Speaker 1: On November eleven, twenty twelve, a housekeeper in Belize entered
Speaker 1: the beachside residence of a man named Gregory Fall. According
Speaker 1: to court documents, she found him lying face up in
Speaker 1: the living room in the pool of blood. The television
Speaker 1: was still on and there were no signs of struggle.
Speaker 1: Once police arrived on the scene, it became clear the
Speaker 1: man was first tasted and then shot in the back
Speaker 1: of the head with a single bullet. The police found
Speaker 1: a nine millimeter shell next to the body. They told
Speaker 1: a local paper that there was no evidence that anything
Speaker 1: was missing, leading them to dismiss robbery as a motive
Speaker 1: for the murder. Following the murder for American national Gregory Fall,
Speaker 1: police in San Pedro have detained one man for his murder.
Speaker 1: They're also seeking American national John McAfee for questioning. McAfee
Speaker 1: is well known because he's the founder of the anti
Speaker 1: virus that bears his name. McAfee, who has a house
Speaker 1: in the area, has not been seen since this incident.
Speaker 1: Greg Fall and John McAfee lift two houses down from
Speaker 1: one another. Before greg was killed, they'd been arguing over
Speaker 1: McAfee's guard dogs. Now the police wanted to talk to McAfee,
Speaker 1: but he was nowhere to be found. He went on
Speaker 1: the lamb. Did you get away with murda? No? I
Speaker 1: did not do murder. This is you know. I think
Speaker 1: this is perfectly clear. I had nothing whatsoever to do
Speaker 1: with the murder of Gregory Paul. But McAfee didn't hang
Speaker 1: around to answer any questions. Do you know who this is?
Speaker 1: He fled, claiming he'd been framed, and though he was
Speaker 1: avoiding the police, he was in constant contact with the media.
Speaker 1: Are you afraid? Wouldn't you be? So? How is this
Speaker 1: going to end? How do you see this coming to
Speaker 1: an end? I don't have a crystal ball. I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue to fight until something changes up. You won't
Speaker 1: turn yourself in. I will not. So it will either
Speaker 1: be that some how you get away or the authorities
Speaker 1: come and get you one of those two on the
Speaker 1: run under suspicion with the world watching. You're listening to Foundering,
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jamie Tarabay. Belize is where everything changes
Speaker 1: from McAfee. It's sometimes referred to as his Heart of
Speaker 1: Darkness era. He's no longer the spiritually enlightened Yogi or
Speaker 1: the adrenaline seeking aircraft enthusiast, his flaunting guns, bodyguards, teenage girlfriends,
Speaker 1: and drugs. He's accused of orchestrating a murder. This image
Speaker 1: of a genius madman is one that will follow him
Speaker 1: for the remaining years of his life. A slew of
Speaker 1: negative news coverage comes out that documents disturbing allegations against him,
Speaker 1: and rather than running away from the bad press, McAfee
Speaker 1: embraces the media, introduces reporters to his homes, his science laboratory,
Speaker 1: and his entourage, and after his neighbor turns up dead, perversely,
Speaker 1: McAfee's famed skyrockets to an all time high, making him
Speaker 1: even more famous than during his heyday as CEO of
Speaker 1: McAfee and Associates. McAfee's life in Belize was marked by
Speaker 1: high drama and chaos, much of his own making. The
Speaker 1: reports being broadcast to viewers at home at the time
Speaker 1: were full of contradictions, accusations, and misinformation, and faithfully, two
Speaker 1: journalists from Bias News even go on the run with
Speaker 1: McAfee as he evades Belizean authorities. This is when events
Speaker 1: spiral out of his control and his antics seemed to
Speaker 1: lead to his undoing. I'll tell you more after a break.
Speaker 1: John McAfee arrived in Belize in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: He wanted it to be a new beginning. He was
Speaker 1: running away from an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit from his
Speaker 1: error trekking business. In Belize, McAfee lived like a rich
Speaker 1: man far outside the bound of US jurisdiction. Here's Jeff Weiss,
Speaker 1: a journalist who has covered McAfee since two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven and is also a contributor to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: He says him now, Belize says all things having so
Speaker 1: much fun. He's got his ultra lights down there. He's
Speaker 1: like exploring these jungle rivers and there's like all these
Speaker 1: abandoned man in ruins. It's like a tourist brochure. Belize
Speaker 1: is a small country hugging the Caribbean coast of Central America,
Speaker 1: wedged between Mexico to its north and Guatemala to its
Speaker 1: south and west. Its population is tiny, just four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people. Many American retirees flocked to the town of
Speaker 1: Saint Pedro. That's the version of Belize that gets promoted
Speaker 1: on travel sites. White sandy beaches, sparkling turquoise water, scuba
Speaker 1: diving in coral reefs. But McAfee being McAfee, decided to
Speaker 1: make his base of operations for his first years in
Speaker 1: Belize in a town called orange Walk, which was something
Speaker 1: else altogether. Here's Jules Vasquez, the news director of Channel
Speaker 1: seven News, a TV station in Belize. I would see
Speaker 1: the difference is it's a rural, agrarian community as opposed
Speaker 1: to tourist tone. There are no white men living in
Speaker 1: that area of orange Walk where you was. Orange Walk
Speaker 1: is on the mainland. It's a poorer community. The only
Speaker 1: other so called white men in orange Walk were a
