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Janice McAfee, the widow of tech impresario John McAfee, is still in the midst of grief. She is doing “odd jobs to feed herself,” has run out of funds, and still doesn’t know what really happened to her husband.

Since the death of crypto guru and antivirus pioneer husband John McAfee in a Barcelona prison more than two years ago, she has remained in Spain in an undisclosed location and has only been saved from homelessness by the kindness of friends.

She can’t move on because she still doesn’t know what happened to her husband in spite of a September ruling this year from a Catalan court that John McAfee died by suicide and the case was effectively closed.

In an exclusive Zoom interview with Magazine, she explained her current situation.

“For more than two years, I’ve not only had to deal with the tragedy of John’s death, but it’s so hard to move on because the authorities refuse to release the autopsy of his death. I have tried and tried, but they will not let me see it.

“There is the opportunity of an independent autopsy, but that will cost 30,000 euros, and I don’t have the money to pay for it. All I want is to see his body for myself and know that really happened.”

“Not having the money myself to make the decision to find out what really happened is hard, but I’m hoping that giving this interview will give people the opportunity to know what’s really going on. I still have people contacting me who still can’t believe he’s dead,” she says.

What happened to John McAfee’s $100-million fortune?

Although John was worth more than $100 million after he resigned from antivirus company McAfee in 1994 and sold his stock, his official fortune had dwindled to an estimated $4 million at the time of his death, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

He claimed in 2019 that he had no money and could not pay a $25-million court order over a wrongful death lawsuit. However, he was arrested the following year on U.S. charges of tax evasion, with authorities claiming he and his team had earned $11 million promoting cryptocurrencies. From prison, he told his 1 million Twitter followers he doesn’t have any hidden crypto. “I have nothing. But I regret nothing.”

According to Janice, her husband didn’t have a will or an estate, so there is no money, and because of the judgments against him in the U.S., it’s highly unlikely that any financial legacy will be passed on to her. 

John was able to tweet pictures of himself from inside his cell
John was able to tweet pictures of himself from inside his cell. (Twitter)

There are stories that there are secret caches and documents, but Janice was deliberately kept in the dark (about alleged “secret treasure”) by her husband, so she wouldn’t be in danger. She also has a raft of unanswered questions about John’s untimely end. 

“I don’t think he thought things would have ended the way they did and nor did I. I don’t know if he committed suicide; we talked every day after he was imprisoned near Barcelona. I don’t know how he got strung up.” 

“I don’t know if it was with a rope or a shoelace. In the prison report, it says that when they found him, he was still alive; he had a pulse and was breathing when they found him. A faint pulse, but a pulse is a pulse.”

John McAfee and wife Janice McAfee (supplied)
John McAfee and his wife, Janice McAfee, were very much in love. (Supplied)

Janice cannot believe that when he was found in the cell with a ligature or shoelace around his neck, medical practitioners there appeared to have attempted CPR on him without removing it first.

“I went to school to be a registered nursing assistant, and I know how to do CPR. Even in the movies, it’s the first thing you do: clear the airways.” 

“If somebody has something tight around their neck, that’s the last thing you would do. The first thing would be to remove the obstruction, but you can see from the prison video that didn’t happen. I don’t know if it was negligence or stupidity; it just feels sinister. But now I’m speculating, and I don’t want to do that.” 

Janice McAfee was frightened after John’s death

After her husband’s death, Janice was frightened for her safety. While John had told her that the authorities were only after him, not her, she was still worried that she would be a target for others.

“John always assured me that he wouldn’t tell me anything that would put me in danger; that was a comfort. He was public about the 31 terabytes of information that he apparently possessed, but he never shared that with me, and I have no idea where it is or whether it actually existed.”

“But I feel safe at the moment. I have nothing to hide, and I don’t even know how he really died, let alone what he possessed. If there was an independent autopsy, I can get some peace. There is an opportunity to do so, but it’s very expensive.”

I first met Janice and John at a blockchain conference in Malta in 2018. Like the crypto world at the time, it was chaos — but good chaos.

I interviewed him on stage, and it wasn’t my finest hour, or maybe it was. There was something about being near him that affected me and made me behave on stage in a more carefree manner. Maybe that’s what he could do, a Svengali of sorts.

Monty and John McAfee
Author Monty Munford got along famously with John McAfee. (Supplied)

John had been drinking whisky on the side of the stage but was sober and lucid. Janice was with him, protecting him from the thousands of people who wanted to speak 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 on-stage interview had been completed, I was approached by a husband-and-wife camera team who was doing a documentary on crypto that was almost finished, but they would love a word with John. Could I help?

