Update (11/26): McAfee has posted an apology to Jeff Wise:
I have erroneously accused Jeff Wise of improper behavior on a reporting trip that he did to my flying ranch in New Mexico. I finally received the photos from that trip and was going to publish them, and when I looked at them, to my horror, it was a different reporter (whose name I will obviously not release) from a different magazine, on a different trip. I wish that I could excuse myself due to the fact that I did dozens of interviews and appeared in dozens of magazines during my flying times in New Mexico, and could be expected to be confused, but that is no excuse. Jeff’s trip did not even include a campfire session.
I was wrong. I apologize. I know that that does not help, but I am truly sorry.
John McAfee is wanted by police in Belize in connection with the murder of his neighbor Gregory Faull. Faull was found shot to death a week ago Sunday. McAfee has been hiding out since, and providing updates via a Wired reporter who had just wrapped up a large piece about his life in Belize.
You can catch up via this series of articles.
A few days ago, McAfee began blogging himself, aiming to set the record straight, from his own perspective. This is a look at his first posts. Read the whole blog here.
In the introductory post, McAfee begins, “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?”
He then proceeds to call out the press for sensationalizing the whole story. While he says he “could go on,” and probably will at some point, he specifically calls out Gizmodo and Wired and their reporters Jeff Wise and Joshua Davis, respectively. The former, which broke the news about this whole murder suspect story, may be angry about some photographs his wife may have received, according to McAfee. Here’s an excerpt:
Jeff’s first article about me was a piece in National Geographic Explorer about my flying adventures in New Mexico. He stayed with us for a week or so and went flying/camping with my pilot friends and I as part of his stay. One of those friends was a beautiful young woman named Goldy Ivashkov. The first day he arrived he ended up spending the night with her. While camping, their intimacy was flaunted to the point that around the campfire, the lap-sitting, face kissing, fondling was so intense that I jokingly and loudly said “somebody get pictures of this to send to his wife in case we get a bad story from him”. It was a joke. I joke a lot. Unfortunately, many pictures were taken and, as I am told, his wife did receive some. I had nothing to do with it. I could care less about who sleeps with whom, or where, or how — as long as it’s not in my own bed while I’m trying to sleep. Well, to be honest, not even in the same room while I’m trying to sleep. Barring that, nothing could concern me less.
Jeff however, I truly believe, thinks that I sent the photos to his wife. If I had done so, then I would deserve whatever wrath he chose to mete out. But seriously, it’s not my style. And if his mistaken suspicion is not the reason for his bulldog approach to sniffing out my life then I can’t even guess at what twisted motives move this man.
Joshua Davis, the Wired reporter (which he has been calling repeatedly throughout this whole adventure), McAfee didn’t have much to say about specifically, but said for his story, a photographer showed up near the end of the process of a huge piece Davis was writing, and took hundreds of pictures, including the now famous one where he is shirtless and holding a shotgun. According to McAfee, he was asked to pose in this fashion. “This is not something I normally do – I mean, walk half naked around my property holding a shotgun…” he says.
McAfee’s next post, entitled “Background” is pretty much a set of links to stories and information about the Belize government, Prime Minister and Gang Suppression unit. The post after that is called “How this began,” and shares McAfee’s side of the story which began with a raid on his property back in April. He mentions that when the authorities showed up, he ran naked outside with a pistol, but then put it down when he saw the military formation. At that point, he went back inside and woke up the 17-year old girl with whom he was living, and told her to get dressed.
He talks about being handcuffed behind his back and sitting in the sun without food or water for 14 hours. He said he emailed the Prime Minister looking for an apology, and did not receive one. He says he will not stop being a vocal opponent of the PM until he receives one.
The next post is about Samantha (pictured), the 20-year-old “ball of fire” that will not leave his side. Here’s an excerpt from that one:
Sam has been upbeat throughout my ordeal with the government, not just in the past week, but also for the past 6 months. She has experienced the government’s harassment with me and has seen all that I have seen. She is pissed at all that has happened to us and wants to see justice done, just as I do – not just for Mr. Faul’s family and friends, but for all Belizeans living under the Draconian system that has evolved under the present government.
For the past week, Sam has kept our clothes clean and has fed us and kept me distracted by telling stories of her life and humorous anecdotes about her family. She is a natural raconteur and mimic. She has also helped me evade detection by grabbing me and kissing me, in public, in a fashion that causes passerby’s to feel embarrassment at the thought of staring and by creating emotional scenes that cause the curious to momentarily forget what they were looking for. She is acutely aware of her surroundings and is as street smart as a sober hobo. She does not drink or take drugs.
