Uninstalling John McAfee

A tech pioneer who built one of the world’s biggest antivirus empires descends into paranoia, excess, and fugitive chaos—turning his life into a globe-spanning thriller that blurs the line between genius and madness. Sources for this episode include: No Domain: The John McAfee Tapes by Mark Eglinton“On the Lam with John McAfee” (Vice) Try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE at https://ziprecruiter.com/KILLERS Keep up with Killer Stories! Instagram: @killerstoriespod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Harvey Guillén?

  Ever hear the myth of Cassandra? She could see the future. Fire, ruin, disasters on the horizon. But no one ever believed her. She'd stand at the city gates, warning people. And they'd just smile and nod and go back to their wine. Cassandra's story isn't really about prophecy. It's about what happens when someone becomes convinced they're the only one who sees the danger. Someone who thinks they can decode the hidden pattern. Someone who believes if everyone would just listen, everything could be saved. In the late 1980s, John McAfee decided he was that person.

• 0:49Harvey Guillén?

  No robes, no temples, just Hawaiian shirts and glowing monitors. He warned of a digital plague. He saw threats everywhere, in your computer, your government, even your friends. Depending on who you ask, he was either a visionary ahead of his time or a man unraveling in real time. Convinced the end was one corrupted file away. He had Cassandra's foresight, but also the kind of volatility that made people stop listening. He was the warning and the reason no one believed him. I'm Harvey Guillén, and this is Killer Stories.

• 1:51Harvey Guillén?

  Picture this: It's 1999. You're on a beige Dell in the corner of the living room. Before you can get to AOL Chat or your Neopets, a little window pops up in the corner. McAfee antivirus is scanning your system. It runs in the background quietly, checking for something you can't see, can't touch, but are absolutely terrified of: computer viruses. To most of us, McAfee antivirus was just that little shield icon you clicked on when something weird happened. To John McAfee, it was the culmination of a very strange journey through technology, psychedelics, and paranoia. Long before his name was on your parents' computer,

• 2:34Harvey Guillén?

  the story of John McAfee starts in a world where the word "virus" means "polio," not "pop-up." In the 1960s, John attends college in Virginia. He technically studies physics, but "studies" might be a generous term. He barely goes to class. Instead, he floats between odd jobs, drinks like it's a competitive sport, and somehow still pulls straight As. He claims to be totally self-taught. He's that annoying guy in school who gets an A+ on his test even though he didn't even try. He's not even trying. By the late 60s, he's bluffed and charmed his way into a training program job at General Electric. You know, GE? And that's where he meets his first computer.

• 3:19Harvey Guillén?

  Now, I know we carry computers in our pockets today, but back then, computers were massive. I'm talking wall-to-wall machinery. There's no screens. There's just like these bunch of knobs and lights. And what is that guy even doing? Hacking into the mainframe? Anyway, GE teaches him just enough programming to be dangerous. And John realizes two things very quickly. He is good at this, and people are willing to believe him when he says he's even better. So when he applies for a job at NASA, he quietly upgrades his resume. Three months at GE become three years. And crazily enough, the lie works.

• 4:01Harvey Guillén?

  NASA hires him as a programmer working with satellite data. Then he hits his first huge wall. He's assigned a project he has absolutely no idea how to solve. This is the moment where most of us would panic, ask for help, or fake a dentist appointment, and never come back. John decides to go in a different direction. According to interviews he later gives, he spends a week wandering around on psychedelics, barely sleeping, filling notebooks with code and ideas until the solution clicks into place. He shows up to the office the next week with the working program. His colleagues are impressed.

• 4:45Harvey Guillén?

