The Fugitive Millionaire

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Speaker 16 I remember the night it was very dark. We pulled in to his home.

Speaker 16 It did have the feel of almost being in a Bond movie.

Speaker 18 He had a lot going on.

Speaker 19 A millionaire computer genius living in paradise and on the edge.

Speaker 21 Heck shot to cut his throat, but he just said, do it.

Speaker 23 He takes the gun out and he puts it to his head. The jungle started to infect him almost like a virus.

Speaker 19 Then came the mystery.

Speaker 2 His neighbor, suddenly found dead.

Speaker 26 There was blood all over the floor.

Speaker 27 Everyone was crying.

Speaker 28 I said, no, it can't possibly happen.

Speaker 19 And the millionaire was suddenly on the run, taunting authorities, launching a chase, an international hide-and-seek hunt.

Speaker 31 It seems like it's fiction.

Speaker 27 It doesn't seem real.

Speaker 30 He may have eluded the police, but he didn't elude us.

Speaker 32 So neither you nor anybody representing you went over to Greg Falls' house and shot him through the head?

Speaker 33 No, sir. Can you possibly get any inkling of the truth? You will not believe the things that happened.

Speaker 30 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 34 Get ready for some serious heart of darkness here.

Speaker 19 And this is Dateline:

Speaker 19 Keith Morrison with the Fugitive Millionaire.

Speaker 36 An American murdered in a tropical paradise while a famous and wealthy man went on the run.

Speaker 37 I'm trying to delay my imminent capture.

Speaker 38 Why was he hiding?

Speaker 39 He is bonkers, in my view, without a doubt.

Speaker 13 The story is a strange brew of dogs and guns and girls, teenage girls.

Speaker 21 I was ready to shoot him, and for some reason, I missed.

Speaker 38 An interconnected web with one man at its center.

Speaker 41 John is smart. He knows what he's doing.

Speaker 5 The case will take us from the high-tech world of Silicon Valley

Speaker 43 to the jungles of Central America

Speaker 12 and finally back stateside into the deep south.

Speaker 34 All right, get ready for some serious Heart of Darkness here.

Speaker 38 Heart of Darkness?

Speaker 44 Oh, yes.

Speaker 46 And a wildly strange tale about a high-flying business tycoon named John McAfee and the bizarre chain of events that would make him the focus of an international manhunt.

Speaker 6 There's little doubt you know the name McAfee.

Speaker 40 That's because you've probably had antivirus software on your computer at one time or another.

Speaker 33 In the past three weeks, we've seen five new viruses.

Speaker 13 Back in the 80s it was the visionary John McAfee who recognized the threat posed by invisible computer viruses and made a fortune by devising defenses to stop them.

Speaker 13 David Faber is a business reporter for CNBC.

Speaker 16 He made $100 million when it really was something to make $100 million.

Speaker 4 But Faber knew that McAfee lost most of that money in the real estate bust.

Speaker 33 This is called Snake Alley for obvious reasons anyway that I hope we don't find out about.

Speaker 53 It was 2009.

Speaker 6 Faber was making a documentary about boom and bust.

Speaker 40 He found McAfee at his new adopted home in Belize.

Speaker 38 And the buff and charismatic then 64-year-old made a fascinating case study.

Speaker 33 My life has turned around 180 degrees down here. I mentioned the freedom here.

Speaker 33 There are virtually no regulations on business.

Speaker 16 A lot of it was how

Speaker 16 Belize is a paradise for people like me because I can do anything I want.

Speaker 3 There are no laws, intellectual property.

Speaker 16 Nobody cares. I can start anything.

Speaker 49 And he did whenever he perceived an opportunity to make a buck.

Speaker 52 Water taxis, ultralights.

Speaker 13 But his pride and joy back if he told Faber was the creation of a special lab.

Speaker 20 in which he planned to make new medicines from jungle plants.

Speaker 33 Hopefully we'll be production of some fairly unique pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 5 With a beach home on an island off the coast called Ambergris Key and a jungle compound on the mainland near the town of Carmelita, John McAfee could still afford to live large and make an impression.

Speaker 16 He had invited me over to his home and I walked in and he was playing the piano.

Speaker 16 And it did have the feel of almost being in a Bond movie. And this is your

Speaker 16 villain in some ways.

Speaker 3 He didn't turn to me and say hello, Mr. Faber,

Speaker 16 but it almost had that feel to it.

Speaker 23 I think he likes drama. I think he likes intense experiences.

Speaker 49 Joshua Davis is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine and one-time NBC News consultant.

Speaker 53 He got to know McAfee after he learned that Belizean police had raided the millionaire's mainland compound looking for illegal drugs.

Speaker 23 I heard about this raid on April 30th when the Belizean police force burst into his compound in the jungle and that struck me as extraordinary.

Speaker 6 As it turned out, the police did not find any illegal drugs at McAfee's compound in that raid, though McAfee was charged with having an unlicensed gun.

