara, who with her dog Cash had just stepped out of her car to find someone waiting.

Speaker 36 Dirty John.

Speaker 7 He said, do you remember me? He looked me right in the eyes.

Speaker 44 There was no pause, no time to think.

Speaker 41 Tara, sitting here talking about it, was still struggling with what happened, still visibly keeping an emotional distance, as if it happened to somebody else.

Speaker 7 He was trying to push me into the car. He actually had the trunk wide open.
Trunk.

Speaker 30 So he wanted you in the trunk of his car.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 19 John was 6'2 ⁇ , a foot taller than Tara.

Speaker 39 As he pushed her, he began hitting her with a bag, something hard in it.

Speaker 7 It just felt like I was getting punched over and over again.

Speaker 37 But it wasn't that.

Speaker 41 There was a knife in the bag, cutting her, slicing into her.

Speaker 7 And I put my arm up with my purse above my heart and I tried to get away from him and I was screaming. He put his hand over my mouth and I bit as hard as I could.

Speaker 4 Gosh, the dog barked furiously, bit into John's ankle.

Speaker 7 I got thrown down onto the ground somehow and I was just pedal kicking him trying to block the knife when he's

Speaker 7 stabbing me and I kicked the knife out of his hand and it landed on my right hand side.

Speaker 35 And then full of adrenaline she did something astonishing.

Speaker 7 I picked up the knife and I started just wailing on him and stabbing him and I pushed him down. I stabbed him at the top of his head and then the last time was in the eyeball.

Speaker 51 Did you aim for that?

Speaker 7 I did. That's the zombie kill.

Speaker 58 That show, The Walking Dead, her education for fighting evil.

Speaker 11 What did you understand from watching that show about how you deal with zombies?

Speaker 7 You have to kill them in the head.

Speaker 7 Like you have to kill their brain.

Speaker 31 The police arrived.

Speaker 41 Their dash cam video picked up Skylar, the junior lifeguard, leading a very shaken Tara to the curb.

Speaker 77 Right under the bottom of the bottom.

Speaker 55 Where, still terrified, she called her mother.

Speaker 55 I think I might have killed him. I'm sorry.
I knew.

Speaker 55 I knew this was going to happen.

Speaker 55 And then I saw you he was going to try to hurt. I don't know what's going on, Danny.

Speaker 6 She said, Mom, I just killed your husband. I'm so sorry.
And I'm thinking, what?

Speaker 59 Deborah raced over there.

Speaker 6 You could see police cars blocking it off, fire engines. It was crazy.
They wouldn't let you in. They said it was a crime scene.

Speaker 28 John Meehan never regained consciousness.

Speaker 37 And four days later, Dirty John was dead.

Speaker 41 Right after the attack, Newport Beach Detective Rick Henry found John's killer, Tara, at the hospital, her dog still guarding her.

Speaker 80 And she told me the whole story.

Speaker 2 The whole story is a pretty complicated mess.

Speaker 80 Yes.

Speaker 41 As doctors treated Tara's wounds, Detective Henry began investigating.

Speaker 20 And the whole family waited and worried.

Speaker 59 So what were you afraid of?

Speaker 6 Well, I didn't know if they would for sure know that it was him attacking her and it was self-defense.

Speaker 30 So you were afraid that they might charge her with something?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 56 There's a process the law must follow.

Speaker 60 Careful consideration.

Speaker 41 August became September, October, November. Deborah didn't know it, but the detective had discovered something in the trunk of John's car.

Speaker 80 We found found a backpack with numerous other knives inside. We found zip ties.
We found duct tape. We found his passport.

Speaker 12 It took some organization. It took thinking.
He's planned this out. This was a revenge killing.

Speaker 35 Matt Murphy, an Orange County Deputy District Attorney at the time, believed the evidence spoke for itself.

Speaker 12 There's an image of this young woman in the hospital with her dog sitting on her bed. Talk about a picture saying a thousand words.

Speaker 12 It screams out that this is an innocent woman who came very close to being murdered by a really bad guy and fought bravely and survived.

Speaker 59 The prosecutor said it was an easy decision. This was self-defense.

Speaker 17 Case closed.

Speaker 40 Did a feeling come with that?

Speaker 7 A sense of relief that it's like finally over.

Speaker 56 John Meehan's ex-wife, Tanya Bales, was working.

Speaker 40 when she got the news.

Speaker 34 Do you remember that moment?

Speaker 9 Oh yeah.

Speaker 9 It made me tremble. I was in the middle middle of the case and I just, it popped up on the screen as a notification John was killed.
By the time I took the patient out of the room, I was in tears.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 9 I wasn't in tears because he died. I was in tears because I had to tell his children.

Speaker 9 And that made me very sad to have to tell them. It was awful.

Speaker 41 Her daughters, 16 and 21 at the time, said they regretted not being able to show him how well they turned out in spite of him.

Speaker 31 And now, Deborah still struggles with guilt.

Speaker 6 I would have never,

Speaker 6 ever in my entire life put my kids a fear or put them in danger. That was the last thing on my mind is that he would be going after one of my kids.

Speaker 2 You feel lucky in a way?

Speaker 6 Oh, I feel very lucky. I believe Tara saved many lives.
Saved my life, saved many other victims.

Speaker 17 So what goes through your mind right now?

Speaker 56 Tara was diagnosed with PTSD.

Speaker 2 She still has some healing to do, but she returned with us to that parking lot.

Speaker 33 I don't want to poke and prod too much, but what happens inside your stomach when you're here?

Speaker 7 I just get a lot of anxiety. I just have flashbacks of me running down the ramp and just like going to

Speaker 7 the cement.

Speaker 60 She gamely showed us the spot where she looked death in the eye and struck back.

Speaker 40 This wasn't an easy thing to do.

Speaker 7 I'm just just taking it all in right now.

Speaker 51 I think you're a tough cookie, right?

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's what a lot of people say.

Speaker 7 I guess so.

Speaker 21 And dirty John Behan is an ever more distant memory now.

Speaker 29 His trail of victims safe from his terror.

Speaker 12 Thanks to a young woman and a little dog who fought for her life and won.

Speaker 10 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 10 9 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 10 Good night.

Speaker 66 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 68 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 69 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 71 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 72 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 70 Check out Zen.com/slash find to find Zinn at a store near you.

Speaker 74 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.