  The man who lighted his way into NASA pulls off the kind of stunt that makes the lie feel almost justified. It's the pattern that will follow him for decades. Bluff, leap, somehow land on his feet, and come out looking like an outlaw genius. By the mid-1980s, he's working in Silicon Valley, married and increasingly obsessed with the emergent online world. The internet isn't really the internet yet. There's no Google, no pop-up ads screaming at you, no videos of puppies and kittens cuddling. It's just a patchwork of servers and early chat boards called BBSs where programmers log in over shrieking dial-up lines

• 5:28Harvey Guillén?

  to trade code, gossip, and very strong opinions. John loves it. He loves the chaos, the arguments, the brainy bragging. So he launches his own BBS called Homebase, a space where other programmers can talk shop. He organizes pizza meetups in the real world. He becomes a minor celebrity in a tiny, deeply nerdy universe. And then he reads about the brain virus. Over in Pakistan, two brothers named Ajad and Basit Farooq Alvi are running a tiny shop called Brain Computer Services. It's the kind of place students come into

• 6:09Harvey Guillén?

  looking for cheap tech fixes and pirated software on floppy disk. The brothers start noticing an annoying pattern. Their customers are sharing those disks with friends who are sharing them with their friends, and nobody's paying the Alvis' assent. So they come up with a plan that is part business strategy, part supervillain origin story. They write a virus. They load it into the floppy disks they sell so if someone copies the software and passes it along, the new machine gets infected. The computer starts acting up. The system refuses to boot, and deep in the drive, a little message appears.

• 6:53Harvey Guillén?

  "Welcome to the dungeon. Beware of this virus. Contact us for vaccination." Then it lists their shop's full name, address, and phone number. It's like a twisted business card buried in your hard drive. The idea is that anyone affected will bring their computer back to Brain Computer Services to get vaccinated. And the Alvis will rake in the cash. But what the brothers don't count on is how far a virus can travel once you set it loose. The code spreads to more than 100,000 PCs around the world. And it gets a name: the brain virus.

• 7:37Harvey Guillén?

  When John reads this story in the newspaper, he's fascinated. Here is a piece of code that can hide from programmers, replicate itself, and corrupt not just personal files, but the fundamental data that makes computers run. John does what John always does. When something grabs him, he dives in. He studies the brain virus, picks apart how it works, and realizes he can engineer a cure. He calls his friend and fellow programmer Dennis Yell. Together, they create a program that can detect the brain infection, remove it, and repair the damage. John names it Virus Scan and uploads it

• 8:20Harvey Guillén?

  to the Homebase BBS for free. According to him, more than a million people download it within a few days. Whether or not that number is exact, the impact is very real. John has just created the very first antivirus program for personal computers. It doesn't take long for him to realize that if one virus can cause this much trouble, others will follow. And whoever can stay ahead of them will have a very profitable kind of power. He quits his day job, hires Dennis and about 20 of his Homebase friends, and turns his small house into a chaotic antivirus headquarters.

• 9:02Harvey Guillén?

  There are programmers at every surface: desks, floors, couches, even the washing machine. John and his team work 18-hour days, seven days a week, and code throughout the night. Eventually, John's wife, Linda, snaps. She's done sharing fridge space with coders and tripping over wires on her way to make coffee. So she rents office space just to get everyone and everything out of the house. And that's really the moment McAfee Associates becomes a company instead of a very intense sleepover, the first real antivirus outfit in the world. John distributes Virus Scan with a simple model. Personal users get it free, corporations pay.

• 9:46Harvey Guillén?

  Sometimes up to 100 grand for a license. In return, he promises that if a new virus shows up, his team will identify it and fix it within hours. And they actually tried to live up to that promise. They cranked through every new threat: Vienna, Ping Pong, Cascade, a parade of viruses with strange names hiding very real problems. By 1982, McAfee Software is very successful. They're running on about half of all Fortune 500 computers, and the company controls roughly 70% of the antivirus market. John's making millions, and tech reporters are suddenly calling him "the guy who invented an entire field,"

• 10:31Harvey Guillén?

  which honestly, he kind of did. John becomes the person companies look to like a digital oracle, the Cassandra of code, the man who understands the danger before anyone else does. But while John is enjoying the fame and the fortune, and let's be honest, the ego boost, technology doesn't slow down to let him savor it. The early internet is taking shape, growing bigger by the day. But the threats are growing bigger too. And that's when the Michelangelo virus hits.

