Original subtitles

- [Operator] Newport Beach 911. - [Woman] I need a ambulance

right away, someone's been stabbed.

- It's a girl. - Do you see blood?

- Yes.

I felt like I caused this.

This is the last thing I ever wanted to happen.

[dramatic music]

I'm a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

I wrote the series "Dirty John" and the podcast.

There are life-and-death stakes in this story.

I met John online.

He made me feel wonderful.

It was the best feeling in the world.

His profile said that he was single, a doctor.

Everything you want to see in a man.

-John was very attractive. Very, very charming.

[Reporter] Many women were terrorized.

John Meehan was a serial predator.

He went from victim to victim.

Took what he could and found a new one.

[young lady] I knew he was trying

to hurt my mom, hurt my family.

I hated John.

[woman] He broke me in half.

I was a good person.

Hi, Mom!

He's going to turn on you and destroy your life.

♪

John is the most dangerous, devious individual

that I ever prosecuted.

- We arrested him,

and inside the backpack he had a revolver,

hundreds of rounds of ammo.

I knew that John was capable of murder.

- One of the lessons of this story

is that monsters don't always look like monsters.

[woman screams]

♪

[mellow music]

♪

- In 2014, I was single,

having a good time.

Successful, full life...

with family, friends, and work.

I'm a interior designer.

I've been doing it 35 years.

I love what I do...

and I felt like I had

this one thing missing...

and it was love.

Companionship.

I realized I just wanted

to be loved.

I think the older you get...

there are less available men

that are healthy

and happy and successful.

♪

I met John online.

One thing about John's profile

that I recall is that everything

I was looking for in a man seemed to be

in his profile.

I wanted a man that went to church,

someone that was

into his family,

successful, intelligent.

I'm looking at this thinking,

"John's a great catch.

"He's a doctor, he's...

seemed so genuine."

[man] What Debra Newell didn't know was that

John Meehan was a serial predator.

He went from victim to victim,

took what he could, and found a new one.

He would terrorize them.

[suspenseful music]

I haven't had the best luck...

in the love department.

I am very protective of my mom in general.

The guys that she was married to before

took complete advantage of her.

Debra Newell had had a bad break-up

with a prior boyfriend, she was feeling vulnerable.

And John seemed like the complete package.

Monsters don't always look like monsters.

He looked like a doctor out of casting central,

so if you're going to impersonate a doctor

it helps to look like you belong on the cast

of "Grey's Anatomy."

That's one of the reasons he was so dangerous.

- Our first date,

John talked about

all his success,

his family.

A very, very charming...

intelligent man.

He asked me a lot of questions about my life.

It was almost surreal.

I'm thinking, "Hmm, I really like this guy."

We ended up walking back to my home.

He went straight to my bedroom and laid on my bed.

I just looked at him and I said, "Oh, no.

Uh-uh. You need to leave."

And I said, "That's not who I am."

He was very persistent.

Kept saying, "Just let me lay here a little bit longer."

Well, I was quite disappointed.

The next day John calls me,

asks for my forgiveness.

I forgave him.

Said, "Let's start over,"

uh, "let's go on another date."

The first few weeks of dating were fantastic.

He was doing everything right.

He would always hold my hand,

and we would walk and talk,

sometimes for hours.

He would tell me how beautiful I was,

I'm his soul mate.

I enjoyed being romanced.

It was a little bit of a whirlwind,

where he had pulled me in

to where I couldn't go backwards.

I was so convinced that John was the real thing.

The way he treated me,

the way he looked in my eyes,

the way he listened.

- My mom seemed very happy,

but I wanted her to look out

for the red flags.

And it was all happening so fast.

My sister had suspicions way before I did.

- During the reporting of the story I, uh, reached out

to, uh, Debra's daughter, Jacquelyn,

who was initially hesitant to talk to me.

She was a very private person.

- When I first met John Meehan, his scrubs were torn.

I thought that he was a fake.

I just had a very bad feeling about him.

I think my kids are very protective of me.

That I see the best in everyone.

- We're a very close family,

we're all looking out after each other.

- John and I started dating

the beginning of October...

and by the end of November he had basically

moved in with me.

I had found this perfect home in Balboa

thinking this would be a good start.

I had fallen in love with John

and I wanted to get to know him.

He never talked about his family.

That's what was really odd.

♪

[Goffard] John grew up in the San Jose area,

and most of what I know about that period of his life

I learned from his sisters.

John had a father who romanticized

the gangster lifestyle and the gangster ethos

and brought John up to believe that if someone crossed you,

you went after them twice as hard.

If they wronged you, you broke their legs.

[children laughing]

- John told me that

his whole family was dead,

so he was all alone except for his kids.

- John Meehan lied constantly about his family.

He did have, uh, two sisters who are alive in California,

and he had turned on them ferociously,

in the way that he eventually turned on everybody.

He was a good athlete.

He played basketball in high school.

Good-looking, charming,

and learned at a very young age

to be manipulative.

That seemed to be his shortcut to getting his way in life.

[man] I was John Meehan's best friend

from 1974...

to 1985.

John was pretty studious, very smart.

Always had books in his hand,

along with a basketball.

John never invited me over to his house.

We didn't talk about his family that much.

[Goffard] His father and mother had a bad break-up

when John was in high school.

The divorce had a devastating effect

on the family, and I think John Meehan

always blamed his mother

for the erosion of the family.

And that was the beginning of his journey

toward the dark side.

- John just came up to me and he said,

"We can make so much money

doing this gigolo thing."

We would have sex with older women,

and we'd make all this money.

Couple hundred bucks a pop.

Back then, that was a lot of money.

John was always trying to make a quick buck.

Besides the other women he was seeing,

he had a steady girlfriend.

- I met John Meehan when I was 20 years old

working in a bank in Los Gatos, California.

John told me he was a student at Stanford and was working

as a surgical tech.

John was very attractive, very, very charming.

I believe John knew I was young, naive,

and probably a little gullible.

He would tell me he didn't want to be away from me,

that he didn't want to spend time apart.

I was very flattered by the attention from John.

I just fell in love with him.

♪

- When I was living with John, he was always in scrubs--

all the time, like 24/7.

He was trying to get into medical school,

and it was very expensive.

He started to dabble into drug sales.

Cocaine.

Then he started selling large amounts.

- We'd go to dinner, his beeper would go off,

we'd leave.

We'd go to the movies, his beeper would go off,

we'd leave.

- He started getting real big.

He started bragging about how he was cutting

the coke, and it was like half the grade it was

when he got it.

He saw green.

It was money, money, money.

All hours of the night people were coming over.

3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning.

I saw a change in John.

♪

One day John called me up

and he goes, "You think you can set me up

with my partners with some coke?"

And it was for three kilos.

You know, and I was dumb.

I was not--I wasn't the big dealer like him.

And I said, "Okay, yeah, yeah.

I got some guys."

I went and set it up.

That night the coke was brought in.

We were partying, young and dumb,

and the door just came-- a hole through it.

[man] Police!

- They say, "We're ATF. Hit the floor."

I was scared [bleep].

They put pillow cases on everybody's head

and they took 'em to different departments

so no one would know who the snitch was.

I knew who the snitch was.

I knew it was John.

♪

[Joe Loeffler ] John and I set up

a coke deal,

and it was for three kilos.

Coke was brought in

and the door just came-- a hole through it.

[man] Police!

The people in the restaurant were all ATF agents.

Supposedly the largest bust

in Santa Clara history.

I knew who the snitch was. I knew it was John.

After that day, I kept asking John,

"Why did you do it? Why did you do it?

I'm your best friend. We hung out."

And he goes, "I had to do it.

"I got busted with a half-ounce of coke.

"I wouldn't be able to go to med school.

