“Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee,” an explosive new Showtime documentary from filmmaker Nanette Burstein, delivers a litany of scandalous accusations against the famed anti-virus software pioneer and failed Libertarian presidential hopeful. Even if you already have some knowledge of McAfee’s sordid misadventures during his off-the-grid years in Belize, you’re likely to watch in drop-jawed astonishment.
Relying on the testimony of McAfee’s former friends, employees and colleagues, Burstein asserts that, while living in the tropical paradise, the man who made his fortune in Silicon Valley became unhinged from reality. It led to increasingly villainous actions, including rape and murder.
Last year, Burstein traveled to Belize expecting to do some kind of “character study” on McAfee. But once she began communicating with residents, she realized there was much more to the story.
“I knew some things (from prior news stories and profiles), but as I got more into it was all, quite frankly, very shocking to me,” Burstein says in a phone conversation. “… We discovered all this surprising stuff that I had absolutely no idea about.”
Over the course of her 90-minute film, Burstein lays out evidence that suggests McAfee paid a hitman $5,000 to torture and kill American expat Greg Faull in Belize. Faull was a neighbor who’d had several real run-ins with McAfee over how the tech tycoon allowed his dogs to freely roam the neighborhood and beaches.
But that’s not all. “Gringo” also asserts that McAfee had David Middleton, a man suspected of robbing his home, abducted by hired thugs and repeatedly stabbed and tasered. Middleton slipped into a coma and later died.
And then there’s the creepy story told by Allison Adonizio, a biologist who believes McAfee drugged and sexually assaulted her while she was working for him on a pharmaceutical project.
Burstein spent three months in Belize talking to residents familiar with McAfee. The portrait they provide feels like something out of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” A hedonistic McAfee, they claim, insulated himself at an island compound, where he recruited known felons to be his armed bodyguards, and took in poverty-stricken teen girls to be his “girlfriends” and provide him with sexual favors.
McAfee, they say, also “greased” the local police by showering them with expensive firearms and other equipment. McAfee’s wealth and bravado, the film suggests, allowed him to run roughshod in the economically depressed country.
But over time, sources claim, he exhibited paranoid, psychotic, volatile and downright scary behavior.
“There was so much crazy (crap) that I don’t know where to start,” Adonizio says in the film. Another source simply refers to McAfee as “bonkers.”
Not everyone Burstein encountered would talk, but the overall cooperation she received from Belize locals is extraordinary.
“There are some people I knew would never speak to me. That includes a girlfriend who still gets money from John and remains loyal to him,” she says. “But a lot of people there felt burned and screwed over by him.”
In 2012, when authorities sought McAfee for questioning in the Faull murder case, he fled to Guatemala. Eventually, he found his way back to the United States, where he made a presidential run on a Libertarian ticket. (He finished a distant second behind Gary Johnson in the primaries). McAfee has never been prosecuted for his alleged crimes.
Burstein’s narrative approach in “Gringo” is enhanced by the ongoing email and text correspondence she has had with McAfee since filming began. Initially, she reached out to him for an interview, a request he turned down. But he couldn’t leave it at that. McAfee repeatedly bombarded her with messages, some of which carried a combative, even threatening tone.
At one point, a McAfee missive describes Burstein as “Satan” and claims that she “will be my last stand.”
“I realized early on that I’d have to be a character in the film,” she says. “I think (his correspondence) says something about just how controlling this guy is. He’s addicted to it. … And he was also very worried about what the film would reveal.”
Contact Chuck Barney at cbarney@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/chuckbarney and Facebook.com/bayareanewsgroup.chuckbarney.
‘GRINGO: THE DANGEROUS LIFE OF JOHN MCAFEE’
WHEN: 9 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Showtime
