Dirty John: Newlyweds
LOS ANGELES - After church one Sunday, Debra Newell walked into the living room with her husband to find a woman she did not recognize.
The stranger sat trancelike before the big window that overlooked Newport Harbor, a thin, weathered woman in her late 30s or early 40s. She had just used the shower; her curly blond hair was wet. She was dressed all in white; she had taken Debra's clothes. She held a tiny Bible and sipped Ovaltine. She acted like she belonged there, though she wouldn't meet their eyes.
John pushed her head onto the countertop and pulled her arms behind her back. He ordered Debra to leave the house and call the police. Debra didn't want to press charges. She figured the woman was homeless, maybe a drug addict, and had climbed in through the third-floor skylight.
John denied knowing her, but Debra wondered. Had he said something to the woman before police took her away? Had he warned her not to reveal their connection? Had she been to the house before, and learned of its unlocked entrance?
John announced they needed to ramp up security. Even in a $6,500-a-month bayfront rental they couldn't be too careful about drifters. Soon the home bristled with cameras that he monitored on his smartphone. He also insisted on cameras at the Irvine office of her interior design firm. He just wanted her to be safe.
Is he watching me? Debra wondered.
And she thought: I can watch him, too.
___
She didn't know where he went all day, when he kissed her goodbye and disappeared in her Tesla. He never brought home a paycheck, but that was easily explained - as
