Exclusive: John McAfee Wanted for Murder (Updated)

Antivirus pioneer John McAfee is on the run from murder charges, Belize
police say. According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force's
Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American
expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down Saturday night at his home in
San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye.

Details remain sketchy so far, but residents say that Faull was a well-liked
builder who hailed originally from California Florida. The two men had been
at odds for some time. Last Wednesday, Faull filed a formal complaint
against McAfee with the mayor's office, asserting that McAfee had fired off
guns and exhibited "roguish behavior." Their final disagreement apparently
involved dogs.

UPDATE: Here is the official police statement:

  MURDER
  On Sunday the 11th November, 2012 at 8:00am acting upon information
received, San Pedro Police visited 5 miles North of San Pedro Town where
they saw 52 year old U.S National Mr. GREGORY VIANT FAULL, of the said
address, lying face up in a pool of blood with an apparent gunshot wound on
the upper rear part of his head apparently dead. Initial investigation
revealed that on the said date at 7:20am LUARA TUN, 39years, Belizean
Housekeeper of Boca Del Rio Area, San Pedro Town went to the house of Mr.
Faull to do her daily chores when she saw him laying inside of the hall
motionless, Faull was last seen alive around 10:00pm on 10.11.12 and he
lived alone. No signs of forced entry was seen, A (1) laptop computer brand
and serial number unknown and (1) I-Phone was discovered missing. The body
was found in the hall of the upper flat of the house. A single luger brand 9
mm expended shells was found at the first stairs leading up to the upper
flat of the building. The body of Faull was taken to KHMH Morgue where it
awaits a Post Mortem Examination. Police have not established a motive so
far but are following several leads.

As we reported last week, McAfee has become increasingly estranged from his
fellow expatriates in recent years. His behavior has become increasingly
erratic, and by his own admission he had begun associating with some of the
most notorious gangsters in Belize.

Since our piece ran on last week, several readers have come forward with
additional information that sheds light on the change in McAfee's behavior.
In July of 2010, shortly before Allison Adonizio pulled the plug on their
quorum-sensing project and fled the country, McAfee began posting on a
drug-focused Russian-hosted message board called Bluelight about his
attempts to purify the psychoactive compounds colloquially known as "bath
salts."

Writing under the name "stuffmonger," a handle he has used on other online
message boards, McAfee posted more than 200 times over the next nine months
about his ongoing quest to purify psychoactive drugs from compounds
commercially available over the internet. "I'm a huge fan of MDPV," he
wrote. "I think it's the finest drug ever conceived, not just for the
indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild
comedown."

Elsewhere, he described his pursuit of "super perv powder" and warned about
the dangers of handling the freebase version of the drug: "I had visual and
auditory hallucinations and the worst paranoia of my life." He recommended
that the most effective way to take a dose is via rectal insertion, a
procedure known as "plugging," writing: "Measure your dose, apply a small
amount of saliva to just the tip of your middle finger, press it against the
dose, insert. Doesn't really hurt as much as it sounds. We're in an arena
(drugs/libido) that I navigate as well as anyone on the planet here. If you
take my advice about this (may sound gross to some of you perhaps), you will
be well rewarded."

Just before posting for the last time on April 1, 2011 (a date that for
McAfee may well have been freighted with intentional significance) January
4, 2011, Stuffmonger identified himself as "John" and described his work
pursuing quorum-sensing compounds and posted photos of his property in
Orange Walk. In signing off, he explained that "the on-line world is more of
a distraction than the self induced effects of the many experiments I've
done using my own body over the past year or so, and I have work to do."

MDPV, which was recently banned in the US but remains legal in Belize,
belongs to a class of drugs called cathinones, a natural source of which is
the East African plant khat. Users report that it is a powerfully
mind-altering substance. In the comments section to my last Gizmodo piece,

and erraticness. i've been thru that. i played with mdpv for about two
weeks, then started seeing shadow people in the corner of my eye, and what
amphetamine heads call 'tree-cops'... its essentially really, REALLY f-ed up
meth."

On his website, addiction specialist Paul Earley warns about the dangers of
MDPV: "Our experience clearly warns of the psychiatric and medical dangers
of this drug. We have cared for multiple patients who have abused MDPV; they
report intense and unpleasant visual hallucinations after a short binge. The
drug feels non-toxic with its first use, but following a moderate binge
users suffer mild to moderate paranoia. in about 10% of individuals who use
higher doses, we have observed a sustained psychotic state with intense
anxiety lasting 3 to 7 days."

McAfee's intensive use of psychosis-inducing hallucinogens would go a long
way toward explaining his growing estrangement from his friends and from the
community around him. If he was producing large quantities of these
chemicals, as implied on Bluelight, that would also shed light on his
decision to associate with some of Belize's most hardened drug-gang members.

McAfee's purported interest in extracting medicine from jungle plants
provided him a wholesome justification for building a well-equipped
chemistry lab in a remote corner of Belize. The specific properties of the
drugs he was attempting to isolate also fit in well with what those closest
to him have reported: that he is an enthusiastic amateur pharmacologist with
a longstanding interest in drugs that induce sexual behavior in women.
Indeed, former friends of McAfee have said he could be extremely persistent
and devious in trying to coerce women who rebuff his advances to have sex
with him.

One other aspect of Stuffmonger's postings gibe with McAfee's general MO:
his compulsion for making outrageous or simply erroneous assertions, even
attached to subjects about which he is being generally sincere. Along with
photographs of his lab near Orange Walk, for instance, he posted a picture
of a decrepit thatched-roof hut and described it as original home in Belize.
He seemed similarly to have embellished his descriptions of his feats of
chemical prowess on the Bluelight discussion board, and this ultimately
aroused the suspicions of his fellow posters. "Stuffmonger's claims were
discredited," a senior moderator later wrote, "and he vanished."