136: What if you had to fight for your life? 40:06

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Hello, listeners. Normally, we release this show every two weeks, but today we have a unique bonus episode of This Is Actually Happening, featuring Tara Newell. Tara is the daughter of Deborah Newell, whose relationship with John Meehan is the centerpiece of the well-known Dirty John podcast. The final episode of the Dirty John series focuses a bit on Tara's story, but I was curious to know more about who Tara was and what it was like from her perspective, so I decided to make an episode just featuring her.

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At that time in my life, I started to see like dark figures and dark shadows sometimes and have really bad dreams. I did have the feeling that someone was going to come back and do something horrible again after that. Welcome to the Permatemp Corporation. A presentation of the audio podcast, This Is Actually Happening. Episode 136. What if you had to fight for your life?

I lived in Orange County, California. My dad had a daughter from a previous marriage, and then my mom also had a daughter from a previous marriage and a son from a previous marriage. It was just like a busy household, but we had a lot of space. We each had our rooms, our own rooms.

My sister was 15 months older than me, and I was the kid that kind of just followed her around because my sister's always been a little bit more outgoing, and I was more of the shy one. I just was really a mellow child. I feel like I was just kind of in my own world as a child.

I always had animals. I've had a duck before. I've had rats, hamsters. I think at one point it got crazy, like 10 cages and like 20 hamsters, and then they would get loose. And then I've had lots of dogs. I also would like read dog encyclopedia books and just look over the different breeds of dogs.

kind of memorized their behaviors and stuff. Then at one point, I think I did like a dog walking service. So I was really involved with animals. When I was little, I want to say I was like five years old. We had the room in the front and there was this big window. And this guy came into my bedroom to the window.

He picked me up and then my sister woke up and she screamed and then he dropped me on the floor and ran out the window and then my parents ran into the room. My dad didn't really believe me for some reason, but we both still had the same vivid memory and it's just kind of crazy. Like my sister goes to psychics and mediums here and there and

And she said, like, an evil spirit lived in that house that, like, picked me up. And that may be why my dad and stuff didn't believe me. At that time in my life, I started to see, like, dark figures and dark shadows sometimes and have really bad dreams. And that was, like, a result of trauma. So as a kid, I thought I was kind of crazy seeing this stuff.

I always had anxiety of being left alone after that. I just couldn't ever be alone and I would cry. I would call my mom if she wasn't home. I did have the feeling that someone was going to come back and do something horrible again after that. My mom, growing up, I had a really good relationship with her. I was really close to her.

She worked a lot, though, so she was always traveling, and sometimes we would travel with her, so we got to go on a lot of cool trips to Hawaii, the Bahamas. My dad built homes, and my mom was a designer.

They actually did work together, but there was some fighting between them, and it just didn't work out in the end for both of them. My dad, I feel, he became less involved in our lives because of the divorce with my mom. My mom met someone right after, too.

I really liked him because he bought me a dog. But he turned out to be a con artist and he actually was married in New York to someone and had a kid with them. When they split up, I didn't really give it too much thought. He gave me a dog, but we didn't see too much of him at all.

My mom got married when I was in the sixth grade to this guy that was a dentist. This guy was very controlling. He had rules for my mom that we couldn't go shopping, we couldn't get pets anywhere.

Looking back and knowing a lot of the terminology and everything, it was really a coercive, controlled relationship. Back then, she wasn't able to see the red flags clearly or really notice how to look out for the red flags. So she ends up divorcing this guy and he ends up like taking alimony from her.

Around like junior year, that's when I started dating. And then that's when I like was picking the bad guys. I graduate high school. And then after high school, I go into cosmetology school. If I graduate cosmetology school, I get my hours. And right after I came back, I started working at the pet store.

I ended up meeting my ex-boyfriend of five years. And I ended up in a good relationship with him. And we moved to Vegas during this time. My mom met a guy on an internet dating website named John Meehan. She was very enthralled by him and excited. It was a new love.

And it was just something that made her feel so happy. John, when he met my mom, he was extremely charming. They were always just so giddy. They were just like two teenage kids in love. They were just like attached at the hip. There was like nothing you could do with her whatsoever.

didn't include him. He said that he was an anesthesiologist. He was a family man. He had these two daughters and everything she's been looking for. And I even think he said he was a Christian man, which is something that she really wanted in someone. When my mother talked about him,

She was just like, oh my gosh, you'll love him. She would always tell me that he's exactly like me and that he loves dogs. My sister met him first and had some speculations of him. And this caused my mom to move away from my sister so that she could move in with John.