Speaker 42 The fact the police even suspected McAfee of making drugs was intriguing.

Speaker 6 McAfee had been an outspoken teetotaler ever since kicking a drug habit back in the 1980s.

Speaker 10 So Davis went to Belize to investigate.

Speaker 49 It was there, said Davis, McAfee told him that the Belizean government was seriously corrupt and the government's paramilitary gang suppression unit, or GSU, was out to get him.

Speaker 23 One of his initial explanations for why the April 30th raid happened was that one of the local politicians had come to him and asked for a donation. He had refused.

Speaker 23 As a result, they sicked the GSU on him.

Speaker 44 To which the Belizean government replied, nonsense.

Speaker 23 They raided him because they didn't know what was going on. He had this laboratory there.
It was heavily guarded. He had more bodyguards than the prime minister.
He had essentially a private army.

Speaker 23 And he's got a laboratory making God knows what because he won't tell anybody.

Speaker 40 Davis went to Carmelita, the tiny town nearest McAfee's jungle compound, where townspeople told him, he said, that McAfee had gone native.

Speaker 23 As he got more involved in this small little village of Carmelita, the way he talked started to devolve, his dress devolved.

Speaker 23 I think that the jungle and that environment started to infect him almost like a virus. It's what he said to his friends was, my fragile connection with polite society has been severed.

Speaker 49 After that raid, McAfee moved back to his island house on Ambergris Key, where Davis reported he surrounded himself with guard dogs, armed men, and several teenage girls.

Speaker 13 In a country where the age of consent is 16, McAfee told Davis he liked to keep those girls busy in bed.

Speaker 23 He told me that for him, five hours is a quickie. And then he brought one of his girls out to confirm the point.
She said, yep, that's true.

Speaker 13 McAfee was 67.

Speaker 10 living a schoolboy's dream, albeit a rather heavily armed schoolboy.

Speaker 10 Davis was soon convinced the man who once billed himself as the world's greatest computer security expert was now a security risk to himself and others.

Speaker 23 We were in his bungalow, and he had a Smith Wesson 38 special strapped to his chest in a holster.

Speaker 23 He takes the gun out, he opens the chamber, there's six bullets in, he drops them out, he takes one of the bullets and he chambers it, closes it, spins the cylinder, and he puts it to his head.

Speaker 23 And I'm like, John, we don't have to do this. And he goes, I know we don't.
And he says, your perception of reality may not be correct. And he starts pulling the trigger.

Speaker 23 Click, click, click, click, click, five times.

Speaker 23 And there's only six chambers. And then he pulls it a sixth time and nothing happens.
And he says, you have missed something about reality. And I say, oh, it's a trick.

Speaker 23 And he goes, no, it's not a trick. And he opens the door and he aims the gun at the sand and he pulls the trigger and the bullet goes off.

Speaker 23 It was a live round.

Speaker 43 Paranoid eccentrics make good stories, but rarely make good neighbors.

Speaker 52 The armed guards and snarling dogs were an aggravation to the tourists and others who had to walk past McAfee's house.

Speaker 6 And by November 2012, one of John McAfee's neighbors may have decided he'd had enough.

Speaker 2 Darkness was about to fall on this sunny stretch of paradise.

Speaker 24 When we come back, a murder mystery.

Speaker 59 His body was there motionless.

Speaker 26 There was blood all over the floor.

Speaker 28 I yelled, no, it can't possibly happen.

Speaker 18 An international manhunt was about to fascinate the world.

Speaker 3 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 40 It was American expats who told us that the murder case that began in November 2012 and made headlines around the world began as a mundane neighborhood dispute about dogs.

Speaker 6 Snarling, snapping curs who frequently roamed the beach in front of John McAfee's beach home on Ambergris Key. The barking kept the neighbors up night, and the biting, well, that was bad for business.

Speaker 59 The dogs did bite a few people. I mean, we had a one group of tourists leave early because of the dog situation.

Speaker 60 Shane and Brittany McCann are property managers on Ambergris Key.

Speaker 14 And like a lot of other American expats on the island, they knew John McAfee casually.

Speaker 59 There were guards at his house. We didn't know all that was going on.

Speaker 53 Jeff Spiegel and his wife Vivian Yu said that customers walking to their restaurant just on the beach from McAfee's house had to first get past McAfee's dogs and guards.

Speaker 62 And if you're a tourist walking up and down the beach at night and somebody shines a maglight flashlight in your face while

Speaker 62 shouldering a shotgun,

Speaker 17 it

Speaker 62 can be disconcerting.

Speaker 13 Such a harsh vibe for such a peaceful place.

Speaker 53 Not at all what Greg Fall expected when he moved to Ambergris Key back in May of 2012.

Speaker 62 We got to know Greg because after working for 12 hours a day, he would come up to our bar and hang out

Speaker 62 and talk and close it down.

Speaker 56 And Greg Fall, said Jeff, was right out of central casting.

