Software giant John McAfee is no longer on the run, and was arrested in Guatemala Wednesday for entering the country illegally, reported Fox News. The arrest ends a bizarre three-week journey for the expatriate running from Belizian authorities.
At this time McAfee's fate remains unclear. Guatemalan authorities are awaiting word from their Foreign Ministry concerning what they should do with the 67-year-old founder of the McAfee anti-virus company, as they may intend to send him back to Belize, where he is a person of interest in the killing of a fellow ex-pat.
"We are awaiting instructions from the Foreign Ministry. It will be the foreign relations department that decides the process," Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said following McAfee's arrest Wednesday at a hotel in Guatemala City.
Earlier Wednesday, McAfee claimed he had formally requested asylum in Guatemala after entering the country from Belize. He refuses to return to Belize because he says he fears his life would be in danger.
McAfee's lawyer in Guatemala, Telesforo Guerra, echoed that sentiment Wednesday evening.
"He will be in danger if he is returned to Belize, where he has denounced authorities," Guerra said, according to Fox News. "From the moment he asked for asylum he has to have the protection of the Guatemalan government."
McAfee has spent weeks on the run from authorities in Belize, but has maintained a media presence through his blog and numerous cell phone interviews from undisclosed locations with publications.
Earlier Saturday, CNN aired an interview with McAfee where the software magnet explained, "I will certainly not turn myself in, and I will certainly not quit fighting," he told CNN. He added that running from the law had taken a toll on his previously extravagant standard of living. "It hasn't been a lot of fun," he said. "I miss my prior life. Much of it has been deprivation. No baths, poor food."
Three weeks ago, authorities in the small Belizean town where expatriate McAfee lived, discovered his neighbor, 52-year old American businessman Gregory Faull, lying dead in a pool of blood with a bullet wound to the head, said the Daily Mail. Only days before that, police had been called the McAfee's beachfront residence after the eccentric millionaire shot four of his dogs, claiming they needed to be put out of their misery, because "unknown assailants" had poisoned them.
All of this is apparently why McAfee was on the lam. According to Belizean authorities, they aren't charging him with murder; they only want to question McAfee about the murder as he is a "person of interest," Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez said.
"Rather than submit to questioning... McAfee freaked out and declared that he would be killed if taken into custody by Belizean authorities," reported Time.
After losing an estimated $96 million due to bad investments, McAfee relocated to Belize in 2008, purchasing several tracts of property, and soon launched an herbal drug venture.
That's when things began to really get out of hand, says Time. McAfee embarked on a mad-capped hedonistic lifestyle that involved a "retinue of prostitutes," an exotic and incredibly volatile designer drug called MPVD ("bath salts"), and a personal security force armed with shotguns. Science journalist Jeff Wise, who has travelled to see McAfee in Belize, said his most recent visit "really scared the hell out of me."
"Around the time his herbal drug plan collapsed, he started to get really heavily into this kind of synthetic, hallucinogenic hyper-aphrodisiac," Wise told FoxNews.com. "Everyone was scared of McAfee. He was walking around the beach carrying a gun."
McAfee founded his namesake software company in 1987, initially running it out of his home in California. The expatriate sold his stake in McAfee Associates in 1994. His net worth is estimated to have been $100 million at its peak.
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