Speaker 1: group of Mennonites. So it was here that McAfee decided
Speaker 1: to build the laboratory. He said he was developing a
Speaker 1: new sort of antibiotic derived from rare plants that grow
Speaker 1: wild in the Belizian rainforest. This research would build upon
Speaker 1: a real emerging area of medicine called quorum sensing, which
Speaker 1: studies how bacteria communicate. The basis for McAfee's research sounds
Speaker 1: pretty technical. Here's Jeff Weiss again. So the bio drug
Speaker 1: thing he was looking for, he had this whole backstory
Speaker 1: that was largely based in reality. There's this thing called
Speaker 1: quorum sensing, where organisms that team up, like slime molds
Speaker 1: and things, organisms that are only sometimes dangerous, like if
Speaker 1: they infect your wound, they can send a signal, and
Speaker 1: if you can interrupt that signal, you can maybe prevent
Speaker 1: them from becoming dangerous. In an article Jeff wrote for
Speaker 1: Fast Company, he posed the question could McAfee do for
Speaker 1: human health what he'd done for computers. It was a
Speaker 1: tantalizing prospect. And he also employed a biologist and she
Speaker 1: had actually done some work. She actually was we talked
Speaker 1: about Charles earlier. She was actually a researcher at Harvard,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, so she was working in some
Speaker 1: Harvard lab there really was working on this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: The biologist is a woman named Alison at Anisio. She
Speaker 1: was relatively young when she was working for McAfee, just
Speaker 1: thirty one years old. Alison had quit her job at
Speaker 1: Harvard and abandoned the grant for a three year research
Speaker 1: program to go to work for McAfee. They co founded
Speaker 1: a company to cultivate natural antibiotics and topical medicine to
Speaker 1: treat wounds. But once Jeff is on site, he has
Speaker 1: trouble understanding McAfee's explanation of how he would actually develop
Speaker 1: the new drugs. They're supposed to be based on rare
Speaker 1: plants only available in the jungle in Belize. So McAfee
Speaker 1: walks Jeff to an area on his property where he
Speaker 1: says these plants were going to spring up. So he
Speaker 1: was claiming that, like he was, he had a plot
Speaker 1: of land where this stuff was growing and he was
Speaker 1: going to clear it so that it was going to
Speaker 1: grow better. But he wasn't going to plant it. It
Speaker 1: was just going to grow. And I and I made
Speaker 1: him walk me through this several times because it didn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to me. I've never heard of like
Speaker 1: growing a crop but not planting the crop, just like
Speaker 1: hoping it'll grow. I'm like, how do you know so
Speaker 1: much about this plant that it's just going to grow?
Speaker 1: He just he said at one point he said to me, like,
Speaker 1: I'm a very smart man, and so you have to
Speaker 1: take my word for it. A seed of doubt is
Speaker 1: planted in Jeff's mind. One he never really shakes. It's
Speaker 1: all a bit handwavy, frankly, But this was the kind
Speaker 1: of spiel that he would fold for people who were
Speaker 1: This was this was the claim that he was making
Speaker 1: the natural antibiotics never come to fruition. Jeff says that
Speaker 1: McAfee puts Allison onto another project he's interested in. John
Speaker 1: McAfee had a very long standing interest in female libido
Speaker 1: enhancing drugs, so he wanted to find a real life
Speaker 1: Spanish fly. He like, experimented with like testosterone, and he
Speaker 1: experimented with various stimulants. At one point he had Alison Adanitzio,
Speaker 1: his biological researcher, working on a libido drug that he
Speaker 1: wanted her to take, and I guess she did um.
Speaker 1: But so it got it got it. You know, you
Speaker 1: sort of peel one layer away and it gets pretty.
Speaker 1: It gets skibe frankly, and the partnership between McAfee and
Speaker 1: Alison Adernethia doesn't last very long. She leaves John McAfee's
Speaker 1: lab in Orange Walk and returns to the US. She
Speaker 1: later alleges that McAfee drugged and assaulted her when she
Speaker 1: said she wanted out of the business. In an interview
Speaker 1: with ABC News, McAfee called Allison a madwoman and rejected
Speaker 1: her allegations. We haven't been able to reach Allison and
Speaker 1: haven't been able to verify what she said McAfee did
Speaker 1: to her, whatever you believe. Her story highlights an aspect
Speaker 1: of McAfee's personality that seemed to intensify with age. This
Speaker 1: obsession with sex and younger women, and the use of
Speaker 1: his money and power to allegedly exploit them. It got
Speaker 1: more and more egregious over the years. In addition to
Speaker 1: his medical research project, McAfee also seemed to be using
Speaker 1: his money to buy influence. The Saint Pedro soun quotes
Speaker 1: him as saying that he donated over two million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of goods to various police departments while he was
Speaker 1: in Belize. He spent on housing police officers, brought them
Speaker 1: m sixteens, tasers, handcuffs, pepper spray, and metal detectors. He
Speaker 1: gave the Coastguard a million dollar boat, and he seemed
Speaker 1: especially focused on crime in the town of Carmelita, near
Speaker 1: his Orange Walk home. A twenty twelve profile in Wired
Speaker 1: magazine says McAfee paid officers to patrol the streets when
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be off duty. He apparently told
Speaker 1: them to sniff out drug dealers. Here's a clip from
Speaker 1: the documentary Gringo, on which Jeff Wise was an executive producer.