Speaker 6 He'd made his money in the construction business in Florida, and in Belize, he was living out a fantasy.

Speaker 62 Greg had three birds, and the first time he walked up to the bar with Mo, yeah, beach bar, Caribbean,

Speaker 62 guy with like a time in Bahama t-shirt, board shorts, paired on his shoulder. And I turned to him and I said, You realize, Greg, that you've become that guy.

Speaker 22 A happy-go-lucky guy.

Speaker 17 But oh, those dogs.

Speaker 63 Greg Fall had himself been bitten and a profound dislike for John McAfee followed.

Speaker 59 A couple times and, you know, John was out there and Greg was yelling at him, keep your dogs inside the fence and just, you know, like, we have tourists here. I mean, they're biting people.

Speaker 8 It all came to a head on the night of November 9th, 2012, a Friday.

Speaker 6 That's when four of John McAfee's dogs were poisoned.

Speaker 8 Many on the island immediately suspected that Greg did it.

Speaker 59 He told everybody that he was going to poison those dogs. You know, everybody knew that he was going to poison the dogs.

Speaker 6 And 36 hours later, early on a Sunday morning, Shane McCann woke up to a ringing phone.

Speaker 30 It was Greg Falls' caretaker.

Speaker 17 Greg, he said, was dead.

Speaker 31 We thought hard attack.

Speaker 59 I was thinking heart attack.

Speaker 59 I'm thinking he could have slipped and fell on the tile.

Speaker 17 But no.

Speaker 51 When the McCanns and the other expats got to Greg's house, it was clear this was no slip and fall.

Speaker 59 His body was there motionless.

Speaker 26 There was blood all over the floor.

Speaker 59 There was blood everywhere.

Speaker 4 Police soon determined that Greg Fall had been killed with a single gunshot to the back of the head, execution style.

Speaker 59 And there was one oddly horrifying horrifying detail the position of greg falls t-shirt yeah it was pulled over like in like a hockey move or something where pulled a center up over your head like that it was all the way behind his neck but his shirt was still on it just the center was pulled up over

Speaker 56 as he stood there looking at his friend's corpse said chain he was struck by the fact that in spite of the obvious violence there seemed to be no sign of a robbery or even any struggle anywhere in the house.

Speaker 59 Just found it very odd that someone could subdue somebody like Greg, a guy that can freedive 50 feet for a conk at 52 years old, ex-military. How could you just subdue somebody like that?

Speaker 6 Shane figured Greg, given half a chance, would have put up a fight.

Speaker 57 That was also the first thing Art Fall, Greg's father, thought when he got the news in Jacksonville, Florida.

Speaker 28 I yelled, I said, no, it can't possibly happen.

Speaker 24 Not Greg.

Speaker 28 I don't think anyone could have overpowered overpowered Greg

Speaker 28 if he'd had a chance. And I suspect that he just never had a chance.

Speaker 40 Given the bad blood between Greg Fall and John McAfee, then, the Belizean police thought it would be a good idea to walk down the beach and have a word with the reclusive millionaire.

Speaker 57 The trouble was, they couldn't find him.

Speaker 10 Beat up and disappeared.

Speaker 65 In short order, the police declared McAfee the primary suspect, and the news flashed around the world.

Speaker 31 The tech millionaire is now a fugitive.

Speaker 40 A celebrity manhunt in the tropics.

Speaker 57 That was like catnip. So I packed my bags and booked a flight to Belize.

Speaker 44 Coming up.

Speaker 17 Here's the house.

Speaker 45 Nice.

Speaker 19 A one-time member of McAfee's harem lets us into his lair, where the stories only get stranger.

Speaker 39 You tried to shoot him. Uh-huh.

Speaker 21 I also tried to cut his throat, but he just leaned against the wall and said,

Speaker 3 do it. When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 42 When we arrived on the strip of island that was John McAfee's paradise in November 2012, the American expats we met seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

Speaker 6 Everybody knew the police were scouring the place, searching for the man they believed knew something about the murder of Greg Fall, but John McAfee truly seemed to have vanished.

Speaker 47 Though it didn't mean reporters weren't hearing from him.

Speaker 37 Right now, sir,

Speaker 37 I am holed up in a place where a mattress here has lice. I've never experienced that before.

Speaker 6 Joshua Davis, who was writing an article about McAfee at the time, was among the first to get a call.

Speaker 37 I can't sleep at nights because I'm allergic to every noise.

Speaker 13 McAfee told Davis he had a young woman with him.

Speaker 37 Sam is quite the soldier of Samantha. She has been with me loyally for the past couple of months.

Speaker 13 He insisted he knew nothing whatever about his neighbor's murder.

Speaker 23 Let me ask you just for the record, point blank, because I don't think I did before.

Speaker 52 Did you kill him?

Speaker 52 No, sir. No, sir.
Yes.

Speaker 22 It's not even funny. Okay.

Speaker 39 Not only did he deny committing the murder, he proposed an astonishing idea.