"You can't have a felony on your record.

I had to do this."

And I'm gonna be going away.

He busted me to get out of that, plain and simple.

Just to save his own ass. I hated the guy's guts.

- John Meehan seemed to have a way

of getting out of trouble.

He seemed to get into a lot of trouble and find a way

to slither out of it successfully.

He was crossing that line from threats to action.

I think he was restless in the way that, um...

psychopaths are.

- We had gone to the movies and his beeper went off,

and we had to leave.

And he dropped me off at home and was kissing me good night.

Said he didn't want to leave me, that he wanted

to spend the rest of the evening with me,

but he had to go to work.

And I never saw him again.

Wondered what I had done wrong.

Wondered if I wasn't his type.

Put a lot of it on me.

You know, what did I do?

I feel that John preyed on me

because he knew I had a lot

of insecurities,

a lot of damage to my self-esteem.

I was practice for John.

He was testing the waters of his con,

of his game.

He broke my heart.

- Some people called him a con man,

but actually, John Meehan was far more than that.

He was a predatory individual.

He didn't form real relationships

or attachments or bonds to people.

He just used people.

He ticks many of the boxes

in the psychopathy checklist.

[Goffard] In the early '80s after John is busted, uh,

for drugs he leaves for Arizona,

where he goes to college.

When he graduates he goes to Dayton, Ohio,

for law school.

It was around then that John Meehan met Tonia Bales.

[Tonia Bales] I was working as a nurse

in the operating room,

and I was out that night with a group of coworkers.

I just made my way to the restroom

and I was stopped by John,

which turned into a conversation.

His personality was enjoyable and outgoing

and smiley and very engaging,

asking a lot of questions.

I did not give him my phone number that night,

but he knew where I worked, and so he called

to the operating room the next night

and had me paged.

I would say that I was naive.

You know, he said all the right things.

"You're really pretty. I'd love to get to know you,

and, you know, any chance we can go out?"

And I was flattered.

I think I fell in love with John because of his

attentiveness towards me, and his interest in me,

and how good he made me feel.

After about a year of dating he pulled me, you know,

close to him and told me that he wanted to spend

the rest of his life with me.

And he presented me with a--

a gorgeous diamond ring, and it was fantastic,

and I said yes.

The wedding was your typical Catholic, Midwest wedding.

There weren't tons of guests, and part of that

was because John did not invite his family.

And he told me that his family would have been

embarrassing to him.

That his dad was an alcoholic.

His parents were divorced, and he thought his parents

wouldn't get along at the wedding,

and he didn't want to ruin our special day.

- John, how do you feel this-- this evening?

- [screams]

No, I--I'm fine. I'm fine.

- And so, uh, what do you got planned for the rest

of the evening here? - Re--rest of the evening, uh,

drink, frivolity, fun, plundering pillages

near and far. - Sounds good.

- The wedding video, I was so excited to watch it

but I noticed in the reception time

with all the guys, you know, having had

probably too many drinks, one of them refers to him

as "Filthy John." - Let me start by saying this:

John Meehan's nickname

is "Filthy John Meehan."

- Yeah, but why? Why? - Why?

- Remember when you first created that nickname and why?

- Yes, I do, but it cannot be divulged

on camera. - I don't take showers.

That's the only reason. [overlapping chatter]

- His--his friends-- his friends call him

- "The Cruiser." - I did question John

about the "Filthy John" comment and he said,

"Oh, they're just--they've had too much to drink."

You know, "They're just being silly.

It doesn't mean anything."

It wasn't really till after we were married

several years that-- the wedding ring had

some smaller stones, and one of the smaller stones

had fallen out, so I took it into a jeweler

to have that stone replaced.

And the jeweler took the ring and said,

"You know this isn't real, right?"

And I got, uh... [stammering]

I pretend-- I said, "Yes."

Yeah, I said yes. Because that's humiliating.

I never told him that I knew that it was fake.

I just got caught up in that, you know,

fall in love as an adult and having a happy ending.

- I think Tonia had no idea

this kind of person existed.

She came from a, uh-- a nice family,

a good background.

She's a nurse anesthetist.

John follows her into the profession.

Tonia told me that she helped support him

as he worked his way through nursing school.

- I would have told you that we were happily married.

Um, we were, you know, busy professionals,

we got along very well,

we very rarely fought about anything.

John didn't want to have children right away.

He eventually, you know, said that he was ready,

and so Emily, uh, was born when I was 30.

- [John] Looks like she got hit.

Looks like somebody punched her in the eye.

[laughter, chatter]

- After Emily was about 14 months,

John was accepted into a nurse anesthesia program

-in Tennessee. - Say, "Hi, Mama."

Hi, Mom!

- Oh, it was a tremendously happy time for me.

- [babbling] - And then we were

soon planning out next child to complete our family,

and he seemed excited about that.

I was very excited about that, so I was ready

to have another child.

- [baby crying] - After Abigail was born,

we came to have a talk after Christmas, um,

and John was saying that he wasn't happy.

And I said, you know, "What's wrong?"

You know, "I can change."

He decided that he wasn't happy in the marriage

and, um, he filed for divorce.

I was devastated.

I married him to be married to him forever.

- I absolutely feel like

he abandoned my family.

He consciously made that decision.

- Him leaving really upset me and I felt really unloved,

and I felt like I wasn't enough for him.

- While John and I are having this split,

everybody's saying, "Something's missing.

Something's missing."

My brother-in-law says, "You know, maybe you should--

really should find his mom or his family."

And he found his mom's phone number on the Internet.

[phone dialing]

With my knees trembling, I dialed that number

and I called her.

And I said, uh, "Dolores, this is Tonia.

I'm married to your son, John."

And the phone was silent.

And then she said, "Oh, Tonia.

I knew you'd call me one day."

And she unloaded on me that he had been arrested,

that--she asked me

if he's still using drugs and I said, "What?"

And she said, "Call his sisters.

They would love to talk to you."

So I called both of his sisters.

They laid out a lot of stories

about insurance fraud, about having a friend,

you know, hit him with the car on purpose

and he broke his leg and he got some money for that.

That he had, um, put some glass intentionally

in his taco at Taco Bell

and filed a suit against that.

That was not congruent with the man that I married.

♪

So I started snooping.

I found a picture of a resident

at the hospital circled,

I found directions to a hotel room

in a female's writing, and I found--

on the very top shelf pushed all the way

to the back--a box of anesthesia drugs--

Fentanyl and Versed.

So at this point I'm married almost ten years

and I'm realizing that everything I've lived

up to this point in my marriage is a lie.

♪

[Tonia] So at this point, I was married to John

for almost ten years,

and I'm realizing

that everything I've lived up to this point

in my marriage is a lie.

♪

John had potent anesthetic drugs.

There was no reason for those to be there.

I'm a nurse anesthetist-- there's no reason

that you bring home drugs.

I knew that something was wrong, but I didn't know what it was.

I thought that he was using drugs,

but I also came to learn through his family

that he was shipping them from Ohio to California

for his brother to use.

- So around the same time that his marriage

to, uh, Tonia is dissolving,

his brother dies in Santa Cruz

of an overdose.

- They call me and say the brother is dead.

Then basically I'm saying, "This needs

"to end, right now.

"I can't hold on to this information.

"I don't know exactly what he's doing, but I've got

to report this."

That's when, you know, I-- I went to the police and said,

"This is what I know."

[audio playing in reverse]

- The police came to my house one day

to kind of search my house and--and look at

where the drugs were at one point.

And there it was: his little, you know,

stash of drugs.

And I thought, "We're done.

"We found it.

"This is gonna be over soon.

"You know, he's gonna get arrested.

"He's killed his brother or helped, you know,

"kill his brother, and we're all gonna prove this,

you know, very fast."

