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. everybody knew the police who are scouring the place, searching for the man they believed knew something about the murder of greg faull, but john mcafee truly seemed to have vanished. though, it didn t mean reporters weren t hearing from him. right now, sir, i am holed up in a place where the mattress here has lice. i never experienced that before. joshua davis, who was writing an article about mcafee at the time, was among the first to get a call. i can t sleep at night because i m allergic to every noise. mcafee told davis he had a young woman with him. sam is quite the soldier. samantha, she has been with me loyally for the past couple of months. he insisted he knew nothing whatever his neighbor s murder.
was her story. eventually, said samantha, they found a place to hold up. mcafee died as air and whenever he needed to venture out into the open, he donned a disguise. he pretended he was a couple guy back. dyed his hair white. a beard. put on the hat, glasses. whatever it would take for a safety, he would do. nobody recognized him? no one ever recognized him. according to her, it was her uncle, the lawyer, who arranged of her and mcafee smuggled out of belize by taxicab to punta gorda and then by boat to guatemala. it has been an adventure for me, yet disturbing. because i don t like to leave my house. it makes me sick. you don t feel well? i don t. john mcafee wasn t exactly feeling on top of the world either, it seemed. first, a guatemalan judge summarily dismissed his position for political asylum, and then the guatemalan police took him into custody. not as a murder suspect, but on the grounds he had entered the
well, a couple of very practical reasons. some of them about family, and some international politics. and because of that, the story got even stranger. after weeks on the run, there he was, in the flesh. according to mcafee, he was not running from a homicide investigation. oh no, he said he was in guatemala to ask for political asylum, and protection from the government of belize. seven months ago, the belizian government sent 42 armed soldiers into my property. i had to leave, but the story has to get out. 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. so, i tell him i have an uncle who s a lawyer. and he s a pretty good lawyer. and you can ask anyone here in guatemala. you certainly could. sam s uncle has represented some of the biggest names in central america, like former panamanian strongman manuel
and she were hiding out on the mainland, she said, in belize city. he was in the city. i mean, john a smart. he knows what he s doing. i mean, you turned his phone on, and said, you know what? they re going to track us down. we have the phone there. we took it all the battery of the, phone and left one on the island, and people really thought he was there. because his cell phone was there? it went on and on, because they were tracking it. what made them think he was there? because on his blog, he would say, i m standing, like, 20 to 40 feet from my yard, and i could see that the police are raiding it. that was a lie? that was a lie! when your life is in danger, you have to lie. and he did. but it certainly wasn t easy, said samantha. very uncomfortable in those early days on the land. we d go in bushes, everywhere. we crossed reversed by boat. john s back was at one point looked horrible. it had a lot of bites on it. i even told him, dude, you look really sick. you don t
journal in two days. it was questions about this other fella. mcafee? like, excuse me? you re asking the wrong question. ask me about our loss. that seemed almost to be secondary, like it was the lost in the shuffle? lost on the shuffle, greg was push off to one side. it was the mcafee circus. no doubt mcafee was good copy, but with the police not talking and john mcafee not talking to police, rumor and speculation is about all there was. that is until the world s most wanted person of interest surfaced in guatemala, seeking sanctuary. according to mcafee s traveling companion, samantha venegas, the couple had used their wits to elude capture. for weeks, she said, mcafee made the police think he was on amergris caye, when in fact, he