Dirty John Podcast
I’m hooked. Dirty John is a true story about a con man, and a smart, rich woman who falls for him.
The investigative reporter behind it is Los Angeles Times journalist Christopher Goffard whose broad American drawl and impressive writing skills make this doubly addictive.
He knows how to tell a story and this is one story worth telling.
It unfolds with Hitchcockian horror.
Debra Newell is a successful interior designer, aged 59, with a deep Christian faith – someone described by Goffard as “trusting” and “open hearted”. She has two daughters who look out for her. Perhaps she is a little too open hearted, too misty eyed by romance – by the time she meets Dirty John, she has been through four marriages and divorces.
She meets John Meehan through a dating website – he claims he’s an anaesthetist – just back from working in Iraq on Doctors without Borders: what stories he has to tell.
He dresses down all the time – in his blue hospital scrubs - but he doesn’t seem to be attached to any particular hospital. In fact, he spends a lot of time at home playing Call of Duty.
He says he has two houses, but Debra never gets to see them.
But most of all he seems totally smitten by Debra, adores her and wants to be part of her life. In two months they are secretly married. But Debra’s daughters are not happy and they have good reason.
For the listener, the story is chilling.
You want to shake Debra. You want to shout at the radio: “Don’t Debra, why are you so stupid. Don’t marry him like that, it’s just been eight weeks.
“Don’t put your money into that house when he says that he can’t for tax reasons.”
And what about the day they come in and there’s a strange woman in their home and she’s wearing Debra’s clothes?
Doesn’t something smell very rotten?
After the podcast was released, Goffard got emails from women who said dating John Meehan was the worst experience of their lives.
He also had an email sent to one woman where Dirty John says basically: “ruining your life will be my masterpiece”.
The thing is, this is no crime thriller fiction, it’s true. We hear the voices of Debra, her children, even John himself. And we know this is not going to end well, but we can’t stop listening.
