In a bizarre twist in the long and convoluted story of John McAfee, creator of the eponymous antivirus software, he is allegedly alive, well, and living in Texas.
The extraordinary claims are made by McAfee’s ex-girlfriend in an interview for a new Netflix documentary titled Running With The Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, released this week.
McAfee ‘Speaks’ Post-‘Suicide’
Central to the Netflix biopic is an interview conducted with McAfee’s former partner Samantha Herrera, who claims she had spoken with the disgraced software developer over the phone after his supposed June 2021 suicide in a Spanish jail.
While the director of the documentary, Charlie Russell, is sceptical, stating “I can’t work out whether [Herrera] thinks it’s real or not”, McAfee’s widow, Janice, isn’t having any of it. She believes that if McAfee were hiding out, it wouldn’t be in Texas, or anywhere else in the US considering he is wanted by the IRS.
Instead, Janice McAfee is circulating a petition for the release of her husband’s remains – and for an independent autopsy – as they are yet to be returned to her by Spanish authorities:
Regardless of the truth surrounding McAfee’s passing, he remains as curious in death as he was in life. The biopic was released by Netflix on August 24.
Death and Taxes
McAfee was arrested at Barcelona International Airport in October 2020 for tax evasion. Late on June 23, 2021, he was reportedly discovered dead in his cell in a Barcelona jail, only hours after the Spanish National Court had approved his extradition to the US, where he would have faced up to 30 years in prison.
According to McAfee’s lawyer, he had hanged himself, although there were several signs of foul play in connection with his apparent death. One of these was a tweet from McAfee which read: ‘I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la [convicted sex offender Jeffrey] Epstein, it will be no fault of mine’.
This Netflix documentary isn’t the only analysis of McAfee’s life in current circulation. No Domain: The John McAfee Tapes, a new book published by biographer Mark Eglinton, details exactly how McAfee managed to lose his US$100 million fortune. The funds were reportedly spent on “bizarre” mansions and compounds across the globe. Perhaps there’s one in Texas we didn’t know about.