Speaker 1: But I moved to the village of Carmelito. I decided
Speaker 1: I would try to clean it up friend to do
Speaker 1: it legally. For on, it makes sense to hire off
Speaker 1: duty officers to collect information and farm that information. Maybe
Speaker 1: they can do or do something, and they did. I
Speaker 1: have an officer living on my compound. It makes me
Speaker 1: feel safe, makes me feel safer to know that all
Speaker 1: the criminals that might want to rob me, no, there's
Speaker 1: a policeman living there, and they think there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with that. Now, Belize does have one of the highest
Speaker 1: murder rates in the world, but when we looked at
Speaker 1: government issued crime maps, we saw that Orange Walk is
Speaker 1: not an especially dangerous area. Jules Vasquez told us that
Speaker 1: the town had a history of drug violence in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, but it's not seriously violent anymore. The sense
Speaker 1: of danger appeared to be mostly in McAfee's own mind.
Speaker 1: McAfee built a sprawling property there. This is Tamara Sniffin,
Speaker 1: the editor of The Sampedro sum. It was a compound.
Speaker 1: It was like a several freestanding buildings that were enclosed,
Speaker 1: but it was surrounded by jungle that was very tucked
Speaker 1: away and looked lovely, all wood structures and comfortable and cool.
Speaker 1: McAfee's Orange Walk home reminded me of his previous setups
Speaker 1: in Colorado with his yoga retreat and New Mexico with
Speaker 1: his ultralight aircraft operation. It was as if he wanted
Speaker 1: to leave civilization as he knew it behind and built
Speaker 1: something new, something out of reach, where he could assert
Speaker 1: his own authority. There were also several teenaged girls living
Speaker 1: in McAfee's compound. He boasts about them in the documentary
Speaker 1: film Gringo. I live a lifestyle which might be over
Speaker 1: the line of normal behavior. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I get to hang out with cute girls who are
Speaker 1: scantilly clad. I do have teenage girlfriends, and many at
Speaker 1: a time. Nothing illegal. They're well beyond the aged consent
Speaker 1: and I've seen nothing wrong with it. And if you do,
Speaker 1: then that's okay. He was sixty seven years old at
Speaker 1: this point. The age of consent in Belize is sixteen.
Speaker 1: Journalist Jeff Wise said that he met a number of
Speaker 1: the girls living on macafee's compound, and you'd have five
Speaker 1: at a time. It was in Belize where because he
Speaker 1: could just like, you know, everyone was so poor and
Speaker 1: he has so much money, and like he seems relatively
Speaker 1: more glamorous there. He could have five. He would have
Speaker 1: multiple buildings on his property, and he would house different women,
Speaker 1: and each one of them, as you say, each one,
Speaker 1: we think they were the special one. In addition to
Speaker 1: flaunting his girlfriends, he stood out in still another way.
Speaker 1: He would travel around town with an armed entourage, big
Speaker 1: scary people, you know, a lot of times wearing fatigues,
Speaker 1: big guys. They always had a rifle slung over their shoulder,
Speaker 1: and they were always on the aware, you know, always
Speaker 1: kind of scoping things out, like he was in danger
Speaker 1: or something. It was very bizarre. According to local news reports,
Speaker 1: including the Saint Pedro Son and Belize Channel seven News,
Speaker 1: several of the men in McAfee's employ weren't registered to
Speaker 1: carry weapons and weren't licensed to work as security guards.
Speaker 1: All of this behavior, the armed protection, the new properties,
Speaker 1: the money he's splashing around in this underdeveloped area, begins
Speaker 1: to attract the attention of law enforcement. The police thought
Speaker 1: it was suspicious that he had bought this property kind
Speaker 1: of in the middle of nowhere, not a scenic location,
Speaker 1: easily accessed by road that sits on a river that
Speaker 1: goes to Mexico. So if you want to move something
Speaker 1: in or out without attracting attention of customs, that would
Speaker 1: be a good place to do it. In April twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: at six in the morning, Belize's Gang Suppression Unit stormed
Speaker 1: McAfee's Orange Walk compound. Jules Vasquez says, the Gang Suppression
Speaker 1: Unit officers are in a different league to the local
Speaker 1: police forces. They are a paramilitary, specialized police unit that
Speaker 1: should should primarily deal with the suppression of guns. But
Speaker 1: they're commander at the time, Marco Videal, you wished for
Speaker 1: them to have a much broader footprint in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: so he would have them pursue pretty much anything that
Speaker 1: it was felt that other units were too corrupt or
Speaker 1: compromised to pursue. Remember McAfee had donated significant money to
Speaker 1: the local police, but the leader of the Gang Suppression Unit,
Speaker 1: Marco Video, felt that his team was outside that kind
Speaker 1: of influence. However, it was his feeling. I believe that
Speaker 1: many times these local police had already been compromised by
Speaker 1: the thick wallets of US investors, and the Gang Suppression
Speaker 1: Unit was the only one that could act with the
Speaker 1: necessary discretion and the professionalism to conduct the read properly.
Speaker 1: The Gang Suppression Unit, also known as the GSU, told
Speaker 1: local media they rated the property based on reports of
Speaker 1: illegal activity occurring at the compound and they were there
Speaker 1: to search for drugs and illegal firearms. Here's a clip
Speaker 1: from SBS Stateline, a current affairs show in Australia. If
Speaker 1: I came out naked with a handgun, I laid mine
Speaker 1: downs and as I saw the souldiers marching information down
Speaker 1: my driveway, I put my pants on went back outside.
Speaker 1: Before I could even get outside the door, I was grabbed,
Speaker 1: thrown up against the wall, A piece of paper was
Speaker 1: shoved in my face. You know. This is the warrant
Speaker 1: and the day it was pretty much a nightmare. McAfee
Speaker 1: says he was lying in bed naked with a seventeen
Speaker 1: year old girl when the Gang Suppression Unit charged to
Speaker 1: his property. He had barely gotten dressed when the police
Speaker 1: handcuffed him and four of his security guards. He says
Speaker 1: he was left in the sun for fourteen hours and
Speaker 1: that one of his guard dogs was shot and killed.