I wasn’t sure but texted Janice, and she said it was OK; John apparently liked me. I was invited to the penthouse suite and convinced the armed guard outside their room that I could vouch for the people with me. Again, not something I did every day.

John laughed when he saw me. “You again, for f–k’s sake!” But he was civil to the husband-and-wife team and invited me to join him on a private yacht in Valletta Harbour that evening.

John McAfee was a presidential candidate twice.
John McAfee was a presidential candidate twice. (Twitter)

What goes on on private yachts stays there, but we became friends there and then, mainly because I was the only one “not blowing smoke up my arse,” according to John. Further invitations would follow — notably to an island off North Carolina when he was still incognito and on the run.

We stayed in touch, and I conducted a couple of interviews with him during the pandemic when I was running a podcast. When I reached out to Janet on Twitter/X to see if she would be interested in doing her first interview, she said John considered me a friend and would be happy to do so.

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Janice McAfee still wants to recover John McAfee’s body

So, that’s the backstory to this interview, but what is more important is the journey from this point on. Janice is determined to follow John’s wishes that, if died, he wanted his body to be cremated. 

“His body is still in the morgue at the prison where he died. I don’t know why they decided to hold on to his body. They don’t need it. Two years ago, I had the money for an independent autopsy; a year ago, I had the money, but now I don’t.” 

Also read: ‘Holy shit, I’ve seen that!’ — Coldie’s Snoop Dogg, Vitalik and McAfee NFTs: NFT Creator

“I am surviving by taking little jobs here and there to feed myself; that’s not what’s important. What matters is what I can do for John. I’m not a victim — John was the victim — and I need that autopsy report, not to continue a fight against Spanish authorities, but to know what really happened to him.”

I put it to Janice that the perception was that John had run out of time and had come to the end of the road. An extradition order to the U.S. had been made hours before his death, and it was surely going to be hard for him in a U.S. prison. 

American authorities do not like people who thumb their noses at them, and an example would have been made of him. In some ways, didn’t his apparent suicide make complete sense to a proud man?

“We never talked about that. Ever. While he did tell me he wanted to be cremated, that was because he knew there were people who wanted him killed, but that’s not the point.” 

“I don’t want to be on one side or the other. Just tell me what the body says. I’m not trying to seek justice — there’s no such thing on this earth any more. I just want John’s wishes to be fulfilled.”

Janice is an American citizen, but she’s understandably in no rush to go back to the U.S. when she doesn’t know what her status is.

John McAfee Netflix documentary

A Netflix documentary called Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee was released last year and portrays her and John as fugitives, which is not something that Janice thinks represents the real story. 

It was more of a tale about the journalists themselves who tried to sensationalize a public figure and weren’t quite up to it. They centered themselves when the focus should have been on the real story of why McAfee felt disposed to be a so-called fugitive… or why Janice was staying with him.

“People forget very quickly, and I understand why because the world moves very fast nowadays. I just want him to be remembered properly, and that’s the least he deserves.”

Janice wants closure. She wants to cremate her husband, remember him with love, and work out what to do next.

I hope she gets her wish. Everybody deserves a chance to move on, and Janice McAfee much more than many others.

Monty Mumford

Monty Munford

Monty Munford writes regularly for the BBC, The Economist and City AM and has been a tech columnist for Forbes and The Telegraph. He also runs a growth and visibility consultancy and has appeared at more than 200 events and conferences, interviewing figures such as Tim Draper, the late John McAfee, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, Kim Kardashian, Guns N’ Roses and many others.

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I’ve followed the PM wherever he goes in his first year in office – here’s what I’ve observed

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I've followed the PM wherever he goes in his first year in office - here's what I've observed

July 5 2024, 1pm: I remember the moment so clearly.

Keir Starmer stepped out of his sleek black car, grasped the hand of his wife Vic, dressed in Labour red, and walked towards a jubilant crowd of Labour staffers, activists and MPs waving union jacks and cheering a Labour prime minister into Downing Street for the first time in 14 years.

Starmer and his wife took an age to get to the big black door, as they embraced those who had helped them win this election – their children hidden in the crowd to watch their dad walk into Number 10.

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Keir Starmer, not the easiest public speaker, came to the podium and told the millions watching this moment the “country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal”.

He spoke about the “weariness at the heart of the nation” and “the lack of trust” in our politicians as a “wound” that “can only be healed by actions not words”. He added: “This will take a while but the work of change begins immediately.”

A loveless landslide

That was a day in which this prime minister made history. His was a victory on a scale that comes around but one every few decades.