Speaker 18 The bullet that killed Fall had really been meant for him.

Speaker 18 The first thing I thought about was, oh my God,

Speaker 18 he's a white man. I'm a white man.
Someone's, you know, the government's finally decided to ask me. They got the wrong white man.

Speaker 23 So he says, the last thing I'm going to do is turn myself into the police because they'll kill me.

Speaker 22 Kill him?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 10 He truly believed the Belizean police wanted to get rid of him.

Speaker 40 Rub him out.

Speaker 13 Do him in.

Speaker 37 I'm trying to delay

Speaker 37 my imminent capture.

Speaker 5 Armed with a laptop and a cell phone and a flair for the dramatic, McAfee tantalized the press and taunted the police with clues that he was still on Amberger's Key.

Speaker 64 This is a regular occurrence, apparently.

Speaker 68 There are police in there, armed police with a rifle, and they're looking through the house, as they do on a regular basis, or have been ever since the beginning of this.

Speaker 22 I don't think there's any expectation, really, that he's going to be here,

Speaker 22 but they're looking.

Speaker 33 Can you speak about this, Mr.

Speaker 22 No?

Speaker 49 Though police admitted they had no other suspect, John McAfee's classification was downgraded to the less ominous-sounding person of interest.

Speaker 69 We still still think he's here in Belize.

Speaker 39 Rafael Martinez was the police spokesman.

Speaker 69 We believe that he will come in.

Speaker 64 And if you find him, you'll arrest him.

Speaker 69 We will detain him and we will ask him some questions.

Speaker 6 But undermanned and underfunded, the Belizean police force seemed ill-equipped to actually hunt him down.

Speaker 40 A man of means like McAfee, a man who clearly did not want to be found.

Speaker 58 What's your message for John McAfee?

Speaker 69 I would want to appeal to him and tell him, please come in, let's bring a closure to this case, and let's all carry on with our lives.

Speaker 46 But John McAfee seemed to be toying with the police, leaving clues in his blog, hinting he might be hiding right under their noses, cleverly disguised as a tourist or a street vendor.

Speaker 37 Been in public many, many times. If I went shopping in public the other day, I went to buy some strawberries.

Speaker 57 Our search was quite unlike that of the police. We made arrangements with middlemen for a secret rendezvous.
But McAfee

Speaker 52 never showed.

Speaker 65 Of course, John might not be on the island at all.

Speaker 6 The only person who seemed always to know how to reach him was one of McAfee's former teenage lovers, Amy Herbert.

Speaker 29 A lot of guests here, besides girls?

Speaker 45 I mean, just

Speaker 68 as much as not much other company.

Speaker 4 No. Amy had John McAfee's trust, it seemed.

Speaker 70 You want to go from the front door?

Speaker 46 Front door, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 So it was with his permission, she said, that Amy showed us around his beach estate.

Speaker 21 Here's the house.

Speaker 45 Nice.

Speaker 27 We would always snorkel almost every weekend and he would get his tan.

Speaker 47 But, said Amy, after that police raid, everything changed.

Speaker 27 That's when he started being paranoid and he just kept inside.

Speaker 6 Given McAfee's bizarre behavior, some people wondered if he was using drugs again.

Speaker 39 Did you guys ever do drugs in here or anywhere?

Speaker 21 No, he never accepted any type of drugs on his property.

Speaker 4 Later, Amy told us she had often seen McAfee doing some kind of chemical experiments.

Speaker 27 So I'm like, what are you doing?

Speaker 21 He said, I'm just working on some chemicals and stuff.

Speaker 21 He said it's for research. He said never to touch these, taste it, eat it, anything.
He said it's poison.

Speaker 27 Do you have any idea what it was?

Speaker 23 I did not have any idea what you did.

Speaker 24 He wouldn't tell you.

Speaker 21 He would not tell me anything about it.

Speaker 70 It was around then, said Amy, that her strange relationship with John McAfee had its strangest moment.

Speaker 21 I was angry, whatever, and I was ready to shoot him, and for some reason I missed.

Speaker 39 You tried to shoot him? Uh-huh.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 21 And I also tried to cut his throat, but he just said, he just leaned against the wall and said, do it. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 49 And you stayed together after that?

Speaker 21 Oh, yeah, he loved me more, I guess. But he slept with one eye open.

Speaker 6 Though the romance eventually ended, Amy remained close enough to McAfee to get him on the phone for us.

Speaker 20 How are you doing?

Speaker 20 I'm doing all right, sir, under the circumstances.

Speaker 36 McAfee wouldn't say where he was hiding, but he did hint he was close by.

Speaker 13 I did notice your boats. You guys in one of my boats, giving me your business.
I'm very glad to have business. Yeah.

Speaker 65 We were in one of your boats. You're absolutely right.

Speaker 42 Was he watching us?

Speaker 4 Were the police watching us too, hoping we might might lead them to him?