Speaker 1: The officers ransacked nine houses on the compound. They found
Speaker 1: a significant cache of weapons. The red conducted by the
Speaker 1: Gang Suppression Unit resulting in the discovery of ten fire arms,
Speaker 1: seven twelve gage pump action shotguns, one twelve gage single
Speaker 1: action shotgun, one tourist nine millimeter pistol. McAfee was released
Speaker 1: early the next morning. He told reporters the raid was
Speaker 1: in retaliation for his refusal to pay a bribe to
Speaker 1: a local politician. ABC News quoted a Belizian reporter who
Speaker 1: said the gang Suppression unit raided McAfee's lab because they
Speaker 1: suspected that he was manufacturing meth. They tested samples they
Speaker 1: collected from the scene. In the end, they didn't file
Speaker 1: a single drug charge, ends him. Jeff suggests that this
Speaker 1: may have had less to do with the absence of
Speaker 1: drugs and what to do with the nature of the drugs.
Speaker 1: At this time, McAfee was in the early stages of
Speaker 1: a very strong interest in let's call them bath salts.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a catch all term, but it's basically
Speaker 1: a kind of pharmacologically psychoactive drug that is not illegal
Speaker 1: because it's different. It has its chemical structure, is somewhat
Speaker 1: different from the stuff that's actually scheduled by the us DA,
Speaker 1: so you can have it and technically it's there's nothing
Speaker 1: they can do to you. Although McAfee walked away a freeman,
Speaker 1: the raid changed him. He became obsessed with the idea
Speaker 1: that there were people out to get him. His bouts
Speaker 1: of paranoia intensify in his later years. Many of these
Speaker 1: actions seemed driven by the idea that the govern was
Speaker 1: hunting for him, the cartel was after him, assassins were
Speaker 1: hidden in the dark, and this paranoia was reinforced in
Speaker 1: reality by the violent raid McAfee endured. After that, he
Speaker 1: moved out of Orange Walk and settled into his beach
Speaker 1: house in Saint Pedro, bringing his entourage with him. McAfee
Speaker 1: took up permanent residence in the tourist town, living near
Speaker 1: another American retiree, a Florida man named Gregory Fall We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. After John McAfee's compound on the mainland
Speaker 1: of Belize was raided by the gang Suppression Unit, he
Speaker 1: moved his life to Saint Pedro on the island of Amber,
Speaker 1: Greece Key. His beach house over look the white sands
Speaker 1: and crystal blue waters of the Caribbean. Saint Pedre was
Speaker 1: a community largely composed of retirees from the US and Canada.
Speaker 1: Here's Jules Vasquez. They have a certain Margharitaville lifestyle, right,
Speaker 1: like they're all straight out of that Jim A. Buffett song.
Speaker 1: And he comes in and he has quotery of dangerous,
Speaker 1: huge quotes dangerous black people around him, right Like he
Speaker 1: has an entourage, right of these people around him. So
Speaker 1: he really doesn't fit in with that community, which is
Speaker 1: really more retirement gringos, right, and then he comes in
Speaker 1: with all this alacrity, all this m combustion. McAfee is
Speaker 1: suspicious with people he doesn't know. He tells Wired Magazine
Speaker 1: that he keeps mainly to his beach house and his women.
Speaker 1: He's having erratically and he's convinced he's a target, says
Speaker 1: Tamara Sniffin. He just thought they were out together because
Speaker 1: he stepped on the wrong toes. Of course, he would
Speaker 1: never be forthcoming on exactly like why he was being
Speaker 1: picked on, just very vaguely that he was the white
Speaker 1: man coming in and stepping on toes or whatever. McAfee's
Speaker 1: presence in Saint Pedro was disrupting everyday life for many locals,
Speaker 1: says Jeff Weiss. He's kind of terrorizing the neighborhood. Everyone's
Speaker 1: freaked out. He's scared of this guy Dodgs. You're biting people,
Speaker 1: the guards, you're staring at people, and it's about six
Speaker 1: months of high tension on this stretch of beach. There
Speaker 1: was one neighbor in particular who took McAfee to task
Speaker 1: about the dogs, Gregory Fall, a fifty two year old
Speaker 1: former contractor and restaurateur from Florida. Here's Tamara. I did
Speaker 1: know that Greg was really unhappy with the dog situation.
Speaker 1: I had heard that he was trying to talk to
Speaker 1: the mayor about it and anybody he could to try
Speaker 1: and get this dog situation remedied. I've been to that
Speaker 1: area and they were really scary dogs, very very intimidating
Speaker 1: when you walked on the beach. I mean they were
Speaker 1: running free and they would run right up patchen. Pretty ferocious.
Speaker 1: So all I know is that Greg and McAfee thought
Speaker 1: about that quite a bit. Gregfull didn't have much tolerance
Speaker 1: for McAfee's behavior. McAfee is pretty good at intimidating people.
Speaker 1: He's pretty good at manipulating people. But I sensed that,
Speaker 1: you know, Greg Fall just like had been around the
Speaker 1: block a few times himself and was just it was
Speaker 1: having none of it, and so when McAfee pushed, he
Speaker 1: pushed back, And these guys get into a dispute and
Speaker 1: complaints are filed, threats are made. Fall allegedly says, if
Speaker 1: you know, if your dogs keep offing me, I will
Speaker 1: poison them. The dogs are poisoned, and then soon thereafter,
Speaker 1: Greg Fall's housekeeper comes in one morning to find Fall
Speaker 1: shot dead. Here's the police press conference about the murder.