He won the largest majority in a quarter of a century and with it a massive opportunity to become one of the most consequential prime ministers of modern Britain – alongside the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.

But within the win was a real challenge too.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

Starmer’s was a loveless landslide, won on a lower share of the vote than Blair in all of his three victories and 6 percentage points lower than the 40% Jeremy Corbyn secured in the 2017 general election.

It was the lowest vote share than any party forming a post-war majority government. Support for Labour was as shallow as it was wide.

In many ways then, it was a landslide built on shaky foundations: low public support, deep mistrust of politicians, unhappiness with the state of public services, squeezed living standards and public finances in a fragile state after the huge cost of the pandemic and persistent anaemic growth.

Put another way, the fundamentals of this Labour government, whatever Keir Starmer did, or didn’t do, were terrible. Blair came in on a new dawn. This Labour government, in many ways, inherited the scorched earth.

The one flash of anger I’ve seen

For the past year, I have followed Keir Starmer around wherever he goes. We have been to New York, Washington (twice), Germany (twice), Brazil, Samoa, Canada, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Brussels. I can’t even reel off the places we’ve been to around the UK – but suffice to say we’ve gone to all the nations and regions.

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Starmer pushed on scale of “landslide” election win

What I have witnessed in the past year is a prime minister who works relentlessly hard. When we flew for 27 hours non-stop to Samoa last autumn to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit, every time I looked up at the plane, I saw a solitary PM, his headlight shining on his hair, working away as the rest of us slept or watched films.

He also seems almost entirely unflappable. He rarely expresses emotion. The only time I have seen a flash of anger was when I questioned him about accepting freebies in a conversation that ended up involving his family, and when Elon Musk attacked Jess Phillips.

I have also witnessed him being buffeted by events in a way that he would not have foreseen. The arrival of Donald Trump into the White House has sucked the prime minister into a whirlwind of foreign crises that has distracted him from domestic events.

When he said over the weekend, as a way of explanation not an excuse, that he had been caught up in other matters and taken his eye off the ball when it came to the difficulties of welfare reform, much of Westminster scoffed, but I didn’t.

I had followed him around in the weeks leading up to that vote. We went from the G7 in Canada, to the Iran-Israel 12-day war, to the NATO summit in the Hague, as the prime minister dealt with, in turn, the grooming gangs inquiry decision, the US-UK trade deal, Donald Trump, de-escalation in the Middle East and a tricky G7 summit, the assisted dying vote, the Iran-Israel missile crisis.

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In September 2024, the PM defended taking £20k GCSE donation

He was taking so many phone calls on Sunday morning from Chequers, that he couldn’t get back to London for COBRA [national emergency meeting] because he couldn’t afford to not have a secure phone line for the hour-long drive back to Downing Street.

He travelled to NATO, launched the National Security Review and agreed to the defence alliance’s commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. So when he came back from the Hague into a full-blown welfare rebellion, I did have some sympathy for him – he simply hadn’t had the bandwidth to deal with the rebellion as it began to really gather steam.

Dealing with rebellion

Where I have less sympathy with the prime minister and his wider team is how they let it get to that point in the first place.

Keir Starmer wasn’t able to manage the latter stages of the rebellion, but the decisions made months earlier set it up in all its glory, while Downing Street’s refusal to heed the concerns of MPs gave it momentum to spiral into a full-blown crisis.

The whips gave warning after 120 MPs signed a letter complaining about the measures, the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall had done the same, but Starmer and Reeves were, in the words of one minister, “absolutist”.

“They assumed people complaining about stuff do it because they are weak, rather than because they are strong,” said the minister, who added that following the climbdown, figures in Number 10 “just seemed completely without knowledge of the gravity of it”.

That he marks his first anniversary with the humiliation of having to abandon his flagship welfare reforms or face defeat in the Commons – something that should be unfathomable in the first year of power with a majority that size – is disappointing.

To have got it that wrong, that quickly with your parliamentary party, is a clear blow to his authority and is potentially more chronic. I am not sure yet how he recovers.

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Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’

Keir Starmer said he wanted to rule country first, party second, but finds himself pinned by a party refusing to accept his centrist approach. Now, ministers tell MPs that there will be a financial consequence of the government’s decision to delay tightening the rules on claiming disability benefits beyond the end of 2026.

A shattered Rachel Reeves now has to find the £5bn she’d hoped to save another way. She will defend her fiscal rules, which leaves her the invidious choice of tax rises or spending cuts. Sit back and watch for the growing chorus of MPs that will argue Starmer needs to raise more taxes and pivot to the left.