The next post is called “Harrassment“. He says that within a week of the raid on his property, the harrassment began. He writes, “First there was an attempt to charge me with running an antibiotics laboratory without a license. In Belize a special government permit is required to research antibiotics – a law which is common in Third World countries. To date, no such permits have ever been issued. I suspect the large drug conglomerates have much to do with these widespread laws, or perhaps it’s a viewpoint motivated by my latent paranoia. In any case, I didn’t have such a permit. Neither was I researching or producing antibiotics. Antibiotics are taken systemically. I was working on a topical antibacterial spray. It could in no way be classified as an antibiotic. After a week or so of play in the press the government abandoned its attempt to charge me under the ‘antibiotic crime laws’.”
Then, he says, the records for a security company he had started, had disappeared from government files and re-appeared without his name. As a result, weapons from this company, that were in his possession during the raid, were deemed illegally held. His property manager managed to produce the original documents and keep him out of prison. Then, he says they talked about charging him with hiring security guards without a license, which never happened. He says lawyers told him they were not aware of any law this would violate. “The list goes on,” he says.
After that, comes a post from Samantha. She tells her story about how she came to meet McAfee.
The next post is called “Punishment of the innocent“. Here, McAfee talks about how the police began a “systematic roundup” of his friends and associates, saying that the list, so far, includes his best friend, his caretaker, a cab driver, his bodyguard (and his wife), and his housekeeper. He concludes that post by saying, “The list will grow. I am asking all people of conscience to read this blog, especially the links in the ‘Background’ section, and see the ugly truth unfolding here. Speak out. Write your congressmen. Write the Prime Minister. Do what you can. These people are suffering and will continue to do so irrespective of my actions. They will become yet another bleak statistic in the web of injustice clutching the heart of this country.”
The next post talks about the police returning to his property over the weekend, searching it without a warrant. He followed that one up with a post called “Watchfulness“. He announced that he is offering a $25,000 reward for the capture of “the person or persons” responsible for Faull’s murder. In the post, he reveals that he’s been hiding out close to the property. He describes his disguise:
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. I put on a pair of ragged brown pants with holes patched and darned. I wore an old, ragged long sleeve shirt. I donned an old Guatemalan style sarape and toted a bag containing a variety of Guatemalan woven goods. I adjusted my posture so that I appeared a good six inches shorter than my actual height and slowly walked up and down the beach with a pronounced limp, pushing an old single speed bicycle and peddling my wares to tourists and reporters using a broken English with a heavy Spanish accent. On my second day, while peddling small wooden carvings, I nearly sold a dolphin carving to an Associated Press reporter standing at the edge of my dock. He was pulled away from my enticement by an urgent phone call.
McAfee says he spoke with Faull’s caretaker, who told them that he was the one who found Faull’s body, despite police having said it was his housekeeper. The caretaker told McAfee that Faull didn’t have a housekeeper, McAfee says. He then says he watched the police dig up his dogs who had been poisoned, cut off their heads, then rebury their bodies. Then, he watched the police search his property seven times. He says he got too close at one point, and was “angrily ordered to go away.”
Apparently his disguise was really, really good.
“On subsequent days using different disguises, I did the same general thing, one day selling tamales and burritos that I had purchased wholesale from a real vendor, on another pretending to be a drunk German tourist with a partially bandaged face and wearing speedo swimming trunks and a distasteful, oversized Hawaiian shirt and yelling loudly at anyone who would listen – ‘Leck mich um ausch!’,” he writes. “At 67 years of age it was quite a spectacle.”
After that, he says he discovered that the police were more concerned with finding him than catching Mr. Faul’s killer. “The most enduring and frequently passed rumor is that the killing was punishment for a soured real estate transaction. I did not know, until I heard the rumor that Mr. Faul was working for a local real estate company. No-one seems to know the true details of the transaction or the parties involved, but the police could easily discover the details if they were so inclined,” he writes.
In the next post, McAfee says the blog will continue even if he is captured, because he has pre-written enough stuff to keep it alive for at least a year. The admin, Chad Essley, will monitor comments, he says. Essley, he says, will also administer the reward and post any info received.
After that, there is another post talking about his views on love and women. “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 man,” he says. “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.”
As of the time of this writing, that’s the most recent post. Check back frequently or subscribe to the feed. It sounds like there is plenty more where this all came from.