Speaker 1: She arrived at mister Fall's home where she saw him
Speaker 1: in a motionless state, lying in a pool of blood.
Speaker 1: The police were called and the scene was processed. The
Speaker 1: buddy had an apparent gunshot wound to the back of
Speaker 1: the heaven Tamara says that the killing shocked the North
Speaker 1: American retirees who were living in Belize. I mean, Greg
Speaker 1: was well liked. He was horribly executed, you know, so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of sadness and then anger. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people immediately assumed that McAfee had some
Speaker 1: liability in it, and they were upset. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't have many murders on the island, and we specially
Speaker 1: don't have expat to expat kind of murder. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just unheard of. I think that's the only one
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of on this island. So yeah, then
Speaker 1: it was number one conversation at every local watering hole
Speaker 1: even that, and the watering hole gossip speculated that McAfee
Speaker 1: had ordered full be killed. I don't necessarily believe that
Speaker 1: it was McAfee who pulled the trigger, but like I said,
Speaker 1: he is always surrounded by armed guys and some very
Speaker 1: faithful people, and all I think he had to say
Speaker 1: was I want that soob dead, you know, and somebody
Speaker 1: said note taken. You know, in my mind, I think
Speaker 1: that's a likely scenario. And on the very day that
Speaker 1: Greg Fulls body was found, McAfee disappeared. He wasn't in
Speaker 1: his beach house, and though he was hiding from the police,
Speaker 1: he was basically talking to everyone else. Police say he
Speaker 1: is a person of interest, but have not called him
Speaker 1: a suspect or charged him. Despite that, McAfee says he's
Speaker 1: now in hiding fearful of what he calls a corrupt government.
Speaker 1: Belize's Prime minister publicly taunting McAfee Wednesday. It strikes me
Speaker 1: that he's extremely paranoid and in fact that it also
Speaker 1: far as to see bonkers. International and US television networks
Speaker 1: descend on Belize. McAfee gives several of them what they
Speaker 1: call exclusive interviews. He's on the crackly phone line here
Speaker 1: with ABC. I have had an adventure. I want to
Speaker 1: say that right now, sir, flying in the bottom of
Speaker 1: cavs Burt did for almost efeteen hours. I have buried
Speaker 1: myself in sand. I have slept on roofs ide have
Speaker 1: I will do whatever takes in case he didn't catch that,
Speaker 1: he said he buried himself in sand. By his account,
Speaker 1: he's the one being persecuted here running from the police.
Speaker 1: He started spreading a story that he wasn't wanted for
Speaker 1: murder at all, that he was wanted for hacking into
Speaker 1: the Belizian government. Here's McAfee talking to Australia's Channel seven News.
Speaker 1: I hacked the Polician government for five months and I
Speaker 1: have all that data, tens of thousands of hours, recordings
Speaker 1: and videos of the Prime Minister of ordering the murder
Speaker 1: of his competitors. McAfee made these claims with zero evidence,
Speaker 1: Though fears of the cartel became a running theme in
Speaker 1: the remaining years of McAfee's life. ABC also interviewed police
Speaker 1: spokesperson Raphael Martinez. He sounded almost puzzled by McAfee's flight.
Speaker 1: I did not know the reason why he should be well,
Speaker 1: not coming and forward to speak with the police. I mean,
Speaker 1: not coming forward knowing that you are wanted for questioning.
Speaker 1: I mean it begs the question exactly a state of mind.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was incredibly difficult for the murder victim's
Speaker 1: family to watch. Here's his father, Arthur Fall, speaking to
Speaker 1: SPS state Line from Australia. Do you believe that McAfee
Speaker 1: was involved. You're convinced that McAfee was involved, not entirely,
Speaker 1: but but but why would he run? Why did he
Speaker 1: not answer the questions? And if he has nothing to hide,
Speaker 1: why doesn't he speak. It's very frustrating to find that
Speaker 1: that that he gets all the attention and my son's
Speaker 1: kind of a prop for his infamy. The whole time.
Speaker 1: McAfee's playing the police and the media, trying to drum
Speaker 1: up sympathy while evading having to so questions about the murder.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeff again, I mean it was it was McAfee's
Speaker 1: fleeing that created the whole hullabaloo. He it was, it
Speaker 1: was it was his disappearance. It wasn't the discovery of
Speaker 1: Greg Fall's body that set the whole thing in motion.
Speaker 1: It was McAfee running away. McAfee's calling up American national
Speaker 1: news organizations and like ultimately flying down journalist, he actually
Speaker 1: winds up hanging out with a film crew. That's but again,
Speaker 1: it's like what he is mother's milk to a journalist.
Speaker 1: A great narrative, protagonist antagonist, high stakes. McAfee creates a
Speaker 1: compelling narrative, one that overshadows the news of Greg Fall's killing.
Speaker 1: This is a news story about McAfee running for cover,
Speaker 1: fleeing from corrupt Belizean officials. John McAfee had long ago
Speaker 1: recognized the power a news story could have. Remember that,
Speaker 1: even during his anti virus days, he was harnessing the
Speaker 1: media to drive sales of his product. Jules Vasquez watched
Speaker 1: as McAfee dominated the news cycle with his bizarre theatrics,
Speaker 1: and then McAfee went full crazy because you know, he
Speaker 1: really is a white man dancing at that point, right
Speaker 1: like he really is living out this fantasy. It just
Speaker 1: becomes this galloping circus of stupidity that he finds so cute.
