Background
John David McAfee, 75, died on June 23, 2021, in Barcelona, Spain. He was born on September 18, 1945, in Gloucestershire, England on a U.S. military base to a U.S. father, Don Harold McAfee, and a British mother, Joan Ellen (Williams nee) Hill. He was both a British and U.S. citizen. McAfee and his mother moved to the U.S. in early 1948 when he was 2 years old. He was an only child and grew up in Salem, Virginia where his father worked as a surveyor for the Virginia Department of Highways and his mother worked as a teller for Farmers National Bank.
McAfee attended Northside High School in Roanoke County, Virginia where he graduated in 1963 in the school’s first graduating class. He then attended Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia where he graduated in 1967 with a B.S. in Mathematics. He then attended Virginia Tech. He did postgraduate studies for a Ph.D. at Northeast State Louisiana State College for a short period and then at Columbia University.
McAfee was employed as a programmer by NASA's Institute for Space Studies in New York City beginning in 1968. He was then employed for a short period at Univac in Bristol, Tennessee and then for a short period as a programmer for the Missouri Pacific Railroad in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked as an operating system architect at Xerox and a software consultant at Computer Science Corporation. In addition, he worked for a consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, from 1980–1982, and subsequently, worked as director of engineering at Omex. He was then employed by Lockheed.
In 1987, McAfee developed the first commercial antivirus software and founded McAfee Associates to further develop and market the software. In 1989, he left Lockheed to spend full-time at McAfee Associates. In 1992, McAfee Associates became a publicly held company with its $42 million stock offering. In 1994, he left McAfee Associates and subsequently sold all his remaining equity interest in the company.
After he left McAfee Associates, he founded Tribal Voice, where he developed one of the first instant messaging programs (PowWow), which he subsequently sold. He then invested in Zone Labs, makers of firewall software, which was subsequently sold.
In addition, after he left McAfee Associates, he became engrossed in several endeavors including yoga and was the founder of the Relational Yoga Mandiram and organizer of the annual Sidha Silence retreats. In addition, he wrote four books on yoga. He was also an ultra-light aircraft enthusiast and co-founded and led the "Sky Gypsies" group and built eight airports for his “aerotrekking” operation in remote areas of New Mexico and Arizona including a home base in Rodeo, New Mexico.
McAfee moved to Belize in 2009 where he became involved in the production of herbal medications. In 2012, McAfee became a person of interest in connection to a homicide investigation of the death of his neighbor in Belize who was found dead of a gunshot wound. McAfee fled Belize and was arrested in Guatemala for illegally entering the country. He was ultimately released and deported to the U.S.
McAfee was also a promoter of cryptocurrency.
McAfee made failed attempts for the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidency as the Libertarian candidate.
When McAfee was 15 years old, his father committed suicide using McAfee's rifle. His father was an abusive alcoholic and this along with the suicide had a profound impact on McAfee. In the late 1960s and into the early 1980s, McAfee became a heavy drinker and drug user. McAfee became more eccentric over the years and his antics became more bizarre.
During the ten years or so preceding his death, McAfee had various legal problems including in 2014 a $2.5 million judgment against him in Arizona Court in connection with a death resulting from the 2006 crash of one of McAfee’s ultra-light aircraft and in 2019 a $25 million judgment against him in U.S. Federal Court in connection with the wrongful death of a neighbor in Belize. In 2019, McAfee announced that he was on the run from authorities in the U.S and living internationally on a boat following the convening of a grand jury to consider indictment of him, his wife, and four of his associates on tax evasion charges. In 2020, he was indicted in the U.S. for income tax evasion that alleged he earned millions of dollars from 2014 to 2018 and failed to file income tax returns. In 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice for tax evasion and was jailed pending extradition to the U.S. In 2021, he was indicted in the U.S. on fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges relating to a cryptocurrency pump and dump scheme where he was paid $23 million in digital assets. At the time of his death, McAfee was in a Spanish prison where he hung himself awaiting extradition to the U.S. on the tax evasion charges.
McAfee was married three times (1969, 1983 and 2013 or 2016) and had one daughter in 1969 from his first marriage.
McAfee was preceded in death by his father in 1961 and his mother in 1974. He was survived by his daughter and granddaughter from his first marriage in 1969. He was also survived by his uncle, Carl Everett McAfee, who defended Francis Gary Powers after he was shot down over the Soviet Union in the 1960 U-2 incident.
McAfee’s daughter and granddaughter from his first marriage issued the following statement relating to his death:
“We are terribly saddened by the sudden and unexpected news of John McAfee’s passing. He was undoubtedly a brilliant and talented man who led a remarkable but deeply troubled life that affected many people...in both good and bad ways. A tortured soul can manifest itself in many manners and there is no doubt that his energy was contagious. Even though he may no longer be with us, his legacy will live on.”
Signed, His Daughter & Granddaughter