I had to kind of meet this guy for myself to fill him out. Just because, you know, something bad that your sister's saying and then your mom's saying something that's the complete opposite. So I decided to go down to Newport and help my mom move.

We saw this guy just like struggling with a mattress. And my boyfriend at the time, he goes up to try to help John. And it's like there are two guys just struggling with this mattress. And John just kind of seems like he has a little bit of ego, like he didn't want help or whatever. My mom comes down, introduces him. And to be honest, I don't feel like he was excited to see us.

He didn't want to look me in the eyes. He also didn't want to engage in conversation. He wanted to give me closed-ended answers where he couldn't really engage back with you. I had three dogs with me and so we decided to get some stuff in and then put the dogs in the house and then go get food.

The dogs are just kind of really anxious and stressed out. They don't really like being there. My dogs didn't really want to interact with him, but I couldn't like put the two and two together. Just like having dinner with him and trying to ask him questions. He's not really trying to engage with us or anything. He's just like giving us close-knit answers.

Then we get back and the dogs are just stressed out. So they pooped everywhere. And you can just tell that he's kind of just annoyed.

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So I was ready and excited to spend time with the family. I noticed him like just driving her car everywhere. Like he didn't have a car apparently. Especially when you're claiming to be an anesthesiologist. You should probably have a car. There was this elaborate story about how all his stuff got stolen.

And I was just kind of calling BS on that. He had all these nice cars in storage and I think there was also maybe a motorcycle. But then someone sold them when he was in Iraq doing Doctors Without Borders. And I was wondering why he didn't have his cars now. Why the insurance money didn't come through.

The day before Thanksgiving, I did all the grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. I just got all the groceries in, unloaded them into the fridge. It was all set for the next day. Then my mom came home. I was texting her when I was at the grocery store and when I got home wondering where she was. She was at the hospital with John.

was curious to know why she was at the hospital with him and she said it was because his arm was hurting him he had gone to the hospital a lot lately and I had a friend that just like is a recovering heroin addict she would always go to the hospitals and then she would have issues with harm and stuff you can have issues with pain in your arm I guess

I was thinking that he was going to the hospital for drugs because he was going frequently. So I was having a lot of questions about this story and I confronted her about all of this. And as I was confronting her and we were discussing it, John came up behind my mom and he started screaming at me. He and I got into it.

He was accusing me of not wanting my mom to be happy. Me using my mom. Telling me that I was jealous. That I just wanted my mom all to myself. That I was using her. That I only wanted her for her money. And so on. And I became extremely mad. And I was arguing back with John. And I basically told him, no John that's what you want.

My mom didn't stand up for me and it resulted in me leaving with my three dogs and my boyfriend at the time going to my sister's and not going to Thanksgiving the next day because I was not welcome there. This all started happening two months into the relationship. So it was extremely hard for

Having my sister and I be excluded when all my other siblings, my cousin, my grandma, and everyone else are there. I didn't think it was fair for me to be disinvited to Thanksgiving when he had only been in my mom's life for two months. My sister Jacqueline was actually raising the most concerns.

I was just kind of teaming up with my sister at this point and hoping that my other siblings and my mom will eventually see what a bad guy this is. That night, my mom also was sending my sister to

Just the most disturbing text messages telling my sister that she should go kill herself. And it wasn't my mom. It was actually coming from John. So I was extremely angry with that. I stopped talking to my mom for probably a good month.

Then it was around Christmas time where we had to go to therapy and try to work out how we could do Christmas together. We all had Christmas together, but John just did exactly what he was not supposed to. Whenever I would try to speak to her, John would speak for her.

It was just really infuriating being around John and not being able to talk to my mom directly. My family decides to hire a private investigator to look into him, and it felt like almost a sense of relief because it just was like something's happening. Hopefully my mom's not going to be in this forever.

And I get a phone call from my sister saying that they found out that he's using different social security card numbers. That he's not really like an anesthesiologist. That he has been to jail several times. And lots of other stuff about him. My sister at this time didn't want to give me too much because she didn't want to make me scared.

And I just got this overwhelming headache and I knew that he was dangerous. That's when I actually started to have bad dreams about him. I had this dream that I actually was stabbing John. I took that dream and I just kind of made myself prepared. My neighbor in Vegas, he had a gun.

My ex would go out of town to work on movies. My neighbor would lend me the gun and like show me how to use it and stuff so that I would be prepared for something. I ended up coming back to California. My brothers and sisters shared the information with my mother and

She ended up leaving John. So we were getting together with the family a lot. And we were just happy to like kind of have her back for the moment. But then we started to kind of see her drift away. Then he was able to convince her that everything that we found out through the private investigator was not really him. And that he had lawyers and stuff to prove it.

