Updated 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday, November 19
John McAfee, the 67-year-old retired founder of McAfee, Inc., a leading computer security company now owned by Intel, is blogging about his life on the run from police in Belize, where McAfee is wanted in connection with the November 11 shooting death of a man described as his neighbor. The blog is online at whoismcafee.com.
McAfee, who maintains his innocence in the matter, has posted 11 entries since his first on Saturday, November 17, including one he claims was written by his 20-year-old traveling companion and lover Samantha.
But the majority of McAfee’s posts are first-person descriptions of his life on the lam, his own harshly critical accounts of an ongoing feud with a special division of the Belizean police known as the Belize Gang Suppression Unit (GSU), and denouncements of journalists at Wired and Gizmodo, who also wrote articles about his time as an expatriate and the murder investigation.
As McAfee wrote on Monday of his decision not turn himself into police: “I also needed to do my own investigation, since the police only seemed to be investigating my whereabouts. My safety is contingent on the truth being discovered. I today announced on NBC Television that I am offering a $25,000 reward for the capture of the person or persons responsible for Mr. [Gregory] Faul’s murder.”
McAfee also relates how he returned to his property in disguise after initially fleeing a police squadron on November 11:
“The first day I colored my full beard and my hair light grey- almost white. I darkened the skin of my face, neck and hands carefully with shoe polish and put on an LA Saints baseball cap with the brim facing backwards and tufts of the front of my hair sticking out unkempt through the band. I stuffed my cheeks with chewed bubble gum stuck to the outside of my upper and lower molars – making my face appear much fatter. I darkened and browned my front teeth. I stuffed a shaved down tampon deep into my right nostril and died the tip dark brown – giving my nose an awkward, lopsided, disgusting appearance.”
Despite vowing to “continue my investigations, since the police seem to have defaulted on this obligation,” McAfee apparently still has time to reply to comments on his blog as well, defending allegations by Gizmodo that he is also a user of the hallucinogenic drugs known as bath salts. As McAfee wrote in response to one commenter:
“I have seen the writing output from other people while they were on drugs. Perhaps you have too. Do my words, my constructs or my trains of thought in any way indicate a drug addled mind? If not, let’s drop this absurd hypothesis. I have been a strong opponent of drugs for 35 years. My record shows this clearly. I am not on bath salts. This is the eleventh time I have answered this question on this blog.”
The blog is actually maintained by Oregon cartoonist Chad Essley, author of an upcoming graphic novel about Essley’s time with McAfee called “The Hinterland,” also the name of the blog.
As Essley wrote on his own website: “I’m getting a lot of calls asking if whoismcafee.com is is the official blog of John McAfee or not. It indeed is. Here is a photo of Mr. McAfee and myself.”
Essley linked on his website to the following photo:
It’s unclear how long McAfee plans to remain a fugitive and how he’s even updating the blog. But as McAfee stated in another post on Monday, “If I am captured,” that no matter what happens to him, the content will continue beyond any such time as he’s apprehended, stating “I have pre-written enough material to keep this blog alive for at least a year.”
McAfee added that Essley would continue to monitor comments and, if necessary, dole out the supposed $25,000 reward for the apprehension of Faul’s murderer.
H/T: Betabeat
Late updates: A spokesperson for McAfee, the company, released the following statement to TPM in response to questions about John McAfee’s current activities: “John McAfee left the company in 1994. He has no current affiliation or association with the company.”
Meanwhile, McAfee gave a telephone interview to USA Today on Monday in which he again maintained his innocence and denied any sort of mental or psychological issues: “I don’t feel crazy,” McAfee told the outlet.