That's not exactly how it went.

[Goffard] His career was disintegrating

around that time.

When he began running amok-- he began stealing drugs

and endangering patients-- people were calling

the Medical Board, he was losing his license.

I think his drug addiction was accelerating,

and at the end it seemed to drive him

to increasingly irrational behavior.

- John moved to the state of Indiana,

started working there, and some friends of mine

who were also nurse anesthetists

warned the Board that he was there.

This is a period of time where things got

really scary for me.

John believed that I was the one making the calls

to the Indiana Board of Nursing and ruining his career.

- He is making...

very scary phone calls to her

that the police tell her to get on tape.

[phone line ringing]

[John] I have it on excellent, excellent authority

you're the one who's been making the phone calls.

[Tonia] I have never called the Indiana Board of Nursing.

- I got a big smile on my face. You know why?

Because it's gonna get done.

- What's gonna get done? - You will understand

when the time comes.

I'll be in Bermuda having a big [bleep] Cuba Libre

with a 22-year-old when it happens.

- That's nice. - You keep that in mind.

So Tonia, you enjoy your time left

on this Earth, okay?

Because that's what it's gonna come down to.

- Everybody knows it'll be you

and you're not gonna make it to Bermuda.

- Oh, I'll be in Bermuda, Tonia.

- Oh, you'll be in Bermuda. - Yes.

- So where will the kids be?

- Probably with your parents.

- Okay. - Wondering, "Gosh,

what happened to Mom?"

♪

- During this time, he's under investigation

and I'm not allowed to say anything,

and I'm having to turn my children over to him

knowing that he's using drugs.

And I've got to put 'em in the back seat of his car

for visitation.

And knowing what I know, that was one

of the most difficult things that I've had to do,

but unless you have a court order

denying someone visitation,

you have to turn your children over.

- [babbling]

I remember on orientation day, when we would meet

the teachers, my mom would have

to tell the teacher and let me know

that if a man comes--

Emily's father-- she is not to leave

under any circumstances.

[harmonica playing] - I used to think

he was always going to kidnap me.

I always thought that he was gonna be out there

and make a big scene and try to get me.

- The whole time after I went to the DEA I'm thinking,

"They're investigating him, they're looking into this.

Something's gonna happen."

It had seemed to me that things just weren't moving

or going anywhere, um, until Detective Luken

was put on the case.

When he came in, I felt things turn.

- The case had kind of gone cold and I had joined

the Warren County Drug Task Force.

And my boss asked me to reopen the case in 2002.

We knew that he was stealing drugs from patients

to feed his addiction.

He was a pathological liar.

He had no conscience.

He had no remorse, and that's what made John

so dangerous.

[Tonia] He had a perfect life, you know, with me.

It--it really broke my heart,

and it--it broke my spirit, you know,

as a--as a good person

just trying to do the right thing and--

and have a good life.

And--and so I--I wasn't necessarily angry.

I was broken.

- John Meehan moved from state to state,

city to city, county to county

for decades.

Many women were terrorized.

I think a lot of people are still probably living

in fear of this guy.

He eventually wound up in Newport Beach,

where, uh, he met Debra Newell.

- It was around Thanksgiving time

and I had moved to Balboa Island.

I had always wanted to live on the ocean.

John is moving his items

into my home.

It was moving way too fast for me,

but he made me feel like--

wonderful.

It was the best feeling in the world.

- I went to my mom's house on Balboa.

It was around Thanksgiving time.

[suspenseful music]

I went into my mom's room

and I just saw his stuff all in there,

and it seemed like he was moving in there.

I noticed that there was a box

in the closet.

♪

I quickly shut the door,

because I didn't want him

to see me snoop through his stuff.

On top of the box it had a nursing certificate.

♪

He said he was a doctor.

I just didn't appreciate being lied to.

I then confronted my mom...

saying, "Why are you moving in with someone

that you've only been together two months?"

- And I'm like, "Well, Terra,

"you know, this is my life.

You know, please let me live it."

♪

- He came up behind my mom

and started screaming at me.

- [muffled shouting]

- John said, "Don't talk to your mom that way."

She said, "You're not even a doctor

"like you say you are.

I read your degree."

- [muffled shouting]

- John accused me that I wanted my mom

all to myself

and that I didn't want her to be happy

and that I was just jealous.

And then I told my mom, I'm like, "I don't understand

"why you're letting him talk to me this way.

"I can't stay here.

I just need to go."

And then I packed up my stuff

and got out of there.

[door slams]

- Terra left.

I confronted John, but he had an answer

for everything.

He said that he didn't lie.

He had his doctorate.

They're basically the same thing,

but one is under the nurses

and one is under a doctor's.

And he said, "But we both put people to sleep."

John was so persuasive.

I know I keep saying this,

but he was that good.

I believed him.

- I thought John wanted me out of there

and he wanted my mom all to himself.

- My sister called me and said that she had

a big blow-out fight with John.

I think him showing so much authority

when he didn't really have a place to do it

was also upsetting.

John was trying to exert control

in the situation.

[somber music]

[Debra] This was such a difficult time

in my life because...

I love my kids...

and I had fallen in love with John,

so I decided to go to a therapist.

From John's standpoint-- what he was telling

the therapist-- my kid were spoiled.

That there needed to be boundaries.

The boundaries consisted...

of not having my kids

attend Thanksgiving

if they were gonna have this kind of behavior.

♪

[Terra] I was heartbroken.

I felt like I was being kicked out of her house.

I stopped talking to my mom

for a while after this.

My mom picked John over me.

- When you're looking to control someone

you don't want daughters and sisters

and mothers and people interfering

in the relationship.

In most of these cases you see isolation.

They never say, "I'm done with all this

Romeo and Juliet stuff.

I'm gonna move to stage two: isolation."

It--it's a very subtle and nuanced thing that happens.

[Debra] I was hoping my kids would come around.

I was still trying to do anything I could

to reach out to 'em.

I just couldn't understand why they couldn't be

happy for me.

[Goffard] John Meehan had been practicing for this role

for a long time.

He was a veteran con man.

He knew what buttons to push.

He knew how to manipulate Debra.

- He would take my cars out

and run errands for me.

He was getting my dry cleaning,

going to the grocery store,

going to the bank, you name it.

Anything that I needed done

he was right there to assist.

There were so many things that just didn't make sense

and that were just bad about him.

Nothing added up.

If he saw an opportunity

he was going to take it.

- John started telling me within probably the third date

that he was in love with me

and that I was his soul mate.

And he kept saying, you know, "I--I want to marry you.

"I wanna grow old with you.

I wanna die in your arms."

And he would do this

several times a day.

[Terra] I knew something wasn't right.

I was honestly depressed at that point in my life.

John tore our family apart.

[Debra] I had to go to Vegas.

I was doing a clubhouse out there.

Design and furniture and all that.

He didn't like me driving at dark or--

and I looked at it as, "Oh, he's so protective."

Not controlling.

And so he would drive me to the job sites.

He said to me, "Why don't we just get married?"

And I'm like, "No, no, no, it's too soon.

"Too soon.

I can't do this yet."

He said, "Please, please, please."

He kept saying, "Please, please.

For me. What do you have to lose?"

There was just this lump...

in my stomach.

And I'm thinking, "What am I doing?"

We'd only been dating a few months.

"Why am I doing this?

Oh, everyone's gonna kill me."

[applause]

♪

John drove me to a lot of job sites.

One of our trips

I had to go to Vegas, so...

he said to me, "Why don't we just get married?"

- John Meehan and Debra Newell went off to Vegas

when she was at a vulnerable place in her life and...

just about everything that he said to her

to attract her was a lie.

