Software founder McAfee denies killing neighbour

Software company founder John McAfee said on Wednesday that he is in hiding, unarmed and accompanied only by a young woman, changing locations and telephones frequently to stay one step ahead of a Belize police unit he says wants to kill him.

Belize police have said they want to question McAfee, who they describe as a "person of interest" in the death of fellow American and neighbour Gregory Viant Faull.

McAfee insists he is innocent.

"And I did not kill him, good Lord. I just can't conceive of myself doing anything like that," McAfee said in a a telephone interview with The Associated Press from an undisclosed location.

Gregory Viant Faull, 52-year-old, was shot and killed over the weekend on the Caribbean island where both men lived.

Other expat residents of the island of Ambergris Caye, where San Pedro is located, have described Faull, the owner of a construction business in Orlando, Florida, as peaceful and well-liked.

McAfee, 67 acknowledged he had differences with the dead man.

The dispute apparently involved several dogs that McAfee kept at his beach side villa that drew complaints from neighbours.

McAfee said that four of his dogs were poisoned late last week, but that he didn't initially suspect Faull of killed them, though he knew Faull didn't like the dogs and had threatened to shoot them.

But McAfee said he now believes government agents or police poisoned the dogs.

Faull was found with a gunshot wound to his head inside his two-story home. The housekeeper discovered the body Sunday morning and called police.

Faull's house guard Jose Najarro said he also came across the body.

"He'd told me that we were going to leave the house at seven, and I was ready to leave but hadn't gone upstairs, but I said I better go upstairs and let him know, and when I went up, I noticed the doors were open, and I saw him from a distance lying down and covered by blood," he said.

Belize's Ministry of National Security has urged McAfee to turn himself in.

But McAfee said he feared that Belize's notorious Gang Suppression Unit, the GSU, a paramilitary-style squad that has been accused of rough treatment and that raided another property McAfee owns in Belize in April, would beat him and he would later die in custody.

"The GSU will do what the GSU does, beat me soundly until I confess to a multitude of sins, including I guess the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, and then just execute me," McAfee said.

He accused authorities of detaining his friends and associates in a bid to pressure him to turn himself in.

"If I'm a suspect, why are they arresting my friends? Why did they arrest my caretaker, my housekeeper, my security guard, his wife for heaven's sake, who had a two-year-old baby?," he said.

McAfee, the creator of the McAfee antivirus programme, has led a life of eccentricity since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company that is named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but four (m) million of his 100 (m) million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as calling that claim "not very accurate at all."

Last April, Belize police and the the GSU raided McAfee's home looking for drugs and guns

McAfee said then that officers found guns, which he said were legal, and he was released without charge after being detained for a few hours.

McAfee said he hid in the sand with a piece of cardboard over his face to help him breathe when police raided his beach side villa on Sunday after Faull's body was found.

There were still a couple of dogs at the villa Wednesday, along with a sign on the fence outside the property reading, "Never mind the dogs. Beware of Owner," together with a drawing of a hand holding a smoking pistol.