Meehan begged Newell to marry him. In the show, Meehan and Newell have a shotgun wedding in Vegas, but in real life, Meehan had actually been begging Newell to tie the knot for quite some time. So when Newell went to Vegas on business in December 2014, she finally gave in. The two wed in a courthouse ceremony and celebrated with lemon-drop martinis after less than two months of knowing each other. "I felt this was an opportunity to love again," Newell admitted in the podcast Dirty John.
The woman who broke into Newell's Balboa Island home was actually there when the couple returned from church. Remember the woman Meehan hired to break into Newell's Newport Beach home? Well, in reality, Newell came home and found her sitting inside drinking Ovaltine and wearing Newell's clothes. The woman had just finished using the shower, so her hair was soaking wet. "She didn't even act surprised," Newell explained in Oxygen's Dirty John, The Dirty Truth documentary. "It was the strangest thing."
While it's never been explained why she was really there, authorities believe Meehan set up the whole thing with the idea of "scaring Debra" into getting security cameras. "I believe now that John put the cameras in so he could watch me when I was home," Newell said. "I believe there were several cameras that I was even unaware of."