[woman] Debra, will you take John

to be your wedded husband,

to live together in bonds of marriage?

Will you love him, comfort him, honor, and keep him

so long as you both shall live?

- Yes. - Please face each other

and hold hands. [laughter]

- Only two months after they meet, uh,

they're in Las Vegas and they're married.

It was whirlwind situation.

- John, please repeat after me. - Okay.

- I, John... - I, John...

- Take Debra... - Take Debra...

- To be my wedded wife... - To be my wedded wife...

- I can't explain it, but I knew it was wrong.

It wasn't the right timing,

but I did it anyway.

[woman] Oh, my gosh.

- Aww! [overlapping chatter]

- I didn't tell any of my family members.

Um...

nobody knew.

- I learned way after the fact

that John married my mom.

Started crying,

bawling my eyes out. - It was alarming to find out

that she had married him at that point

because it just made it so much harder to end things.

It was the start of when I really felt like

we were in danger.

- [Goffard] John Meehan was a cunning

and manipulative person.

The number of people that he did exactly

the same thing to is, uh, astonishing,

and I think that I probably only heard

from a handful of them compared to the victims

he has out there who are embarrassed

or ashamed or frightened

of talking about it.

[woman] I met John online.

His profile said that he was single,

that he was a doctor-- an anesthesiologist.

Uh, just a great profile,

everything you want to see in a man.

I didn't have a high opinion of myself.

I was divorced, I had two small children,

and he made me feel like a princess.

- John Meehan very much used dating sites

as a fishing pool.

He had a particular typology that he was after,

women who were affluent.

It became, uh, sort of an addiction for him.

The same as drugs were an addiction for him.

- I think John was looking for people exactly like me,

who might need him, who had a little money

of their own.

People who would fall for his charm-- and that was me.

When John and I went to Mexico we had been dating

for about three months.

He claimed that he had a convention down there.

Uh, he just asked me if I wanted to go, be with him.

Like, "Wow, okay, so now this beautiful man

is taking me on a trip."

Day one I'm like, "This is awesome.

The weather was beautiful, the hotel was beautiful.

"I am going to have a great time."

Day two...

let me tell you about day two.

John said that he had to leave for a little bit,

that his back hurt.

Okay.

He came back with a vial of drugs,

wrapped a belt around his ankle,

and he inserted the drugs with a hypodermic needle

between his toes.

Now I'm like,

"What is going on here?

I know that's not right."

I felt like I was in danger.

Like...

who is he?

What is he going to do?

I'm scared, but I'm also...

a very brave person.

He asked me to take him to the hospital.

He knew just what to say to go to the hospital

and get the drugs that he needed.

John Meehan had a drug addiction

going back decades.

It seemed to get worse and worse.

This is insane.

There is something wrong.

He--he has to be a drug addict.

I want to make sure I get home safely.

When I leave Mexico, John is still in the hospital.

I drove home, getting all of my luggage out,

and John's gym bag is in there.

And his gym bag had spilled...

and I found vials.

I don't know what they are, but they're like

little tiny vials, and I'm like, "You know what?

This looks like a drug."

I also found a card-- business card--

that had his ex-wife's name on it.

So I called Tonia the next day.

- I'd been separated, um, from John

for approximately a year, living in a new home,

and I randomly get a call from a woman saying

that she has travelled to, um, Cancun

with John and, uh, asking me

a lot of questions about him.

I said, "You need to call Detective Luken."

Seven days later, after I open this case,

luck would have it, I get a call from Meg.

He told me that there had to be drugs in John's house.

He was afraid there were weapons in the house.

He told me that they had been trying to get John

for months and months.

He asked me if I would go into the house

and see if I could find any drugs.

I had a key.

I'm going through the house.

I know John's in Mexico...

but I kept thinking, "He's gonna come up

right behind me."

Inside, I was trembling.

And I just happened to look up...

and there was an attic door.

And it wasn't put in place right.

It looked like someone had been up there recently.

I was so afraid to stick my head up there.

Stuck my head up there,

and it was chock full of empty vials.

♪

There were vials stuck in the gym shoes,

there were vials everywhere.

I couldn't believe it.

Like, "This is really true,

"and this man is now going to kill me

because I helped."

I don't think I was out the front door

before I called Dennis and said, "I found it.

I found everything."

He said, "We need to get a search warrant.

Will you be willing to go in front of the judge?"

If you want a search warrant, then yes.

[Luken] When I did the search warrant

on his house, I found a Ruger 9mm.

Well, he was not allowed to possess that

because he was on probation

from where he had threatened Tonia.

[John, recording] Tonia, you enjoy your time

left on this Earth, okay?

- I think John's crimes and arrogance about it

were so egregious that, uh, Detective Luken

just was not gonna let this case or this guy go.

They revoked his probation,

they arrested him.

I went up to the Montgomery County Jail

to interview him.

John denied taking drugs from the hospitals.

He also stated at that point and time,

"I could show you four hundred ways

to steal drugs from a hospital."

John had all the traits of a psychopath.

It was all about control.

John was the most dangerous,

treacherous, devious,

deceptive individual that I ever prosecuted

in 40 years of law enforcement.

[Tonia] I was in the courtroom when John was sentenced,

and he requested time to make arrangements

for his two dogs.

And then he was to show on Monday morning at 10:00

for his sentencing.

[Luken] So he's out on bond during

this whole point in time.

He's gotta do something.

He wants to get that last high or last fix or whatever,

so John, out of desperation,

drove to Saginaw, Michigan, where he then stole

anesthesia kits from three different hospitals.

[phone ringing]

- That Monday I got a call from Detective Luken,

and what he said to me was,

"Tonia, John did not show

"for his sentencing, and they sometimes

take hostages."

- She needs to run like hell and get away from John.

- And he said, "I want you to go get your children

out of daycare and school and go hide."

♪

And I thought, "Oh, my God, he's coming over here."

You know, "He's coming to the house

and he's gonna do something to me."

[Tonia] I got a call from Detective Luken.

He said that John did not show for his sentencing,

and he said, "I want you to go get your children

out of daycare and school and go hide."

[dramatic music]

And I thought, "Oh, my God, he's coming over here."

He's coming to the house and he's gonna

do something to me.

I just felt, uh, a visceral, you know--

I was frightened.

[engine turns over]

I always thought that, like, he was gonna try

to, like, come and get us just to get back at my mom.

And I got scared.

John wants to get that last high or last fix.

He went to three different hospitals

where he had worked, and he was able

to gain anesthesia kits.

The following morning, the cleaning attendant

for the hotel at Comfort Suites in Michigan

finds him in a room

in a semiconscious state.

Calls the paramedics.

They're gonna transport him to a hospital.

[sirens wailing]

[dramatic music]

[Goffard] He jumped out of the ambulance,

ran into a local, uh, department store

climbed up an elevator shaft,

and fought like hell as the cops tried

to climb up and get him.

He was not afraid to use violence,

and I think he was capable of murder.

- One of the officers was able to grab John

and they both fell about 10 to 12 feet

on top of the elevator.

So at that point John was placed under arrest

for the theft of those anesthesia kits.

Oh, when I found out that--

that he was arrested in Michigan,

it felt like a ton of bricks was lifted off my shoulder.

and I thought, "I'm gonna have some peace for at least,

"you know, 21 months or two years.

"I can breathe. I don't have to be looking

over my shoulder."

[Luken] John had no criminal record

at that point in time.

And in Ohio, if you successfully complete

a treatment program you don't go to jail,

and it's gonna be removed from your record.

John always had a way of escaping things.

That's our criminal justice system.

Everybody thinks that everybody

can be rehabilitated.

John was not somebody you can rehabilitate.

He was the worst of the worst.

♪

- Dennis Luken saw what a lot of people

in the justice system did not.