Speaker 58 Listen, can you tell us anything that will clear up some questions about what happened over that course of that weekend when your neighbor was killed?

Speaker 58 You know, I have no idea what happened to my neighbor.

Speaker 5 None.

Speaker 14 We traveled a long way for that phone call, and we're still no closer to laying eyes on him than were the Belizean police.

Speaker 7 And then, days after the call, McAfee's blog reported he'd been captured in Mexico.

Speaker 43 But no, that turned out to be false.

Speaker 9 And then on December 4th, 2012, nearly a month after Greg Fall was murdered, McAfee announced on his blog that he and his young female companion had crossed the border to Guatemala.

Speaker 11 Why? Guatemala?

Speaker 55 Well,

Speaker 39 a couple of very practical reasons.

Speaker 1 Some of them about family and some international politics.

Speaker 67 And because of that, that, the story got even stranger.

Speaker 53 After weeks on the run, there he was in the flesh.

Speaker 46 According to McAfee, he was not running from a homicide investigation.

Speaker 40 Oh, no.

Speaker 12 He said he was in Guatemala to ask for political asylum and protection from the government of Belize.

Speaker 33 Seven months ago, the Belizean government sent 42 armed soldiers into my property.

Speaker 58 I had to leave, but the story has to get out.

Speaker 5 According to McAfee's 20-year-old companion, Samantha Venegas, the couple came to Guatemala in part because she had a relative here who could be helpful.

Speaker 41 So I told him, I have an uncle who's a lawyer, and he's a pretty good lawyer, and he could ask anyone here in Guatemala.

Speaker 51 You certainly could.

Speaker 49 Sam's uncle has represented some of the biggest names in Central America, like former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.

Speaker 6 But convincing a judge that John McAfee was a political refugee was shaping up to be John McAfee's biggest challenge yet.

Speaker 44 Coming up.

Speaker 41 When your life is in danger, you have to lie.

Speaker 41 And he did.

Speaker 9 Inside his life on the run, a master of disguise.

Speaker 20 And nobody recognized him.

Speaker 41 No one ever recognized him.

Speaker 19 And the element of surprise, a sudden collapse.

Speaker 19 And everyone's heart skips a beat when Dateline continues.

Speaker 6 For weeks after the murder of Greg Fall, we and much of the rest of the world's press tried to find the elusive John McAfee.

Speaker 5 A spectacle which, for Greg Fall's father, Art, and stepmom Roseanne, was pretty hard to take.

Speaker 28 I had phone calls from CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal in two days.

Speaker 25 It was questions about this other fellow.

Speaker 12 McAfee.

Speaker 25 And it's like, excuse me, you're asking me the wrong question. Ask me about our loss.

Speaker 50 And that seemed almost to be secondary, like it was lost in the shuffle.

Speaker 28 That's right, it was lost in the shuffle. Greg was pushed off to one side because it was the McAfee circus.

Speaker 13 No doubt McAfee was good copy.

Speaker 55 But with the police not talking and John McAfee not talking to police, rumor and speculation was about all there was.

Speaker 10 That is, until the world's most wanted person of interest surfaced in Guatemala, seeking sanctuary.

Speaker 6 According to McAfee's traveling companion, Samantha Vanegas, the couple had used their wits to elude capture.

Speaker 6 For weeks, she said, McAfee made the police think he was on Ambergris Key when, in fact, he and she were hiding out on the mainland, she said, in Belize City.

Speaker 41 He was in the city. I I mean, John is smart.
He knows what he's doing. I mean, he turned his phone on and said, you know what? They're going to track us down.
Leave the phone there.

Speaker 41 We took out all the battery of the phone and leave one on the island. And people really thought he was there.

Speaker 29 Because his cell phone was there.

Speaker 41 Because they were tracking it. And what made him think he was there? Because on his blog, he would say, I am standing like 20 to 40 feet from my yard and I could see that the police are waiting it.

Speaker 22 And that was a lie.

Speaker 41 That was a lie. When your life is in danger, you have to lie.
Yeah. And he did.

Speaker 13 But it certainly wasn't easy, said Samantha.

Speaker 6 Very uncomfortable in those early days on the land.

Speaker 41 We doing bushes everywhere. We cross rivers by boat.
John back was at one point look horrible. It had a lot of bites on it.
I even told him, dude, you look really sick. You don't even look like John.

Speaker 41 He was skinny because he didn't eat. He didn't drink water.

Speaker 6 True, impossible to know, but that was her story.

Speaker 48 Eventually, said Samantha, they found a place to hole up and McAfee dyed his hair and whenever he needed to venture out into the open, he donned a disguise.

Speaker 41 He pretended he was a crippled guy, hump up, painted his hair white, his beard, put on a hat, glasses. Whatever it would take for his safety, he would do.

Speaker 65 And nobody recognized him?

Speaker 41 No one ever recognized him.

