MIAMI — Anti-virus software founder John McAfee arrived in the U.S. on Wednesday night after being deported from Guatemala, where he had sought to evade police questioning in the killing of a man in neighboring Belize.
The American Airlines commercial jet carrying McAfee landed in Miami shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday, said Miami International Airport spokesman Greg Chin.
A short time later, a posting on McAfee's website announced that he was at a hotel in Miami's upscale South Beach neighborhood. He said he arrived by taxi after a group of customs or immigration agents, he didn't know which, escorted him to an airport taxi stand. McAfee has frequently communicated through the website.
"I have no phone, no money, no contact information," the post said. Reached by telephone at the hotel, the 67-year-old McAfee told an AP reporter that he couldn't talk because he was waiting for a call from his girlfriend, 20-year-old Belizean Samantha Vanegas.
Vanegas had accompanied him when he was on the run, but did not go with him to the U.S.
On a blog he has been posting for the past two weeks, McAfee wrote, "I have been forcibly separated from Sam," but claimed she would be coming to the United States later.
McAfee sat in a coach-class seat on the flight, which took off at midafternoon from Guatemala City, according to the airline.
Other passengers on the flight told The Associated Press that McAfee was escorted off the aircraft before others were allowed to disembark.
"They asked us to please stay seated and said, 'Mr. John McAfee, come to the front,' and he did," said Maria Claridge, a 36-year-old photographer from Fort Lauderdale. "He walked very peacefully, chin up. He didn't seem stressed."
Claridge said she did not see what happened to McAfee after he left the aircraft. She said he was well dressed, in a black suit and white shirt, appeared to be traveling alone and that she didn't realize who he was until another passenger told her.
"I thought he was either a diplomat or a politician," she said. "It just seemed eerie to be traveling on an airplane with someone who was in trouble."
An FBI spokesman in Miami, James Marshall, told the AP in an email that the agency is not involved with McAfee's return to the U.S.
Authorities from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals office and the U.S. attorney's office did not immediately respond to questions about whether McAfee would be questioned or detained in the U.S. They said there was no active arrest warrant for McAfee that would justify taking him into custody.