• 11:08Speaker 01

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• 11:39Speaker 02

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• 12:09Speaker 03

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Make them remember you.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 12:24Harvey Guillén?

  So it is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You know, I think I'd be a pretty good mall Santa. I'm just saying, someone should hire me. I mean, already when I'm in public, a lot of you come up to me and feel so compelled and comfortable telling me your life story or about that unsolved murder in your hometown. And kids, they'll just tell you whatever's on their mind. I was in the UK recently and this little boy came up to me and said, hey, do you like sweets? And I said, yes, I love sweets. Why? Does it look like I like sweets? And he said, you do. You do look lucky, you like sweets. Anyways, somebody should just hire me as a Santa for a mall or as a therapist. And whatever job you're hiring for this holiday season, one thing remains true. You need to find someone with the necessary skills and experience, which isn't actually

• 13:09Harvey Guillén?

  that hard to do if you use ZipRecruiter. Check it out for free at ziprecruiter.com/killers. The reason ZipRecruiter is so highly rated is simple. It's fast with powerful matching technology that parses through resumes and then it picks out the most qualified and interested candidates to present them first. So you can talk with people who are capable and genuinely excited about the job from the beginning. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try for free today at ziprecruiter.com/killers. That's ziprecruiter.com/killers. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 13:50Harvey Guillén?

  Michelangelo is a piece of malware that hides quietly inside computers and is programmed to activate on March 6th, Michelangelo's birthday. John and his team believe it could render countless machines useless. A month before it's set to trigger, John goes on a massive media tour. He tells reporters that up to 5 million computers could be permanently destroyed, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. The news treats John like a techno Nostradamus. End of times are coming and John positions himself as both herald and savior, the man sounding the alarm and holding the antidote.

• 14:32Harvey Guillén?

  But when March 6th finally rolls around, Michelangelo, well, doesn't exactly bring the apocalypse. About 20,000 computers get hit, not great, but not the 5 million John had warned about. John immediately says this proves his point, that his software worked, that his warnings saved the day, that everyone should really be thanking him. And maybe he's right. Or maybe Michelangelo just wasn't that dangerous. This is a moment where things change for John McAfee, where the trajectory he was on starts veering off into an unexpected place. People in Silicon Valley start whispering.

• 15:16Harvey Guillén?

  Some call him dramatic, others say fear mongering. And then there are rumors that claim he exaggerated the whole thing to boost sales or worse, that he might have known a little too much about the virus itself. As in, maybe he was actually behind the virus. John denies all of it, of course, but once that kind of story starts spinning, it's hard to get your reputation back in the box. Inside McAfee the Company, leadership starts shifting in their seats, suddenly very aware of the man whose name is on the building.

• 15:57Harvey Guillén?

  Outside the company, people roll their eyes when his name comes up. John says that the thrill is gone anyway, that chasing viruses has become too corporate, too boring, too predictable. He even calls his own company bland. And in 1994, he leaves. Whether by choice or by executive nudging, remains one of Silicon Valley's favorite arguments. John cashes out with around $150 million. And then he does what most people would do if they suddenly became very, very rich. He goes shopping. He buys a $20 million mansion in Colorado, then eight more properties across the country

• 16:42Harvey Guillén?

  because why stop at one when you can build your own monopoly board? He throws money at new startups. Chasing that rush, he felt the first time he saved the digital world, trying to catch lightning in a bottle again, even though lightning historically is not known to strike twice. John's still flying high, but then the 2008 financial crisis hits. His wealth is heavily tied up in real estate and investments. The markets crash. And for John, they crash hard. His net worth drops from around 100 million to under 10 million.

• 17:23Harvey Guillén?

