On November 12, 2012, Belizean police announced that they were seeking John McAfee for questioning in connection with the murder of his neighbor. Six months earlier, I began an in-depth investigation into McAfees life. This is the chronicle of that investigation.
Twelve weeks before the murder, John McAfee flicks open the cylinder of his Smith & Wesson revolver and empties the bullets, letting them clatter onto the table between us. A few tumble to the floor. McAfee is 66, lean and fit, with veins bulging out of his forearms. His hair is bleached blond in patches, like a cheetah, and tattoos wrap around his arms and shoulders.
More than 25 years ago, he formed McAfee Associates, a maker of antivirus software that went on to become immensely popular and was acquired by Intel in 2010 for $7.68 billion. Now hes holed up in a bungalow on his island estate, about 15 miles off the coast of mainland Belize. The shades are drawn so I can see only a sliver of the white sand beach and turquoise water outside. The table is piled with boxes of ammunition, fake IDs bearing his photo, Frontiersman bear deterrent, and a single blue baby pacifier.
McAfee picks a bullet off the floor and fixes me with a wide-eyed, manic intensity. This is a bullet, right? he says in the congenial Southern accent that has stuck with him since his boyhood in Virginia.
Lets put the gun back, I tell him. Id come here to try to understand why the government of Belize was accusing him of assembling a private army and entering the drug trade. It seemed implausible that a wildly successful tech entrepreneur would disappear into the Central American jungle and become a narco-trafficker. Now Im not so sure.
But he explains that the accusations are a fabrication. Maybe what happened didnt actually happen, he says, staring hard at me. Can I do a demonstration?
He loads the bullet into the gleaming silver revolver, spins the cylinder.
This scares you, right? he says. Then he puts the gun to his head.
My heart rate kicks up; it takes me a second to respond. Yeah, Im scared, I admit. We dont have to do this.
I know we dont, he says, the muzzle pressed against his temple. And then he pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He pulls it three more times in rapid succession. There are only five chambers.
Reholster the gun, I demand.
He keeps his eyes fixed on me and pulls the trigger a fifth time. Still nothing. With the gun still to his head, he starts pulling the trigger incessantly. I can do this all day long, he says to the sound of the hammer clicking. I can do this a thousand times. Ten thousand times. Nothing will ever happen. Why? Because you have missed something. You are operating on an assumption about reality that is wrong.
Its the same thing, he argues, with the governments accusations. They were a smoke screenan attempt to distort realitybut theres one thing everybody agrees on: The trouble really got rolling in the humid predawn murk of April 30, 2012.
