LOS ANGELES _ He had lavished her with compliments, and now he savaged her looks. He had entered the marriage broke, and now he demanded half her wealth. He had been gentleness itself, and now he threatened her with "long-lost relatives" in the mob.
"Enough," Debra Newell texted him. "You are evil."
"Divide up the stuff and I never see you again," John Meehan texted back. "Your choice."
In March 2015, as Debra Newell studied the paperwork detailing her husband's long record of women terrorized and laws broken, she learned that he had a nickname. It went back decades, to his brief time in law school at the University of Dayton.
Dirty John, classmates called him. Sometimes it was Filthy John Meehan, or just Filthy. But mostly Dirty John.