Speaker 60 And according to Vinegis, it was her uncle, the lawyer, who arranged to have her and McAfee smuggled out of Belize, first by taxicab from Belize City to Punta Gorda, and then by boat to Guatemala.

Speaker 41 It has been an adventure for me, yet disturbing. Because I don't like to leave my house.
It makes me sick.

Speaker 6 You don't feel well?

Speaker 41 Alone.

Speaker 6 John McAfee wasn't exactly feeling on top of the world either, it seemed.

Speaker 5 First, a Guatemalan judge summarily dismissed his petition for political asylum.

Speaker 70 And then the Guatemalan police took him into custody, not as a murder suspect, but on the grounds he had entered the country illegally.

Speaker 70 And then, the next day at the local immigration detention center, as a gaggle of media waited to find out if Guatemalan authorities would send McAfee back to Belize, this story took a heart-stopping turn.

Speaker 45 Within sight of the assembled cameras, John McAfee suddenly swooned and appeared to lose consciousness.

Speaker 49 Within minutes, he was rushed to the hospital.

Speaker 40 But when doctors could find nothing wrong with him, he was returned to the detention center.

Speaker 53 And it was there that John McAfee finally agreed to sit with us.

Speaker 17 And what an interview it was.

Speaker 33 A crazy man on the run is far more sensational than a political problem.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 50 And you are an insane man on the run.

Speaker 44 Coming up.

Speaker 33 Can we ask that for a moment?

Speaker 24 Expect the unexpected.

Speaker 33 How can that be menacing?

Speaker 2 Could he really be behind this?

Speaker 32 So neither you nor anybody representing you went over to Greg Falls' house and pulled his t-shirt up over his head and shot him through the head.

Speaker 3 When Dateline continues,

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Speaker 72 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

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Speaker 49 For nearly a month, John McAfee, one of Silicon Valley's original princes of high-tech, had been hiding from Belizean police.

Speaker 39 They wanted to talk to him about the murder of his neighbor, Greg Fall.

Speaker 9 Now, detained in Guatemala with nowhere to hide, John McAfee decided to talk to us.

Speaker 61 Though

Speaker 22 it must be said,

Speaker 40 he didn't seem to relish the prospect.

Speaker 33 Here's the problem. You have a deadline, right? And your deadline is always now because the news has become immediacy.
Immediacy. Your job is to get the news out before your competition.

Speaker 33 Well, that makes your deadline infinitesimally small. Can you possibly get any inkling of the truth in that infinitesimally small space?

Speaker 58 No, but you can when you research things.

Speaker 33 All we do, or all the folks do, is research everybody else. New York Times said this, CNN said this.

Speaker 58 But this is really a question.

Speaker 68 The whole point is that this is a story about a murder.

Speaker 70 You would not feel in the...

Speaker 33 This is a story about America. For me, it is not.

Speaker 67 It is interesting.

Speaker 45 For a man who once used the media to such personal advantage, John McAfee seemed to resent the press now that he was in custody in Guatemala.

Speaker 33 What sells in the news? Sensationalism.

Speaker 33 A crazy man on the run is far more sensational than a political problem.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 50 And you are an insane man on the run.

Speaker 51 If you say so, I will.

Speaker 22 Well, I mean, but that's the image.

Speaker 20 I mean, you have a blog.

Speaker 53 You know what the comments in your blog are.

Speaker 22 They all think you're nuts.

Speaker 73 They all think I'm nuts. Half of them do.

Speaker 33 Half of them think I'm nuts and half of them think they love me. Both of them are nuts.
Because the ones that think they love me, they've never met me.

Speaker 29 Well, the assumption is you enjoy it.

Speaker 33 That's a perception. Why was I not in the press for 10 years? I would not talk to a reporter.
I don't trust you guys.

Speaker 12 Can't imagine why.

Speaker 33 Because whatever I say to you people, because

Speaker 33 I live a lifestyle which might be a little over the line or outside, I want to say over the line of normal behavior, instead of looking at

Speaker 33 latest thing I'm trying to develop,

Speaker 33 oh, that's great, that's great about the antibiotics. But tell me, tell me about your lifestyle.

Speaker 13 On the subject of Greg Fall,

Speaker 20 Tom Mike if he conceded there was bad blood between the two men.

Speaker 33 I did not particularly care for the man. He drank a lot.
I am sorry. I don't hang with people who drink.
I don't even want to talk to people who drink while they're drinking.

Speaker 68 In the weeks and months

Speaker 68 leading up to the murder, how often did you see him?

Speaker 33 Maybe one time, maybe twice,

Speaker 33 and only passing the beach. He did come by one time and said, I'm just angry about your dogs, I can't sleep.
And I go, I'm really sorry, I can't sleep either. I'm angry about my dogs.
I sympathized.

Speaker 68 And did you say you were going to do something about that?

Speaker 33 Yes, and I did something. I built another fence so that they were jumping out.
That was annoying all the neighbors.

Speaker 58 Was he also complaining about your security guards and the guns that they were carrying?

