Author: Monty Munford, Cointelegraph; Translated by: Song Xue, Golden Finance
Janice McAfee, John McAfee's widow, is still in grief. She is working "odd jobs to support herself," has run out of money and still has no idea what happened to her husband.
She has remained in an undisclosed location in Spain since the death of cryptocurrency guru and anti-virus pioneer John McAfee in a Barcelona prison more than two years ago, rescued from homelessness only by the kindness of a friend.
She cannot move on because she still does not know what happened to her husband, even though a Catalan court ruled in September that John McAfee died of suicide, effectively closing the case.
Photo of John and Janice, from her personal collection.
In an exclusive interview with Zoom Magazine, she explained her current situation.
“For more than two years I have not only had to deal with the tragedy of John’s death, but it has been difficult to move on because the authorities have refused to release the results of the autopsy into his death. I have tried and tried but they won’t let me see it. There is the opportunity for an independent autopsy but it would cost €30,000 which I don’t have the money to pay. I just want to see his body with my own eyes and know that this really happened.”
"It's difficult for me to make the decision myself without the money to find out what happened, but I hope doing this interview will give people a chance to find out what really happened. I still have people contacting me who still can't believe he's dead," she said.
1. What Happened to John McAfee’s $100 Million Fortune?
Although John was worth more than $100 million after resigning from antivirus company McAfee in 1994 and selling his shares, his official wealth at the time of his death was estimated to have dwindled to $4 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
In 2019, he claimed he had no money and could not pay the $25 million court award from a wrongful death lawsuit. However, he was arrested the following year on U.S. tax evasion charges, with authorities claiming he and his group had made $11 million from promoting cryptocurrencies. In jail, he told his 1 million Twitter followers that he had no crypto hidden. “I don’t have anything. But I have no regrets.”
According to Janice, her husband had no will and no estate, so no money, and it was unlikely that any financial inheritance would pass to her because of the U.S. judgment against him.
John was able to post a photo of himself inside his cell. (Twitter)
There were stories of secret collections and documents there, but Janice was deliberately kept in the dark by her husband (about the so-called "secret treasure") so that she wouldn't be put in danger. She also had many unanswered questions about John's untimely death.
"I don't think it ended the way they thought it would. I don't know if he committed suicide or not. We talked every day after he was imprisoned near Barcelona. I don't know how he was hanged."
“I don’t know if it was with a rope or a shoelace. The jail report said that when they found him, he was alive; when they found him, he had a pulse and was breathing. It was a weak pulse, but a pulse is a pulse.”
John McAfee and his wife Janice McAfee are very much in love.
Janice couldn't believe that when he was found in a cell with a ligature or shoelace around his neck, the doctors there appeared to have tried to perform CPR on him without first removing it.
“I went to school to be a certified nursing assistant, and I knew how to do CPR. Even in the movies, the first thing you do is: clear the airway.”
“If someone has something around their neck, that’s the last thing you want to do. The first thing is to clear the obstruction, but from the jail video, that didn’t happen. I don’t know if it was negligence or stupidity; it just feels sinister. But now I’m just speculating, and I don’t want to do it.”
2. Janice McAfee was terrified after John died
After her husband's death, Janice feared for her safety. Although John told her that the authorities were only after him, not her, she still worried that she would become a target for others.
“John always assured me that he would not tell me anything that would put me in danger; that was a comfort. He made public 31 terabytes of information that he apparently had, but he never shared it with me, and I had no idea where it was or if it actually existed.”
"But I feel safe now. I have nothing to hide and I don't even know exactly how he died, let alone what he had. If there was an independent autopsy, I could get some peace. There is a chance that Yes, but the cost is very high.”
I first met Janice and John at a blockchain conference in Malta in 2018. As was the crypto world at the time, it was chaotic, but chaotic in a good way.
I interviewed him on stage, and it wasn't my finest moment, or maybe it was. There was something about being with him that influenced me, made me more carefree on stage. Maybe that's what he was all about, a Svengali man.
John had been drinking whiskey next to the stage, but he was sober and level-headed. Janice was with him, protecting him from the thousands of people who wanted to talk to him.
She reminded me of Kim Kardashian when I interviewed her in Armenia—calm, collected, and almost Zen-like in her presence. I immediately liked Janice and trusted her.
Later, after the onstage interview, I was approached by a husband-and-wife photography team who were working on a nearly completed cryptocurrency documentary, but who really wanted to speak to John. Could I help?
I wasn’t sure, but I texted Janice and she said it was okay; John obviously liked me. I was invited to the penthouse suite and convinced the armed guard outside the room to let me vouch for the guy I was with. Again, this wasn’t something I did every day.
John smiled as soon as he saw me. “You again, my goodness!” But he was gracious to the husband-and-wife team and invited me to join him that evening on his private yacht in Valletta Harbour.
What happened on the private yacht stayed there, but we became friends there, mostly because I was the only one who “didn’t smoke,” according to John. More invitations would follow—particularly when, still incognito and on the run, he visited an island off North Carolina.
We stayed in touch, and I did a few interviews with him during the pandemic while running my podcast. When I reached out to Janet on Twitter/X to ask if she’d be interested in doing this first interview, she said John considered me a friend and would love to do it.
3. Janice McAfee still wants to recover John McAfee’s body
That’s the backstory to this interview, but more importantly the journey from now on. Janice is determined to follow John’s last wishes, which were that if he died, he wanted his body to be cremated.
“His body is still in the morgue of the prison where he died. I don’t know why they decided to keep his body. They don’t need it. Two years ago, I had the money to do an independent autopsy; a year ago, I had the money, but now I don’t.”
“I supported myself by doing odd jobs here and there; that was not important. What was important was what I could do for John. I was not the victim – John was the victim – and I needed the autopsy report, not to continue my fight with the Spanish authorities, but to know what happened to him.”
I told Janice that people thought John was running out of time and had reached the end of his road. An extradition warrant had been issued just hours before his death, and his time in an American prison was sure to be difficult.
He was an example of how American authorities don't like people who thumb their noses at them. In some ways, wasn't his apparent suicide perfectly reasonable for a proud man?
“We never talked about it. Although he did tell me he wanted to be cremated, it was because he knew someone wanted to kill him, but that wasn’t the point.”
I don't want to take one side or the other. Just tell me what my body is saying. I'm not looking for justice - there is no such thing on earth anymore. I just want John's wish to come true.
Janice is a U.S. citizen, but understandably she was in no rush to return to the U.S. when she didn’t know what her status was.
4. John McAfee Netflix Documentary
A Netflix documentary titled Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee was released last year and portrayed her and John as fugitives, but Janice doesn't think that's the true story.
This is more a story about the reporters themselves, who tried to paint a public figure through sensationalist narratives but failed to do so. They focused attention when the focus should have been on the real story of why McAfee was willing to be a so-called fugitive... or why Janice stayed with him.
"People forget very quickly and I understand why because the world moves so fast these days. I just hope he is remembered correctly, that's the least he deserves."
Janice wanted closure. She wanted to cremate her husband, remember him with love, and figure out what to do next.
I hope she gets her wish. Everyone deserves the chance to move on, and Janice McAfee more than many others.