The body of software entrepreneur John McAfee remained at a morgue in Spain Thursday a year after his death as a legal case filed by his family, who do not believe he committed suicide, is yet to be resolved.
The 75-year-old founder of the anti-virus McAfee software was found dead in his cell at a prison near Barcelona on June 23, 2021 a few hours after a Spanish court authorised his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges.
An autopsy determined he had died by suicide. But his widow Janice swiftly demanded further checks, arguing that McAfee was not suicidal and that the autopsy was “incomplete”, her lawyer Javier Villalba said.
A local court denied the request but his family appealed that decision and a judge ruled McAfee’s remains could not be handed to his family until the appeal is settled, he added.
McAfee’s corpse remains at the Barcelona morgue where the autopsy was carried out, said a spokesperson for the regional Catalan government’s justice department.
“One year ago today John McAfee was stolen from us. A champion of freedom & privacy, the world is a much darker place without him,” Janice McAfee tweeted along with the hashtag #JohnMcAfeeDidNotKillHimself.
According to an indictment filed in a US court, McAfee was alleged to have deliberately failed to file tax returns between 2014 and 2018, despite earning millions from consulting work, cryptocurrencies and selling the rights to his life story.
If convicted, he could have faced up to 30 years in prison.
McAfee in 1987 founded the computer security software company and ran it for seven years before resigning.
His life after that became a headline-grabbing mix of controversies involving drugs, weapons and even murder.
McAfee moved to Belize in Central America and made headlines when his next-door neighbour was mysteriously murdered in 2012. The crime was never solved.
McAfee claimed he was nowhere near the victim at the time, but local police wanted to interview him as a person of interest in the case.
After the police found him living with a 17-year-old girl and discovered a large arsenal of weapons in his home, McAfee fled Belize.
