Dangerous Liaison

- Judy Ewens

The true-crime story of John Meehan, US con artist and sociopath, became a hugely popular podcast – and was described as ‘the best true-crime podcast since Serial’ – when it was released in 2017.

Now, the story has been turned into a TV series starring Hollywood actor Eric Bana as the serial predator, and Nashville’s Connie Britton as interior designer and single mother Debra Newell, who met Meehan online in 2014 and fell for him, despite her family’s misgivings.

Meehan, who had been tutored in insurance scams by his casino-owning father, earned the nickname

‘Dirty John’ while studying at law school, on account of the number of women he slept with.

He married and had two children with his first wife Tonia, and trained to be an anaesthetic nurse. But when the couple split up, he was sent to prison for stealing drugs and, after being released, created an online dating profile to meet women.