That, uh, John Meehan was a fundamentally

different creature from a lot of the people

that the system is designed to deal with.

- He needed those drugs. That was John's obsession.

He had to have those drugs.

And if that means stealing, hurting someone,

terrorizing some-- John's gonna do it.

- When John found out my name was on the search warrant,

he lost it.

John calls me and tells me that

I'm going to regret

ever helping Dennis Luken.

He said I was a whore and a bitch

and I was going to pay for what I did.

He knew where my family was;

you know, I had small children.

In his threats, his voice was so real.

His voice went from this cute guy in Mexico,

to psycho.

♪

[Luken] He sent her postcards,

taunting her, harassing her.

Says, "How's my poor little Meg doing?

"Freedom is so tasty.

"But you wouldn't know about that.

How about--remember Cancun?"

And he signs "D. Luken" on it.

It's about the control,

the manipulation, the terrorization.

You can't get away from John.

John's always got his tentacles on you.

[Tonia] You can't escape John Meehan

until he's dead.

There's been some small victories, maybe, for you.

Maybe things have gone in your direction, you know,

with the law or the court, but you never feel

perfectly at ease.

[Meg] John was out of rehab.

I'm outside in my cute little neighborhood--

very quiet little neighborhood--

walking my dog, and I go to cross the street...

[engine revving]

...and a car came at me.

The moment I saw the car,

I knew it was aiming for me.

[revving engine]

And it came at me so fast.

I'm trying to get away, and I can't get away.

[tires squealing]

[woman screams]

I got hit by the car.

I knew it was John.

I had no doubt that it was John.

He knew that I was on that search warrant,

he believed that I had just ruined his life.

This guy just tried to kill me.

I'm miserable.

My leg is broken.

I called Dennis the next day,

and that's when Dennis told me he had an alibi.

- He had an axe to grind with her.

I knew at some point in time either he would kill someone

or somebody would have to kill him.

♪

- John Meehan evaded law enforcement

year after year.

He seemed to have no fear of the authorities,

no respect for the law.

By the time he married Debra Newell,

he had multiple restraining orders against him

filed by different women.

He was a chameleon, so he molded himself

into whatever image people seemed to need from him.

[Debra] John was the perfect husband.

He doted, and he would tell me all the time,

"You have it so good.

I am so good to you."

And I'd think, "You're right, you are."

It was just like this whirlwind...

uh, romance.

During this time frame, John and Jacquelyn

started despising each other,

so John told me, "You'd better not be

seeing your daughter."

So I would sneak to go see her.

Jacquelyn I was looking over my shoulder

everywhere I went

the whole time she was with him.

He was a ticking time bomb.

- Jacquelyn knew he was up to no good

and began to research him.

♪

[Jacquelyn] I was determined to get evidence

he was lying, so we put a tracker

on John's car.

I was curious about everything that he did.

[Terra] I loved it when Jacquelyn tracked

his car.

I thought, "At least someone's doing the dirty work."

- [Jacquelyn] He would hit up three or four doctors' offices

in one day.

Sometimes he would only be at these places

for 30 minutes.

- My theory was he was getting different drugs

at different doctors.

- And then he would go home and be on the TV

playing video games.

He would be sleeping for like 14

to 16 hours straight.

[Debra] Jacquelyn said something

to me at one point.

"If you knew that John was...

lying, would you still love him?"

I said, "Yes."

- We thought that she might...

not believe us...

because John was so good at manipulating her.

My mom was very much in love with John.

She thought that he was her soul mate.

♪

- There were little signs along the way

that something wasn't right.

John had set up these cameras in the house.

One was at the front door,

one was outside.

What John didn't realize is,

yes, he was watching me,

but I could also watch him.

So he would leave for work

in his scrubs and come back an hour later,

uh, when I was gone,

and go up to the room and lay down.

Spend the day playing video games

or on his computer.

I didn't want to believe it, by any means...

but that's when I started seeing,

"Something's not right."

[suspenseful music]

One day I walked out

to the mailbox and there was this letter

for John from a man from jail.

So I got the mail,

read this letter...

and it's talking about how happy he was for John

that he's happily married and has a great life

and that he'd turned his life around.

And as I'm reading this,

I'm thinking, "What is going on?"

♪

There's cameras inside.

He can pretty much watch me wherever he was.

John walks up,

grabs the letter.

Says, "You've just committed a felony.

You opened up my mail."

And I said, "John, who is this guy?"

He says, "How dare you open up my mail.

"You are so wrong.

I could have you arrested for this."

I remember thinking to myself, "Oh, my gosh.

What have I gotten myself into?"

♪

[tense music]

- I read this letter, and it's from this man in jail.

John walks up,

grabs the letter,

but he turned it on me.

He says, "How dare you open up my mail?"

He threw it on me, what I had done,

and made me look like I was just the worst person on Earth.

I said, "Okay, well, who is he?

Just tell me that much."

He said, "I send him care packages."

"I send care packages

to a lot of people that are in prison."

And I thought, "Oh, well, that's a kind thing."

It was very difficult to live with John.

You have this fear, at some point,

that you're doing something wrong

even though you're not doing something wrong.

I... was so confused.

♪

[Richards] He was very sophisticated

at this brainwashing of-- of Debra.

You are talking about a grown adult female

that is being, uh, almost undone psychologically.

However, Debra in her gut knew

that certain things didn't add up.

- I was, little by little,

having my suspicions.

I also fell in love with him,

so I didn't want to look at him.

I only wanted to see the good.

- It was the kind of thing that he specialized in:

putting pressure on people and manipulating them.

Jacquelyn in particular

got a very bad feeling from him

and, uh, put a tracker on his car.

- My mom and I had stopped speaking for a while

because of John.

I was still trying to do what I could

to track John's whereabouts.

I caught John watching my mom.

He followed her when she went to dinner.

I did not tell her because I didn't want her

to know that I still had an eye on him.

One night, I could see on the tracker

that John's car was across the street

from my high-rise.

He was watching me.

I thought I was going crazy.

I did not know what John Meehan

was going to do, but somebody needed

to stop him.

- For me, it was, "How can we get this guy to stop?"

John was an evil person.

The case came to my desk.

The suspect, named John Meehan,

had a dating relationship

with this Brazilian woman.

Her name is Marileide Anderson.

She is a accomplished author in Brazil.

She's written several books.

She was a multimillionaire.

She told me that in April of 2012

she had brain surgery.

She woke up the next morning in a haze.

There was a man by her bedside

and he was wearing scrubs, and he identified himself

as her anesthesiologist.

He's very charming,

he's very good talking, good presentation.

I feel very comfortable with him.

[Bowman] After meeting in the hospital

they started a relationship.

Marileide was very vulnerable.

She had just had brain surgery.

She's going through a divorce with her husband.

John and Marileide's email exchanges

were very flirtatious

and very calculated in--

in the way that he's grooming her

to divulge her most intimate information.

She started telling him that she had all this money

in Brazil, but she was unable

to bring it to the United States.

John told her he had a free bank account

and that he could take all of her money.

She was going to be transferring

$37 million

into John Meehan's bank account.

Marileide reaches out to her friend,

and her friend says,

"You've made a horrible mistake.

"I don't care who the guy is, you should have never

transferred your money to him."

So Marileide immediately begins the process

of stopping the transfer.

The money never came to his account,

then he started to be very mad and rude to me.

- Once their relationship ended,

he started extorting her for money.

He tells her that she now owes him

$37,000 that she needs

to pay him back for John to leave her alone.

[Marileide] Wherever I drive,

he follows me.

Then I have to sleep with a knife to protect myself.

- So Marileide finally came to the police department

because John Meehan had broken into her house.

But he was just so hard to find.

