McAfee founder on the run after killing
Police raided McAfee’s mansion on Ambergris Caye, an island off Belize, to question him about the murder of Gregory Faull, who lived nearby. But McAfee was nowhere to be found, said police, who added he was wanted “for homicide”.
McAfee told Wired magazine he was innocent, and had watched police search his property from a hole he had buried in the sand — covering himself with a cardboard box. “It was extremely uncomfortable,” he said, adding: “You can say I’m paranoid about it but they will kill me, there is no question. They’ve been trying to get me for months.”
He said Belizean authorities had targeted him, but killed the wrong American.
Vidal’s officers searched McAfee’s mansion several months ago looking for weapons and drugs, and detained him for hours.
McAfee claims he was arrested because he refused to make a donation to a local politician’s campaign.
Faull, 52, was found dead at his home by his housekeeper on Sunday morning.
At the crime scene, investigators found a 9mm shell, “consistent with the wound in the back of Faull’s neck”, said a national security ministry spokesman.
A police report said there were no signs of a break-in, and that a laptop and mobile phone were missing.
Residents of the island, known for scuba diving, tropical fishing, and its American expatriate community, told gizmodo.com that Faull and McAfee had a recent fallout. According to Gizmodo, which quoted locals speaking on condition of anonymity, McAfee had displayed increasingly erratic behaviour and had been experimenting with psychoactive drugs.
Asked about the shooting, McAfee told Wired that he knew “nothing” other than Faull had been shot. The antivirus pioneer even said he was worried that Faull’s killers had actually been looking for him.
“Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in this country. You can say I’m paranoid about it but they will kill me, there is no question. They’ve been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me. I am not well liked by the prime minister. I am just a thorn in everybody’s side.”
McAfee has been living in Belize for four years.
The 67-year-old made millions when he sold his antivirus software company in the early 1990s.
McAfee and Faull lived in adjacent lots on the jungle island and had traded barbs and nearly blows over McAfee’s nine dogs. Faull’s father, Arthur Faull, told ABC News his son had demanded that McAfee quieten them down. McAfee allegedly threatened Faull that the next time he set foot on his property he’d shoot him. Faull promptly filed a complaint. He was shot a few days later.
McAfee was one of the first in Silicon Valley to amass a fortune by building a business off the internet.
He started McAfee Associates in 1989, initially distributing its antivirus software as shareware on internet bulletin boards.
He took the company public in 1992 and left two years later following accusations that he had hyped the arrival of a virus known as Michelango, which turned out to be a dud, to scare computer users into buying his company’s products.
McAfee’s life began unravelling in 2008, when he lost most of his estimated $100m (€78.6m) fortune in the combined collapse of the stock market and property market. He auctioned off everything he owned.
He then moved to Belize, where he set up a company that sought to transform jungle plants into modern medicine. That firm began to fall apart in 2010, after an investor fled the country.
According to freelance writer Jeff Wise, who profiled McAfee’s decline on Gizmodo, McAfee had become deeply enmeshed in the world of gangs, narcotics and arms. Wise told ABC that McAfee had become something of a prophet of “bath salts” and the drug’s erotic effects on hardcore drug message boards.
Bath salts, synthetic drugs that can mimic the effects of cocaine, have been linked to numerous bizarre and violent incidents in the US.
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