Reporter: John McAfee Is 'Either A Lunatic Or Crazy Like A Fox'

Gizmodo John McAfee

This Friday, NBC news show Dateline will air a two-hour special report on the murder of an American citizen in Belize, Gregory Faull, and the role of John McAfee, the founder of the eponymous antivirus software company.

McAfee, a neighbor of Faull's was never a formal suspect in the case. But he fled Belizean police who wanted to question him.

Reporter Keith Morrison tracked McAfee from Belize to Guatemala to interview him and numerous other people involved in the case.

Business Insider talked to Morrison about McAfee and Sam Venegas, a woman who accompanied McAfee when he went into hiding.

After McAfee fled, the whole thing turned into some kind of real-life James Bond movie involving hiding in the jungle, faking his own capture and more. UPDATED: Warner Bros. just Impact Future Media now has the movie rights to his story. (However, Warner Bros. might do a movie, too. It optioned an article by Wired Magazine writer Joshua Davis.)

Here's a lightly edited transcript.

BI: What surprised you most about McAfee?

Dateline Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison

Keith Morrison: I don't know whether he is a lunatic or crazy like a fox. Maybe a little bit of each. He glories in the public perception that he's a crazy man, which tells you to watch out. We caught up with him, but what conclusions people reach, I don't know.

We were trying to do a story about the murder of Greg Faull and keep our focus on that. But McAfee's focus is to try to change the subject away from that and skate along in this interesting public persona he showed the world. He's an odd man, to say the least.

What were your thoughts about McAfee's girlfriend, Sam Venegas?

Keith Morrison: Which girlfriend? There were something like nine of them at some point and then he was down to half a dozen. Now, I gather he has just one, although he maintains he would like to have a second one with him, but now apparently she has a boyfriend of her own.

They admitted to me that they were presented to him as 16-year-old prostitutes whom he took in. He had a harem. His claim to fame that he was able to satisfy all of them, which lead to all kinds of speculations of testosterone injections or, more likely, this odd drug called MDPV. And then there was the question of if he was using it, or lying about using it.

He was caught in a tangle of interlocking crazy stories.

Don't miss: Do Police Really Think John McAfee Is A Murderer? Dateline Investigates