Speaker 33 Everybody complained about that. Everybody complained about your guards.
He was not an exception.

Speaker 68 You would allow security guards to wander around in the front of your house, in front of a public beach, with guns menacing at least in the perception of the tourists walking by these people and not prevent them from doing so okay here's what here may I stand up for a moment

Speaker 33 are you clever enough to do this I think you are yeah okay so now if someone is carrying a gun yeah a shotgun holding like this how can that be menacing how can that be menacing sir Someone sees a gun, well the world is full of guns, America has 280 million of them.

Speaker 68 However, your neighbors were saying that these men weren't just holding the guns down. That's not true.
treating them at people.

Speaker 12 They were threatening people.

Speaker 33 Do you think I would tolerate that? Get real.

Speaker 6 As he had from the beginning, McAfee insisted he had no motive for killing Fall.

Speaker 44 He never believed Fall was responsible for poisoning his dogs, he said.

Speaker 33 I knew who killed the dogs. Who?

Speaker 29 The government.

Speaker 68 The witness who has no reason to lie claims that Greg Fall told him he was going to kill the dogs.

Speaker 22 Well, he told everybody.

Speaker 24 Not before.

Speaker 33 But he told everybody he was going to kill the dogs. He drank a lot.

Speaker 33 So you just blew it off.

Speaker 33 I know for a fact he's not the kind of person who would kill a dog.

Speaker 24 How do you know that for a fact?

Speaker 33 Because he was a dog lover.

Speaker 50 I'm told that he didn't love dogs at all.

Speaker 33 Well, that's fine. All I can tell you is I believed he loved dogs.

Speaker 29 There's lots of evidence to suggest Greg Fall killed your dogs.

Speaker 33 Well, no, I say there's a lot of evidence where Greg Fall could have killed my dogs.

Speaker 29 Anybody could have killed my dogs.

Speaker 33 I know who poisoned my dogs.

Speaker 73 My paradox tells me.

Speaker 73 Okay.

Speaker 61 Agreed.

Speaker 32 So neither you nor anybody representing you went over to Greg Paul's house on that occasion and pulled his t-shirt up over his head and shot him through the head?

Speaker 33 No, sir.

Speaker 33 The government poisoned my dogs.

Speaker 6 And the government killed Greg Paul?

Speaker 33 How would I know who killed Greg Paul? I don't believe the government killed him. That was the first thought through my mind, however.

Speaker 49 Still, at the time we spoke, McAfee seemed to face a probability of deportation back to Belize.

Speaker 6 He seemed remarkably unconcerned. In fact, he told us that after five years in what he once called an entrepreneurial paradise, he was looking forward to going home

Speaker 36 back to the good old USA.

Speaker 58 How do you see this whole saga ending?

Speaker 73 Happy for everybody.

Speaker 33 Happy for everybody. What I will do is I will stop bashing Belize in my block.
My neighbors can have some peace and quiet.

Speaker 33 The Guatemalan government gets to go,

Speaker 33 thank God he didn't want to stay here. Everybody's happy.
America's happy. More tax dollars.
It's the perfect solution. That will be the solution.

Speaker 50 You're convinced of it?

Speaker 33 You know, I haven't been wrong much about my life. You know, the people who know me will say one thing.
Don't ever bet with this man.

Speaker 33 I don't like to lose money. I don't.
And I'll bet you on this one.

Speaker 6 Spoken like a gambler who might have known the fix was in.

Speaker 52 The real question was whether John McAfee would ever be forced to sit face to face with homicide detectives.

Speaker 28 Coming up, I don't understand it.

Speaker 62 It almost feels hopeless.

Speaker 19 The murder of Greg Fall, will a broken-hearted family get answers? And the mysterious Mr. McAfee in danger again?

Speaker 33 My wife and I ran downstairs. We hid under a car for four and a half hours while they searched everywhere for us.

Speaker 3 When dateline continues

Speaker 6 A week of the John McAfee Media Circus was apparently all Guatemala could take. On December 12, 2012, the runaway millionaire was abruptly deported.

Speaker 49 Not to Belize, where he was considered a person of interest in a murder case, but back to the United States, where he was considered a celebrity.

Speaker 15 John, thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 53 Where you are in Miami, aren't you?

Speaker 33 I was just playing around with, yes, I am in Miami.

Speaker 60 At every stop on his media rounds, McAvey said he would gladly answer questions about the murder of Greg Falls,

Speaker 40 but not in Belize.

Speaker 15 What will you do if you are charged with this murder and the U.S. forces you go to go back to Belize? Will you disappear? Will you go to answer those charges?

Speaker 33 I will certainly answer any questions, and I've offered to answer them in a neutral country. If I am, well, I'm certainly going to answer them, but it will not happen, sir.

Speaker 45 Back on Belize is Amberder's Key. American expats like Vivian Yu and Jeff Spiegel are left to wonder if the investigation in the Gregg Falls murder is even active.