That borrowing costs of UK debt spiked on Wednesday amid speculation that the chancellor might resign or be sacked, is a stark reminder that Rachel Reeves, who might be unpopular with MPs, is the markets’ last line of defence against spending-hungry Labour MPs. The party might not like her fiscal rules, but the markets do.

What’s on the horizon for year two?

The past week has set the tone now for the prime minister’s second year in office. Those around him admit that the parliamentary party is going to be harder to govern. For all talk of hard choices, they have forced the PM to back down from what were cast as essential welfare cuts and will probably calculate that they can move him again if they apply enough pressure.

There is also the financial fall-out, with recent days setting the scene for what is now shaping up to be another definitive budget for a chancellor who now has to fill a multi-billion black hole in the public finances.

But I would argue that the prime minister has misjudged the tone as he marks that first year. Faced with a clear crisis and blow to his leadership, instead of tackling that head on the prime minister sought to ignore it and try to plough on, embarking on his long-planned launch of the 10-year NHS plan to mark his year in office, as if the chancellor’s tears and massive Labour rebellions over the past 48 hours were mere trifles.

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Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?

It was inevitable that this NHS launch would be overshadowed by the self-inflicted shambles over welfare and the chancellor’s distress, given this was the first public appearance of both of them since it had all blown up.

But when I asked the prime minister to explain how it had gone so wrong on welfare and how he intended to rebuild your trust and authority in your party, he completely ignored my question. Instead, he launched into a long list of Labour’s achievements in his first year: 4 million extra NHS appointments; free school meals to half a million more children; more free childcare; the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation; and the US, EU and India free trade deals.

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Starmer defends reaction to Reeves crying in PMQs

I can understand the point he was making and his frustration that his achievements are being lost in the maelstrom of the political drama. But equally, this is politics, and he is the prime minister. This is his story to tell, and blowing up your welfare reform on the anniversary week of your government is not the way to do it.

Is Starmer failing to articulate his mission?

For Starmer himself, he will do what I have seen him do before when he’s been on the ropes, dig in, learn from the errors and try to come back stronger. I have heard him in recent days talk about how he has always been underestimated and then proved he can do it – he is approaching this first term with the same grit.

If you ask his team, they will tell you that the prime minister and this government is still suffering from the unending pessimism that has pervaded our national consciousness; the sense politics doesn’t work for working people and the government is not on their side.

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Fiscal rules are silly but important

Starmer knows what he needs to do: restore the social contract, so if you work hard you should get on in life. The spending review and its massive capital investment, the industrial strategy and strategic defence review – three pieces of work dedicated to investment and job creation – are all geared to trying to rebuild the country and give people a brighter future.

But equally, government has been, admit insiders, harder than they thought as they grapple with multiple crises facing the country – be that public services, prisons, welfare.

It has also lacked direction. Sir Keir would do well to focus on following his Northern Star. I think he has one – to give working people a better life and ordinary people the chance to fulfil their potential.

But somehow, the prime minister is failing to articulate his mission, and he knows that. When I asked him at the G7 summit in Canada what his biggest mistake of the first year was, he told me: “We haven’t always told our story as well as we should.”

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Beth Rigby asks the PM to reflect on a year in office

I go back to the Keir Starmer of July 5 2024. He came in on a landslide, he promised to change the country, he spoke of the lack of trust and the need to prove to the public that the government could make their lives better through actions not words.

In this second year, he is betting that the legislation he has passed and strategies he has launched will drive that process of change, and in doing so, build back belief.

But it is equally true that his task has become harder these past few weeks. He has spilled so much blood over welfare for so little gain, his first task is to reset the operation to better manage the party and rebuild support.

But bigger than that, he needs to find a way to not just tell his government’s story but sell his government’s story. He has four years left.

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Did Keir Starmer screw up his own anniversary?

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Did Keir Starmer screw up his own anniversary?

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Sir Keir Starmer wanted to be talking about what he sees as Labour’s achievements after 12 months in government and his 10-year plan for the NHS.

But, after another dramatic policy U-turn and the sight of his own chancellor crying at PMQs, when he kept his support for her slightly vague, Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson discuss if his start in office has been shattered by this week.

They also wonder if the solution to make relations with his own MPs a bit easier would be to make better use of Angela Rayner.

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US Republicans declare ‘Crypto Week’ to mull 3 crypto bills

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US Republicans declare ‘Crypto Week’ to mull 3 crypto bills

US Republicans declare ‘Crypto Week’ to mull 3 crypto bills

US Republican leaders say the House will look to pass bills on stablecoins, crypto market structure and CBDCs in mid-July in what they’ve dubbed “Crypto Week.”

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