  Yep, turns out he had a significant investment in Lehman Brothers. Remember those guys? And to make matters worse, around the same time, he's getting sued left and right. He had become a light aircraft enthusiast and had become such an enthusiast that he started a company to train people to fly these aircraft. Well, someone who was being trained to fly dies in a crash and John is accused of being responsible. And he has another lawsuit that claims someone was injured on one of his properties. It's not looking good for John. He believes these are just cash grabs, but in reality, they are real legal problems that could drain all he has left.

• 18:08Harvey Guillén?

  Either way, he makes a choice that will change the rest of his life. He runs. So in 2008, John McAfee goes looking for a place where he can live lavishly on what remains of his fortune, stay one step ahead of the creditors and reinvent himself yet again. And he finds Belize. Belize on paper is paradise. There are turquoise waters, coral reefs and palm trees, but Belize is also known for offshore banking and attracting people who want to live outside the lines. John buys land on an island called Ambergris Key and builds a compound that looks like the setting of a Bond movie.

• 18:51Harvey Guillén?

  Ambergris Key is the most developed and wealthiest island in Belize. It's a strip of white sand and coral reef where scuba tourists, retirees, tech expats and the quietly wealthy buy villas that look like luxury resorts. Its nickname is La Isla Bonita, after Madonna released a song about the island, which I will sing for you now. La... I guess not. I'm being told with a big sign that says stop, that I can't. Moving on. John could have ended the story here. Now 63 years old, he could have lived a quiet retiree life, sipping piña coladas and soaking in the sun.

• 19:36Harvey Guillén?

  Instead, he brings the full chaos of John McAfee to the Caribbean.

• 19:43Harvey Guillén?

  He starts new businesses, spends his nights at a bar and brothel called Lover's Bar, and makes himself impossible to miss by buying drinks for the entire room. Over time, he forms relationships with several of the young women who work there. Eventually, eight of them move into his home. It becomes a polyamorous boarding house, the kind where you almost want to stop the story right here and just say, "Hey Johnny, hey buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy, look at me, look at me, what's the plan here, huh? Who's in charge, yeah? Who's the chore chart? Who's doing what? Ladies! No thongs have to be on after 6:00 PM. Rules are rules." But John isn't just partying in Belize.

• 20:24Harvey Guillén?

  He's also trying on a new persona, Maverick Scientist. He invites a young natural product chemist named Allison Adonizio down to help him with what he calls groundbreaking research into natural antibiotics, plant and bacteria-based compounds that he believes could fight drug-resistant superbugs. He builds a lab for the project, though officials later say it doesn't come close to meeting a basic scientific standard. Instead, officials think it's a meth lab, and they raid the facility in 2012. They don't find any drugs, but they find something just as dangerous: a lot of guns and ammunition.

• 21:07Harvey Guillén?

  They arrest John, who by this point has bleached blonde hair and is covered practically head to toe in tattoos. He spends a night in jail but doesn't face any serious charges, but Allison has had enough. Not long after the police raid, she leaves Belize and returns home to New York. For now, John is getting away scot-free, but as he continues to settle into his life in Belize, something else settles in, too: paranoia. He becomes convinced the attention he's drawing is putting him in danger. He says local gang members are pressuring at least two of the women to extort him, and

• 21:49Harvey Guillén?

  once John believes he's under threat, he acts accordingly. He installs a panic room in his bedroom and builds hiding spots throughout the house. He collects more guns, hires private security, and keeps a pack of loud territorial dogs on the property. At night, he sleeps with a loaded shotgun pointed at the door. The whole place feels less like a beach retreat and more like a bunker. And to at least one person, it's a problem. John's neighbor, an American retiree named Gregory Fall. He grows increasingly frustrated with the noise, the dogs, the guards, the nonstop chaos spilling across the property line.

• 22:34Harvey Guillén?

