With lots of time on my hands and very little to do with it, I’ve been reflecting on the recent detour my life has taken. How did I end up as a murder suspect on the lam?
So begins a blog post apparently written by John McAfee, founder of the antivirus company that bears his name -- and a self-described fugitive from the police in Belize.
Since going into hiding earlier this month, McAfee apparently has altered his appearance, relocated multiple times and repeatedly contacted a journalist at the technology magazine Wired.
Now he’s blogging, too. It’s up to him, he wrote Saturday, to make sure his story isn’t blown out of proportion. (“Autonomous and self-serving,” he wrote, “the press does what it does best -- sensationalize.”)
He has blogged 11 times in three days. Posts range from philosophic musings about the meaning of love and a guest post from someone who appears to be his 20-year-old Belizian lover. They also include details of how he evaded police after his neighbor, Gregory Faull, was found dead in a beachside home in Belize.
Belize police say McAfee is not a suspect, just someone they want to talk to.
A series of elaborate disguises has helped him hide near his own beachfront house, McAfee wrote. One day, he posed as a salesman hawking Guatemalan goods. He darkened his skin with shoe polish. He filled his cheeks with chewed bubble gum. He stuffed a tampon into his right nostril and colored the tip brown to make his nose look misshapen. He walked with a limp.
He looked so different, he wrote, that an Associated Press reporter covering the story nearly bought a carved dolphin from him.
Another day, he posed as a drunk German tourist with a partially bandaged face, he says.
The former CEO moved to Belize to retire in 2008. After selling his stake in McAfee in 1994 for $100 million, he lost much of his fortune through a series of bad investments, including bonds invested with now-defunct Lehman Bros.
Four of his friends have been arrested in a “systematic roundup” since he began evading police, McAfee wrote. He believes they are targeting him because of his run-in with police April 30, when he was arrested and charged with unlicensed drug manufacturing and possession of an unlicensed weapon. He’s since complained that there is a lack of justice in the Central American country.
McAfee also waxed poetic about his relationships with younger women, including a 20-year-old woman named Samantha, who he said is on the run with him.
“Sam, and others, can verify if they choose, that I am not foolish enough to believe that many young women could love a 67 year [old] man,” he wrote. “Being loved does not interest me much. Loving does. I truly love, not with a desire to possess or control, but with compassion and empathy. I care immensely, about many people. What they may or may not feel for me is their own issue.”
ALSO:
McAfee, still on the run, blasts Belize government in an essay
McAfee proclaims innocence, alters look to evade Belize police
Belize police want to ask McAfee founder about neighbor's death
