When we last heard about John McAfee, the 67 year-old retired founder of well-known computer security software company McAfee, Inc., it was on Monday, when he was reported by Gizmodo to be wanted by police in Belize, the country he’s lived in since 2008, in connection with the murder of a fellow expatriate. Now McAfee has broken his silence: In a lengthy interview with Wired allegedly from a hiding location somewhere still inside Belize, McAfee relates claims of how he evaded the authorities and maintains his innoncence:
As Belizean police combed the property of expat antivirus pioneer John McAfee Sunday afternoon, McAfee was closer than they could have known. He’d seen them coming, and says he hid — burying himself in the sand with a cardboard box over his head so he could breathe. “It was extraordinarily uncomfortable,” he says, in an exclusive interview with Wired. “But they will kill me if they find me…”
The homicide victim is McAfee’s neighbor, Gregory Faull, a 52-year-old American expatriate, who, like McAfee, lives on Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast of Belize. According to police, Faull was found face up in a pool of blood with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. Authorities found a single Luger brand 9mm expended shell at the scene.
Asked what he knows about the shooting, McAfee said, “Nothing — other than I heard he had been shot.” In fact, McAfee added, he’s worried that whoever shot Faull may have actually been gunning for him. “I thought maybe they were coming for me. They mistook him for me. They got the wrong house,” he said. “He’s dead. They killed him. It spooked me out.”
Read the entire article in full here at Wired. The pictures in particular are worth a look. Then read Gizmodo’s original background story on McAfee’s life in Belize following an arrest in April for alleged unlicensed drug manufacturing. Gizmodo also reported in another article that McAfee was posting on Internet drug forums about taking and purifying the substances known as bath salts.