Speaker 1: A man is dead, right, But yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: he comes across as justice, this wild and crazy guy,
Speaker 1: and then he's the wanted person, and so he takes
Speaker 1: on that role completely and goes into full gringo fugitive mode,
Speaker 1: making a mockery of the police along the way, paints
Speaker 1: himself as the victim of judicial or a law enforcement
Speaker 1: system that wants entrup incarcerit and kill him. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Francois Garcia is a filmmaker based in Canada.
Speaker 1: He met John mccafee years before Greg Fall's death when
Speaker 1: he and his wife were on vacation in Belize. So
Speaker 1: fast forward to twenty twelve watching CNA, and I see
Speaker 1: the news reports about John McAfee on on their own
Speaker 1: one ponful questioning for the murder of his neighbor. I'm
Speaker 1: a filmmaker, I'm always hunting for a good story. I
Speaker 1: gotta jump on it. So this Canadian filmmaker calls McAfee.
Speaker 1: He says they make a verbal agreement to work together
Speaker 1: with Francois acting as a kind of pr agent free
Speaker 1: of charge. Francois offers to take over who is McAfee
Speaker 1: dot com, a website controlled by McAfee himself that posts
Speaker 1: updates on his whereabouts, and Francois also offers to help
Speaker 1: reach out to the media on McAfee's behalf. At this point,
Speaker 1: he has no opinion on whether McAfee killed fall. I
Speaker 1: immediately understood no matter what his claims were, either way
Speaker 1: was a good story. If he's innocent based on his claims,
Speaker 1: so it's a great story. If he's guilty of what
Speaker 1: he's accused of, it's still a great story. So it
Speaker 1: was a win win. Francois was picturing all the ways
Speaker 1: he could package and sell McAfee story. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: feature film down the road, I'm thinking of a book.
Speaker 1: My money focus was on documentaries. Francois also says he
Speaker 1: made an offer to get McAfee out of Belize. He
Speaker 1: said he had a friend who could fly a plane
Speaker 1: to Mexico and land near the border. That McAfee would
Speaker 1: need to the border on foot, but that he could
Speaker 1: get him out of the country. He says McAfee didn't
Speaker 1: want to leave the media circus he created. He wanted
Speaker 1: to to stay. He wanted to continue. I mean he
Speaker 1: was saying that he was hiding in a sailboat. He
Speaker 1: was hiding in a cardboard box. He kept moving locations
Speaker 1: on the hour. In reality, he was sitting in a
Speaker 1: small apartment complex about twenty minutes from Belize, a city.
Speaker 1: As a filmmaker, Francois also wanted to get footage of
Speaker 1: McAfee on the ground in Belize, but he didn't have
Speaker 1: a team on Cole to send out to shoot McAfee.
Speaker 1: So he has a new idea, get the press involved
Speaker 1: to basically document McAfee for him, and Francois could always
Speaker 1: license this footage after he makes a call to Vice
Speaker 1: News as then editor in chief Rocco Castoro. I reached
Speaker 1: out to to Rocco and there there were in a
Speaker 1: plane hours leader. These vice reporters, Rocker Costoro and photographer
Speaker 1: Robert King, would get closer to McAfee than any of
Speaker 1: the other journalists in the wake of Gregfall's murder. They
Speaker 1: actually travel with him for weeks and they alter the
Speaker 1: trajectory of McAfee's Central American exploits. They meet up in
Speaker 1: Belize and make their way out of the country all together.
Speaker 1: The Vice reporters start rolling tape on McAfee. The Prime
Speaker 1: Minister has one hundred and fifty thousand dollars bounty. Im
Speaker 1: sholl if you are Sholl, yes kill. There was no
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on McAfee's head. But
Speaker 1: McAfee is building his own mythology here. He's the anti hero,
Speaker 1: the outlaw, escaping the corrupt Belizian government. They head for
Speaker 1: the border. On the phone, McAfee is giving instructions to
Speaker 1: Frontois team on what a post on who is McAfee
Speaker 1: dot com. So an unconfirmed, unnamed sources has contacted has
Speaker 1: contacted the blog with the information that mister McAfee has
Speaker 1: been has been arrested just across the border of police
Speaker 1: in the country, in the country of Mexico. Write that down.
Speaker 1: It's so funny to me that he's on the phone
Speaker 1: dictating misinformation. This story actually got picked up. A handful
Speaker 1: of news outlets published that McAfee was arrested in Mexico
Speaker 1: and then had to issue corrections. In fact, McAfee did
Speaker 1: make a successful border crossing. Michael McDonald is a reporter
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg News. In twenty twelve, he was reporting for
Speaker 1: Reuters out of Guatemala. Like so many others, he was
Speaker 1: assigned to cover the software entrepreneurs Saga. He snuck into
Speaker 1: Guanama from Belize. I mean, there are official checkpoints at
Speaker 1: the border, but it is a very porous border, so
Speaker 1: if you want to sneak in, it's it's not that difficult. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a river separating both countries, so it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to cross that at night if you
Speaker 1: want to. And McAfee's entry into Guatemala was actually illegal
Speaker 1: and obviously if you don't go through an official checkpoint,
Speaker 1: you have no stamp in your passport, and he had
Speaker 1: no Guatemala stamp in his passport, so he had essentially
Speaker 1: entered the country illegally. Remember McAfee crossing the border with
Speaker 1: two reporters from Vice is a situation engineered by Francois Garcia,
Speaker 1: who's watching this all unfold from Canada. I'm watching the
Speaker 1: madness from from Afar. But they want with John to
Speaker 1: guatemalaf did it crossed the first by car and then
Speaker 1: by by boat. Photo journalists Robert King took the famous
Speaker 1: Vice picture of John and Rocco and the headline we
Speaker 1: are with McAfee suckers. Vice published the picture of the
Speaker 1: image without removing ge location, and they just went viral.