He made himself kind of like a ghost.

During the course of the investigation

we learned from Marileide that he had

all these physical ailments.

He had a chiropractor in Palm Desert.

Well, it was kind of a shot in the dark

but went to this chiropractic office

and sat in our, uh, unmarked car.

[tense music]

And John pulls into the lot, gets out of the car.

♪

I went up to John and badged him.

♪

Every single thing he said to me was a lie.

♪

We arrested him for burglary,

extortion, stalking.

Inside of the car we found paperwork

for an office building and an RV

in Cathedral City.

We go to the trailer and it looks like

it's out of, uh, "Breaking Bad."

♪

It's filthy. Just lots

of prescription drugs, needles.

Barely could walk around inside of it.

But there is this very, very nice computer,

and the entire wallpaper

is hundreds of JPEGs of women.

Clicking on the pictures of the women

I immediately start to recognize them,

either as Marileide or previous girlfriends,

his wives.

♪

- Why he left all this evidence around

is one of my, uh, abiding questions

about John Meehan.

Maybe because he lusted after confrontation.

Maybe because he kept them around as trophies.

- I was very concerned.

In the office building there was a refrigerator.

Crooks hide things in their freezer.

Open the refrigerator and there's a backpack.

Open the backpack and inside the backpack

there is a revolver,

there's hundreds of rounds of ammo,

there's a bottle of cyanide capsules.

Pretty much a very complete

killing and kidnapping kit.

We have to throw the book at this guy.

When I saw the kidnapping and killing kit,

I knew that John was capable of murder.

[tense music]

- When I saw the kidnapping and killing kit I knew

that John was capable of murder.

On July 2013,

I contacted the domestic violence DA,

who said, "We have to throw

the book at this guy."

But our victim, Marileide Anderson,

was desperately trying to leave the United States

because she was in so much fear of him.

The DA was not confident

that she would be in the United States

to testify if we prolonged it with a jury trial.

- I had a lot of people call me and say,

"If you don't get out, he's going to kill you."

[Bowman] John pled felon in possession

of a firearm,

burglary, and stalking.

And he was sentenced to--

to jail for only two years.

Two months after that, I got a call from a deputy.

He said, "We have an inmate

"who's put a hit out on someone.

Uh, do you know someone named Julia Bowman?"

And I said, "I am Julia Bowman."

And he said, "Well, we have an inmate--John Meehan--

"who put a hit out for $10,000

on Julia Bowman."

At the same time this was going on,

my boyfriend and I had both felt that someone

was following us home.

Several times I would see the same car

right on my bumper.

And then as I get out of my car the car would stop

in front of our house.

We started putting firearms around the house

so that we would be able to defend ourselves.

♪

I started having these vivid dreams

that John Meehan was outside of my house,

that he was coming to my house to kill me.

John was that case that would always haunt me

and was never going to go away.

So at that moment I knew he's not staying in jail.

This isn't over.

[Goffard] It was only a matter of two days after he got out

of jail for the last time that he found Debra Newell

on OurTime, the over-50 dating site.

At this point they are married,

but she's now more isolated

from her family than ever.

[Debra] Some of my kids stopped speaking to me.

I started missing my family...

so incredibly much.

John was really trying

to control my life and everything in it.

One night, he was supposed to have surgery the next day

on his back,

but that night he got a bowel obstruction,

ended up in the hospital,

and I had his phone.

I thought, "Okay."

And I went and started scrolling through it.

And I saw...

all these different women.

And I started

snapping shots of it--

of his phone.

I was...

a thousand percent heartbroken.

Felt betrayed.

I just...

It was hard.

I drove to Balboa Island.

I thought, "I need to know the truth.

What's going on with him?"

- She called me that she needed me

to come over.

She believed some things that I was telling her

and she wanted my help.

♪

- Uh, we went into his office.

There was a bunch of papers on the floor.

I grabbed some stuff.

[suspenseful music]

And we read a few of the pages

and we're like, "This is sick."

♪

- When we came across his dirty laundry

that he was keeping on himself,

we were very alarmed.

- The papers show that John has

numerous names,

numerous social security numbers.

And it's stating all these different--

I think there were seven or nine

restraining orders against him.

From stalking...

to choking, to drugs.

I mean, there were... [scoffs]

so many.

One was a case of this woman

from Laguna Beach-- Marileide Anderson--

where John has tried to get her money

and stalked her

and really made her life a living hell.

At that point I realized, "Oh, my gosh.

I'm his latest victim."

♪

I found myself in shock.

[Jacquelyn] And there were notes scribbled down

about semi-automatic weapons

that he was trying to get access to.

He had spyware passwords, usernames.

♪

- He had this evidence

sitting in his office. - Almost as if he was, like,

proud of it.

He... [sighs]...

was just a bad guy.

[Terra] I thought, "This guy is a con artist.

I knew that he was in it for the money.

He was trying to take everything that she was worth.

- He did all kinds of reckless things

which really run counter to this image

of a master criminal.

My suspicion is that he liked playing the game.

There was some thrill in it.

There was some thrill in tempting fate.

- What I realized also is John had just gotten out

of jail like two days prior...

to me meeting him online.

Our first date, when John laid on my bed, he said,

"This feels so good."

In my eyes, I'm thinking, "It's just a bed."

And I don't think he had anywhere to go.

♪

- John Meehan targeted these women deliberately.

He picked them out--

there is no mistake about that--

and he looked to exploit them

in every way possible.

- I highlighted names

of any arresting agency

or detectives that were involved in his case,

and I just call Denis Luken.

- I get a call from Jacquelyn and I'm thinking,

"This can't-- this can't be true.

"This can't be happening.

"What is it gonna take to stop this guy?

Here we go again."

So I kept telling them, "Please notify law enforcement.

Please communicate."

[Jacquelyn] He gave me a warning.

He told me to do everything in my willpower

to get my mom away from this man

because it was the worst thing that could possibly happen

to my family.

♪

- Everything came to a head.

Between these papers...

the letter, his phone... Obviously, he was not

who I married whatsoever.

In fact, I don't know if any of it was the truth.

So at that point, I was scared.

[Jacquelyn] I was shocked, but more than anything

I was worried about her safety.

- I moved out of Balboa

very quickly.

I scrambled, grabbed all my stuff...

♪

and moved away.

[Debra] Everything came to a head.

John was not who I married whatsoever.

I scrambled, grabbed all my stuff,

and moved away.

♪

I realize I need to end this marriage,

so I get this lawyer, um,

to be able to fi--

file an annulment.

We decide that he's dangerous,

and we also change my will...

and make sure that he knows that my kids

are getting my money.

♪

I was worried that John was gonna kill me

to try to get the money, 'cause I had married him.

[Goffard] John is in the hospital

at this point

and he becomes a-- a totally different person.

He becomes extremely menacing,

begins insulting her via text and email.

She sees a side of him that I don't think

she had glimpsed before.

[Debra] John sent nasty text messages to me.

That I'm a liar, that he'll get even.

That I stole his money.

He was turning things around

and making it look like I was the bad guy

and he was the good guy.

John went from this extremely loving,

wonderful man

to a complete--

I'm gonna say this,

but he came off evil.

[Jacquelyn] It was a message to my mom

that he was not messing around.

I knew that message a long time before he needed to send it.

I was in shock.

I--I just couldn't believe what was happening.

[Richards] Psychopaths and narcissists

have this understanding

that you either dominate or be dominated.

If you challenge them or their sense of self,

or this image that they're projecting,

they will go after you.

They will take revenge, and they will do it

in the unholiest of ways.

[Debra] I met with a private investigator

and he said, "You have to think...

like they think."

He said, "Always face the door.

"Anywhere you go, be aware of your surroundings.

