“He put [a] hit out on me,” Orange County, California, Detective Julia Bowman tells PEOPLE. “Once he knew my name and recognized me as one of his targets, I never felt safe.”
Bowman and other victims of Meehan — including women who became ensnared in his web of lies, manipulation and terror — open up in Oxygen’s upcoming documentary,Dirty John: The Dirty Truth,a two-hour special airing on Monday, Jan. 14 at 8 PM ET.
The special airs a day after the explosive season finale ofBravo’s hit scripted seriesDirty John,starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana, on Sunday, Jan. 13 at 10 PM ET.
John Meehan.California Department of Corrections
TheBravo series centers onhow Meehan charmed mom-of-fourDebra Newelland her family only to terrorize them later. It was adapted fromLos Angeles Timesreporter Christopher Goffard’s popular podcast and investigative reporting piece.
Newell, a well-to-do interior designer in Southern California, fell prey to Meehan when she thought she found true love with him after four failed marriages.
While Newell secretly wed her attentive and charming suitor after dating him for just two months, her children were immediately suspicious of him, hiring a private detective to look into his past.
They learned he’d had run-ins with the law and dozens of restraining orders filed against him.
Oxygen
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John Meehan and Debra Newell at a 2014 breast cancer benefit.Courtesy Debra Newell
What happened to Newell and the other women was not their fault, Bowman stresses. “Some people might think, ‘I’d see through that, or I’d ask this question, or I would’ve done that,’” she says. “I’m telling you, they wouldn’t. What happened to her was a direct result of who he was.
“He was so manipulative, and so suave, and knew the words to say, and would be able to create these relationships with them, and then basically take them for everything they were worth.”
In the Oxygen documentary, Bowman recalls the chilling phone call she received from the Orange County Jail in July 2013, just after she and others arrested Meehan.
She recounts to PEOPLE what a corrections employee told her: “Hi. We’ve got an inmate here. He’s trying to orchestrate a hit on one of your officers. Do you know a Julia Bowman?'”
Shocked, she replied, “I am Julia Bowman.”
She says she then asked the corrections employee, “What are you going to do about it?”
She learned that from jail, Meehan had gone to his roommate and offered to pay $10,000 to kill her and a female police officer who’d had dealings with Meehan.
In the documentary, she recalls feeling like someone was following her and her husband, who was her boyfriend at the time.
“We lived in a cul de sac, and cars would drive down the street that didn’t belong there,” she tells PEOPLE. “It became kind of a scary situation. Just knowing him the way I had, I didn’t know what he was capable of or what it might lead to.”
In February 2014,Meehan pleaded guiltyto stalking the Brazilian writer and being a felon in possession of a firearm, theLos Angeles Timesreports. He got out of jail that summer but landed back in jail after he violated a restraining order against another woman, according to theTimes. Freed on Oct. 8, 2014, he met Newell online two days later, theTimesreports.
The season finale ofDirty Johnairs on Sunday (10 p.m. ET) on Bravo.
The documentaryDirty John: The Dirty Truthairs Jan. 14 (8 p.m. ET) on Oxygen.
source: people.com