  According to Greg's friends and multiple neighbors, he confronts John directly about the dogs and their constant barking more than once. And when nothing changes, he files a formal complaint with local authorities. And then, one morning in November 2012, everything goes quiet. People walking the shoreline see them first: John's dogs lying dead in the sand. Reports later suggest they were killed with a neurotoxin or pesticide. No one has ever determined exactly what the dogs ingested or who put it there.

• 23:15Harvey Guillén?

  Neighbors say John becomes angry, pacing, shaking, swearing revenge on whoever had done it. And the next day, Gregory Fall is found dead in his home.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  Make them remember you.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Weeping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 23:45Speaker 06

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• 24:15Speaker 07

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• 24:47Harvey Guillén?

  On November 11, 2012, Gregory Fall is found dead with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. His laptop and phone are missing, and his front door is slightly ajar. Police immediately identify John McAfee as a person of interest. John thinks that they are corrupt, that the Belizean police are out to get him, that Greg's murder is a convenient excuse. So when officers arrive, he climbs up into a hiding place above a closet and lies flat on a piece of plywood, barely breathing as they search the home. He stays there for 18 hours.

• 25:29Harvey Guillén?

  When the house finally goes quiet, he slips out and goes on the run. Over the next few weeks, John lives in abandoned houses and safe houses, dyes his hair jet black, and puts on disguises. He travels with his wife, several of the young women from his compound, and a small group of bodyguards. They carry guns, burner phones, and backpacks stuffed with cash. John stays in constant contact with journalists, giving live updates from hiding like he's broadcasting his own fugitive travel blog. He tells anyone who will listen that he is innocent and being framed. At one point, he claims he buries himself in the sand with a cardboard box over his

• 26:14Harvey Guillén?

  head so police helicopters won't see him. Eventually, he slips across the border into Guatemala with his entourage avoiding official checkpoints. The international press cannot look away. This is the man whose name used to pop up in the corner of our screens when our computers booted up, now described as a potential murderer hiding in the jungle with an entourage of girlfriends and armed guards. In early December 2012, Vice journalists track John down. They take photos and publish a story promising not to reveal his exact location. What they forget is that modern cameras embed metadata in every digital photo: time, date,

• 26:59Harvey Guillén?

  and GPS info. Authorities check the data in one of the images and instantly discover where he is. His cover is blown. He is arrested for entering Guatemala illegally and suddenly faces the threat of being sent back to Belize and questioned for the murder of Gregory Fall. And this is where John does something only John would do. Right in front of a room full of cameras, John clutches his chest, groans dramatically, "Ugh," and collapses. He's wheeled out on a stretcher with an oxygen mask, staring at the cameras like the actor

• 27:42Harvey Guillén?

  who knows exactly where his close-up is. Later, a doctor says nothing is physically wrong with him. John eventually admits he fakes the heart attack to stall his deportation, a con so brazen it actually works. Guatemala sends him not to Belize, but to the United States. So after all of this, the raid, Greg's murder, the jungle hideouts, the fake heart attack, John McAfee lands at Miami International Airport. Bienvenidos a Miami. He just waltzes through customs. With no handcuffs and no murder charge, Belize still calls him a person of interest in Gregory

• 28:26Harvey Guillén?

  Fall's killing, and Greg's family later wins $25 million in wrongful death judgment against him in a civil court. John never pays a cent. John's old company, now owned by Intel, has been steadily distancing itself from his persona. In 2013, he decides to help them along by releasing a YouTube video called "How to Uninstall McAfee Antivirus." But it's not a tutorial. It's a four-minute spectacle: John's unfiltered breakup letter to the company that still bears his name. He's sitting there in a red and black velvet robe that looks borrowed from Hugh Hefner's

• 29:11Harvey Guillén?

  closet, smoking a cigar and reading profanity-laced emails from customers furious about virus scan. And then, things escalate. Suddenly, there are women in nurses' outfits stripping him down to boxers and suspenders while he snorts something that looks suspiciously like cocaine. John launches into a rant about his own software, and to drive the point home, he reaches into his suspenders and pulls out a gun, points it at a laptop, and fires. The image is exactly as subtle as you think. He later says he is parroting the media's portrayal of him, but whether it's satire

• 29:54Harvey Guillén?

  or cellphone, the effect is the same. It cements him as a kind of tech world villain, like if the Joker were a computer programmer.