"Someone might be following you.

"When you park, park in the--the light,

"and think of the world...

"as...

everyone's suspicious."

I couldn't go to the office.

I would actually stay at a hotel,

different hotels near my office,

and have my assistant--

make sure nobody was following her--

meet me.

One thing that I had to do was disguise myself,

and they said, "Don't be conspicuous."

I had to get a dark wig.

I had to get plain clothes.

You don't want to be noticed.

You have to blend in with the crowd.

That was something that I had to do.

I put on this long black wig,

changed my makeup up.

Just--my life changed at that point.

- I had thought, "My mom's life is in danger."

At this point I knew

that one of us was gonna end up dead,

and that he was just a dangerous person.

[Debra] One of the things

that I read

was that John had hired a hitman

to kill an investigator, so I'm thinking,

"Who knows who he knows out there

that could be doing his dirty work for him?"

I didn't know when he was getting out

of the hospital.

I was looking over my shoulder constantly.

[sinister music]

[Debra] 23 days had passed

and I think I had lost, like, 12 pounds.

Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep.

All of a sudden John calls me.

His whole tone changes,

and he says, "I need you.

"I can explain everything.

"I can promise you...

"that these accusations are not me.

"Yes, I was--I did go to jail,

but I was framed."

He goes, "I couldn't bear telling you.

"I was so in love with you.

I thought you wouldn't date me if you knew that."

What he told me about the awful texts

that he had sent me was that he was drugged.

He had so many drugs in his system

he was out of his mind.

He said, "I have no one,

"and I have MS.

And I have nowhere to go."

I went to the hospital to look him in the eye,

to say, "Why?

"Why did you do this?

"Why were you so dishonest with me?

Is this all a lie?" And I walked into his room

and he cried and he cried

and cried and kept saying,

"Please forgive me.

"I am so sorry.

You don't know how much I love you."

And I started feeling sorry for him.

The one thing that he kept telling me was,

"Don't give up on me.

I am the best thing that's ever happened to you."

And he says, "I promise you,

"I will get a lawyer and prove to you

that I didn't do any of these things."

And I thought, "If this man has been framed

"and if all these other aliases or whatever are not him,

how can I just leave him like this?"

I was the only one that was gonna be willing

to give him a second chance.

- For Debra, she understood

that 95% of what his behavior was

was bad, but there was this 5%

that he could bargain and get leverage on.

And we have to remember that it takes, on average,

a woman seven times

to leave their abuser.

- You don't fall right out of love

when you have fallen in love.

It's not quite that easy.

[tense music]

On one hand I'm in love with this man

and he's got a answer for everything.

On the other hand, there's evidence.

It's like, here's the head

and here's the heart,

and they don't work together very well.

[Goffard] Eventually he is able to convince her

that his accusers are liars,

that in some cases the name

on the paperwork is a different John Meehan.

And he tells her that, uh,

if she'll just give him some time he can prove to her

that he's been set up in case after case.

♪

- I got back with John...

and I really...

didn't want anyone to know about it.

It was bad.

[Jacquelyn] I could tell that she got back together with John

because she stopped telling the family

her whereabouts.

I hated John so much.

I knew he was trying to hurt my mom,

hurt my family.

[Debra] When I went back with John,

things were progressively getting worse.

John was trying to isolate me again.

♪

One person he despised was Jacquelyn.

He saw me as a threat and I saw him as a threat.

- He told me that if I went and I talked to her

he would make sure she was thrown in the ocean

and never come out.

♪

[Jacquelyn] I was scared.

I knew it would all come down to him going crazy.

I thought, "Oh, my gosh.

"I've gotta get away from this guy.

That's the straw."

But I couldn't just walk away.

In my eyes, I figured he was too dangerous.

♪

I was trying to plan my exit.

One of the things that I did was I bought a home in Vegas.

And it wasn't done,

and so I told John, "Why don't you stay out here

"and get the house in working order?

"And in the meantime, I've gotta work

and I've gotta travel, but I really need you there."

So I was able to get my freedom.

[Richards] The point of separation

when there has been abuse,

it correlates highly with murder,

so the time someone leaves is the highest-risk time.

Debra understood that, and we need to know

and understand that victims are the best assessors

of their own risk.

- John came home from Vegas.

I had been hiding money because I felt as though--

number one, it's mine,

but secondly...

if he had money...

he would have more choices.

My thoughts were, if I can cut him off,

then he's gonna have a hard time

hiring people and staking out.

What happened was he pulled out the cash,

came in, said "What's this?"

And he says, "What are you doing?"

And I looked at him and I said, "It's my money."

♪

And he says, "Technically it's both of our money."

And started bullying me.

And he says, "I want you to hit me.

I want you to hit me."

He goes, "If you hit me,

you will never get up again."

♪

- I had been hiding money.

Hid it in a bottom drawer in my closet.

He pulled out the cash.

He said, "Why are you hiding money?"

[tense music]

And I said, "Because I'm leaving you."

♪

I grabbed the suitcase...

took off, drove to Jacquelyn's,

and we got in the car

and we went to Vegas to get anything we could

out of the house that was mine.

♪

- The whole way to Vegas she was getting

threatening text messages from him.

He was going crazy.

It was a downward spiral

of him just kind of losing control.

[Jacquelyn, on recording] Truck's full. We're [bleep].

We left John all his [bleep].

And you need all--

all your stuff.

I know your watches are in here, John.

Don't worry.

Okay, I have a video of everything.

- They got all of my mom's things out

of the house and videotaped it all

so that he couldn't turn it around on them.

[Jacquelyn] You have your keys, you have your phone?

[Debra] Got my phone.

- I have everything. Let's go. Yeah.

[Goffard] Debra and Jacquelyn clear out the house

in Henderson, Nevada.

John is sending her a series of, uh, menacing texts,

um, and taunting texts.

What he wants is half of all of her stuff.

- Some of the text messages that he was sending me were,

"Watch out. "I will destroy you.

"I will destroy your family.

This is bigger than you."

So things are escalating to the point

where I had one of my cars parked

at my business even though I wasn't going in.

He got into my car, started it,

and set it on fire.

[dramatic music]

When John burned my car up, the private investigator said,

"This is getting serious"

and he thought about me getting a bodyguard.

I didn't.

I thought I'd just have to be extremely careful.

[Goffard] John Meehan was spiraling.

He was a serious drug addict.

He had lost a lot of weight.

He was a different John Meehan.

He wanted Debra Newell to know what he was capable of and,

"You'd better play along or this is what awaits you."

- I went to four police stations

and I said, "Help me.

"This man is a bad man.

"I'm in fear of my life.

I don't know what to do."

They said, "There's nothing we can do.

You don't have a mark on you."

And some of them were annoyed with me.

- These predatory individuals are allowed

to get away with it, and it gets worse.

It increases, it escalates, and then serious harm

and murder happen.

[suspenseful music]

[Jacquelyn] I got home, there was a silver car

sitting in the front of the parking lot.

John looked up.

I saw his face from the light of his phone.

He was pretty startled to see me.

♪

Jacquelyn comes running through the door that evening

and she says, "Mom, Mom!" John's outside!"

I said, "What?!"

She goes, "No, I know it's him.

John was outside."

I'm like, "No, John can't be here."

He--how would he get here?"

[Jacquelyn] He came there to do something bad.

He had lost all control.

He didn't have his car anymore--

this was a rental car.

He had come all the way from Las Vegas for a reason.

[Richards] He felt that Debra was winning,

and how dare she?

How dare she take the control away from him?

And it becomes this cat-and-mouse situation

that at all costs, he's gonna burn

and scorch the earth to make her pay.

And her Achilles' heel are her children.

And that's who he goes after.

[Debra] He's a psychopath.

