As Belizean police combed the property of expat antivirus pioneer John McAfee Sunday afternoon, McAfee was closer than they could have known. He’d seen them coming, and says he hid — burying himself in the sand with a cardboard box over his head so he could breathe. “It was extraordinarily uncomfortable,” he says, in an exclusive interview with Wired. “But they will kill me if they find me.”
McAfee blames the death of the dogs on the Belizean authorities, with whom he has been tangling for months. In April, the Gang Suppression Unit raided his property on the mainland and accused him of manufacturing methamphetamine and possessing unlicensed weapons. Those charges were dropped but McAfee believes that the government has a vendetta against him. He believes the death of his dogs was just another attempt to get him to leave the country.
McAfee is currently on the run from the police. “Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in this country,” he told me this afternoon. “You can say I’m paranoid about it but they will kill me, there is no question. They’ve been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me. I am not well liked by the prime minister. I am just a thorn in everybody’s side.”
Nonetheless, McAfee insists he has no plans to leave the country. “I like it here,” he says. “It’s the nicest place on earth.”