And she got back together with John. He just like was able to convince her that everything that was wrong was right. She was just like, oh no, this isn't him. This isn't true. And then she was like, you guys just wait and see what a good guy he is. I just was kind of trying to have boundaries with her at this point. Because there was just a lot of hurt.

And I didn't want to continue to get hurt by being put into the situation with them. She had also bought a house in Nevada with him. I'm just kind of going into living my life again, getting things handled. But I always just had this constant fear. And I felt like I was being watched.

Then she ends up leaving him again. And this time we think it's for good because he threatened to like, if she hits him, he will make sure she never gets up again. He would just say weird comments when he was with my mom even. Like he told my cousin that he would shoot my sister with a sniper rifle one time.

My mom just was like, she didn't know what to think of it, I guess. But there was just like so many things like he was telling other people, apparently, like this lawyer person, he knew that he was going to bury us in the backyard and stuff.

And like harassing my sister. He was just sending her horrific, threatening messages. And one night we called the police and the police just came and said, we can't do anything with these messages because you're responding. And so that was very hard to hear that, that we didn't even have the police on our side.

He knew exactly what to say where he couldn't get in trouble for it. He sent my sister a picture of her birth certificate one time with spit on it. So we came to this point of living in constant fear and he was just spiraling downward and

At one point, he ended up lighting her car on fire. And so we had a police report about that. And we were just kind of hoping that like he would get in trouble for that. He was squatting the Vegas house that my mom and him got together. Then he was going to California and stalking us.

And when he was stalking us, he was leaving the dog that my mom and him got together at home. So the dog would get out. And then the dog got picked up by animal control. And then I ended up taking the dog because my mom works so much. And I worked at a dog kennel and I could take the dog to work with me daily. So I had his dog. And then...

I would go hiking a lot, so I brought, the dog's name is Murphy, I brought Murphy and my dog Cash on lots of hikes. We would hike in the back bay. I remember meeting these two Rhodesian Ridgebacks on the trail, and then I got a call for grooming for two Rhodesian Ridgebacks on August 19th.

And this guy called with a fake French accent and was trying to schedule an appointment for his two dogs. And things are loud when you're working in a dog kennel with all the dogs barking and everything. So I didn't think too much of it, but I felt that the phone call was kind of weird. The next day came, August 20th, and...

I get a phone call and it's the guy canceling but I can't really hear him too much. So then I just go home and start to get ready because I have Jason Aldean's concert later that night. So I start to get ready for the concert and then I go back to work because I have to finish out my shift. I get off work a little bit early.

I pull into the gate of my parking structure. I look over and it's just this guy with a tire iron. My dog Cash just starts going off on this guy. And I feel like maybe he's homeless or he's sleeping in his car or something. So I tell my dog to knock it off. I then get out of the car and

get grabbed by the waist and he looks me in the eyes and he says do you remember me I immediately try to flee away from him I'm biting him pushing him doing whatever I can to try to get away and my dog's attacking his ankles at this time I end up falling on my back

And then he's on his knees. At this time, I realized that there's a knife and I'm getting stabbed. I feel like I was getting punched at first. I honestly didn't really have time to think. I tried to flee from the attack right away. But then if you're unable to flee, then you have to fight back. And that's what I did.

It was just like my body just doing everything. My body already knew what to do. I watch a lot of Walking Dead. And then I also just watch a lot of other criminal shows. They kind of, if you pay attention to like how the people that survive, survive, is that they really did anything they could to try to get out of their attack.

I'm trying to block the knife as it's coming down. I finally kick the knife out of his hand and it lands on my side. I pick it up and I start just willing back on him. I stabbed him in his back. He starts to fall on top of me. I start to push him off.

And then I stabbed him the last two times, one in the eye and then one in the forehead. And the one in the eye is what made him brain dead. I pushed him off of me. I tossed the knife as far as I can away. And I just started screaming for help and just evaluating myself. I realized I got stabbed in the forearm, so I started applying pressure to that.

This lady comes up, she was walking her yellow lab. She asked me what she could do to help me. I see that my dog's running around and so I ask her to grab my dog. She grabs my dog and then now more people are coming to help and stuff. Someone comes up to me, gives me a sweater. The 14-year-old girl that came from lifeguard training came up to try to help me too and she gave me a clean towel.

Then the guy goes over to John to try to check up on him, starts trying to revive him, and I tell him, "He might try to kill you." I just went down the hill to get away from John, and I called my mom, and I told her, "I'm so sorry. I think I killed your husband." And then I told her I knew this would happen.

