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Murder suspect John McAfee says he did not do it

Wanted for murder and on the run from the police in Belize, tech pioneer John McAfee says that he didn’t kill his neighbor and that whoever did might have been gunning for him.

“I thought maybe they were coming for me,” McAfee told Wired. “They mistook him for me. They got the wrong house. He’s dead. They killed him. It spooked me out.”

McAfee, who pioneered antivirus software at his eponymous company, says authorities searched his tropical compound Sunday afternoon while he hid himself in the sand with a cardboard box over his head so he could breathe.

“It was extraordinarily uncomfortable,” McAfee said.

McAfee has had to resort to such extraordinary evasion tactics because he is wanted for the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, 52, who was McAfee’s neighbor. Faull was found dead of a single gunshot to the back of his head over the weekend.

Initial reports about McAfee’s suspected involvement in the murder failed to turn up a motive, but it might have had something to do with the four dogs that he kept at his compound.

The dogs were a constant bother to neighbors, including Faull, and they were mysteriously poisoned Friday night, according to McAfee.

Their death prompted the eccentric McAfee into a bout of paranoia as he came to believe that Belizean authorities were responsible for their death.

“The coast guard dropped off a contingent of black-suited thugs at 10:30 [Friday night] at the dock next door. They dispersed on the beach. A half hour later my dogs had been poisoned,” McAfee said.

McAfee believes that the poisoning of his dogs was just another incident in a long running campaign against him by the Belizean government. In April, Belize’s Gang Suppression Unit raided one of his properties and accused him of manufacturing methamphetamine and possessing illegal guns. The charges were later dropped.

Marco Vidal, the head of the Gang Suppression unit denies McAfee’s conspiracy claims, “This guy amazes me every day. We don’t have anything personal against Mr. McAfee. There is no need for us to poison dogs.”

Now McAfee is on the run and does not plan to either talk to police or leave the country.

“Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in this country,” McAfee said, “They’ve been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me.”

But McAfee says, “I like it here. It’s the nicest place on earth.”