Marlene Wagman-Geller

     A common online notification warns users to “update your McAfee antivirus.” But whether we renew our annual subscription or choose another program, we owe the slaying of the computer worm to John David McAfee.

    Tech titans are known for quirkiness, but the leader of the eccentric pack was Mr. McAfee. He was born in 1945, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, where his father, Don, was an American-based soldier. At the end of World War II, Don and his English born wife, Joan, left for Virginia. His only child ranted that Don was an abusive alcoholic who “beat him-and his mother- mercilessly.” When John was fifteen, Don killed himself with a shotgun. His son recalled, “Every relationship I have, every mistrust, he is the negotiator of that mistrust.” 

    John attended Northeast Louisiana State College where he worked on his PhD in math until his dismissal as a teaching assistant for sleeping with his student. He ended up marrying her though their relationship was of a brief duration.

      In Silicon Valley, after a breakdown at work, John joined Alcoholics Anonymous, a move he claimed saved his life. By the mid 1980s, as an employee at Lockheed, John read an article about the Pakistani Brain computer bug. He shared that the virus reminded him of his father’s unprovoked attacks. From his 700-square-foot home in Santa Clara, California, John created an antivirus software that he gave away while its renewal called for an annual subscription. By 1990, he was bringing in annual revenues of $5 million. In 1992, he stirred up fears about the Michelangelo virus and his company went public in a move that made his stock worth $80 million. Two years later, admitting that running a tech start-up was “not his cup of tea,” he sold McAfee for $100 million; Intel purchased it in 2010 for 47.6 billion. The self-proclaimed “lover of women, adventure and mystery” built nine homes and purchased a fleet of planes and antique cars, as well as 200-acres in Colorado where he established a yoga retreat. He also divorced his second wife, Judy, an airline stewardess.

      During the 2008 financial crash, John took off for Belize where he bought a beachfront estate near the ruins of a Mayan temple. He shared the premise with a bevy of beauties, some south of the age of consent. Paranoid, for protection John hired ex-convict army guards; his eleven dogs roamed the beach, terrifying the locals. By 2012, newspapers described him as a latter-day Kurtz who led a Heart of Darkness existence. After his American neighbor, Greg Faull, filed a complaint, four of John’s canines perished from food poisoning. Two days later, Greg died from a gunshot wound. Prime Minister Dean Barrow’s pronouncement of John: “Bonkers.” John fled incognito. While illegally crossing the border into Guatemala in a bid for political asylum, authorities detained him and arranged his return to Belize. Ever resourceful, John faked a heart attack and Guatemala extradited him to the United States. The night he landed in Miami, he picked up a forty-year younger prostitute, Janice Dyson, who became his third wife.  He ran for president for the Libertarian Party; the winning candidate was Donald Trump.  In 2017, there was news of a film on John’s life, tentatively starring Johnny Depp.

   As he was about to board a plane to Istanbul, police arrested John at the Barcelona airport on the charge of American tax evasion. In a tweet to his million followers, he revealed his final tattoo, “$Whacked.  If I suicide myself, I was whackd.” His jailers discovered him hanging in his cell. He is survived by Janice, and as many as forty-seven children “depending on DNA test.” The renegade computer genius’ life could be encapsulated by his presidential campaign tagline, “Here’s to the crazy ones.”