Netflix explores the crazy true story behind the anti-virus creator John McAfee in the true crime documentary Running with the Devil.
You may have heard of – and hated – the McAfee anti-virus program, but the story of its creator is completely bonkers, and it includes murder, going on the run, and prison escapes.
Netflix Running with the Devil
The documentary, Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, drops on the streaming site on August 24 and follows the story of McAfee (the man, not the computer program) as he goes on the run when he’s suspected of murder.
That’s right, in 2012 McAfee’s neighbour, Gregory Faull, was found murdered and when he feared the Belize police would kill him he ran for it – and he took a few absolutely baffled video journalists along for the ride and to document his journey.
According to the synopsis the doc has ‘hundreds of hours of never-before-broadcast footage of McAfee as he’s pursued by the authorities, this is the definitive story of a larger-than-life character, a man who ran for President, escaped from prison multiple times, and claimed to have hacked the world’.
Who is John McAfee?
McAfee was more than just an anti-virus creator who went on the run while being suspected of murder – though that would be enough for anyone. He was a true computer genius of his day.
McAfee grew up in Virginia and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Roanoke College in 1967. Before he went on to work in computers McAfee worked with NASA on the Apollo space programme between 1968 and 1970.
In the 1970s he went to Univac as a software designer, and later to Xerox as an operating system architect. However, in 1986 things changed for McAfee when he worked at Lockheed and read about the Brain computer virus made for the PC.
The virus was a ‘terrifying‘ thought to McAfee so he came up with anti-virus software that could detect the computer virus and remove it automatically. This was the beginning of the McAfee Anti-Virus Software we know today as he launched his own company, McAfee Associates Inc.
At his peak, McAfee was worth a staggering $100 million and was even a two-time presidential candidate who unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016 and 2020.
In 2020 McAfee was apprehended in Spain after prosecutors in the United States accused him of not filing tax returns for several years, however, when a Spanish court said that he could be extradited to the United States on tax-evasion charges in 2021 McAfee took his own life in his Barcelona jail cell. He was 75.