• 30:06Harvey Guillén?

  Shortly afterward, Intel announces it will rebrand all McAfee branded products as Intel Security. John publicly cheers the move, calling his association with the software a curse, and referring to it as some of the worst code on the planet. Most founders don't go on record calling their life's work terrible, but John, John has entered his "burn it all down" phase. He gives interviews about government outreach and cyber surveillance. He rants on social media about the NSA, the CIA, and the ways he believes governments are spying on citizens through their phones and webcams. At first, it sounds like classic McAfee.

• 30:50Harvey Guillén?

  The paranoia, the performance, the drama. But there's one thing, he wasn't wrong. By the time most people had laughed him off, the Snowden leaks hit. And suddenly McAfee didn't sound quite so paranoid. The leaks confirmed what he'd been screaming into the void. The NSA was collecting data from phone calls, emails, and webcams. Internet companies were cooperating. The surveillance was real. So yes, he's erratic, he's theatrical, but in this case, he was Cassandra, shouting a warning no one wanted to hear.

• 31:33Harvey Guillén?

  But John also frames himself as uniquely persecuted. He insists officials are trying to silence him, that they want to kill him and make his death look like a suicide. While John's catching the attention of the media, he's also attracting attention from someone from his past, Allison Adonizio. The chemist John hired to help him with his experiments in Belize? She left the country after the police raided the lab and found stockpiles of guns. But it turns out, that wasn't even half of the story. Allison starts giving interviews and says John was controlling and intimidating. He wouldn't let her leave the compound unaccompanied.

• 32:16Harvey Guillén?

  He started sabotaging her work, and then, according to Allison, he spiked her fruit smoothie with an unknown substance. She doesn't remember much after that, but claims that John sexually assaulted her. No charges were ever filed, and John claims she made the whole thing up because she was bitter about being fired. The allegations don't stop John from continuing his Twitter rants. And then, he does what any unhinged tech bro does. He runs for president. Twice. John announces a campaign in 2016, turning the whole process into a performance art.

• 32:59Harvey Guillén?

  He says he's doing it to warn people about mass surveillance and government overreach. He's also doing it for attention. He picks fights on Twitter, including with the IRS, and eventually, that gets him in real trouble. Because one day in 2019, he tweets, "I have not filed a tax return for eight years. I live off cash from McAfee, Inc. My net income is negative, but I am a prime target for the IRS. Here I am." By 2020, he is effectively a digital fugitive, wanted by the US government for tax evasion. He launches another presidential campaign from what he calls exile, on a yacht in international

• 33:44Harvey Guillén?

  waters, promising to run his campaign from sea. He posts videos from the boat and calls it a symbol of sovereignty, of life beyond the reach of any government. On that yacht, he becomes a kind of pirate prophet. He preaches about personal freedom and encourages people to use cryptocurrency to detach completely from traditional financial systems. He calls Bitcoin, which is trading at around $9,000, "the people's currency." He promotes smaller obscure coins to his followers on Twitter, and for a while, his endorsement causes their prices to skyrocket. Regulators eventually catch up.

• 34:29Harvey Guillén?

  When they dig in, the picture gets clearer. The Securities and Exchange Commission accuses him of secretly taking more than $23 million to promote various initial coin offerings on Twitter, without telling anyone he's being paid. The Department of Justice unseals a tax evasion indictment that says he earned millions from crypto promotions, consulting, speaking gigs, and selling the rights to his life story, and didn't file any US tax returns from 2014 through 2018. Prosecutors say he routed income through accounts in other people's names and hid assets like real estate, vehicles, and the yacht the same way.