He is going to turn on you and destroy your life.

[Terra] Jacquelyn called me.

She told me that she saw John at her apartment,

that he was in a silver car,

and to keep a lookout for it.

♪

- I thought that he was going to come after either my sister

or myself.

I thought myself because he disliked me more

than anybody else in the family.

♪

- On August 20th I went to work that day.

I get there around 7:00 a.m. in the morning

and I work till 1:00.

Then I went home.

When I pulled into the parking garage,

I looked over and this car

was backed up into a space.

I saw this guy with a tire iron.

I get out of my car, I walk around,

and this guy grabbed me by the waist.

He looked me in the eyes and said, "Do you remember me?"

♪

It was John.

I knew I was in trouble.

I knew he was gonna try to kill me.

He was trying to push me towards his car.

His trunk is open.

[woman screaming]

- I saw man holding a knife

- and a woman screaming. - [screaming]

- He was trying to grab my mouth

to stop me from screaming.

I'm screaming, asking-- like, yelling for help.

[Skylar] He was raising a knife,

bringing it down over and over.

I bite him as hard as I can.

I'm kicking, I'm fighting.

I told my mom to call 911 and tell them that somebody

- was being stabbed. - [woman] Newport Beach 911.

[Skylar] There's a man up here with a knife

- and a girl screaming. - I was already rushing out

the door to go help her.

- I got pushed down onto the ground

as he is on his knees

just trying to stab me.

He dropped the knife and it landed

exactly right next to me on my right-hand side.

I didn't even give it a second thought.

Picked up the knife, and I started wailing

back on him.

- I got pushed down onto the ground

as he is on his knees

just trying to stab me.

He dropped the knife and it landed

exactly right next to me on my right-hand side.

I didn't even give it a second thought.

Picked up the knife, and I started wailing

back on him.

- I know it's either him or me.

I'm stabbing him with all my might.

I was fighting for my life.

He begins falling on top of me,

and he gasped.

I stabbed him once,

like, right here,

and then I stabbed him in the eye.

I just start screaming.

[woman screaming]

I saw John, like, laying face-down

after she had stabbed him,

just in shock, like, having a seizure.

[dark music]

And that picture's just always gonna be in my mind.

[Skylar] Hi, I need a ambulance right away and the police.

- What address? - Um, someone's been stabbed

and he attacked a girl.

It's a girl and her dog and then a guy...

is on the ground.

Um, I'm not really sure what happened,

- we just heard her screaming. - Do you see blood?

- Yes.

[sirens wailing]

[man] Hold on, somebody--

[Skylar] Terra was in hysterics during this.

She was just screaming and crying

and just shrieking all about how much, like,

she knew it was gonna happen

and how she knew she was in danger with him.

[cop] Come over here and get started on you, OK?

[radio chatter]

Come down here. - [Terra sobbing]

And I told her, "I just need to get away from him.

He's gonna get up and hurt me."

[Terra] I need to get away from him! [sobbing]

- [cop] What's goin' on-- - I know he was gonna kill me.

[Debra] It's about 5:25,

and I get this call.

And it's Terra screaming, "Mom, I killed your husband!

I killed your husband!"

I'm like, "What? Where are you?"

And all I remember is getting in my car

and I made it to the scene.

And I couldn't get to my daughter.

- [Debra] Terra! - [cop] Do you know her?

- She's my daughter! - Okay, just hold on.

Hold on. She's gonna--she's gonna get

- some medical treatment, okay? - I felt like...

[choking up] I caused this.

This is the last thing I ever wanted to happen.

[somber, tense music]

I had to stay behind the yellow line

and I'm thinking, "This is when she needs me more than ever."

[Debra] Do you think she killed him?

I don't know. I don't know.

I was across the street

from her house at the grocery store,

and I think I dropped everything in my hand.

And I just ran out the front door.

[sirens wailing]

One ambulance was going one way,

the other ambulance was going another way,

and I did not know which one to follow.

[Terra] When I was in the hospital

I was getting questions for hours and hours.

I just wanted to see my mom.

[Debra] So she sat in that bed and they wouldn't

let me see her because it was a crime.

And it wasn't until 10:30 at night

that I finally got to see her.

It was... very hard.

So there was hearsay that John

is on life support, but they needed

for me to go and identify him.

It just felt so...

surreal.

[monitor beeping]

[Debra] I saw John on life support.

There's so much that goes through you.

Anger, you know...

[sighs] But how could you do this?

Why?

Why would you do this

to my--to my daughter, to my flesh and blood?

And I just thought, "He's that evil.

He's that bad."

- I was at work the day I was notified

that, um, he was on life support.

Debra had already turned over legal rights for his sisters

to pull the plug on John.

John is stabbed on August 20th,

and, uh, four days later on August 24th

he's taken off life support.

The coroner's report says there are 13 stab wounds, uh,

to his body, uh, the fatal one

through his eye and into his brain.

- I'd been predicting for a long time

that this was gonna end in a big ball of fire.

John would be killed at the hands

of someone's husband, brother, or father.

I never imagined that he would fall

to the hands of, you know,

a 5'2" girl fighting for her life.

I thought it was poetic justice.

[Goffard] Why did John go after Terra

at the end?

I think John Meehan wanted to kill Terra Newell

and send a message to her mother, Debra.

But what she had going for her was the gift of adrenaline,

uh, quick reflexes, and she did what a lot

of safety experts advise you to do:

Don't get in the car, or fight, kick, scream--

do whatever you can.

I'm not a victim. I'm a survivor.

I believe that John would have killed again.

I believe he would have done anything to anyone.

[somber music]

- I was glad when John died

because there's so many victims

that were no longer within his power

- and his control. - When I heard

that John was dead...

it was the best and the worst day of my life.

I couldn't believe how happy I was

that someone was not just dead,

- he was killed. - When I got the phone call

that he had been killed, it was a tremendous relief,

and I wouldn't want to say this about anyone,

but he was someone that had to die.

♪

- I get people emailing me,

texting me all the time...

and there are so many women out there.

It's so sad.

The advice that I give them

is be careful.

Um, look at the red flags.

Don't engage.

Stay involved with your family.

[Richards] The point with this case

is that Debra could be anybody.

Some of the advice I would give

is be very slow in terms

of who you invite into your life.

The number one rule is: trust your instincts.

This is the thing that keeps you safe.

[Bowman] There is recourse.

There are people to help you,

and that if you contact your police department

that there are resources that--

this is a crime and that you need to be

your own advocate.

[Tonia] Of course I wish none of this

had happened to me, but without him

I wouldn't have Emily and Abby, and they're the greatest things

that have, you know, happened in my life.

Hi, Mom!

[harmonica playing]

[Tonia] Any time he could have stopped.

He could have said, "I'm done with this life.

Those girls are the most important."

John Meehan is a psychopath, but he knew right from wrong,

and he chose wrong.

He chose himself, he chose drugs,

he chose women...

over his children.

No one can deny that,

and that's gotta hurt.

[Goffard] I guess the thing that surprised me most

was the volume of his victims,

and I expect any day to get another email

or another phone call from someone

detailing another horror story

and adding another piece to the puzzle.

[Jacquelyn] John Meehan was in our life

for two years,

and it was the worst two years of my life.

I was very relieved that he was not a threat

to anybody anymore.

[Terra] In the end,

it brought my family closer together.

We're a lot closer than we've ever been.

- We're still healing...

and I think that's gonna take time.

It's really caused me to rethink dating.

Men. [laughs]

And realize that there is good and evil in the world.

Luckily, in this case, the good won.

[wedding guest] John Meehan's nickname

is "Filthy John Meehan."

[guest 2] Yeah, yeah!

♪

- For more information, go to oxygen.com.