Stepdaughter Terra Newell recalls being attacked by “Dirty John” Meehan and the horror moment she was forced to stab a conman

WHEN Debra Newell met her future husband, John Meehan, both of her daughters knew it was bad news.

Former anesthesiologist John and successful interior designer Debra had met online through an online dating site for over 50 years and appeared to be smitten.

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Meehan falsely told Debra he worked with Doctors Without Borders in Iraq.

Debra, who had been married several times, thought John was the man she had always been looking for.

The scammer “blew them off their feet,” Debra later told Fox5, adding, “He tended to have everything I was looking for on my checklist.”

“I liked that he was a doctor, that he was successful in helping people, and then when he said he had been to Iraq, Doctors Without Borders, that impressed me too,” she added.

But the reality was far more sinister.

In fact, he was a con artist who took advantage of vulnerable women and wormed his way into Debra’s life by manipulating her emotionally and mentally.

And just weeks before meeting Debra, he’d been in jail for violating a restraining order.

Daughter Terra, now 31, said she told Debra about her reservations about her new partner over Thanksgiving 2014.

The couple ignored their family’s concerns and were married weeks later in Las Vegas. They had only been together for a few months.

But two years later, Terra and her sister Jacquelyn’s worst fears would be confirmed.

After Debra finally broke up with John, he began threatening to kill the family.

He then launched a brutal attack on his stepdaughter Terra in August 2016 in Newport Beach, California.

Pinned to the ground, at first she thought he was going to hit her.

Terra would quickly realize that Meehan actually stabbed her with a knife hidden in a pocket.

When he dropped his knife, Terra took her chance to fight back.

She landed 13 punches herself, eventually killing him with a knife to his eye.

He died in hospital four days after the incident at the age of 57.

Terra told Fox News: “I held his head like a zombie so he wouldn’t bite me and then I thought about the last two stab wounds.

“Whenever a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath loses control of someone, that’s when you’re most vulnerable to being attacked or killed.”

The story of her mother’s controlling relationship with Meehan was the subject of a Netflix show called Dirty John.

“People like John don’t like losing control,” Terra added.

“It means they’ve lost such a sense of himself. And so, for him, he’s literally lost control.”

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