• 35:14Harvey Guillén?

  John treats every new charge like it proves his point about government overreach. He gets a tattoo on his arm that reads "whacked," and tweets that if he ever dies by suicide -- he didn't. He was whacked. He even launches a cryptocurrency with the same name. In October 2020, after years of bouncing between countries and boats, he makes a decision that finally allows the system he's been fleeing to grab a hold of him. He boards a commercial flight from Istanbul to Barcelona. When he lands in Spain, authorities are waiting. He's arrested on a US warrant and is taken to prison outside Barcelona to await an extradition hearing.

• 35:59Harvey Guillén?

  From his cell, he continues to reach out through the digital world he helped shape. Through his wife and others, he posts updates on Twitter. He insists that he is being treated well, the food is good, and that he has friends. Then he posts one of the lines that will echo loudest after his death. "I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. Everything is well. Know that if I hang myself, à la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine." On June 23, 2021, a Spanish court approves his extradition to the United States. Just hours later, guards find him dead in his cell. Officials rule it a suicide.

• 36:44Harvey Guillén?

  For most people, that would be the end of the story. But with John McAfee, the end is just another origin story for conspiracy theories. Online forums erupt with speculation. Some claim he was hiding tons of government secrets, and some, shadowy agents wiped his servers before anything could leak. There are rumors he faked his death, that he is living under a new identity somewhere in Eastern Europe or Central America. Grainy photos of older men on tropical beaches get posted on Reddit asking, "Is this John?" The more impossible the theories, the more people repeat his old line.

• 37:27Harvey Guillén?

  "I will never kill myself." Meanwhile, back in Belize, Gregory Falls murder is still unsolved. No one has ever been criminally charged. John McAfee never sits in a courtroom to answer for it. By the time John dies, it's almost impossible to separate the man from the mythology. He lies, he exaggerates, he contradicts himself so often that you get the sense even he isn't entirely sure where the truth stops and the story starts. This is a guy who spends his early career building systems to keep danger out. Anti-virus software, security compounds, panic rooms, and then spends the rest of his

• 38:12Harvey Guillén?

  life inviting danger in. He warns us that governments are watching us through our screens, that corporations are harvesting our data, that bad actors are lurking in the code, and he's not entirely wrong. But the threat he never figured out how to neutralize was the one running silently in the background of his own mind. The paranoia, the ego, the hunger to be the only one who truly understood what was going on. The thing that made him brilliant in one context made him catastrophic in another. Cassandra's curse wasn't just that no one believed her.

• 38:56Harvey Guillén?

  It was that she had to live with the knowledge she couldn't control. John McAfee's curse may have been that he believed everything he thought was prophecy, even when it was just fear dressed up in code. In the end, his story isn't just about a tech pioneer who fell from grace. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about danger. Where it comes from, who can see it, and who we can trust to protect us from it. John built a life on the promise that he could keep chaos out of your computer.

• 39:36Harvey Guillén?

  Then, he became the chaos everywhere else. We still don't know if John McAfee was more prophet or madman, more Cassandra or cautionary tale. And maybe that's the point. In a life built on code and myth and mirrors, some things we will just never fully decrypt. Thanks for listening to Killer Stories, a Spotify podcast. New episodes release on Mondays. If you liked today's story and want to learn more, we drop some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey Neen. Stay safe.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  Film for IMAX.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  Make them remember you.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 40:39Speaker 07

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Score the best gifts at Dick's Sporting Goods. Find picks she'll love from FP Movement, Kalia, Ugg, and Hydro Jug. Check off his list with must-haves from Nike, TaylorMade, On, and Turtle Box. And finish the kid's wish list with trending picks like trading cards and squishies, plus favorites from Adidas and Baseball Lifestyle 101. Shop on Dick's.com and in the Dick's app.