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Get started on the Angie app or visit Angie.com today. You can do this when you Angie that. After the attack, it was pretty hard. I went to one of the hospitals and there I was questioned over and over and over again until probably about 11 p.m. at night.

At first, I only saw my sister because the police told me that my mom had went to the other hospital to be with John. So that was kind of hard. But then she came back and she told me that she only had to go there to identify him. And then I kind of just like,

brush that off because I was just honestly so happy to see my mom and to have my mom there. They gave me stitches because I refused to get stitches until my mom got there. I was getting undressed and then they realized that there was another stab wound in my chest. That was alarming to them and so they put me on another ambulance and

to be transferred to the trauma unit. There's about 10 people in a room poking you with needles, sticking you with IVs, checking you to see if you got stabbed in another place or if anything else happened to you. I felt re-traumatized. I felt very unsafe after that because all these people were touching me that I did not know and

I hate needles and I hate the hospital. So it was just very hard to be there. And I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I didn't want anyone to touch me, especially after everything that I went through. I was on lots of like pain medication because they also did exploratory surgery on me to see if I was bleeding out.

And then I was on a lot of Zofran and Ativan because I just went through this attack and I could not be at this place. I had to, they had to basically drug me the whole time I was there. A couple days later after the attack, my mom and his sisters went to pull the plug. And when that happened, I was just like relieved he was finally gone.

It was just I had all this healing that I needed to do now. When John died, I was just kind of relieved it was over. Everything just ended. He was bugging my family for so long, and he wasn't going to hurt us anymore. There was a sense of relief that he was gone, but I was still very traumatized from my attack.

When they finally pulled the plug on him, it was extremely frustrating, actually, because we were actually hoping to donate some of his organs, and we got the news that we weren't unable to. So it was extremely hard hearing that we were unable to donate his organs, and we were hoping...

That we would be able to do that and at least have one good thing that John did in this life. I did not know where my home was after that because I was living at a place that

I don't know. I was in shock. Like, I guess I was okay in my head feeling like I could go back there. But everybody else didn't want me to go back there. And I guess when I went there for the first time afterwards, it was really hard because

And so I now know why people didn't want me to go there right afterwards. And then my sister literally went to my place, grabbed some clothes for me. And then I was living on the couch of my mom and my sister's place for a while after that. I was just extremely in shock. I was trying to go out with my friends and just trying to live my life normally without

But there would be points where I was scared. And then some people would scare me. So it was this constant fear. And it was just like my mind was going from extremes. I feel like I would go through things.

violent rages when I couldn't even do normal tasks that I used to do or like some loud noises would just set me off and I didn't know how to really figure out what was going on with me and I just really had to try to go to therapy and sort through what PTSD really is.

When I went to therapy and I got a good therapist, I ended up going to Austin, Texas, actually, to live with my sister, my oldest sister for a bit. And she helped me get into a good therapist over there that did EMDR training. And so I found that extremely helpful. And she really helped me figure out like what was going on with me.

It helps rewire your brain where you're not into flight or flight mode anymore. That has been one of the things that has extremely helped me. And then now something that I find extremely helpful in my situation is guided meditation for anxiety and also to help me fall asleep at night.

This story got turned into the podcast Dirty John. And then probably about a year later, it got turned into a TV show. Having the TV show come out, it was really exciting. It was just, oh wow, like something's being made. I've worked in film and TV before. As it got going, you kind of realized that

This isn't just a TV show. This is really like my life. And some of the things did happen and some of the things didn't. And some of them necessarily didn't happen exactly like it was on the show. But it was really kind of re-traumatizing to watch all of that and go through that again.

Just the level of publicity and just like the amount of people that watched it. Just the podcast alone had 28 million plus people listen to it. So it was just overwhelming.

But I'm extremely grateful and happy that it is out there because there has been so many women that have messaged me and even men that said that they were able to realize the red flags and get out of certain relationships and also get awareness for PTSD and everything. It not only is just a show, but it's something that raises awareness for so many things.

I feel like it's really changed me as a person. I've become a lot stronger as a person, just really become more independent. And that feeling of the fear of being left alone stayed up until the moment after my attack. It changed after that.

I'm really close with my mom still. It's really brought us close together. And I'm able to kind of get over issues that I've had with her with this too. Like we've gone through a lot of therapy together. It really honestly helped me find my way of life. Before I was doing dog grooming, I loved it. I didn't feel like it was 100% my life purpose.

I feel like my life purpose right now is to spread awareness for the red flags, talk about PTSD and inform people, and then talk about how to defend yourself. And so now I have three ways that I can help save women by just talking about my experience. There's never a second thought that

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