John McAfee’s Corpse Still Being Held by Government 1 Year After His Death

U.S. millionaire John McAfee gestures during an interview with AFP on his yacht anchored at the Marina Hemingway in Havana, on June 26, 2019. Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images

The body of antivirus software pioneer John McAfee still remains in a Spanish morgue about a year after he was found dead, his lawyer and authorities confirmed late last week.

A spokesperson for the regional government’s justice department told Reuters on Thursday that his corpse is still at the same Barcelona morgue where the autopsy was carried out. The official said it was not common for identified bodies that were reclaimed by family members to be stored for such a long time.

“This has been one of the longest years of my life. I would not wish this journey on anyone,” Jen McAfee, John’s daughter, told MarketWatch last week, confirming that his body remains in the morgue.

The elder McAfee, who founded the first antivirus software bearing his namesake in 1987, was found dead in a Spanish prison cell on June 23, 2021, while he was awaiting extradition back to the United States on tax evasion, fraud, and other charges. An initial autopsy report released by Spanish officials said his death was a suicide, and a court later upheld that ruling amid controversy. His cause of death has not been released.

“It’s been an unfathomable delay,” Joy Athanasiou, Jen McAfee’s attorney, told MarketWatch before saying that she hasn’t communicated with the Spanish court since February.

And McAfee’s family, including his wife Janice, said the software entrepreneur wasn’t suicidal. Janice McAfee told news outlets last year that “his last words to me were ‘I love you and I will call you in the evening.’”

“Those words are not words of somebody who is suicidal,” she added at the time.

In 2019, John McAfee, while posting a photo on Twitter of his arm tattoo, said that he’s not suicidal.

“Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: ‘We’re coming for you McAfee! We’re going to kill yourself,'” McAfee wrote at the time. “I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn’t. I was whackd,” he wrote.

Regarding the delay in releasing his remains, “It’s infuriating … it makes absolutely no sense … it is inexcusable … There is no reason there should be so many delays,” Janice McAfee said during a podcast interview with Rice TVx last month. “I mean, it could be just incompetence on behalf of the Spanish [authorities], but I just feel that there may be something more sinister that’s happened here,” she said.

“If there were any credibility to that suicide story, then why are they not allowing us to have an independent autopsy? Why can’t we get their autopsy report?” Janice McAfee also said during the interview.

When she viewed her husband’s corpse at the Spanish morgue last year, Jancie McAfee said that she saw only his head. The rest of his body was covered with a sheet, she said, adding that she believes her husband was killed.

Jen McAfee, however, told Marketwatch she believes her father indeed killed himself.