Speaker 31 Nobody said anything. They're not looking for anybody else as far as we know.
Why? We only know as much as you know and as much as everybody else knows.

Speaker 70 Could detectives have made some sense of it all had they been able to question McAfee? That time seemed to have passed.

Speaker 9 As for John McAfee?

Speaker 39 After brief stints living in Portland, Oregon, and Colorado Springs, Montreal, McAfee told us he'd settled in Lexington, Tennessee.

Speaker 9 Among his many projects, he started a company called Future Tenth Central to develop internet security and privacy products.

Speaker 9 McAfee also became a big backer of cryptocurrency and even ran for president in 2016 as a libertarian.

Speaker 39 As for all those young women McAfee spent time with down in Belize,

Speaker 9 they were left behind.

Speaker 39 McAfee married his wife Janice in 2013.

Speaker 9 Last time we spoke, he still believed the Belizean government was out to get him and described what he said was an attempt on his life in Portland.

Speaker 33 At 2.15 in the morning, two police motorcycles, followed by a black sedan, followed by a garbage truck, parked in front of our condominium, 2.15. My wife and I ran downstairs.

Speaker 33 We hid under a car for four and a half hours while they searched everywhere for us. The security cameras, by the way, were removed on that day.
It was a frightening experience for us.

Speaker 9 But in spite of that, said McAfee, he was tired of running.

Speaker 28 It is exhausting to live in fear.

Speaker 33 And at some point you say, this is no way to live.

Speaker 53 And if you're wondering what happened to all those guns he seemed so fond of brandishing for the cameras, McAfee told us that was all just for show.

Speaker 33 In order to sell newspapers, they need drama. And,

Speaker 33 you know, a madman with guns, well, that's drama.

Speaker 73 So sure, here they are. I'll hold them.
How do you want me to hold them?

Speaker 33 You bet. I'll do that.
I don't even have them with me today. If you want to see a gun, my security guard has one.
So,

Speaker 33 no, I mean, that's not me.

Speaker 33 That's what the press wants to make of me.

Speaker 9 Perhaps.

Speaker 49 But John McAfee kept adding fuel to the fire.

Speaker 39 A few months after this interview, the self-professed teetotaler was arrested for driving well under the influence and possession of a handgun while intoxicated.

Speaker 39 In typical McAfee fashion, he joked about the incident on social media and claimed, falsely, that he had a shootout with police.

Speaker 39 He pleaded guilty to DUI, forfeited his weapon, paid a fine, spent 48 hours in jail. All of which begged the question, could anyone take seriously anything John McAfee said?

Speaker 9 As you might imagine, for Greg Falls' family, the answer to that was no.

Speaker 28 It doesn't make any sense at all if McAfee claims his innocence. Why did he disappear and make a circus of this whole thing? I don't understand it.

Speaker 28 And I just wish someone would

Speaker 28 investigate it or

Speaker 28 find someone who can talk about it and bring some justice somewhere.

Speaker 39 But Falls family wasn't holding their breath waiting for justice.

Speaker 28 It almost feels hopeless because, you know, it's a foreign country and I don't know how to handle it.

Speaker 50 Are you getting any answers or any

Speaker 50 contact from them?

Speaker 28 No, not anything from them at all.

Speaker 9 In 2013, the family filed a wrongful death suit against John McAfee.

Speaker 39 After the millionaire failed to respond to their claims, a federal judge deemed him to be in default and ordered McAfee to pay Falls' estate more than $25 million.

Speaker 9 In response, McAfee issued a statement insisting he was never charged with Greg Fall's murder.

Speaker 14 He also claimed he had no assets, so he was unable to pay even a penny of the judgment against him.

Speaker 11 And he wouldn't be paying another nemesis either, the IRS.

Speaker 9 From undisclosed locations around the world, McAfee taunted the taxman on Twitter.

Speaker 71 I have not paid taxes for eight years. I've made no secret of it.
I have not filed returns. Every year I tell the IRS, I'm not filing a return.
I have no intention of doing so. Come and find me.

Speaker 39 In the fall of 2020, the Justice Department did just that, tracking McAfee down in Spain, Spain, where he was arrested for income tax evasion.

Speaker 43 But his legal woes didn't end there.

Speaker 39 In a separate case filed months later, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York indicted McAfee on seven new charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Speaker 39 all stemmed from his online promotion of cryptocurrencies.

Speaker 5 The 75-year-old denied any wrongdoing, but he would not live to see his day in court.

Speaker 39 On June 23, 2021, McAfee was found hanging in his jail cell.

Speaker 39 Authorities suspect it was suicide.

Speaker 43 The official cause of death is pending investigation, but in a cryptic tweet sent months before his death, McAfee wrote, Know that if I hang myself, Allah, Jeffrey, Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.

Speaker 39 Just like the eccentric millionaire, to keep people guessing until the very end.

Speaker 19 That's all for now.

Speaker 2 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 33 Thanks for joining us.

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