John McAfee’s Death Was Likely Suicide, Spanish Authorities Say

Spanish authorities opened an investigation into the dying of application pioneer
John McAfee
right after he was found useless in his jail cell from an evident suicide.

His body was found Wednesday at a facility in close proximity to Barcelona, a day right after a Spanish courtroom ordered his extradition in connection with a federal felony continuing in Tennessee. Mr. McAfee, the seventy five-calendar year-outdated founder of antivirus application company
McAfee Corp.
, had been detained in Spain due to the fact Oct in connection with felony charges submitted by the Justice Department’s tax division.

“Everything indicates that it could be a dying by suicide,” a spokeswoman for the Justice Department of the Catalan regional authorities advised The Wall Road Journal on Thursday.

The spokeswoman explained that a local judicial delegation is investigating the result in and conditions of Mr. McAfee’s dying and took his body away from the jail to have out an autopsy.

Mr. McAfee’s body was found in his cell at close to 7 p.m. local time. Safety staff attempted to resuscitate him, but the jail’s professional medical staff later declared him useless, the spokeswoman explained.

Mr. McAfee shared the cell with yet another guy, but he was by yourself when he was found, she explained. The spokeswoman explained she could not remark further more.

His Spanish law firm, Javier Villalba, explained the director of the jail exactly where Mr. McAfee was detained advised him on Wednesday that his consumer was found hanging. He explained that he was not offered additional information and facts about the conditions and that he was waiting for the results of the investigation currently being carried out by Spanish authorities.

Do you have to have help? The get hold of quantity for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.

The spokeswoman of the Justice Department of the Catalan authorities declined to remark on Mr. Villalba’s remarks. The director of the jail could not be achieved to remark.

A spokeswoman for the Significant Courtroom of Justice of Catalonia in Barcelona, which is handling the investigation on Mr. McAfee’s dying, explained she could not confirm the result in of his dying right up until the results of his autopsy were released. That could just take numerous times, she explained.

Mr. McAfee’s dying caught his Spanish law firm by shock. He explained Mr. McAfee has generally been “combative.”

“He has under no circumstances offered any signal he could have taken his have existence,” Mr. Villalba advised the Journal. “It’s an disagreeable shock, something we could not expect at all. We never fully grasp it.”

Nishay K. Sanan, an lawyer symbolizing Mr. McAfee in U.S. felony proceedings, explained Mr. McAfee “was and will generally be remembered as a fighter.”

“He attempted to like this state but the U.S. authorities built his existence extremely hard,” Mr. Sanan explained.

Mr. McAfee took a very long and circuitous route to Spain. He lived in Belize for a long time, leaving in 2012 when authorities there wished to problem him in connection with the suspected homicide of his neighbor, Gregory Faull, who was found with a gunshot wound to the head. Mr. McAfee, who explained he was fearful of currently being established up, asserted his innocence and fled to Guatemala.

He was later arrested for illegally getting into Guatemala and deported to the U.S., exactly where he pursued his desire in libertarian politics, briefly in search of the nomination of the Libertarian Bash as its prospect for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

In 2019, Mr. McAfee announced he would go on his campaign in exile, as he place it, right after expressing he ran afoul of U.S. tax authorities.

“I’ve not compensated taxes for eight a long time. I make no mystery of it. I have not submitted returns. Each calendar year I explain to the IRS ‘I am not filing a return, I have no intention of doing so, come and come across me,’” he explained in a movie he posted to
Twitter.

Following his arrest in Spain in Oct, Mr. McAfee submitted a request to Spanish judicial authorities to be freed even though waiting for a decision on his extradition to the U.S.

Even so, in December, a courtroom turned down his request, expressing that he was a flight chance and that remaining in the jail in close proximity to Barcelona didn’t pose a chance to his wellness.

For the duration of a courtroom hearing about his extradition, Mr. McAfee explained that the charges towards him experienced a political motive and that if he was despatched to the U.S. he would invest the rest of his existence in jail. The Spanish courtroom dismissed his claims because of to a deficiency of proof.

Mr. McAfee launched the company that continue to bears his identify in 1987, but he sold his stake in the nineteen nineties for additional than $100 million.

—Bowdeya Tweh contributed to this report.

Write to Giovanni Legorano at [email protected]