Police in Belize say that John McAfee remains on the run after erroneous earlier reports heralding his capture.
The 67-year-old American software pioneer and founder of the McAfee anti-virus company is wanted for questioning in last month’s murder of another American expatriate in the Central American country.
McAfee says that he has left the country, but is “not quite out of the woods yet,” according to his website, whoismcafee.com.
Earlier media reports said that McAfee had been apprehended by authorities at the Belize-Mexico border. However, Belize national police confirmed to the Daily Mail on Sunday that the “whereabouts of the multimillionaire software developer are still unknown.”
McAfee has been on the lam since Nov. 11, when a neighbor he had allegedly been “quarreling with” was found dead, lying face up in a pool of blood in San Pedro, Belize. The man’s body was found in his own home.
According to a police report, 52-year-old Gregory Faull was shot in the back of the head. His laptop and iPhone were reported missing, but there had reportedly been no evidence that anyone had broken in.
Belizian authorities labeled McAfee a “person of interest” in the case.
McAfee has “disputed any connection to the crime,” telling the media that he believes police will torture and kill him if he is captured.
“They will kill me if they find me,” he told Wired in an earlier interview.
However, though McAfee has been on the run for weeks, he has been anything but invisible, according to the New York Times.
Asserting his innocence, he became a multi-platform cyber-dissident, with a Twitter account, and a blog at whoismcafee.com with audio links, a comments section, photographs and a stream of invective against the government and the police of Belize. He has done interviews on podcasts, like the “Joe Rogan Experience,” and offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of “the person or persons” who killed Faull. He has turned lamming it into a kind of high-tech performance art.
On his blog, for example, McAfee has described the elaborate steps he has taken to evade capture.
“He has contended…that when the authorities searched his house in the days after the murder, he hovered nearby in preposterous-sounding disguises, including that of a drunk German tourist in a Speedo and ‘a distasteful, over-sized Hawaiian shirt,’ ” according to the Times.
McAfee has reportedly been living in Belize for the last four years.
