The Hidden Struggle of John McAfee's Wife: Janice McAfee's Fight for Answers

More than four years have passed since cryptocurrency pioneer John McAfee died in a Barcelona prison, yet his widow Janice McAfee remains trapped in a painful limbo. Working odd jobs to survive in an undisclosed location in Spain, she continues to grapple with unanswered questions about her husband’s death—questions the Spanish authorities refuse to help her resolve.

A Fateful Meeting: How It All Began

My first encounter with John and Janice McAfee came at a blockchain conference in Malta during 2018. The crypto world was beautifully chaotic back then, and there was something magnetic about John’s presence. During our staged interview, his openness seemed to make everyone around him more authentic. Janice stood beside him with calm authority, protecting him from the endless stream of people seeking his attention—she had the composure and grace I’d seen in only a handful of public figures before.

That evening led to unexpected connections. A filmmaking couple approached me asking if I could arrange an introduction to John. I reached out to Janice, and to my surprise, she agreed. What followed was an invitation to John’s penthouse suite, then his private yacht in Valletta Harbour. Our conversations went beyond surface pleasantries, and a genuine friendship formed. Years later, during the pandemic, I conducted several interviews with John for my podcast. When I reached out to Janice about doing this first exclusive interview, she told me John had always considered me a friend—and that he would have wanted this story told.

A Widow Left With More Questions Than Answers

Today, Janice sits alone with her grief, still searching for the truth about what really happened inside that Barcelona prison cell. In September, a Catalan court officially ruled her husband’s death a suicide, effectively closing the investigation. But for John McAfee’s wife, the case feels far from resolved.

“For more than two years, I haven’t been able to move forward,” Janice explained during our conversation. “The authorities won’t release the autopsy results. I’ve tried repeatedly, but they refuse. I just want to see his body with my own eyes and know that what they’re telling me is actually true.”

The most disturbing details came from Janice’s analysis of the prison surveillance footage. When guards discovered John, he was still alive—barely. “He had a pulse,” she insisted. “It was weak, but it was there.” Yet when medical staff attempted CPR, they apparently did so without first removing the ligature around his neck—a procedure that contradicts basic emergency medical protocol.

“I trained as a certified nursing assistant,” Janice said, her voice steady but pained. “The first rule of CPR is to clear the airway. If someone has something around their neck, that’s the very first thing you remove. But in the prison video, that didn’t happen.”

The Fortune That Vanished

When John resigned from the McAfee antivirus company in 1994, he walked away with wealth exceeding $100 million. Yet by the time of his death, that fortune had largely disappeared. Celebrity Net Worth estimated his remaining wealth at just $4 million—a dramatic decline that raised its own questions.

In 2019, John claimed he had no money to pay a $25 million judgment from a wrongful death lawsuit. A year later, U.S. authorities arrested him on tax evasion charges, alleging he and his associates had made $11 million promoting cryptocurrencies—money they claimed was hidden away. From his jail cell, John posted defiant messages to his million Twitter followers: “I don’t have anything. But I have no regrets.”

As for inheritance, there would be none for Janice. John left no will, no estate, nothing to pass down. According to his widow, he deliberately kept her in the dark about any potential assets or documents precisely to protect her from danger. “He would never tell me anything that could put me in jeopardy,” she explained. “He published 31 terabytes of data at some point, but I never saw it. I don’t even know if it exists.”

The Independent Autopsy She Cannot Afford

What Janice desperately wants is not justice—she has lost faith in that—but closure. An independent autopsy could provide some answers about what really happened in that cell. The cost would be €30,000. She doesn’t have it.

“Two years ago I had the money. A year ago I still had some resources,” Janice said quietly. “But I’ve been supporting myself with whatever work I can find. That wasn’t important though. What mattered was what I could do for John. He was the victim here, not me.”

Without the ability to conduct an independent examination, Janice is stuck repeating the same haunting questions: Was it suicide or something darker? Why wasn’t the ligature removed immediately? Why won’t the prison authorities cooperate? How does a prisoner with constant surveillance end up dead under such questionable circumstances?

Fear and Safety in the Aftermath

After John’s death, Janice lived in constant fear. Despite his assurances that authorities were targeting him, not her, she worried about becoming collateral damage to whatever forces had been pursuing her husband. She remained in hiding, her location undisclosed even now, sustained only by a friend’s kindness and her own determination to survive.

“John always told me he wouldn’t burden me with information that would make me a target,” she said. “But I was still afraid. I still am. I have nothing to hide and I don’t even know exactly how he died. If anything, that should make me safe.”

Netflix’s Version of the Story

Last year, Netflix released “Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee,” a documentary that portrayed the couple as fugitives on the run. Janice bristles at this characterization.

“The film was more about the filmmakers than it was about John,” she said. “They created a sensational narrative instead of exploring the real story—why John felt compelled to live the way he did, or why I chose to stand by him. People move so quickly through the world now. They forget. But I hope he’s remembered accurately. It’s the least he deserves.”

A Widow’s Final Wish

What Janice wants now is simple by comparison to everything she’s endured. John always said that if anything happened to him, he wanted to be cremated. She wants to fulfill that wish. She wants to finally collect her husband’s remains from the prison morgue where they’ve been stored for years. She wants to say goodbye properly. And maybe, just maybe, she wants the world to understand that John McAfee was more than the caricature he became.

“I’m not looking for justice,” Janice said, her resolve unshaken despite her precarious circumstances. “Justice doesn’t exist anymore. I just want people to know the truth about what happened to him, and I want him to rest in peace as he wished.”

For John McAfee’s wife, living on odd jobs in a foreign land, that may be the closest she’ll ever get to closure. It’s a far cry from the glamorous life she once shared with one of the most controversial figures in cryptocurrency history—but then again, nothing about their story has ever been conventional.