Speaker 1: Robert King, the photographer who took the photo with geolocation
Speaker 1: data on it, later posted this video online of the
Speaker 1: moment they realized the data had leaked. Our good friends
Speaker 1: friends in New York published the XFT. Okay, here's the
Speaker 1: spin on this. You guys are fucked here. You realize
Speaker 1: that if we got right, you know that you're you're
Speaker 1: fighting for your life. Here. McAfee's voice sounds calm, but
Speaker 1: he's saying dire things to the reporters. That they'll likely
Speaker 1: be tortured because they're with him, that he may lose
Speaker 1: fingers and toes if he's found, and that there'd be
Speaker 1: a massive reward for his capture. McAfee's heard telling them
Speaker 1: that the story now is about how two journalists get
Speaker 1: out of a tight situation. If you get arrested with me,
Speaker 1: there is the chance that you might suffer some gil treatment.
Speaker 1: The way you spend this is that Jesus, they were
Speaker 1: coming to get us. We were on the line. Now
Speaker 1: we became part, we became part of a different story.
Speaker 1: At that point, the Vice reporters who were traveling with
Speaker 1: McAfee were widely blamed for the GEO data leak. We
Speaker 1: asked Rocco for a statement. He sent us this recording,
Speaker 1: which we've edited for length and clarity. He starts by saying,
Speaker 1: the data leak wasn't his fault. Yes, I instructed Vice
Speaker 1: staff multiple times to scrub the metadata from the image.
Speaker 1: I was never given a clear, specific reason for why
Speaker 1: the photo was published with the metadata intact. Rocco says
Speaker 1: that he was in the field with McAfee when the
Speaker 1: leak happened. I started receiving panic calls and messages from colleagues,
Speaker 1: friends and family regarding the exposure of the metadata and
Speaker 1: our exact coordinates. When King and I returned from Guatemala
Speaker 1: to the VICE office in Brooklyn, people looked at It's
Speaker 1: like we were ghosts that has just walked into the office.
Speaker 1: Roca Castoro and Robert King did suffer significant reputational damage.
Speaker 1: In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Vice released a statement.
Speaker 1: Here's an exit quote. We have always been transparent in
Speaker 1: our filmmaking and will continue that practice. This will be
Speaker 1: no exception. The story as a whole has engaged people
Speaker 1: around the world precisely because it is so freaky, and
Speaker 1: even if it shows that we made mistakes on the
Speaker 1: ground during a very hectic and dangerous week of reporting
Speaker 1: on McAfee's mistakes, we are sure it's going to make
Speaker 1: one hell of a documentary end quote. But McAfee's other
Speaker 1: warnings that the revelations of his location would lead to arrests, torture,
Speaker 1: and interrogation did not come true. Here's Jeff Weiss again,
Speaker 1: to be clear, do the cops then come rolling down
Speaker 1: the street? No, they don't. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1: So so McAfee's like, oh shit, and like apparently he
Speaker 1: freaks out. I think it's on They have it on
Speaker 1: film of Macie what you got, so they run, they
Speaker 1: won't have In Guatemala City, reporter Michael McDonald is in
Speaker 1: Guatemala City covering McAfee's escapades. He recognizes the former Attorney
Speaker 1: General of Guatemala in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel.
Speaker 1: He had this lawyer named t les Fro Guera, and
Speaker 1: TLEs Farro was sort of this this powerful lawyer that
Speaker 1: you would contact in Guatemala that the elites would use
Speaker 1: when they were in trouble. Ex presidents would hire him
Speaker 1: when they were in trouble, so he was sort of
Speaker 1: the go to lawyer for big cases. The lawyer tells
Speaker 1: Mike that the goal is to keep McAfee from being extradited.
Speaker 1: In this clip from Vice you can hear McAfee asking
Speaker 1: for reassurances that he won't get sent back to Belize
Speaker 1: to because I'm not worried. Of course they want. While
Speaker 1: McAfee was in limbo in Guatemala, Mike interviewed him in
Speaker 1: his hotel room. He said that at times McAfee seemed
Speaker 1: like he wasn't all there. He did come across as
Speaker 1: deranged at some points, um I like he did. He
Speaker 1: did appear to be on drugs. He always insisted that
Speaker 1: he wasn't. You know, some of the things he does
Speaker 1: and some of the things he says to you make
Speaker 1: you wonder are you on drugs now? In the end,
Speaker 1: McAfee was arrested for entering Guatemala illegally. Vice News shot
Speaker 1: footage of him being shoved into a police fan and
Speaker 1: cut it off to prison again, he seems composed. Where
Speaker 1: are they taking you, John John? Where are you going
Speaker 1: to jail? Even from jail mac. If he couldn't stay
Speaker 1: away from the media, he would call reporters, including Mike,
Speaker 1: at all hours. The first time he called it was
Speaker 1: probably three in the morning. Actually, he told me his
Speaker 1: jail cell was lacking color and he wanted me to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get plants into his jail cell
Speaker 1: in order to spruce it up. A couple days later
Speaker 1: he called me from the jail again, and he said
Speaker 1: he was bored, and he wanted me to bring a
Speaker 1: chess set to his jail cell, so he would call me.
