Janice McAfee's Ongoing Battle: How John McAfee's Wife Continues to Seek Justice and Closure

More than two years after her husband’s death in a Barcelona prison, Janice McAfee finds herself trapped in an uncertain limbo—grieving, impoverished, and still desperately searching for answers about what truly happened to John McAfee. The widow of the controversial antivirus pioneer and cryptocurrency advocate has spent the years since his death working whatever casual employment she can find in an undisclosed Spanish location, exhausting her savings in pursuit of the truth and struggling to accept the official narrative that her husband took his own life.

The Catalan court’s September ruling that John McAfee died by suicide appeared to close the case legally, but for Janice, it left everything unresolved. She remains haunted by unanswered questions about the circumstances surrounding his death—questions that no official verdict can silence.

The Death That Still Haunts John McAfee’s Wife

Janice’s struggle with grief has been compounded by the authorities’ refusal to release the autopsy results. She has repeatedly requested access to the post-mortem examination findings, only to be denied each time. An independent investigation into her husband’s death would cost approximately €30,000—a sum she simply does not have, particularly after years of financial decline.

“I haven’t been able to move forward properly because I cannot see the evidence,” she explained in a recent interview. “I want to examine his body myself and understand what happened. The uncertainty is unbearable.”

What troubles Janice most is not speculation about why her husband might have ended his life, but rather the physical facts that don’t align. According to the prison’s own documentation, when John McAfee was discovered in his cell with a ligature around his neck, staff noted that he had a pulse and was breathing—however weakly. Yet the video footage she reviewed showed prison medical personnel attempting CPR without first removing the obstruction from around his neck, a procedure that contradicts basic emergency medicine protocols.

“Any trained medical professional knows you clear the airway first,” she stated. “Even watching movies, that’s rule one. To perform resuscitation on someone with something constricting their neck strikes me as either profoundly negligent or deliberately harmful. I cannot explain why that didn’t happen.”

The Fortune That Vanished: Understanding John McAfee’s Wealth Collapse

The financial trajectory of John McAfee’s life provides crucial context for understanding his final years. When he departed from the McAfee antivirus company he founded and liquidated his shareholdings in 1994, he accumulated wealth exceeding $100 million. Yet by the time of his death, that vast fortune had been reduced to approximately $4 million according to wealth assessment sources, with the actual figure possibly even lower.

The erosion of his wealth accelerated following legal judgments against him. In 2019, John McAfee claimed bankruptcy, asserting he lacked the resources to pay a $25 million court judgment stemming from a wrongful death lawsuit. The following year, he faced arrest on federal tax evasion charges; prosecutors alleged that he and his associates had generated over $11 million through cryptocurrency promotion schemes.

Imprisoned and facing American extradition, John McAfee communicated to his million-plus Twitter audience that no hidden cryptocurrency reserves existed. “I have nothing, but no regrets,” he posted from his cell.

According to Janice, he left no will and established no formal estate. This absence of legal planning means there is virtually no financial inheritance for her to claim, particularly given the outstanding judgments against him in American courts. John had deliberately withheld information about any assets or secret holdings from her, specifically to shield her from potential danger if others learned of hidden valuables.

The Cremation Wish: A Final Request Still Unfulfilled

Two years have passed, and John McAfee’s body remains stored in the morgue of the prison where he died. Janice struggles to comprehend why authorities maintain custody of his remains when, by her understanding, they serve no investigative purpose.

Her husband’s final wish was explicit: if he died, his body should be cremated. Yet this last request has gone unfulfilled. Janice once possessed the financial capacity to arrange an independent autopsy and honor this final wish, and even a year ago she could have managed it. Today, she cannot.

“Supporting myself through whatever work I could find wasn’t the priority,” she reflects. “What mattered was doing right by John. He was the victim here, not me. I needed answers—not to wage war with Spanish authorities, but to understand what happened to him and carry out his wishes.”

She emphasizes that she seeks no vendetta or legal battle. She wants neither financial compensation nor political confrontation. Her sole objective is to obtain the medical examination results, cremate her husband according to his explicit instructions, and finally achieve some semblance of closure.

When a Journalist Met the McAfees: A Personal Encounter

The relationship between Janice and this interviewer offers perspective on both John and his wife. They first encountered each other at a blockchain conference in Malta in 2018, during an era when the cryptocurrency world thrummed with chaotic energy. The on-stage interview that followed was memorable—something about John’s unfiltered presence seemed to transform the dynamic, stripping away formality and encouraging spontaneity.

What stood out was how Janice managed her husband’s presence among crowds. While John displayed the confidence and eccentricity he was known for, Janice maintained a calm, collected demeanor—protective without being overbearing. There was a quiet strength to her presence, an emotional stability that balanced John’s more volatile personality.

Later interactions—including an invitation to John’s private yacht in Valletta Harbour—revealed a man who was gracious to those he trusted, thoughtful, and surprisingly sober-minded despite his public reputation as an iconoclast. When political persecution intensified and John went into hiding on an island off North Carolina, contact continued sporadically. During the pandemic, interviews conducted for a podcast kept the connection alive.

When Janice was approached about doing this interview, her response was immediate: John had always considered this person a friend, and she welcomed the opportunity to tell her story.

The Netflix Narrative: Disputed Storytelling and Lost Legacy

Last year, Netflix released “Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee,” a documentary that portrayed both John and Janice as fugitives on the run. But Janice contests this framing entirely. In her view, the documentary represents the filmmakers’ sensationalized interpretation rather than the authentic story of why a man would choose such an existence or why a woman would remain devoted to him through it all.

“The real narrative got lost,” she explains. “The filmmakers wanted a dramatic story about outlaws, but they missed the actual point—understanding why he lived as he did and why I chose to stand beside him.”

As memories of John fade from public consciousness, Janice’s primary concern is that his legacy not be distorted by oversimplification. “People forget quickly, and I understand why—the world moves so fast. But I hope he’s remembered for who he actually was, not who the documentaries decided to make him.”

Moving Forward: What Janice McAfee Needs Now

A U.S. citizen by birth, Janice has made no moves to return to America, uncertain what legal status she would face upon arrival. In Spain, she survives on temporary work, living modestly while continuing to advocate for the autopsy results that remain locked away.

She asks only for transparency and the fulfillment of her husband’s final wishes. She does not seek justice—a concept she believes has become meaningless. She wants John’s body to be treated with dignity and his remains handled according to his explicit instructions.

Janice McAfee deserves the chance to grieve properly, to understand what happened, and finally to move forward. Everyone facing such profound loss deserves that opportunity—but perhaps she deserves it more than most.