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Dirty John tells the story of John Mehan, a master of deception who charmed and tormented his unsuspecting victims, women like Deborah Newell.

What do you think when people hear your story and think, how did you let this happen?

I tell them you weren't in my shoes.

What was it about John that captivated you at first?

A few things. I think he was a doctor. So I thought, okay, he's got a career. His charm.

I'm learning a lot about charming people, though. His looks, his interest. He said all the right things. So, any other family.

He has a picture on his dating side that is of his daughters. So that always a family man is great. So I thought he had it all.

Hello, lovely listeners and welcome to Real Crime Profile. I'm Laura Riches, former criminal behavioral analyst, New Scotland Yard and founder of Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service. And with me today in the studio is...

Lisa Zambetti, I am a casting director at CBS's Criminal Minds.

Where Jim Clemente is my colleague, unfortunately Jim is not here today. Is he Laura?

He's not and we're sad about that because I know Jim really wanted to be here, but he's headlong in a case at the moment. So that needs his full attention. But we are very happy to be joined by a super special guest.

Debra Nual from Dritty John.

Yes, so many of our listeners were probably recall that about a year ago we actually dropped a number of bonus episodes about this rather incredible story called Dirty John that was put together by Chris Goffard from the LA Times and by our host network Wondry.

For our listeners, if you wanted to go back and recap, you can certainly listen to Chris Goffard's six-part podcast along with our three bonus episodes.

And they dropped on the 4th of October, 2017, the 10th of October and the 18th of October, where we actually interviewed Chris just before that podcast dropped.

And that podcast, because I think it had more than 15 million downloads. And now it's been made into an eight-part bravo show and also a documentary that's been put together and produced by Oxygen.

I've been very much part of that process working with Debra and her family. I've had the real pleasure and privilege to get to know them all over.

It's been almost a year, or maybe a little bit under a year that we first started talking Debra.

And I know, you know, our listeners will probably be intrigued to learn that you have a very good friend, called Fiona, who's British.

She had listened to the podcast, to what we had to sound real crime profile and had mentioned to you that you should listen to what we said.

And Fiona felt that somehow, you know, I and my co-hosts on real crime profile that we had a good understanding of what had gone on, particularly regarding coercive control and stalking.

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