Speaker 1: He probably called me three or four times from the
Speaker 1: jail cell. In jail, he's vulnerable. His fate seemed to
Speaker 1: be in the hand of the Guatemalan authorities. As much
Speaker 1: as he tries to influence things from inside prison, he's powerless.
Speaker 1: I don't think he anticipated ending up in a jail
Speaker 1: in Guatemala. I think he probably figured he could work
Speaker 1: his way around that and get out of that. So he,
Speaker 1: you know, he created this whole scene, and he faked
Speaker 1: a heart attack and they took him to the hospital,
Speaker 1: that's right. Fearing that he might be deported back to Belize,
Speaker 1: McAfee tried to retake control by faking a heart attack.
Speaker 1: He was treated for chest pains and then went back
Speaker 1: into detention. Ironically, despite all of his fears, Belizian authorities
Speaker 1: never took concrete steps to bring him back. I remember
Speaker 1: speaking with the police spokesman and Belize and he kept
Speaker 1: telling me, well, he's a you know, John's a person
Speaker 1: of interest and we would like him back. But he
Speaker 1: told me they weren't going to file an official extradition request.
Speaker 1: I always wondered, well why not, And so I was
Speaker 1: always suspicious that maybe they maybe they don't want him back,
Speaker 1: and they just kind of want to get rid of him,
Speaker 1: and they don't really care what his future held. The
Speaker 1: Belizian police didn't respond to numerous requests for comments, and
Speaker 1: Guatemala found a way to get rid of McAfee as well.
Speaker 1: Within the week, Mike gets word that McAfee's going to
Speaker 1: be deported back to the US for entering Guatemala illegally.
Speaker 1: A crowd of journalists rushed to see him off before
Speaker 1: he leaves. So we were at the airport in about
Speaker 1: ten minutes, and we were all there waiting for him.
Speaker 1: I mean, the entire press crew was there waiting for him.
Speaker 1: Immigration officers were there, the police were there, and the
Speaker 1: pickup showed up, and it was just sort of this
Speaker 1: mad scramble to get the last quote from John McAfee
Speaker 1: before he was driven through this gate at this side
Speaker 1: gate at the airport and onto the tarmac. Mike doesn't
Speaker 1: remember what McAfee said, only that his demeanor was calm.
Speaker 1: The truck went through the gates and onto the tarmac,
Speaker 1: and Mike returned to his office to file a story
Speaker 1: that John mccafee had been deported. My editors were in
Speaker 1: Mexico at the time, and they wanted to he absolutely
Speaker 1: certain that he was on the plane, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, well, how do I figure this out? And
Speaker 1: then I remembered it, Well, I wonder if his Guatemala's
Speaker 1: cell phone is still working. So I called the Guatemala
Speaker 1: cell phone and he picked up, and he was on
Speaker 1: the plane, and you could hear the dinging of the
Speaker 1: seat belt signs and you could hear the captain speaking
Speaker 1: in the PA system, and he said, yeah, I'm on
Speaker 1: my way to Florida. And that was just the first
Speaker 1: flight that they could get me on back to the US.
Speaker 1: And so we're about to take off and I have
Speaker 1: to go. And with that the wild ride was over,
Speaker 1: McAfee is flown back to the United States, away from Belize,
Speaker 1: where he would have had to face questioning over Greg
Speaker 1: folds murder. The victim's family never saw justice. They filed
Speaker 1: a civil suit in the Middle District Court in Florida.
Speaker 1: The judge granted fourth daughter five million dollars to compensate
Speaker 1: for the harm caused by her father's death. The court
Speaker 1: added another twenty million dollars to quote punish McAfee for
Speaker 1: his misconduct and deter further such action in the future
Speaker 1: end quote. When the judgment came down, McAfee refused to
Speaker 1: respond to requests from the court and never appeared to
Speaker 1: answer for the complaint. He tweeted, I was never charged
Speaker 1: with murder by Belizing authorities or any other authority. It
Speaker 1: was a suit based entirely on media reporting. McAfee was
Speaker 1: at least partially right. He was never charged. Many in
Speaker 1: the expact community in Belize, as well as journalists who
Speaker 1: closely reported on McAfee's time there, blame him for Greg
Speaker 1: Fall's murder, and if that's true, then he got away
Speaker 1: with it. In his lifetime, McAfee succeeded in evading consequences
Speaker 1: for many of his actions, but this would be the
Speaker 1: most notorious. You might think that MCA at this point
Speaker 1: is at an all time low. He's sixty seven years old,
Speaker 1: vending off accusations of murder and rape. He says he
Speaker 1: can't access any of his money, that his accounts of frozen,
Speaker 1: but his return to the US is the beginning of
Speaker 1: a personal renaissance. Once again, McAfee reinvents himself and surprises
Speaker 1: everyone by launching an unlikely bid to be the next
Speaker 1: President of the United States. That's next time on Foundering,
Speaker 1: The John mccafee Story. Foundering is hosted by me Jamie
Speaker 1: Tarabay Sean When is our executive producer. Pratana Prakash contributed
Speaker 1: reporting to this episode. Special thanks to Young Young and
Speaker 1: Eileena Peng for helping with production. Molly Nugent is our
Speaker 1: associate producer. Serif Josef is our audio engineer, Mark Million
Speaker 1: and Vandermay, Andy Martin and Molly Shoots are our story editors.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe and if you like our show,
Speaker 1: leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends see you
Speaker 1: next time.